Versailles

Hall of Mirrors

Through the door and up the Queen's Staircase, tap tap tap up forty-two steps. TAP TAP TAP the echo comes back, in golden rings, in rings of gold. A thin layer of dust lies everywhere. Also cobwebs, though spiders have trouble making their thread stick to marble. They have to be patient.

Patient as a spider in a mausoleum. Patient as a cat whose paws are being grilled. Over hill and dale, over moor and meadow, a million miles and a million to go. Late autumn light spills from the second-floor loggia, the smell of burning leaves, of burning houses. The planet tilts, plane trees drop their leaves; earth and clouds stream by.

It's Allhallows, it's All Souls', it's the Day Between the Years. Brumaire. BRRRRRR. It's time to fatten the pigs with acorns. It's the end of the world, where the world stops in a point like a tail.

The Room of the Queen's Guard, the Queen's Antechamber, the Salon of the Nobles, the Apartments of the Queen. Over river and stream, over valley and mountain, a million miles to the end of the world.

Meanwhile in Paris they're making things pure. Meanwhile in Paris the cats are eating the cats. Sssssss-boom. Sssssss-boom. Saint Guillotine. The Black Widow. Wasn't it Mirabeau who said that liberty is a bitch who likes to be bedded on a mattress of cadavers?

Try to be nice, though, try to be nice. It's the Reign of Purity, after all, also known as the Reign of Terror. Most people look better painted on walls. The Sun King, risen like a god to the ceiling of the Hall of Mirrors, surrounded by blue sky, clouds, the sun breaking through.

From the Salon of Peace to the Hall of Mirrors, in its seventeen windows the sun breaking through.

Seventeen windows, forty-four panes of glass each. Seven hundred forty-eight panes of glass and through them all the November sun shines on poor lonely Latona and her frog companions, the fountain dry as a bone, the basin full of leaves and in the distance the Grand Canal like a long gray finger pointing at a pair of nondescript poplars.

Tap tap tap on the parquet floor. TAP TAP TAP the echo comes back. Gold November sun, thick with dust and the illusion of heat, dripping off the crystal pendants of the chandeliers. Raindrops, teardrops. Twenty-two chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, twenty-four on pedestals along the walls. Forty-six chandeliers in all.

Spades and hearts, power and courage; clubs and diamonds, money and pleasure. Bacchus and Venus and Hermes and Modesty. If only we knew how to see green things, see them as though in bloom, in their wonder! A cord from the center of the heart, a cloud of birds from the corners of the sky.

Over earth and sea, over moon and sun. Two poplars, a million birds.

Two hundred twenty steps, a million miles. From the Salon of Peace to the Salon of War, from the root to the crown, from the rock to the spring. From Versailles to Paris, from heaven to earth.

Seventeen arcades, each with eighteen mirrors. Three hundred six mirrors and in every one of them no Antoinette.