The Sisters of Versailles

by Sally Christie

Dear Marie-Anne,

  What a nice surprise to get a letter from you! Every time I receive one I do think we should write more frequently. Ah, dear Zélie, yes, she always said the truth: we must be more sororal.

  Life at Versailles is wonderful. I and my husband are well; he sends his regards. Thank you for asking after His Majesty, and of course I do not begrudge you the question. It is no secret that I am in love with him, and he with me. He is well, troubled by a slight nose infection at the end of May, but nothing to be concerned about.

  It is true that Pauline is at Court with me now. Still. She has been here quite a while now; I thought she was coming for just a quick visit but she proved to be surprisingly popular. Many at Court begged me to allow her to stay longer, and so I consented. I suppose it is more interesting for her here than at the convent, and she can be very charming and witty when she is in good humor.

  I am of course very happy for her but I do worry about Diane all alone at Port-Royal. I should like to urge Pauline to consider returning there, for her position here is awkward as she is not married, and she does not know well the manners and customs of Versailles. It would be kind of her to return to Diane at the convent, but you know how Pauline is—she is often too busy to truly think of others.

  Thank you so much for the cardamom. It was very popular and I am sad to report that I have none left, so eager were others for a pinch. I am glad, dear Marie-Anne, that you are happy in Burgundy. I hope you have a wonderful summer.

  With love,

  Louise

  Louise

  VERSAILLES

  July 1739

  For all that Pauline used to complain about our governess, Zélie, and what a simpleton she was, I still mind many things she taught us. One lesson in particular I treasure: Zélie taught us that to show our emotions was to be naked.

  “Your emotions are like your buttocks or your shoulders,” I remember her saying, and we were so young then that we would blush and titter at this image. “Emotions, just like your buttocks or shoulders, or legs, must be covered in decent society. If anyone sees your emotions, consider yourself naked.”

  If we cried, or looked angry or resentful, Zélie would make us stand on a chair and lift our skirts to show our legs. I remember those lessons well and now I cover my emotions completely, so none may see how I die inside.

  It is a Wednesday afternoon and the queen’s daughters are giving a small concert. We ladies must applaud and flatter and praise the young princesses as though they were the Muses themselves. Madame Elisabeth, the eldest, has a particularly flat ear and gauche fingers. Madame Henriette, her twin, and Madame Adelaide are passable but hardly the musical paragons their mother so proudly proclaims them.

  First the Princess Elisabeth woos us on the harpsichord, playing a zarzuela piece she has learned in honor of her upcoming marriage to the infante of Spain, her thin body rigid with self-importance as she pecks the keys. She will be twelve next month and the wedding is fixed for shortly after her birthday. Louis is distraught at the prospect; last year he lost his four youngest daughters to the abbey at Fontevraud (Fleury insisted, claiming the expense was too much to keep them all at Versailles) and now he will lose his eldest daughter to Spain. In exchange, the dauphin, Louis’s eldest and only son, will marry a Spanish infanta. The dauphin is just ten years old, so that wedding won’t be for another four or five years.

  We clap with polite enthusiasm when Elisabeth finishes. “Gracias,” she says as she rises and bows; she has been having Spanish lessons.

  “Magnificent, magnificent, madame, you must be so proud,” says Mademoiselle de Clermont to the queen in her hearty voice.

  The queen beams and I note tears in her eyes; it is not only the king who will miss his daughter. She is very sad these days, for while the king still sees her almost every day, his visits are just routine and quick formality; they live almost completely separate lives. Though her children give her consolation, she must know that one day she will lose all her daughters to marriages far away.

  Madame Henriette, taller and softer than her twin, takes up the strings of a viola and strangles a piece of Lully. We listen with polite, mustered attention. Their music master, a thin young man, oddly bearded, strums in nervous proxy by her side, as if to will the notes out through the sheer force of his bulging eyes.

  While I am stuck here they—the king and Pauline—are away together at Choisy, a new palace he has recently acquired. Pauline has no formal engagements at Court, so she is free whenever the king is. I think she urges him to travel during the weeks when she knows I must be with the queen.

  “Vanderful, vanderful,” says the queen in delight as Madame Henriette finishes her piece. The queen smacks her knees to applaud, a vulgar fashion of the Poles. She has been in France long enough; surely she should know our manners by now? These days I find myself irritated with everyone, even with the poor queen. I believe she now pities me as I used to pity her; I have learned that to be pitied is a dreadful thing.

  Madame Henriette gives an awkward curtsy.

  “Again, magnificent, madame, magnificent: how proud you must be.”

  “We will practice a group symphony, yes, and playing for all. All of us together, before Elisabeth leaving.”

  “But nothing could be more horrifying!” says the Princesse de Montauban sweetly as Clermont snaps her head around in censure. “If we were to miss this wonderful opportunity.”

  A flustered footman struggles to wheel in an enormous harp, one of its wheels broken, his face popping peach with exertion. Little Princess Adelaide, all nine solemn years, then settles in front of it and twitches her tiny sausage fingers at the strings. The afternoon is hot and interminable—how I wish I were at Choisy with Louis! How I wish I were alone with Louis at Choisy.

  What hurts the most is how quickly it all happened. The day after that awful dinner all Louis could talk about was Pauline, Pauline, Pauline. At first I thought he was just being courteous, to give me pleasure. But then he sought every opportunity to dine with her and spend time with her, and then, so very, very quickly, they were inseparable.

  I told myself it was just a passing phase. But before I understood what was happening, I was on the outside looking in, watching the man I love fall in love with my sister. What despair, what torture. My world is broken and seemingly nothing can make it right.

  I know she wants me gone, and truth be told sometimes I think a convent would be preferable to this version of Hell that Versailles has become for me. But a convent would mean never seeing Louis again, and there is nothing, not all the humiliation in the world, not all the grief in the world, that could be worse than that.

  And so I stay.

  Now we are oftentimes all together, like some awful three-headed monster from a Greek myth.

  When I am alone with him, I cry. I don’t want to but I can’t help myself. When I see the distance in his eyes and his aura of guarded familiarity, the tears flow so fast they run away with my rouge. I know he hates crying women but I cannot stop. And then he slips further and further away until he is like a star at night that I can only see from afar and can never hope to draw nearer.

  In front of everyone, I never cry. Instead I smile and take his arm and take Pauline’s arm and exclaim in delight when she suggests one of her outlandish games, or listen with interest when she talks of politics or finance that she has no business even thinking about.

  I am never naked before the world, but once alone in my apartments I can only cry and cry and cry. My woman, Jacobs, says I must have a river in my head, for she has never seen anyone produce so many tears. She never asks me why I cry because it is obvious—who would not in this dreadful situation?

  What have I done to deserve such a fate? Is this God punishing me for being unfaithful to my husband? But I love Louis, I truly love him. How can that be wrong?

  Oh, despair.

  I love him in a way that I know Pauline cannot. I believe she is incapable of true love, for it is clear to me and t
o everyone around us that she is ambitious and loves power, and power only. For her, Louis is but a hill she climbs on her hungry quest, but for me he is my world, my life, my everything.

  Most people do not like Pauline, no matter how they may flatter her. But there is something in her they admire. They even admire her ugliness. They say she is ugly but in a unique way that has its own charm: jolie laide.

  I have come to hate this place and I hate Pauline and I hate the shifty-eyed courtiers who whisper, not even behind my back:

  “My darling, how do you bear it?”

  “Dearest, your eyes are so red! Red! Have you been crying? Understandable, of course. Why, if I were in your place, I would cry my eyes away. But then again, I would never be in your place . . .”

  “Let me be a shoulder to cry on in this time of need. You must be so sad, so humiliated, you must feel so pathetic.”

  “Straight to the convent. Straight there. I wouldn’t hesitate for a minute. Isn’t your great-aunt the abbess at Poissy?”

  Charolais hugs me tightly, suffocating me in a field of her loathsome lavender, and whispers: “We always suspected the king did not have the most discriminating taste, but this is beyond anything we might have imagined.”

  Still I smile and curtsy with grace. For what else can I do?

  It is a hot summer morning in July. I have no duties with the queen and I am in a tired, sour mood. Last night I drank too much wine, waiting for the summons from the king that never came, then was unable to sleep for Matignon’s dogs that barked the entire night long. I must confess sometimes I find it hard to get out of my robe on the days I am not in service with the queen. Today it’s too hot to dress and I can’t be bothered to do my hair.

  I sit by the window, working on a doormat for my room, a piece of stiff tapestry that I am embroidering with the word welcome. I concentrate on the W, the difficult curve of the letter as it turns at the top.

  “I don’t know why you insist on doing that yourself! Why don’t you get one of your women to do it, if you really think you need another doormat?” Pauline is sitting at the table, munching on a carrot and leafing through a stack of old Gazette de France magazines she has procured from somewhere. “Did you know too much rain can be as bad for crops as too little? That doesn’t even make sense, does it?”

  She’s not dressed either; it is too hot to even contemplate putting on a formal gown. Later, in the evening, it will be cooler and we will get dressed. There is a display of fireworks planned this evening for the Spanish delegation’s arrival, down by the Grand Canal.

  “You know I like needlework; it calms me. Besides, I don’t have a doormat. That is why I am making one.”

  The door flies open without a scratch and it is the king. Oh! How unfortunate, I had thought he was busy all morning with the Spaniards. I quickly stuff a few hairs into my cap and catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror, then wish I hadn’t. And the room is a mess, old pastries from yesterday scattered and crumbing all over the side table—Pauline picked out the fruit from all the tarts and left the shells.

  “My dear—” The king stops rather awkwardly when he sees me. “You are not with the queen, dearest,” he says. “I had not thought to find you here.”

  “No, I changed my day with Madame de Villars,” I say, keeping my voice steady as I realize that he came to see Pauline, not me.

  “Well . . .” The king hesitates a fraction, then plunges on: “This good news concerns your family, and in particular your sister.”

  “Majesty!” Pauline bounds up to him. They embrace cordially, as if they are old friends from childhood, and Pauline leads the king to the table and offers him a chair.

  “Pauline, you’re not even wearing your robe! You can’t greet His Majesty like that!”

  “Oh, he doesn’t mind,” she says, grinning at him, and a look of such intense admiration passes between them that I almost faint.

  “No, no, I will not sit. I cannot tarry. The contracts will not wait, but I wanted to come to you the minute it was confirmed.” He looks between us but I know he only means Pauline. Suddenly I know what he is going to say next, and my spirit flakes like yesterday’s pastries.

  “My dear,” he says to Pauline, “all is confirmed, our little project. Your husband has been decided—the Comte de Vintimille.”

  Pauline claps her hands but doesn’t hide her grimace.

  “Well, I suppose d’Eu was too much to hope for.”

  “Indeed, but the comte is a . . . a . . . well, he is young and of good family. The Italian blood has surely passed out by now. And healthy in many ways, I believe. His great-uncle the archbishop was gracious enough to consent.”

  “Mmm. Well done!” says Pauline, and the king glows as though he has been praised by Mother Mary herself. They stare at each other, both grinning madly, and I know they are thinking of what it means once she is married.

  The dogs upstairs erupt in a cacophony of barks and the spell is broken. Pauline goes back to flicking through her journals and munching on her carrot.

  “Isn’t that wonderful, Bijou,” the king says, turning to me at last. “A year of great marriages, with little Elisabeth next month and then Pauline.” He makes no attempt to hide his joy, even though he must surely know the news is not happy for me.

  “Well, I must get back to the council. A long day, a disgracefully long day, the Spaniards making last-minute demands that no Frenchman would consider. Might not even make the hunt this afternoon. And, Louise, you must really talk to Matignon about those dogs—this apartment can be unbearable sometimes.”

  He leaves and we are left alone. Pauline beams at me and I notice, not for the first time, how radiant she is looking. She was outside playing boules last week, without a hat, and her slightly darkened skin makes her eyes shine like little emeralds.

  “Isn’t this wonderful news!”

  “Yes,” I say quietly. I look down at the W I have sketched on the tapestry. Should I embroider the letters all in pink, or trim them with blue?

  “You know what this means?”

  I think I am going to faint. Instead I start weeping.

  Pauline looks puzzled. “Louise, what is the matter? Are you not feeling well? You certainly don’t look very well. But why are you crying?” Once started, the tears pour out like rain onto my doormat.

  “Oh! But you are not crying because I am to be married?” She is the most hateful person that ever walked this earth. “But it is no secret the king wants me to get married. We all know the king desires me, loves me, I suppose. It’s not my fault that he loves me more than you, surely you know that. Stop crying, it’s very irritating.”

  I try as best I can to stifle my sniffles and change the subject to something more pleasant: “The Duchesse de Ruffec has invited us to dine with her tomorrow. Will you come?”

  “You should be happy for me, Louise! This is ridiculous. Thank goodness I am going to be married soon and I can leave these rooms. I don’t know where Vintimille has his apartment—oh. Perhaps he doesn’t have one? But I am sure the king will award him one, as a wedding gift. I shall go and find out right now.”

  She skips out, humming a little tune to herself. I am left alone with my sorrow and my throbbing head. My only hope is that once he sees her naked he will recognize her for the beast she is, and will return to me.

  Oh, despair.

  From Pauline de Mailly-Nesle

  Château de Versailles

  August 10, 1739

  D—

  A quick note to share my good fortune. I have momentous news: I am to be married! The king has finally found me a husband. His name is Jean something something de Vintimille. He’s very young, only nineteen, and has terribly spotty skin. His great-uncle is the Archbishop of Paris—you remember the fat one that married Louise.

  The king has arranged it all! He is the most generous of men, and is even helping with the dowry. Oh, D—I wish you could meet him. The king, I mean, not Vintimille.

  Once I am married and
presented, I shall always be at his side and we will rule France together! I don’t think the spies open these letters, but why should it matter if they do—everything I say is true.

  Louise is very happy for me—she sends her love. The Court is all abustle with the celebrations for Madame Elisabeth’s Spanish marriage. The king is melancholy but it will be good to have one gone at least; they all manage to be frightfully disapproving even though they are hardly more than children.

  I enclose a hat of Louise’s—you will love the orange feathers. I think she has worn it enough and so I told her it would be best if she gave it to you. Send my love to Madame de Dray. Do you think she would also like a hat? Louise has a rather somber brown one, also with feathers, that I think would suit her well.

  After my marriage, I promise I will pester the king for a fine husband for you—no less than a duke!

  Love,

  P

  Pauline

  VERSAILLES

  September 1739

  I can’t say anything, for the first time in my life. I can’t breathe either, though I have no stays holding me in. I am naked and staring at Louis, and he is staring at me.

  “You cannot know,” he says, leaning in to kiss me, down there, “what a pleasure this is for me.” He tugs gently at my hair with his teeth while he presses his hand against himself. I don’t know what to do. I shiver and look at the ceiling. This uncertainty is new for me. There are things I don’t know in this world.

  He motions me down to unbutton his breeches and I look at his cock in amazement. All of Madame de Dray’s stories could not possibly have prepared me for this moment. Now, in my hand I hold it, the source of all mystery and vitality, stiff and harsh as wood. Impulsively I lean in to kiss it.

  Louis gasps in delight then we fall back on the bed and he pushes into me. The pain is nothing, not even to be considered. Once he is inside, my hands instinctively find his back and I feel my hips move to meet his. Yes. Yes. Someone from above, perhaps my mother, I think as I stare up at the ceiling, motions me onward and tells my body exactly what it needs to do. I pull him farther in, because it is France inside me, my future inside me.