“They hoped only to preserve my innocence,” Marie-Josèphe said. “The holy sisters are innocent themselves. They know nothing of —” Her voice fell to a whisper.
“Whoring,” Lotte said out loud. “I’ll tell you of Ninon de L’Enclos — I met her, if His Majesty found out! — Or mama — but of course she isn’t a whore, she’s a courtesan.”
“What is that?”
Lotte explained. To Marie-Josèphe, the difference could dance on the head of a pin with a thousand angels.
In the convent, the nuns had repeated dire and ambiguous warnings that Marie-Josèphe never understood. Only once had she asked what “fornication” meant, exactly; a week alone in her room with nothing to eat but bread and water could not cure her unwomanly curiosity, but the punishment made her devious about how she found out answers. The punishment left her with the holy knowledge that intimate relations between a man and a woman were evil, obligatory in marriage, and unpleasant.
When she was Lotte’s age, Marie-Josèphe had wept for her dead mama and papa, who had loved each other while they lived, who loved her and Yves, who had been required to submit to distress and pain to create their children and their family. She wept because she and her future husband would have to do the same thing, if she wished to recreate the enchantment of her childhood. She hoped she was strong enough, and she wondered why God had made the world this way. She wondered if God had made a joke. But when she asked the priest at confession, he laughed. Then he told her people should not love each other, for such love was profane. People should love God, whose love was sacred. Then the priest assigned her such a heavy penance that she suspected she had nearly earned a beating.
Once Mother Superior lectured her students about fornication. She left them in such a state of confusion and excitement that at bedtime they whispered instead of sleeping.
When the holy sisters checked their charges at midnight, they heard the whispers. That night, and for a month afterwards, the sisters laid themselves down next to the students, rigid and wakeful, to prevent forbidden words and to enforce the proper sleeping position among their charges: on their backs, their hands on top of the covers.
“Now you know of Mlle de L’Enclos,” Lotte said, “who is a wit, who was the toast of Paris, a courtesan.”
“She committed mortal sin,” Marie-Josèphe said, appalled.
“Then everyone at court will go to hell!”
“Not everyone! Not Madame —”
“No, not poor mama,” Lotte said.
“And not His Majesty!”
“Not now, it’s true, but when he was young, why, Marie-Josèphe, he was the worst!”
“Oh, hush, how can you speak of His Majesty that way?”
“Where do you think the mouse turds came from!”
Marie-Josèphe tried to reconcile her belief that children resulted only from marriage, with the indisputable fact that the duke du Maine — and his brother and sisters and his half sister — existed.
“His Majesty can do as he wishes,” Marie-Josèphe said.
And perhaps, Marie-Josèphe thought, God makes the business of creating children less horrible, for his representative on Earth. That would explain why His Majesty had created so many.
“Not according to the Church — not according to Mme de Maintenon! The courtiers say she has him locked up in a chastity belt.”
Embarrassed, Marie-Josèphe held her silence. She, the elder, should be the more knowledgeable. Lotte had ventured into territory about which Marie-Josèphe was ignorant.
“And I’m not going to hell — not for that reason, in any event,” Marie-Josèphe said, trying to regain a foothold. “Nor are you —”
“Are you sure?” Lotte said slyly.
Marie-Josèphe forged ahead, unwilling to understand Lotte’s innuendo. “— or my brother —”
“Your beautiful brother!” Lotte exclaimed. “Yves is wasted on the priesthood, what a shame! Every woman at court is entranced by his eyes.”
“— Or — or —” Marie-Josèphe stumbled, knocked off-balance. “Or Count Lucien!”
Lotte stared at Marie-Josèphe, argued into concurrence. Then, to Marie-Josèphe’s astonishment, Lotte burst into a great rollicking unladylike laugh.
“Dear Marie-Josèphe!” she said. Her laugh turned to a snort, and she caught her breath. Marie-Josèphe had no idea why she was laughing. “You’re jesting with me, and here I thought you were serious, I thought, My friend is so learned in some ways, and so ignorant in others. But you knew everything all along.” She sighed. “So I suppose I mustn’t try to enhance my reputation with you, for you’ll know I’m exaggerating and I’ll lose your respect.”
“You couldn’t,” Marie-Josèphe said, grateful for a handhold in shifting sands. “That could never happen.”
“I wonder,” Lotte said softly.
oOo