A Visit From Voltaire

by Dinah Lee Küng

  ‘Mmm . . . ’ I wonder if Maurice wasn’t a bit too manly for V. to swallow.

  ‘Yes, and penniless. Of course, as talented as he was in the battlefield, it was in the boudoir that he intended to conquer. He aimed high, and used all of Adrienne’s pawned jewels, some 40,000 livres’ worth, to woo the hand of the widowed Duchess of Courland, one Anna Ivanovna, later Empress of Russia. ‘

  ‘Poor Adrienne. Did she know?’

  ‘Yes, she lent Maurice her jewels open-heartedly, ready to be a friend as well as his adoring conquest. But Maurice’s father, Augustus, feared the marriage for political reasons. So although Maurice bedded Anna, as well as her sister—he could never leave a bedcover unturned—he failed to win his duchy and came back to Paris. For over three years, Adrienne had kept herself for him alone, but one hardly expected his kind of man to return the favor.’

  ‘Adrienne’s starting to sound more like a doormat than a celebrity actress.’

  ‘I warned her. She was four years older than Maurice. She welcomed him back without a single reproach about the little opera singer Marie Carton who followed him from military camp all the way back to Paris. Marie was now enjoying most of his lusty attentions backstage, you might say.’

  ‘Was he some great military hero?’

  ‘Madame!’ V. groans at my ignorance. ‘Surely you know he became the Marechal de France and one of the greatest military strategists of all time!’

  ‘I think I’m with you so far but let’s recap. Adrienne the actress loved Maurice the Cad, and he came home to her after his attempt on the Duchess of Courland fell through, but with the singing Marie in tow. But I thought you said that somebody named Bouillon murdered Adrienne? Where does she fit in, this Duchess of Broth?’

  V. lets one of his typically brittle laughs escape.

  ‘She wasn’t chicken stock, Madame, far from it. Non, our suspect, the Duchesse de Bouillon was of very royal blood, Louise Henriette Françoise de Guise de Lorraine, the sister-in-law of the Duc de Richelieu, married off at eighteen to an old toad, Emanuel Théodore de La Tour d’Aubergne, Duc de Bouillon. Oh, by the way, our Duchesse, too, had granted Maurice her favors—’

  ‘He really got around!’

  ‘Oh, he was the subject of much gossip. But his liaison with the Duchesse, was, as you would say, cold coffee.’ He pours himself a fresh cup.

  ‘Didn’t all this bother the Duke of Bouillon?’

  ‘Mais non! He was forty years older than the Duchesse! The Duc was far wiser than his wife. The Duchesse was incapable of accepting Maurice’s indifference. In the torrent of jealousy, she hatched a plan against Adrienne.’

  ‘I thought you said the Duchess wasn’t guilty.’

  ‘Madame, I implore you to listen, for here is where my story leaves the territory of the banal menage à trois.’

  I interrupt, ‘Four, if you count Marie.’

  V. waves a limp hand. ‘Nobody ever counted Marie.’

  He leans forward. ‘Now, listen. Enter, stage left, the most unusual character in my little mystery, Siméon Bouret. He was a hunchbacked abbé of only eighteen, seeking a career in Paris as a miniature portraitist.’

  ‘Shame on you.’

  ‘Hah! A pun I couldn’t resist. These little pictures on rings, brooches, trinkets, it’s the fashion, non? He escapes his nasty rooming house every evening by going to the Théâtre-Français. One day he meets a young man dressed in livery who turns out to be the page of the Duchesse—’

  ‘Bullion?’

  ‘Hardly a heart of gold,’ Voltaire sneers. ‘They chat and the page invites the abbé to the Hotel de Bouillon to paint the Duchesse. Why not? She’s a well-connected beauty of twenty-two, tall, black-eyed, with dark hair and a large beauty mark near the right eye, if I remember correctly . . . ’

  ‘It all sounds slightly too easy.’

  ‘Well, there was indeed, a strange catch . . . ’

  ‘Oh, good, I hope we’re getting to the murder.’

  Voltaire takes a deep breath and leans his bony face back in the bright sunlight, his eyes closed. He seems far away from our farmhouse. I imagine he is once again in the Paris salons, drinking up every detail of the great sex-and-murder scandal of 1729.

  ‘Want more coffee?’ I heat up some more water and in a few minutes, rejoin him, still basking like a sly, thin cat in the streaming rays. Outside our gate, the lady dog sled owner has come bouncing out of her chalet with a pail of scraps only to discover that two of her dogs are missing. I watch her boot plunge into a glistening pool of blood. Her startled cries rouse her husband.

  V. smiles to himself at this tableau and goes on with the intrigue. ‘ . . . During the third sitting for the abbé, the Duchesse works the conversation around to the theater. She asks rather pointedly, ‘Do you know the actress Lecouvreur?’ Well, of course he doesn’t know Adrienne personally, but the Duchesse urges him to get to know her, and even then dictates a letter to the abbé to deliver, a silly piece of business purportedly signed by a prince of the blood asking Adrienne to break off her affair with Maurice.’

  ‘How do you know all this?’

  ‘Read it yourself. It’s in the police report.’

  ‘Did he deliver the letter?’

  ‘No. That doesn’t stop our jealous Duchesse. The next day, she asks for the letter back, but tells the abbé to be at the gate of the Tuileries that same night.’

  ‘I hope he didn’t go.’

  ‘Well, he does go, and there he’s met by two masked men.’

  ‘Qh, c’mon! Too fishy. I warn you, no mystery reader is going to buy two masked men!’

  ‘I vow to you, Madame, there they are, two powdered rascals, fresh from the Palais Royal ball. They ask the abbé if he wants to make some money in exchange for gaining access to Adrienne and giving her a few pills filled with a potion to make her fall out of love with Maurice and in love with someone else. ‘

  ‘Beyond fishy. Your story just moved from poisson to poison.’

  ‘Oui,’ V. laughs. ‘They lead the abbé over to the Duchesse herself, crying and repeating Maurice’s name over and over again.’

  At this Voltaire starts playfully weeping into a handkerchief. ‘Mademoiselle Lecouvreur is an unworthy woman. It would be doing a service to the state to put her out of the way. You can be sure of a reward.’

  This is a man who loved to act in any of his fifty plays.

  ‘Oh, stop it, I get the idea. The Duchess sounds like a case.’’

  Voltaire instantly stops sobbing, ‘Ah, yes, but a murderess?’

  ‘Finally our hunchback hero finishes the portrait, but still hasn’t met Adrienne. The thugs of the Duchesse hound him. He writes a desperate note to Adrienne asking for a meeting on the terrace of the Luxembourg.’

  ‘Would an actress of her fame answer such a note?’

  ‘Oh, you can be sure my wise friend was there. The abbé warns her she is in danger of being poisoned. Adrienne asks, ‘Is it from the Opéra that the danger is threatening me?’ referring to the singer Marie.

  ‘No,’ says the abbe. ‘Then it must be from the Hôtel de Bouillon!’ Adrienne guesses. She tells the abbé she wants to ask the advice of a competent man—’

  ‘Maurice of Saxony.’

  Voltaire looks miffed. ‘I am the author here! Yes, Maurice. Maurice and Adrienne meet the abbé, Maurice accuses him of making up stories, but Adrienne is convinced, ‘This threat comes from the Duchesse de Bouillon,’ she says.’

  ‘Good instincts,’ I comment.

  ‘Better than those of the Duchesse herself,’ Voltaire points out, ‘who never guessed her real rival for Maurice’s love was the humble Marie. The following day, the poor abbé is dragged to a meeting on the Quai de l’École with the two masked men and now a third man in disguise who never speaks. They order him to go the next day from Pont Tournant in the direction of the marble statue through a little alley of trees. In the second tree on the right he will find a package of pills, most of which are harmless; but thre
e wrapped in a separate paper are meant for the actress.’

  ‘Masked men, poison pills, marble statues. Well, your story has historical color.’ I keep my opinion of the plot to myself. He can be so touchy with critics.

  Voltaire leans back, sweeping his lace cuffs free, ‘It is what you call the True Crime. You will help me put in the red salmons later—’

  ‘Red herrings.’

  ‘As you say. Abbé Bouret brings the pills to Adrienne and Maurice. Just sniffing them makes all three nauseous. They alert the police commissioner Hérault.’

  ‘Haven’t I heard his name before?’

  Voltaire nods with a knowing smile. ‘Oui, the snob Hérault who threw me into the Bastille. Of course, he favors the Bouillon tribe over a bumpkin cleric and a mere actress. He sends the poor abbé to Saint-Lazare—’

  ‘Prison?’

  ‘Oui, for three months. And he sends the pills to L’Académie des Sciences for testing, but they say they need more pills to form a reliable opinion.’

  Something here troubles me.

  Voltaire cocks an eyebrow and continues, ‘The police accuse the abbé of inventing the entire story because he’s in love with Adrienne. They charge him with using poison and giving false information!’

  ‘May I ask you something?’

  His long-fingered hand sweeps up gracefully and the long cuffs flop back on his large-buttoned sleeve.

  ‘Not yet. Poor Bouret remained in jail. Adrienne, trouper that she was, played in Horace in January and in Electra and Le Plorentin in February and then a month passed before she returned to the stage in March in Le Malade Imaginaire.’

  ‘A rather prophetic title.’

  ‘Indeed. If only what happened next had been an imaginary malady,’ Voltaire says. ‘On March 15th, Adrienne collapsed on stage with a violent case of dysentery. The doctors couldn’t stop the internal bleeding that followed. On the morning of the 20th, she died. I was at her side.’

  Loud voices erupt beyond our gate. One of our other neighbors, the mother of a newborn girl has emerged from her chalet to collect the mail. She has stumbled upon our sled dog neighbor clearing the snow of cat guts.

  V. and I can catch snatches of hysterical exchanges in colloquial French, to the effect, ‘Why aren’t these dogs under better control?’ ‘What if that had been my baby?’ ‘What makes you think they were my dogs?’ and so on.

  V. and I overhear defensive retorts about the supervision of the second dog team at the end of the road. An element of doubt has been introduced as to the guilty canine culprits. There’s no doubt in my mind whose fence gave way to the vicious pair, but the tracks are too jumbled now to wrest a conviction.

  I pose the obvious theory. ‘So after all, the Duchess poisoned Adrienne.’

  Voltaire purses his mouth as if warning me not to be so hasty. ‘Note that on her own deathbed, although she confessed to a Herculean stable of mortal transgressions, the Duchesse de Bouillon did NOT confess to the murder of Adrienne Lecouvreur.

  ‘Well . . . ’

  ‘Ah, ah, ah, be careful, Madame. My generation took their deathbed absolutions very seriously.’

  ‘Well, absence of a deathbed confession certainly wouldn’t clear her name today. I’m more struck by other things. Take the police report. If a mere whiff of these noxious pills knocked over three healthy people, why couldn’t the Academy form an opinion? Maybe they never saw the real poison pills?’

  ‘A very good point,’ V. encourages me.

  I venture further, ‘And even if nobody wants to believe an actress or a star-struck abbé, why don’t we hear a loud protest from Maurice of Saxony, future Marechal of France? After all, he’s spent all of Adrienne’s 40,000 livres. He owes her at least some support.’

  Voltaire’s eyebrows lift suggestively, so I go on.

  ‘And didn’t you say the thugs were accompanied by a mysterious third man? Who was he?’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Well,’ I play Watson to his Holmes, ‘it seems to me that once her plot was blown, even that hysterical Duchess would want to lie low. She could only hope that nobody would interview those funny friends who stuff poison pills into trees. Would she make another attempt so soon after the first? She’d be suspected.’

  V. interjects, ‘Oh, she was vilified in whispers. Only her titled position protected her while Adrienne’s humble birth and vulgar profession condemned her to a shameful burial in a hole filled with quicklime like a dog with no Church rites! I wrote some very passionate verses about the hypocrisy of that, I can tell you!’

  It’s futile to stop him from leaping to his feet and with one hand dramatically pointing at our snow-clogged roof gutters, bursting into verse:

  Ah, verrai-je toujours ma faible nation,

  Incertaine en ses voeux, flétrir ce qui’ il admire

  Nos moeurs avec nos lois toujours se contredire

  Et le Français volage endormi sous l’empire

  De la superstition—

  He throws me a glance, ‘You’re not listening. Do you need a translation?’

  ‘No, sit down, sit down. I’ve got the idea, Empire of Superstition, a weak nation that doesn’t know its own mind, yadda, yadda, yadda . . .’

  Voltaire is indignant. ‘Some say it was my finest poem. It was set to music by Frederick the Great—’

  ‘Oh, no . . . ’ A frisson of fear runs down my spine.

  ‘Cold? Come sit by me. There’s more sun over here.’

  ‘It’s not that, Monsieur Voltaire. I just thought of another possibility. But it’s so cynical. If . . . naw . . .!’

  ‘If what? Go on, go on.’

  ‘Well, Adrienne knew someone was trying to poison her. She wouldn’t put anything strange into her mouth. If I were her, I’d have my food tasted.’

  ‘Yes, she knew she was in danger, but she wasn’t sure from whom. She suspected the poor little Marie, and then the Duchesse de Bouillon.’

  I’m swept by an urge to protect an honest and talented woman dead for more than two centuries.

  ‘In fact, she wouldn’t trust anybody except Maurice, who had seen the poison pills himself. After all, she loved him enough to re-establish him in Paris with her life savings, even when he was sleeping with an opera singer down the street.’

  ‘Exactement. Maurice handled the poisoned pills. As you say, perhaps the police authorities never received and tested the real pills at all. Because in the end, the poison was used, n’est-ce pas?’ Voltaire rises from the table and carefully lifts his matelasse coat off the back of the chair.

  ‘Maurice?’ I gasp. ‘He was the third masked man?’

  The argument beyond the gate has finished. The ghastly remains of the dead cat are buried in a snowdrift. Our sledding neighbor works in waist-deep snow, repairing the damaged fence and cursing under her breath.

  ‘Well, at least our two neighborhood murderers have been caught,’ V. says, heading indoors. He concludes, ‘As for Adrienne, as we might have said in France, cherchez l’homme.’

  ‘Just so he didn’t have to pay back her life savings? He set up one discarded mistress as an unsuccessful murderess, misdirecting Adrienne’s fears, and then did away with her himself. That’s not a bad story, if it’s true.’

  ‘Merci, Madame. And as you know my secretary Longchamp is nowhere to be found, would you be so kind as to put it all down on paper? I propose we entitle it, The Third Man.’

  ‘I think you’ll have a problem with the title. Besides, I don’t have time.’

  He stops inside the kitchen doorway and a strange expression crosses his face. Little did I know this was going to be the seed of so much trouble to come.

  ‘I have a better idea,’ he says. ‘Why don’t you teach me?’

  ‘Teach you? To write?’

  He rolls his eyes. ‘Mon Dieu. Non, Madame, teach me to type.’

  Chapter Eleven THE ETERNAL CONTEST

  The nights are at their longest now.

  Dusk falls around five, lingering only
lightly on Mont Blanc’s violet ridges before dying altogether. I’m listening in a desultory way to ‘Europe Today’ on the BBC World Service, but European Union events hover permanently below the watermark of ‘interesting.’ I realize I couldn’t care less what a Dutch parliamentarian from the Green Party thinks of US foreign policy towards Iraq.

  V.’s warming himself by the fire, scanning the cartoons in a six-week-old New Yorker, sighing with frustration, ‘I don’t get that one . . . nor that one . . . now why is that funny . . ?’

  He tosses the magazine aside. ‘Madame, you should switch on the terrace light. We wouldn’t want Monsieur to slip on the ice.’

  ‘You’re right.’ I heave myself out of my favorite armchair.

  On her doubled winter rations, Frisbee is starting to waddle, not run, to the door when we put her out for the night. Surviving the cold by sleeping under the heating tank, she’s lucky compared to the wild cats clinging to the stony cliffs that shelter us from the storms sweeping the plateau above.

  This is the ‘high’ season in St-Cergue when the funky, smoky restaurants along the main street fill up with visiting Genevan families reddened by hours of skiing and sledding. The shops are full and no longer close exactly on time, the doors merrily jangling their bells with the entry and exit of customers. There’s a cheerful money-making expression on everyone’s face, giving a new meaning to ‘Jingle Bells.’

  The ski slope opposite École Jean-Jacques Rousseau is busy until ten each night. Passing in my car, I can make out tiny, darting figures flying downhill, moving in and out of the floodlights that compete with the full moon. I cherish these glimpses of hidden beauty, fleeting and unplanned. There’s no après-ski glamor to speak of. There are no private airstrips, Versace wardrobes, or Fergie photo ops. We are not in Gstaad or Klosters or Chamonix. St-Cergue’s last royal visit was in the 1920s when posters in London advertised ‘Fly this morning and ski in St-Cergue by tea time.’