Once one of those girls has found a position in some household at Versailles, she has only a few years to make arrangements for the remainder of her life. She is like a plucked rose in a vase. Every day at dawn she looks out the window to see a gardener driving a wagon loaded with wilted flowers that are taken out to the countryside to be used for mulch, and the similitude to her own future is clear. In a few years she will be outshined, at all the parties, by younger girls. Her brothers will inherit any assets the family might have. If she can marry well, as Sophie did, she may have a life to
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