The Sisters of Versailles

by Sally Christie

  Sister, embrace your new life and keep your trust in God and He will hear your prayers and bring you happiness again.

  Thank you for your offer of a winter bonnet for the baby. Please send it to Picardy, the child went there last week. She is well made and healthy, but I was hoping for another son. We have named her Adelaide-Julie, for yourself and our sister Diane.

  You are in my heart,

  Hortense

  From Louise de Mailly

  Hôtel de Toulouse, Paris

  December 21, 1742

  Dear Diane,

  Please write to me, please. I know Philippine is dead but your writing is not as bad as you think, I can make out most words, and I must have news. I must know what is going on. You must help me.

  Do not trust Marie-Anne, though she may appear sweet and kind at heart, she is an evil woman. Remember I was a friend to Pauline? I helped her and I cannot understand why Marie-Anne does not want my friendship and my companionship. I cannot bear to be apart from him. I dreamed of him last night, I dream of him every night, but in morning’s light it is the purest of agonies to wake without him, and without hope of seeing him.

  Please, I beg of you, help me. Speak to her, or to the king. He once said you reminded him of Pauline—surely he holds some affection for you?

  You will be married soon: congratulations. I know you must be busy with your preparations, but please do not forget me. And once you are a duchess and a woman in your own right, you must distance yourself from Marie-Anne and seek only Hortense’s company.

  Please, Diane, write, and tell me what you know, and what I must do.

  In love and sorrow,

  Louise

  Diane

  VERSAILLES

  Winter and Spring 1743

  When I first meet my future husband, Lauraguais, he is drunk and takes no pains to hide his distaste for me. The feeling is mutual; I find him a grisly boar with no manners, and besides, I have only heard bad things about him. He is the same age as I but recently widowed with two small children, so now I have two small stepchildren. I haven’t met them yet—they live in the country outside Paris—but I should like to know them someday.

  Lauraguais turns with large pleading eyes to his mother, and starts to whine: “But, Mother, you thaid—”

  His mother, the Duchesse de Brancas, cuts him short and pushes him toward me. We are in the salon at Madame Lesdig’s house. Lesdig squeezes my hand to reassure me, but I don’t care. I am not romantic or starry-eyed like Louise used to be. It doesn’t matter that my husband is unattractive and unkind, because I will be a duchess and I will live at Versailles and have my own apartment. Husbands, of course, can make a wife very unhappy—Madame Lesdig has assured me of this—and her advice is to avoid them as much as possible.

  Lauraguais makes an exaggerated bow and almost topples over, then steadies himself against a delicate table that wobbles precariously. A sour, drunk smell wafts off him and brings me directly back to the nursery on the fourth floor and to memories of my father. I shudder; I hate the smell of drunken men.

  “Oxen oaf!” whispers Madame Lesdig under her breath.

  Lauraguais rights himself and waves at me.

  Startled, I wave back.

  “Hello—no, no. Your hand, give me your hand. Paw. Cats! All around . . . so many.”

  I reluctantly proffer my hand. I can hear Madame Lesdig breathing heavily beside me, ready to pounce should things go wrong.

  “Mademoiselle,” and his voice is slurred and his eyes wander wildly. “It is my most great and grandest, most great . . . grandest . . .” He loses concentration, momentarily. “Cats, so many cats. Why?”

  “Privilege,” hisses his mother.

  “The most grantest privilege to be united in matra . . . matra . . .”

  “Oh, shut up, Louis. You’re embarrassing yourself.” His mother, Angélique, smiles at me and reaches over a lemon-gloved hand to tweak my earlobe. She is pleasingly plump and has a kind face. “Out too late with the men. Celebrating. Dearest daughter. He is overcome, simply overcome with his great good fortune. We must get you some earrings for those pretty lobes.”

  As they leave she presents me with an enormous diamond that she says has been in their family forever, and promises to send over a bolt of the finest white ermine for my wedding cape. Their family will profit too: Marie-Anne, who is adored by the king, arranged for him to pay a handsome dowry for me. Well, actually the Jews of Lorraine paid for it, they were taxed because they are . . . well, because they are Jewish. But it was the king who made the new tax and made sure the Jews paid it, so in a way it is he who paid.

  We are married in the cathedral by the fat Archbishop of Paris, who also married Pauline. I wear one of my black mourning dresses, in memory of her. At the wedding feast Lauraguais is very drunk, his eyes red and his breath terrible. “You smell,” he declares. “Can’t you bathe for your own wedding day?”

  “It’s not me,” I retort. I really hate the smell of drunken men. “It’s this dress.” Why waste water washing a dreary black dress I will soon discard? Besides, my new white ermine cape doesn’t smell; it is quite the finest thing.

  The wedding feast is wonderful, with more than twelve varieties of pies—including my favorite pigeon pie and of course sugar pie. The reception is at his mother’s house on the rue de Tournon, not far from our childhood home on the Quai des Théatins. It is true what Madame Lesdig has told me: my husband’s family is very rich. The house has enormous gardens, now a field of snow, and inside, it is almost as luxurious as Versailles.

  Marie-Anne attends, and because she is there, Louise cannot be. That makes me a little sad, and of course Pauline cannot be here either. A few people helpfully point out my husband’s “special friend” amongst the guests, a tall woman with unpowdered red hair and slanted cat eyes. I admire her hair color—it seems painted on. Did she dye her hair as they might dye cloth?

  When I have finished eating, my new mother-in-law shows me around the house.

  “But you must call me Angélique, or Mama, or Mama Angélique,” she says, and I think I am going to like her.

  Each of the reception rooms is a different color and all the curtains and the chairs and the sofas match the walls. I like the yellow room the best. There are fires blazing everywhere, and even though we are deep in January, the rooms are toasty and warm. In each room footmen stand silently in curved niches, ready to leap out at a moment’s notice to fluff a cushion or fetch a cup. They are dressed not in the gold and blue of the Brancas livery, but in a uniform that matches the color of the room. They blend into the walls to great effect.

  “Waiting for the bell is so tiresome,” Angélique explains, and shows me how it is done. We are in the Pink Salon; she drops a handkerchief and a pink-coated man leaps nimbly from his perch in the wall and restores the cloth to her.

  I giggle. “Why not paint their faces the same color?” I ask.

  “Unfortunately they sweat too much with the paint. And a sweating footman is simply distasteful.”

  Touffe, my woman from Madame Lesdig’s, shows me to a bath. Down below I overhear my new husband screaming at his mother: “I won’t touch her until she bathes! You promised!”

  The bath is unlike anything I have ever had, lakes of steaming hot water in a large marble tub. I luxuriate and think: I could get used to this. They do not have such baths at Versailles, and certainly not at Madame Lesdig’s. I decide I will come here once a month—no, once a week—and have a bath that lasts at least three hours. But even with the stoves ringed around the tub the water finally starts to cool and I must get out, for my husband is waiting. Below I can hear the sounds of the wedding party continuing in a great carouse of song and music. Somewhere a glass shatters and a woman laughs. I climb out reluctantly, sleepy from the hot water and the champagne and too much sugar pie. But it is time to go: the life of a duchess must be paid for.

  As I enter the bedchamber Lauraguais quickly releases a chambermaid. She grows as red
as the walls and runs from the room without looking at me. I am relieved she does not scamper into a wall niche, for I do not want eyes on me at this time. Though I have to laugh at the thought.

  “You shut up. Always laughing.” Lauraguais pushes me down on the bed. It is unpleasant, very unpleasant even, but soon he snores from his drunkenness and I am alone, thinking: Now I am a duchess and soon I will live at Court. I am the last to marry and so the last of my sisters to know the reality of the marriage bed. I wonder what Marie-Anne and the king do together in their private apartments, and I wonder where Pauline is now. Is she watching me, perhaps laughing and raising one of her bushy eyebrows over her little green eye? She would be happy for me, I decide.

  I fall sleep and dream of a pigeon pie, an enormous one, larger even than the table. Around it folk discuss and poke it and some attempt to eat it, but then the crust breaks and out of the middle flies a blackbird. It disappears into the black-painted walls and everyone claps.

  So now I am a duchess; therefore I am the envy of everyone who is not a duke or a duchess, which even at Versailles is still a great many people.

  After the wedding I spend a few weeks with Lauraguais in his family’s apartment at Versailles. He is not always drunk and I discover he is even rather funny, and quite nice. We compare eyebrows: they are of exactly the same size and that makes us laugh. I am a woman and could replace mine with elegant ones of gray mouse hair, but he is stuck with his.

  We are lying on the bed drinking cinnamon-flavored coffee, the latest breakfast drink.

  “God, but I love your breasts,” he says, smothering himself in them then coming to rest against one. “A woman’s breasts—two, or one if big enough—are simply the best pillows. Far superior to anything those Turks can make, finer even than goose down. I must see about having a serving girl just for that purpose. One with large breasts, purely for my relaxation. I will call it”—he takes a puff on his pipe for inspiration—“a chest coddle.”

  “Your family has strange ideas about servants,” I say, watching the smoke from his pipe curl up under the canopy of the bed. The smell is strange, an animal roasted too long on the fire. “The priests say we must remember their humanity.”

  Lauraguais puffs languidly. “And this, from the woman whose grandfather knocked out the teeth of all his maids, to render them unattractive and remove his temptation.”

  “But those were different times!”

  He takes another deep puff. “Ah . . . I wonder what that would be like?”

  “Oh, very painful, I’m sure! Once I had a tooth that ached so I—”

  “No,” he interrupts me, “not the tooth removal, but a toothless suck. Now, that is something I wish to experience. What would that be like?”

  “You only ever think of one thing, you’re like a squirrel constantly searching for nuts.”

  “It’s true, it’s true.” He doesn’t deny and returns to his favorite subject. “So come on, DouDou,” he wheedles.

  “DouDou? Who is DouDou? Is that what you call your red-haired slut?”

  “Which one?” He grins and shakes his head. “I cannot abide the name Diane. Never could. Had a nurse when I was younger called Diane. Such a stupid name. She was quite the witch.”

  “Then call me Adelaide. Not DouDou.”

  He pulls himself up on one side, balancing the pipe: “So tell me, DouDou. Is it true what they say, that the king can make love twice, with no rest?”

  I laugh. “Who is ‘they’?”

  “You know, the people that know. I’ve heard it said that he can do it twice in a row, and even twice in a row with the same woman?” He looks at me expectantly.

  “I wouldn’t know. I have never slept with him. I have only ever slept with you.”

  He lies back down on the bed and drops his pipe on the floor. “Is it true?” he asks again, and now there is a strange look in his eyes, glazed as though he has been hit on the head. “That you and your sister have slept with him, together? At the same time?”

  I shudder. I could not, would not. “No, no! I told you I have never slept with the king, with or without Marie-Anne.”

  “And Hortense? They say she is there too, but she does not participate, she just supervises. She’s too much of a prude to join in, but she is naked. She puts her hair down and—”

  I smother his mouth with my breasts. “Oh, shut up, shut up!”

  Lauraguais wriggles free. “But you’d tell me if you did? You’d tell me everything? The details?”

  “If I did what?”

  “Slept with the king. With your sisters. Especially if it’s with Hortense. They say she lets her hair down and she licks—”

  “Oh, please, Lauraguais! Stop it! That will never happen.”

  After the rather pleasant interlude with my husband, I return to Paris to visit Madame Lesdig. She tells me I am a married woman now and must conduct myself like one, and not like the feckless, giggling girl I still appear to be. I know beneath her disapproval she adores me, so to make her happy I promise her I will no longer be like a chattering squirrel, but instead will be as proud and as stately as a lioness.

  I then visit Louise. She is now in her own house, a small one the king provided for her on a funny, narrow street near the Louvre; Madame Lesdig’s predecessor—another Dowager Duchesse de Lesdiguières—used to live here. The rooms are unfurnished and so bare she could be in a convent. She doesn’t even have a carpet on the flagstoned floor, just little cut-up squares in front of the chairs to rest her feet on. One says Welcome, stitched in pink and blue, but there is nothing welcoming about this room.

  “You look well,” says Louise, but she does not look well at all. Her skin is more gray than white and she is already like an old woman, though she is only four years older than I. She always used to take such care of her appearance but now she is dressed entirely in black with no rouge, nor even a beauty patch.

  I laugh nervously: “You look like a nun, Louise.”

  “That is a compliment,” she says softly, picking at a simple wood rosary in her lap. “I am thinking of taking orders.”

  “Oh, don’t do that!”

  She raises her eyes to the ceilings. “Whether I do, or don’t, is immaterial—I have devoted the rest of my life to God. To expiate my sins.”

  For once, I don’t know what to say. There is a deep dark hurt oozing off her, filling up the room. “Would you like news of Court?” I ask brightly before I realize that any news of Court must include news of Marie-Anne. And the king. “Of the queen, then?”

  “How is Her Majesty?”

  “Oh, very well, Marie-Anne tells me . . . I mean, Marie-Anne is now in her service, well, of course you knew that, you gave her your place, well, not to her but to Hortense . . . Marie-Anne says she is well . . . and . . .”

  I trail off helplessly. All roads lead to Marie-Anne. Actually, Marie-Anne has no good words to say of the queen. She is a very good mimic and does a very funny impression of the queen’s Polish accent: Goot, goot, goot. Marie-Anne says the queen deserves to be mocked for not losing her terrible accent after almost twenty years in France.

  Louise’s eyes flicker with pain when I say Marie-Anne’s name. There is silence and I struggle to think of something else to say.

  “Do you like it here? These rooms are very . . . very . . . white. White! White is good, it’s so calm and serene. My apartment at Versailles is so cluttered, my husband’s family has more money than dukedoms and all they do buy is furniture and I keep knocking things over just like I did when I lived with Madame Lesdig, so I . . . this is nice. Your room. Calm.”

  Finally she says: “It doesn’t matter to me. This, that, all of it.”

  She makes another noncommittal gesture and looks up at the ceiling. It’s as if she’s not alive anymore, like her soul has gone from her body and left a shell where before she once lived. It’s very painful. When I leave I promise to write to her often but I know I won’t. What can I say to her? I have no comfort to offer.

>   Poor Louise. I don’t understand why Marie-Anne had to banish her—why could Louise not have stayed with us? Wouldn’t that have been kinder?

  “Habits are a hard thing to break,” hisses Marie-Anne when I broach the subject. “And Louise was a habit.”

  “But was she not a harmless habit?” Louise never hurt anyone.

  “Nobody ever won by being kind,” says Marie-Anne, and I know by the way she says it that I should not ask anymore. But what is she trying to win? She has already won the king’s heart, and I am sure he will make her a duchess very soon, and then she will have all she desires.

  I am not happy about what Marie-Anne did to Louise, but I cannot say it out loud. There is something about Marie-Anne. Something . . . cruel. I remember when she was young, how she used to gather mice in a little box then starve them, to see how long they would take to die. I think I am a little afraid of Marie-Anne. Just a little.

  Despite my fears, Marie-Anne and I are becoming closer and we spend much time together. I do have an awful lot of fun in her company. She is Marie-Anne—she can do anything. With her, I feel I am at the center of Versailles, which means I am at the center of the world, which is a very satisfying feeling. I like the king too; he has a good sense of humor and likes my jokes. I know Marie-Anne doesn’t really like them as much, but she tolerates me; she says I should go and live on the rue des Mauvaises-Paroles in Paris—the Street of the Bad Words. I don’t think I should like that; it’s rather too near a fish market.

  The Marquis de Thibouville, an aspiring playwright and a confirmed dandy, has adapted Cupid and Psyche into a short pastoral play, and we are all to star in it. Well, Marie-Anne and the king are to star in it, but there are several other parts for the rest of us. Marie-Anne originally wanted to do something by Molière or Racine, but decided amateurs, even royal amateurs, might lessen the majesty of those fine works. I have been given the role of Marie, a young maid.