# Chapter 11: The Death of a Duke and the Road to Paris
Hello everyone, it's me again! How are you all doing? Welcome back to our journey through this story, and today I will continue to walk with you and review Chapter 11 of "Mistress Of The Sun free digital audiobook." This is a chapter that breaks your heart in one breath and then steals the furniture in the next. It is a chapter of death, of greed, of broken mourning, and of a girl named Petite standing at the rail of a barge, watching her entire world drift away behind her. So settle in, because this one moves fast — and it moves hard.
The chapter opens in a sickroom thick with the smell of dying. Abbé Patin approaches the bed and announces, with the careful tenderness of a man who has done this too many times, that the Duke's devoted daughters have come to see him. He gestures Princess Marguerite forward. And Marguerite — poor, frightened Marguerite — turns to Petite and whispers, "What should I say?" She is stricken, frozen, a daughter who does not know how to say goodbye to a father who is already half gone. Petite, her own eyes filling with tears, whispers back the only mercy she can offer: *Tell him that you will pray for him.* So Marguerite steps to the foot of the bed and says it. "I will pray for you, Sire." Then Patin leans over the Duke and coaxes the blessing out of him, word by word, like a nurse spooning medicine into a failing mouth. "Repeat after me: 'I bless you.'" And the Duke, eyes closed, feeble as a dying candle, breathes out, "I bless you." Marguerite keeps her head down, her eyes nailed to the floor, and Petite — sensing the storm about to break behind her friend's eyes — quietly hands her a nose cloth. That small gesture, that tiny act of kindness in the middle of a deathbed, tells you everything about who Petite is.
Then Candlemas arrives, and with it the ritual of endings. Every beeswax candle in the château is carted to the chapel to be blessed. Every brittle sprig of holly, ivy, and mistletoe is taken down, as if the house itself is being stripped of its last bits of warmth. The princesses and their attendants gather in the library to read from their breviaries. And shortly after eleven o'clock, a funereal bell begins to toll. The Duke's soul has departed.
The girls fall to their knees and make the sign of the Cross as Madame de Raré leads them in prayer. But Petite does not pray — not yet. She counts. *One. Two. Three...* Outside, she hears the faint lowing of cattle being brought in from the hay meadows, and the scent of freshly baked bread drifts through the air, absurdly ordinary on the most extraordinary of mornings. *Four. Five. Six...* And then other bells join in, and the pealing turns raucous, joyful even — a clamor that sounds less like grief and more like a celebration, or a riot. Madame de Raré says uneasily that the soul of His Highness is ascending, and that they should rejoice. The youngest princess covers her ears and complains about the racket. It sounds, the narrator tells us, like pots and pans being beaten with metal objects.
And then they hear wagon wheels in the courtyard. Marguerite looks out and asks why the furniture is being removed. Because it is. Chairs, candlesticks, even the bed curtains are being handed out the windows to waiting carters. "We're being robbed," Madame de Raré whispers — and the youngest princess bursts into tears. Petite recognizes one of the thieves: a water boy. The governess grabs her cane and says they must alert the guards. And Nicole, sharp as ever, notes the terrible truth: *the guards are the robbers.* Four husky men in uniform are loading an ormolu mirror onto a cart.
Petite's stepfather appears in the doorway, bewildered and uncharacteristically undone, his ruff askew. He stammers that their esteemed father, the Duke — and the governess cuts him off. "We're being robbed." The Marquis answers with a shaky sigh that he comprehends. And there is nothing anyone can do. Everything has been ransacked, stolen the very moment the Duke breathed his last. Even the sheet that covered his body was stripped from him. Think about that. The man is not yet cold, and the house has already been picked clean. The Marquis then bows with grave formality and informs the princesses that it is their mother, the Duchess, who now appeals for them.
So Petite and Nicole stand behind the princesses as they pay their condolences to the Duchess, who reclines on her bed in a heavy black gown, her head draped in a lace-edged veil of black crêpe. The room has already been hung in black, the one mirror covered. Two attendants in black sit by the fire, making mourning jewelry from the Duke's hair. The maid of honor reads a prayer aloud for the soul in Purgatory, destitute of spiritual aid. "Amen," they all echo. "Eternal rest give unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him. Amen." And then Abbé Patin enters with a document, and says amen too.
The Duchess demands, "Where is my Duke?" Patin glances at the princesses with dismay. "With the Lord Almighty, Your Highness." And the Duchess, lost somewhere between grief and denial, answers, "Tell him to come home." It is a line that will hollow you out if you let it. Patin, gentle as ever, says he would if he could, but the good Lord wishes to keep him. "Amen," the Duchess sighs.
Then comes the will. The Duke has left everything to the Crown — his library of ancient texts, his collections of stamps, medals, and engraved stones, even his cabinets of curiosities. His tulip bulbs, however, he bequeathed to the Queen Mother. Whatever remained was to go to charitable foundations. And the Duchess, who until this moment has been drifting in a fog of grief, suddenly wakes from a long sleep and says, plainly and dangerously, "Send for my lawyer."
Now the story tilts. Princess Marguerite announces that they are moving to Paris. Immediately. The Duchess insists they take possession of the Duke's palace in Paris before la Grande Mademoiselle claims it — because that woman has countless castles, and they do not even have one. Petite sets aside her book, Ovid's *Metamorphoses*, and her stomach drops. Moving? To Paris? The city is dangerous. There are murderers there. Nicole, ever the optimist, simply says, "Alleluia." But Petite is thinking something else entirely: *The King lives in Paris — as well as my brother.* Yet she cannot help asking about the sacred observances. A widow is supposed to stay in a darkened room for forty days after her husband's death. The Duchess is leaving in two days. She is taking the Duke with her — his body, displayed at the Church of Saint-Sauveur, his heart to be embalmed and donated to the Jesuit convent that very afternoon. And the princesses are to follow in a week or two. Marguerite twirls, and under her skirt flashes a forbidden red flannel petticoat — a small, defiant flicker of life in a house of death.
On the twentieth of February, the princesses set out for Orléans. They are a party of forty-seven: the princesses and their attendants, the governess, the attendants' attendants, a cook and three helpers, grooms, equerries, and all the guards. The river, normally placid, is swollen and treacherous from bad weather. Teams of oxen pull the boats upriver against the wind. Carp are caught and cooked over charcoal burners on the blustery deck. Petite stands at the rail, watching the passing woods and undulating meadows, the horses cantering and tossing their heads in the fields — including a white horse, though it is dappled. She has never been so far from home.
From Orléans they travel north by coach, reaching the ancient hunting château of Fontainebleau on the sixth day. From there it is only one long day by barge to the city. They leave before sunrise, in the dark, with wolves howling in the distant woods. The sky lightens in brilliant hues. The girls play Put-and-Take — Petite wins ten sous — while their governess reads aloud from *The Book of Vices and Virtues*. Gradually the river opens onto a vast plain dotted with windmills. And then, suddenly, there it is on the distant horizon: Paris, its spires and towers rising up through a haze of smoke.
Here the story crosses into Part III, titled "The Enchanter." The river becomes congested, the water murky, the air scented with refuse. Windmills stand motionless against an ominous gray sky. Boats loaded with grain, livestock, bricks, and lumber seem barely able to float. Little Madeleine waves gaily at everything — even at some chickens bound by the feet and hanging woefully from a pole. Sprawling monasteries and cloisters give way to a patchwork of homesteads with gardens, vineyards, and pastures where animals pick at weeds. Pigs wander dirt roads lined with sod huts. A pack of snarling dogs circles an overturned baker's cart. Four barefoot children run along the shore, chasing a man driving a high gig with a thin cow tied behind. Laundry boats hug the shore, patched linens hanging from the riggings like sails.
And then, beyond the towpath, they see vast gardens and two enormous edifices: the royal palaces of the King — the ancient Tuileries and the newer Louvre — both empty now, because the Court is still in the south. They pass under a footbridge and pull up in front of a tower. As the barge jolts against a crowded dock, their captain yells instructions to the workers, and the governess grabs Princess Madeleine's apron strings before she can climb out. "Smells like a chamber pot," Marguerite says, pressing a nose cloth to her face. Nicole asks why they are stopping here, since the city proper is farther upriver. The captain explains that the Palais d'Orléans is on the other side, outside the city walls, in the countryside — they must take boats across. They wait as their papers are checked, the toll taxes paid, the barge-owner, cook, and tow-boys tipped, and their trunks reloaded onto passage boats. At last they set off, eleven laden vessels perilously winding through the busy river traffic, dodging the flyboats darting in and out. A church bell is ringing for vespers as they pull up near a—
And there the chapter cuts off, mid-breath, leaving us hanging on the dock with the smell of the river in our noses and a whole new city waiting to swallow Petite whole.
**Reader's Impressions & Star Rating**
What struck me most about this chapter is how brutally honest it is about death — not the poetic, gilded death of courtly romances, but the real thing: a dying man whispering a blessing he can barely form, a daughter who does not know what to say, and servants stripping the sheets off a corpse before the bells have even stopped ringing. The looting scene is unforgettable precisely because it is so petty and so human. Guards carrying mirrors out the window while a Duchess asks her dead husband to come home — it is grotesque and heartbreaking at the same time.
And Petite. Oh, Petite. She is the quiet center of every scene, counting bell tolls, handing over a nose cloth, recognizing a water boy among thieves, and secretly thinking about the King and her brother. The line about the King living in Paris tells us everything about where this story is heading. The forbidden red petticoat, the game of Put-and-Take, the windmills emerging from the mist — Sauvé weaves small domestic details into a vast historical canvas, and it works beautifully. My only small complaint is that the chapter ends so abruptly, mid-sentence, that it feels almost cruel. But that is also the point.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Rating: 4.7 / 5 Stars
**Next Chapter Prediction**
The next chapter will open with the princesses finally reaching the Palais d'Orléans — and I suspect the reception will be anything but warm. La Grande Mademoiselle will likely already have her eyes on the property, and the Duchess, freshly widowed and freshly furious, will throw herself into a legal and social war to claim what is hers. Meanwhile, Petite is about to step into a Paris that is noisy, filthy, thrilling, and dangerous. With the Court still in the south, I predict she will not meet the King just yet — but she will begin to hear about him, and about the strange, magnetic world of the court that awaits. The title "The Enchanter" suggests someone new is coming: a figure who will cast a spell over Petite, or over the story itself. My guess is that this chapter will plant the first seeds of the romance that gives this novel its name — and that Petite's life is about to change forever.
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