The Porcelain Dove (6 page)

Like a cat stooping on a mouse, Mme du Fourchet bent forward to embrace her daughter, and the chocolate cup coming between them slopped its lukewarm contents over Doucette, the counterpane, and the fine blond lace on madame's bosom. There was much barking and exclaiming and ringing for cold water, after which madame and monsieur took their leave. When the door shut upon them, mademoiselle my mistress began to weep and, despite my best and tenderest efforts, was unable to stop until it was nearly time to dress for dinner.

CHAPTER THE SECOND

In Which Mademoiselle Comes to Woman's Estate

Writing of my youth and Port Royal, I all but exhausted the crystal inkpot. This morning when I opened it again, the nestling's belly was full to the throat and my pen as sharp and clean as though 'twere newly plucked. Colette followed me to the library with a glass of wine, which she set at my elbow with a wink that has very nearly stemmed my flow of words altogether, saying that I must not think too much of her as I write—what she may or may not know, what she may or may not want to read. This is not a gown, after all, to be cut and trimmed to a client's taste. This is a history. It contains the truth. And if some of it is painful to write or to read about, well, then: that is the nature of truth and of history both.

I was writing of my mistress' betrothal.

On the morning after the marriage-contract was signed, Mme du Fourchet sent up word that M. de Malvoeux was expected to dine, and would Mlle Adèle be dressed by noon, and not in that hideous rose de Grecque sacque that made her look quite thirty, whatever monsieur her father thought. Immediately the page delivered the message, mademoiselle was out of bed so suddenly that Doucette, who'd been curled asleep upon her pillow, was startled into a volley of shrill barks.

"Oh,
hush
, Doucette, do," cried my mistress, and slapped the little spaniel on her nose. "Noon, and it's gone ten o'clock already.
Oh, Berthe, Berthe, I haven't a rag to my back, excepting only the rose de Grecque sacque. Whatever shall I wear?"

I couldn't blame her for being nervous. I was nervous myself. The day before, it had all been "How can he love me? He's never even
seen
me!" until her mother had struck her at last. She'd spent the better part of the evening in tears, declaring she'd not have him, no, not if he were king of France.

I had set myself to change her mind.

How often over the years I've looked back upon that night and wondered at myself. Not for coaxing my mistress into a more complaisant frame of mind, to be sure—her parents would have married her to this duc by will or by force, and a blind man could have seen she'd a better chance of happiness if 'twere by will. No, what I wonder at is the passion with which I set about the task. How excited I was at the prospect of being femme de chambre to a duchesse! Silk gowns! Amber necklaces! A little maid to run upon my errands!

Bah!

'Twas not so difficult to change my mistress' mind, not for one who knew her heart as well as I. The married state has infinite advantages, I told her. Imagine a ball at Versailles, and you all dressed in black and silver to make your first courtesy to the king. As the wife of a duc, you'd have the right to ride in His Majesty's private coach; he's an eye for beauty, they say—he'll be sure to ask you. And that's the least part of a married woman's privileges. A duchesse may stay up as late as she wishes, wear whatever she wants, even play whist if she's a mind. No one asks a duchesse the date of the battle of Crécy or the number of Eleanor of Aquitaine's husbands. Furthermore, this duc de Malvoeux didn't sound so bad a bargain, as husbands went; neither a twittering petit-maître like the comte de Poix nor a grotesque like the marquis de Bonsecours, but a famous naturalist, a collector of birds. She liked canaries, I reminded her. And it was so romantic of him to fall in love with her portrait, like a prince in a conte de fées. Surely her heart must be touched.

If I do say it, I spoke eloquently. And as I spoke, mademoiselle grew quiet and thoughtful.

"'Twill please madame my mother, will it not?"

"Bien sûr, mademoiselle. And M. le baron as well, and all of mademoiselle's friends."

"Will it please you, this marriage?"

My heart beat high. With pride? With fear? I know I felt my
power over her; I pray I meant to use it only for her greater happiness. Meeting her eyes in the mirror, I said, "Yes, mademoiselle."

She smiled at me; her breast rose and fell in a quivering sigh. "Bon. Then I'll try to love him."

To make promises at night is as easy as brushing hair; to keep them in the morning is more like creating a coiffure à jamais vue. Mademoiselle demonstrated her good intentions by weighing
ad nauseam
the rival merits of white and blue, gauze and silk, coral beads and pearls. I was reminded of nothing so much as Mme Dumesnil dressing for a new play: "These ribbons are hideous, Berthe. I'll have the pink ones after all," and, "Is that a freckle, Berthe? Will the rice powder cover it?" and, "Do you think the cream gauze makes me sallow, Berthe?" I vow 'twas a miracle I didn't pin her garter in her hair.

Yet the thing was done at last, and Mlle Adèle stood up in a sacque of heavy silk brocaded with peacock feathers of pink and apple green, an apron of white drawn-work, and a fichu of the same. Her hair was curled in tiny ringlets à la dragonne, heavily powdered, and garnished with a fetching pompon of lace and pink feathers. With her white skin and her black eyes, she was perfect—like a porcelain figure animated and smelling delightfully of roses. I was just buckling one dainty brocade shoe when a double knock thudded on the front door. She tore her foot from my hand and flew to the window with me behind. We peeked around the curtain in time to see a gentleman in a sad burgundy coat step out of a smart town carriage—the duc de Malvoeux, beyond doubt.

Briskly he ascended the steps of the hôtel and disappeared within, leaving me with a fleeting impression of fashion, height, and extreme thinness. A pie-faced boy in silver-gray livery followed more slowly, bearing a cane and a chapeau-bras and a large flat leather case.

Mlle Adèle clasped shaking hands to her breast. "Oh, Berthe," she faltered. "Is he not . . . distingué?"

Well, I confess I'd thought him skeletal and rather sharp looking, but after my speeches of the night before, could hardly say so. Therefore, "Yes, mademoiselle," I answered her brightly. "Very distinguished, mademoiselle," and knelt to secure her shoe.

Dinner lasted from two until four, at which time Mme and M. du Fourchet took the betrothed couple to promenade in the Tuileries, then to a performance of
Artis
at the Opéra followed by supper at Switzer's. All in all, my mistress was out of my sight for nine hours
or more. Words cannot describe how I suffered through those hours, how I wondered whether she'd turn sullen or flighty, whether madame her mother would scold, whether the entertainment would please, whether the duc should prove unbearable after all. By the time my mistress came under my hands again, I was half-frantic and she—she was flushed and animated and most annoyingly coy.

Oh, the opéra had been well enough, though monstrous long and hard to follow; and the supper had been most modishly ill-served. As for the duc, why, he was not such an ill man. For all that his title was four centuries old, he was himself only twenty-five, a veritable infant among ducs. His eyes were very handsome, very bright. To be sure, he had a monstrous long nose. And yet, she vowed, she loved him. During their walk in the Tuileries, he'd pressed her hand most tenderly while declaring that her brow was white as a dove's wing and her bearing more graceful than a demoiselle crane's.

"He told me all about his birds, Berthe. They're not larks or canaries or common swans or peacocks like the ones at Versailles, but birds from strange lands—from the Dark Continent and the Indies. And he's given me this fine parure"—she opened the leather case on a blinding display of diamonds—"Much finer than Hortense's pearls, don't you think?"

The next morning, M. de Malvoeux sent Mlle du Fourchet two lovebirds in a silver cage. Providentially, they arrived at the same moment as the mantua-maker, and their quaint chirpings helped amuse my mistress while the woman measured her for her bride-clothes. Over the next weeks, we had the lingère in as well (
not
my tante Duvet, I need hardly say) and the stay-maker, the milliner, the shoemaker, and the modiste. We also had a number of mademoiselle's old school friends, bearing silver saltcellars, kisses, good wishes, and an endless commentary on the habits of husbands.

"Six months of bliss, my love, and then, pouf! He's off with his mistress, and you might as well be mademoiselle again, except that you have license to do whatever you please." Thus the comtesse de Fleuru, who had been Mlle des Anges. Very worldly she sounded, and very wise. At the convent, I remembered, she'd been thrashed for failing to brush her teeth. Could it have been her foul breath that drove M. de Fleuru so quickly into a mistress' arms?

The présidente de Hautebriande threw her hands aloft. "Lord love you, Nathalie, you'll give poor Adèle the most curious notion of married life, 'pon my soul you will. I assure you, M. de Hautebriande
continues most attentive. Why, he's so exigent that I hardly have time for my darling Clémence—you know Clémence de Lys, a bewitching little creature. She puts me much in mind of you, Adèle, all deerlike and breathless. I quite dote on her."

The young matrons exchanged wise looks and smiles, the comtesse de Fleuru making such an exaggerated moue I feared she'd lose her patch. "A lady friend is a comfort, to be sure," she said, "but I hope, Stéphanie-Germaine, that you don't intend to trust her with your heart. She'll leave you for some handsome youth by and by, or worse, attach your husband's interest. No. Give me a handsome chevalier, or a second son, or even an abbé—someone
safe
, you understand—and I will undertake to survive any amount of marital neglect."

The marquise d'Orcy, very demure and nunnish in a gray Brunswick gown, laid down her netting and cried shame upon them all. " 'Tis not neglect if the demands of duty call a husband from his wife's side," she scolded them. "Would you expect a man upon whose word the lives of a thousand Frenchmen depend to spend his time sitting with his wife while she talks of bonnets?"

"Indeed, I would not," laughed Mme de Berline—who not a year since had been locked in the crypt for having rouged and patched old Mme Saint-Antoine as she slept, so that saintly dame attended Matins bedizened like a strumpet. "Depend on it, Adèle. Husbands are a necessary evil, an inn upon the road between virginity and true love. Be presented at court, sit with him at the theater, give him an heir, and then, as Nathalie says, enjoy yourself. It ought to be easy enough. I hear that M. de Malvoeux is forever off to the ends of the earth looking for birds."

Innumerable variations on this theme were played over the four weeks it took for the banns to be called and the trousseau to be made up, and I assure you I grew heartily sick of it. All those silly children—most of them my juniors by a year or more—flounced and beribboned until there was more silk to them than flesh, laying down the law on marriage à la mode! And while they chattered, mademoiselle sat or stood among them mumchance, pretty as a wax doll and no more conversable, turning docilely this way and that to be kissed or pinned or laced up or trimmed.

"I am very happy," she would answer to all inquiries. "M. de Malvoeux is all any woman would desire in a husband." But often at night I would hear her weeping and creep from my pallet to comfort her.

"Doucement, chérie, ma petite colombe, agneau blanc," I'd murmur, and taking up her silver-backed brush, I'd remove her lace nightcap and unbind her black hair. "Hush thee, now, enfant, and thy Berthe will tell thee a story. Dost wish to hear 'La Belle aux Bois Dormant'?" From girlhood, that had been my mistress' favorite story, though the prince's kiss enticed her more often to sleep than waking.

A watery sniff, a small white hand pulling one black tress from the storm-cloud mass and winding it through trembling fingers. "Tell me about my wedding, Berthe."

"Oh, 'twill be very splendid, enfant! Three hundred are invited to the church and two hundred to the wedding supper. A countess will hold thy train, and no fewer than three marquises will support thee at the altar. Why, princesses have gone to their bridals less nobly attended."

"Go on," my mistress would say. "Will I be very grand?"

"More grand than La Pompadour in the days of her beauty, ma colombe. White brocade—no whiter than thy neck, bien sûr—embroidered with pearls and small silk flowers, Alençon lace at bosom and elbow, a train three ells long, and thy diamond parure blinding all who look upon it. I vow and declare, enfant, there will be green hearts among thy schoolmates then."

"Dost think so, Berthe? Dost truly think so?"

I'd set down the brush and cradle her against my shoulder. "But yes, chérie, I truly think so. Thou shalt move down the aisle of the Church of Sainte-Catherine with lace floating behind thee like cloud, and the tapers—six hundred of them, enfant, only think!—will make of thy diamonds a river of light. Thou shalt be a queen, my love, like La Belle and Princesse Rosette, and thy little dog Doucette shall eat no worse meat than partridge wings all the days of her life."

By this time, my mistress would be asleep in my arm, her face calm upon my bosom, her breathing soft and even, her cheeks and eyelids touched with rose. This is something I have always envied her: that her beauty does not diminish when she weeps (which she does as easily as a stay-lace snaps) but only softens, so that even when she'd most enraged me, her tears could always make me love her again.

On the twentieth of May, in the year of Our Lord 1763, Mlle Adèle Hermione Catherine du Fourchet was wedded to M. François Marie Baptiste Armand Maindur, vicomte de Montplaisir, seigneur de Beauxprés, duc de Malvoeux. She looked much as I'd foretold—paler,
perhaps, than the Princesse Rosette, but much more à la mode. She moved down the aisle with due attention to the weight of her three ells of train, and from my place up in the balcony of the east transept, all I could see of her as she mounted the steps to the altar was white brocade and lace and the false black curls hanging to her waist behind.