Sherzad’s captivity at Versailles

Sherzad’s captivity at Versailles is a condition of confinement in the Fountain of Apollo, where a reprieve from death does not amount to freedom. The pool’s grating, shallow limits, and watchful guards separate her from the sea; even a brief passage through the Grand Canal offers only a fragile interruption. Her captivity also binds Marie-Josèphe de la Croix to the fountain: she stays near Sherzad, knowing that escape would leave her friend alone and that remaining means accepting surveillance and uncertainty.

Identity and Conditions

Sherzad is held as a sea woman in the Fountain of Apollo. The pool is not simply a place to keep her: it is a prison whose barriers shape what she can do. Its inlet is blocked by a grating, and the small enclosure gives her nothing useful with which to force it open. Bits of metal on the bottom bend in her hands. The contrast with the open ocean is explicit in her movements: she can cross the pool repeatedly, but not swim with the speed or range available to her at sea.

Her confinement is also bound up with the fate of her companion. At the fountain, she mourns beside Marie-Josèphe while Yves de la Croix prepares the dead man’s body for burial and the servants carry the coffin. Sherzad’s keening and grief place her imprisonment within a larger loss: she is separated not only from the sea but from someone she has already lost. Her captivity therefore cannot be reduced to a question of physical enclosure. It leaves her grieving in a place where the living are kept under guard and the dead are prepared for removal.

A Reprieve, Not Freedom

The danger of Sherzad’s execution becomes clear when Marie-Josèphe appeals to Louis XIV. Spectators in the tent whisper for the King not to kill the sea woman, but their support does not soften his response; a musketeer’s approach silences them. Louis XIV treats Marie-Josèphe’s attempt to save her pet by telling a story as a clever tactic, and the courtiers laugh, with Lucien de Barenton, Count de Chrétien among the exceptions. The scene shows that Sherzad’s fate remains in the King’s hands, not those of the visitors or of the woman pleading on her behalf.

Afterward, Marie-Josèphe is too exhausted and relieved to stand. Lucien checks her wrist: its swelling has gone and the streaks have receded. She asks whether Sherzad will be spared. He can promise no more than a reprieve of one day. That limited reprieve alters the immediate prospect of death but leaves the captivity intact. The wording of the exchange matters: time has been granted, not release, and the next decision still belongs to the King.

The Fountain as Prison

Sherzad’s resistance is expressed through repeated movement and failed efforts to get out. She swims across the pool, turns, and crosses it again; then she dives to the inlet and struggles with the immovable grating. She searches the bottom for something that might serve as a tool, but the scattered pieces of metal are too soft to help. Marie-Josèphe calls to her, but Sherzad ignores her, continuing to swim and keen. When she catches a fish, she tears it apart. These actions register the strain of confinement without making the pool a substitute for the sea: its limits remain, however forcefully she moves within them.

A later passage places Sherzad in the clean, cold water of the Grand Canal. She hums and whistles as she listens to the space around her, whose shapes she distinguishes through sound; she notices the keels of small boats above her and searches the current for the underwater river. The canal gives her more room and water unlike the filthy pool, but it is not the open ocean she seeks. The episode makes the distinction between temporary movement and escape consequential: a change of water does not itself restore her home, her people, or lasting safety.

Return and Continuing Confinement

Sherzad eventually plunges back into the Fountain of Apollo entangled in a net. As the net loosens, she slashes at its cables, but once she is inside the pool the cage door closes and its lock snaps shut. Alone, she tries the sides of the pool and the drain grating, without finding a way out. Her efforts end in failure: the account closes on the fact that she has found no escape. The fountain is again not just a place she occupies but a structure that defeats her attempts to leave it.

The captivity continues under close watch. When Spanish treasure arrives in heavily guarded wagons, Sherzad remains in the fountain while guards watch both the tent and Marie-Josèphe’s rooms. Their vigilance increases when Marie-Josèphe comes to visit. She could leave by the route through her window and over the roof that Lucien had shown her, but she sees no destination for herself beyond the escape, and understands that Sherzad would then be left alone and Lucien left behind. Sherzad rests her head in Marie-Josèphe’s lap; her condition has worsened, and she fasts in silence. The visit makes the human consequence of confinement plain: Marie-Josèphe’s presence is a form of companionship, but it cannot open the cage or ensure Sherzad’s survival.

Significance

Sherzad’s captivity is sustained by the gap between a ruler’s temporary mercy and an actual change in her circumstances. Public pleas, Marie-Josèphe’s advocacy, and the one-day reprieve affect how soon Sherzad may die, but none removes the barriers around her. The shifts between the fountain and the Grand Canal sharpen that distinction: water can become a little cleaner or more spacious without becoming freedom. Meanwhile, Marie-Josèphe’s repeated presence turns the state of captivity into a shared constraint. She remains because leaving would abandon Sherzad, even as the guards’ attention narrows her own choices. The imprisonment thus persists not as one failed escape alone, but as a cycle of restricted movement, uncertain reprieve, attempted departure, and renewed watchfulness.