Allons-y
Louis XV, king of France since the age of five, puts a sheet of paper in the blazing fireplace like a child would send a letter up the chimney to Father Christmas.
My dear Doctor,
I write to you with my own hand to express my great delight at encountering you once again.
Do you remember that evening long ago when first we met? People still speak of the spectacular entrance of Monsieur le Docteur, crashing into the room on his white horse, coming to defeat the clockwork assassins and save the lovely Reinette – and, as a sort of afterthought, to save ma majesté and the court of France. What theatricality you showed, my dear Doctor! What impeccable timing! What bravado!
And, ah, Reinette . . . so bright, so beautiful. In those days, she inspired many such heroic acts of devotion in many a masculine heart. And you, monsieur le Docteur, whatever else you may be - soldier, scholar, wizard, fool - you looked at her with the eyes of a man.
And yet, I was not jealous of you. "The only man save you I have ever loved," she called you once - and yet I bear you no ill will. Not only because whatever passion I once bore for her was faded long ago, but because I see in you a man of real understanding. A man of princely courage. A man of sophisticated taste.
In fact, I admire you greatly, dear Doctor, because you alone had the exquisite taste to keep Reinette waiting. She was a woman unaccustomed to waiting: she seized fortune with both hands and made it serve her. But she waited her whole life for you. Even long after she had ceased to wait for me, to hope that I would return to her, she continued to wait and hope for you. You, who were both the hero and the villain in her little romance.
How despicable! How delightful! To keep a woman waiting for you, faithful to you, for almost forty years with nothing more than a kiss and a few outlandish promises. Odysseus himself could not say as much!
And so I recognized in you a man like myself, a man who shunned the vulgar pleasures of what most people call love. Pleasant bedfellows and tender hearts are to be had from every direction for men like us, and so conquest holds little allure. But the more exotic charm of lost love, and love denied, and love withered on the vine – it is like wine! It is the taste of both sunshine and decay. And it is intoxicating!
So it was as a fellow connoisseur that I allowed you to join me in savouring the scene this afternoon. We stood at the window together, watching poor Reinette's funeral cortège, tasting - not grief- but la nostalgie. For the pain of parting is so much sweeter than the pleasure of possessing; and the living rose is nothing compared to the dried rose pressed between pages yellowed by time. There is pleasure in saying "Je t'aime" - but there is greater pleasure in saying "Je me souviens" - and there is infinitely greater pleasure in saying, "Je la regrette."
And that is why we deliberately choose the flowers that must fade, is it not? The ladies with whom there can be no future. Of course, we dispose of them humanely, giving them houses and money and perhaps an agreeable husband - but it is the delicious guilt of being the one who disappointed her, who failed her, who never came back - c'est ça that gives us unique meaning and significance!
Most do not understand this ultimate truth about love, but I feel sure that you do understand, my dear Doctor, perhaps better than I do myself. And so allow me to make a proposal.
It would please me greatly if you could undertake to record the histories of all your liaisons dangereuses. Tell me of the ladies - and perhaps the gentlemen - and perhaps the nations - whom you have kept waiting, whom you have disappointed, who slipped from your grasp. Tell me your stories of what might have been, and all your stories of what will never be again. Tell me all the things for which you are unforgiven - and I promise not to forgive you.
Send me poems, send me letters, send me little plays - your history shall take whatever form you wish. I will treasure it, and honour it as the work of a greater craftsman than myself.
In return, you shall have the gratitude and friendship of a king, and whatever else it is in my power to grant you.
Besides which, it would be amusing, would it not? Alors – allons-y!
Louis R.