Free Versailles by Kathryn Davis Page A

Austrian Bitch—a big dis - appointment. Couldn't even be counted on to get the baby's sex right...
    Marie-Thérèse Charlotte. Popularly known as Madame Royale, and nicknamed Mousseline la Sérieuse by her doting parents. A pretty child, with her mother's clear fair skin and large blue eyes, the older she grew and the more male siblings she acquired, the more her habitual gravity turned to sullenness, the sort of dusty limp look a sun-loving plant, a daisy for instance, develops when stuck in a shady part of the garden.
    She would outlive them all, La Sérieuse, ending her days deep in the woods in a dark stone house, with only mice and squirrels and owls and the occasional fox for company. A persistent sighing of wind in the trees, a constant rain of leaves and acorns. A leaky roof, a smoking fireplace. Once upon a time she was a princess and she was crying because she was teething, and she was holding onto her father's finger as she sat on his lap in a wing chair covered in white
gros de Tours.
She loved to hold onto that finger, so long and plump and warm, with a consoling knob of knuckle in the middle and a smooth gold ring at the base. Big white clouds sailing past the window, and her father giving off his usual smell of sweat and horse manure and wine. Her mother playing the harp. Pling pling pling. I had a little nut tree and nothing would it bear.
    La Sérieuse died in 1851 at the age of seventy-two, the same year Louis Napoleon proclaimed himself emperor. The house fell into ruins and was sold as scrap. Eventually the road to Quimper was built over the place where it had stood.

Voices from Beyond
    The English-style garden of Montreuil, the Prince and Princesse de Guéménéee's small yet graciously appointed chateau. It is a brilliant afternoon in early autumn, 1782; the Princesse is seated on a stone banquette, surrounded by her dogs. She is wearing a simple white lawn dress in the Creole style currently favored by the Queen, and a wide-brimmed straw hat, its blue ribbons loose and dancing in the breeze. Her eyes are closed.
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P RINCESSE: HOW out of sorts I feel today, my darlings! Not unlike a soup tureen in the hands of a clumsy servant, if you know what I mean. Come closer. Speak to me. Set my mind at ease.
C OOKIE : Hark, hark, the dogs do bark...
P OUNCE : The beggars are coming to town...
P RINCESSE : Please. You're just making things worse.
She rubs her temples and sighs.
I want good news. Tell me some good news. The war in America? My dear friend Antoinette? Her adorable children?
W INNIE : Your dear friend Antoinette has an income of between three and four million
livres
a year.
P EARL : She also has one hundred seventy new dresses since January. White spots on a lavender ground. Gosling green with white spots. Mottled lilac.
L ULU : Spots are all the rage.
W INNIE : Not to mention she's more beautiful than ever. Everythingthat astonishes the soul leads to the sublime—Diderot said that.
P EARL : Infernal depths, darkened skies, deep seas, somber forests. The war in America is over, by the way.
P RINCESSE : Hush, hush. You've made your point.
P OUNCE : A clear idea is another name for a little idea.
He bares his teeth and, growls.
C OOKIE : Pounce is a very clever boy, but dangerous.
L ULU : He's a very bad boy.
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    A shower of yellow leaves blows in from stage left; Pearl paws at the Princesse's shoe, whining.
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P RINCESSE : This wind! If it doesn't let up soon I'm going to have to go inside.
P EARL : But I thought you wanted to hear about the adorable children. Don't you want to hear about them?
P RINCESSE : Yes. That's right. I do.
C OOKIE : The little girl is solid as a rock, but the Dauphin's a mess. His vertebrae are put together wrong.
P RINCESSE: I'm their governess. All I have to do is look at them to know that.
C LIO ,
angry:
Then what more do you expect? You of all people should know that the future is off-limits, even to the dead.
C OOKIE : You of all