The Sisters of Versailles
Page 39
After Louise died, only Diane and I remained, both of us still at Court through all the changes that came and went. Diane’s little girl—our new little Marie-Anne—died before she reached the age of five. Of all the tragedies and the heartaches that our family has suffered, this I feel was the cruelest. The death hit Diane hard and I grieved for her; she was one of the good ones, never a bone of artifice in her body, and she deserved her small share of happiness, which in the end was denied her.
And Versailles is no place to mourn.
Diane finally retired from Court and died in 1769, thirty years ago now but a time that passed in a blink of an eye. She died at the height of the ancien régime—even now we call it thus, though it was less than a generation ago. Our Louis was still on the throne then, and it was before the changes, before the Revolution, before the world stopped then started again. I am glad she did not live to see the world she loved with sincere abandon explode in such a horrid way. She died at the right time, and though only our Maker knows the hour of our death, sometimes I regret having lived so long.
I survived the Revolution that struck this country, that awful broom that swept the land and rid it of the dust and dirt accumulated over centuries. They say that change is the great constant, and even those like myself that lived in gilded cages knew it was coming, but why did it have to be so cruel and so bloodthirsty?
I was imprisoned during the Terror, and many that I knew and loved perished. When they arrested me I was seventy-eight years old—can you imagine? An aging widow, wearing black and passing her days listening to her maid read aloud from old letters, her eyes riddled with cataracts. What threat was I to anyone? What was my crime—had I bored the revolutionaries with long-winded stories of my youth?
But I was not killed like so many I knew; instead they released me, and so I live on.
“Grandmama! We have a surprise for you! We went to Versailles last week.” I pretend I haven’t heard Elisabeth; I don’t want her to even say that word.
“Can you hear me, Grandmama? I said we went to Versailles last week. Béranger came with us—I can’t wait for you to meet him. The gardens are in a dreadful state but it was of passable interest. We had the most divine blackberry ices, and for five centimes you could boat on the canals.”
“We bought you this,” says Claire shyly—only she has the feeling and the grace to be uncomfortable. She places a small piece of gilded iron in my hands, cold and heavy. “We bought it from one of the peddlers. He said it was from the gate to the Court of Honor.”
My hand won’t cooperate and I drop the piece of iron into my lap. Versailles as I knew it in my youth, in all its pestilence and its glory, will never be again. Now the great palace sits empty, desecrated and ravaged by the Revolution. I can’t bear to think of it like that.
I myself left in 1776, along with so many others. A virtual exodus it was, all of us disgusted with the new queen and her peasant ways. Funny to think the worst among us used to compare the late Queen Marie to a peasant; no, her Polish manners were sometimes rough, but she was at heart a queen and her blood never betrayed her. But that Austrian girl—you would have thought she had been brought up by the gypsies, the way she was determined to flout all that everyone held dear and true.
Once I left, I never went back. And now . . . its great halls destroyed, but not my memories. With my good hand I thumb the piece of golden iron like a talisman, willing it to bring me back to that place and time, that will never, ever, come again. Gone, like a faith that has disappeared and never been reclaimed.
“Thank you, my dears,” I say softly, and to my horror I realize I am crying.
“Oh, Grandmama, don’t cry!” The girls are horrified and uncomfortable; they have not the manners to deal with the spectacle before them. The tears continue to roll down my cheeks as they take an awkward leave, promising to visit again next week when I am better. I am surprised at how my tears fall, for I didn’t think there was this much left in my dried-up old body.
After they are gone my maid, Sophie, comes in and closes the curtains again. She doesn’t chide or scold me, or treat me like a child, just presses a handkerchief on me then leaves me alone again in the dark. It is in darkness that my memories come, floating like feathers down through the years to settle at the bottom of my soul. I long for them, I live for them, for what else do I have left? In recent years my mind has played tricks on me and the memories and images of my childhood rise up brilliant and clear, as though they had happened yesterday; meanwhile what did happen yesterday is lost in shadows.
When I was younger I saw the world in black and white and thought the Bible was best read as a guide for judging others. Now I know that the world is but a storm sky filled with infinite shades of gray, nuanced and deep, everyone striving through whatever sorry hand they have been dealt by God and fate.
My sisters are all gone and soon I will be too. What then is left of their story—our story—the story of the famous Nesle sisters? Lingering memories in the old-timers, a flicker of recognition in some when they hear our names. A tomb in Saint-Sulpice, a place in the gossipy mémoires of Court life “in the old times,” in vogue in recent years as if people need to be reminded of all that they had worked so hard to erase.
They circulate Richelieu’s memoirs, but I don’t think he wrote them: he was everything scandalous but at base he was a discreet man. He died in 1788, his timing impeccable as always. He enjoyed the life that our world gave him immensely, and died before he had to pay the price.
I close my eyes and wait to see my sisters again. Soon, out of the darkness, a memory comes, blazing through the black, its colors vivid and bright, and there they are. I am back with my sisters in our nursery on the fourth floor of the Quai des Théatins, the one time we were ever truly together, before fate and circumstances and malice and greed separated us all. I see Louise, always so quiet and content; Pauline organizing treasure hunts but never hiding the treasure; Diane so funny and playful, laughing at everything and everyone, pretending to feed raisins to the wooden giraffes; and little Marie-Anne, so clever and so innocent then. I smile at them, and they smile back.
How I wish that were how the world would remember us, but I know that that is only the vain hope of a silly old woman.
May God have mercy on our souls.
A Note from the Author
The story of Louis XV of France and the Mailly-Nesle (pronounced My-ee Nell) sisters is stranger than fiction but all too true. When I first learned about their fascinating lives, I set out to write a nonfiction account. But as I dove into the research and writing, the voices of the sisters—strong, true, funny, sometimes imperious—kept insisting on a more intimate and vivid portrait, demands best met by a fictional retelling.
Researching and writing The Sisters of Versailles was an exhilarating, challenging, and frustrating experience. Apart from one biography written by the eminent Goncourt brothers in late nineteenth-century France, mainly focused on Marie-Anne, little has been written specifically about the sisters. To discover them and their lives, I drew heavily on contemporary autobiographies and memoirs of the day in which they appear as secondary characters. However, most if not all of these sources contradict each other, for each account is subject to the author’s personal biases, the lapses of time (many were written years after the fact), and differing desires to titillate and exaggerate.
Generally, the sisters’ lives were best documented when they were at or came into contact with Versailles (though subject to the contradictions outlined above), while their childhoods and early lives have remained fairly obscure. I have endeavored to be as faithful to the historical record (or what passes for it) as possible, with just a handful of deliberate changes for the sake of clarity or timing, including the date of Hortense’s wedding changed by a year and the dates of the Duc de Richelieu’s sojourn in Vienna extended. All of the primary and secondary characters (with the exception of Zélie, their childhood governess) are based on real persons, and as much as poss
ible tertiary characters are as well.
Every person that has ever lived is so much more than just the collection of dates and the handful of anecdotes that the void of history may provide. I’ve filled in the broad brushstrokes of the sisters’ lives and personalities with an array of foibles, quirks, and faults that we as humans all have. I like to imagine Louise, Pauline, Diane, Hortense, and Marie-Anne reading my book. Perhaps they would laugh and giggle, cry at the memories, raise their eyebrows at what I got right, frown where I missed the mark. My hope is that they would recognize at least a part of themselves and their fascinating lives in this book, my tribute to them.
Acknowledgments
Writing can be a very solitary pursuit, but many hands have helped to bring this book from initial concept to finished product. First, thanks have to go to my agent, Dan Lazar, at Writers House, and to my editor, Sarah Branham, at Atria, for all their wonderful work and ideas, as well as to Alison McCabe, who helped enormously with the first draft.
The research process for this book was very interesting and rewarding; thanks to the DILA in Paris for the informative tour of the Hôtel de Mailly-Nesle; to Deborah Anthony at French Travel Boutique and to Odile Caffin-Carcy for bringing me behind the scenes at Versailles; and to Google Books for making so many obscure eighteenth-century books available online and for free, an amazing boon to any researcher. And of course thanks to my family and friends for all their encouragement and support.
JOHN CARVALHO, EXPOSURES PHOTOGRAPHY
SALLY CHRISTIE was born in England and grew up around the world, attending eight schools in three languages. She spent most of her career working in international development and is currently settled in Toronto. The Sisters of Versailles is her first novel. Visit sallychristieauthor.com to find out more.
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2015 by Sally Christie
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