# Chapter 26: The Hidden Mother and the Prince of Shadows
Hello everyone, it's me again! How are you all doing? Today I will continue to walk with you and review Chapter 26 of "Mistress Of The Sun free digital audiobook". This is a chapter that cuts straight to the heart—a chapter of weddings and secrets, of a hidden house and a hidden child, of a mother’s cruel rejection and a king’s mortal limits. So take my hand, and let us step back into the gilded, dangerous world of Petite and Louis.
The chapter opens in the glow of a wedding, but not a joyful one for everyone. Jean, Petite’s brother, is marrying Gabrielle Glé de la Cotardais—a noble, beautiful, young woman of seventeen, rich enough to bring forty thousand livres a year. To the courtiers watching, it is a bewildering match. Why would such a prize give her hand to a nobody? But Petite knows the answer. Louis has poured royal favor upon the La Vallière family, and envy is already curling through the pews like smoke. Petite sits with her mother, Françoise, who murmurs about fortunes and furnishings with a dangerous lack of discretion. Petite keeps signaling her to hush, because at Court, envy is not merely ugly—it is lethal.
Above them, Louis and the Queen take their seats in the tribune. Petite feels a wave of sick apprehension. She is carrying the King’s child, and the sooner she disappears into hiding, the better. Her mother, meanwhile, seems almost intoxicated by the family’s new wealth. “We’re richer than most of them now—thanks to Jean,” she says, lifting her chin. But Petite can only think of the secret swelling beneath her laced bodice.
By the time Monsieur Colbert, the new minister of finance, finds her a hideaway, Petite is far along. He has been busy, he explains, swallowed by the duties of his new position. Petite sympathizes, but hiding her condition has become agony. Clorine laces her painfully tight. The freezing weather lets her wear heavy woolens. Henriette, at Louis’s command, provides cover by giving Petite quieter tasks and eventually announcing that her maid of honor needs leave for reasons of health. Still, time is running out. At last, Colbert secures a house: the Hôtel Brion.
It is small—two floors, twenty-four paces long and eight wide—but sufficient. The entry pleases Petite, and the location is excellent, looking onto the park of the Palais Royale, hidden yet close. Louis will be able to see her often. Colbert leads her up a circular stair. There is a guard room and kitchen below, four chambers for domestics, and a personal maid’s room near Petite above. The sitting room is bright, overlooking a garden and a small courtyard. The furnishings are opulent: gilded chairs, lemon-yellow damask curtains with tassels and fringe. The bookshelf is filled with classics—Aristophanes, Homer, Plutarch—because Cardinal Richelieu once used this little house as his library.
Petite touches a white marble horse used as a bookend and thinks of Diablo, of her lost youth. She runs her fingers over tooled leather covers. There is even a set of Virgil, which would have pleased Abbé Patin from her girlhood at Blois. But the memory brings shame, because she knows where she is now and why. In the corner stands a large rosewood and ivory theorbo, a lute with a long neck, and beside it a guitar. Notation for a duet by Robert de Visée waits on a stand. The guitar was made by Checchucci of Livorno in the reign of Henry the Great—and Louis selected it for her himself. The instrument is slender, with a vaulted rosewood back and ebony ribs. When Petite strums the gut strings, the tones are rich and resonant. “Fit for a king,” Colbert says matter-of-factly, opening the door to the bedchamber.
A gold perfume burner scents the air with attar of rose. Through the window facing the massive poster bed, Petite can see elm trees. Our child will be born in this room, she thinks, feeling the baby stir. Clorine pushes open the double doors to the dressing room, where a small basin on claw-and-ball feet waits for washing feet. Then Colbert opens a small chamber: Clorine’s room. Clorine, who has never had a room of her own, is stunned.
Petite lowers herself onto the chaise longue, hand on her corseted belly, while a fire wards off the autumn chill. She thanks Colbert for going to such trouble. The courtiers call him “The North” because of his cold demeanor, but Petite finds him refreshingly direct. He comes from the mercantile class—his grandfather was a cloth merchant—yet she respects him. His wife helped furnish the house, he says, and the brocades and linens are of the finest quality. Petite assures him that His Majesty will be pleased.
Then comes a pounding at the door. It is likely the men with her belongings. Colbert suggests Petite withdraw from view, because one of the movers might recognize her. She hides in the necessary closet, listening to men grunt and shift trunks. When they are gone, Clorine calls her out. Everything has arrived, even the dirty laundry. Petite sees with relief the statue of the Virgin and her keepsake box. She loops her rosary around the Virgin and sets it on the prie-dieu. Then she opens the keepsake box and takes out the branch—only two leaves left now—and wedges it into the frame of a mirror.
Madame Colbert arrives promptly. She installs the cook downstairs, but Petite is not to be introduced. Only Clorine and the chambermaid will ever be allowed to see “Mademoiselle du Canard,” the consort of a noble who will always arrive masked. Madame Colbert is short, round, adorned with frivolous gewgaws, and still speaks with a Touraine accent. She remembers meeting Petite at Blois, long ago, during one of la Grande Mademoiselle’s visits. “Were you the skinny little girl with a limp?” she asks, then embraces Petite warmly. She chatters about her husband, Colby, who works sixteen hours a day, even feast days, and about their five children. Petite cannot imagine this outgoing woman in the embrace of the stern finance minister, but clearly they have made a life together.
Then comes the arrangement that chills Petite to the bone. Monsieur and Madame Beauchamp, a couple long in the Colberts’ employ, have agreed to look after the baby. They do not know the child is the King’s. They have been told that Colbert’s brother’s fiancée found herself in a delicate condition, and the family is under obligation to care for the infant. As soon as Petite’s pains begin, a courier will alert them. They live in the parish of Saint-Leu, out near porte Saint-Denis. They will be provided with a coach and a charcoal foot-warmer. Madame Beauchamp was wet nurse to two of Madame Colbert’s own babies. She is clean, and her milk is excellent.
Petite sets down her dish of tea lest it spill. She has accepted that the child will never be hers, but she had not realized he would be taken from her immediately. She thinks of the mistresses of past kings—Diane de Poitiers, Agnès Sorel, Gabrielle d’Estrées—and wonders if they too had to hide away and give up their babies. A sudden sympathy rises in her for these women the court regards with such contempt. She asks if the Beauchamps will hire a coach. They will. A charcoal foot-warmer too. Madame Colbert tells her not to worry. Porte Saint-Denis isn’t far, Petite says hopefully. I could walk. But Madame Colbert warns that the cemetery lies between, and the stink of the dead would make her faint—or worse. She offers to arrange a visit, but says frankly it is best not to think of it. She sent all her babies out, and look, she says, proudly raising her breasts. It will be difficult for one week, but soon Petite will feel normal again.
Petite smiles grimly, concealing her dismay. Madame Colbert may have sent her children to wet nurses, but she got them back and raised them herself. She does not understand the difference. Then Madame Colbert pats Petite’s shoulder and says, “Think of the King, my dear girl, think of his needs. Think of the glorious service you have the honor to provide.” Petite reins in her tongue. It appalls her to think of her time with Louis as “service.” Madame Colbert also asks if she has met Monsieur Blucher, the midwife. Petite falters. She did not like discussing such intimate matters with a man. But Madame Colbert assures her he attended her last lying-in and is very, very good. He has promised the King that Petite will stay nice and tight. She grins, forming three chins.
Trapped in the house, Petite grows bored and desperate for air. She begs Clorine to let her go at least to Mass. The servants go to church at seven, and Notre-Dame de Recouvrance is not far. It is a shabby little church—not even the servants go there. She will not be seen. Clorine worries about leaving the house empty, but at last relents. Petite goes alone, disguised in Clorine’s old clothes, her curls tucked under a bonnet. If she feels even a twinge, she promises, she will return.
Going to Mass regularly lifts her spirits, and she continues even when November turns icy. On the twenty-fourth, a Friday, she goes to Confession. “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. I am about to give birth to a bastard.” She stays to pray two Hail Marys and three Our Fathers before taking Communion. She has been afraid of going into childbed unconfessed. Women sometimes die in childbed, and she cannot stop fearing what lies ahead. She remembers whispered stories from her youth—deformed babies, women torn asunder, cries of terrible pain. They say the more pleasure a woman experiences during congress, the more pain she suffers giving birth. And Petite has certainly experienced pleasure with Louis.
It is past eight when she steps out of the musty church into bright winter light. Boys are playing noisily in the square, kicking an inflated pig bladder filled with pebbles. She kicks it back and hurries on, careful of the frozen mud. As she nears the gate into the Palais Royale gardens, a hand touches her shoulder. She turns to see a middle-aged woman in a stiff figure-of-eight ruff and a powdered wig, tightly frizzled and covered by a net of black beads. It is her mother.
At first Petite is confused. Is Françoise not in the country with Jean and his wife? And is this truly her mother? The woman has paled her face with white lead and painted her cheeks red. A servant girl Petite does not recognize hovers behind, laden with parcels. But yes, it is her. Françoise looks at Petite’s impossible-to-hide condition, even under the felt cloak. “Forgive me, Madame,” she says. “I mistook you for my daughter.” Petite backs away, nearly tumbling into a pit of sewage. She shakes her head, not daring to speak. She is masked and veiled—how could she be recognized? Then Françoise glances down at Petite’s boot, its thick sole. “Aye,” she says slowly, looking Petite up and down with a cynical smile. “You are not my daughter—for I have disowned her.” And with that, she turns and walks briskly away, followed by the servant girl, who smirks back over her shoulder.
Petite stands watching until they disappear. Disowned. She fights back angry tears. She thinks of running after her mother, rebuking her, throwing herself into her arms, begging mercy—demanding it. She is nineteen, and sinfully with child, yes, but Louis is her only link to the world, and he is so rarely with her. She chose her path, but it is not easy. Now, approaching childbed, she longs for a mother’s counsel and protection—but that is never to be.
Church bells ring. A beggar woman hobbles up, leaning on a stick. “A sou?” She pokes dirty fingers into Petite’s belly. “For a blessing on it.” Petite shakes her head, alarmed by the old woman’s evil eye. “A curse, then?” the woman cackles. Petite turns and hurries back to the safety of her hideaway. Clorine exclaims that she is late and demands to know what happened. The air smells of jasmine. Petite says she needs to lie down. Disowned. She can still hear the contempt in her mother’s voice.
Then a man speaks. “Is there a problem?” It is Louis. Petite gropes toward him. Why is it so dark? She touches a wall, feels the flock-work design. “Thank God, you’re here.” He asks what happened, if it is her time. Clorine says she is unsteady. Louis’s hand is on her arm, reassuring and strong. “Why is it so dark in here?” Petite asks, shivering. “Dark?” Louis sounds close. “I can’t see you,” she says, stumbling. He holds her steady. “What do you mean?” She reaches out, runs her fingers over his face, feels his nose, his angular cheeks, the stubble on his chin. This is not the dark of night. This dark is deeper. “It’s… it’s daylight,” she hears him say. Concern fills his voice, and that frightens her. Saint Michel, I pray to you, help me in this world of darkness, defend me against the spirits of wickedness. Louis urges her to lie down. She takes cautious steps until she feels the bed at her knees. She gropes for the pillows, lets herself down with his hand at her elbow. “Louis, I can’t see a thing,” she says, her voice breaking.
With repeated bleeding and herbal infusions, Petite’s vision slowly returns, but she suffers debilitating headaches and dizziness. Louis, alarmed, makes her promise not to leave her hideaway until after the birth of their child. “You should not have been going out at all. Look what you risked.” In a moment of weakness, Petite asks him to heal her. His touch alone cures hundreds of the Evil. But he smiles sadly. “My love, that’s for the people. I can’t really—” He shrugs and throws up his hands. “I’m mortal.” She embraces him, not wanting him to see the disappointment in her eyes, the disillusion of her childlike faith.
He is with her when her labor begins, four weeks later. It is the eighteenth of December, a Tuesday, and he is on his way to Saint-Germain-en-Laye for a hunt. As he puts on his feathered hat, Petite grasps his arm and lowers herself onto a wooden chair. The pain passes, and she takes a deep breath. She lifts her face for a kiss, but it happens again. She grasps her belly, muffling a cry. Clorine appears at the door. “Your Majesty?” Louis kneels, taking Petite’s hands, waiting for the contraction to pass. “I have to leave you.” She knows. The hunt was organized long ago; four foreign ambassadors await him. He says he will send for Blucher, then stands. “Don’t worry,” she says, then gasps as another wave of pain comes.
Clorine stands by as Monsieur Blucher examines Petite. “She will be some time yet,” he tells Clorine, arranging his implements and positioning the birthing chair. He tells her to call him when the pains come one upon the other, then lists everything Clorine and the chambermaid must do: stoke the fires, draw, filter and heat water, get vinegar from the cellar, melt unsalted butter, prepare compresses, bandages, draw sheets, wax cloths for binding the stomach and breasts. But not before. Then he plucks Pascal’s Provincial Letters from a side table and retires to the sitting room. Soon Clorine can hear him snoring.
She looks over the syringes, the skein of linen thread, two strings of four-ply thread, a long sharp darning needle, a thin silver tube, two bottles—one labeled Ipecacuanha and another Kermes Mineral—blunt-ended scissors, a number of knives, and most chilling, a large metal hook to haul the baby out if it died in the womb. There is even a vial of holy water in case an emergency baptism is called for. Clorine crosses herself and prays: may the baby be born straight, may my mistress survive. Infants born on the third day after the new moon rarely lived. Petite moans for her rosary. Clorine tucks the worn wooden beads into her mistress’s clenched fist. She wishes she had the gumption to ask the King for a garment he’d worn at the moment of conception. The smell would have helped draw the baby out.
Then the newborn is in Petite’s arms. The labor has been shockingly painful, but as soon as she sees her baby, all is forgotten and forgiven. A big and hungry boy, he latches on eagerly. The pains, mercifully, have not gone on long—only eighteen hours—but it was a difficult delivery. “He’s handsome, just like his father,” Clorine says, checking the pillow under Petite’s knees. Petite marvels, cupping the infant’s soft head. “Charles,” she whispers. Louis’s son. A ferocious love fills her—love and fear. Heavenly Father, protect this precious little one.
“Mademoiselle?” It is the surgeon, drying his hands. “My instructions are to send the infant away before sunrise.” Petite nods, but clasps the baby to her breast. My little prince, she thinks. He will be baptized in the morning by his new “parents.” She thinks to baptize him herself, with a spoon of wine and some garlic, as Henry the Great had been baptized—Henry the Great, her son’s great-grandfather, and the grandson of her own dear father. How proud he might have been—or shamed? Yes, shamed.
Clorine goes to the window facing the garden and parts the heavy damask drapes. “The sky is beginning to lighten now,” she says, turning to Petite with tears in her eyes. This is too great a sacrifice, Petite thinks, caressing the baby’s fine hair with her lips and inhaling his sweet scent. The baby makes a little chirping sound. Her heart would surely break. And with that, the chapter closes—and the novel turns toward Part V: Beloved.
Reader's Impressions & Star Rating: This chapter is devastating in the best possible way. It gives us the glittering surface of Court—weddings, royal favor, hidden houses with gilded chairs and lemon-yellow damask—and then strips it away to reveal the lonely, brutal cost of being the King’s secret mistress. Petite’s temporary blindness after her mother disowns her feels almost biblical: the outer darkness mirrors the inner wound. Louis’s inability to heal her, his simple “I’m mortal,” is a quiet, heartbreaking crack in the myth of the Sun King. And the birth of Charles, followed immediately by the order to send him away before sunrise, is one of the most painful scenes in the book. It is not just history; it is a mother’s grief made flesh. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Rating: 4.9 / 5 Stars
Next Chapter Prediction: The next chapter will likely open with spring and Louis’s grand festival at Versailles, “Pleasures of the Enchanted Island.” Publicly, it honors the two queens, but secretly it is all for Petite—a dazzling distraction from the child she has lost and the mother who has disowned her. I predict Petite will be drawn deeper into the King’s enchanted world, masked and hidden, watching her own life become a spectacle she cannot fully enjoy. Charles will remain a secret ache, and the Beauchamp household near porte Saint-Denis may become a dangerous thread. Meanwhile, the Court’s envy will not sleep. I suspect a new rival, or at least the shadow of one, will begin to circle Louis’s attention, because Petite’s position is built on love, secrecy, and sacrifice—and in Versailles, none of those are ever safe for long.
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