Chevalier de Lorraine

Chevalier de Lorraine is a court figure whose appearances expose the coercive edge beneath Versailles’s ceremonious display. First he joins the laughter at Sherzad’s attempt to speak; later he arrives with armed men to supervise the sea woman’s transfer and personally ties Marie-Josèphe to a cart. Across these scenes, his mockery and physical authority help make a captive’s performance—and the people who defend her—subject to the court’s power.

Courtly Mockery and the Sea Woman

When the sea woman climbs past Marie-Josèphe and snarls Sherzad’s name at Louis XIV, Lorraine seizes on the moment as a joke. He exclaims that the clever Mlle de la Croix has taught “it” to talk, then compares the sea woman unfavorably with a parrot. The wording reduces a deliberate attempt at communication to an amusing trick and labels the speaker as a thing rather than a person. Monsieur laughs and extends the joke by calling her “Sherzad the parrot.” The laughter ends when Louis XIV says that the myth requires him to let her live another day. Lorraine’s quip therefore lands within a sudden change of stakes: what begins as courtly amusement is interrupted by a royal decision about the captive’s survival.

The scene gives Lorraine no stated explanation for his response, but its effect is clear. Marie-Josèphe’s teaching is turned into a spectacle for the court, and the sea woman’s first spoken name is treated as comic mimicry. The contrast between the court’s laughter and the King’s decision makes Lorraine’s wit part of a larger environment in which the captive’s life and meaning are debated by people who control her.

The Storytelling at the Fountain

At another visit to Sherzad, Lorraine enters with Chartres and the duke of Berwick while Marie-Josèphe asks Sherzad for a cheerful story. The three men take the front row and bow with exaggerated courtesy to Louis XIV’s portrait. Their elaborate deference to the King’s image contrasts with their behavior toward Marie-Josèphe: they whisper, laugh, and insult her with significant glances. Chartres openly announces that they have come for a story. Marie-Josèphe refuses to engage, treating their presence as a dangerous discourtesy rather than welcoming them as an audience.

Lorraine’s conduct here is not described in isolation from the group, but his participation places him among the men who turn the performance into an occasion to belittle its human participants. The scene also sets their spectatorship against Sherzad’s active presence. Marie-Josèphe reaches out to her, Sherzad encloses her fingers in her swimming webs, then breaks away and swims rapidly across the pool before leaping out of the water over Triton’s trumpet. The men have come demanding a story; Sherzad answers through movement on her own terms. Lorraine’s role is that of a jeering observer, not a participant in the communication Marie-Josèphe is trying to foster.

Authority over Sherzad’s Transfer

Later, as visitors picnic beside the Green Carpet and the gardens fill with hidden music and the sound of the fountains, a heavy wagon arrives beside the Fountain of Apollo. Lorraine dismounts from his tall horse and leads half a dozen men carrying staffs into the tent. Marie-Josèphe rides up, abandons her drawing box, and calls on them to stop in Louis XIV’s name. She protests that Sherzad cannot leap properly in the confined space and says there is no need to prod her. The order given is that Sherzad is to perform her acrobatics in the Grand Canal.

Marie-Josèphe is suspicious of Lorraine’s supervision. She asks why he is overseeing the transfer instead of Lucien de Chrétien. Lorraine’s answer suggests that Lucien may have more important duties or may have lost the King’s favor. That alternative matters: Marie-Josèphe is not simply told that a routine task has been assigned to Lorraine. The change is presented in terms of rank and royal favor, while the captive is being moved to perform elsewhere. Lorraine acts as the visible authority on the spot, but the scene does not establish who initiated the transfer or what his private purpose is. What it does show is the imbalance between Marie-Josèphe’s effort to protect Sherzad and the men who arrive equipped to carry out an order.

Physical Coercion and Narrative Role

During the later confrontation involving Louis XIV, the King rides away to meet his brother. Lorraine then ties Marie-Josèphe’s hands to the traces of the cart-horses. She is bedraggled and despondent and makes no objection. Yves struggles when Lorraine directs the musketeers to tie him beside her; Lucien bears the disgrace with arrogant disdain, while Chartres and the Duke du Maine bind him on Marie-Josèphe’s other side. Lorraine then tells Marie-Josèphe that someone in a high position could be useful to her now.

The actions distinguish Lorraine’s role from that of the other men: he personally binds Marie-Josèphe and directs the musketeers to restrain Yves, while Chartres and the Duke du Maine bind Lucien. His remark about the usefulness of a powerful ally follows immediately after these restraints, but the evidence does not specify a bargain or explain what he expects Marie-Josèphe to do. The juxtaposition is nonetheless pointed. He speaks in the language of access and advantage at the very moment when he has helped make her physically powerless.

Taken together, Lorraine’s scenes trace a progression from ridicule to enforcement. He helps make Sherzad’s speech and Marie-Josèphe’s storytelling objects of courtly amusement, supervises a coercive transfer, and later takes part in binding Marie-Josèphe and her companions. His significance lies less in a stated motive than in this repeated position at the boundary between spectacle and force: he can laugh at a captive’s voice, oversee her movement, and restrain those who resist the court’s actions.