The Sisters of Versailles

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To John & Sylvia: Simply the Best

Hortense

PARIS

An VII (1799)

W
e were five sisters and four became mistresses of our king. Only I escaped his arms but that was my choice: I may be eighty-four years old, and all that I speak of may have happened in the far distance of the past, but in a woman vanity is eternal. So I need to tell you: I could have. Had I wanted. Because he—the king—he certainly wanted.

I’m not speaking of the last king, our sixteenth Louis, poor hapless man dead these six years on the guillotine, followed by his Austrian wife. No, here I talk of the fifteenth Louis, a magnificent king. I knew him when he was fresh and young, no hint of the debauched libertine that he would become in his later years, with his drooping eyes and sallow skin, his lips wet with lust.

The story of my sisters and Louis XV is today mostly forgotten, their memory eclipsed by more famous and more scandalous mistresses, and by the upheaval of the last decade. I too am forgetful now, my memory faded and worn as my sisters slip in and out of the shadows in my mind. I spend my hours immersed in a sea of their old letters; reading them, then rereading them, is both my comfort and my sorrow. Is anything more bittersweet than the pull of past memories? These letters, a portrait of one sister that hangs above the fireplace, and a faded sketch of another pressed between the pages of a Bible, are all that remain to me now.

It was years ago that it all began: 1729, almost three-quarters
of a century past. It was such a different time then, a completely different world. We were secure and arrogant in our privilege, never suspecting that things might change, that the accident of birth might not always be the promise it once was. We were born daughters of a
marquis
; titles and courtesy and the perquisites of the nobility were all that we ever knew, but now, what do those things matter? Well, they still matter a lot, though all we
citoyens
must pretend they do not.

The world—our world—was softer then; those who could afford to do so buttered and feathered themselves until they were insulated from all of the unpleasant realities of life. We never dreamed—ever—that a horror like the Terror could happen.

We were five sisters in our childhood home on the Quai des Théatins. Our home was in the center of Paris on a road by the Seine, lined with the houses of the rich and powerful. The house still stands on that street, now renamed the Quai Voltaire to honor that great man. I shudder to think who may live there now.

It was a grand house, an elegant house, a reminder to all of our place in the world. I remember well my mother’s golden bedroom on the second floor, opulent and resplendent, the awe we felt when summoned for a visit. Of course, the nursery was not so grand; children in those days were mostly ignored, and so why waste money on things, or children, that were so rarely seen? Up in the aerie of our nursery on the fourth floor, the rooms were cold and bare, but comfortable, our haven in a heartless world.

We had no education to speak of; the aim was not an educated daughter, but a mannered daughter, one who knew her way through the intricate maze of politeness and social graces that governed our world. In truth, even with the wisdom that is supposed to come with age, I can’t say that more education would have served me better in my life.

We were five sisters and we had no brothers; my mother sometimes remarked, when she was happy on champagne, the misfortune that had cursed her so.

Though we sprang from the same parents, we were all so
different. Oh, how different! Louise was the eldest, charming and somewhat pretty, nineteen when she was first presented at Court. She was a dreamer, always with stars in her eyes when she thought of her future and the happiness that would surely come for her.

Then there was Pauline, fierce with no softness in her body and a character to make a pirate proud. She was as headstrong as a horse and ruled the nursery; she towered over us, both in height and in strength. Even at seventeen, Pauline knew she would be powerful and important. How she knew that, I know not. But she knew.

Our next sister was Diane, fifteen then and always jolly, lax and lazy. She avoided conflict and only wanted to giggle and laugh and dream of becoming a duchess. Physically she reminded everyone of our sister Pauline, but without the force of personality. I suppose that was both a curse and a blessing.

Then there was I, only fourteen when everything changed. All called me the prettiest of the family and many commented on my likeness to my namesake, my famous great-grandmother Hortense Mancini, who in her time bewitched more than one king.

Finally there was little Marie-Anne, though it seems strange now to speak of her last. She was twelve and also very pretty, but hidden beneath her angel face was a sharp and shearing mind that emerged occasionally to astound our nursemaids.

I remember our years on the fourth floor of the Quai des Théatins as happy ones, years of light and love. Certainly, there were small differences, the usual squabbles and petty fights, but overall harmony reigned, a harmony that was all too precious and absent later in our lives. Perhaps there were signs, but they were faint and thin, mere whispers of the callousness and suffering to come. No, my memory is of a happy time, before the harsh world of adults caught us and covered us with its disappointments and cruelties, before we lost the closeness of our younger years and before Louise became broken, Pauline mean, Diane fat and lazy, and Marie-Anne manipulative and hard.

But through it all, through the good, the bad, the sin and the scandal, the heartbreak and the joy, the exiles and the deaths, through it all, they were my sisters. And now I am all that is left. I sit in my darkened rooms, an old woman, passing my days rustling through their letters and my memories. If I am careful, and still, I can hear their voices once again.

Part I

One in Love

Louise

VERSAILLES

1730

V
ersailles. Vastness and grandeur and echoes; the chatter of a hundred persons murmuring in polite whispers, the sound overwhelming though each speaks so softly; the smell of a thousand scents mingling; a great crush of people like a painting come to life.

Everything is gilt in richness and the walls are hung with enormous mirrors that lie like lakes against the marble and reflect your life back at you, magnified many times over. Everywhere are candelabras and chandeliers, some with two hundred candles, and at night the palace sparkles as though lit by the sun itself.

The endless corridors are lined with statues of kings and gods, enormous in bronze, marble, and stone. The ceilings are so high they reach the heavens and they are painted like the heavens too, only you can’t twist to admire them, for one must always appear very sophisticated and disinterested.

In this vast palace it is hard to find one’s way; traps and trickery are everywhere and life is rich in rules that everyone seems to know but myself. The palace is like a treacherous flower I once heard about, beautiful and lush, that eats the flies that dare to land on its lips.

I have been here for several months already, in the exalted position of lady-in-waiting to the queen, yet still every day I wake up and wonder: Is this the day that something dreadful happens? Will I fall when I curtsy? Slip on the orange-waxed floors?
Speak at the wrong time? Offend the right person with the wrong words?

My rooms are up three flights of stairs, not far from the great staterooms but not so near either. I have memorized the route from my apartment to the queen’s, but today after Mass I was bidden to deliver a pot of mushroom pâté to the Duchesse de Luynes, a favorite of the queen who finds herself ill and in bed with fever. I make the delivery in the company of a Luynes maid but on the way back I find myself alone and in an unfamiliar part of the palace. It is dreadfully confusing: Is it possible Versailles was designed by a madman? Who else could create such a serene and uniform exterior hiding this jumble of rooms, passageways, and stairs?

I am far from the magnificence of the public halls, the grand rooms where the king and the queen and the royal family live and sleep; those rooms are only a small part of the palace, a little flourish on top of a great gesture. Back here, opulence is out of reach and there are no orange trees in great gilded pots to sweeten the air. The floors are dirty, the dizzying parquet of the great rooms replaced by flagstones and uneven oak.

A woman in a mask, her pink skirt slick with mud and sin, pushes rudely past me. I stop; surely I am not going where she goes? All is unfamiliar, and dread tightens my throat. Before I can decide which way to turn, six wolfhounds race past me, giant gray beasts smelling of wet fur and sticky rabbit blood, followed by two pages trotting. The road to the stables must be ahead, so I change direction.

“Going somewhere, little one?” It is the Comtesse d’Hauteville and a companion. I want to ask her help but she doesn’t stop, just sweeps past as the dogs did and I don’t have the courage to call out.

“Armande’s daughter,” I hear her say to her companion.

A tinkle of laughter. “Let’s hope she doesn’t take after her mother, poor lamb,” says the other, and then they are gone down the corridor, their heels clacking on the stone floors.

I come upon another narrow corridor, where I am leered at
by men with no livery, jostled by servants carrying great barrels of water on their backs. I look out a window onto an interior courtyard. I am in the South Wing; do I need to go north to find the main palace? But I don’t know where north is. We didn’t receive much education in the schoolroom in our childhood home in Paris. Our governess, Zélie, was a distant relation of ours, and while I loved her dearly, sometimes her lessons were wanting. She would spin the globe and tell us about the world . . . I remember north was up. Or was that the sun? I find a staircase and climb.

At the top is a large square room hung with crimson drapes. A group of men in dark coats talk with animation in a corner and I daren’t interrupt them. I move toward two men sitting by a window, but as I approach I see their coats are worn and their breeches stained. “Sirs,” I start, then realize in horror they are drunk. One smiles at me and reaches out a dirty hand.

No, no, no. I stumble down a small flight of stairs only to find myself faced with another back corridor of whitewashed walls and stone floors. This one is quiet and it is hard to believe that elsewhere in the vast palace there is life and laughter. This part of the building feels older, lost, away from the comfort of the familiar and the opulent, and the mold of centuries soaks through the thin soles of my shoes. At the end of the corridor is a small door nestled in a panel. I open it, thinking to find another passage, but before me is a room. Two men standing too close, and a woman sitting watching. I freeze.