The scene opened upon the Dauphin's study, a chamber half-bathed in the golden light of an afternoon sun. Maps of Europe, the Americas, and the East Indies lay scattered across the polished oak desk, their corners pinned down by heavy inkstands and brass instruments. A large globe, still bearing the cartographer's smell of varnish and sea salt, stood solemnly in the corner, its surface dotted with pins of different colors—red for France, blue for England, black for Spain.
The head of the Dauphin's guard,Jean, stood before the young prince. He had just concluded a long report of tidings gathered from every corner of the known world. His words, heavy with the dust of faraway battlefields and merchant harbors, seemed to linger in the air.
"…and to conclude, your highness," the guard said, lowering his head slightly, "the Dutch have launched an offensive in Asia. Their fleets press farther into the islands, eager to strengthen their grip on the spice trade."
Louis-Joseph, Dauphin of France, only three years old, leaned back in his chair with a calm that belied his age. His hands were folded neatly, his expression thoughtful yet untroubled.
"I see," he answered, his voice measured. "That is of little importance to me now. Let the infiltration continue abroad as it has been, but do not divert too much attention. France must remain our principal focus."
He paused, and for the first time in days allowed a small sigh to escape his lips. He glanced at the piles of untouched notes, sketches, and pamphlets on his desk—things he had neglected in pursuit of more immediate intrigues.
"As for me," he continued, his tone firm but tinged with something personal, "I have matters of far greater consequence. Things I have set aside for too long. It is time I attend to them."
Jean bowed, excused himself, and left the chamber. Silence returned, broken only by the faint chirping of birds in the royal gardens beyond the tall windows.
Louis-Joseph was no ordinary boy. Though small in frame, he possessed an awareness far beyond his years, sharpened by memories no one in this century could suspect. Yet, he knew better than to flaunt this brilliance openly. To survive and to grow, he would have to play the prodigy—just enough to inspire admiration, but not so much as to breed fear or suspicion.
His first step was to lean into the innocence expected of a child: curiosity. He spent long afternoons strolling the gardens of Versailles, asking the gardeners about herbs, flowers, and the strange remedies whispered about by peasants. He watched soldiers drill in the courtyards, then pressed them with questions about the bandages they used, or the salves applied to bruises and cuts. He cultivated an image: the inquisitive boy, eager to learn, harmless in his questions yet precocious in his observations.
The key, he knew, lay in his father—the King. Louis XVI was not a man of politics by nature, but of mechanisms, locks, and experiments. He admired ingenuity more than intrigue. To capture his attention, Louis-Joseph would speak in the language of curiosity, not ambition.
One evening, as supper ended and the King lingered near the fireplace, the Dauphin approached timidly, as though unsure whether he was interrupting.
"Father," he said, his voice soft yet deliberate, "I have taken a great interest in plants of late. They seem to hold many secrets . I heard of a man, a certain Monsieur Parmentier, who knows much about them. Would it be possible for him to visit me? Perhaps he might explain their uses, and I might learn."
Louis XVI, spoon in hand, looked at his son with mild surprise, then a broadening smile. The King adored such requests. They reminded him of his own boyhood passions, of moments stolen from duty to pursue curiosity.
"My dear child," he said warmly, "your request honors me. Monsieur Parmentier is indeed a man of knowledge—an apothecary, an agronomist of repute. If you wish him to come, then come he shall. What better use of his talents than to instruct the heir of France?"
The matter was settled. In the court of Versailles, even a child's request carried the weight of command when it pleased the King. Within days, arrangements were made for Antoine-Augustin Parmentier, famed for his studies on potatoes and food preservation, to appear at Versailles—not as a lecturer, but as a tutor for the Dauphin's amusement and education.
Days later, in the King's study
The study smelled faintly of beeswax and old parchment. Afternoon sunlight filtered through the high windows, falling across scattered tools, gears, and half-finished sketches of locks and mechanical puzzles. Louis XVI sat at his workbench, his broad hands occupied with the delicate mechanisms of a new lock. To most of his courtiers, these hobbies seemed beneath a king; to his son, they were an opening.
Louis-Joseph lingered nearby, feigning the patience of a boy waiting for the right moment to speak. Yet inside, his thoughts whirled with fragments of knowledge no twelve-year-old could rightly possess. In the world he had left behind—the world of his previous life—this kind of knowledge had been passed casually through glowing screens, shared in forums, scattered across articles, debated in comment threads. Now, in 1784, it felt like contraband smuggled across centuries.
He cleared his throat gently.
"Father," he began, careful to keep his tone respectful yet curious, "I have been reading from a book in the library. It spoke of a chemist named Scheele, who says that salts of silver darken when exposed to light."
Louis XVI glanced up, interest sparking at once in his eyes. His son's voice carried none of the mystical tone that so often surrounded inventions in court. This was not alchemy, nor magic—it was the language of mechanics, of observation, of experiment.
"Yes?" the King asked, setting down his tools.
The Dauphin continued, shaping modern memory into eighteenth-century simplicity. "If silver changes under light, perhaps we could capture an image with it. What if, Father, we used one of your chambers noires—your beloved camera obscura? We let the light fall through its lens, but instead of a fleeting image upon paper, it would write itself upon a plate coated with these salts. Imagine: your face, caught and preserved, as though painted by the sun itself. Would it not be the finest box you have ever made?"
He hesitated, then added with a smile: "And it would be a beautiful gift for Mother's birthday."
The King's eyes widened, first in surprise, then in delight. Few things pleased him more than mechanical puzzles, and fewer still than the thought of charming Marie-Antoinette. He leaned forward, his curiosity engaged. "You mean to trap light… to make it hold still, like a prisoner upon the plate?"
Louis-Joseph nodded. "Yes, Father. A box that writes with light. The world's truest portrait."
Over the next hour, the Dauphin laid out the theory with careful precision. He spoke of the box: a wooden chamber, sealed but for a single lens to admit light. He described the screen upon which the image would appear, invisible to most, but which could be coaxed into permanence with chemistry. He told it as though retelling a fable, each step a metaphor—light as a brush, the silver plate as a canvas, the chemicals as invisible ink waiting to be revealed.
Louis XVI listened, captivated. His large hands twitched, already imagining the carpentry, the grinding of the lens, the careful mixing of powders.
"But how would you keep the image from fading?" the King asked.
Louis-Joseph lowered his eyes, pretending to recall from memory rather than from the bottomless well of another lifetime. "The book said that once the light has written, the plate must be treated with another solution, to fix it. I do not yet know which. Perhaps with Father's help, we may discover it together."
The King chuckled warmly. "Ah, so it is an unfinished puzzle. Excellent. The best sort."
By the week's end, the Dauphin's proposal had grown from a boy's fancy into a royal project. Louis XVI, indulgent and curious, commanded that one of the palace workshops be cleared. Carpenters were summoned to fashion the wooden chamber, opticians from Paris brought to grind lenses of finer clarity than any toy glass. Apothecaries, half-skeptical, half-flattered, were asked to prepare the mysterious salts of silver.
To the court, it was presented as nothing more than the amusements of a curious prince—a harmless diversion, a scientific game to occupy his precocious mind. Yet Louis-Joseph knew better. This was more than a curiosity. It was the opening step of a larger plan: to set foundations for the kind of future no one in Versailles could yet imagine.
At night, when all was quiet, he would recall flashes of his former life—the arguments of amateur photographers in digital forums, the tutorials that had once played on glowing screens. Words like "exposure," "developer," "fixer" swirled in his memory. He dared not utter them aloud. Instead, he clothed them in the language of books, of dusty libraries and forgotten authors. He claimed he had found them in old volumes no one else had bothered to open.
And his father believed him.
By the end of June, the Dauphin had secured what he needed: space, tools, and the freedom to experiment under the indulgent gaze of the King. To the world, it looked like the harmless curiosity of a clever child. To Louis-Joseph, it was something far greater.
It was the beginning of an empire of knowledge—one carefully planted under the cover of innocence, destined to bear fruit in ways none of them could yet see.