So Bettina had pictured to herself a lady of the court of Queen Marie Antoinette, conceiving her as young, stately and reserved, with lovely fair hair, blue eyes and delicate features.
Indeed the heroine of Bettina’s self-told tale, as so often happens with the heroines of one’s imagination, bore a likeness to herself. But with the personal resemblance the analogy ceased.
In Bettina’s romance, Mademoiselle Elise Dupuy is the daughter of a poor French nobleman whose parents desire her marriage to a man of great wealth but far older than herself. Elise is one of the Maids of Honor at Queen Marie Antoinette’s court. Both the King and Queen are also anxious for her marriage, wishing to attach her fiancé to their service.
As the young French girl refuses the marriage she is banished from Court. Hoping she may reconsider her position Queen Marie Antoinette, who has an affection for her as well, has sent her to spend the winter months alone at the Little Trianon. She has a few servants to care for her, but no friends are allowed to see her and no letters are to be written her, save that now and then a letter from the Queen to ask if she has decided to submit her will to those in authority over her.
So strong was Bettina’s creative imagination and so frequent her habit of entertaining herself in secret with the stories that she hoped some day to write, that during the long hours of the night, her little French heroine became a real person to her.
She had a remarkably clear vision of Elise Dupuy walking alone in the Queen’s secret garden three centuries ago. Mam’selle Dupuy wore lovely flowered silk gowns and a flowing mantle and the picture hats which were the fashion of her day.
The point of Bettina Graham’s romance, wherein it differed from more conventional fiction, was that Elise Dupuy had no young lover who made her marriage distasteful.
Instead the young French girl desired to dedicate her life to the service of the women and children of France.
Recalling the past, one must remember that in the days of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, the poor of France were starving. Among the nobility and wealthy classes there was no interest in their fate, until after the advent of the French revolution and the execution of the King and Queen.
Therefore, no one sympathized or believed in Elise Dupuy’s self imposed mission, which received no aid or support from her friends. In Bettina’s story, the young French girl, through the assistance of one of the servants at the Little Trianon, who is in accord with her, makes her escape from Versailles to Paris, and there begins her lifework among the poor.