Versailles (20 page)

I spent four days and three nights in Versailles, and on the very last day, just as I was about to head back to my hotel and pack up, I decided to take one last look out across the Grand Canal. It was a beautiful day, but for a moment I stood there shivering. I felt as if the ghost of Marie Antoinette had passed right through me.

And then I saw two young men wearing hip waders, standing just a little to my right. Tall young men with longish hair. Gawky and cute in that way of young French men. Gardeners, I thought. They must be gardeners, why else the boots? And so I approached them to ask Gianna's question.

"Gloire de Versailles?" one of them said. "You want to see the Gloire de Versailles?" and he looked meaningfully at his friend before suddenly taking off.

"He will show you Gloire de Versailles," the other young man said. "Come with me."

Does this sound sinister? I was mildly suspicious but, frankly, too curious to exercise caution. Besides, it wasn't as if the young man was dragging me off into the bushes, only down the steps and over to the left, though the truth is his friend had taken off in the opposite direction.

This is ridiculous, I thought, and just as I was about to turn and head back to where I'd come from, the young man nudged me with his elbow.

And then I saw it. I couldn't help but see. All of the fountains had been turned on. All of them, their water impossibly bright and glittering against the still deep-dark-blue French sky. The Glory of Versailles.

It was like a miracle—it was like Antoinette's miraculous response to all of my interminable obsessive counting.

And at last I knew I was ready to go home and finish my book.

1. Marie Antoinette is commonly perceived as the callous, vainglorious queen who purportedly said of the peasants, "Let them eat cake." How does the depiction of Antoinette in this narrative differ from that image? Has reading the novel changed your opinion of Antoinette?

 

2. The voice of Antoinette is introduced as her soul disembodied from her physical self. But so much of what we know of her and how she views herself is informed by her beauty and physical presence. To what extent do you think a person is shaped by an inner self and to what extent by the regard of others?

 

3. Throughout the novel, the structure and layout of Versailles are described in great detail. How do these details both add to a picture of the palace's grand extravagance and create a sense of limitation and claustrophobia?

 

4. During her first pregnancy Antoinette finds herself content with her own ruminations and indifferent to state affairs. She says the very definition of being content may be "the heart safely secluded, a world unto itself"—unlike being in the grip of either love, which is transporting, or of pleasure, which must be sought after. Do you agree with these definitions, and which state, if any, would you choose to live in? Can contentedness be as dangerous as the pursuit of love or pleasure? How does Versailles itself represent each state of being?

 

5. Antoinette believes every life has a shape. How would you characterize her life? Was she powerless to change the course of it? In Antoinette's world of birthright and hierarchy, were choice and fate indistinguishable? How would you describe the shape of your own life thus far, and do you think people's characters remain generally static from birth to death?

 

6. Antoinette says that ultimately it doesn't matter if Axel was her lover in the physical sense or not, that it matters only to historians and gossips. Do you think it matters? How would you compare Antoinette's love for Axel to her love for Louis?

 

7. What is the effect of the miniplays and vignettes on the narrative as a whole? Do they allow a different perspective on Antoinette, a more cohesive reporting of history?

 

8. Kathryn Davis, in the essay that precedes these questions, says that she's an eighteenth-century girl. To what century do you belong? Would you have wanted to live in a different time?

The Girl Who Trod on a Loaf

 

"Magnificent, a bravura performance of grand imagination and fierce intelligence.... Kathryn Davis is a writer of original gifts and haunting power."

—Ephraim Paul,
Philadelphia Inquirer

 

"Heated, dramatic, grand in its ambition.... Brilliant."

—Maggie Paley,
New York Times Book Review

 

Hell

 

"A gripping, hallucinatory novel.... The reader closes the book as if waking from a dream."

—
The New Yorker

 

"Kathryn Davis's
Hell
is more comparable to music than narrative. Its themes sound and resound, counterpoint and build, and then, after the last heavenly note fades, they echo."

 —Melvin Jules Bukiet,
Washington Post

 

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