The Enchanted Clock Read online

  In this mirage of the young Louis that Claude-Siméon imagines while celebrating his recovery among the crowd, he cannot help painting his own wishes. Under the sovereign highness that transcends them, in the fog of the mournful gaze, the long eyelashes like a young girl’s, the flaccid flesh of the jowls, the feverish adolescent from Mazarin caresses unavowed temptations. Too passive, ready for somber cruelties, bloody angers to suppress unavowable abandon. Who guesses so? His ambitious mother, who bears her name Marie-Madeleine to perfection? No chance. Alexis d’Hermand certainly, the close friend and more than that who scarcely hides his attraction to the male dancers at the Opera. “Are you coming?” he cries, aping the minions of the Tuileries. Claude-Siméon thinks Alexis is overdoing it, it’s not funny anymore. “His society is not ours,” the mercer and his spouse have always warned him. Passemant the son is going to cut into the flesh of his daydreams, of his weakness for Alexis, for Marie-Madeleine. What remains is royal seduction, bolstered by readings, halted by evasions into the stratosphere. Interminable fumbles, adjustments, finesses, and feints worthy of a royal clockmaker-jeweler. One could hardly put it better, since he will become one.

  As for the fragile Louis, destined from birth to a shorter life than even that of his parents, he cultivates muscles and passions, suffers no fatigue, kills beasts and humans in his hunts with hounds, thinks only about the next day’s conquest. Between the head of the melancholy androgyne and the haughty body of the commander-in-chief, he shelters a secret garden, to which the somber memory his gaze reveals bears witness. Invisible to all, courtesans and even mistresses. But not to Claude-Siméon. The future astronomer will see intercontinental and interstellar spaces traverse the suave and painful unspoken royal thoughts, the promised land of geographic and astronomical maps, numbers, calculations, altitudes, scales, stars, plants, zoology, all sorts of science. No art. The king refrains: art dispenses pleasures to the senses, and His Majesty’s are as volcanic as they are fragile. There are places for that, discreet if possible—the Parc-aux-Cerfs, for example, which will be notorious.

  Claude-Siméon, too, has a single passion: light. That is what saves him from his own “black holes,” migraines, and untold rages. The gentlest of men, the most docile of spouses, the most tender of fathers with his two daughters (after a son who died at an early age) and with his sons-in-law, to whom he will transmit his science, his daydreams, his enterprise, light. The light that Louis shelters in the velvet of his eyes, that he explores in his private cabinets. That he shares only with the great scholars of his kingdom. And also, sometimes, rarely, with the unranked chosen, those outside the game, outside the times, like this Passemant who brings him his fabulous clock, the one he had presented as a project to the Academy of Sciences on August 23, 1749.

  On October 10, 1753, Louis is waiting for him at Choisy. The clock conceived by Passemant was constructed by the clockmaker Louis Dauthiau in a new case of gilded bronze, which the king ordered from the famous bronze smelters Jacques and Philippe Caffieri. The Duc de Chaulnes is charged with presenting the wonderful object as well as its inventor. A great honor. An event. But what’s this? The inventor is late. An offense. Calamity! Catastrophe! The courtesans panic, scandal threatens. His Majesty doesn’t wait. Will not wait for long. What time is it? This is too much for a king, even one who protects the sciences. Finally the man arrives!

  1. James Anderson was the author of The Constitutions of the Free-Masons, written in 1723 and published in America in 1734 with Benjamin Franklin’s name on it. This was the first Masonic book published in America.

  12

  THE FAMOUS CLOCK

  Claude-Siméon has a horrible headache that day. Is it the rain battering the Château de Choisy? Is it the grandeur of the royal person? The engineer can’t move, hasn’t a single word to say. Prostrate.

  Many of those who helped him complete his various works, crowned by the already famous astronomical clock, have been gathered before His Majesty for some time already, struggling to distract him as best they can. The Comte de Maurepas should have been the work’s sponsor. Was it not he, the state secretary in charge of administering the Royal Academy of Sciences, who granted to the hardworking technician a privilege from the king for the construction of his reflecting telescope? But Maurepas, in disgrace for several years now, is no longer among the scientific counselors nor in the circle of invited personalities. He is the declared enemy of the king’s mistresses, noted for his witty sayings, suspected of being the author of an epigram directed against la Pompadour in person. It’s the Marquis Charles François Paul Le Normant de Tournehem, director general of buildings and close relative of the favorite, who, seeking to associate himself with the prodigious jewel, advances toward the king as a connoisseur to remind him that solid walls are indispensable for this kind of work.

  “To be able to attach his instrument for observing the stars on the walls, in line with the Meridian,” he concludes in learned tones, thus letting people believe he has been involved in the entire project at the desire of the king and thanks to his protection.

  Louis XV is not an expert in communication. Most of the time words refuse to come out of his mouth, other than banal canned phrases relayed by a distressing mutism, an absent air. His mechanical questions call for no answers. At times one senses that he would like to speak more, but without taking the risk of granting or soliciting affection.

  A few succeed in drawing him out of his reticence: scholars, his children—and his angora cat. And then, surprise, while waiting for the clock and its inventor, the king recovers his presence of mind along with the pleasure his scientific knowledge brings him, a presence well served by his grand style and all the colors of his expression. His Majesty approaches the object.

  “What exactly is it? A clock? A mockup of the universe? An androautomaton? A priapic sculpture?”

  “The clock made into a man, Your Majesty!” says Chaulnes.

  Indeed. An enormous head and not just one sphere but two—the solar globe with all its planets atop the ball of its clock face. But the silhouette of this automaton lacks arms. All its cleverness is elegantly constricted in its waist, svelte like the dancer of a minuet. Male strength is planted in the legs, sporty thighs and calves, spread wide the better to encircle the treasure of this personage: its gigantic pendulum consisting of a heavy mass of gilded copper suspended from its stem, able to oscillate around an axis of rotation and thus regulate the movements of the clock.

  Their eyes riveted to the crotch of this astronomical android—on the pendulum of the clock, to be exact—the (male) guests are also swinging back and forth, not at all sure if they are supposed to admire the exploits of science, rhapsodize about the beauties of the art, or envy the virile powers of this being as rigorous as it is eternal. Had one wished to give His Majesty a mirror of his own gifts, one could not have done better!

  “An astronomical male, Majesty!” says Tournehem.

  Obscenity is hardly in style, but everyone still has in mind the Ode to Priapus, which resulted in its author, Alexis Piron, not being elected to the Académie. La Pompadour offset this failure with an equivalent pension, but still.

  “Perhaps not Priapus, but it’s really Metromania!” Luynes takes it upon himself to whisper the title of the play by the same Piron that caused a scandal at the Comédie-Française.

  “It’s fortunate Maurepas is missing. He would have recited Piron’s poem:

  Priapus, give me breath,

  And for a brief moment into my veins

  Bear your fire …”

  Tournehem is definitely not planning on being bored.

  “Enough, gentlemen! Maurepas is a witty man, but for the moment astronomy is where we are, and before you is a masterpiece conceived by M. Passemant.” As Chaulnes never fails in his role, the ceremony becomes serious again.

  Overwhelmed with pain, embarrassed by his lateness, Passemant comes forward, more haggard than ever. Only his two eyes, used to staring at the stars, express the
curiosity of a fascinated, inaudible intelligence. His Majesty, so close by today, seems nothing like the imagined adolescent whose coronation he had followed as a schoolboy. No connection either with the whimsical sovereign whom rumors charged with burlesque exploits—walking on rooftops at twenty-one, accumulating acrobatic feats along the gutters, shouting like a savage to scare guests in the Château. No more of that mischievousness, that great cordial pummeling. To the sudden inconsistencies and the legendary mutism of the young monarch have succeeded an apparent reserve and insatiable, less and less secret rituals of pleasure. The voluptuous hunter has been refined into an enthusiast of science, skilled with his hands, master of his memory. And that is the man, King Louis XV, whom the engineer of time contemplates by an unheard-of chance right here, in this very instant, before the best of the court gathered here for the occasion.

  Today, Louis XV looks more like the portrait by La Tour than the one by Van Loo. Piercing gaze, trembling masculine beauty, sensual lips and nostrils, the desire for and the practice of carnal domination. Precisely what Claude-Siméon fears and flees, he the ascetic who reads and rereads everything he can find as testimony about the life of monks, saints, and hermits. As if to justify his disgust or dismiss his vices.

  When he sees his automaton dressed like Louis XV, in the case fabricated by Caffieri, Passemant thinks he’s having a nightmare. The infinity of time contained in a human carcass, even a royal one—that is surely a scientific absurdity, he thinks. It’s a monstrous stupidity! What demon, what infernal alchemist can have fomented such an offense? Unless it’s a farce, a joke—but by whom, on what?

  Before this unbearable vision, the engineer wants to cover his face; shame is drilling into his brain. But he is struck by one detail: this homunculus has no arms. Did that idea come from him, from Claude-Siméon? It doesn’t seem familiar. No, had it escaped him, he would have disavowed it at once; he will never assume its paternity. Perhaps Caffieri made 9999 armless precisely to remove from it the mad pretention to seize hold of the passing years and, why not, of the expanding cosmos? Or did the furniture builder want to draw attention to the sovereign crotch? Or was it just a fantasy?

  In any case, in taking note of the automaton’s handicap, the inventor immediately feels his anguish diminish. He brushes a light kiss on his own hands, as if he is discovering them for the first time. These hands that will never hold anything but the pen, the compass, the square, the plumb line, books, and metals, screws, and nuts. He looks at this work of his that does not capture passing time but tries to adjust its inner being to the cosmic race that transcends it. And a certain pride touches his heart, which doesn’t even last a second—perhaps a sixtieth of a second.

  Chaulnes tries to excuse the unfortunate inventor’s tardiness: “Majesty, M. Passemant suffered a headache so painful that it prevented him from presenting himself before Your Honor at the given hour.”

  Tournehem tries in vain to obtain a few words from the engineer about his prodigious clock programmed to the year 9999. Aaaah! sighs the audience. With the position of the planets, the hours, the minutes, the seconds, the sixtieths of the second. Aaaah!

  But it’s the sovereign who comes up with the right words to put an end to the malaise of his talented servant. Who was it who said His Majesty had complexes? His very straight stature, his head held high, and his robustness, sculpted by the outdoor exercise that Louis enjoys and recommends, grace him with a masculine manner and a noble grandeur. But it is “the expression of his magnificent head” that Giacomo Casanova himself, a keen connoisseur in matters of seduction, finds overwhelming, “when the monarch turns it to look at someone with benevolence,” writes the Venetian. At this moment the someone is none other than Claude-Siméon Passemant.

  “He mustn’t worry. Like him, I have been subject to headaches that have not had any consequences.”

  The ice is broken. Who was it who said His Majesty was not an expert at communicating? Passemant feels the blood flowing in his veins once more; his voice resonates in his throat. His gaze encounters the eyeballs of the king.

  “Sire …”

  The inventor has forgotten his notes. Fixed in his diamond-shaped face, which betrays obstinacy more than scientific nobility, his piercing eyes scan the draft consigned to his memory. Clearly this technician is in breakdown mode. After tardiness, forgetfulness. Will the chain of accidents never stop, then? Luynes, like a canny psychologist, comes to the rescue and fills the silence with a sententious tact: “Our scientist pronounces more sentiment than words. His politeness is simple, but never false. We are listening.”

  The description will be brief and precise. The two men—the king facing his engineer—and their two worlds are suddenly joined in this instant of becoming, named 9999 that day. One of those majestic spectacles, like the ones the Duc de Saint-Simon immortalized in the past, “where nobody thought to budge, and deep silence reigned.”

  A brouhaha and a little applause follow. Passemant looks out for the grudges, the jeers of the ignorant, the bigoted, the jealous, and such. He glimpses only delighted faces. His Majesty is pale with concentration. He walks around the clock several times, remarks on the position of the planets in the solar system, with the eclipses. And notes the time—“a lot of time”—that will elapse until the year 9999, its hours, minutes, seconds, and sixtieths of seconds.

  “You are hunting the sixtieths of the seconds all the way up to 9999, Passemant, congratulations!” he says with the smile of an experienced reveler.

  “This clock is the most beautiful in the world!” Luynes exclaims. “I believe it’s a miracle of science.”

  “One that gives us a headache!” says the marquise, the only woman in the audience. His Majesty’s face darkens.

  General stupefaction. Suddenly the assembly hears the clear, resonant voice of the king, who carefully avoids looking at Mme de Pompadour: “This masterpiece would more likely make mine go away, as far as I’m concerned.”

  “May I be permitted to agree with His Majesty?” Passemant hears himself pronounce these words, at once realizing their temerity.

  “You may, my good man. Nothing brings people closer than the body’s pains. And the light of Apollo, right?”

  The king’s supper punctuates the presentation of 9999. Passemant is present, against all etiquette. Louis XV’s hungry curiosity is beginning to shock even the most devoted of his followers; the traditionalists of the court seize upon the slightest reason to plot. Never mind, Louis bombards his engineer with questions.

  “Luynes, you will have this astronomical clock installed in the grand apartment in Versailles, next to the bedchamber.”

  “Yes, Majesty … Well, the changes to the interior apartment of the king have occasioned some contestation. I have requested that M. de Gesvres be so kind as to inform me of the details …”

  Luynes makes certain that entries to the king’s dwellings are strictly regulated. When the sovereign goes to morning Mass, for example, only the grand chamberlain, the first gentleman of the chamber, and the captain of the guards have the honor of following him, as well as any princes of the blood who are there. All who wish it are presented in the throne room, but none are presented in the bedchamber …

  His Majesty is not listening.

  “Did you hear me, Passemant? You will be well lodged, my good man. I speak of your clock, naturally. As for your person, you will have a pension of one thousand livres and an apartment at your disposition in the Louvre, in the galleries. Be assured of my benevolence and of all my protection.”

  “Those persons who have the honor of following the king cross the interior corridor only after him; the door is always double-locked when the king passes there …” Luynes continues to murmur.

  “Go now, you may leave, Passemant.”

  The inventor bows but doesn’t lower his head in front of the sovereign.

  “Don’t look at me like that. It’s surprising, I know, but that’s how it is. I can be gentle, polite, amiable, speaking a
lot, even speaking with exactness. That does happen, with wit and charm, contrary to what they say. Oh yes, oh yes! Cheerful and affable, talking and talking well, it will be said; you will see, or your descendants will see.” The monarch is more and more at ease with his engineer. “We have time, don’t we, you and I? At least ten thousand years; that is what you calculated, isn’t it? Afterward, we’ll see. Luynes, rest assured, this astronomical clock will be installed under Apollo’s rays. Where exactly? Its place is in the Petits Cabinets. Where the Meridian will pass, one day, later, obviously. You will do it, won’t you?”

  Whereupon His Majesty veils the homosexual languor of his eyes, shuts up his orphan timidity within his royal pause, and leaves the clockmaker, who has had the privilege of counting among his intimates for the space of only a few moments.

  You who doubt this encounter, read Louis XV’s letters to his grandson, the infante Ferdinand de Parme. They bear witness to the realism of the scene and the comments of the sovereign, which would galvanize the body and mind of the inventor until his death.