Her eyes followed every move as Delphine stood up. “You are launching yourself upward. You must look as if you are floating to your feet.” Madame du Quesnay looked at the two men. “I am indeed sorry to have to say something so indelicate, but I’m afraid I must.” She turned back to Delphine. “To do it properly, Mademoiselle de Bercy, you must summon your strength by drawing your toes under you to support your weight, and come up using the strength in your upper legs, comme ça.”
Madame du Quesnay’s corset kept her back rigid as she tilted her body forward just a little from the hips. “From the thighs,” she said as she rose from her chair in one motion. “Mademoiselle du Châtelet, let’s observe you again. Sit where Mademoiselle de Bercy just was, as if monsieur were an admirer you are delighted to see. Then get up from the couch as gracefully as if the air under your gown were setting you afloat.”
Walk to couch. Rotate hips to move panniers aside so I can land on my behind. Stick out left foot enough to help shift my weight to right foot but not enough for it to show from under my petticoats. Weight on right foot, bend at hips, brace leg against couch and go down slowly. Voilà. Lili hit the seat with only a little bump.
“Quite improved,” Madame du Quesnay said. “But you are showing far too much concentration. Your lips practically disappeared inside your mouth and that is, of course, most unattractive. Practice at home until you can get up and down as if you gave no thought to it.”
Seated again in her fauteuil, Madame du Quesnay raised and lowered her hand in a fluid motion. “Remember, you have no thoughts at all, except how pleasant it is to have the opportunity to converse with an attractive gentleman. Now, rise as I explained, and repeat the entire motion—down, then up.”
That man is a prissy old bore, and if I have to listen one more time to him talk about his dead wife, I will throw myself out the window. Lili glazed her face over and willed her mind to go blank. Her skirts billowed out around her in just the proper way, and she turned to Monsieur de Barras. “Why, monsieur, is that a hint of a smile I see?” she asked in the most lilting tone she could muster. “I believe it is!”
“I was just remembering my Clarisse, and how she carried herself. Watching you, I am just now appreciating how extraordinary she was at something I took entirely for granted,” he said with the lifelessness of a priest sleepwalking through mass.
“I am so pleased that I can contribute to your appreciation of someone else,” Lili said, forming her lips in what she hoped was the correct smile, and struggling to keep the sarcasm out of her voice. She turned her hips to accentuate the bows and embroidery on the bodice of her dress and the tops of her breasts pushing up from it. “And I am so sorry for your loss.” Remove smile. “Madame de Barras sounds as if she was absolute perfection.” Restore smile.
He opened his mouth to speak, but Lili had already pressed the balls of her feet into the floor and was tightening her thighs to come to a stand. Get up from the couch as gracefully as if the air under your gown is setting you afire, she thought, suppressing the urge to laugh.
To her surprise, everyone seemed pleased. “Very graceful,” the priest said. “Was it not, Baronne Lomont?”
The baroness gave a nod of fleeting approval. “A man should always believe that you find him attractive,” she said to Lili. “This is the best means for someone of ordinary appearance and unexceptional charm to be found attractive in return. Wouldn’t you agree, Madame du Quesnay?”
“Quite.” Madame du Quesnay nodded. “Successful flirtation conveys what response would be welcome, without appearing to expect any such response at all. A man will puzzle over what your words and actions might have meant, and if he discovers he has been thinking about you, he is likely to conclude that he must be in love.” She looked at her brother. “Although I don’t imagine most men would be willing to admit how simpleminded they are about such things. Tell me, dear brother, was Mademoiselle du Châtelet flirting with you just then, or merely being polite?”
Barras gave a small cough to clear his throat. “I did not take mademoiselle’s behavior as anything more than the effort of a young woman who knows little about grief to be pleasant to a man consumed with it.”
Flirt with that dried-up old prune? Lili glanced toward Baronne Lomont and saw that she was looking at her and Barras as if absorbed in some private thought. Lili felt acid rise in her throat. Is that what she has in mind?
RAIN BATTERED THE last of the dry leaves still clinging to the chestnut trees in the courtyard of Hôtel Bercy a few days after the girls’ last lesson with Madame de Quesnay. A dozen or more chairs were arranged in Maman’s sitting room to make a narrow pathway, and at the end, an upholstered stool indicating the queen’s position was placed in front of a large mirror. Lili observed from the stool while Delphine made the deep curtsey known as a révérence.
“Maman says we won’t have any more room than this because Queen Marie Leszczynska’s visitors will be crowding in as much as they can without being too obvious they’re making it as difficult as possible for us,” Delphine said.
Although some presentations involved both the king and queen, Lili’s and Delphine’s would be no more than an introduction to the queen on their first visit to her chambers. Despite the relative simplicity, Lili imagined the scene as a kind of warfare, won by having the widest panniers and fitting them through the smallest space, all the while chatting and nodding as if the task were not difficult at all. A duel by clothing, Lili thought with a grimace.
Delphine walked a straight line between the chairs, without touching anything with her panniers or train along the way. In front of the empty stool, she gave a deep curtsey and held it until Lili could see the trembling in her thighs disturb the fabric in her skirt.
“You may rise,” Lili said in an officious tone she thought sounded queenly. Delphine came up in a single fluid motion. “How did my révérence look?”
“Perfect, except for the shaking at the end.”
“If I have to hold my curtsey that long, I’ll know Queen Marie Leszczynska hated me on sight,” Delphine said. “It hurts my legs to stay down that long. ‘Your majesty, la-la-la,’ Maman will say, and then I’ll look into the queen’s eyes just so.” Delphine gave the empty air above Lili a look that was at once shy and eager. “Then I’ll say, ‘May I bring honor to your court and to France,’ and then …” Delphine took several steps backward without catching her train underfoot, a move she had practiced for months. “All right, now for the worst part.”
Delphine went up onto her toes. She brought the train cleanly around with a much practiced twist of her body, avoiding catching it on the stiff frame of her dress and leaving it in a rumpled pile at her side. She looked behind her in the mirror, satisfied that the train lay smoothly behind her. “How did I look going around?”
“Better, but still a bit hesitant.”
Delphine pulled her train out of the way and sat down heavily in one of the chairs. “I’ll never get it.”
“Well, just remember, I will do so poorly I’ll deflect all the ridicule onto me.” They both tried to laugh, but two days before their departure for Versailles, nothing was amusing. More than anything else, holding what looked like an effortless révérence, and the neat fall of their trains behind them after a gracious turn, would set up a good stay at court. And there was no need to state the obvious, that a good stay at court would set up everything else.
Lili walked down the aisle and held her curtsey until sweat prickled on her back and her legs felt so weak she thought she might not be able to get up. Back upright, she whipped her body around so violently that the train went far beyond center.
“You’ll come visit when the queen throws me in the Bastille, won’t you?” Lili said with a grim smile.
Delphine giggled. “And you forgot the backward steps again too.”
Lili tried the routine a second time, and then a third, before collapsing in a chair across from Delphine. She pulled a damp handkerchief from between her flattened b
reasts and patted her temples.
“It’s hard work to be appealing, isn’t it?” Delphine said, pulling out her own handkerchief. “I hope I don’t perspire like this then. Imagine what the ladies would think of a girl whose temples are dripping.”
“I’ll just be glad when it’s over and I can come home,” Lili said.
“Come home? Afterward will be the only good part!” Delphine shut her eyes and leaned back with a dreamy smile. “We’ll go to banquets and balls, and go riding with handsome courtiers. Maybe there will be a ballet or an opera while we’re there and we’ll sit with our fans and flirt with men who are dying to kiss us.”
She opened her eyes but her voice was still far away. “I want people to say, ‘There goes Delphine. Isn’t she wonderfully gracious and confident? Witty and spirited enough to be interesting but never so much that she frightens people off.’ That’s what I want to be like, and sometimes—” She leaned toward Lili as if the line of empty chairs might overhear her otherwise. “Promise you won’t say a word of this because it sounds so immodest?” she said. “Sometimes I think I already am that Delphine—at least more than before.” Her face grew somber. “Certainly more than last summer.”
“You are that Delphine,” Lili said. And I’m not any of those things. All of a sudden the intimacy in the room was so overwhelming that Lili wanted to blurt out all her fears, but before she could reply, Julie swept in. “Time to practice with you, Maman!” Delphine said, jumping up so quickly that her panniers caused the delicate chair to topple over.
“Oh dear,” Julie murmured, picking up the chair and setting it right again. “Fortunately, most furniture is built to stand up to our wardrobes. But girls, always be sure someone has your chair securely in hand when you stand up. And don’t look around to check. You must appear to expect to be attended to at all times.”
She went over to the stool. “Let’s see how you’re doing.” Then, noticing she was still holding a letter, she fluttered it in her hand. “Lili, remind me after we’ve finished that I need to discuss this with you. Baronne Lomont would like a private visit with you before you leave for Versailles.”
“Nothing she wants can be good,” Lili grumbled.
Julie held up her hand. “Not for more lessons,” she said. “But we both agree that you should not go to Versailles knowing as little as you do about your—your background. It’s time you knew what other people know. Or think they do.”
“Baronne Lomont?” Lili pictured the sitting room in the baroness’s home. Even though a fire would be lit, she shivered at the memory of how drafty and cold it always felt. “I’d rather hear it from you, Maman.”
“Baronne Lomont wishes to be the one to share this information.” Julie’s tone made appeal useless. “And that is appropriate, since she has a family connection.”
Lili’s eyes stung. “You and Delphine are my family,” she whispered too softly for them to hear.
Just then a sudden rain squall sent them all to the window to look out on the courtyard. A scullery maid was rushing back inside with a basket of vegetables. The man who had sold them to her was pushing his cart with no deliberate speed in the direction of the gate, shrugging off the rain as if resisting a soaking was pointless.
A gust of wind blew more wet leaves onto the cobblestones, and Julie shivered in response. “I feel cold just looking at him,” she said. “I hope it’s a better day than this for your visit tomorrow.” Lili felt Delphine’s hand cradle her waist from one side and Maman’s from the other. “Moi aussi,” she said, wishing that the thought of a visit to Hôtel Lomont didn’t require hope to make it bearable.
LILI WAS PLEASED with what she saw as she glanced in the mirror that hung in the vestibule of Baronne Lomont’s home on the Île Saint-Louis. Under a jaunty hat, her hair was formed into several ringlets fixed with sugar water so they would dangle perfectly in front of one shoulder. Her face was lightly powdered, and her cheeks and lips were touched with rouge. Her cloak in dark blue wool moved with her in an attractive drape, its gold buttons secured by embroidered loops to protect against the chill of an early Parisian winter.
The servant did not lead her in the usual direction toward the parlor, but farther back into the house, to the study. Baronne Lomont sat alone by the fireplace, dressed for mass. “Come in, my dear,” she said, setting aside a letter resting in her lap. “We haven’t much time. I presume you were also informed we are going to Nôtre-Dame to offer special prayers for your presentation and that of Mademoiselle de Bercy?”
“Oui, madame,” Lili said, curtseying in the precise manner appropriate for greeting an older female relative of higher rank. Not too deep, not too long, with good eye contact afterward to show that the gesture had been a courtesy toward a family member one had the pleasure of seeing often, and wasn’t meant to suggest an inappropriate level of submission.
Lili sat down across from the baroness. It’s a lot to remember, but I did it right without thinking, she realized. Her mind whirled with the tiniest details of how the greeting might change if she were meeting someone else, and suddenly she felt a wave of tenderness toward the difficult old woman in front of her. All the long hours of cracking eggs, getting up and down from chairs, and enduring forced and pointless conversation—had it been as much of an ordeal for the baroness as it was for her, and was she equally glad it was over?
“Oui, madame, I am honored to go with you.” Lili’s eyes stung with unexpected tears. “And I want you to know how grateful I am for how well you have prepared me. I hope I have not been too difficult.”
And then, to Lili’s amazement, Baronne Lomont smiled. “You are either entirely sincere, in which case I thank you for your kind words, or you are a very skilled liar, in which case I have done my job well. But in any case, you have grown into a handsome young woman, and I believe you will acquit yourself well.”
She stood up. “Come with me. I have something to show you.” On the far wall hung an ornately framed painting of a man and two boys. In riding habits, they stood in front of a magnificent horse held by an equerry dressed in the expensive livery of a noble household. “Do you know who they are?”
“Non, Baroness.”
“It is your grandfather, and the two boys are your father, Florent-Claude, and my late husband, Édouard-Marie. I’m sure you appreciate that they are from one of the oldest noble families in Lorraine. Two families, to be precise—the Lomont branch of the Châtelets.”
“Oui, Baroness. Madame de Bercy has told me that much.”
“Your father was one of the king’s Musketeers and his grandfather was one of Louis Quatorze’s most trusted generals. At the end of his career, the Marquis du Châtelet was in service to the deposed King of Poland, now Duke Stanislas, of Lorraine—you are named in honor of him—and you should hear nothing but praise for your father at court, since he has earned the admiration of all who know him.”
“Oui, madame.” But why, if he were such a great man, had Baronne Lomont and Maman acted as if there were nothing to say about him? What is she telling me now that I couldn’t have known long ago?
“Your father was part of the noblesse de robe, as you know, not the noblesse d’épée,” the baroness went on. “You do understand the distinction, do you not?”
“Oui, madame. Some families are noble by ancient bloodlines, and they are called the nobility of the sword. But the king can bestow a title of noble of the robe on whomever he wishes, as a reward for service—”
“Or a large contribution to the king’s private treasury,” the baroness sniffed in scorn. “You’re sure to meet the countess of this or the marquis of that, and just remember that in some cases the title means very little.” Baronne Lomont arched her eyebrows to reinforce her point. “You must be aware of everyone’s lineage, since there is proper etiquette for each relationship. And you must be aware that many people are a mix of both types of nobility, and it can be quite complex to sort out who, like our family, are closer in status to the noblesse d’épée
than they are to poseurs who bought just yesterday the same titles we have had for generations.”
“Oui, madame.”
“Your maternal grandmother was Gabrielle-Anne de Froullay, who married Louis-Nicholas le Tonnelier, Baron de Breteuil. Gabrielle-Anne was of higher rank than her husband, despite his title, since she was noblesse d’épée.”
The baroness turned away from the painting toward Lili. “It was considered a good match, since it brought together his money and her social standing. My marriage accomplished the same. Like my family, many of the sword have seen their fortunes decline, and their hopes now lie in forging bonds with the noblesse de robe. It’s these newer families who control much of the wealth in France now, I regret to say. A noble of the sword will never earn money from any kind of trade or profession, and that practice has played a role in our impoverishment in this new France everyone speaks so highly of.”
She sniffed to show her contempt. “Any noble of the sword who accepts pay for his efforts will suffer the disgrace of losing his tax exemption and be treated socially as no better than a well-dressed laborer. But I assume you know all this.”
“No, Baronne. But I suppose I could have guessed as much, from the lack of occupation I’ve observed.” Lili winced. Do you always have to be so sarcastic? she chided herself.
“Quite,” the baroness replied. “As a result of your connection to the Breteuils, you are noblesse d’épée, but of lesser standing, since it is only from one grandparent,” Baronne Lomont went on. “I believe you should be able to see how important this makes a good marriage for you. It would be quite tragic for your children if you were to marry someone situated no better than you, when there are good opportunities to improve your social standing.”
Baronne Lomont had by now moved away from the painting and had gone to sit at a small desk. After taking a ring of keys from a pouch dangling from her waist and laying it on the desk, she motioned to Lili to sit on a nearby fauteuil. “In fact, Mademoiselle de Bercy outranks you, for her mother comes from two excellent families of the sword, although, I’m sorry to say, they are both impoverished and rural. Monsieur de Bercy was of the robe, and he supplied the fortune, down to the last coin, in exchange for the privilege of marriage to someone of madame’s standing.”
Finding Emilie Page 16
