Memoirs of the Courts of Louis XV and XVI. — Volume 6: Being Secret Memoirs of Madame Du Hausset, Lady's Maid to Madame De Pompadour, and of the Princess Lamballe

What did the queen really think when the mob came for her? What whispers passed between the king's mistress and his ministers when no court official was present? Madame Du Hausset knew, because she was there, threading through the gilded corridors as lady's maid to the most powerful woman in France. This memoir takes us inside the court of Louis XV and into the collapsing world of Louis XVI, offering an eyewitness account of the French Revolution from those who lived closest to the throne. We see Marie Antoinette's desperation as Versailles descends into chaos, feel the shock of the Bastille's fall ripple through halls that had believed themselves eternal, and witness the final days of the Princess Lamballe, whose fate would become one of the revolution's most tragic symbols. Du Hausset writes without the distance of history, capturing the small daily dramas and mounting terrors as lived by women who had everything to lose. This is not the history of treaties and battles. It is the history of what was whispered in private rooms, of what was worn to court on the eve of destruction, of how the old world ended for those who had believed themselves immortal.