Hortense
Louise
VERSAILLES
1731
Finally I am beginning to find my way and my feet—in all ways, for I no longer topple over when I curtsy. At Court one must wear dreadfully high-heeled shoes: at first I was wobbly, but now I can walk with delicate gliding steps and in entire confidence.
Everything at Versailles is very fine: I used to think my mother’s gold-paneled bedroom so opulent, but now I realize it was nothing. Amid all this luxury the queen lives a very simple life. She is pious and enjoys reading the Bible and the long religious tracts her confessor supplies. The queen has fifteen ladies in her service: the surintendante, a dame d’atour, a dame d’honneur, and twelve ladies of the palace. The younger ladies—there are a few of my age, including my friend Gilette and the very beautiful Princesse de Montauban—declare their lives insufferably dull, but I cannot see how anyone could be bored here. The formidable Mademoiselle de Clermont, a granddaughter of the last king and a cold, sour woman, is the surintendante. Her husband disappeared one day while hunting in a forest and was never found again! Gilette tells me the Court wishes it were she that disappeared, and not her luckless husband.
Tante Mazarin is also one of the ladies-in-waiting. My hated mother-in-law retired just a few months after I arrived at Versailles, and Tante took her place. Tante takes care of my two youngest sisters, Hortense and Marie-Anne, and declared upon her arrival that she would also take care of me. She has instructed me to be careful in my choice of friends and warns me there are some very bad moral examples amongst the other ladies. Pincushions, she calls them, because they are full of pricks. Tante is one of a group of ladies known as the Pious Pack, ladies who love to judge those they judge impious.
The queen’s French is not very good and her accent is thick even after more than five years in France. She is a devoted mother and sees her children every day—three little princesses and two boys: our beloved dauphin and the little Duc d’Anjou, just a baby.
We spend most afternoons in the queen’s private apartments, doing needlework, reading aloud, or listening to the queen play the harp. We also have French lessons to help her improve her vocabulary.
“Lackluster,” suggests the Princesse de Montauban. She is very young and very charming and usually very annoyed with the queen, though she hides this behind bright eyes and dimpled smiles. “Try lackluster. It means dull and boring.”
It still shocks me, even though I have been here almost a year, to hear the courtiers disrespect the queen. Never the king, but the queen . . . she is frequently the butt of their caustic comments and laughter.
“Lackluster,” repeats the queen, pronouncing it lohk-lohster. “A very goot word, let me make a sentence with it.” She pauses and looks around at her ladies, who all smile back. I smile with sincerity; I like the queen and dislike the way many are false with her. She considers awhile and the clocks on the mantelpiece tick on. Montauban widens her eyes and holds them open as though she were about to burst. Finally the queen says: “The boring play was very lohk-lohster.”
We all nod in praise and encouragement.
“Or,” says the Comtesse de Rupelmonde, shifting in her chair and rearranging the fine-filigreed lace that shields her large breasts from impropriety, “you could use it to describe people, or even a time of day.” At Versailles I have heard many shocking stories of her adventures with my mother, and I find her no nicer here than she was in Paris. “For example: ‘This afternoon is very lackluster.’ ”
“Ja, ja, ‘this afternoon is very lackluster,’ ” repeats the queen, beaming. “Ja, ja. That is a goot word.”
Our evenings are generally spent listening to musical concerts or watching plays or gambling. Gambling sounds very exciting, sinful even, but when the queen plays it is decidedly lackluster. The younger ladies outdo themselves with excuses to escape the queen’s company. But even if they must remain, the queen retires very early and then they are free to fly, like a flock of pretty-colored birds, wherever they wish.
Despite her plainness of manner and looks, the king has eyes only for his wife. The king himself is very handsome—tall and well made and rumored to be very strong. He has a clear complexion and haunting dark eyes, like pools of black velvet. He loves hunting and dogs and has exquisite manners and is unfailingly polite—everyone agrees he is the most mannered man at Versailles. I believe all the ladies of the Court are in love with him. But if anyone compliments another woman in his presence, he is quick to say that the queen is more beautiful. And while that’s not really true—the queen is fair but no beauty—no one can contradict him because he is the king.
He visits the queen every day, and though some of her ladies shamelessly seek his eye—Rupelmonde was chastised just last week for the sudden disappearance of her new and fashionable fichu when the king arrived—he only chats politely with us and reserves his keen attention for his wife. It is all so romantic! When I see them together, I think of my husband, Louis-Alexandre, and I feel sad and empty inside.
Today is the feast of Saint Cecilia and it is raining and cold. We are gathered in the Queen’s Apartments to read the Scripture and to reflect on Saint Cecilia and her sacrifice. I confess that books bore me. Even the Bible. My mind wanders, and before I can stop myself I find myself staring at the queen. Imagine living in Poland! And Sweden! It must have been awful. She is getting old now, almost thirty, while the king is seven years younger. He is my age—we were born only two months apart. I have heard courtiers sneer that the queen is like last week’s flowers—fading and dying—and they say it destroys the prestige of France for her to be their queen. Many at Versailles are as nasty as their words imply.
“Madame de Mailly, my dear, vot are you staring at?”
The queen’s voice snaps me out of my reverie.
I blush. It is very rude to stare, especially at the queen. “Oh, nothing, madame, nothing, I was just thinking of this passage I have read.”
“Very goot, goot to be contemplating of what you are reading. Read it to us all so we may contemplate too.” Contemplate was yesterday’s word.
Her Majesty is not being subtle or snide; she is too good for that. My friend Gilette is severely wicked and free and says I must not emulate the queen or I will never find my way at Versailles. I bend my head and pick a passage from the open book: “ ‘He leads the humble in what is right and teaches the humble his way.’ ”
The queen grunts in approval. “Very goot, goot.”
Gilette quivers and coughs. I can tell she wants to giggle. Gilette claims that the king’s eyes are no longer only for his wife, but I know she likes to exaggerate and will do anything to stir up trouble.
“And so true, so true,” the queen continues, smiling at me. “Don’t you agree, Madame de Boufflers?”
The Duchesse de Boufflers, a formidable lady of great girth and age who treats the queen more as a recalcitrant child than a sovereign, smiles in agreement and offers a homily about youth and humility. Boufflers is a great friend of Tante Mazarin’s and is almost as nasty as she is; she likes to say that one is never too old for disapproval.
The rain patters down on the windowpanes and my toes curl in cold as I try to focus on my book and not disappoint the queen. But oh! How can words, so innocent in isolation, conspire to be quite so boring when they come together?
Suddenly there is a commotion in the corridor. We all strain to listen, hoping it is the king—wherever he goes he carries with him a commotion like nature’s serenade.
It is.
“Madame,” he says, striding in to bow to the queen and kiss her hand. The queen’s complexion is sallow and she does not blush, but shifts awkwardly and smiles her delight. We rise and curtsy. The king bows to us in greeting but reserves his conversation for his wife; some say he is a very shy person. He has lived almost his entire life in public—he has been king since he was five years old—and sometimes appears cold with strangers and those he doesn’t know well.
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nbsp; With the king is Cardinal Fleury, his prime minister and treasured adviser. Fleury is an ancient man with watery blue eyes and no wig. He is reputed to be brilliant but he makes me uneasy; he is a calculating, canny man. Though the king is past twenty, His Majesty still relies on Fleury for almost everything. Even lends him a helping hand when he is paddling his pickle, I once heard the Comtesse de Rupelmonde whisper, and I was shocked that one would speak of the king that way. I’m sure he is a very good king, but perhaps still learning; it must be very difficult to learn everything about reigning.
“Madame d’Antin,” Fleury says, leaning low over Gilette’s hand while the king chats with the queen.
Gilette throws back her head and laughs. “Perhaps you saw my husband this morning?” she asks.
Fleury smiles at her and makes a remark about “relinquishing her hand, but only for now.” I fear I don’t understand half of what is said here, even though we all speak the same language. When Fleury comes to me I curtsy low and keep my hands clasped in front of me, as though I am about to burst into song. I have no wish for his weak lips on my hand—like being kissed by death. I shudder.
“You are cold, madame?” asks Fleury.
I shake my head guiltily.
“And how is your husband?”
Gilette titters.
Everyone here is most astonishingly free and very few people remain faithful to or even cordial with their spouses. Most have lovers, sometimes even multiple lovers at once. Some of the ladies of the queen are quite notorious for their laxity, even though the queen is very virtuous herself. I suppose she did not have much choice in the selection of her household.
Gossip is a full-time occupation. When I arrived at Versailles I learned that everyone knew that my mother and the one-eyed Duc de Bourbon had been lovers. The duke often visited our house in Paris—my mother always said he was coming for tea, and I used to think how odd it was that the man should like tea so much, and he not even English. I have also encountered more wicked untruths about my father here than I ever heard from the most slack-mouthed servant at home. And if I want to know where my husband spends his nights, for it is certainly not in my apartment, I need only ask the nearest passerby; they are sure to know. The answer, as I have found out thanks to Gilette and many others, is: at the house of Mademoiselle Baudet in town. Mademoiselle Baudet is the daughter of a sword maker. A sword maker. Worse than a bourgeois! Imagine that.
Gilette tells me that my husband wanted to marry his mistress—marry a sword maker’s daughter, for goodness’ sake—but the king, or Fleury, forbade it. That is the reason our marriage happened so suddenly.
“I do believe my husband is fine,” I reply stiffly to Fleury. He reaches for my hand and his fingers are as soft as wormy chestnuts.
“Such an innocent,” he says, and though everyone here likes to mask the real meaning of their words beneath several layers of falsity, I sense he is sincere. “Stay that way, my dear, stay that way.”
Pauline
CONVENT OF PORT-ROYAL
1732
Our Tante Mazarin does not like me, a fact she makes publicly known. She never fails to remark on my dark complexion or bushy eyebrows, and once even said, in a light voice to make it appear as though she were joking, that Mama must have slept with a Hungarian, so horrible was I to look at.
Although it is not permitted to criticize our elders—out loud—the feeling is mutual. I think she is a spiteful old woman who hides her black heart beneath her robes of piety. One time when she was visiting our mother in Paris, Louise and I were brought down from the schoolroom to greet her and sing a song. While we were singing, Tante examined us as Cook might inspect a chicken. Our hands were clasped in front of us in the correct posture for singing (as our foolish governess, Zélie, had taught us), when I had the irresistible urge to sneeze. I did, and unfortunately it was a messy one. And it happened as Tante was standing right in front of me, examining my left ear.
I have to confess it was a little bit on purpose—I could have turned my head, after all—but it was rather funny. Tante was so disgusted that she has barely looked at me since.
So I was glad to be sent to the convent with Diane and not to her house. I was sad for the loss of my mother, of course, but she was never very maternal and we rarely saw her. I was well pleased not to be shut up in Tante’s stuffy house with Hortense and Marie-Anne, and I believed I was finally going to get an education.
Zélie, our governess from the Quai des Théatins, was complete nonsense. She was a relation of ours, something-something five times removed. As a rare act of charity my mother took her into our household but I don’t believe she had any more education than a field mouse, and I don’t think she even attended Saint-Cyr, as she liked to claim. During lessons she would spin the globe and tell us stories about faraway places. I was sure she made everything up, for how would she know anything about Québec or India? When I accused her of lying, Zélie would protest and say that being able to entertain was the most useful accomplishment, even if the substance of what one said was in doubt.
I thought that at the convent I might finally learn something. Well . . . to think I ever fancied getting an education here! I feel I have been tricked. Sometimes my head buzzes with frustration and fury, as though a hundred bees were trapped inside my skull.
Every morning for three hours we must study religious books or memorize the lives of obscure saints. Pointless: Why should I care what a virgin Roman girl with an outlandish name did more than a thousand years ago? Afternoons are spent on mountains of needlework. I generally despised Zélie but at least her lessons were secular, and I don’t think she even knew how to sew.
The other students are much younger than Diane and me, for I am already twenty years old and Diane eighteen. The girls are sent here by their families for safekeeping until they are released into marriage; no one expects any quality to their education. Without exception they are silly little girls who jump at rats and whimper at thunder and spend hours crying if they find a new freckle on their nose. I call them drops because they are as boring as drops of water. The little drops only care about their future husbands, and they shriek when they hear I am not even betrothed. If one more little drop says she will pray for a husband for me, I will scream.
The days pass, long and dreary. When I declare I have read every life of a saint there is to read and sewn every cushion cover the chapel will ever need, I am allowed to help Sister Claudine in the convent library. We are working to catalog an estimated two thousand books that clog the towering shelves. You might think this would be interesting work, but without exception, and here I will swear on the Holy Bible, all two thousand books are boring beyond belief. The Canons of Dort? A bound collection of Papal Bulls from the Seventeenth Century? Of Exorcisms and Certain Supplications? Well, that last one does sound a little bit interesting.
There are other boarders here: widows or women seeking refuge from their husbands, or from the world in general. They are very pleasant, apart from one creaky old lady who refuses to speak to Diane and me because of an ancient but well-remembered grudge against my long-dead grandmother. My grandmother was apparently as notorious a slut as my mother, and was once rumored to have slept with two members of the Swiss Guard. At the same time! The ancient lady with the grudge tells me blood is thicker than water and that the seeds of laxness flow through my veins. I snort and retort that I’d rather have lax-seeded veins than her great knobbly blue ones.
But generally the ladies are kind enough and I prefer to dine with them rather than with the little drops. Sometimes we play cards in the evenings and I also borrow books from them; mostly novels and farces. One woman in particular has become a friend, a Madame de Dray, who is in retirement from the world after the death of her husband. He was only a magistrate, so normally we would not be friends, but I find in her a very forthright and funny soul. She has no artifice and hates piety, especially false piety, almost as much as I do. She is also remarkably open about the facts of
married life that I have hitherto been in ignorance of. Fascinating, really, the secrets of men.
The convent is not secluded from the world; in fact its walls are as porous as the grilles that box the confessionals, and the lady boarders are free to receive visitors and gossip from Versailles. My silly sister Louise is now at Court and is one of the queen’s ladies. I am jealous. Very jealous. I should be at Versailles too, meeting interesting people and living an exciting life. When I pepper the older ladies with questions about life at Court, they describe the concerts and the plays, the fortunes won and lost at card tables, the intrigues and the gossip, the scandals and the power. It’s not fair that pitiful little Louise was able to get married and go to Court, simply because she is two years older than me. I am already twenty and no one is planning my wedding.
How I long to be there, at Versailles, and away from this convent crypt of monotony. But to be at Versailles one needs both money and a husband. Everyone knows our father frittered away what little was left of our inheritance and that we have only 7,500 livres for our dowries, so we’re as poor as . . . well, poor people. Not really poor people, of course, but we’re poor compared to the other people in our world.
Without money you can still get married, but then it helps to be beautiful. Ugly is a strong word, and a damning one for a woman, but I do not believe I am ugly. It is true I am very tall and my skin is dark, certainly, not pale like Louise’s, but that is what powder is for. I have nice green eyes—like emeralds—and I like my large eyebrows. I think they make me look distinguished.
My hopes for my future now rest with Louise. She should help Diane and me to get married and get out of this convent. No one else will. I detest letter writing, but I have started to write to Louise frequently. I profess my love and devotion and tell her how much I miss her, which she is probably naive enough to believe. I tell her that I pray that we will one day be reunited (at Versailles) and that she should lead the way to find good husbands for Diane and me.
The Sisters of Versailles Page 4