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Marie-Angélique lifted the curtain of her bedchamber and beckoned to me. I put down my sketch pad, and together we peeped out into the misty spring morning. Heavy-budded fruit trees, all ready to burst into bloom, lifted their branches above the high garden walls opposite. And there, concealed in a doorway across the street, stood the figure of a man. “He’s there every day. What do you think he wants?” Marie-Angélique’s face was pink with pleasure. She wanted me to say again what she already thought.
    â€œI imagine he’s in love with you. Everybody is, sooner or later.” Poor man. It was early in the year 1674, and he had hundreds before him. The heavy scent of narcissus in the vase by Marie-Angélique’s bed filled the room with spring. Beside the vase on the little night table lay a copy of Clélie with an extravagantly embroidered bookmark in it. Marie-Angélique loved romances. They were her measure of life; a scene in reality was judged by how well it matched up with the scene in which Aronce declares his love for Clélie, or Cyrus abducts Mandane in his luxurious ship. “Suppose, Marie-Angélique, that Cyrus had a shabby little boat. What would you think then?” I had once asked her. “Oh, Geneviève,” she’d answered, “Mademoiselle de Scudéry could not even imagine such an unromantic thing.” Poor reality—it always came off so badly by comparison to the silly things she read. I was, at the time, reading Herodotus with Father.
    â€œOh, do you really think he’s in love?” she fluttered. “How long has he been there? Three days?”
    â€œNo, more like a week.”
    â€œOh, that’s terribly romantic. Tell me, don’t you think he looks nice?” It must be the spring, I thought. In spring, everyone falls in love with Marie-Angélique. I peeked out again for her. He stepped out of the shadowy doorway, and my heart died a little as I recognized his face. He had on high boots, a short embroidered jacket festooned with ribbons, an epée with an embroidered baldric, and a short cloak dramatically thrown back. His hat was tilted jauntily over his lean face, and he had managed to grow a moustache since I had last seen him. It was my white knight, André Lamotte, but now no longer mine, not even in imagination.
    â€œWho do you think he is?” Marie-Angélique said dreamily. “He doesn’t have any lace…Oh, is that a ring I see? No…but perhaps he’s in disguise.” Marie-Angélique was always hopeful.
    â€œI saw him once when Father took me to the Luxembourg Gardens. He was reading,” I said.
    â€œOh, a student.” Marie-Angélique sounded disappointed. “But perhaps he is a prince, who is learning responsibility before he takes up his title.”
    â€œI think his name is Lamotte.”
    â€œOh dear,” responded Marie-Angélique. “You had better put down the curtain at once, Geneviève. Mother doesn’t approve of staring at strange men.” I dropped the curtain and picked up my sketch pad. There, amidst the dutifully copied flowers assigned by the drawing master, I sketched in Lamotte’s handsome young profile. Beneath it I wrote, “Do not look at strange men” and showed it to Marie-Angélique, who burst out laughing.
    â€œSister, what shall I do with you? You will never learn the proprieties!” she cried.
    â€œCome, come, Mesdemoiselles, what are you waiting for?” Mother bustled into the room in her cloak, with a basket of cakes, fruit, and pâtés over her arm. “Don’t dawdle. You aren’t children anymore. It’s high time you learned Christian responsibility.” No, we were not children anymore. I had turned fifteen, and Marie-Angélique was nineteen, and old enough to be married if she had had a proper dowry. Mother looked terribly businesslike. Charity was a new thing