Emilie's Voice Read online

  Ten

  The spirit of most women fortifies their folly more than their reason.

  Maxim 340

  Madame de Maintenon rose slowly from her deep curtsey, as if reluctant to forgo the pleasure of abasing herself before the king.

  “Come, Madame, you know that we are friends. There is no one here to see you standing before me!” Louis held out his hand to assist the widow Scarron to her feet. They were alone in an almost hidden corridor of the palace, and they walked together slowly, heads toward each other, deep in quiet conversation.

  “Forgive me, sire, but I must speak.” Madame de Maintenon always prefaced her remarks to the king in this way. It gave her the deepest thrill to know that speaking to him honestly—or as honestly as she dared—was a privilege she had won through careful stratagems and a patient campaign of calm strength. Unlike the royal mistress, she took care never to be insistent, never to raise her voice, never to demand recognition or privileges.

  “You know that I count upon you to do so,” said the king, stooping a little lower to hear his companion’s words.

  Madame de Maintenon cleared her throat and continued. “Now that you need even more help from the Almighty to prevail in the Low Countries, I believe it is imperative that you look to your salvation.” She referred to a recent dispatch that informed the king that, contrary to all he thought, things were by no means over in Belgium, and he may soon be forced to lead a campaign there again.

  “I am always mindful of such things, whether I am at war or at peace. I attend mass every day, and under your tutelage I have come to understand the requirements of the pious life much more thoroughly,” the king said, with a little bow of his head in recognition.

  The widow Scarron returned the bow as if almost overcome with gratitude. “Understanding them, and acting upon them, are two different sides of the same coin,” she said. “You have a queen—”

  The king interrupted her. “And I have done my duty by her! I have fathered heirs to the great throne of France, and she wants for nothing, including my respect.”

  Madame de Maintenon turned a corner, leading the king onward but appearing only to have wandered as though she were following a train of thought. “You know that your confessor does me the honor of hearing my own confession,” she said. “And he has alluded to me of late that his conscience is troubled by administering the sacraments to a king who, although great beyond measure as a monarch, refuses to curb his appetites as a man.”

  Louis’s face darkened. Madame de Maintenon thought for a moment she had gone too far and rapidly began to think how she might soothe the king. She paused, and in the silent interval she could hear clocks chime eleven in the morning. With a swift glance around she checked their location. They were in the corridor just behind the Salle de Bal, and soon Émilie would begin her lesson with Monsieur Lully. She stopped walking so that they would not pass beyond that place without hearing the young girl’s voice, which had been the object of this conference all along.

  “As divinely appointed sovereign, surely I was given these appetites to exercise them!” Louis said.

  “Or, if you will forgive me, to overcome them?”

  At that moment, Émilie began her vocal exercises. The king stopped and cocked his head. The walls of the château were quite thick, and so it sounded as though the voice were coming from somewhere very far away, not from the chamber on the other side of the wall where they stood.

  “Your Majesty?” Madame de Maintenon said, with an expression of curiosity on her face.

  “Who is that?” Louis asked.

  “Who is what?” answered the widow Scarron, pretending not to know what he was talking about.

  “Can’t you hear it? That voice? I’ve never heard anything so beautiful!”

  Madame de Maintenon smiled. “Perhaps, sire, that is the voice of your own conscience, for I hear it not.”

  She turned and commenced walking back in the direction of the king’s apartments, trying not to hurry, but hoping that they would be out of earshot before Lully began instructing the young singer and the illusion would be destroyed by the sound of his irritating, nasal whine. The king seemed unwilling to tear himself away from listening, but Madame de Maintenon knew he was too polite not to escort her as she walked, and so after a few more minutes of strolling through the corridor they could no longer hear Émilie.

  As they continued their conference, the widow Scarron tried hard not to smile with satisfaction. Her plan had worked to perfection. The king was agitated and thoughtful when she left him. And tomorrow, when he saw Émilie in the fête, the next step in her plan would be complete. Then it would only remain to orchestrate the final coup that would persuade the king that his affair with the Marquise de Montespan was divinely condemned.

  At that moment, Madame de Maintenon still believed that her motive was pure, that it was her duty to turn the great monarch of France away from the path of sin, to make him be once more an example to his people of piety and justice. She was far more adept at reading the secrets of other hearts than those of her own.

  The day of the fête dawned. Almost before she got out of bed, Émilie could tell that it was going to be hot, although it was only the beginning of May. Her skin prickled with a light sweat, and she threw the covers off with relief. The cold wooden floor of her room felt pleasant on the soles of her feet. She stood in just her muslin slip, looking out of her window at the slightly hazy sky above the opposite wing of the château, waiting for Marie to bring her morning tray. In a few moments a gentle scratch on her door announced the quiet young maid’s arrival.

  Émilie skipped over to let her in. She turned the key and the mechanism of the lock disengaged with a satisfying clunk. It made her feel safer to be able to lock her door at night, although she had nothing of value to protect—unlike many of the courtiers, who kept stashes of costly jewels in their tiny rooms.

  Marie placed the tray on her little desk, curtseyed, and left.

  “Thank you!” Émilie called after her. So far Marie, who took care of all her intimate needs from bringing her clothes to emptying her chamber pot, had not said a word to her.

  Tucked in next to her dish of hot chocolate, Émilie found a note.

  Mademoiselle Émilie,

  Please attend your costume fitting at 9 o’clock, in the Salle de Vénus.

  A little thrill of excitement went through her. Today she was going to take part in a masquerade that was to involve the entire court. At last she would see the king. She imagined him taller and grander than anyone else in the world. Too bad she was not going to sing for him. Monsieur Lully said that the fresh air might damage her voice. Still, it seemed bizarre to Émilie. They’d brought her here and worked with her, taught her mountains of notes and made her memorize volumes of words, spent hours training her in movement and pantomime, and the first time she did anything in front of the king she was to be the centerpiece in an enormous tableau vivant. She would neither move a muscle nor make a sound for most of the thirty minutes she would be on display.

  Although she had very little to do, Émilie’s task in the masquerade was not exactly easy. She had practiced her pose, which was not the difficult part (although she thought it might be a little tougher to hold it for the required half hour while perched on the top of a fifteen-foot ladder). The hardest thing, she thought, would be not to perish of boredom out there doing nothing.

  Émilie knew better than to be late for an appointment at court, even if she subsequently had to wait for someone else to arrive. And so, when she heard the distant clocks chime the appointed time, she found her way to the Salle de Vénus. This was her chance to try to get used to her costume. Not only was it to be made entirely of feathers, but, she had been informed, she was to be naked from the waist up.

  “Mademoiselle will be magnificent!” the smiling costumer had said, looking for all the world like the guardian of the gates of heaven, standing in front of a sea of mostly white feathers. “Mademoiselle must not be a
shamed! Such a beautiful young body. She will be très artistique!”

  When Émilie began to cry at the idea, they summoned François. “It is nothing to be ashamed of, Mademoiselle Émilie,” he told her. “Every morning, the king and queen dress before scores of courtiers. And you see, on the ceiling, all the naked women? It is only art. You will be like a sculpture, like the fountains in the garden.”

  Émilie calmed herself but decided she would not tell Charpentier about her costume in her next letter. If word ever got back, her mother would be furious.

  When the moment arrived for the celebration, Émilie was quite accustomed to being half exposed. She did not feel entirely like the same person, and so it was not so difficult to put aside her modesty. And besides, from her perch atop the ladder she could see a great exodus from the château, platoons of courtiers streaming out of every door, flowing down the steps to the garden, a splendid, glittering, human mass. They swarmed over the sets that the workmen had labored all the night before to build, and which they would demolish entirely later that day. By tomorrow, no one would ever suspect the event had taken place at all.

  The royal fanfare was sounded, signaling the start of a procession of such magnificence that Émilie was completely awed. She had a glimpse of it coming past on its way to parade before the king, a full mile of richly arrayed courtiers on horseback. The platform upon which she was seated on the ladder, with children and domestic animals gamboling below her, was hidden behind an immense curtain that had been rigged to a sort of frame. At precisely noon, this curtain was to be drawn aside to reveal the tableau. Émilie was then expected to remain absolutely still while an ode, written specially for the occasion by Monsieur de La Rochefoucauld, was recited. At its end, she was to climb down gracefully, take two of the putti by the hands, and step up to a point about ten feet in front of the king before curtseying and then backing away.

  Émilie had practiced her descent from the ladder several times on the days before the masquerade, but not in costume, and not atop a platform that was already eight feet off the ground. She was a little anxious but felt confident that she would be able to maneuver her feathers without a misstep. But matters were complicated by the warm weather. After only a few minutes in position, Émilie felt the perspiration gathering beneath her feather skirt and trickling down the backs of her legs to her bare feet. There was no way for her to reach them to scratch what was soon an almost unbearable itch. Although she did not suffer as much as the courtiers who had added so many heavy layers of jewels to their normal habits, soon the heat made Émilie feel a little dizzy.

  Despite her growing discomfort, she managed to strike her pose before the curtain was pulled away, and the gasp of pleasure the tableau provoked was sincere. It was the image of pastoral beauty: angelic children, sheep and goats that had been washed to snowy whiteness, and quantities of colorful flowers, atop which sat Émilie, looking like a cross between a bird and a goddess about to ascend to the sky. The perspiration had added a sheen to her skin that made her almost glitter. Émilie longed to be able to look at the king, but she had been warned not to change her pose until the very end.

  For the first fifteen minutes, Émilie was fine. She ceased noticing the tickle of sweat, but the glare of the sun (which she was forced to confront because her eyes were to be cast upward) and the heat made her feel increasingly shaky, and the world started to revolve around her slowly. A dull pounding in her temples gradually drowned out the sound of the actor, who savored every syllable so that the king would be sure to appreciate the delicacy and finesse of his expression. A few moments before he finished reciting the ode, Émilie began to feel that she was in danger of falling off her ladder. She feared greatly not only the harm to herself that would result, but the possibility of crushing one of the infants, all children of servants and workmen, who played so innocently beneath her. She held out as long as she could, then decided she could no longer risk waiting.

  Just before the last, adulatory line of the ode, Émilie gingerly started to negotiate her descent on the ladder. The rungs of the ladder had become slippery despite having been rubbed with resin. Émilie stepped very cautiously, but on the fourth rung she lost her footing. She could feel the skin being scraped off the top of her left foot as it shot through the ladder. She grabbed the vertical poles. The ladder swayed from side to side, but her grip was strong through sheer desperation, and she managed to counterbalance the movement. The result was that, rather than float delicately down from her aerial perch, she found herself suspended, hanging upside down, her swan feather skirt around her ears, revealing her derrière most unbecomingly to the royal party. In that moment, Émilie wanted to die.

  A horrified gasp escaped the crowd. There was a great clicking and whirring of fans as ladies opened them suddenly and agitated them, more to prevent anyone’s seeing or hearing them laugh than out of a sense of modesty. All Émilie could think of was that she had not had time even to glance at the king, and now here she was, not exactly showing him her best side.

  To the shock of all, King Louis stood up from his seat and swept the crowd of courtiers and servants with his gaze. “Won’t one of you help the poor girl?” he asked, and then commenced laughing heartily.

  Within seconds François had leapt upon the stage and disengaged Émilie’s foot from its caught position. He righted her, but her headdress was a shambles. Émilie did not know what to do, so she removed it, gave it to one of the children, and then made the deepest, slowest curtsey she had ever managed. She did not look up. She couldn’t bear to see the king’s expression.

  The curtain was hastily drawn across again, and the festivities continued. Émilie, however, was rooted to the spot. She did not know how she had been able to descend to the floor and rise again in her curtsey despite the pain in her ankle.

  “Come, let me help you back to your room,” said François, supporting her under her elbow.

  “No!” cried Émilie. “I can’t.”

  “Why not?” he asked.

  “It’s my foot. I can’t walk. And …”

  “And what, Mademoiselle?”

  Émilie did not answer him but looked down at the floor. François followed her eyes and saw the blood that had trickled down from between her legs. The servant blushed.

  “I’ll fetch one of the maids, and a surgeon,” he said.

  Eleven

  One often passes from love to ambition, but one seldom returns from ambition to love.

  Maxim 490

  The king’s first view of Émilie had precisely the effect that Madame de Maintenon had planned on, although she had hoped it would have been accomplished with more decorum. Louis began to make discreet inquiries about the young cygnet who had fallen off her perch.

  “I am very pleased, Monsieur de St. Paul, with Mademoiselle Émilie’s progress,” she said.

  St. Paul pretended to yawn. “I knew you would soon see the many ways in which the young thing might entertain the king.”

  “Ah, but simply entertaining the king is not very difficult.”

  “You seem to imply that this project took no effort—nor, might I add, expense—on my part,” said St. Paul, his voice betraying more than he wished of pique.

  “The expense, I imagine, you intend to recoup. The effort—what effort has there been, after all? It is Monsieur Lully who instructs her, and François who looks after her. All you did was bring her to Versailles in your carriage! And now that she is here, you have no more expenses on her behalf.”

  “What if I had not seen her at my godmother’s salon? Where would you be now!” The count was becoming annoyed.

  “There would have been other ways,” she said, walking to the window of her sitting room and looking out over the gardens. It was so hot that the landscape seemed to duplicate itself just above the horizon. No ladies cavorted on the lawn today. She closed the shutters and plunged her room into near darkness. “Do not worry yourself, Monsieur le Comte. If all goes well, you will be amply rewarded for your
troubles. But the real question is how to take the next step. What must Mademoiselle Émilie do to secure herself in the king’s regard so that I may continue with my plan?” Without looking at St. Paul, she went to her bookshelves.

  “You mean our plan, do you not, Madame?”

  She smiled. “Of course, how foolish of me.”

  St. Paul took his handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped the perspiration off his face. The widow Scarron never misspoke, and so he suddenly had the distinct impression that she had not told him everything. From what she had originally said, he thought that the idea was to replace Madame de Montespan, who had become rather too powerful and public, with someone whom they had in their power and could manipulate as necessary. Now it seemed that she had something else in mind. This powerful lady had promised him advancement, and he knew she could procure it. But if she did not trust him, he could not trust her. He would have to be very cautious. “I am here to do your bidding,” he said.

  “I thank you, Monsieur.” Madame de Maintenon ran her fingers along the spines of the books, and chose one seemingly at random. “But instead, let us do Monsieur Quinault’s bidding. Or at least, let Mademoiselle Émilie do it.” Madame de Maintenon opened the volume and traced the lines on the page with her forefinger. “According to Quinault, she must offer to give her life to save her husband. Then we shall see—if she plays her part well, she shall be redeemed by the gods.”

  “Of course. How clever of you. Let her sing in an opera. It is the story of Alceste, if I am not mistaken? The king will be utterly enchanted. I shall inform Monsieur Lully right away. Is there anything else you wish me to do?”

  “I will call for you later, when we see how things go.” The widow Scarron punctuated her last phrase by snapping the book shut. She extended her hand to St. Paul, who bent over it, and then left.