The Hall of Mirrors turns a royal banquet into a display of power—and, when Pope Innocent crosses the room to approach Marie-Josèphe de la Croix, a stage for challenging the authority that display represents. Its reflected light, royal emblems, and carefully ordered company make private differences of rank impossible to hide.

Setting and Ceremonial Splendour

Afternoon sunlight floods the hall and rebounds from its mirrors; crystal chandeliers scatter rainbow spectra across a room marked by the King’s golden sunburst. Gods and heroes crowd the ceiling, while long banquet tables fill the floor with the aristocracy of France and its allies. Music and the scent of orange trees complete the spectacle. Even the arrangement of the guests is consequential: the clothes, food, and seating at His Majesty’s banquet are expected to occupy court gossips for months, after months of preparation by the Introducer of Ambassadors and his assistants.

The room’s brilliance gives ceremony a physical force. Light dazzles as well as decorates, and the sunburst repeats the King’s emblem across the walls. The banquet’s splendour is therefore also an ordering system: who enters, who is watched, and where each person belongs all matter within the spectacle.

Marie-Josèphe’s Entrance

The usher announces Marie-Josèphe by name. She enters alone and unescorted, walking into a hum of speculation; when her guard appears, the whispers stop. She keeps her head up and glides forward despite the attention. Her inward amusement turns the court’s scrutiny into a question of its own: she suspects the guests might gossip as much about her unfashionable hair or lack of an escort as about the guard.

Haleed’s fantastical headdresses supply a pointed contrast. Their scale seems to loom over the fashionable women’s lace constructions, making the court’s carefully cultivated appearance look less like an unquestioned standard than another spectacle to be judged. In the Hall of Mirrors, Marie-Josèphe is both watched by the gathering and alert to the absurdity of its judgments.

Pope Innocent and the Breach of Protocol

When the usher announces Pope Innocent, he turns away from the high table and approaches Marie-Josèphe. The usher’s frantic search for assistance finds no one; after whispering with the Pope, he bows and backs away. Marie-Josèphe rises and curtsies, and Pope Innocent permits her to kiss his ring. Yves de la Croix kneels before him, while Lucien de Barenton, Count de Chrétien, remains standing. The Pope’s request for another chair makes room for an encounter that the banquet’s formal arrangements had not anticipated.

The hall’s hierarchy becomes a visible conflict when Pope Innocent insists that women must be submissive, obedient, and quiet. Lucien leans toward him in an angry gesture, then freezes and turns pale. He answers that, if the Pope believes in God, he must accept that God made Marie-Josèphe audacious and brave. Pope Innocent calls Lucien and the sea creature unnatural. The exchange transforms the room from a setting for royal display into a public contest over who may speak, who may define what is natural, and whether ceremony can contain dissent.