Finding Emilie Page 3

  A few minutes later, the two made the short visit required of returning girls, and before being turned away by a servant, they caught a glimpse of the abbess without her patch. Over the hollow cavity, her lids had been sewn together, and the scars formed what looked like stubby white eyelashes. The girls backed away in shock and ran to their room, where Delphine vomited into a washbasin and Lili retched in sympathetic dry heaves until her stomach was sore.

  Still, Lili told Delphine later, when she had a chance to think about it some more, it wasn’t fair to blame the abbess, because it was hard to imagine how losing an eye was her fault.

  “I know,” Delphine said, “but still, there should be something she can do not to bother people so much.”

  “Perhaps she could wear a hood that covered her whole face, with one hole for her good eye,” Lili suggested. She meant it as a joke, but Delphine took all solutions seriously, including wearing shimmering veils like a harem girl, until Lili pointed out how unlikely that would be for a nun.

  Finally Delphine dismissed the entire subject. “All I know is I would never let that happen to me,” she said, touching each of her eyes tenderly. “I’d die first, wouldn’t you?”

  Wondering for a moment if losing an eye might give someone a secret, compensatory magic, Lili didn’t respond. Maybe that’s the real reason the abbess is so frightening, she thought. She has a power we don’t even know about. “I think I’d have to wait and see,” she finally replied. “It’s probably a good idea to wait to see how desperate you really are.”

  THE AFTERNOON OF their return to the abbey, Lili and Delphine went with a few other girls to a wood-paneled study with large windows giving out onto a lawn bordered with tidy flowers and neatly clipped hedges. Sister Thérèse, their catechism nun, was leafing through one of the leather-bound books in an ornately carved bookcase.

  “Good afternoon, madame,” each girl said before taking her place on one of the couches arranged around a fireplace.

  “Bien,” the middle-aged nun said, coming over to her chair without sitting down. “Shall we pray?” The girls all stood up and crossed themselves, and Lili heard Delphine suppress a burp from their just-completed midday meal. “in nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti, Amen,” they murmured before droning an Ave Maria and a Pater Noster. Sister Thérèse gestured to them to sit down, and after she was settled in an armchair facing them, she opened her book.

  “Today is the feast day of Saint Solange,” she said, looking over the top of her spectacles at the girls. “Would anyone like to tell us who this blessed martyr was?”

  Delphine straightened her back so quickly that Lili thought she might fly off the chair. “She was a shepherdess on the estate of the Comte of Poitiers, who had an evil son,” Delphine blurted out, and though her feet were hidden under her skirt, she jiggled them so intensely that Lili felt the motion against her own thigh.

  “Young ladies, wait to be called upon,” the nun said. “And don’t speak so quickly. It isn’t becoming to sound so excited.”

  “Oui, Sister Thérèse,” Delphine said, looking down at her lap. “Saint Solange took a vow of chastity because she was so devoted to God and when the count’s horrid son Bernard tried to—tried to—”

  “Tried to force himself on her,” the nun prompted.

  “Oui, Sister Thérèse. When he tried to do that, she resisted him with all her might, so he killed her.”

  Sister Thérèse frowned. “Does someone else feel they can tell the story with the dignity it warrants?”

  Lili felt Delphine sit back in surprise, and knew that back in their room she would be in tears. “What did I do wrong?” she would ask. “Didn’t I know the story? Didn’t I care enough about that stupid saint?”

  “Mademoiselle de Praslin,” the nun said, “would you be so kind as to say what happened, and do so with the proper demeanor for a lady?”

  Delphine pushed her hand down in the space between her skirt and Lili’s. Lili’s hand followed, and squeezing their interlaced fingers, they stared at the floor while Anne-Mathilde de Praslin spoke. Anne-Mathilde was the daughter of the Duc de Praslin, one of the richest and most powerful men in France. At twelve, she was two years older than Lili and Delphine, and her body was beginning to take on the curves of a woman. Her hair was pale gold and her skin, a radiant ivory, was so lacking in flaws it seemed to be made of something other than flesh. “A perfect beauty,” Lili had overheard one of the nuns remarking. “A bride worthy of a great noble of France.” If Delphine hated Sister Thérèse, she truly loathed Anne-Mathilde—a sentiment she could count on Lili to embellish in the darkness of their room.

  “Bernard tried a number of times to grab Solange and force her to the ground,” Anne-Mathilde said in a deliberately musical voice, casting a gloating look at Delphine that only Lili saw. “But Solange prayed to the Blessed Virgin, who gave her the strength to fight him off. He was angry, not just because he couldn’t have her, but because she had embarrassed him in front of his friends.”

  Anne-Mathilde’s best friend, Joséphine de Maurepas, nodded. “If I may add a detail,” she said in a voice so simpering, it was all Lili could do not to grab the girl’s hair and twist it until she squealed. Joséphine was also twelve, like Anne-Mathilde, but so scrawny it was hard to imagine she would ever look like anything but a little girl. The drab ash-brown of Josephine’s hair and the way she scurried around in thrall of her best friend made Lili think of the little mice she’d watched the scullery maids shoo away with a broom at home.

  “I’d like to remind everyone that Bernard fell off his horse once trying to reach down and pull Solange onto it,” Joséphine was saying. “To fall off a horse for a peasant girl …?” Her voice curled up, as if she were asking whether anyone in the room really needed her to explain the disgrace.

  Sister Thérèse gave them each a nod of approval. “And now, Stanislas-Adélaïde,” she said, her eyes narrowing, “will you finish the story for us?”

  I should have known Sister Thérèse would do this, Lili thought. Delphine had been ridiculed, and now Lili had to retell the part of the story Delphine relished most. Lili withdrew her hand and brushed her ear, the secret signal with which she and Delphine warned each other to keep a straight face regardless of what was said next.

  “I can certainly do that, Sister Thérèse,” Lili said, copying Anne-Mathilde and Joséphine’s unctuous tone. “Because at home Mademoiselle de Bercy and I often discuss the important message about piety the story contains for girls our age.” A lie is a small sin, she thought, especially for Delphine. “However, I find it particularly edifying to hear Delphine tell it, and I believe the others have not had that opportunity. May I ask if she might be permitted to finish the story herself?”

  Lili heard the rustling of Anne-Mathilde’s and Joséphine’s dresses and knew without looking that their faces were shining with anticipation of something new to disparage. Sister Thérèse stared at Lili for a moment before she spoke. “If Mademoiselle feels she can control her urge to tell it so breathlessly?” Her eyebrows arched as she turned to Delphine.

  “Bernard beheaded her,” Delphine said. “But even with her head on the ground, she was able to invoke the name of God three times.” Though Delphine may have sounded demure and ladylike, Lili recognized the discouragement in her tone. At home, away from the nuns’ disapproval, Delphine would have stood up and tapped her shoulders and neck with her hands, as if surprised to realize that her head was no longer there. “Mon Dieu,” she would have said in a loud voice, before repeating it more plaintively as she crumpled to the floor. “Mon Dieu,” she would have whispered a third time, tapping the floor like a blind person until she found her head and picked it up.

  “Then Solange walked into the town,” Lili heard Delphine say. “It wasn’t until she reached the church that she fell to the ground and died.”

  “May God’s holy name be praised,” Sister Thérèse murmured, and everyone made the sign of the cross.

  “D
id I do better?” Delphine asked, her voice rising in hope of at least faint praise.

  “It was an improvement,” the nun said. “But it isn’t seemly for a young lady to beg for approval.” Anne-Mathilde and Joséphine stifled a giggle behind their hands.

  “I understand,” Delphine said. Lili could hear the tremor in Delphine’s voice. “I want nothing more than to improve myself,” Delphine added. Lili looked to see if she was touching her ear, but she wasn’t.

  “And with God’s grace, you will succeed, my child,” Sister Thérèse said. “With God’s grace, and with faith, anything is possible.” She crossed herself. “After all, look at our blessed Saint Solange.”

  “Oui, Sister Thérèse.” Out of the corner of her eye, Lili saw Delphine cross herself. She rushed to do the same, but so quickly that she did it again, just to make sure it counted.

  DELPHINE’S TEARS GAVE way to exhausted sniffles and then to light snoring in their room that night. The candle was still lit, and Lili picked up her book of fairy tales to read until her mind was quiet enough for sleep.

  “Once upon a time there was a king and queen who ruled so badly they lost their kingdom, and they and their three daughters were reduced to day labor.” The story of Finette Cendron was one of Lili’s favorites, but tonight none of the stories in the book was likely to amuse her.

  She went to the desk and took out a sheet of paper already nearly full of penmanship exercises. I could try writing a story myself, she thought. She touched the tip of a quill in the inkwell on the desk. Then, squinting to focus in the dim light, she began.

  “Once upon a time …”

  Once upon a time what? She thought for a moment, and suddenly it came to her.

  “Once upon a time, there was a girl living in a dreary village who wanted nothing more than to travel to the stars. Her name was …”

  Lili thought for a moment. She could call her Delphine and put some dresses in the story, but she didn’t want to do that. She scratched out the last three words and dipped her quill again.

  “Meadowlark had a laugh like a songbird, so everybody called her Meadowlark. Every night Meadowlark would sneak outside and hope with all her might that her wish could come true. And then, to her surprise, one night a horse made of starlight appeared in front of her. ‘Are you the girl named Meadowlark?’ the horse asked. When she said yes, the horse snorted and reared up. ‘My name is Comète,’ it said. ‘Climb on my back.’ Before she knew it, Comète had galloped off with her into the night sky, leaving behind a trail of stars wherever its hooves touched.”

  Lili’s eyes ached in the flickering candlelight. She would have to stop. Dipping her pen one more time, she wrote in big letters at the top of the page, “Meadowlark, by S.-A. du Châtelet.”

  “GABRIELLE-EMILIE!”

  Emilie de Breteuil stopped at the entrance to the dining room, turning her eyes in the direction of her mother’s angry voice. What had she done wrong? Most likely a loose strand of hair. Emilie reached up to tighten the pins on a dark lock drooping at her neck, but it would be too late to avoid a tongue-lashing tomorrow. “I’m sorry, madame. I was reading and I neglected to prepare myself for dinner.”

  Gabrielle-Anne Froullay du Châtelet would not be so ungracious as to frown in the presence of guests at table, but her ten-year-old daughter felt her hard stare piercing through the candlelight. A servant placed a small piece of confit and several bits of pickled vegetable on Emilie’s plate. The others were finishing their first course, and the guest had resumed his conversation with Emilie’s father, Louis-Nicholas. “Space is so vast,” Bernard de Fontenelle was saying, “that the white band you see across the sky is actually millions upon millions of stars, some of them as big as our sun.” He turned to Emilie with a patronizing lift of his eyebrows. “Did you know that?”

  Emilie nodded. “It’s in a book Father and I are reading.” She put down her fork. “Do you think it’s really possible that thousands of stars have planets orbiting around them? If that’s so with our sun, wouldn’t natural law require that it also be the case anywhere similar conditions exist in the universe?” Her hand brushed against the fork poised on her plate and it clattered onto the table, depositing a small brown morsel she absentmindedly put back onto her plate with her fingers. Emilie cast a sidelong glance at her mother and saw, to her dismay, that she had noticed.

  A smile played at the edge of Fontenelle’s mouth. His friend Louis-Nicholas had told him Emilie was a very bright girl who acquired knowledge as easily as iron shavings flew toward a magnet. But Louis-Nicholas’s young daughter had obviously done more than pack facts in her head. She was asking questions—and precisely the right ones.

  “Yes, I’m sure that is the case,” he went on. “Monsieur Newton has made a convincing argument for his law of attraction, and I think his work shows there is no end to what we might know if we set our minds to study as devotedly as he did. I, for one, believe we are not far off from the day when we will be able to determine mathematically what distant planets are composed of, and even how much they weigh.”

  Gabrielle-Anne rang for the dishes to be cleared for the second course. “My daughter’s mind could be better used pondering other matters,” she said. “I really must insist that the subject be changed.”

  Emilie’s face brightened. Surely another of her favorite subjects would be different enough. “Do you think, Monsieur Fontenelle, that it is possible God sprinkled creations all over the universe?”

  This conversation had gone in the most horrifying and sordid of directions. Gabrielle-Anne glared at her husband. If he hadn’t insisted otherwise because he enjoyed having Emilie to talk to, they would long ago have sent her to a convent to get such foolishness out of her head. What future husband would put up with this? Just look at the girl and Monsieur Fontenelle, acting as if no one else were at the table! This wasn’t precociousness; it was impertinence, and it would have to stop.

  1760

  THE ONLY good thing about the abbey, Lili thought, was that it protected her from Baronne Lomont. Whenever Lili was at Hôtel Bercy for more than a few days, a sedan chair inevitably arrived to take her to Île Saint-Louis, for a visit at Hôtel Lomont. One fall morning shortly after Lili’s eleventh birthday, she presented herself at the baroness’s town house to make her way through the thicket of expectations attached to a simple breakfast.

  “Tell me, Stanislas-Adélaïde, what did you study in catechism this week?” Seated across from Lili, Baronne Lomont set her bony chin slightly forward as if it might enable her to snap heretical thoughts out of the air before they reached the ear of God.

  The baroness broke off a small piece of bread and placed it in her mouth with the deliberate manner of someone setting an example. Bread, she often reminded Lili, should never be cut at the table, but broken off just so. Only stale bread required a knife, and one should never be served anything but the freshest loaves from a host. Above all, appearing hungry by tearing off a bite with one’s teeth was the mark of a peasant.

  “Works of perfect Christian virtue spring from love, and have no other objective than to arrive at love,” Lili recited, putting in her mouth a piece of bread so small it dissolved without requiring her to swallow. It’s a good thing Corinne made sure I had breakfast at home, Lili thought, since I won’t get a single real mouthful until I’m back for dinner.

  Baronne Lomont leaned forward from the hips with the rigidity imposed by a tightly laced corset. Lili almost certainly was exposed to guests in a shocking state of disarray when she visited Julie de Bercy, and that was all the more reason the baroness herself needed to set an example. She had told Lili as much, pointing out with great frequency how exhausting it was for her, ailing with nearly everything that could afflict a woman in her sixties, to fulfill her duty not just to Lili, but to France itself.

  And, of course, to God. “What, my dear child, do you take that to mean?” the baroness asked, putting the proper upward inflection on the last word, to convey that she expected
the pleasant reply that was the mark of good conversation.

  “Sister Thérèse says it means that we must show our disapproval of sinners, as a way of urging them back to the church,” Lili said. “Since that is the only way to salvation, she says we help save the souls of those we love when we reject their bad ideas and behavior, even if they don’t appreciate our efforts.”

  “And what is your response to that?”

  “I find it hard to argue against that logic,” Lili said, shrugging her shoulders.

  “My dear girl, finding something to argue with in anything is most unattractive.” The baroness rang a small bell, and the servant appeared immediately. “You may bring us our eggs,” she said, before turning back to Lili. “A young lady is not to follow personal logic, but to accept what the church teaches, and learn it well. A proper girl is always thinking of the impression she is making. You may not be aware of it, but good families are already watching girls your age to see who might make a suitable match for their sons in a few years time.”

  “Oui, madame. I only meant that I had arrived at the same conclusion as Sister Thérèse,” Lili lied. “I am sorry I phrased myself so poorly.”

  “Phrasing is an essential part of gracious communication,” Baronne Lomont went on. “You must ask yourself whom your words may offend, and take pains not to do so. Women considered charming rarely reveal their thoughts. That is because their real pleasure comes from making the men with whom they are conversing sound intelligent even when they are not. You will be most praised for your conversation when you let others speak and do not force attention on yourself.” Baronne Lomont removed the top of a soft-boiled egg with a single, almost noiseless flick of her knife. “Do you see how just one tap should suffice?”

  Lili banged the egg harder than necessary, and the top broke off in a jagged tear, splattering tiny beads of yolk on her hand. A grimace flashed across the baroness’s usually expressionless face. Pursing her lips, Lili dabbed at her fingers with her napkin in a show of what she hoped was exquisite delicacy.