Read The Sisters of Versailles for Free Online Page A

bedroom so opulent, but now I realize it was nothing. Amid all this luxury the queen lives a very simple life. She is pious and enjoys reading the Bible and the long religious tracts her confessor supplies. The queen has fifteen ladies in her service: the surintendante, a dame d’atour, a dame d’honneur, and twelve ladies of the palace. The younger ladies—there are a few of my age, including my friend Gilette and the very beautiful Princesse de Montauban—declare their lives insufferably dull, but I cannot see how anyone could be bored here. The formidable Mademoiselle de Clermont, a granddaughter of the last king and a cold, sour woman, is the surintendante . Her husband disappeared one day while hunting in a forest and was never found again! Gilette tells me the Court wishes it were she that disappeared, and not her luckless husband.
    Tante Mazarin is also one of the ladies-in-waiting. My hated mother-in-law retired just a few months after I arrived at Versailles, and Tante took her place. Tante takes care of my two youngest sisters, Hortense and Marie-Anne, and declared uponher arrival that she would also take care of me. She has instructed me to be careful in my choice of friends and warns me there are some very bad moral examples amongst the other ladies. Pincushions, she calls them, because they are full of pricks. Tante is one of a group of ladies known as the Pious Pack, ladies who love to judge those they judge impious.
    The queen’s French is not very good and her accent is thick even after more than five years in France. She is a devoted mother and sees her children every day—three little princesses and two boys: our beloved dauphin and the little Duc d’Anjou, just a baby.
    We spend most afternoons in the queen’s private apartments, doing needlework, reading aloud, or listening to the queen play the harp. We also have French lessons to help her improve her vocabulary.
    “Lackluster,” suggests the Princesse de Montauban. She is very young and very charming and usually very annoyed with the queen, though she hides this behind bright eyes and dimpled smiles. “Try lackluster . It means dull and boring.”
    It still shocks me, even though I have been here almost a year, to hear the courtiers disrespect the queen. Never the king, but the queen . . . she is frequently the butt of their caustic comments and laughter.
    “Lackluster,” repeats the queen, pronouncing it lohk-lohster . “A very goot word, let me make a sentence with it.” She pauses and looks around at her ladies, who all smile back. I smile with sincerity; I like the queen and dislike the way many are false with her. She considers awhile and the clocks on the mantelpiece tick on. Montauban widens her eyes and holds them open as though she were about to burst. Finally the queen says: “The boring play was very lohk-lohster .”
    We all nod in praise and encouragement.
    “Or,” says the Comtesse de Rupelmonde, shifting in her chair and rearranging the fine-filigreed lace that shields her large breasts from impropriety, “you could use it to describe people, or even a time of day.” At Versailles I have heard many shocking stories ofher adventures with my mother, and I find her no nicer here than she was in Paris. “For example: ‘This afternoon is very lackluster .’ ”
    “ Ja, ja , ‘this afternoon is very lackluster,’ ” repeats the queen, beaming. “ Ja, ja. That is a goot word.”
    Our evenings are generally spent listening to musical concerts or watching plays or gambling. Gambling sounds very exciting, sinful even, but when the queen plays it is decidedly lackluster . The younger ladies outdo themselves with excuses to escape the queen’s company. But even if they must remain, the queen retires very early and then they are free to fly, like a flock of pretty-colored birds, wherever they wish.
    Despite her plainness of manner and looks, the king has eyes only for his wife. The king himself is very handsome—tall