To Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

12 Sept.1 68 5

This morning I was summoned to the comparatively spacious and splendid apartments of a Lady in Waiting to the Dauphine, in the South Wing of the palace adjacent to the apartments of the Dauphine herself.

The lady in question is the duchesse d’Oyonnax. She has a younger sister who is the marquise d’Ozoir and who happens to be visiting Versailles with her daughter of nine years.

The girl seems bright but is half dead with asthma. The marquise ruptured something giving birth to her and cannot have any more children.

The d’Ozoirs are one of the rare exceptions to the general rule that all French nobles of any consequence must dwell at Versailles-but only because the Marquis has responsibilities at Dunkirk. In case you have not been properly maintaining your family trees of the European nobility, Doctor, I will remind you that the Marquis d’Ozoir is the bastard son of the duc d’Arcachon.

Who, when he was a stripling of fifteen, begat the future marquis off his grandmama’s saucy maid-companion-the poor girl had been dragooned into teaching the young Duke his first love-lesson.

The duc d’Arcachon did not actually take a wife until he was twenty-five, and she did not produce a viable child (Etienne d’Arcachon) for three years after that. So the bastard was already a young man by the time his legitimate half-brother was born. He was shipped off to Surat as an aide to Boullaye and Beber, who tried to establish the French East India Company there around 1666.

But as you may know the French E.I.C. did not fare quite as well as the English and Dutch have done. Boullaye and Beber began to assemble a caravan in Surat but had to depart before all preparations had been made, because the city was in the process of falling to the Mahratta rebels. They traveled into the interior of Hindoostan, hoping to establish trade agreements. As they approached the gates of a great city, a delegation of banyans-the richest and most influential commercants of that district-came out to greet them, carrying small gifts in bowls, according to the local custom. Boullaye and Beber mistook them for beggars and thrashed them with their riding-whips as any self-respecting upper-caste Frenchmen would do when confronted by pan-handling Vagabonds on the road.

The gates of the city were slammed in their faces. The French delegation were left to wander through the hinterland like out-castes. Quickly they were abandoned by the guides and porters they had hired at Surat, and began to fall prey to highwaymen and Mahratta rebels. Eventually they found their way to Shahjahanabad, where they hoped to beg for succor from the Great Mogul Aurangzeb, but they were informed he had retired to the Red Fort at Agra. They traveled to Agra only to be told that the officials they needed to prostrate themselves before, and to shower with gifts, in order to gain access to the Great Mogul, were stationed in Shahjahanabad. In this way they were shuttled back and forth along one of Hindoostan’s most dangerous roads until Boullaye had been strangled by dacoits and Beber had succumbed to disease (or perhaps it was the other way round) and most of their expedition had fallen victim to more or less exotic hazards.

The bastard son of the duc d’Arcachon survived all of them, made his way out to Goa, talked his way aboard a Portuguese ship bound for Mozambique, and pursued a haphazard course to the slave coast of Africa, where finally he spied a French frigate flying the coat of arms of the Arcachon family: fleurs-de-lis and Neeger-heads in iron collars. He persuaded some Africans to row him out to that ship in a long-boat and identified himself to her captain, who of course was aware that the duc’s illegitimate son was lost, and had been ordered to keep an ear to the ground for any news. The young man was brought aboard the ship.

And the Africans who had brought him out were rewarded with baptisms, iron jewelry, and a free trip to Martinique to spend the rest of their lives working in the agricultural sector.

This led to a career running slaves to the French West Indies. During the course of the 1670s the young man amassed a modest fortune from this trade and purchased, or was rewarded by the King with, the title of Marquis. Immediately he settled in France and married. For several reasons he and his wife have not established themselves near Versailles. For one thing, he is a bastard whom the duc d’Arcachon prefers to keep at arm’s length. For another, his daughter has asthma and needs to breathe sea-air. Finally, he has responsibilities along the sea-coast. You may know, Doctor, that the people of India believe in the perpetual re-incarnation of souls; likewise, the French East India Company might be thought of as a soul or spirit that goes bankrupt every few years but is always re-incarnated in some new form. Recently it has happened one more time. Naturally many of its operations are centered at Dunkirk, le Havre, and other sea-ports, and so that is where the Marquis and his family spend most of their time. But the Marquise comes to visit her sister the duchesse d’Oyonnax frequently, and brings the daughter with her.

As I mentioned, Oyonnax is a lady-in-waiting to the Dauphine, which is looked on as an extremely desirable position. The Queen of France died two years ago, and had been estranged from the King for many years at the time of her death. The King has Mme. de Maintenon now, but she is not officially his wife. Therefore, the most important woman at Versailles not really, but nominally, according to the rules of precedence is the Dauphine, wife of the King’s eldest son and heir apparent. Competition among the noble ladies of France for positions in her household is intense…

So intense that it has resulted in no fewer than four poisonings. I do not know if the sister of d’Ozoir poisoned anyone herself, but it is generally understood that she did allow her naked body to be used as a living altar during black masses held at an abandoned country church outside of Versailles. This was before the King became aware that his court was infested with homicidal Satanists, and instituted thechambre ardente to investigate these doings. She was indeed among the 400 -odd nobles arrested and interrogated, but nothing was ever proved against her.

All of which is to say that Mme. la duchesse d’Oyonnax is a great lady indeed, who entertains her sister Mme. la marquise d’Ozoir in grand style.

When I entered her salon I was surprised to see my employer, M. le comte de Beziers, seated on a stool so low and tiny it seemed he was squatting on his haunches like a dog. And indeed he had hunched his shoulders and was gazing sidelong at the Marquise like an old peasant’s cur anticipating the descent of the cudgel. The Duchess was in an armchair of solid silver and the Marquise was in a chair without arms, also in silver.

I remained standing. Introductions were made-here I elide all of the tedious formalities and small talk-and the Marquise explained to me that she had been looking for a tutor to educate her daughter. The girl already has a governess, mind you, but that woman is quite close to being illiterate and consequently the child’s mental development has been retarded or perhaps she is simply an imbecile. Somehow she had settled on me as being the most likely candidate this is the work of d’Avaux.

I was pretended to be astonished, and went on at some length protesting the decision on grounds that I was not equal to such a responsibility. I wondered aloud who would look after poor little Beatrice and Louis. M. le comte de Beziers gave me the happy news that he’d found an opportunity in the south and would soon be leaving Versailles.

You may not know that one of the only ways for a French nobleman to make money without losing caste is by serving as an officer on a merchant ship. Beziers has taken such a position on a French E.I.C. vessel that will be sailing out of the Bassin d’Arcachon come spring, bound for the Cape of Good Hope; points east; and if I’m any judge of such matters, David Jones’s Locker.