The Sisters of Versailles (26 page)

But what can I do—wish continued sickness upon my beloved so that I may be his nurse? No, I cannot do that.

Recently Pauline has been less cold to me, less demanding. I believe she likes me at her side, as a confidante and foil. As I once wanted her to be mine! Oh, how very ironic, how very
unfair
. How I wish I had never invited her. What did I do to deserve a sister like Pauline?

The king is often at his new palace of Choisy with her. There is much work to be done there—improving and redecorating—and he is enthusiastically overseeing all of it.
They
are enthusiastically overseeing it; Louis declares it will be his gift to Pauline and that when they are finished it will be the most beautiful palace in Europe.

He never gave me a palace.

I have been to Choisy a few times and Louis is very energetic there, like a young boy with a newfound passion. He spends hours with the architects and works with the carpenters on their drawings, making changes here, suggesting other designs. The Court buzzes with the news that he has even taken up cooking. Apparently last week he made a delicious soup from the mushrooms he and the courtiers had spent an afternoon gathering from the forest. Gathering mushrooms! Like peasants! Tales of these scenes of easy domesticity burn my ears and deepen my despair—how was I to know that Louis wanted to be like a peasant?

Oh, despair.

I cannot endure this life, I simply cannot.

From Louise de Mailly

Château de Versailles

A dark day, 1740

Dearest Mother,

How are you, dear Mama? Are you happy where you are? I miss you so much, Mama, I remember when we would come down from the nursery to your wonderful golden chamber, and you would lie with us on the bed and hold us and feed us candies. How I long to feel your arms around me again!

I am so alone, I turned to Pauline when I needed guidance, I had hoped she would help me but she did not. She did not. She is . . . well, I cannot write what I think of her, for though she has done me a hateful service, she is still your daughter. And my sister.

Oh, Mama, how I wish you were here to guide me. Do you remember how you hugged me the day of my wedding? You said you would always be there for me, but then you died.

Though it is wicked to think such thoughts, and even more wicked to write them, sometimes I envy you, for you are in a far better place and all the grief and the sorrow of this cruel world are behind you. You are at peace, a state so rare here on earth.

I know it is foolish of me to write this letter but I am so alone. I have no one to turn to and sometimes my despair threatens me with such dark thoughts. I do not wish to have them, but I cannot stop them no matter how I pray. Perhaps we shall meet sooner than later in the greatest of God’s gardens?

I will burn this letter now.

I will love you forever.

Your faithful daughter,

Louise

Pauline

VERSAILLES AND CHOISY

Summer 1740

I
am
beginning to understand that Louis is a weak man. On his seventeenth birthday, the last king, Louis XIV, stood calmly before his ministers and told them that the time of his youth and tutelage had passed, and that now he was in charge. There is little likelihood of my Louis doing that, and besides, the moment has passed: what would have been exemplary in a seventeen-year-old would only be embarrassing in one already thirty.

His ministers still treat him as a child, and Cardinal Fleury, whose influence is continuing and absolute, has, I believe, squashed any independent spirit Louis might have grown. I cannot bear to see the king clinging to his leading strings. If Louis is ever to become a king in more than name, he needs to be out from under the cardinal’s domineering thumb.

I decide that the king’s new palace at Choisy is the perfect place for him to grow into his own man, one who will listen to me and not to that ancient piece of decrepitude.

The château is partially in ruins, for the old Princesse de Conti did not take care of the place as she should have. Regardless, the location, overlooking the banks of the Seine, is divine, and in spring and summer a brisk breeze comes up from the river and rolls through the rooms. Together we plan the additions and the interior decorations, and for the first time Louis supervises the work directly. At Choisy, Louis can be a man and not a king.
Here, when we are in bed together he is more ardent, as though he left some restraint in his nature behind at Versailles. At Choisy he can go twice a night; on one occasion it was thrice.

Choisy is no more than a few hours from Versailles, but when we are here we shed our skins and bar the door against Madame Etiquette and live simply as though the fate of France were not on our shoulders. Here we are more relaxed than even at Rambouillet. We are not alone, of course; Louis hates solitude, and so there must always be a group of courtiers buzzing around us, like flies on meat.

Even Louise comes with us sometimes.

We women leave off our panniers and float through the halls with drooping, flowing skirts. The men hunt all day and in the evening we have suppers with the food from the hunt and the garden, and even do some of the cooking! At midnight we glide on the river in gondolas bedecked with lanterns, sliding through the water as though we are in another world. The old stuffies back at Versailles tut and hiss and say Choisy undermines the majesty of His Majesty, for who wants a king who acts like a peasant and disregards the sacred etiquette? But it is a testament to my growing influence that Louis ignores all they say.

Louis loves landscaping and gardening even above building. He is planning an elaborate maze and has rediscovered a long-lost passion for growing vegetables: when he was a child Fleury gave him a small garden where he grew lettuces. Now with an exacting eye he oversees the gardens, not just the ornamental ones but the kitchen gardens as well. He ensures the rows are well weeded, the vegetables perfectly planted and tended with water, but also with milk and chicken blood.

Louis still prefers lettuces over all other vegetables. I notice that he likes vegetables that have many layers to peel: sprouts, cabbages, and onions. It is a curious turn of his personality and perhaps harkens to his secretive nature. I couldn’t be less interested in gardening myself, but I feign an interest and even get my gloves dirty. Once a
worm
fell on my hand. I crushed it before Louis could save it—he is
remarkably sentimental when it comes to garden bugs.

Every day after Mass but before he leaves for the hunt, we stroll to the gardens and follow the progress of his beloved lettuces as though we were following the growth of the
dauphin
himself (the boy turns eleven this year and, as the only surviving son in a field of daughters, he is even more precious than a lettuce). When the lettuces are ready to harvest, they are carefully picked by Louis and served at dinner with great pomp and ceremony. The guests strive to outdo themselves in praising the freshness, the crispness, the élan of the leaves. It all gets a bit ridiculous.

As satire, I compose a verse comparing His Majesty’s lettuce to the sun:

Golden orb of green

Covered with layers of Light

Such succulence grown

By the hand of Might

In private I coax Louis to laugh and see the absurdity of my words; no small feat for a man who has been flattered from birth and who thinks sycophancy is simply normal speech. We agree that when the next “golden orb” is harvested, we will goad our guests to laud the lettuce in verse, and give a prize to the one who composes the most outlandish praise. Seeing the courtiers become ridiculous without realizing they are ridiculous, now that is a delicious thing.

The prize is won by the Duc de Richelieu, a companion of the king’s youth and recently returned from Vienna. He is an astonishingly accomplished man, so it was no surprise that his ode comparing the leaves of the lettuce to the cloak offered to Venus, set with a musical score and accompanied by two violinists, won. I think he’s in on the joke but you never can tell with that man. He sees everything, almost as much as I do.

Louis is absolutely and completely infatuated with me and his adoration does not diminish with the passing of time. I must confess his ardor makes me occasionally uncomfortable and he can be irritating—just a touch. When I am not in a good humor, I am not always as pleasant and soft as he would desire.

But perhaps that is part of my success: you can never give a man, even a king, everything he wants. If you do he will only grow complacent and I am determined that Louis
never
grow complacent. I am always on my guard, for love is a tenuous thing and can easily be uprooted, like a turnip too easily pulled from the ground.

Initially I had thought to banish Louise, but now I see my sister is no threat at all. I never cease to find it strange that we should be linked by blood yet so vastly different. She is mostly a ghost in our lives but having her around does have advantages. She serves a purpose when Saint Maurice, as they say, makes his visit. And everyone knows that men like variety in all things. Men will eat
anything
when they are hungry.

Of all that surround me, I believe I trust Louise the most. I am a general and she is my aide-de-camp, if you will. She is a good listener and I can always depend on her to be there with her big sad goose eyes and her hangdog face, looking for a kick or a treat. She’s so good that if she tried to stab someone in the back, she’d probably just curtsy and hand them the knife.

And it’s nice to have at least one friend. I can’t say I’ve made too many others. And there is no end of those who assume that I am too ugly to last, or that I have not enough charm to last.

People
always
underestimate me.

Charolais, with her lisping baby talk and her powdered lilac hair, is plotting against me at this very moment. She’s getting older and starting to look like a lavender-colored clown. The king is old friends with her from childhood but I don’t like the closeness between them. I think I shall wean him from her. I’ll leave the Comtesse de Toulouse alone; Louis needs some mothering and he certainly won’t get it from me.

As time passes Cardinal Fleury makes no effort to hide his disapproval
of me, and I return the favor. The cardinal is about two hundred years old, but he still has the mind of a much younger man. Ageless and with many, many decades of experience, he is a cunning and formidable opponent. He likes control in all things and it was he who chose Louise to be the king’s mistress. I must concede his strategy was perfectly correct: Louise was a very malleable mistress who never meddled in politics.

With me, Fleury very quickly realized that though Louise and I are sisters, we are in fact as different as peas and pears. He had no hand in the king’s choice of me; right there, we started off on the wrong foot. I do believe he would have wished me to seek his benediction before I even spoke to the king! The idea is preposterous.

So we are enemies, but I have youth, and time, and charms that he has not when it comes to influencing the king. And surely the old man must die soon?

I am not the only one waiting on his death. His grip on power has been absolute since the king was twelve, far too long for one man, and an especially long time for a man who never played the patronage game. There is a whole generation of capable men and ministers waiting impatiently in the wings, eager for more power and riches.

Despite Fleury’s continued presence, my influence with Louis is growing and recently he even made a few decisions without the benediction of the cardinal. Last month I was able to secure the appointment of a friend, Monsieur de Breteuil, to the Ministry of War. Directly in the face of Fleury’s wishes.

Others are starting to notice my waxing and Fleury’s waning moon. Surprisingly, Maurepas, Tante’s son-in-law and a very powerful minister, has openly declared his support for me. He shares Tante’s dislike of Louise and, combined with his animus for Fleury, it seems he can forget that I sneezed on his mother-in-law.

But still—things would progress much faster if Fleury were removed. Until he leaves, Louis will never be free to be the king I know he can be.

Richelieu is not an ally—what need do I have of allies?—but
I know he understands my concerns. I happen upon him one morning in the Hall of Mirrors, surrounded by a clutch of lesser courtiers. The Marquis de Meuse detaches himself from the group to bow before me and compliment me profusely on my dress.

“Such a dazzling pattern, madame, rarely have I seen a finer material and such exquisite workmanship. Such detail on the wings! Such life in the eyes of the little birds!”

I incline my head and wait in silence until he backs away. Finally, the group leaves and Richelieu turns to me.