Chartres

Chartres is a court figure whose appearances bring together spectacle, mockery, intimacy, and coercion. He first joins a group that treats Louis XIV’s portrait with exaggerated deference while ridiculing Marie-Josèphe; later, he leads a flamboyant mounted company in the royal pageant and takes part in binding Marie-Josèphe and those around her. The contrast makes his power legible as both performance and action: he can command attention in the parade and help impose physical restraint when the court’s display turns punitive.

Identity and Courtly Presence

The evidence presents Chartres through particular encounters rather than through an account of his origins or private life. His social position is nevertheless apparent in the company he keeps and the authority he exercises. He enters with Lorraine and the Duke of Berwick, takes a seat in the front row, and later leads a mounted band in a royal spectacle. At the end of the supplied sequence, he helps bind Lucien alongside the Duke du Maine. These scenes place him among figures able to participate in the court’s rituals and to act directly upon other people, though they do not establish the full extent of his title, duties, or motives.

Mockery Before the King’s Portrait

When Chartres arrives with Lorraine and the Duke of Berwick, a footman has just installed Louis XIV’s portrait in an armchair. The three men sit in the front row and bow to the image with exaggerated courtesy. Their deference is conspicuously theatrical: while Marie-Josèphe tries to ignore them, they whisper together, laugh, and direct insulting glances at her. Chartres then calls out that they have come for a story. Marie-Josèphe refuses to answer him and instead reaches toward Sherzad.

The arrangement gives the exchange its particular sting. Chartres’s group performs loyalty before the King’s image, yet uses its place in front of that image to make Marie-Josèphe their target. Her silence is not simple compliance: she pointedly withholds the response he seeks and turns her attention to Sherzad. The scene establishes Chartres as part of a coordinated display of ridicule, with his public courtesy and his treatment of Marie-Josèphe pulling in opposite directions.

Pageantry and Command

During the mounted procession, Chartres leads a band costumed as ancient warriors in translucent Egyptian linen. He carries a tall sheaf of sunflowers; the wind whips it and scatters yellow petals. His chestnut horses challenge the bays ridden by the Duke du Maine’s company, and the two groups race head to head, close behind Monsieur’s team.

The episode gives Chartres a different kind of prominence from his earlier place in the audience. He is now at the head of a moving company, and his group’s challenge contributes to the procession’s competitive motion. Costume, flowers, horses, and speed turn leadership into a visible performance. The scene does not describe Chartres’s thoughts about the spectacle; it shows instead how he occupies its center, directing a band whose movement presses forward among the other mounted groups. His role in the parade contrasts with his later participation in restraint: in one scene he leads riders through an extravagant public display, and in another he helps control people who cannot move freely.

Intimacy and Pursuit

In a later encounter, Chartres answers Marie-Josèphe’s observation that he appears whenever she is thinking of him by asserting that she thinks of him continually, and saying that he thinks of her as well. He bends to kiss her fingers, turns her hand over, and kisses her palm before wheeling Zelis around and galloping into the shadows. The exchange gives his conduct a more intimate register than the open mockery at the portrait, but the action remains his: he defines the terms of their verbal exchange, initiates the kisses, and leaves at speed.

The moment does not supply a full explanation of his intentions or of Marie-Josèphe’s feelings. Its gestures nonetheless matter beside the other scenes: Chartres can approach her with apparent tenderness, yet his surrounding conduct includes public insult and, later, physical control. The contrast prevents the intimate encounter from serving as simple proof of trust or safety. What the sequence establishes is a change in register, not a settled reconciliation between them.

Binding and Coercion

When the King rides away to meet his brother, Lorraine ties Marie-Josèphe’s hands to the traces of the cart-horses. She is bedraggled and despondent and makes no objection. Yves struggles without success as Lorraine orders the musketeers to tie him at Marie-Josèphe’s left hand. Chartres and the Duke du Maine bind Lucien at her right. Lucien bears the disgrace with arrogant disdain, while Lorraine tells Marie-Josèphe that someone in a high position could be useful to her now.

Chartres’s action is specific and consequential: he helps make Lucien part of the group’s physical humiliation, securing him beside Marie-Josèphe while Yves is restrained on her other side. The moment places Chartres not merely among spectators or performers but among those enforcing the binding. Its staging also sharpens the contrast with his earlier intimate gesture. A hand he had kissed is now one part of a scene of confinement; the narrative offers no explanation that reconciles these actions, and the difference between them is itself revealing. Across these episodes, Chartres’s characterization rests on that unresolved combination of courtly display, personal approach, and participation in coercion.