Paradise

Unlike the king and the rest of his court, Philippe de Chabot was a devotee not of art, culture, or tennis, but of the glory of France.

Ever since poor Rombaud had made an appearance in his rooms with a fourth ball made from the hair of the Boleyn woman, he had been thinking about the benefits that such an object might yield if placed in the right hands at the right time.

A ball made from the hair of the decapitated queen was the perfect gift for softening the already pliant Giovanni Angelo Medici, then governor of the Papal States, and a key piece in the negotiations with His Holiness regarding the urgency of forcing the succession of the marquisate of Fosdinovo in Lunigiana, where one Pietro Torrigiani Malaspina, patron of mediocre artists and magnificent thugs, was blocking the loading of marble onto French ships in the port of Carrara.

The ball couldn’t be sent to Rome as it was, so he had a little chest made from sheets of mother-of-pearl riveted with gold, which in addition to matching the regal sumptuousness of its contents had the advantage of being a lengthy job for the goldsmith. This allowed the minister—who was a devotee of the glory of France but also (though always secondarily) of the delectable sexual practices of low-ranking and high-breasted courtesans—to embark on a bedroom game or two with the ball, beneath whose leather stays beat Anne Boleyn’s incendiary braids.