Charlotte

By Emanuela Choppin de Janvry and Hermine de Clauzade

“…if you had opened your window that night from the castle, you would have enjoyed a true spectacle. She was standing beneath the vastness of the sky, just a sliver above the grass, brushing against it with a generous thin dress, barefoot. Swinging her hips and putting her arms up, she was getting into a tender dance, caressing the flower buds, brushing the ground, the tree barks and the wet leaves of the night.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Dec 16, 2022
• ISBN: 9781528946506

Emanuela Choppin de Janvry

While graduating in International Relations, Emanuela was writing short stories and poems to make her sisters laugh. She discovered this passion when she was eight, hand-in-hand with her favourite authors: Roald Dahl, Raymond Queneau and Alexandre Dumas.

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About the Author

While graduating in International Relations, Emanuela was writing short stories and poems to make her sisters laugh. She discovered this passion when she was eight, hand-in-hand with her favourite authors: Roald Dahl, Raymond Queneau and Alexandre Dumas.

Dedication

To my family and friends.

Copyright Information ©

Emanuela Choppin de Janvry 2022

Illustrated by Hermine de Clauzade

The right of Emanuela Choppin de Janvry and Hermine de Clauzade to be identified as author and illustrator of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781528933865 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781528946506 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2022

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

1 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5AA

Preface

The monumental work, which happens to be the memories of the Duke of Saint-Simon, has pushed me to write this story. This novel might be a tribute to Saint-Simon’s masterpiece and to all the tender ones in this world, those who choose love and mildness every day. We will never have enough of those values neither of the courage of heart of these people. It might be a tribute to the silent heroes of yesterday and to those of today. To those fathers, mothers, brothers, friends who carry each day the pain in their heart. It is a tribute to time passing, to the errors understood. It might be a cry of sorrow for the most lacerating period of history that we, as the people of this world, repeat over and over again.

Maybe, once we will be finished paying the fees on childhood, we will have time to love. Maybe someone will finally teach us the art of resetting the count to zero.

Dear reader, please excuse my lack of accuracy concerning some locations. Some of them really existed while some never did.

Chapter I

A Saturday of September 1696, under the boiling heat of the sun and beneath a lush leaf of cabbage, a small creature came into the world. She was given the name ‘Charlotte’, which comes from ‘Karl’, meaning strong. Whether this name sounds appropriate to you, dear reader, you can decide.

At that time, the King and his court had been residing in Versailles for more than thirteen years; Giambattista Tiepolo was born in Venice; Love’s Last Shift was performed for the first time at the Theatre Royal in London and the courtesans perfectly knew how to behave following l’Étiquette, the rules and behaviour to adopt at the royal court. A few of them were present during the Petit levé of the King, the moment when he was dressed and visited by the doctors. One hundred courtesans appeared during the Grand levé, when the King was having a light breakfast, composed of a simple broth. This whitish mixture was made of three liquid ingredients, broth, milk and wine, accompanied by some solid components, like one or two egg yolks, sugar, cinnamon, and a few clovesi. Not everybody liked it in the court, but it was fine for the king.

The rest of the schedule was chronologically fixed, at least as precisely as the number of cloves in the broth. At 08:30 am, the king would say his first prayer of the day in front of the courtesans. For lunch, the king would eat alone in his room. At 2 pm, he would hunt or it could have been that he was having a walk in the gardens with some courtesans following him. After supper, the King and the Queen would conversate or they would pray, and at last they would go to sleep at 11 pm, adopting almost the same observances as in the morning. The following days would be identical; as well as the day following the following day, and the day following the following day of the following day. The routine was the same even in times when the royal couple was travelling.

As the days passed, the creature we introduced above was growing up with her tender mother, Marie-Gabrielle, and her strict father, the Duke of Saint-Simon.

Marie-Gabrielle, or simply Madame de Saint-Simon, was everything a husband could desire and everything a child could wish for in a mother. She was sweet as sugar and warm as an oven. She was beautiful, modest and deeply in love with her husband. She was respected by everyone in the court for her kind manners. Her husband, a history-lover, was passionate for the things of the state. Two madames were ruling his heart, Madame de Saint-Simon and Madame l’Étiquette. He knew every single thing about both his madames. He was aware of what they needed and when, what to do with them and how, when and where to be present and how to show up in society respecting them like a faithful knight.

Charlotte met Madame l’Étiquette at a very young age. She learnt very quickly to appreciate this madame and to stick to her rules, such as not talking loudly, not saying bad words, reading, sewing, not crying, conversing not only with the valet, the lackey and the cook but also with the count, the prince and the king. Charlotte tried to comply with her as precisely as a child of her age could, but Madame l’Étiquette was not a ruling Madame of her heart. Some parts of this Madame were incomprehensible to Charlotte. She could not understand why it would be ‘inappropriate’ to hug the son of the Monsieur le pâtissierii, or why she could not lift her dress up to her knees. She would neither understand why Louis XIV looked so severe with the little ones, or why the Queen wore those huge dresses within which she could barely move. All things apart, there was one activity Charlotte loved when she was in Versailles: being outside, washing off the acid smell of the city and replacing it with the softer one of the grass while playing with the yews and fountains of the gardens. She would seal all her thoughts in her heart and she would talk about it with her friends: the flowers, the bowers, the hours.

As time passed, her hair grew longer and frizzier. It became hard for her to wear wigs. Her mane