The rich and powerful try to create Arcadia and only end up constructing a labyrinth. They try to shape a paradise and end up as prisoners. To those with a metaphysical take on history, the Sun King was a prisoner of infinity. To others a prisoner of unreality.
As they drove in silence deeper into the grounds of Versailles, Lao read the notes that Husk had prepared for their next encounter.
‘The court of Versailles was not everyone’s idea of paradise. Marie Antoinette, the wife of Louis XVI, preferred a constructed village, with goats and sheep, at the far corner of the rolling acres of the palace. How much like the traditional condition of things: behold the man’s possessions, his 100,200 trees, his 160 million flowers, his 43 kilometres of streets, his canal, his lakes, his châteaux, fountains, servants, his innumerable houses and their numberless rooms and lavatories everywhere. And the woman, the queen, has only a little patch, far away, to call her own. She had only a constructed little village, to call her own. It is just over a mile away from the palace. A little hamlet with its own farm, pond, and mill.’
The crew spilled out of the bus and gazed upon the charming hamlet which a queen had created for her own pleasure. It could have been a quaint fairy-tale village, and had much of the air of little Swiss towns, or the little villages that girls have in their picture books. A doll’s village, with a lake, a chateau, a mill and pond, shepherds’ huts, and an abundance of plants and flowers and its own woods. There was a garden house and a house for the policeman. There was a beautiful little tower, and a theatre where comedies were staged. There was also a house for the poor, beautifully thatched with grass.
The curator of the preserved hamlet, a Monsieur Torraban, led the crew round the infamous extravagance of the Petit Trianon. He showed them the paddock where the cows and sheep were kept. He was generally enthusiastic when speaking in French. And he seemed to have a charming effect on Husk. She coloured often and perked up in his company. She seemed, for a while, to have forgotten that she was heartbroken. And when she announced to Jim an amusing forthcoming problem to do with the interview, she was almost girlish.
Monsieur Torraban, it seemed, had spoken perfectly acceptable English in their previous discussions, but when it came to the moment of the interview he panicked. He refused to speak anything but French and was as intractable as a mule. Monsieur Torraban kept disappearing during the linguistic negotiations and each time he returned he seemed more stressed and more drunken than before. By the time of the interview itself, he was positively refractory.
At this point Lao came forward, told Sam to start filming, and the whole interview was plunged into a strange transaction of languages. In the end Lao forced the poor distraught fellow to speak in his pretty ropy English as it was marginally better than Lao’s threadbare French.
Their conversation, which lasted hours, and needed many disappearances on Monsieur Torraban’s part, reduced the entire crew to stitches of laughter. But what emerged was something charming and sad.