I shared a large dormitory room with the other girls of my age. Grandchamp was indeed exclusive, where wealthy families boarded their daughters. Some of the girls gave themselves airs because of their titles. But others, like Marie Colombier, whom I befriended after my arrival, were like me—of uncertain provenance, with mothers who toiled as—
“Demimondaines,” Marie whispered one day after we’d been sent to the garden to study our roles for the upcoming annual Nativity play, performed in honor of the archbishop of Paris, who was one of the convent’s benefactors. I had turned eleven; the last two years had passed swiftly, and I was now old enough to be assigned a supporting role in the play. I’d desperately wanted the lead as the archangel Raphael, memorizing every line, but the nuns allocated the part to Louise, an older girl with a family of status.
Now I looked up from the three lines I had as a shepherd in the play to meet Marie’s mischievous gaze. She was dark-haired, with velvety brown eyes. I envied her beauty and her budding figure—I was still narrow as a twig—as well as her astonishing worldliness.
“Demimondaine?” I said in bewilderment. “Whatever is that?”
“Not what. Who.” Marie rolled her eyes. “A courtesan, silly. A cocotte. A grande horizontale. Remember? Like the Magdalene.” As I went still, she added, “Surely you must know. How else could our mothers afford this place? We’re not Rothschilds, Sarah.”
“But that must mean our mothers are…whores?” I breathed out the unspeakable word in a hushed voice. I only knew it because of her. The story of Mary Magdalene had provoked many questions from me that the nuns refused to answer, so Marie had finally taken it upon herself to explain what Mary was. I thought it a very ugly word, but as she defined it for me, I realized it described my mother to perfection. Julie’s salon and her suitors, that ghoul Morny tiptoeing from her chamber in the early morning hours—this surely was how she must earn her living.
Marie said, “It isn’t how they would describe themselves; they don’t sell themselves in the street. Demimondaines must be very sophisticated. They are…” She paused, searching for the right word. “Entertainers. Like actresses.”
“Entertainers?” I felt a wave of revulsion, recalling my mother’s insistence that I must learn proper manners, her chiding of me to respect her suitors. “How could any woman ever do such a thing with smelly old men?”
She giggled. “Well, if the smelly old man pays enough…”
I resisted a shudder. But even as I did, I lost my fear of my mother. I even felt a slight stir of pity for her, with the confidence of the very young that no matter what travails life might have in store for me, I would never stoop so low.
Marie told me that becoming a demimondaine was a coveted and difficult endeavor. Penniless girls from all over Europe flocked to Paris as my mother had, in the hope of transforming themselves into one of these scintillating creatures who never expressed in public what they were about. There was complex language involved, Marie said, made up of subtle gestures and expressions that conveyed what the lips could not. While every girl who entered the trade did so in the hope of success, only the most skilled ever achieved it.
“My mother told me of one who snared a prince’s son,” Marie said. “He was so in love with her, he gambled away his inheritance to win her favors. She fleeced him of every sou, then threw him aside for another. He challenged her lover to a duel and got himself shot. His father was so enraged, he threatened to see her run out of Paris, but she seduced the man instead. He made her so rich, she eventually retired to a château.” Marie let out a sigh, as if she found this crude tale irresistible.
“My mother is nothing like that,” I said, thinking of her crowded flat and overstuffed salon, of Julie’s glazed fixture of a smile, as if a single misstep might cast her into ruin. “I don’t think she’s very successful or rich at all.”
“Well, she must have something to place you here. Imagine it. To live as you please and make your own fortune: it’s a freedom that of all women, only a courtesan enjoys.”
I considered this. “Is it really freedom? Or another form of slavery, like the Hebrews in Egypt? Whatever these women possess can be taken away from them, can’t it?”
“The Hebrews in Egypt?” Marie laughed. “Oh, Sarah, that was centuries ago! You don’t understand. Wait until you are older.”
I gave her a narrow-eyed look. Marie was a year older than me—a fact she often cited to assert her advantage—but I didn’t think age was going to change my mind. Still, I also didn’t go so far as to confide my suspicion that it was Morny, not Julie, who was financing my education here. Now that I knew the truth, that bump I’d seen at my mother’s midriff must signal another child, perhaps one sired by the duc himself. Julie hadn’t sent me away to safeguard me. She was preparing to bear another bastard; as she had said, I was indeed an inconvenience.
Believing I’d been sent away to make way for another child bolstered my determination that my time at Grandchamp mustn’t be wasted. I must prove myself, and so I plunged into preparations for the play with renewed fervor. All the parents and guardians of the school’s pupils would attend; Rosine’s promise to visit me regularly had gone unfulfilled, though at least she sent a packet of fresh linens every month. But the presence of the archbishop of Paris might spur even my neglectful aunt and mother to make their long-overdue appearance, if only to ensure that I wasn’t signaled out as the only girl at Grandchamp without any kin to support her performance.
I must shine on the stage, even as a shepherd with a few measly lines.
IV
On the day of the play, I was the first to rise. It was an icy morning in late November, as the annual Nativity play took place before the actual holiday. In the dull light filtering through the high windows above the orderly rows of cots, I hurried to smooth my tangled hair into a braid and make up my cot with the tucked blanket corners that the nuns insisted upon, while the other girls grumbled about how cold the flagstone floor was.
The nuns came to escort us to the chapel. During our prayers, I found myself begging God, not to make me more pious or virtuous or help me find a husband when the time came—as I suspected most of the girls did—but to make me extraordinary in my role. Then, lowering my eyes in a plea of forgiveness for my vanity, I asked that He, in His infinite wisdom, might strike Louise with a mild colic to impede her from performing that night.
“Blessed Lord, I don’t ask this for myself,” I whispered, “but for Your greater glory. She cannot play the role as I can. She eats too many sweets. Whoever heard of a fat archangel?”
When we went through the final rehearsal on the small stage with its hand-painted backdrop in the main hall, I noticed Louise was looking peaked. The thought that God had heeded me so promptly gave me a secret thrill, making me forgot my own entrance. Sœur Bernadette, who oversaw the production, chided, “Sarah Henriette, you are late on your mark. Get your head out of the clouds and step to your place.”