To Dance With Kings, page 29
Within the next few days she consulted her financial adviser, talked with a number of jewelers and goldsmiths, and examined Lille and Valenciennes and Flemish laces, looking for the best that money could buy. When everything was settled and designs for these new and expensive fans began to be made under Lucille’s expert direction, Marguerite went into the Crimson Salon where Augustin’s portrait hung above the fireplace. It was in this salon that they had first sat down to a meal together and had joked about being served by invisible hands. She had not entered it since the day after her return from the coast when she had replaced the dustcovers and locked it up in her dividing off of the house.
She went first to fold back the shutters and let the light pour into the beautiful room. It was with effort that she turned her head from where she stood and, rimmed with light from the window behind her, looked toward the portrait. In the same instant she clapped a hand over her mouth to keep back the huge choking sob that threatened to break from her throat and trigger off the tears that after the first few empty days she had resolved never to shed again. Although she had been prepared for anguish, she thought that work and more work had dulled her sensibilities and during these four years without him she had become resigned to her solitary state. The force of her love racked her. Almost without being aware of it she was drawn to stand in front of the portrait and gaze on the face of the man gone from her life. Through a trick of the artist’s brush he appeared to be looking directly at her.
“I know you are in London.” Her whisper sounded loud in the shrouded room. Only a few days ago her financial adviser had given her this scrap of news. “You are now a prosperous banker in Lombard Street. Here I have given you the chance at last to invest in my venture as you always wanted, although I had never expected it to come in these circumstances when you first asked me. I’m going to make the bejeweled and bepearled fans that I have been designing in readiness over a long period, hoping that the day would come. Your gold has opened the way for me. Just as it changed my life when you paid for a keepsake fan that bore my name on it.”
Her voice faltered and failed her, but she straightened her shoulders as she turned away and left the room. After that the double doors were never locked and the Crimson Salon was kept in order. With time she would be able to take her meals there without dying a little whenever her eyes met those in the portrait. But that was a long way ahead.
LAUNCHING INTO SUCH a costly new line presented a number of difficulties. Marguerite applied in writing for a stall in the vestibule and was told no names were being taken at the present time. These fans could not be sold from Clarisse’s basket, for it would belittle their value and importance; in any case she had no wish to interrupt the steady flow of Clarisse’s sales with a still-uncertain product. She displayed a few in her shop window, but the clientele for whom she aimed did not look for items of such value in a little fan and ribbon shop. Disaster struck when a pane was smashed and a thief grabbed the fans and fled. They were found later in a broken state with the jewels prized out of them.
After several months of outlay and disappointment, she drew further on her Château Satory funds and took a fat purse with her when she called on the official in charge of the vestibule. He greeted her and inquired after her business, expecting it to be a minor matter connected with her fan-seller. When she said she was prepared to pay a fee to get her name on the list for a stall he understood her immediately and all went well for them both. She secured her name at the top of the waiting list and he had the purse to put in his pocket, one of the perks that had long since benefited the post that he held.
Yet still she had to wait. He could not work miracles and produce space in the vestibule where none existed. Many months went by during which the shop kept her busy and her designing went well. With nothing else in life to distract her she laid up a full file of designs in readiness for the day when the birds and flowers and garlands, even scenes of balls and masques in the gardens of Versailles, could be carried out with the delicate use of pearls and rubies, sapphires and diamonds and emeralds.
Exactly two years after she had displayed her first jeweled fan in her shop window she was notified that stall space was now available. When she went to claim it she was delighted to find it was in a most advantageous position where it would be in full view of anyone going up or down the Queen’s Staircase. When the stall was erected she had it dressed in a rose velvet cloth, the canopy lined with tinted silk.
The time of getting her stall could not have been more opportune. It coincided with news of a forthcoming marriage between the king’s second bastard daughter by Athénaïs de Montespan and the young Duc de Chartres, it being Louis’s policy that all his bastards should make a good match. Although the Court was grandly dressed from morning until night as etiquette decreed, this would be one of the great occasions when all would vie with one another more than ever to be the most elegantly clad and adorned with a whole fortune in jewels. On Marguerite’s first morning in the vestibule her fans, sparkling out from a space previously occupied by a seller of rather dull paintings, were destined to draw the attention of those on the lookout for unique accessories. She had arrived early to make sure she had everything just as she wanted it.
“I do feel nervous,” she admitted to Clarisse.
“Please don’t be,” the young woman said encouragingly. “I know exactly what to say and do when you give me the signal.”
At that moment some early morning riders, returning from a canter, paused to view her wares with marked interest and said they would come back later. It seemed like the promise of success.
As soon as the Court was fully astir the busiest did not even give a glance from the stairway, but when the more leisurely began to appear there was a sudden cluster in front of the stall. It was then that Marguerite staked everything on the gamble she had planned. As arranged, before any sales were made, she beckoned Clarisse over to take her place. The young woman slipped her basket under the stall out of sight and began to answer the questions of would-be buyers.
“Yes, madame. That design could be made up with sapphires instead of rubies. Indeed, sir. Here is another with pearls.”
Marguerite slipped away. She collected her jeweler in her carriage and went straight home to Château Satory. There she installed him in the Ivory Salon and went behind a locked door into the vault where she kept her stock of jeweled fans for security. Back in the Ivory Salon she made an arrangement of some of them on a side table and put the rest out of sight. Then she settled to wait. The minutes ticked by. The jeweler, who had put on his best coat, was a presentable man in his midthirties, untroubled by the waiting since he was being paid for the time away from his bench and also it could lead to much more of the fan-work that he particularly liked. He had opened the box he had brought with him and had a variety of precious and semiprecious stones laid out on silk-lined trays in front of him.
“Have I made a mistake, Monsieur Doignel?” Marguerite asked on a note of anxiety when an hour had gone by without result. She was banking on what Augustin had told her about the Court’s ability to take up a whim of fashion and make it de rigueur.
“Allow them time, mademoiselle.”
Hardly had Doignel given this advice when from the window she glimpsed a barouche bowling through the distant gates. She spun around in triumph. “At least one has come!”
“Then let’s hope the rest will follow.”
The first couple to be admitted by the young footman, whom Marguerite had employed recently with this occasion in mind, were a young marquis and his wife. Marguerite had seen them at the stall before she left. She received them as graciously as any well-bred hostess welcoming distinguished guests to her home. Immediately they were at ease, not having been quite sure what to expect, and they expressed surprise that the fans on display in the vestibule at the Château of Versailles were only samples and not for sale.
“What better than to select a fan in comfortable surroundings?” Marguerite replied, leading the way to the Ivory Salon. “This is my jeweler, Monsieur Doignel, who is here to show you a choice of stones for any special requirements.”
The marquise went straight to the fans on display, delighted to have first choice. Marguerite nodded to the footman that it was time to bring in refreshments. No sooner had they been served than a second coach arrived and then a third. Since all those present happened to know one another, it became quite a conversational occasion. More people arrived and took the seats of those who had left, none departing without having purchased or given an order.
Marguerite took on extra hands to meet the demand and Doignel with his assistants worked all hours to get through the orders before the State Ball at the start of Shrovetide with the wedding the following day. By that time it had become the height of fashion to flutter a fan chosen amid the luxurious surroundings of the Château Satory.
Marguerite had soon found it necessary to open up all the ground-floor salons. Members of the Court made their visits a social event, not always buying, but that was not expected of them. They strolled about at leisure or sat together while sipping hot chocolate or coffee or some of the château’s best wines. Since it was risky for women to smoke at Versailles, for somehow the king always seemed to find out about their secret smoking parties, they requested a salon at Château Satory where they might indulge their pleasure. Marguerite gave them the Garden Room, which could be shut away from the rest of the house. There amid the orange trees and palms and potted shrubs they puffed their long-stemmed pipes and gossiped to their hearts’ content, the lacy fontanges they wore on their heads nodding like so many starched petals among the foliage.
There were gallants who came hoping to find a convenient place of assignation, but they soon realized that this was a handsome château in which business was conducted on elegant terms and nothing untoward was allowed. If people made private arrangements to meet among themselves that was entirely their own affair, but whatever the outcome it did not take place at Château Satory.
Marguerite began to hold concerts, entrée by invitation only. Then she introduced a monthly salon where poems were read, new books discussed, and lectures given on the new sciences. Before long it was almost as important to be seen at the Château Satory as it was at Marly. For this reason people settled their accounts for purchases and whatever refreshment they had imbibed on their visits without delay, for there was something about Mademoiselle Dremont that told them she would not tolerate debtors under her roof.
Those who remembered her in the company of Augustin Roussier thought how changed she was. There was a sober, tight-laced air about her, a withdrawn quality that put her at a distance even when she was smiling and at her most welcoming. She had become adept at turning aside amorous advances, and courtiers were neatly put in their places. Between themselves the gallants joked that either Roussier had locked her into a medieval chastity belt before his departure or her stays were so knotted as a precaution as to make them impossible for any male to untie. Yet behind their jokes there was pique, and often angry resentment, that this intriguing, fascinating woman, moving gracefully amid her patron-guests, should be impervious to their swashbuckling attractions.
Yet in reality she was not as immune as she would have had them believe. She was twenty-eight, had once experienced to the full the ardor of a passionate man, and had made work a substitute for love ever since. There were times when her flesh cried out to be embraced, to know again the kisses and tender caresses of a lover, but although there were men who had interested her the encounters had been brief and without fulfillment. She was too wary and unhealed. Sometimes she wondered if she would ever be whole again.
Plenty of invitations came her way and she accepted those at which she could be sure the king would not be present. In gambling on the Court’s obsession of being à la mode she had never expected to find herself an acceptable figure in society. It had happened to her just as it had to Françoise de Maintenon in the days when she had been the humbly born wife of the poet Scarron and had carved her own niche in the elitest circles. For her it had ended in marriage to a great king. Marguerite saw no marriage ahead for herself, for as she seemed to be incapable of bearing children even that benefit could not weigh the scales in making a match.
She devised a new line of portrait fans. These were painted on silk with the same techniques that her mother and her grandmother had used before her, but each one was unique in depicting the purchaser of the fan in some scene at Court. The first had not been commissioned. Marguerite painted a scene of the king riding off to his Flanders campaign in the company of several ladies honored by his invitation to accompany him, and several of them recognized their own likeness on the leaf. As she had anticipated, this led to orders for a purchaser to be portrayed at a State Ball or at the hunt or, in the case of younger women new to Court, at their own weddings. This new line was catching on like wildfire when her fortune increased from an entirely unexpected source.
Her lawyer called to see her with the news that monies from the sale of the Manoir, which had once belonged to the Roussier family, together with its land and properties had been directed to her according to instructions laid down by Augustin over two years before his departure.
She protested strongly. “But he made those arrangements then in case anything should happen to him, such as imprisonment or some other fate. His father was getting old and since the property would have been Augustin’s eventually, he simply included it at the same time. This money is his and must go to him in London!”
“Even if we were not at war with England that would not be possible,” the lawyer replied. “Monies from Huguenot properties are forfeit to the Crown if there is no other legal claimant who is not, I hasten to add, of the Protestant faith. It is yours, mademoiselle.” His face became grimmer than the severe expression normal to him. “Waste no pity on the Huguenots, mademoiselle. Most of them took the greater part of their fortunes with them and are thriving wherever they have settled.”
She knew that apart from England and Holland they had settled in Geneva among other places, including several Catholic states, such as Genoa in Italy, which was among many that had voiced abhorrence of Louis’s treatment of fellow Christians. It was said that nearly a quarter of a million Huguenots had fled the country. One of them had made her a very rich woman. The least she could do was to see that others benefited as well, and that meant giving as much employment as was possible to those in desperate need of work.
When the hatter’s shop came up for sale she bought it and the buildings of the court behind, where she installed three jewelers in a workshop of their own, gave two large areas over to ribbon-making, and the rest of the space to an increased number of fan-makers. Where once hats had been purchased there was a new décor and her fans were displayed to advantage. The old shop and the floors above it were altered to provide accommodation for some of her workers, many of them young country girls, thus giving them a homelike atmosphere in which to live. Whenever the Court was at Fontainebleau or elsewhere, she sent stock and reliable saleswomen to be on the spot. In Paris she opened a shop facing the wide avenue of the Champs-Élysées.
In 1697 there was another wedding of supreme importance when the son of the Grand Dauphin, the Duc de Bourgogne, married the captivating and mischievous Princesse Marie Adélaïde of Savoy. To Louis and Françoise she became a beloved granddaughter, bringing laughter into their private apartment where they spent more and more time together, he with his work, she with her sewing. Louis was beginning to show his age, and his waistcoat bulged as it had never done before. Although he continued to dominate the Court with his awe-inspiring presence and his code of etiquette that kept them all like puppets on strings, he was content that the young and lively among the nobility should set the social scene. The Court gave itself up to new heights of frivolity and debauchery, fostered its club for sodomites, and danced into every kind of exciting and time-passing diversion that could be devised.
It did not please Louis when the war came to a somewhat indecisive end with the Treaty of Ryswick. Fortunately a source of consolation to him was the new chapel that Mansart was to build at Versailles. It was to be the final addition to his great Château, a glorious place of worship that would be a hymn of praise in itself with its huge proportions. In white and gold with multicolored marble pavings, there would be beauty in every line, its graceful arches supporting a gallery with white columns soaring to a vaulted ceiling enhanced by paintings to the glory of God.
Work began. As if the clock had been turned back once again, there was a great confusion of scaffolding and winches, blocks of marble, earth from the vast foundations, stacks of slates and other materials, and a flock of workmen numbering hundreds. Mansart had as his assistant on this new project a fellow architect whose work he had long respected. One afternoon, when all was going well and they could take a little time to themselves, Mansart suggested that they visit Château Satory where there was always amiable company.
Marguerite, chatting with guests in the Ivory Salon, turned her head as the footman announced the new arrivals. She knew Jules Hardouin-Mansart from previous visits. His companion was instantly recognizable, although seventeen years had passed since their first and only meeting.
“Baron Picard!” She greeted him with an overwhelming sense of pleasure, associating him with Augustin and the happy time when she had first entered Château Satory and fallen in love twice over, once with the house and yet again with the man who owned it. “What a marvelous surprise! Welcome back to this house that you designed and built!”
“You remember me?” He was equally delighted, thinking her more beautiful as a mature woman in her midthirties than as the girl who had dazzled him on that summer evening, spinning around on the central star of the marble floor with the sun setting fire to her hair.
