SUMMER 1685
For the market is against our sex just now; and if a young woman has beauty, birth, breeding, wit, sense, manners, modesty, and all to an extreme, yet if she has not money she’s nobody, she had as good want them all; nothing but money now recommends a woman; the men play the game all into their own hands.
—DANIEL DEFOE, Moll Flanders
12 July 1685
Monseigneur,
As you see I have encyphered this letter according to your instructions, though only you know whether this is to protect it from the eyes of Dutch spies, or your rivals at Court. Yes, I have discovered that you have rivals.
On my journey I was waylaid and ill-used by some typically coarse, thick Dutchmen. Though you would never have guessed it from their looks and manners, these had something in common with the King of France’s brother: namely, a fascination with women’s undergarments. For they went through my baggage thoroughly, and left it a few pounds lighter.
Shame, shame on you, monseigneur, for placing those letters among my things! For a while I was afraid that I would be thrown into some horrid Dutch work-house, and spend the rest of my days scrubbing sidewalks and knitting hose. But from the questions they asked me, it soon became obvious that they were perfectly baffled by this French cypher of yours. To test this, I replied that I could read those letters as well as they could; and the dour looks on the faces of my interrogators demonstrated that their incompetence had been laid bare, and my innocence proved, in the same moment.
I will forgive you, monseigneur, for putting me through those anxious moments if you will forgive me for believing, until quite recently, that you were utterly mad to send me to Versailles. For how could a common girl such as I find a place in the most noble and glorious palace in the world?
But now I know things and I understand.
There is a story making the rounds here, which you must have heard. The heroine is a girl, scarcely better than a slave—the daughter of a ruined petty noble fallen to the condition of a Vagabond. Out of desperation this waif married a stunted and crippled writer in Paris. But the writer had a salon that attracted certain Persons of Quality who had grown bored with the insipid discourse of Court. His young wife made the acquaintance of a few of these noble visitors. After he died, and left this girl a penniless widow, a certain Duchess took pity on her, brought her out to Versailles, and made her a governess to some of her illegitimate children. This Duchess was none other than the maîtresse déclarée to the King himself, and her children were royal bastards. The story goes that King Louis XIV, contrary to the long-established customs of Christian royalty, considers his bastards to be only one small step beneath the Dauphin and the other Enfants de France. Protocol dictates that the governess of les Enfants de France must be a duchess; accordingly, the King made the governess of his bastards into a marquise. In the years since then, the King’s maîtresse déclarée has gradually fallen from favor, as she has grown fat and histrionic, and it has been the case for some time that when the King went every day to call upon her at one o’clock in the afternoon, just after Mass, he would simply walk through her apartment without stopping, and go instead to visit this widow—the Marquise de Main-tenon, as she was now called. Finally, Monseigneur, I have learned what is common knowledge at Versailles, namely that the King secretly married the Marquise de Maintenon recently and that she is the Queen of France in all but name.
It is plain to see that Louis keeps the powerful of France on a short leash here, and that they have nothing to do but gamble when the King is absent and ape his words and actions when he is present. Consequently every Duke, Count, and Marquis at Versailles is prowling through nurseries and grammar-schools, disrupting the noble children’s upbringing in the hunt for nubile governesses. No doubt you knew this when you made arrangements for me to work as a governess to the children of M. le comte de Béziers. I cringe to think what awful debt this poor widower must have owed you for him to consent to such an arrangement! You might as well have deposited me in a bordello, Monseigneur, for all the young blades who prowl around the entrance of the count’s apartment and pursue me through the gardens as I try to carry out my nominal duties—and not because of any native attractiveness I may possess but simply because it is what the King did.
Fortunately the King has not seen fit to grace me with a noble title yet or I should never be left alone long enough to write you letters. I have reminded some of these loiterers that Madame de Maintenon is a famously pious woman and that the King (who could have any woman in the world, and who ruts with disposable damsels two or three times a week) fell in love with her because of her intelligence. This keeps most of them at bay.
I hope that my story has provided you with a few moments’ diversion from your tedious duties in the Hague, and that you will, in consequence, forgive me for not saying anything of substance.
Your obedient servant,
Eliza
P.S. M. le comte de Béziers’ finances are in comic disarray—he spent fourteen percent of his income last year on wigs, and thirty-seven percent on interest, mostly on gambling debts. Is this typical? I will try to help him. Is this what you wanted me to do? Or did you want him to remain helpless? That is easier.
My dark and cloudy words they do but hold The truth, as cabinets enclose the gold.
—JOHN BUNYAN, The Pilgrim’s Progress
To Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
4 August 1685
Dear Doctor Leibniz,
Difficulty at the beginning* is to be expected in any new venture, and my move to Versailles has been no exception. I thank God that I lived for several years in the harim of the Topkapi Palace in Constantinople, being trained to serve as a consort to the Sultan, for only this could have prepared me for Versailles. Unlike Versailles, the Sultan’s palace grew according to no coherent plan, and from the outside looks like a jumble of domes and minarets. But seen from the inside both palaces are warrens of stuffy windowless rooms created by subdividing other rooms. This is a mouse’s-eye view, of course; just as I was never introduced to the domed pavilion where the Grand Turk deflowers his slave-girls, so I have not yet been allowed to enter the Salon of Apollo and view the Sun King in his radiance. In both Palaces I have seen mostly the wretched closets, garrets, and cellars where courtiers dwell.
Certain parts of this Palace, and most of the gardens, are open to anyone who is decently dressed. At first this meant they were closed to me, for William’s men ripped up all of my clothes. But after I arrived, and word of my adventures began to circulate, I received cast-offs from noblewomen who either sympathized with my plight or needed to make room in their tiny closets for next year’s fashions. With some needle-work I have been able to make these garments over into ones that, while not quite fashionable, will at least not expose me to ridicule as I lead the son and daughter of M. le comte de Béziers through the gardens.
To describe this place in words is hopeless. Indeed I believe it was meant to be so, for then anyone who wants to know it must come here in person, and that is how the King wants it. Suffice it to say that here, every dram of water, every leaf and petal, every square inch of wall, floor, and ceiling bear the signature of Man; all have been thought about by superior intellects, nothing is accidental. The place is pregnant with Intention and wherever you look you see the gaze of the architects—and by extension, Louis—staring back at you. I am contrasting this to blocks of stone and beams of wood that occur in Nature and, in most places, are merely harvested and shaped a bit by artisans. Nothing of that sort is to be found at Versailles.
At Topkapi there were magnificent carpets everywhere, Doctor, carpets such as no one in Christendom has ever seen, and all of them were fabricated thread by thread, knot by knot, by human hands. That is what Versailles is like. Buildings made of plain stone or wood are to this place what a sack of flour is to a diamond necklace. Fully to describe a routine event, such as a conversation or a meal, would require devoting fifty pages to a description of the room and its furnishings, another fifty to the clothing, jewelry, and wigs worn by the participants, another fifty to their family trees, yet another to explaining their current positions in the diverse intrigues of the Court, and finally a single page to setting down the words actually spoken.
Needless to say this will be impractical; yet I hope you will bear with me if I occasionally go on at some length with florid descriptions. I know, Doctor, that even if you have not seen Versailles and the costumes of its occupants, you have seen crude copies of them in German courts and can use your incomparable mind to imagine the things I see. So I will try to restrain myself from describing every little detail. And I know that you are making a study of family trees for Sophie, and have the resources in your library to investigate the genealogy of any petty nobleman I might mention. So I will try to show restraint there as well. I will try to explain the current state of Court intrigue, since you have no way of knowing about such things. For example, one evening two months ago, my master M. le comte de Béziers was given the honor of holding a candle during the King’s going-to-bed ceremony, and consequently was invited to all the best parties for a fortnight. But lately his star has been in eclipse, and his life has been very quiet.
If you are reading this it means you detected the key from the I Ching. It appears that French cryptography is not up to the same standard as French interior decoration; their diplomatic cypher has been broken by the Dutch, but as it was invented by a courtier highly thought of by the King, no one dares say anything against it. If what they say about Colbert is true, he never would have allowed such a situation to arise, but as you know he died two years ago and cyphers have not been upgraded since. I am writing in that broken cypher to d’Avaux in Holland on the assumption that everything I write will be decyphered and read by the Dutch. But as is probably obvious already, I write to you on the assumption that your cypher affords us a secure channel.
Since you employ the Wilkins cypher, which uses five plaintext letters to encrypt one letter of the actual message, I must write five words of drivel to encypher one word of pith, and so you may count on seeing lengthy descriptions of clothing, etiquette, and other tedious detail in future letters.
I hope I do not seem self-important by presuming that you may harbor some curiosity concerning my position at Court. Of course I am a nothing, invisible, not even an ink-speck in the margin of the Register of Ceremonies. But it has not escaped the notice of the nobles that Louis XIV chose most of his most important ministers (such as Colbert, who bought one of your digital computers!) from the middle class, and that he has (secretly) married a woman of low degree, and so it is fashionable in a way to be seen speaking to a commoner if she is clever or useful.
Of course hordes of young men want to have sex with me, but to relate details would be repetitious and in poor taste.
Because M. le comte de Béziers’ bolt-hole in the south wing is so uncomfortable, and the weather has been so fine, I have spent several hours each day going on walks with my two charges, Beatrice and Louis, who have 9 and 6 years of age, respectively. Versailles has vast gardens and parks, most of which are deserted except when the King goes to hunt or promenade, and then they are crowded with courtiers. Until very recently they were also filled with common people who would come all the way from Paris to see the sights, but these pressed around the King so hotly, and made such a shambles of the statues and waterworks, that recently the King banned the mobile from all of his gardens.
As you know, it is the habit of all well-born ladies to cover their faces with masks whenever they venture out of doors, so that they will not be darkened by the sun. Many of the more refined men do likewise—the King’s brother Philippe, who is generally addressed as Monsieur, wears such a mask, though he frets that it smears his makeup. On such warm days as we have had recently, this is so uncomfortable that the ladies of Versailles, and by extension their attendants, households, and gallants, prefer simply to remain indoors. I can wander for hours through the park with Beatrice and Louis in train and encounter only a few other people: mostly gardeners, occasionally lovers on their way to trysts in secluded woods or grottoes.
The gardens are shot through with long straight paths and avenues that, as one steps into certain intersections, provide sudden unexpected vistas of fountains, sculpture groups, or the château itself. I am teaching Beatrice and Louis geometry by having them draw maps of the place.
If these children are any clue as to the future of the nobility, then France as we know it is doomed.
Yesterday I was walking along the canal, which is a cross-shaped body of water to the west of the château; the long axis runs east–west and the crossbar north–south, and since it is a single body of water its surface is, of course, level, that being a known property of water. I put a needle in one end of a cork and weighted the other end (with a corkscrew, in case you are wondering!) and set it afloat in the circular pool where these canals intersect, hoping that the needle would point vertically upwards—trying (as you have no doubt already perceived) to acquaint Beatrice and Louis with the idea of a third spatial dimension perpendicular to the other two. Alas, the cork did not float upright. It drifted away and I had to lie flat on my belly and reach out over the water to rake it in, and the sleeves of my hand-me-down dress became soaked with water. The whole time I was preoccupied with the whining of the bored children, and with my own passions as well—for I must tell you that tears were running down my sunburned cheeks as I remembered the many lessons I was taught, as a young girl in Algiers, by Mummy and by the Ladies’ Volunteer Sodality of the Society of Britannic Abductees.
At some point I became aware of voices—a man’s and a woman’s—and I knew that they had been conversing nearby for quite some time. With all of these other concerns and distractions I had taken no note of them. I lifted my head to gaze directly across the canal at two figures on horseback: a tall magnificent well-built man in a vast wig like a lion’s mane, and a woman, built something like a Turkish wrestler, dressed in hunting clothes and carrying a riding crop. The woman’s face was exposed to the sun, and had been for a long time, for she was tanned like a saddlebag. She and her companion had been talking about something else, but when I looked up I somehow drew the notice of the man; instantly he reached up and doffed his hat to me, from across the canal! When he did, the sun fell directly on his face and I recognized him as King Louis XIV.
I simply could not imagine any way to recover from this indignity, and so I pretended I had not seen him. As the crow flies we were not far apart, but by land we were far away—to reach me, the King and his Diana-like hunting-companion would have had to ride west for some distance along the bank of the canal; circumnavigate the large pool at that end; and then go the same distance eastwards along the opposite bank. So I convinced myself that they were far away and I pretended not to see them; God have mercy on me if I chose wrong. I tried to cover my embarrassment by ranting to the children about Descartes and Euclid.
The King put his hat back on and said, “Who is she?”
I closed my eyes and sighed in relief; the King had decided to play along, and act as if we had not seen each other. Finally I had coaxed the floating cork back into my hands. I drew myself up and sat on the brink of the canal with my skirts spread out around me, in profile to the King, and quietly lectured the children.
Meanwhile I was praying that the woman would not know my name. But as you will have guessed, Doctor, she was none other than his majesty’s sister-in-law, Elisabeth Charlotte, known to Versailles as Madame, and known to Sophie—her beloved aunt—as Liselotte.
Why didn’t you tell me that the Knight of the Rustling Leaves was a clitoriste? I suppose this should come as no surprise given that her husband Philippe is a homosexual, but it caught me somewhat off guard. Does she have lovers? Hold, I presume too much; does she even know what she is?
She gazed at me for a languid moment; at Versailles, no one of importance speaks quickly and spontaneously, every utterance is planned like a move in a chess game. I knew what she was about to say: “I do not know her.” I prayed for her to say it, for then the King would know that I was not a person, did not exist, was no more worthy of his attention than a fleeting ripple in the surface of the canal. Then finally I heard Madame’s voice across the water: “It looks like that girl who was duped by d’Avaux and molested by the Dutchmen, and showed up dishevelled and expecting sympathy.”
It strikes me as unlikely that Liselotte could have recognized me in this way without another channel of information; did you write a letter to her, Doctor? It is never clear to me how much you are acting on your own and how much as a pawn—or perhaps I should say “knight” or “rook”—of Sophie.
These cruel words would have brought me to tears if I’d been one of those rustic countesses who flock to Versailles to be deflowered by men of rank. But I had already seen enough of this place to know that the only truly cruel words here are “She is nobody.” And Madame had not said that. Consequently, the King had to look at me for a few moments longer.
Louis and Beatrice had noticed the King, and were frozen with a mixture of awe and terror—like statues of children.
Another one of those pauses had gone by. I heard the King saying, “That story was told in my presence.” Then he said, “If d’Avaux would only put his letters into the bodice of some poxy old hag he could be assured of absolute secrecy, but what Dutchman would not want to break the seal on that envelope?”
“But, Sire,” said Liselotte, “d’Avaux is a Frenchman—and what Frenchman would?”
“He is not as refined in his tastes as he would have you think,” the King returned, “and she is not as coarse as you would have me think.”
At this point little Louis stepped forward so suddenly that I was alarmed he would topple into the Canal and oblige me to swim; but he stopped on the brink, thrust out one leg, and bowed to the King just like a courtier. I pretended now to notice the King for the first time, and scrambled to my feet. Beatrice and I made curtseys across the canal. Once more the King acknowledged us by doffing his hat, perhaps with a certain humorous exaggeration.
“I see that look in your eye, vôtre majesté,” said Liselotte.
“I see it in yours, Artemis.”
“You have been listening to gossip. I tell you that these girls of low birth who come here to seduce noblemen are like mouse droppings in the pepper.”
“Is that what she wants us to believe? How banal.”
“The best disguises are the most banal, Sire.”
This seemed to be the end of their strange conversation; they rode slowly away.
The King is said to be a great huntsman, but he was riding in an extremely stiff posture—I suspect he is suffering from hemorrhoids or possibly a bad back.
I took the children back straightaway and sat down to write you this letter. For a
nothing like me, today’s events are the pinnacle of honor and glory, and I wanted
to memorialize them before any detail slipped from my memory.
To M. le comte d’Avaux
1 September 1685
Monseigneur,
I have as many visitors as ever (much to the annoyance of M. le comte de Béziers), but since I got a deep tan and took to wearing sackcloth and quoting from the Bible a lot, they are not as interested in romance. Now they come asking me about my Spanish uncle. “I am sorry that your Spanish uncle had to move to Amsterdam, mademoiselle,” they say, “but it is rumored that hardship has made him a wise man.” The first time some son of a marquis came up to me spouting such nonsense I told him he must have me mixed up with some other wench, and sent him packing! But the next one dropped your name and I understood that he had in some sense been dispatched by you—or, to be more precise, that his coming to me under the delusion of my having a wise Spanish uncle was a consequence or ramification of some chain of events that had been set in motion by you. On that assumption, I began to play along, quite cautiously, as I did not know what sort of game might be afoot. From the way this fellow talked I soon understood that he believes me to be a sort of crypto-Jew, the bastard offspring of a swarthy Spanish Kohan and a butter-haired Dutchwoman, which might actually seem plausible as the sun has bleached my hair and darkened my skin.
These conversations are all the same, and their particulars are too tedious to relate here. Obviously you have been spreading tales about me, Monseigneur, and half the petty nobles of Versailles now believe that I (or, at any rate, my fictitious uncle) can help them get out from under their gambling debts, pay for the remodeling of their châteaux, or buy them splendid new carriages. I can only roll my eyes at their avarice. But if the stories are to be believed, their fathers and grandfathers used what money they had to raise private armies and fortify their cities against the father and grandfather of the present King. I suppose it’s better for the money to go to dressmakers, sculptors, painters, and chefs de cuisine than to mercenaries and musket-makers.
Of course it is true that their gold would fetch a higher rate of return wisely invested
in Amsterdam than sitting in a strong-box under their beds. The only difficulty lies
in the fact that I cannot manage such investments from a closet in Versailles while
at the same time teaching two motherless children how to read and write. My Spanish
uncle is a fiction of yours, presumably invented because you feared that these French
nobles would never entrust their assets to a woman. This means that I must do the
work personally, and this is impossible unless I have the freedom to travel to Amsterdam
several times a year…
To Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
12 Sept. 1685
This morning I was summoned to the comparatively spacious and splendid apartments of a Lady in Waiting to the Dauphine, in the South Wing of the palace adjacent to the apartments of the Dauphine herself.
The lady in question is the duchesse d’Oyonnax. She has a younger sister who is the marquise d’Ozoir and who happens to be visiting Versailles with her daughter of nine years.
The girl seems bright but is half dead with asthma. The marquise ruptured something giving birth to her and cannot have any more children.
The d’Ozoirs are one of the rare exceptions to the general rule that all French nobles of any consequence must dwell at Versailles—but only because the Marquis has responsibilities at Dunkirk. In case you have not been properly maintaining your family trees of the European nobility, Doctor, I will remind you that the Marquis d’Ozoir is the bastard son of the duc d’Arcachon.
Who, when he was a stripling of fifteen, begat the future marquis off his grandmama’s saucy maid-companion—the poor girl had been dragooned into teaching the young Duke his first love-lesson.
The duc d’Arcachon did not actually take a wife until he was twenty-five, and she did not produce a viable child (Étienne d’Arcachon) for three years after that. So the bastard was already a young man by the time his legitimate half-brother was born. He was shipped off to Surat as an aide to Boullaye and Beber, who tried to establish the French East India Company there around 1666.
But as you may know the French E.I.C. did not fare quite as well as the English and Dutch have done. Boullaye and Beber began to assemble a caravan in Surat but had to depart before all preparations had been made, because the city was in the process of falling to the Mahratta rebels. They traveled into the interior of Hindoostan, hoping to establish trade agreements. As they approached the gates of a great city, a delegation of banyans—the richest and most influential commerçants of that district—came out to greet them, carrying small gifts in bowls, according to the local custom. Boullaye and Beber mistook them for beggars and thrashed them with their riding-whips as any self-respecting upper-caste Frenchmen would do when confronted by panhandling Vagabonds on the road.
The gates of the city were slammed in their faces. The French delegation were left to wander through the hinterland like out-castes. Quickly they were abandoned by the guides and porters they had hired at Surat, and began to fall prey to highwaymen and Mahratta rebels. Eventually they found their way to Shahjahanabad, where they hoped to beg for succor from the Great Mogul Aurangzeb, but they were informed he had retired to the Red Fort at Agra. They traveled to Agra only to be told that the officials they needed to prostrate themselves before, and to shower with gifts, in order to gain access to the Great Mogul, were stationed in Shahjahanabad. In this way they were shuttled back and forth along one of Hindoostan’s most dangerous roads until Boullaye had been strangled by dacoits and Beber had succumbed to disease (or perhaps it was the other way round) and most of their expedition had fallen victim to more or less exotic hazards.
The bastard son of the duc d’Arcachon survived all of them, made his way out to Goa, talked his way aboard a Portuguese ship bound for Mozambique, and pursued a haphazard course to the slave coast of Africa, where finally he spied a French frigate flying the coat of arms of the Arcachon family: fleurs-de-lis and Neeger-heads in iron collars. He persuaded some Africans to row him out to that ship in a long-boat and identified himself to her captain, who of course was aware that the duc’s illegitimate son was lost, and had been ordered to keep an ear to the ground for any news. The young man was brought aboard the ship.
And the Africans who had brought him out were rewarded with baptisms, iron jewelry, and a free trip to Martinique to spend the rest of their lives working in the agricultural sector.
This led to a career running slaves to the French West Indies. During the course of the 1670s the young man amassed a modest fortune from this trade and purchased, or was rewarded by the King with, the title of Marquis. Immediately he settled in France and married. For several reasons he and his wife have not established themselves near Versailles. For one thing, he is a bastard whom the duc d’Arcachon prefers to keep at arm’s length. For another, his daughter has asthma and needs to breathe sea-air. Finally, he has responsibilities along the sea-coast. You may know, Doctor, that the people of India believe in the perpetual reincarnation of souls; likewise, the French East India Company might be thought of as a soul or spirit that goes bankrupt every few years but is always re-incarnated in some new form. Recently it has happened one more time. Naturally many of its operations are centered at Dunkirk, le Havre, and other sea-ports, and so that is where the Marquis and his family spend most of their time. But the Marquise comes to visit her sister the duchesse d’Oyonnax frequently, and brings the daughter with her.
As I mentioned, Oyonnax is a lady-in-waiting to the Dauphine, which is looked on as an extremely desirable position. The Queen of France died two years ago, and had been estranged from the King for many years at the time of her death. The King has Mme. de Maintenon now, but she is not officially his wife. Therefore, the most important woman at Versailles not really, but nominally, according to the rules of precedence is the Dauphine, wife of the King’s eldest son and heir apparent. Competition among the noble ladies of France for positions in her household is intense…
So intense that it has resulted in no fewer than four poisonings. I do not know if the sister of d’Ozoir poisoned anyone herself, but it is generally understood that she did allow her naked body to be used as a living altar during black masses held at an abandoned country church outside of Versailles. This was before the King became aware that his court was infested with homicidal Satanists, and instituted the chambre ardente to investigate these doings. She was indeed among the 400-odd nobles arrested and interrogated, but nothing was ever proved against her.
All of which is to say that Mme. la duchesse d’Oyonnax is a great lady indeed, who entertains her sister Mme. la marquise d’Ozoir in grand style.
When I entered her salon I was surprised to see my employer, M. le comte de Béziers, seated on a stool so low and tiny it seemed he was squatting on his haunches like a dog. And indeed he had hunched his shoulders and was gazing sidelong at the Marquise like an old peasant’s cur anticipating the descent of the cudgel. The Duchess was in an armchair of solid silver and the Marquise was in a chair without arms, also in silver.
I remained standing. Introductions were made—here I elide all of the tedious formalities and small talk—and the Marquise explained to me that she had been looking for a tutor to educate her daughter. The girl already has a governess, mind you, but that woman is quite close to being illiterate and consequently the child’s mental development has been retarded or perhaps she is simply an imbecile. Somehow she had settled on me as being the most likely candidate this is the work of d’Avaux.
I was pretended to be astonished, and went on at some length protesting the decision on grounds that I was not equal to such a responsibility. I wondered aloud who would look after poor little Beatrice and Louis. M. le comte de Béziers gave me the happy news that he’d found an opportunity in the south and would soon be leaving Versailles.
You may not know that one of the only ways for a French nobleman to make money without losing caste is by serving as an officer on a merchant ship. Béziers has taken such a position on a French E.I.C. vessel that will be sailing out of the Bassin d’Arcachon come spring, bound for the Cape of Good Hope; points east; and if I’m any judge of such matters, David Jones’s Locker.
Although, if Mme. de Maintenon opens her school for poor girls of the French nobility at St. Cyr next year her personal obsession—St. Cyr lies within sight of Versailles, to the southwest, just beyond the walls, then Beatrice might be shipped there to be groomed for life at Court.
Under the circumstances I could hardly show the tiniest degree of reluctance, let
alone decline this offer, and so I write you this letter from my new lodging in an
attic room above the Duchess’s apartments. Only God in Heaven knows what new adventures
await me now! The Marquise hopes to remain at Versailles until the end of the month
the King will spend October at Fontainebleu as is his custom, and there is no point
remaining at Versailles when he is not here and then repair to Dunkirk. I shall, of course, go with her. But I will certainly
write another letter to you before then.
To M. le comte d’Avaux
25 September 1685
It is two weeks since I entered the service of the Marquis and the Marquise d’Ozoir, and another week until we leave for Dunkirk, so this is the last letter I will send from Versailles.
If I am reading your intentions correctly, I’ll remain in Dunkirk only as long as it takes to walk across the gangplank of a Holland-bound ship. If that comes to pass, any letters I send after today will reach Amsterdam after I do.
When I came down here some months ago, I stopped over in Paris for a night and witnessed the following from my window: in the market-square before that pied-à-terre where you were so kind as to let me stay, some common people had erected a cantilever, a beam projecting out into space, like the cranes used by merchants to hoist bales up into their warehouses. On the pavement beneath the end of this beam they kindled a bonfire. A rope was thrown over the end of the beam.
These preparations had drawn a crowd and so it was difficult for me to see what happened next; but from the laughter of the crowd and the thrashing of the rope, I inferred that some antic, hilarious struggle was taking place on the street. A stray cat dashed away and was half-heartedly pursued by a couple of boys. Finally the other end of the rope was drawn tight, hoisting a great, lumpy sack into the air; it swung to and fro high above the fire. I guessed it was full of some sausages to be cooked or smoked.
Then I saw that something was moving inside the sack.
The rope was let out and the writhing bag descended until its underside glowed red from the flames underneath. A horrible yowling came out of it and the bag began to thrash and jump. I understood now that it was filled with dozens of stray cats that had been caught in the streets of Paris and brought here to amuse the crowd. And believe me, Monseigneur, they were amused.
If I had been a man, I could have ridden out into that square on horseback and severed that rope with a sword-blow, sending those poor animals down to perish quickly in the roaring flames. Alas, I am not a man, I lack a mount and a sword, and even if I had all of these I might lack courage. In all my life I have only known one man brave or rash enough to do such a deed, but he lacked moral fiber and probably would have reveled in the spectacle along with all those others. All I could do was to close up the shutters and plug my ears; though as I did, I noticed that many windows around the square were open. Merchants and persons of quality were watching it, too, and even bringing their children out.
During the dismal years of the Fronde Rebellion, when the young Louis XIV was being hounded through the streets of Paris by rebellious princes and starving mobs, he must have witnessed one of these cat-burnings, for at Versailles he has created something similar: all the nobles who tormented him when he was a scared little mouse have been rounded up and thrown into this bag and suspended in the air; and the King holds the end of the rope. I am in the sack now, Monseigneur, but as I am only a kitten whose claws have not grown in, all I can do is remain as close as possible to much bigger and more dangerous cats.
Mme. la duchesse d’Oyonnax runs her household like a Ship of the Line: everything trim, all the time. I have not been out of doors since I entered the service of her sister. My tan has faded, and all of the patched-together clothes in my wardrobe have been torn up for rags and replaced with better. I will not call it finery, for it would never do to outshine these two sisters in their own apartment. But neither would it do to embarrass them. So I will venture to say that the Duchess no longer cringes and grimaces when she catches sight of me.
In consequence I am now catching the eyes of the young blades again. If I still served M. le comte de Béziers I would never get a moment’s peace, but Mme. la duchesse d’Oyon-nax has claws—some would say, poison-tipped ones—and fangs. So the lust of the courtiers has been channelled into spreading the usual rumors and speculations about me: that I am a slut, that I am a prude, that I am a Sapphist, that I am an untutored virgin, that I am a past mistress of exotic sexual practices. An amusing consequence of my notoriety is that men come to call on the Duchess at all hours, and while most of them only want to bed me, some bring bills of exchange or little purses of diamonds, and instead of whispering flattery and lewd suggestions they say, “What rate of return could this bring in Amsterdam?” I always answer, “Why, it all depends on the whim of the King; for do the markets of Amsterdam not fluctuate according to the wars and treaties that only His Majesty has the power to make?” They think I am only being coy.
Today the King came to see me; but it is not what you think.
I had been warned of His Majesty’s coming by the cousin of the Duchess: a Jesuit priest named Édouard de Gex, who has come here on a visit from the pays in the southeast where this family maintains its ancestral seat. Father Édouard is a very pious man. He had been invited to play a minor role in the King’s getting-out-of-bed ceremony, and had overheard a couple of courtiers speculating as to which man would claim my maidenhead. Then another offered to wager that I didn’t have a maidenhead, and yet another wagered that if I did it would be claimed by a woman, not a man—two likely candidates being the Dauphine, who is having an affair with her maid, and Liselotte.
At some point, according to Father Édouard, the King took notice of this conversation and inquired as to what lady was being talked about. “It is no lady, but the tutor of the daughter of the d’Ozoirs,” said one of them; to which the King replied, after a moment’s thought, “I have heard of her. They say she is beautiful.”
When Father Édouard told me this story I understood why not a single young courtier had come sniffing around after me that day. They thought the King had conceived an interest in me, and were now afraid to come anywhere near!
Today the Duchess, the Marquise, and all their household took the unusual measure of attending Mass at half past noon. I was left alone in the apartment under the pretext that I needed to pack some things for the upcoming journey to Dunkirk.
At one o’clock the chapel bells rang, but my mistresses did not return to the apartment. Instead a gentleman—the most famous chirurgeon in Paris—let himself in through the servants’ entrance, followed by a retinue of assistants, as well as a priest: Father Édouard de Gex. Moments later King Louis XIV of France entered solus through the front, slamming a gilded door in the faces of his courtiers, and greeted me in a very polite way.
The King and I stood in a corner of the Duchess’s salon and (as bizarre as this must sound) exchanged trivial conversation while the surgeon’s assistants worked furiously. Even one who is as unschooled in Court etiquette as I knew that in the presence of the King no other person may be acknowledged, and so I pretended not to notice as the assistants dragged the massive silver chairs to the edges of the room, rolled up the carpets, laid down canvas drop-cloths, and carried in a heavy wooden bench. The chirurgeon was arranging some very unpleasant-looking tools on a side table, and muttering occasional commands; but all of this took place in nearly perfect silence.
“D’Avaux says you are good with money,” the King said.
“I say d’Avaux is good at flattering young ladies,” I answered.
“It is an error for you to feign modesty when you are talking to me,” the King said, firmly but not angrily.
I saw my error. We use humility when we fear that someone will consider us a rival or a threat; and while this may be true of common or even noble men, it can never be true of le Roi and so to use humility in His Majesty’s presence is to imply that the King shares the petty jealousies and insecurities of others.
“Forgive me for being foolish, Sire.”
“Never; but I forgive you for being inexperienced. Colbert was a commoner. He was good with money; he built everything you see. He did not know how to speak to me at first. Have you ever experienced a sexual climax, mademoiselle?”
“Yes.”
The King smiled. “You have learned quickly how to answer my questions. That pleases me. You will please me more by now making the sounds that you made when you had this climax. You may have to make those sounds for a long time—possibly a quarter of an hour.”
I must have clutched my hands together in front of my bosom, or put on some such show of girlish anxiety. The King shook his head and smiled in a knowing way. “To see a certain déshabille, in a quarter of an hour, would please me—only that it might be glimpsed, through the door, by the ones who wait in the gallery.” The King nodded toward the door through which he had entered. “Now if you will excuse me, mademoiselle. You may begin at any time.” He turned away from me, doffing his coat and handing it to one of the chirurgeon’s assistants as he moved toward the heavy bench, now draped in white linen, that sat in the middle of the room on a carpet of sailcloth. The chirurgeon and his assistants closed in on the King like flies on a piece of meat. Suddenly—to my indescribable shock—the King’s breeches were down around his ankles. He lay down on his stomach on the bench. For a moment I fancied he was one of those men who likes to be struck on the buttocks. But then he spread his legs apart, bracing his feet against the floor to either side of the bench, and I saw a frightful purplish swelling in the crevice of his buttocks.
“Father Édouard,” the King said quietly, “you are among the most learned men of France. Even among your fellow Jesuits you are respected as one to whom no detail is unnoticed. Since I cannot view the operation, you will please me by paying the closest attention, and telling me the story later, so that I will know whether this chirurgeon is to be counted a friend or an enemy of France.”
Father Édouard nodded and said something I could not hear.
“Your Majesty!” the chirurgeon exclaimed. “To perfect my skills, I have performed a hundred of these operations, in the last six months, since I was made aware of your complaint—”
“Those hundred are not of interest to me.”
Father Édouard had noticed me standing in the corner. I prefer not to speculate what sort of expression was on my face! He locked his dark eyes on mine—he is a handsome man—and then glanced significantly toward the door, through which I could hear a low hubbub of ribald conversation among the dozen or so courtiers biding their time.
I moved closer to that door—not too close—and let out a throaty sigh. “Mmm, Vôtre Majesté!” The courtiers outside began shushing one another. In my other ear I heard a faint ringing noise as the chirurgeon picked a knife up off his table.
I let out a groan.
So did the King.
I let out a scream.
So did the King.
“Oh, gentle, it is my first time!” I shouted, as the King shouted curses at the chirurgeon, muffled by a silken pillow Father Édouard was holding to his face.
So it went. For a while I continued screaming as if suffering great discomfort, but as the minutes wore on, I changed over to moans of pleasure. It seemed to go on for much longer than a quarter of an hour. I lay down on a rolled-up carpet and tore at my own clothes, pulled the ribbons and braids from my hair, and breathed as heavily as I could, to make my face flushed and sweaty. Towards the end, I closed my eyes: partly to block out the hellish things I was beginning to see in the middle of the room, and partly to play my role more convincingly. Now I could clearly hear the courtiers in the gallery.
“She’s a screamer,” said one of them admiringly. “I like that, it makes my blood hot.”
“It is most indiscreet,” said another scornfully.
“The mistress of a King does not have to be discreet.”
“Mistress? He’ll throw her away soon, then where will she be?”
“In my bed, I hope!”
“Then you had best invest in a set of earplugs.”
“He had best learn to fuck like a King before he’ll need them!”
A drop of moisture struck me on the forehead. Fearing that it was a splash of blood, I opened my eyes and looked vertically upwards into the face of Father Édouard de Gex. He was indeed all spattered with the blood royal, but what had fallen on me was a bead of sweat from his brow. He was glaring straight down into my face. I have no idea how long he had been watching me thus. I glanced over towards the bench and saw blood everywhere. The chirurgeon was sitting on the floor, drained. His assistants were packing rags between the King’s buttocks. To stop all of a sudden would be to give the ruse away, and so I closed my eyes again and brought myself to a screaming—if simulated—climax, then exhaled one long last moan, and opened my eyes again.
Father Édouard was still standing there above me, but his eyes were closed and his face slack. It is an expression I have seen before.
The King was standing up, flanked between a pair of assistants who stood ready to catch him if he should faint. He was deathly pale and tottering from side to side, but—somewhat incredibly—he was alive, and awake, and buttoning up his own breeches. Behind him other assistants were bundling up the bloody sheets and drop-cloths and rushing them out through the back door.
Here is what the King said to me as he was leaving:
“Nobles of France enjoy my esteem and confidence as a birthright, and make themselves common by their failures. Commoners may earn my esteem and confidence by pleasing me, and thereby ennoble themselves. You may please me by showing discretion.”
“What of d’Avaux?” I asked.
“You may tell him everything,” said the King, “so that he may feel pride, inasmuch as he is my friend, and fear, inasmuch as he is my foe.”
Monseigneur, I do not know what His Majesty meant by this, but I am sure you do…
To Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
29 September 1685
Doctor,
The season has turned and brought a noticeable darkening of the light.* In two days the sun will sink farther beneath the southern horizon as I journey with Mme. la marquise d’Ozoir to Dunquerque at the extreme northern limit of the King’s realm and thence God willing to Holland. I have heard that the sun has been shining very hot in the South, in the country of Savoy more on this later.
The King is at war—not only with the Protestant heretics who infest his realms, but with his own doctors. A few weeks ago he had a tooth pulled. Any tooth-puller chosen at random from the Pont-Neuf could have handled this operation, but d’Aquin, the King’s doctor, got it wrong, and the resulting wound became abscessed. D’Aquin’s solution to this problem was to pull out every last one of the King’s upper teeth. But while he was doing this he somehow managed to rip out part of the King’s palate, creating a horrendous wound which he then had to close up by the application of red-hot irons. Nonetheless, it too abscessed and had to be cauterized several more times. There is another story, too, concerning the King’s health, which I will have to tell you some other time.
It is nearly beyond comprehension that a King should suffer so, and if these facts were generally known among the peasantry they would doubtless be misconstrued as an omen of Divine misfavor. In the corridors of Versailles, where most but not all! of the King’s sufferings are common knowledge, there are a few weak-minded ninehammers who think this way; but fortunately this château has been graced, for the last few weeks, by the presence of Father Édouard de Gex, a vigorous young Jesuit of a good family when Louis seized the Franche-Comté in 1667 this family betrayed their Spanish neighbors and flung open their gates to his army; Louis has rewarded them with titles and a great favorite of Mme. de Maintenon, who looks to him as a sort of spiritual guide. Where most of our fawning courtier-priests would prefer to avoid the theological questions raised by the King’s sufferings, Father Édouard has recently taken this bull by the horns, and both asked and answered these questions in a most forthright and public way. He has given lengthy homilies at Mass, and Mme. de Maintenon has arranged for his words to be printed and distributed around Versailles and Paris. I will try to send you a copy of his booklet. The gist of it is that the King is France and that his ailments and sufferings are reflections of the condition of the realm. If various pockets of his flesh have become abscessed it is a sort of carnal metaphor for the continued existence of heresy within the borders of France—meaning, as everyone knows, the R.P.R., the religion prétendue réformée, or Huguenots as they are known by some. The points of similarity between R.P.R. communities and suppurating abscesses are many, viz…
Forgive this endless homily, but I have much to tell and am weary of writing endless descriptions of gowns and jewels to cover my traces. This family of Fr. de Gex, Mme. la duchesse d’Oyonnax, and Mme. la marquise d’Ozoir have long dwelt in the mountains of Jura between Burgundy and the southern tip of the Franche-Comté. It is a territory where many things come together and accordingly it is a sort of cornucopia of enemies. For generations they looked on with envy as their neighbor the Duke of Savoy reaped a harvest of wealth and power by virtue of sitting astride the route joining Genoa and Lyons—the financial aorta of Christendom. And from their châteaux in the southern Jura they can literally gaze down into the cold waters of Lake Geneva, the wellspring of Protestantism, where the English Puritans fled for refuge during the reign of Bloody Mary and where the French Huguenots have enjoyed a safe haven from the repressions of their Kings. I have seen much of Father Édouard lately because he pays frequent visits to the apartments of his cousines, and I have witnessed in his dark eyes a hatred of the Protestants that would make your flesh crawl if you saw it.
This family’s opportunity finally came when Louis conquered the Franche-Comté, as I said, and they have not failed to take full advantage of it. Last year brought them more good fortune: the Duke of Savoy was forced to take as his wife Anne Marie, the daughter of Monsieur by his first wife, Minette of England, and hence the niece of King Louis XIV. So the Duke—hitherto independent—became a part of the Bourbon family, and subject to the whims of the patriarch.
Now Savoy also borders on that troublesome Lake and it has long been the case that Calvinist proselytizers would come up the valleys to preach to the common folk, who have followed the example of their Duke in being independent-minded and have been receptive to the rebel creed.
You can almost finish the story yourself now, Doctor. Father Édouard has been telling his disciple, Mme. de Maintenon, all about how Protestants have been running rampant in Savoy, and spreading the infection to their R.P.R. brethren in France. De Main-tenon repeats all of this to the suffering King, who even in the best of times has never hesitated to be cruel to his subjects, or even his own family, for the good of the realm. But these are not the best of times for the King—there has been a palpable darkening of the light, which is why I chose this hexagram as my encryption key. The King has told the Duke of Savoy that the “rebels” as he considers them are not merely to be suppressed—they are to be exterminated. The Duke has temporized, hoping that the King’s mood will improve as his ailments heal. He has proffered one excuse after another. But very recently the Duke made the error of claiming that he cannot carry out the King’s commands because he does not have enough money to mount a military campaign. Without hesitation the King generously offered to undertake the operation out of his own pocket.
As I write this Father Édouard is preparing to ride south as chaplain of a French army with Maréchal de Catinat at its head. They will go into Savoy whether the Duke likes it or not, and enter the valleys of the Protestants and kill everyone they see. Do you know of any way to send warnings to that part of the world?
The King and all who know of his late sufferings take comfort in the understanding that Father Édouard has brought us: namely that the measures taken against the R.P.R., cruel as they might seem, are more painful to the King than to anyone; but that this pain must be endured lest the whole body perish. I must go—I have responsibilities below. My next letter will come from Dunquerque, God willing.
Your most affectionate student and servant,
Eliza