Maman looked through the glasses for a fleeting moment before handing them to Delphine. “I believe so,” she said. “Did you notice the box to his left?” Delphine leaned forward and squinted into the eyepiece. “Don’t look quite so interested, ma petite,” Julie said, touching her shoulder to coax her back into her seat.
“It’s that wolverine, Anne-Mathilde,” Delphine said, sitting back. “You look, Lili, your eyes are better. Is her little pet with her?”
Lili glanced across the theater without need of the glasses and looked quickly away. “The Duchesse de Praslin is there too,” she said, casting another quick look back. “And Anne-Mathilde is making sure the man next to her is enjoying the tops of her breasts. She’s hiding her face behind her fan and leaning toward him.”
“I heard a rumor that since she’s already been presented to the queen, Anne-Mathilde is about to be engaged to the Comte d’Étoges’s son,” Maman said. “That would be quite a success for both families.” She looked for a moment in the direction of the box. “If that’s him, she’s certainly doing her best to help the matter along.”
The door to the box opened, and a small man with intense gray eyes and a slightly disheveled wig stepped inside. “Monsieur Philidor!” Julie said, rising effortlessly in her corset and panniers to greet him. “A triumph! The cast is excellent! You remember my daughter Delphine and Mademoiselle du Châtelet, do you not?”
“Enchanté.” The composer bowed. “I hope you are also enjoying my little comedy?”
“Oh yes,” Delphine said, turning her head at an attractive angle. “Especially the man playing Tom Jones.” She touched her ear, and Lili surreptitiously lifted her eyebrows to acknowledge Delphine’s lie.
“I’m afraid I had to clean up the libretto a bit too much for some people’s tastes,” Philidor said. “I’ve already heard grumbling that
Tom Jones seems more akin to the Quaker in the story than to Monsieur Fielding’s rather licentious character.”
“I do wish he could be a little more”—Delphine paused, parting her lips slightly to make it appear she was measuring her words—“playful,” she said, turning up one corner of her mouth just before she hid it behind her fan.
“I’m afraid the original Tom Jones would be far too much for our censors,” Julie said, diverting attention away from Delphine’s awkward attempt at charm. “And of course it’s the music people care most about, and it, my dear Philidor—” Julie took in as deep a breath as possible and let it out sensuously. “It is truly ravishing.”
Lili noticed how Julie managed to turn her body toward the brightest light in the box and bend almost imperceptibly forward, so her lightly powdered breasts and bare tops of her shoulders could complete the appearance of being hopelessly in thrall to every note in Philidor’s score. No wonder everyone adores her, Lili thought, admiring how effortless Maman always seemed, as if she were lit by some inward fire that escaped through her skin with insuppressible radiance.
Philidor looked down at the stage. “The musicians are coming back in. I must go,” he said, and with a nervous and perfunctory bow he was gone. As the orchestra tuned for the second act, Delphine looked again across the theater. “There’s Joséphine,” she sniffed. “Are their dresses sewn together? Can’t they bear to be apart?”
“I think Anne-Mathilde sees us,” Lili said. “She’s putting on quite a show.”
“Mon Dieu!” Delphine gasped. “Look who just sat down between them.”
Jacques-Mars Courville had taken the chair between Joséphine and Anne-Mathilde. Noticing that Joséphine’s shawl had fallen, he reached for it and draped it around her shoulders. “That was a bit cozy,” Lili said, as Delphine looked sharply away. Anne-Mathilde leaned forward and said something to both of them, and Joséphine cocked her head toward Jacques-Mars, flitting her fan as she laughed.
Ignoring Julie’s admonition not to stare, Lili watched as Anne-Mathilde got up and stood behind them, putting one hand on Joséphine’s shoulder and the other on Jacques-Mars’s as she bent over and looked across the theater. “Look who’s over there, Jacques-Mars,” her eyes seemed to say. “Your playmate Delphine and that other one.” She stood up and continued to stare across the theater to the box where Lili and Delphine were sitting. Though they were too far away to be able to see the coldness in her eyes, Lili felt it all the same, until the orchestra started up and she forgot everything but the music.
TWO DAYS AFTER
Baronne Lomont issued the invitation to come to her home for a few final lessons, Lili stood in the parlor of Hôtel Lomont in panniers so large and stiff she could have balanced a teacup on each hip.
Seated in a fauteuil, wearing a prim hat in the same green as her dress, was their tutor, Madame du Quesnay, a friend of the baroness. To one side were Baronne Lomont and her confessor, and on a couch on the other was Madame du Quesnay’s brother, Robert de Barras. Delphine had just sat down next to him, managing her panniers so they rested prettily around her.
“Charming,” Madame du Quesnay said to Delphine. “And now, Mademoiselle du Châtelet, shall we try it again? And please do not sigh this time. A show of frustration is most unbecoming.” She lifted one hand in a delicate arc. “Fluid grace. Effortlessness. That is your goal.” She turned to Delphine. “But first, Mademoiselle de Bercy, show us how you rise from a low couch.”
Her eyes followed every move as Delphine stood up. “You are launching yourself upward. You must look as if you are floating to your feet.” Madame du Quesnay looked at the two men. “I am indeed sorry to have to say something so indelicate, but I’m afraid I must.” She turned back to Delphine. “To do it properly, Mademoiselle de Bercy, you must summon your strength by drawing your toes
under you to support your weight, and come up using the strength in your upper legs, comme ça.”
Madame du Quesnay’s corset kept her back rigid as she tilted her body forward just a little from the hips. “From the thighs,” she said as she rose from her chair in one motion. “Mademoiselle du Châtelet, let’s observe you again. Sit where Mademoiselle de Bercy just was, as if monsieur were an admirer you are delighted to see. Then get up from the couch as gracefully as if the air under your gown were setting you afloat.”
Walk to couch. Rotate hips to move panniers aside so I can land on my behind. Stick out left foot enough to help shift my weight to right foot but not enough for it to show from under my petticoats. Weight on right foot, bend at hips, brace leg against couch and go down slowly. Voilà. Lili hit the seat with only a little bump.
“Quite improved,” Madame du Quesnay said. “But you are showing far too much concentration. Your lips practically disappeared inside your mouth and that is, of course, most unattractive. Practice at home until you can get up and down as if you gave no thought to it.”
Seated again in her fauteuil, Madame du Quesnay raised and lowered her hand in a fluid motion. “Remember, you have no thoughts at all, except how pleasant it is to have the opportunity to converse with an attractive gentleman. Now, rise as I explained, and repeat the entire motion—down, then up.”
That man is a prissy old bore, and if I have to listen one more time to him talk about his dead wife, I will throw myself out the window. Lili glazed her face over and willed her mind to go blank. Her skirts billowed out around her in just the proper way, and she turned to Monsieur de Barras. “Why, monsieur, is that a hint of a smile I see?” she asked in the most lilting tone she could muster. “I believe it is!”
“I was just remembering my Clarisse, and how she carried herself. Watching you, I am just now appreciating how extraordinary she was at something I took entirely for granted,” he said with the lifelessness of a priest sleepwalking through mass.
“I am so pleased that I can contribute to your appreciation of someone else,” Lili said, forming her lips in what she hoped was the correct smile, and struggling to keep the sarcasm out of her voice. She turned her hips to accentuate the bows and embroidery on the bodice of her dress and the tops of her breasts pushing up from it. “And I am so sorry for your loss.” Remove smile. “Madame de Barras sounds as if she was absolute perfection.” Restore smile.
He opened his mouth to speak, but Lili had already pressed the balls of her feet into the floor and was tightening her thighs to come to a stand. Get up from the couch as gracefully as if the air under your gown is setting you afire, she thought, suppressing the urge to laugh.
To her surprise, everyone seemed pleased. “Very graceful,” the priest said. “Was it not, Baronne Lomont?”
The baroness gave a nod of fleeting approval. “A man should always believe that you find him attractive,” she said to Lili. “This is the best means for someone of ordinary appearance and unexceptional charm to be found attractive in return. Wouldn’t you agree, Madame du Quesnay?”
“Quite.” Madame du Quesnay nodded. “Successful flirtation conveys what response would be welcome, without appearing to expect any such response at all. A man will puzzle over what your words and actions might have meant, and if he discovers he has been thinking about you, he is likely to conclude that he must be in love.” She looked at her brother. “Although I don’t imagine most men would be willing to admit how simpleminded they are about such things. Tell me, dear brother, was Mademoiselle du Châtelet flirting with you just then, or merely being polite?”
Barras gave a small cough to clear his throat. “I did not take mademoiselle’s behavior as anything more than the effort of a young woman who knows little about grief to be pleasant to a man consumed with it.”
Flirt with that dried-up old prune? Lili glanced toward Baronne Lomont and saw that she was looking at her and Barras as if absorbed
in some private thought. Lili felt acid rise in her throat. Is that what she has in mind?
RAIN BATTERED THE
last of the dry leaves still clinging to the chestnut trees in the courtyard of Hôtel Bercy a few days after the girls’ last lesson with Madame de Quesnay. A dozen or more chairs were arranged in Maman’s sitting room to make a narrow pathway, and at the end, an upholstered stool indicating the queen’s position was placed in front of a large mirror. Lili observed from the stool while Delphine made the deep curtsey known as a révérence.
“Maman says we won’t have any more room than this because Queen Marie Leszczynska’s visitors will be crowding in as much as they can without being too obvious they’re making it as difficult as possible for us,” Delphine said.
Although some presentations involved both the king and queen, Lili’s and Delphine’s would be no more than an introduction to the queen on their first visit to her chambers. Despite the relative simplicity, Lili imagined the scene as a kind of warfare, won by having the widest panniers and fitting them through the smallest space, all the while chatting and nodding as if the task were not difficult at all. A duel by clothing, Lili thought with a grimace.
Delphine walked a straight line between the chairs, without touching anything with her panniers or train along the way. In front of the empty stool, she gave a deep curtsey and held it until Lili could see the trembling in her thighs disturb the fabric in her skirt.
“You may rise,” Lili said in an officious tone she thought sounded queenly. Delphine came up in a single fluid motion. “How did my révérence look?”
“Perfect, except for the shaking at the end.”
“If I have to hold my curtsey that long, I’ll know Queen Marie Leszczynska hated me on sight,” Delphine said. “It hurts my legs to stay down that long. ‘Your majesty, la-la-la,’ Maman will say, and then I’ll look into the queen’s eyes just so.” Delphine gave the empty
air above Lili a look that was at once shy and eager. “Then I’ll say, ‘May I bring honor to your court and to France,’ and then …” Delphine took several steps backward without catching her train underfoot, a move she had practiced for months. “All right, now for the worst part.”
Delphine went up onto her toes. She brought the train cleanly around with a much practiced twist of her body, avoiding catching it on the stiff frame of her dress and leaving it in a rumpled pile at her side. She looked behind her in the mirror, satisfied that the train lay smoothly behind her. “How did I look going around?”
“Better, but still a bit hesitant.”
Delphine pulled her train out of the way and sat down heavily in one of the chairs. “I’ll never get it.”
“Well, just remember, I will do so poorly I’ll deflect all the ridicule onto me.” They both tried to laugh, but two days before their departure for Versailles, nothing was amusing. More than anything else, holding what looked like an effortless révérence, and the neat fall of their trains behind them after a gracious turn, would set up a good stay at court. And there was no need to state the obvious, that a good stay at court would set up everything else.
Lili walked down the aisle and held her curtsey until sweat prickled on her back and her legs felt so weak she thought she might not be able to get up. Back upright, she whipped her body around so violently that the train went far beyond center.
“You’ll come visit when the queen throws me in the Bastille, won’t you?” Lili said with a grim smile.
Delphine giggled. “And you forgot the backward steps again too.”
Lili tried the routine a second time, and then a third, before collapsing in a chair across from Delphine. She pulled a damp handkerchief from between her flattened breasts and patted her temples.
“It’s hard work to be appealing, isn’t it?” Delphine said, pulling out her own handkerchief. “I hope I don’t perspire like this then.
Imagine what the ladies would think of a girl whose temples are dripping.”
“I’ll just be glad when it’s over and I can come home,” Lili said.
“Come home? Afterward will be the only good part!” Delphine shut her eyes and leaned back with a dreamy smile. “We’ll go to banquets and balls, and go riding with handsome courtiers. Maybe there will be a ballet or an opera while we’re there and we’ll sit with our fans and flirt with men who are dying to kiss us.”
She opened her eyes but her voice was still far away. “I want people to say, ‘There goes Delphine. Isn’t she wonderfully gracious and confident? Witty and spirited enough to be interesting but never so much that she frightens people off.’ That’s what I want to be like, and sometimes—” She leaned toward Lili as if the line of empty chairs might overhear her otherwise. “Promise you won’t say a word of this because it sounds so immodest?” she said. “Sometimes I think I already am that Delphine—at least more than before.” Her face grew somber. “Certainly more than last summer.”