The Sisters of Versailles (10 page)

Louise,

I hope you are well. We have not had any news from you for quite a time and I hope you have not forgotten me. I long for your fascinating news—did the Marquise de Villar’s new gloves of sable and pink leather keep her warm this winter? How are your gloves?

I suggest you invite me to Versailles. The convent is boring and the younger students are constantly crying for me because I am almost twenty-two and not yet married or even betrothed. But then little Gabrielle de Moudancourt, only thirteen, left to be married and was dead in childbirth within the year, so for a while their pity stopped. But I know it will start again.

Father tried to visit last month but he was turned away at the gate for being too drunk. Apparently he was accompanied by an actress! Unfortunately I did not get to see her.

Remember, Diane and I have no other relations to take care of us and now we have the news that Marie-Anne, only sixteen, is engaged! It is an absolute scandal for a younger sister to marry before her elder sisters. She is to be married because Tante Mazarin has her interests at heart. You know that Tante hates me and will not do the same for me.

Diane is well and she sends you her love. She pricked her hand sewing last week and is unable to write but she does love you, but not as much as I love you. I think you know I love you the most.

Sororal love,

Pauline

Marie-Anne

PARIS AND BURGUNDY

1734

S
o, I am married.

As of
yesterday, in fact. The Marquis de la Tournelle was a frequent visitor to Tante’s; she is—was—great friends with his mother. Jean-Baptiste, or JB, as I call him, was quite taken with me and Tante encouraged his attentions. Actually, he was more taken with Hortense, who has become an extraordinary beauty, but Tante suggested I would make the better bride. I think Tante is holding on to Hortense for a better match than Tournelle.

Ours is what they call a “love match,” though I don’t love JB. But at least I know him and he is a fine enough boy. He’s actually my age—sixteen is rather young for a man of no dynastic importance to get married—but he had to grow up quickly because his father died when he was only three. His mother is atrocious; the worst kind of arrogance. She was against our match from the beginning, contending we were both far too young and that my dowry wouldn’t feed a bird for a month. She and Tante had quite the fight over it and they are now no longer the great friends they once were.

JB does not have to listen to his mother, and so he decided we should be married. He’s not the most intelligent person but he is very much devoted to me, and I must make him believe his admiration is returned, for what choice do I have? One has to marry—it’s either that or the convent. So I have married Jean-Baptiste-Louis
de la Tournelle, the Marquis de la Tournelle and the owner of a host of unimportant places, mostly in Burgundy.

It was all neatly arranged and now Tante never ceases reminding me what a wonderful match it is. Surprisingly, she is tickled by the idea of a (suitable) love match. She told me the tale of her disastrous first marriage: she was only eleven when her parents betrothed her to the late king’s councillor Phelypeaux. He was not of the old nobility, but of the new and despised administrative nobility: his father was only ennobled in 1678! I know this, having read it in the
Genealogical History of the Royal Family and Peers
.

What I didn’t know was that my aunt cried and cried at having to marry such a man. My image of stuffy old Tante as a stuffy little girl is a charming one. When she was twelve she obeyed her parents and married him, but she told her family she would never be happy again and that she would never forgive them. She was correct on both accounts. Luckily, Phelypeaux died and then she married the Duc de Mazarin, fulfilling her dream of becoming a duchess.

So I am now the Marquise de la Tournelle. An acceptable title, not as old or as prestigious as my father’s, but still, nothing to turn up one’s nose at. As well as becoming a marquise, today I also became a woman, at four a.m. to be precise; the wedding feast at his Paris home was long and protracted and that was the earliest we “smitten lovebirds” (actually one smitten lovebird, and one rather indifferent but a little bit excited and a little bit drunk lovebird) could escape. Within five minutes (and lots of fumbling and one torn chemise), it was over. I am not sure what all the fuss is about, but perhaps time will tell.

Now it is odd to think that there is someone who has more of a claim on me than Tante, or even Zélie, ever had. Someone who can interfere with my private thoughts—or even with my body—at any moment of the day.

JB has the house in Paris but he is frequently away with his regiment and does not have a place at Court yet. Unfortunately his mother also lives in the Paris house and I certainly don’t want
to live with her. Then it was proposed that I continue living with Tante while my husband is away. Oh, horror.

“I wish to live in the country, at his place in Burgundy,” I announce. I keep my expression neutral: I’d rather go to Vienna, or Rome, or a hundred other places, but since those aren’t options, I will settle for Burgundy. Anywhere but here.

“Who
willingly
goes to the country? And leaves Paris? And goes as far away from Versailles as it is possible to get?” responds Tante, her voice filled with alarm.

Burgundy is quite close to Paris, but for Tante, anything beyond two hours’ drive could as well be in Hungary as far as she is concerned. She considers my request at once shocking and eccentric.

“Eccentricity is all well and fine in a man, especially a rich one,” Tante reminds me. “But certainly not in a woman! And definitely not in a new bride.”

I stand my ground and JB agrees to my plan. Then I have the supreme triumph of defying Tante and making my first independent decision as a grown, married woman. With the permission of my husband, of course.

I believe I am settling quite well into my new life. On the surface, it appears that I only desire to please. I play the part very well and it is interesting to see JB grow daily more infatuated with me. I have a rather cherubic face that is definitely at odds with my inner being: rosy, dimpled cheeks and a mouth that can be compared to a rosebud have never served a woman wrong. JB says it is my eyes that are fascinating; the rest of my face is like a child’s, but my eyes are those of an older, knowing woman. I am much smarter than he is, but I know that I must never contradict a man, or concern him in any way with my wit. Zélie was fairly useless but that lesson stays with me.

My new home has some nice surprises: it lies beside a river of considerable strength and the days are filled with the soothing sounds of flowing water. But the saving grace of the house, and of my life, is the library. There, I am like a man dying of thirst who has just been released into a lake.

“Darling.” JB calls me to the bed. I’m on a sofa, crouched next
to the fire, reading. The château is icy and everything feels colder here than it does in Paris: I have decided that country cold is different from city cold.

“Yes, JB?”

“You’re awake?”

“Yes, you can see I am sitting up.”

“What are you doing?”

Does he not see I have a book? “I am reading.”

“What are you reading? Come here and show me.”

He motions me to the bed and I show him the book.
“Pascal: Lettres Provinciales.”
He spells out the title rather laboriously. “Never heard of him.”

What can I say to that?

I don’t think JB has ever been inside his own library, but it is rather fine, three well-stocked rooms with books towering to the ceiling, extensive collections of literature and philosophy and geography and so much more; his grandfather Nicolas-François was a great reader and intellectual.

“Well,” says JB, taking the book from my hands and throwing it on the floor—!—“You don’t have to read any more of these dull books.”

“Is that a promise?” Or a threat? I hadn’t thought to ask his permission to take books from the library.

“Mmm . . . definitely a promise. Move over a little . . . there . . . mmm . . .”

Will I ever get used to cold hands on my private places? His tiresome pawing feels so uncomfortable and so
wrong,
I don’t care if we are husband and wife. Though sometimes . . . if he moves in the right way, I catch glimpses and hints of things I cannot quite place, like trying to catch a cloud or a shadow in the night. Something I want to grab and pull back to me, though I don’t know what it is yet. I think I’ll find it eventually.

Other than studying JB and my books, there is not much else to do at the end of the world in deepest Burgundy. I miss my sisters, except of course Pauline.

I write to Diane at the convent and occasionally she writes back, but I can never decipher her letters; her spelling is atrocious. Hortense writes sheaves of pages and tells me that thanks to my romantic story she now prays for a marriage as filled with love and passion as mine. I don’t disabuse her of her fairy-tale follies.

I occasionally write to Louise; even though she is rather dull, she has the most exciting life of all of us. She hinted in her last letter that she has a lover, but I suspect this is just another of her girlish fantasies. I remember her mooning, for years, over that sketch of her dreadful husband. Still, the idea is intriguing. I wonder if we will ever go to Versailles—JB assures me that in the future we will establish ourselves there. Louise could help, of course, but she was always so timid I can’t imagine her influencing anyone on our behalf.

Will I be forgotten here, outside the world? Will Louise have all the glory and the love, while all I get is JB? I console myself with a newly found book of
Aesop’s Fables
. It is strange to think that we can learn from insects and animals, but we can: he makes good use of humble lessons to teach great truths. Right now I feel a little like the tortoise—my life is starting slowly. Very slowly. Perhaps one day I’ll be the hare?

From Louise de Mailly

Château de Versailles

August 4, 1734

Dearest Marie-Anne,

Congratulations, my dearest sister, on your wedding! I am thrilled that you are now a woman and introduced to the joys of marriage. I heard it was a love match, though a suitable one of course, and I am delighted for you. And how marvelous it is that your husband is the same age as you! That is absolutely perfect!

Love is the most wonderful thing in this world. I am talking about true love, of course, not puppy love, or infatuation, or things that we think are love, but about
real love
, the kind that only comes when one has found one’s kindred soul, and when one realizes why the world exists and why
we
exist.

That is the love that I have finally, as a married woman, and I hope that you will also find it in your marriage. This rapture, this giddiness, this happiness—would that everyone could experience it so!

Oh, but I am rambling! It is just that I am so happy. For you, I mean. Though I am happy too. The world is wondrous and I am in love!

You must write and tell me of Burgundy. Burgundy! How far away it sounds. I overheard Tante Mazarin (she no longer speaks to me) saying that she feared she had failed in your upbringing, to have raised a child who would wish to live so far from Paris and the Court.

I am sure you miss Hortense and Paris but you will find a replacement, and more, in the arms of your husband.

A thousand hugs and kisses and congratulations again!

Louise

From Pauline de Mailly-Nesle

Convent of Port-Royal, Paris

August 22, 1734

Marie-Anne,

Congratulations on your wedding and your husband. My friend Madame de Dray says it is highly irregular for a younger sister to be married before an older. You are only sixteen, yet I am twenty-two and still not married. And Diane is twenty. Did Tante not consider the scandal?

Diane says we must write more often, that it is not sororal to dislike one’s sisters.

I hope you like Burgundy. I’m sure it can’t be worse than Tante Mazarin’s house.

Pauline

From Marie-Anne de la Tournelle

Château de la Tournelle, Burgundy

September 1, 1734

Dear Hortense,

Greetings from Burgundy! All is well here, though I have to confess married life is not that different from my life before; in Paris I was confined to Tante’s house, and now I am confined to my husband’s house. Well, not exactly confined, but as there is nowhere for me to go, it is all rather the same.

My days are not exactly boring; the weather is lovely here and the gardens are extensive and good to ramble through. Everything is very quiet. There is a wonderful library with seeming all the books of creation gathered into three rooms and that is my solace and my passion. I have just read
Manon Lescaut
; have you heard of it? See if you can find a copy—I recommend it highly, but don’t let Tante find it.

There is not much else to report. My husband was here until last month but has now left to be with his regiment. He is well, though he had a persistent cough he blamed on the summer wind. He says the Austrians are being very aggressive and he is worried. I’m not; Burgundy is miles away from Austria.

Please let me know how life is with you. How is Victoire? Did she have her puppies? How many? One of the gardeners here found a baby deer and I adopted it; it was quite the most adorable thing. Unfortunately it got rather big and the cook complained it would decimate the onion stores for the winter. I had it killed and it was delicious, though I was a little sad.