1780: What Was a Day Off Like for a Servant Girl at Versailles

Not the duchesses. Not the ladies-in-waiting. The girl at the very bottom, who slept in a wardrobe, emptied the queen's chamber pot at dawn, and was almost never painted or written about.

Follow her through one rare free day, from the cramped garderobe and the back staircases to Mass in the town, the bustle of the Notre-Dame Market, cheap wine on the Rue de Satory, a letter home, and a quiet walk along the Grand Canal where, for once, nobody was watching her.

Along the way, we look at:
• How a palace of 700+ rooms ran on thousands of servants
• Why a closet could be a bedroom
• What wages really looked like in the decades before the Revolution
• The memoirs of Henriette Campan and Nicole du Hausset, rare voices from inside the court

The most revealing part of Versailles may not be the Hall of Mirrors. It may be the corridors behind it.