“Your lady mother can only approve of your moral backbone,” I say firmly. “Never—you must never speak to her. The people will lose all respect for you if you do.” I know the dauphine’s refusal to speak to her is causing the harlot no end of frustration and Civrac told us there was a disgraceful screaming episode last week. My poor papa is suffering, but the solution is simple: banish her.
“Do you think they care? The people? Mama cares most awfully. As does the king.”
“My dear, you must not falter! You are the first lady of France, queen in all but name—these are causes worth sacrificing for! You must have fixity of purpose,” I say, thinking of my father at the lit de justice. “Be firm and resolute. Compromise will gain you no pearls.”
The girl only looks confused; her French has certainly improved, but it is by no means perfect. “But they only want me to say a few words to her. Perhaps a sentence or two next week?”
“Your silence is the right approach, and you must take strength from that.”
Antoinette chews on her lip, and behind her I can see the Comtesse de Noailles shaking her head. Though dim, and rather stupid, the dauphine, I suspect, is becoming aware of her rather precarious position—a king who is increasingly displeased with her, and an unconsummated marriage.
Yet despite our stern counsel, the dauphine weakens and promises Mercy and her mother that to please the king, she will address the harlot.
She is about to capitulate, but that can never happen. Fixity of purpose!
We risk the harlot’s polluting presence and deign to attend a card party in the suite of the Duchesse de Valentinois, where the conversation is rumored to take place. Valentinois is a distressingly immoral woman; she caused a scandal by refusing to live in Monaco with her husband. Though understandable—apparently in Monaco everything is wet and riddled with sea salt, even the wine—last year she displayed great moral laxity in running away from her husband and taking up quite openly with the Prince de Condé. A supporter of Choiseul, Condé was exiled with him, but the duchess remains at Court.
With Victoire and Sophie, one at each side—my lieutenants—we ensconce ourselves in a corner of the room, ready to spring forth into battle when needed. The harlot is dressed in a white-and-green-striped dress, her hair piled high like an actress’s, only a hint of rouge on her face. She is barely visible, surrounded by a flock of male admirers; Papa is supping with the Cardinal de Luynes tonight, and does not attend.
At the other end of the room the dauphine plays at a table of comète, her voice too high-pitched and too excited to truly be decorous, and she cries out like a child when she loses. She is gaining a reputation as a flighty flibbertigibbet—well deserved—but she must show the world she does have a backbone. Fixity of purpose. Resolution. I remember my father’s steely voice as he addressed the Parlement. We shall not waver, we shall not capitulate.
“Ah, look, there she goes,” whispers Victoire in a voice of tiny excitement. And it is true, the dauphine has finished her game and is now walking rather stiffly toward the harlot’s cluster, Count Mercy nodding her forward. The Duchesse de Valentinois grins and flutters her fan and the room falls silent. The crowd of men around the harlot parts to reveal the treasure in their midst, the Prince de Soubise holding her arm as though to protect her. The way between the two women is now a straight line, free of impediments and people, a smooth strip of parquet showing the dauphine the way forward.
No, it shall not be. No compromise. The harlot must not win.
I hurry over, my feet sturdy in low-heeled mules, chosen just for tonight. My armor as I enter the battle.
“Come, my dear, come, I am sure the king is waiting for us. He would like us to wish him good night before he retires.” I place a restraining hand on the dauphine’s arm. The whole room is watching us. Admiring us. Me.
“Tante?” Antoinette stops and her face is a mixture of fear and relief as she looks between me and the harlot.
“Come,” I say more firmly, pulling her away from the path of compromise she has chosen. “Come and let us go and give our good-night blessings to the king. We must not keep him waiting!”
I steer her out of the room, Victoire and Sophie scurrying after us. As we leave, I cast a look of triumph at the hated harlot, Soubise now solicitously fanning her, her face as red as the felt on the table behind her. Beside her, Count Mercy is looking at me with what can only be described as hatred.
Triumph.
Chapter Thirty-Two
In which the Comtesse du Barry hears an intriguing idea
“Not so tight, man,” complains the king as his dresser attempts to button his breeches. I peek into the room and smile at Adolphe, now the king’s chief equerry.
“Ah, my dear, come here and tell me what you think,” says Louis, his face lighting up when he sees me. “I’m not sure about the coat—a little flamboyant? Ridiculous?” His valet slips it on and he turns around to model it.
“Never,” I say, giving him a kiss and winking at Adolphe. The king’s coat—ordered by me—is of patterned silver, sewn with thousands of bright lilac sequins. “You look magnificent. And it’s perfect for this heat.”
I’m dressed in a thin summer gown of rose-colored taffeta; here at my château of Louveciennes we stand on little ceremony, even for a formal dinner. Earlier, Chon said that I looked as though I was in the Caribbean, in Saint-Domingue perhaps, where even Frenchwomen forget propriety and dress in chemises.
“Indeed,” I said. “I’ll take that as a compliment!” Besides, jewels can make any gown magnificent: cascades of diamonds fall off my ears, and around my neck a magnificent rose quartz choker gleams.
“Rather tight.” Louis sighs again as his valet closes the buttons of the coat over his belly. He is starting to put on a little weight. I think his belly adorable, and tell him as much.
“Ha! Well, I have never been very proud of that part of my anatomy,” he says, giving his stomach a sad jiggle, “but it pleases me that you like it.”
Against all protocol, we descend together to the salon. This dinner is to honor Aiguillon’s appointment as minister of foreign affairs—the Barriens are more powerful than ever—but it is also to celebrate my lovely house, finally finished and ready to show off.
Life at Louveciennes is heavenly and I come as often as I can. Here, there is no need to get up for Mass, no need to dress in uncomfortable gowns, no need to suffer the silent reproach that still lingers around me at Versailles. Here, I am surrounded by fresh air, not the stale miasma of the palace, and I am far from the squabbles and endless intriguing, and the icy silence of the dauphine.
Louis and I enter the magnificent dining room, a temple of luxury. Giant mirrors adorn the gilded panels and from the ceiling hang dozens of chandeliers. On a balcony above, a light orchestra of harps and violins fills the night air with its sweet music. Guests—friends—already crowd the room, including Adolphe and Chon. They won’t be at the main table, of course, but I was pleased to be able to include them. My Louveciennes, my rules, I think in satisfaction, and I know that my little scented invitations are in great demand.
Later, when the food is mostly a memory and the guests satiated with the wine and rich food, a troop of monkeys is brought in to perform. Some guests watch idly, while others chat amongst themselves, and a few even fall asleep and snore loudly. Those guests kept standing attempt assaults on the main table when the occupants of the chairs excuse themselves.
Anarchy, I think, and smile. The footmen come in bearing great platters of fruit pudding, made with apricots and cherries from my own orchards. Unfortunately, the puddings remind Louis of his grandsons, and his mood turns dark. Louis’ second grandson, the Comte de Provence, was married in May. His bride, the new Comtesse de Provence, is a rather dull Savoyard princess with poor personal hygiene—Chon tells me the Italians are notorious for never bathing. Though the Comte de Provence boasted, often, of his sexual prowess and skillful deflowering of his bride, he is even fatter and more tor
pid than his older brother, and no one believed him.
The sad amatory state of his grandsons vexes Louis to no end, and he cannot stop wondering what he did to deserve them. Though they say the dauphin has progressed to partial insertion with his wife, it’s been over a year since their wedding and nothing final has happened.
“Two unnatural grandsons,” he thunders as I try to interest him in the monkeys or the delicious pudding. “Find me two men in all of France who would not be all over those virgins, charmless as the Savoy girl is,” he rails, stabbing at the wobbly mess on his plate, his mood dark despite the gaiety around him.
“La, leave your family troubles behind at Versailles,” I admonish, “where they belong. Look at the monkeys!”
At the end of the table, one of the monkeys, dressed in a lilac jacket—resembling the king’s coat, I realize in alarm—performs another somersault. The guests applaud and Louis just shakes his head; I don’t know much about etiquette, but I do know that clapping in front of the king was once prohibited.
Things change, I think in satisfaction, things change.
I call Richelieu over. “Tell him about the Duchesse de Mazarin and her dinner,” I command, and leave the king with him. Richelieu is always ready with spicy stories to lighten the king’s mood, and the story of the duchess’s dinner party will surely amuse him. Wanting a pastoral theme, she had her chefs place live birds inside an enormous pie. When the pie was served, the enraged birds broke free and attacked the guests and their wigs with venom.
I go to stand by one of the open windows and look out over the July night. The song of hundreds of nightingales from the myrtle hedges outside trill in the dark night, complementing the orchestra within.
“A triumph, my dear, a triumph,” says Mirie, carried over to me in a chair, her head wobbling rather rapidly. Her gout is acting up this summer and she has difficulty walking when it is too hot. “Truly magnificent. You have such the talent for entertaining!”
“Madame, an exquisite night, a night to remember, a night to live in my dreams,” says the Duc de Duras in his usual overwrought manner, shaking his head as though stunned by my beauty, and the beauty of the dinner.
“My dearest, we thank you from the depths of our hearts,” says Félicité, Aiguillon’s wife, smiling and curtsying to me. Her ivory teeth glow yellow in the candlelight. Beside her, her husband bows smugly; Chon says I must be glad to have such a firm supporter. In truth there is something about Aiguillon I do not trust completely, and even Richelieu admitted his nephew was a man of outstanding mediocrity.
I let the waves of admiration wash over me and look around in happiness. What did Chon say to me? That the fumes of adulation intoxicate me.
It’s true. They do.
The next day the house empties of courtiers and Louis leaves as well; Maupeou, in the wake of the dismissal of the Parlement, is determined to push through a new tax, and that matter has quite occupied him these last months.
Chon and I stay on for a few days. We walk out to see a pavilion that is being built by the river: smaller and more intimate than the big house. Zamor follows with a basket to fill with wildflowers. When he first came he could scarcely walk in the shoes we gave him; now he minces prettily behind us.
We stop to contemplate the half-finished pavilion. It will be very simple but proportioned and will be the perfect place to hold summer suppers. A cleared lawn, still bereft of flowers and grass, leads down to the water’s edge.
“What a wonderful breeze!” I turn to the river and extend my arms to catch the wind wafting up from the Seine. “Do you feel it? It got so hot last night—did you see how Felicité’s rouge melted and dribbled?”
“What?” shouts Chon. The pavilion is just above the mechanical fountains that pump water from the Seine to be delivered to Versailles, and the pumps make a continual hum in the background. “What a dreadful industrial noise!”
“Come, let’s go this way,” I shout. “Arnould says if we plant more linden bushes, the noise will be deadened. And you do get used to it—it does fade in time.”
We trail through the peaceful serenity of a wooded path by the waterfront; all this land is mine. Across the river the spires of Paris rise on the horizon, and down to our west lies Versailles, an easy hour’s gallop away.
“So—you’re looking very pleased with yourself,” I say to Chon. “Was it the Prince de Ligne? He scarcely left you alone all evening. Or Aiguillon—I saw him dancing attendance on you.” I am determined on a romance for Chon, but she doesn’t seem in the least bit interested.
“I have found a solution,” she announces smugly. “To our intractable problem.”
“I don’t believe you,” I say, impatient that thoughts of that ginger-haired girl should impinge on the peace of Louveciennes. Despite pressure from her mother, from her advisers, and even from the king himself, the dauphine remains surprisingly stubborn: she will not talk to me. How distressing, I sometimes think, to have discovered she has a spine of steel. And that it had to be about me.
Silly girl.
Last month it seemed she had finally succumbed to the pressure and was about to address me, but then Mesdames extracted her from the room. Not Mesdames, I think grimly, just Madame Adélaïde: I can still see her broad and uncompromising back as she whisked the dauphine out of the room. Louis was so angry he even talked of banishing his daughters from Court as a permanent display of his displeasure. I had to talk him down from that rash idea; I don’t like banishing people, and what happened to Choiseul still makes me uneasy.
Louis is equally annoyed with the dauphine. He only likes females who smile and purr, not pout and cry and cause difficulties. Chon tells me that she—the dauphine—is terribly unhappy, and that a chambermaid caught her crying in the night last week. Another night when her cowhand husband didn’t visit her. I wonder sometimes if she clings to her hatred for me as the one thing in her life that gives her satisfaction.
“So, Chon—what have you come up with? When will she speak to me?”
“Now, you see, Jeanne,” begins Chon pompously, “you’re so focused on small details—like having the dauphine speak a sentence to you—that you are entirely missing the bigger picture. You are not seeing the forest for the trees.”
“La, what a stupid expression!” I declare. “How can one not see a forest when one is in it?” I gesture at the trees surrounding us. “Mostly oak, I think. Chestnut.”
“You know all that talk of the king marrying again.”
“Not all that talk,” I say sullenly, my mood turning dark. I take a posy of wild roses that Zamor has gathered and inhale their fortifying scent. The idea scared me, but talk of it lessened in the wake of Choiseul’s departure.
“You know the story of Madame de Maintenon?” asks Chon.
“Well, certainly. Louis XIV’s last mistress, whom he married. What has she got to do with anything?” Richelieu remembers her and says a more pious, sanctified hag could not be found. “You’re not suggesting Mass three times a day, are you? I don’t think more piety will make the dauphine speak to me.”
“Jeanne, you must focus on what I am saying,” says Chon, stopping and taking the roses from my hand and throwing them down. “Think: if you were queen, the dauphine could hardly ignore you, could she?”
“Of course not! Why, if I were queen, that red-haired chit would curtsy to me!” I laugh in delight as I imagine the look on the girl’s face, then realize what Chon is suggesting. “Me—marry the king? But I am already married! To your brother, no less.”
“Married—pishposh,” says Chon cryptically. “Divorce can be considered.”
“Divorce?”
“Think about it, Jeanne! It’s perfect!” Chon’s little face is flushed and animated and I realize she has put some thought into her plan. “You were never Guillaume’s true wife. All he has to do is declare that it was never a real marriage, never consummated. We’ll get Terray on board. Richelieu has already spoken to Maupeou, and we would only need the
pope’s approval, and then . . .”
Oh! I sink down onto the muddy forest floor, my legs as weak as rope. “Do you think . . . ?” I whisper. “Do you really think . . . ?”
“I do,” says Chon firmly, and not for the first time I think what an extraordinary little woman she is.
“You’re a genius.”
“An evil genius,” she corrects me proudly.
“What would I do without you?” I get up, shaking my head and my skirts, the idea starting to delight me.
“Spend your days trying on clothes and selecting jewels, no doubt,” replies Chon promptly.
Chapter Thirty-Three
In which Madame Adélaïde hears of an abhorrent plan
A small word, but an important one. It was once the entirety of my world, my identity bound within it. Madame. Now I am no longer the Madame I have been since the death of my elder sister Henriette. So many years—almost twenty. When I think of how quickly the years pass, it makes me panic; it is best not to think of it at all.
The Comtesse de Provence, my nephew’s new wife, now has my title and all the prerogatives of Madame. I mull and stew, and stew and mull, and wonder if I should beseech Papa to change the rules, but a glum voice tells me there is no use. I must bow before the immutable rules of etiquette. The rules are made for our protection; if we ignore them, it is at our peril.
That is what the Comtesse de Noailles said to the dauphine last week after she refused to wear rouge; such true words, I wish I had thought of them myself.
And so I accept in outward silence, with dignity as befits my station, the loss of my position.
No longer Madame; I am now Madame Adélaïde.
Since the marriage and this unfortunate turn of events, I have been in a sour mood, so unlike my normal benign mien. My ears are still blushing from Provence’s lewd boasting all over Court, designed entirely to shame his brother, of his lovemaking with his new wife. I can no longer make eye contact with him, and poor Sophie was so distraught she took to her bed for a week.
The Enemies of Versailles Page 21