Finding Emilie

by Laurel Corona

  She looked at Lili. “I suppose you are wondering why you are only hearing these things about the de Bercy family now. You have been kept uninformed about much of it because madame did not wish rank to be a means by which you settled the quarrels that would be inevitable between girls raised together. I believe she also disapproves of the system as a whole and tries to minimize its effects in her home.”

  She searched Lili’s face. “You are clearly troubled.”

  “Oui, Baronne. It’s a great deal to take in all at once.”

  “I shouldn’t be too concerned. At Versailles someone like you should err on the side of extreme deference, to avoid giving offense, and we will ensure that you make a match that will advance you appropriately when the time comes for you to marry. For now, just remember that at sixteen, for you it’s ‘deference, deference, deference,’ until you have sorted it all out.”

  “Deference, Baronne. I shall remember that.”

  Baronne Lomont gave her another long, quizzical look. “Now we must turn to the most difficult subject at hand, and that is your mother.”

  My mother? Lili’s heart punched her ribs and for a moment she forgot to breathe.

  Baronne Lomont reached for the keys again and opened a small drawer. She took out an object about the size of a small book and opened it to reveal twin picture frames trimmed with elaborate gold filigree.

  “It’s rather a curiosity,” the baronness said. “Quite foreign in style. The marquis must have seen something like it in his travels and had one made as a present for your mother. It has symbols from both family crests—the fleur-de-lys and the sparrow hawk—and it used to contain two small portraits, one of your mother and one of him.”

  Lili held it in both hands. “There’s nothing now.”

  “It wasn’t empty when I found it among your mother’s things at Lunéville after we buried her. This was on one side.” Baronne Lomont took a small, stiff card from a waxy wrapping and handed it to Lili. On it was a miniature painting of a woman with a high forehead, brown hair, and round, dark eyes. She was looking to one side, as if something just out of reach had caught her eye. “You look quite a bit like her,” the baroness said.

  My mother. Lili held the card as if it might crumble in her hands. My mother.

  “Your mother’s likeness was on the left when I found it, looking toward the portrait on the right,” the baroness said, “which was this one.” She took from the same wrapping an identically sized portrait of a small man with narrow eyes, hollow cheeks, and a sardonic curl at the corners of his mouth.

  “This isn’t my father,” Lili said. “I’ve seen this man’s likeness in the front of his books. This is Voltaire. I’ve heard she knew him, but …”

  The baroness sniffed with contempt. “Your mother took the marquis’s gift of affection and used it in this fashion, to keep the image of another man closer than her own husband.”

  “I don’t understand!” Lili picked up the image of her mother and stared into it. Speak to me, she pleaded silently, but the eyes of the young woman revealed nothing.

  “When you are at Versailles, you are almost certain to hear about the relationship between the two of them. And of course, since so many people at court grow bored when they have ground the latest gossip into dust, they may use your presence to resurrect what, I must warn you, was a scandal. Some people consider themselves quite the authority on it, in all its sordid and—I must say—largely fabricated details.” She retrieved the portraits and put them back in the wrapping.

  Baronne Lomont sat back in her desk chair, watching Lili. “Madame la Marquise was extraordinarily gifted,” the baroness went on. “Too gifted, in my opinion, for her own good.”

  Lili’s blood pounded. I want it back. I want to hold her again, even if it’s just a picture in my hand.

  She stopped for a moment, waiting for Lili to reply. “Really, my dear,” she finally said. “You must remain part of conversations. You must always make some response if you are to make a favorable impression.”

  “I know that she translated Newton,” Lili said, clearing her throat to recover her voice. “That she did it herself, and did not, as some have said, just serve as a scribe for the men around her.”

  “I am not in a position to know such things,” the baroness said. “The difficulty was that she was never satisfied with the role to which nature destined her. To be sure, she spent countless hours at court seeing to the advancement of her husband’s interests, and her attention to her children was most admirable. A convent education for her daughter, who made a good marriage at your age, and a military career for the son who survived to adulthood. And that should have been enough for her.”

  The baroness paused. “Look at me, Stanislas-Adélaïde.” Lili struggled to face her without trembling. “We are not to fill our days with frivolous things we wish to accomplish. One of the reasons Madame de Bercy and I withheld information from you is that when we saw you had your mother’s quick mind, we did not want you to be attracted to the kind of life she led. Beyond your duties as a wife and mother, it is your social role that must take up your attention. Of course you may have small edifying pursuits of your own—a charity perhaps, or a hobby. Sketching is quite appropriate, or learning to play a musical instrument. The harp is quite appealing, since it shows off the hands, and your fingers are nicely shaped.”

  Lili’s temples were throbbing. “Oui, Baronne Lomont.”

  “I paid a short visit once to the marquis at his ancestral home at Cirey,” the baroness went on. “All day he and his guests waited for your mother and Monsieur Voltaire to leave off from their experiments and their papers, and even at dinner they would talk about nothing of interest to anyone but themselves. I recall one singularly unedifying discussion about fire, and another where both of them stormed from the table over a disagreement as to whether some hidden force was at work in rocks they had been dropping all day in their lab—”

  “Monsieur Voltaire lived with my parents at Cirey?”

  “Monsieur Voltaire lived with your mother at Cirey.” Baronne Lomont paused to let her meaning register. “The marquis was rarely there, since we are almost always at war now, and he spent months on end with his regiment at the front. I imagine your mother impressed upon him how prestigious it was to have the most famous writer in France living on his property, even if there were the occasional problems with the police.”

  “Police?” The story was spiraling beyond imagination.

  “Monsieur Voltaire is in trouble with the censors all the time. Many feel his quite public problems are a stronger reason for his fame than the quality of his work. I wouldn’t know since I think it is best not to waste time on authors the church has banned.” The baroness looked at a small clock on her desk. “We must get ready to leave for mass. I think I’ve said all you need to know.”

  “Baronne Lomont,” Lili said, swallowing hard. “Why doesn’t my father care about me?” There. I’ve said it.

  “What on earth do you mean? He turns over all the receipts from one of his properties to pay Madame de Bercy for your expenses. How can you fail to appreciate that?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “And he replies promptly when there are issues regarding your upbringing.” Her expression made it clear what she thought of Lili’s ingratitude.

  “But he doesn’t reply to me—at least I imagine he would not if I were permitted to write. He has never asked to see me, and I’ve never been invited to visit him at Lunéville or Cirey. He must come to Paris from time to time, doesn’t he? Why have I never met him?” Lili put her hands to her face, trying to mask what she could feel was the growing scarlet of her cheeks. “I’m sorry, madame. I should be more discreet, but—”

  Baronne Lomont cleared her throat and began speaking in a voice that could barely contain her disgust. “Because of his obligations to his regiment and to the Duc de Lorraine, the marquis had few opportunities to live as husband and wife with your mother. Instead, she lived in a mocker
y of that state with Voltaire for more than a decade.”

  She paused to enforce her point. “A decade, Stanislas-Adélaïde. Your mother and Voltaire took no pains to hide that they were lovers, and that led, quite naturally, to the most vicious rumors about her, even when it became clear the passion between them—if that’s what you call it—was gone, and they were no more than friends.”

  Lili had never seen Baronne Lomont reveal anything beyond slight irritation, but now her eyes flashed and her lip was curled.

  “To hear some people tell it, your mother at one point or another bedded every scientist or man of letters in France, and though nothing like that is the case, rumors themselves serve to magnify disrepute,” the baroness said. “When she conceived you, there were a few who amused themselves by spreading doubt that the marquis had been at Cirey at the appropriate time. You may hear the most unseemly whispering, but your father insists on his paternity, and anyone of quality should accept his word.”

  What is she talking about? My mother had lovers? Whispers about paternity? Lili’s mind whirled in confusion.

  Baronne Lomont stood up. “Do not listen to gossipmongers,” she said with a stern face. “And now we really must go.” She swept toward the door, leaving an astonished Lili to follow.

  ALL THE WAY to the Cathedral of Notre-Dame Lili and Baronne Lomont sat in silence while gusts of rain from an unexpected thunderstorm battered their sedan chair. Lili shivered under a lap robe in the damp air, going over everything the baroness had said, and the one thing she had not. Why should my father be upset with me over something that happened long before I was born, something that wasn’t my fault at all?

  “Baronne Lomont?” Lili inquired into the gloomy air of the coach. “How old is my father now?”

  “He is nearing seventy. Why do you ask?”

  “I just wondered. Did he ever marry again?”

  “No. He loved your mother very much. Sometimes I think he stayed away from you because he didn’t want to be reminded of her.”

  Maybe I wouldn’t either, if I’d lost someone I loved, Lili thought, unable to take the thought further because the only death she had ever mourned was poor little Tintin, who had died the year before.

  The sedan chair slowed to a stop and she felt herself being lowered to the ground. She folded the lap robe and placed it on the velvet upholstery of her seat and waited for one of the carriers to open the door. Clouds veiled the twin towers of the west portal of Notre-Dame in wisps of gray as Lili and Baronne Lomont stepped out of the chair and entered the cathedral. Night was falling, and around them the church was dark except for hundreds of candles in the chapels lining the side aisles, and flickering light from oil lamps in the nave.

  “Mademoiselle du Châtelet!”

  Lili turned in the direction of a familiar voice.

  “I thought that was you!” Joséphine de Maurepas said, coming out of the gloom toward her. “Didn’t I tell you so?” she asked the young man walking next to her.

  Lili’s stomach fell. Jacques-Mars. “What are you doing here?”

  Casting a stern look at Lili for her failure in etiquette, Baronne Lomont turned to Joséphine. “I don’t believe we’ve been introduced,” she said in an uncharacteristically pleasant tone.

  “Forgive me, Baronne,” Lili said. “I was taken by surprise to see someone I knew. Baronne Lomont, may I present Joséphine de Maurepas, a friend of mine from the abbey. And Jacques-Mars Courville, whom I met at Vaux-le-Vicomte this summer.” The baroness nodded stiffly, and Lili turned back to Joséphine.

  “Where is Anne-Mathilde?” she asked. And why are you here alone with Jacques-Mars?

  Joséphine tittered, in a manner far more lively and confident than Lili remembered. “Anne-Mathilde is at Versailles with her mother, visiting the queen.”

  “At Versailles?” Now? Lili’s heart sank.

  “Yes, and when she heard you would be coming with Delphine, she was so pleased. She said it would be so much fun to have some friends there, since I am required to be in Paris now.” She turned to Baronne Lomont. “My mother is not well. Normally she comes to Notre-Dame to light candles in our chapel on the Friday nearest the feast day for St. Martin of Tours, since he is the patron saint of her family.” She took Jacques-Mars’s arm. “But I am doing it in her place this year, and Monsieur Courville was so kind as to bring me. We’re just waiting now for the carriage to take us home.”

  She looked up at Jacques-Mars with a coquettish smile. “And just think, you foolish man, if there hadn’t been this beastly rain we might not have seen Lili. Or met Baronne Lomont.” She reached up and gave Jacques-Mars’s ear a friendly tug. “You should listen to me. I think that’s settled once and for all, isn’t it?”

  “Decidedly,” Jacques-Mars replied, looking at Lili with the same hooded eyes that had so unnerved her the previous summer. “And now that I’ve heard you will be at Versailles, I will have to pay a visit myself. I believe I am still in your debt for a game of trictrac I lost? I’m afraid I can no longer honor your request to remove my bandage, since I’m quite healed, but”—he brandished his finger—“I’m sure you’ll be pleased to know such a pitiful wound left no scar.”

  “Scar?” Josephine’s eyebrows rose as she turned toward Jacques-Mars with a nervous laugh. She wasn’t part of it, Lili realized. She was just in tow. She’s always been just in tow.

  “It’s just a little joke between us,” Jacques-Mars said. “Isn’t it, Mademoiselle du Châtelet?”

  Taken aback by his ability to be sinister and jovial at the same time, Lili was too dumbfounded to reply.

  “Well then!” Joséphine had grown edgy. “If we aren’t all going to be in on the story, perhaps it’s time to leave.” She turned to Jacques-Mars. “Shall we see if our carriage is waiting?”

  “Certainly,” he said, bowing to Baronne Lomont. “I hope I shall have the honor of seeing you again. And Mademoiselle du Châtelet, I am so pleased to know such an opportunity is imminent. Until Versailles, then.”

  The baroness’ eyes pierced the gray air as she watched Jacques-Mars usher Joséphine through the door of the cathedral. “I don’t like that young man,” she said. “He has a way about him that is not to be trusted. And I’m not sure I like the tone of his reference to his bandage. Would you care to tell me about that?”

  “Jacques-Mars was bitten on the finger by some prey he had snared,” Lili said, surprised by the facility with which she reshaped the truth. “He was rather embarrassed to have been so careless, that’s all.” Lili shrugged. “I’m surprised he remembers. And it had nothing to do with me.”

  Baronne Lomont searched Lili’s face. “A shrug of the shoulder usually means there is more to something, not less, but I shall take you at your word.” She paused. “Nothing good will come of his attention to that young woman. Mark my words. And please reassure me you will stay away from him at Versailles.”

  “You need not worry on that score, Baronne,” Lili said. “Neither Delphine nor I want anything to do with him. He is really quite a cad.”

  The baroness nodded approval. “And I should make clear to you that the only time you need not defer to a social superior is when your honor is threatened. Remaining virtuous is your right, and you should keep that in mind around men like that one.”

  The baroness glanced toward the crossing at the end of the nave. “They’re lighting the candles on the altar,” she said, taking Lili’s arm but not yet moving down the aisle. “I hope you understand how important it is to have a trustworthy man who can protect you. There are many who will not, and the young are so inclined to misjudge.”

  “Oui, Baronne.”

  “Take for example that Jacques-Mars. He might be viewed as more charming than someone such as …” She appeared to be searching for an example. “Someone like Monsieur de Barras. His deep regard for his wife has made him, I’m afraid, rather poor company at present, but he is an excellent man. He is both wealthy and of the sword, which as you know has become rather
unusual these days.”

  Lili felt her heart plummet. I should have known this was coming. “When his time of mourning has passed,” the baroness went on, “he will begin looking for a new wife, since he has two young children, and a woman is better suited to attend to the needs of the young.”

  Please don’t say any more. Lili fought the urge to run out of the church—anywhere, even in the rain, in the dark—stumbling along the riverbank until she fell in, if that was what she needed to do to avoid hearing what she thought might be coming next.

  “Do not get your head turned about your prospects when you are at Versailles,” Baronne Lomont went on. “You are young and attractive enough, and I hope you will enjoy the time before you marry, but you would be well advised to keep an open mind about men like Robert de Barras, and the kind of match you will eventually be able to make with your limited assets and standing.”

  Lili’s knees felt weak and she pulled her elbow in, tightening the elder woman’s arm against her body.

  “I can see you are affected by my words,” Baronne Lomont said. “You are a good girl, Stanislas-Adélaïde.” She extricated herself to lower one knee in front of the altar and cross herself. Lili did the same, just as the celebrant began the mass.

  “Introibo ad altare Dei,” the priest intoned. “I will go in to the altar of God …”

  “Who giveth joy to my youth,” Lili murmured in response, wondering if perhaps both joy and youth were gifts God had withdrawn from her in the course of a single afternoon.

  THE COACH TAKING Julie de Bercy and the two girls to Versailles two days later sped through the outskirts of Paris into the countryside. In the glare of the frosty morning, Delphine’s face was pallid with apprehension and exhaustion after a night of fitful sleep. Though women were not expected to travel in anything as impractical as panniers, Delphine had insisted on wearing a dress whose tailoring required a hard busk to flatten her chest and stomach, and she had been fighting back tears from the jarring of the coach as it bounced along.