The Sisters of Versailles (6 page)

Gossip is a full-time occupation. When I arrived at Versailles I learned that everyone knew that my mother and the one-eyed Duc de Bourbon had been lovers. The duke often visited our house in Paris—my mother always said he was coming for tea, and I used to think how odd it was that the man should like tea so much, and he not even English. I have also encountered more wicked untruths about my father here than I ever heard from the most slack-mouthed servant at home. And if I want to know where my husband spends his nights, for it is certainly not in my apartment, I need only ask the nearest passerby; they are sure to know. The answer, as I have found out thanks to Gilette and many others, is: at the house of Mademoiselle Baudet in town. Mademoiselle Baudet is the daughter of a sword maker. A
sword maker
. Worse than a bourgeois! Imagine that.

Gilette tells me that my husband wanted to marry his mistress—marry a sword maker’s daughter, for goodness’ sake—but the king, or Fleury, forbade it. That is the reason our marriage happened so suddenly.

“I do believe my husband is fine,” I reply stiffly to Fleury. He reaches for my hand and his fingers are as soft as wormy chestnuts.

“Such an innocent,” he says, and though everyone here likes to mask the real meaning of their words beneath several layers of falsity, I sense he is sincere. “Stay that way, my dear, stay that way.”

Pauline

CONVENT OF PORT-ROYAL

1732

O
ur Tante
Mazarin does not like me, a fact she makes publicly known. She never fails to remark on my dark complexion or bushy eyebrows, and once even said, in a light voice to make it appear as though she were joking, that Mama must have slept with a Hungarian, so horrible was I to look at.

Although it is not permitted to criticize our elders—out loud—the feeling is mutual. I think she is a spiteful old woman who hides her black heart beneath her robes of piety. One time when she was visiting our mother in Paris, Louise and I were brought down from the schoolroom to greet her and sing a song. While we were singing, Tante examined us as Cook might inspect a chicken. Our hands were clasped in front of us in the correct posture for singing (as our foolish governess, Zélie, had taught us), when I had the irresistible urge to sneeze. I did, and unfortunately it was a messy one. And it happened as Tante was standing right in front of me, examining my left ear.

I have to confess it was a little bit on purpose—I could have turned my head, after all—but it was rather funny. Tante was so disgusted that she has barely looked at me since.

So I was glad to be sent to the convent with Diane and not to her house. I was sad for the loss of my mother, of course, but she was never very maternal and we rarely saw her. I was well pleased not to be shut up in Tante’s stuffy house with Hortense and Marie-Anne, and I believed I was
finally
going to get an education.

Zélie, our governess from the Quai des Théatins, was complete
nonsense. She was a relation of ours, something-something five times removed. As a rare act of charity my mother took her into our household but I don’t believe she had any more education than a field mouse, and I don’t think she even attended Saint-Cyr, as she liked to claim. During lessons she would spin the globe and tell us stories about faraway places. I was sure she made everything up, for how would she know anything about Québec or India? When I accused her of lying, Zélie would protest and say that being able to entertain was the most useful accomplishment, even if the substance of what one said was in doubt.

I thought that at the convent I might finally learn something. Well . . . to think I ever fancied getting an education here! I feel I have been tricked. Sometimes my head buzzes with frustration and fury, as though a hundred bees were trapped inside my skull.

Every morning for three hours we must study religious books or memorize the lives of obscure saints. Pointless: Why should I care what a virgin Roman girl with an outlandish name did more than a thousand years ago? Afternoons are spent on mountains of needlework. I generally despised Zélie but at least her lessons were secular, and I don’t think she even knew how to sew.

The other students are much younger than Diane and me, for I am already twenty years old and Diane eighteen. The girls are sent here by their families for safekeeping until they are released into marriage; no one expects any quality to their education. Without exception they are silly little girls who jump at rats and whimper at thunder and spend hours crying if they find a new freckle on their nose. I call them drops because they are as boring as drops of water. The little drops only care about their future husbands, and they shriek when they hear I am not even betrothed. If one more little drop says she will pray for a husband for me, I will scream.

The days pass, long and dreary. When I declare I have read every life of a saint there is to read and sewn every cushion cover the chapel will ever need, I am allowed to help Sister Claudine in
the convent library. We are working to catalog an estimated two thousand books that clog the towering shelves. You might think this would be interesting work, but without exception, and here I will swear on the Holy Bible, all two thousand books are boring beyond belief.
The Canons of Dort
? A bound collection of
Papal Bulls from the Seventeenth Century
?
Of Exorcisms and Certain Supplications
? Well, that last one does sound a little bit interesting.

There are other boarders here: widows or women seeking refuge from their husbands, or from the world in general. They are very pleasant, apart from one creaky old lady who refuses to speak to Diane and me because of an ancient but well-remembered grudge against my long-dead grandmother. My grandmother was apparently as notorious a slut as my mother, and was once rumored to have slept with two members of the Swiss Guard. At the same time! The ancient lady with the grudge tells me blood is thicker than water and that the seeds of laxness flow through my veins. I snort and retort that I’d rather have lax-seeded veins than her great knobbly blue ones.

But generally the ladies are kind enough and I prefer to dine with them rather than with the little drops. Sometimes we play cards in the evenings and I also borrow books from them; mostly novels and farces. One woman in particular has become a friend, a Madame de Dray, who is in retirement from the world after the death of her husband. He was only a magistrate, so normally we would not be friends, but I find in her a very forthright and funny soul. She has no artifice and hates piety, especially false piety, almost as much as I do. She is also remarkably open about the facts of married life that I have hitherto been in ignorance of. Fascinating, really, the secrets of men.

The convent is not secluded from the world; in fact its walls are as porous as the grilles that box the confessionals, and the lady boarders are free to receive visitors and gossip from Versailles. My silly sister Louise is now at Court and is one of the queen’s ladies. I am jealous. Very jealous. I should be at Versailles too, meeting interesting people and living an exciting life. When I pepper the
older ladies with questions about life at Court, they describe the concerts and the plays, the fortunes won and lost at card tables, the intrigues and the gossip, the scandals and the power. It’s not fair that pitiful little Louise was able to get married and go to Court, simply because she is two years older than me. I am already twenty and no one is planning
my
wedding.

How I long to be there, at Versailles, and away from this convent crypt of monotony. But to be at Versailles one needs both money and a husband. Everyone knows our father frittered away what little was left of our inheritance and that we have only 7,500
livres
for our dowries, so we’re as poor as . . . well, poor people. Not
really
poor people, of course, but we’re poor compared to the other people in our world.

Without money you can still get married, but then it helps to be beautiful. Ugly is a strong word, and a damning one for a woman, but I do not believe I am ugly. It is true I am very tall and my skin is dark, certainly, not pale like Louise’s, but that is what powder is for. I have nice green eyes—like emeralds—and I like my large eyebrows. I think they make me look distinguished.

My hopes for my future now rest with Louise. She should help Diane and me to get married and get out of this convent. No one else will. I detest letter writing, but I have started to write to Louise frequently. I profess my love and devotion and tell her how much I miss her, which she is probably naive enough to believe. I tell her that I pray that we will one day be reunited (at Versailles) and that she should lead the way to find good husbands for Diane and me.

I am very direct and keep to the point—what does she care if we had eels for dinner yesterday, or how Madame de Felingonge’s back pains are progressing? I ask her to invite me to Court or find me a husband. Then I write again and ask her to invite me to Court or find me a husband. Or secure me a place at Court, even if it’s in the service of some dreary old duchess. I don’t care. I just want to get out of here. But all I receive from Louise are infuriatingly sweet letters ignoring my requests and telling me to trust in God, because only He knows where my future husband is.

And now my giggly sister Diane doesn’t laugh as much as she used to. She has taken to praying for five hours a day and even gets up for matins. She declares she is
madly
in love with Jesus, Mother Superior, and with one of the nuns called Sister Domingue.

“Diane, I think you should focus on Sister Domingue; beneath her wimple she is certainly prettier than Mother Superior. Despite her pox scars. And she is probably prettier than Jesus,” I joke, trying to make her laugh.

“Sister, my love for Jesus, and everyone else, can never be divided,” Diane replies, all haughty and hushy. “And I have asked you at least twenty times not to call me Diane—my name is Adelaide now. Diane is a pagan name. It’s not suitable for a woman with a strong religious vocation. You know I hate it and I don’t know why you always try to annoy me with it.”

“Sorry,
Adelaide
.”

The older ladies assure me that professing a great vocation is just a phase every girl goes through, like wanting to marry a duke or play with kittens all day. Some of the kinder ladies ask gently if it would be so bad if Diane, poor little jolly (as they call her), were to find a life of happiness inside convent walls? Not here—7,500
livres
as dowry will not open the doors of Port-Royal—but they might take her elsewhere.

It is certainly a blessing to have relatives in the Church, but we already have aunts in abbeys all over France. I want my fun sister back. I ask God for this, and while I’m asking for favors, I also remind Him that I want a husband and that I want to go to Versailles. I want to start
living
.

From Pauline de Mailly-Nesle

Convent of Port-Royal

March 20, 1732

Louise,

I am sure you are in good health and happiness. Not I. I do not like life at the convent and I want to leave. I want to get married. I hope you can find me a husband, please ask Tante Mazarin and anyone else you can if they can help me.

I also want to come and visit you at Court, I think you should remember your sororal duties and invite me for a visit. Remember wise Zélie, who always said that sororal love was the highest love? Please do not forget me.

I miss you very much, I think about you every day, sometimes I cry because I miss you so much. Diane cries too. I would love to see you again and I suggest you invite me to Versailles.

Thank you for writing with the news of the Duchesse d’Antin’s dress. Imagine a pink satin petticoat sewn with white posies—fascinating! How I would like to see that dress myself! If you invite me to Versailles, I could see it and then I would be even more fascinated.

Diane thanks you for the lace ribbons. She sewed them onto the cuffs of her convent dress but the nuns make her take them off on Sundays. She sends her love; she wishes she could have written but a bee stung her finger and now she has some difficulty holding her quill.

With much sororal love,

Pauline

Louise

VERSAILLES

1732

T
he
fashions here are simply extraordinary. Gowns of silk and satin, velvet and fur, brocades in winter, fine muslins and gauze in the summer. Everywhere there are ruffles and lace and bows and ribbons and flowers. And feathers and jewels and bells and even little stuffed birds, adorning dresses all the pale colors of the sun and the moon. If one wears a dress too often, friends will remind you that you are not in the provinces and they claim that seeing the same garment too often affronts their eyes and may even cause blindness. They complain that dark colors give them headaches: why wear brown when one can wear pink?

The more daring women push out their legs while seated so their gowns and petticoats fall away and reveal their pretty satin shoes, sewn with pearls and decorated with delicate buckles. Some even dare to show their shocking white stockings and I have heard that the Comtesse de Rupelmonde wears a bejeweled garter that cost more than a pair of horses.

I have a fair number of dresses, but most of them are hopelessly plain when compared to what the other ladies wear. Everything must be beautiful, but everything must be paid for. Not immediately—dressmakers are generous with credit—but eventually. I receive a pension as a lady of the queen, but what are 8,000
livres
a year when some ladies (and gentlemen too, for the men must be as well dressed as the women) spend five thousand
livres
for
just one outfit? How I envy my friend Gilette, the Duchesse d’Antin; her husband is one of the richest men at Court and I have never seen her wear the same dress twice. Never; not even one turned inside out!