Louis XIV postpones the Sea Woman’s butchering during a royal hearing at the Fountain of Apollo, but his order offers only a temporary reprieve. The scene brings the dispute over her status into direct contact with the power to decide her fate: Marie-Josèphe de la Croix insists that the captive is an intelligent woman, while the King continues to regard her as a creature who can be displayed, assessed, and eaten. The immediate slaughter is stopped not by the King’s acceptance of Marie-Josèphe’s argument, but by Lucien de Barenton, Count de Chrétien’s appeal to classification and practical necessity.

The King arrives at the cage

The Sea Woman lies submerged at the bottom of the pool as the King’s party enters. Louis XIV, suffering from gout, struggles from his wheeled chair and steadies himself with the support of the Chevalier de Lorraine and Lucien de Barenton, Count de Chrétien. Monsieur follows with the King’s walking staff. The arrival makes the meeting a test conducted under royal authority: Marie-Josèphe rises and curtsies, while Lucien, Yves de la Croix, and the French Academy of Sciences gentlemen bow.

M. Boursin arrives with the entourage carrying an old book. His concern is immediate and material: he fears the Sea Woman may have died or spoiled, and says he should have butchered her the day before. As an artisan works at the cage lock with a file, Louis peers inside and asks Marie-Josèphe whether she has killed the Sea Woman. She answers calmly that she has not. The question frames the captive’s condition as a matter of responsibility and possession before the King has heard Marie-Josèphe’s account of what she is.

Marie-Josèphe argues for personhood

Marie-Josèphe explains that the Sea Woman is demonstrating the unusual lobe in her lung, which allows her to breathe underwater. She knows more about the organ’s function than she tells the court: she deliberately keeps its true secret back and offers only the explanation that it enables underwater breathing. When Louis asks how she learned this, she says the Sea Woman told her. Her statement makes their communication part of the case, not merely an inference drawn from the captive’s appearance.

Marie-Josèphe goes further, asserting that she and the Sea Woman understand one another, that the Sea Woman speaks and is intelligent, and that she is a woman and human. Yves disputes this interpretation, comparing her to an animal rather than accepting her as a person. The King likewise refuses Marie-Josèphe’s conclusion. When the Sea Woman rises to the surface alive, her effort to breathe and her visibly unfamiliar features do not persuade him; he asks what she can be if not a monster. The difference between the sisters’ claimed understanding and the court’s outward judgment remains unresolved.

The Sea Woman reacts to the refusal, and Marie-Josèphe is overwhelmed by the failure of her appeal. This response matters to the scene’s argument: the captive is not presented only as an object being discussed by observers. She understands that the King has rejected Marie-Josèphe’s defense and responds to that rejection. Yet her reaction does not alter the King’s decision about her status.

Boursin’s plan makes the stakes explicit

After the King calls on M. Boursin to present his plans, the naturalist displays a woodcut from his old book. It depicts a Sea Woman arranged as the centerpiece of a meal. Boursin describes preparations involving seafood and proposes both a dish for the King and a larger banquet; he also laments that the male Sea Monster has died, preventing him from preparing two. His proposal turns the question of classification into an immediate threat: if the court treats the captive as food, the argument over whether she is human has consequences measured in days, not abstractions.

Marie-Josèphe screams at the image. Lucien tells Boursin to close the book, while the Chevalier de Lorraine holds Marie-Josèphe as she sobs. Boursin does not understand her distress and continues discussing the meal. The contrast is sharp: for him, the book is a plan for an impressive banquet; for Marie-Josèphe, it shows what the court intends to do to a being she has come to understand as a person.

Boursin then asks permission to take the Sea Woman, explaining that the meat must hang before it can be served. Lucien interrupts by challenging the premise on the King’s own terms. If the Sea Woman is not human, he argues, she is a beast; and Boursin has already brought forward the Church’s judgment that sea monsters are fish. Butchering her that day, Lucien adds, would leave the flesh spoiled before the King’s banquet. His intervention does not establish the Sea Woman’s humanity. Instead, it uses the competing category of animal and the practical timing of the meal to make immediate slaughter inconvenient.

A reprieve, not recognition

Louis XIV accepts Lucien’s objection and commands that M. Boursin may not butcher the Sea Woman that day. He remains calm and in control, and the authority of the final order belongs to him. The decision prevents the proposed immediate killing, but its limit is explicit: the King does not reverse his refusal to call the Sea Woman a woman, nor does he abandon the banquet plan. The pause is temporary, resting on the timing of the meal rather than on recognition of her claim to personhood.

The King also orders Lucien to arrange for Jean-Baptiste Fagon to attend Marie-Josèphe. Lucien departs to carry out the instruction, while the Chevalier de Lorraine lifts Marie-Josèphe in his arms. The event therefore produces two distinct immediate consequences: the Sea Woman is spared slaughter for the day, and Marie-Josèphe is placed under the care of a doctor. Neither consequence resolves the conflict that brought the group to the cage.

Classification as power

The scene stages a contest between intimate testimony and institutional judgment. Marie-Josèphe offers knowledge gained through communication with the Sea Woman, including evidence of speech, intelligence, and mutual understanding. Louis and Yves reject the human category, while Boursin’s book makes the consequences of that rejection visible as a proposed meal. Lucien succeeds only by moving the argument onto ground the King will accept: the Church’s classification and the danger that the flesh will spoil.

The postponement is consequently both consequential and precarious. It interrupts the plan without disarming it. The Sea Woman remains confined, still classified by those in power as a creature rather than a woman, and still exposed to Boursin’s intention to butcher her. The King’s command buys time; it does not grant freedom, settle the question of her humanity, or promise that the same danger will not return.