The Vampire Girl #Winterfest2020

4

By the time they reached the wooden shed, Wilhelm was barely able to move, and Camilla had dragged him along with her for a while. It was clear to both of them that he wouldn't be able to write down her story and would have to rely on his fickle human memory if she decided to let him live. But at least she made an effort to keep him alive because she sat him down on the only chair in the small room and handed him an old blanket which she had immediately spotted in a corner. She remained standing and walked around the small room in circles as she began to tell him the story of her life.

"Believe it or not, I was born in a hut that was only a stone's throw away from the château de Versailles 137 years ago. I was the illegitimate daughter of a cook and a nobleman - who was also a vampire.

As extraordinary as it may seem now, I did not think the lifestyle at the palace was special at all when I lived there. It was the only lifestyle I knew until I was thirteen.

On the other hand, I have to admit that the world back then was quite different from the one you know. For example, the United States did not exist at the time. I was born in 1776, a few weeks before the document that you know as the Declaration of Independence was signed. The 'war in the English colonies' was the first political event of any importance that I remember because a lot of people were talking about the American Revolution at the palace. We were French and had our own colonies in America in those days, and we were proud that there was no unrest there.

Moreover, there were a lot of things we didn't have at the palace even though the château de Versailles was the most modern home of its day: We had no electric light, so the palace was illuminated with thousands of candles every night. We watched theatre plays or listened to live concerts given by the best musicians and bands in Europe because we didn't have cinemas or gramophones. We had paintings of our loved ones, not photographs, wrote letters because telephones did not exist, and we traveled in carriages drawn by horses since motor cars and trains had not been invented yet. There were some fearless individuals who visited the palace with their ballons, however, and I've often wondered what they would make of modern aeroplanes.

The court was quite a large one; 20,000 people were present at the palace every day. And mind you, even though we already had a few indoor toilets with actual seats, and the queen even had a flush toilet, we didn't have enough toilets for everybody! That's why I never hid under a staircase or behind a curtain when I was playing hide and seek with the other children... You never knew who you would bump into there, or what things your feet could get caught up in! Also, if you walked too close to the actual palace, the chances were high that some servant would empty a chamber pot on your head.

Our standards of personal hygiene at the palace were a nightmare in general. We did have bathtubs, but everyone preferred cold over hot water because they thought cold water was better for one's health and would keep one's skin young. But most people didn't like those cold baths and avoided them, so they sprayed a lot of perfume on themselves to escape their own body odours!

As you can imagine, the intense smell of Versailles has never really left my nostrils!

But I think you're not that interested in the daily life of a commoner. In the past, whenever I mentioned that I had grown up at the palace, all everyone wanted to know was what our king and queen were really like. I don't know a lot about that because I didn't know them. I knew some of their children though, especially the poor dauphin, who was younger than I was. All I can say about Marie-Antoinette's children is that they were really nice and well-behaved.

My father knew the queen personally and always claimed she had had it coming for a long time. In fact, he knew one of her brothers from the time he had spent in Vienna, and it was Marie-Antoinette's brother who provided him with a letter of recommendation for the court. When my father arrived in Versailles, he called himself Vicomte Jean-Jacques des Étoiles, and it was at least true that he belonged to that noble family. There were only a couple of people who knew the truth about him - such as his "nephew," the previous owner of the family's title and property in Lorraine who had "adopted" his ancestor on his deathbed.