Before Versailles by Karleen Koen

expected to become Louis’s chief minister. The treasury was on the verge of bankruptcy. It was one of the reasons why the viscount was so important. He kept the kingdom from tipping over into the abyss, had done so for years. He was a collector of taxes, a maker of loans, and, also, a maker of men.
    “Monsieur does me the honor to ask if I, in my humble way, might make a pleasing argument he be allowed a place at this council. Is there a time when I might make such appealing to you, your majesty?” As always, the viscount was suave and as smooth as honey.
    “A bribe,” asked Louis. “Are you attempting to buy me?”
    Nicolas blinked, then bowed low, his eyes on the floor. “How clumsy I am. I’ve offended, when all I wished to do was champion a man I think would add much to our governance. His highness, your brother, is your most loyal servant. I’ll say no more.” The viscount unbent and met Louis’s eyes. “Allow me to be of service in another way. I understand you are searching for cup-of-gold vines. It happens that I have some at my estate not far from here. They are yours.”
    Good God, thought Louis, how can he know that already?
    “I become clumsiness entirely,” Nicolas said as Louis’s silence lengthened. “This is not my morning, is it?”
    The viscount referred to an earlier, terse exchange about funds to rebuild the navy.
    But Louis laughed. If there was one attribute the viscount possessed—and he possessed many—it was charm. “You surprise me, viscount, that’s all. Can you read my mind? I was speaking of the vines only this morning.”
    “I assure you I am not omniscient. The Countess de Soissons was kind enough to tell me.”
    “Send every vine you have, then. I accept them with pleasure.”
    Nicolas smiled, as if he lived only to please his sovereign, and in spite of himself, Louis smiled back. I could like this man, he thought, but can I trust him?
    “My only wish is to serve you to the best of my talents,” the Viscount Nicolas said as if he had read that thought, too.
    Feeling awkward and graceless, Louis turned back to his dogs. He knew he should say something equally fulsome, such as how the viscount’s least talent was a treasure, but he just wanted to put distance between himself and this man, who seemed too smooth, too capable, too kind, and—was it simply pique on his part and how he hated that it might be—too certain of himself. It was as if he tolerated Louis’s whim to rule without a chief minister, all the while knowing such was impossible, that it was simply a matter of time before Louis realized it, too. That’s what the court was whispering behind his back. No one believed he could manage without a Mazarin.
    Gesturing that he wished no friends as companions, Louis walked not to his wife’s apartments but in another direction altogether, toward a quieter, less-used part of the palace. He passed through halls and unoccupied bedchambers and then through the silent ballroom an ancestor had built. It was a magnificent room, a long chamber with huge, wide, handsome bays on each side to let in light through floor-to-ceiling windowed doors with expensive and rare glass in them. Everywhere were the emblems of its builder-king, his letter “H” embossed and entwined, along with the “C” of his queen, but also the crescent moon of the goddess Diana—Diana, also the name of that king’s mistress. The large frescoes at one end were allegories of Diana also, Diana and the hunt, that king’s favorite things. Two huge bronze satyrs embellished each side of the enormous fireplace, the satyrs signifying lust, the lust that king had felt for a woman.
    Lust. Thou shalt not commit adultery. His heels clicked on the intricately patterned wooden floors. The scratch of his dogs’ nails against the floors was a comfort to his ears. He was on his way to an old, neglected chapel just on the other side of this ornate ballroom. No one used it anymore, there being a far grander one