The Rivals of Versailles: A Novel (The Mistresses of Versailles Trilogy) (41 page)

Chapter Sixty-Eight

A
new doctor diagnoses me with heart troubles, in addition to my lungs; how fitting, I think ruefully. I am grown thin, emaciated as a skeleton, my skin gray and my eyes sunken, eaten by the consumption that now ravages me clean. I have aged twenty years in just a few, and when I look in the mirror these days (which is not very often), I feel more amazement than sadness at the stranger I find there. Who is she? Where is Reinette, the woman I was, the woman he loved, where has she gone?

At the end of last year I thought it was the end; many did too, but then my strength returned. These days I rarely leave my apartment, some days not even my bed. I suppress the sordid realities of vomiting and bedsores from those around me, and still insist on the fresh flowers, the scented candles and potpourris, the luxurious furs. Finally I can heed Quesnay’s advice: rest, rest, and more rest.

In the cold of March, a brief respite. I feel stronger and the cough lessens and my lungs free up. Choiseul arranges a private performance by two little Austrian musical prodigies. The children are enchanting, the little girl, Maria Anna, like an angel and she reminds me of Alexandrine, as so much does these days; perhaps as death sidles alongside, it also wishes to remind me of what it offers.

Her younger brother, Wolfgang, is truly a gift from God, his small, graceful hands producing notes that could only come from Heaven. His music is so exquisite that it frightens; it is music that threatens to soar too high and too wide, to break us free of chains we never knew we had.

When I leave the concert chamber I stagger in sudden weari
ness and firm arms guide me to my chair. A terrible presentiment comes over me, that never again on this earth will I hear anything so beautiful. It is as though the little boy’s music was sent by angels to guide me home.

The next day something is released and I retire to the bed I will never leave. As the days pass Quesnay is sad but firm: the end is near. I am on my deathbed, I think in amazement, and that small part of me that is not yet consumed by the beast rebels. No! Forty-two is too young to die. I rage against what is coming with all the strength I have left. I want to live, I want to feel the breeze on my face, the touch of a loved one, the joy of Louis’ smile; I want to know what happens to all those I love as the future unfurls.

I am overcome with a desperate sadness that this world will go on without me, and I despair over all that I will miss. The world will not stop for a heartbeat when I am gone. And Versailles, this great palace that shelters me now, will continue long after me, insensate, uncaring, the epicenter of France and frivolity. Will it ever change?

I leave nothing of myself that is not of the material world. No child—not Alexandrine, nor the unborn child, that whispered cipher, the child that should have been from the love of Louis and me. No more, nevermore . . . I leave no child behind and that, as I prepare to leave this earth, is my greatest regret.

But then a tiredness like quicksand drags me down and my earthly worries are cast aside. I doze, and dream and stir, and there before me is Alexandrine and she is made of love and light, and she smiles, her hands outstretched as she beckons me toward her, toward the place where there is no more pain, and she calls to me:
Mama
.

My apartment fills with people making their farewells and paying homage. Choiseul comes; no words are necessary. He has thanked me enough and I am glad to leave him to Louis. I can only pray the king continues to recognize his worth.

Mirie comes, sobbing openly. Frannie glides in and looks at me with a look of such tenderness that I burst into sobs that rack and hurt my chest. Dear Gontaut, Soubise, Ayen, all faithful and firm friends through the years. Their chance to betray me passed, I think, but then I stop myself: they are my friends and if plots were conceived, they were never uncovered.

Even the queen comes, an homage she knows I will find dear. I remember my presentation day as though it were yesterday: that rush of euphoria at her kindness, thinking I had her approval. But perhaps now I do.

“My dear Marquise,” she says softly. Her voice is grown polished with age, no trace of the guttural accent her ladies once loved to mock. She is swathed in black, a cap over her graying hair, her eyes dampened and distant; she too is growing old, already sixty. “I wish to thank you for your years of service.” She looks at me kindly.

“Madame, my one wish was to serve you.”

“You have, dear Marquise, you have.”

Even Richelieu comes, bearing a single daffodil: misfortune or eternal life? He offers no smirking vile words, just what sounds like a sincere wish for my recovery. We are both survivors, I think sadly, though he will outlast me. Before he leaves he arches an eyebrow at the fishbowl on the mantel—as though he knows—then bows smartly and departs.

Through the long days of darkness and dreaming, a few of the demons, with their perfect dress and their spiteful minds, come to pay me compliments and insults. They too will one day make this journey I am on, for no amount of malice can prevent that.

“My dear, so pale, what an absolutely lovely skin color, one could even say being sick becomes you!”

“Your eyes, grown even larger than before.”

“A pity about your hands—looking a little knobby, aren’t they?”

“Snake soup, dear Marquise, snake soup, eaten fresh—my sister swears by it.”

Finally my Louis comes. He has been crying; I can read his face like no other and I see the single streak of redness in his left eye, the faint puffiness of his cheeks. They are calling him cold but I know he is not. A lifetime of controlling his emotions in front of others—only I know what lies beneath the king’s frozen mask.

He sits on my bed and strokes my hands. We are both silent, for there are no words sufficient to this occasion. Nicole brings in the box as I asked. He opens it and finds two pieces of ribbon, once fine red velvet, now crumpled and faded.

“Your first gift,” I whisper, and take one of the pieces and rub it against my cheek, smell the memories and the must. I start to cry, and he bows his head.

“I take confession tomorrow, my love,” I say finally, and he nods, then leans in to kiss me one last time. I close my eyes and inhale, as best I can through my scarred, useless lungs, the scent of love and life. All my memories wash over me as I breathe in one last time the man I built my life around.

“You never disappointed me. Ever. Believe me.” A tear trembles in his eye. “You were my one true friend. I fear I made you unhappy.”

“No. No, never,” I say, and reach for his hand again, wishing I never had to let it go. “You were the best moments of my life.”

“And you—you were my everything.”

“Go,” I whisper, releasing his hand. “Go.”

He has a life to return to, one that will continue without me. I fear for him, and for France, but the time for anxiety is done. He leaves and peace falls over me. This life was a fair dream; I have had the most charmed of lives, not without great sorrows but which lives are untainted by such? I think of the gypsy woman; I think of my mother and of my darling Alexandrine. I will see them both again so soon. And Louis—was he my third great sorrow?

I take confession and the rain beats down outside, as though a great flood is coming. The room is dimly lit and faintly scented with lilies. It is a great honor to die at Versailles, for etiquette dictates that none but the royal family may die here. Tomorrow is Easter Sunday, if I last until then. Have I done right? Have I lived my life the way it should have been lived? Do we turn to God in our later years, not through fear of death, but through increased wisdom?

And as that last terrible night embraces me in all its pain and suffering, as I prepare to leave for a palace even greater than Versailles, there is one thought that keeps me strong before I surrender:

He loved me.

He did.

Epilogue

O
n the 15th of April, Easter Sunday, 1764, the Marquise de Pompadour’s body was taken from Versailles in a carriage pulled by six black horses. Louis XV watched from a window as the hearse rode out through the rain, tears streaming down his face. Her
cortège
disappeared into the distance and another strange chapter in the strange history of Versailles came to an end.

A Note from the Author

From relatively chaste beginnings, the floodgates of Louis XV’s lust soon opened wide.
The Rivals of Versailles
highlights the stories of a few of the many women who graced Louis’ bed during the middle part of his reign.

Rosalie de Romanet-Choiseul died in childbirth in 1753, just six months after being banished from Versailles and from the king’s heart. She was only eighteen; her daughter and namesake died three years later. Though the timing was right, there does not appear to be any suggestion that she was the king’s child.

Marie Louise O’Murphy, nicknamed Morphise in this book, was banished, married, survived, and even, after numerous men, marriages, and other adventures, lived to see the nineteenth century. Ah, poor delightful Morphise, her timing was entirely wrong: after Pompadour’s death, the next official mistress was a woman with equally humble roots.

Marie-Anne de Mailly de Coislin had a long and rather exciting life, lover of kings, survivor of the Revolution, denizen of more than one country. She probably wasn’t as silly as I have depicted her, but there is definite consensus that she was no match for either the first Marie-Anne, one of the great “might-have-beens” of history, or for the Marquise de Pompadour.

Finally, Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, the Marquise de Pompadour, the little girl from the middle classes who rose to become the virtual Queen of France and quite possibly the most influential royal mistress ever. She expertly managed a capricious master and her memory lingers long in our consciousness; alongside Catherine the Great of Russia and Maria Theresa of Austria, she is considered one of the three most powerful women of the eighteenth century.

I have tried to do justice to her life, to the highs and the lows, to the impact she had on French style and history, to the enigma that she was on so many levels. Overall, I think she had quite a sad life but I believe it was the life she wanted, the only life she could ever have conceived of, and one that ultimately left her content.

Near the end of his life Louis XV, by that time a confirmed libertine, unknowable to his younger self, was asked whom he had loved most of all of the women who had graced his life and his bed.

“Marie-Anne,” he replied without hesitation, referring to Marie-Anne de Mailly-Nesle, the Duchesse de Châteauroux and one of the protagonists of
The Sisters of
Versailles
.

“But what about Pompadour?” came the question, to which the king replied: “No, no, I never loved her. I only kept her around because to banish her would have been her death.”

Those cruel, light words of gross ingratitude contain a kernel of truth—Louis was the air that Pompadour breathed—but also came from a self-centered man for whom the passage of time had erased so much. I have no doubt that while love may not have lasted, for the almost twenty years that Reinette ruled by his side she was the most important person in his life.

After Reinette’s death, Louis mourned, but privately, and the world continued onward. The final book in the trilogy,
The Enemies of Versailles,
will focus on the last years of Louis XV’s reign, a pivotal decade in the history of France as it approached the revolution. The story will be told by the Comtesse du Barry, Louis XV’s last official mistress, and by his eldest daughter, Madame Adélaïde.

Please visit my website www.sallychristieauthor.com for details on the research that went into this book, as well as additional information on the main and secondary characters.

Acknowledgments

Bringing a book from draft to publication is definitely a team effort. Lots of thanks and gratitude must go to my editor, Sarah Branham at Atria, and to my agent, Dan Lazar at Writers House. Thanks to Alison for once again giving me great input on the draft, and to Sylvia and Vivienne for their early feedback. Thanks to Odile Caffin-Carcy in France for answering my questions, no matter how small or silly, and to Deborah Anthony at French Travel Boutique for arranging a backstage tour of Versailles, which was invaluable in giving me much of the sensory detail that informs these pages. Thanks to the marketing and publicity team at Atria US: Andrea Smith, Jin Yu, and Jackie Jou, as well as the team at S&S Canada, including Katie Callaghan, Catherine Sim, and Andrea Seto. And of course thanks to the many helping hands behind the scenes that I never get to meet or talk with, responsible for all the copyediting and great design work, both on the cover and inside the book.

For more salacious drama, check out the first seductive installment of the Mistresses of Versailles trilogy . . .

Goodness, but sisters are a thing to fear.
The Nesle sisters compete for love, power, and the attention of King Louis XV in this scandalous and sumptuous beginning to the Mistresses of Versailles trilogy.

The Sisters of Versailles

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