***
“What a cold-hearted little thing you’ve brought to me,” said Mother, fixing me with a sharp glance from her china-hard green eyes. She was sitting in an armchair in her reception room, dressed in a sacque of yellow silk, inspecting samples of material sent by the ladies’ tailor she frequented. Fresh from my trip, I stood across the room and looked at her for a long time. She was very pretty, but I remember that I did not wish to touch her. The fires were out and there was a chill in the tall, blue-and-white paneled room. I didn’t notice for several years, until it was pointed out to me, the barrenness of the parquet floor, where the carpet had been removed, or the light squares on the wall, where the paintings by Vouet and Le Sueur no longer hung.
The house to which my father had brought me was an old mansion built in the days of Jean le Bon, located in the Quartier de la Cité in the heart of Paris. Above a reception and dining room rebuilt in the new fashion, its narrow old rooms were compressed around a courtyard with a tower at one corner and a well at its center. On the ground floor, the kitchen and the stable let into the courtyard. There César and Brutus, the bay geldings, put their long faces out into the sun, dogs and cats lounged in the muck and searched for scraps, and cook shouted insults at the kitchen maid as she dumped dirty water out on the cobblestones. Above was the elegant floor, with gilt-paneled walls and nymphs painted on the ceiling, from which the music of violins could be heard when Mother entertained. Beyond this lay all that was ancient and unplanned, curious rooms of various sizes running almost at random into twisted staircases, and a maze of interconnected chambers.
The front of the house, a wide, low Gothic arch and heavy door to the street, revealed little of the complex life within: the maids kneeling to dust the heavy furniture while my mother locked the silver-laden sideboards; the manservant lowering the chandelier to replace the candles; my older sister playing the clavichord; father’s valet hurrying upstairs with a cup of cocoa; and high, high above, Grandmother’s parrot pacing and squawking while the old lady read the court news in the Gazette de France. Above this all-concealing door were carved in the stone arch those little Gothic grotesques called marmousets; and from this, not only was the house known as the House of the Marmousets, but the narrow winding street beyond it, which ran from the rue de la Juiverie to the cloister of Notre Dame itself, was called the rue des Marmousets.
Father, as I was to learn much later, had risen rapidly as a financier under the protection of Nicolas Fouquet, the surintendant des finances, only to lose his fortune and his freedom in Fouquet’s fall. Father’s face never lost the pallor of the Bastille, nor his heart a disgust for the court and its intrigues. He had been forced to sell his offices and now had only the income from a tiny country property left to him by an uncle. His years in prison had left him caring only for philosophy and with no interest whatsoever in returning to high finance. Rumors abounded that he had hidden money abroad, safe from Colbert, the King’s contrôleur-général des finances, but Father kept his secrets.
Mother had had several horoscopes cast indicating the return of good fortune, but it was not returning fast enough to suit her. She still resented the fact that the royal pardon had not returned Father’s fortune, which had been gobbled up into the maw of the ever-hungry Colbert. The King, she said, should have taken into account the fact that she was practically a Matignon on her mother’s side and granted her an allowance.
“After all,” she would announce, “it is inconceivable that a family such as mine, no matter in what straits, would have arranged my marriage to a poor man of your name, and now your mismanagement has left me in most inappropriate circumstances. It’s entirely improper for a Matignon to live this way. I deserve to live better. Besides, you have quite spoiled my Wednesdays.”
“What’s a Wednesday, Grandmother?” I asked some weeks after my arrival, when I had climbed the stairs from the kitchen to Grandmother’s room. Grandmother was always there. She never left her immense bed, all hung about with heavy green curtains. Whenever I knocked at the door, Grandmother’s parrot repeated her “Come in!,” stepping back and forth on its tall perch with its dry, yellow feet and peering at me over its curved orange beak with its little black eyes. If it had had a pink face instead of a green one, and wore a little cap, it would have looked not altogether unlike Grandmother.
“Ah, you’ve brought my chicory water, have you? Come and sit here on the bed and tell me what’s going on downstairs.” The walls of the room were painted in the old style, in dark red, the color of dried blood, with geometric designs in gilt around the edges. The curtains were always pulled across the windows; Grandmother thought the sun unhealthful.
“Grandmother, why does mother say she has a Wednesday, when they belong to everybody?”
“‘Wednesday,’ ha! That’s the afternoon that whorish daughter-in-law of mine displays her bosom to the world and flirts with strangers. She calls it her ‘salon’ and demands that people call her ‘Amérinte’ instead of by her Christian name. Genteel, indeed—it’s nothing but cards and court gossip…that, and an occasional bad poet who can’t make a name for himself somewhere better. Oh, it was a ruinous day when that poverty-stricken family of parasites attached themselves to my son! Hand me my Bible from that nightstand, Geneviève, and I’ll read to you about Jezebel, and what happens to wicked women.” And so I heard something very interesting and lurid from the Bible, about the dogs eating up Jezebel except for her hands and feet. For Grandmother had been a Huguenot before her family had been forced to convert, and she’d kept the Protestant habit of Bible reading—to the scandal of the rest of the family.
On my way back downstairs, I crossed through Uncle’s room, where he’d been sleeping all morning because he never went to bed at night. I saw his head and a strange woman’s peeking out from under the covers. Uncle, my mother’s brother, called himself the Chevalier de Saint-Laurent, although Grandmother always said the title was as false as he is, and it is what one could expect of a worm who made his living sinning at the gaming tables and borrowing from women. Uncle was accounted handsome by many, but there was something about his narrow, foxy face and arrogant, pale eyes above the high, slanting cheekbones that I did not like. Still, women thought him dashing.
So I peeked into the tall, gilt reception room on Wednesdays, hoping to see some interesting sinning like Jezebel and the hands and feet, but it was just grown-ups calling one another by pretend names and saying sharp things to one another and drinking from the good glasses, while Mother laughed her special, silvery little laugh that she saved for Wednesdays. She wore her tight dress in violet silk that was cut very low in front and her gold bracelets with the diamonds on them. This was the time she would glance sideways under her lashes at the men, who would praise her green eyes and perhaps recite an impromptu verse on the subject of her nose or lips. There were only a few ladies, and those not as pretty as she was, and a lot of men who dressed like my uncle in baggy pants with lace hanging down their shins and embroidered doublets and short jackets all in silk. They talked a lot about luck at bassette or hoca, and whom the King had looked at last Friday, and pretended to be interested in Mother until, at a signal from her, my big sister, Marie-Angélique, would glide through, blushing. Then she was the only person they’d look at. Everyone knew she had no dowry because Father had no money—or, rather, had to save it so that my older brother, Étienne, could stay at the Collège de Clermont and become an avocat and get rich again for the sake of the family. But Mother hoped my sister might “meet someone important” on her Wednesdays, someone who could launch her into society on account of her beauty.
On Wednesdays Father shut himself up in his study to read about the Romans. That, and take snuff from a little silver box Monsieur Fouquet had once given him. He never really wanted to talk to anyone, except sometimes me.
“Why the Romans, Father?” I asked him one afternoon.
“Because, my child,
they teach us how to bear suffering in a world of injustice where all faith is dead,” he answered. “You see here? Epictetus shows that reason governs the world, being identical with God.” He pointed to a place in the Latin book he was reading.
“I can’t read it, Father.”
“Oh, yes, of course,” he answered in that distant, absentminded way he had. “No one has seen to your education. I suppose I shall have to myself. Modern education is nothing but fables anyway, fit only to enslave the mind. Look at your sister—nothing but the most fashionable empty-headedness. She embroiders, tinkles a bit at the clavecin, and knows two dozen prayers by heart. Her mind is entirely formed by the reading of romances. And your brother, memorizing legal precedents. He learns precedent instead of logic, and law instead of virtue. No, far better to learn about the Romans.” Telling me that the rational discovery of truth was the highest activity of the human mind, he then gave me his own little leather-bound notebook to write down my thoughts to make them more orderly and arranged for a Latin tutor.
And so it was that I was educated according to my father’s eccentric plan by a series of starving abbés and penniless students who exchanged lessons for meals until I had sufficient knowledge to be able to discuss the Romans and especially his beloved Stoics with him.
Very soon my days fell into a pleasant routine, although one utterly abnormal for a child. In the morning, I studied whatever my current tutor was interested in: fragments of Descartes, the Epicureans, the question of proof in geometry, the new discoveries in physiology of Monsieur Harvey, the English doctor. In all this, they were guided by Father, who believed that new minds should be trained for the new age; that science and rationality would drive away the superstition of the old era.
In the afternoon, I ingratiated myself with my mother by running confidential errands for her. From her I had three petticoats my sister had outgrown, an old comb, and the promise of a new dress at Christmas if I kept her secrets. Although Mother left me unkempt and untaught in matters feminine, still, I learned a great deal from her indirectly. It was on my afternoon errands that I learned where love potions, hair dye, and wrinkle creams could be bought, how to make change and tell false coin from good. I found out where to buy the best illegal broadsides for Grandmother and that Mother received letters in secret with heavy wax seals on them. It was not at all the proper training for a young lady of good family, who should never be seen outdoors without a lackey, but my twisted body and wild, untutored manners exempted me from all rules, just as they prevented me from receiving the benefits of my birth.
In the evenings, when Mother entertained the delightful Monsieur Courville, or the divine Marquis of Livorno, or the charming Chevalier de la Rivière or some other poseur, I discussed the rules of logic and especially the Romans with Father. I loved the way he would read, in his calm, deep voice, and then peer over his little reading glasses to make some comment on the text. Then I would display my small learning of the morning and be rewarded with his narrow, ironic smile. It was the perfect arrangement; I wanted no other life.
THREE
It was in the summer of my twelfth year that fate and my mother’s ambition brought me to the attention of the most powerful sorceress in Paris. It was at that moment that the most devious mind in that devious city hatched the plan to create the Marquise de Morville. For the fashionable fortune-teller whom Mother chose to consult about the mending of her fortunes was, unknown to her, the brilliant and malicious queen of the witches of Paris, and it was she who discovered that I had been born with the power to read the oracle glass. I still remember how her eyes glowed when she recognized the gift and her quiet, possessive smile—the smile of a connoisseur and collector confronted by a rare vase in the hands of a fool. And because the sorceress was ingenious, determined, and as patient as a spider in the center of a web, it was only a matter of time until I tumbled into her hands.
I remember the day well. It was a hot day in midsummer; that winter I had just turned twelve.
“Mademoiselle, did you put the bottle from the Galerie on my dressing table?” It was Mother’s morning levée. Not much by the standards of the court, I suppose, but she was attended in her bedchamber this day by several servants, my latest tutor, and a man she had engaged to paint Marie-Angélique’s portrait in miniature.
“Yes, Mother, right at the back, by the mirror. See there?” Mother eyed the spot suspiciously and turned so suddenly that the maid who was brushing her hair dropped the hairbrush.
“And the change? You’ve brought it all?” I held it out to her and she counted it carefully before putting it away. “And the note?” A note with an address on the rue Beauregard from her parfumeuse. I took it out of my sleeve and gave it to her. “You haven’t shown it to anyone, have you?” she asked, her voice sharp. I shook my head.
I didn’t tell her that I’d tried the perfume on the way home the afternoon before. I had long ago discovered how to reseal a vial so Mother couldn’t tell it had been opened, just so I could try out anything that looked interesting. The woman at the parfumerie at the Galerie du Palais supplied all sorts of things Mother needed: hair dye, rouge, and now a new scent with something extra having to do with incantations that would make the wearer irresistible. No better trial than on me, I’d thought. It’s not much to make a good-looking person irresistible, but an ugly girl who can’t walk right and who is as skinny and small as a monkey—why then, it would be really powerful. So I’d doused myself in it and hidden myself from Mother for the rest of the day.
First I’d gone to the tower room where the old clothes, mouse-eaten cushions, and furniture in need of mending were kept, and taken out my secret book. There I wrote the date: July 20, 1671, and beside it: Irresistible perfume—trial number 1. Then I’d slipped out for the afternoon—something my sister was never allowed to do. But there is a freedom in ugliness: Mother did not care what happened to me, and Father never noticed I was gone, unless it was time to discuss the Romans.
Reeking of Mother’s perfume, I entered the Street of the Marmousets as one would a river, drifting and bobbing among the crowds of merchants and urchins, the little knots of respectable women out shopping with their laden servants behind them, the occasional avocat or notary hurrying to the Palais de Justice with papers in a leather case under his arm. Here and there on the river bobbed a sedan chair, its white-faced, powdered occupant staring into space above the sweaty backs of the bearers. The river joined the main stream pouring toward the Pont Neuf, and I slipped unnoticed, a pale, twisted little girl, limping sideways like a crab, among the mass of humanity. It was a fine day for a scientific trial; the bridge was crowded with beggars, players, peddlers, and little booths selling trinkets and illicit publications.
I started by purchasing a most satisfactory libelle for Grandmother, from a peddler of religious tracts who kept the best things hidden under his cloak. A bargain, newly smuggled in from Holland, where they print all the finest illegal pamphlets: The Scandalous Life of Louis, King of the French, in which it was explained that it was only natural that the King should repeatedly break the sacred tie of marriage, because he was in fact the natural son of Cardinal Mazarin, who had had an affair with the Queen. Of course I hid it away, because reading it was very nearly as illegal as publishing it or selling it, and joined the crowd of watchers and cutpurses around an impromptu stage, where several players in masks were shouting filthy jokes while a man who represented the wife’s lover hit the cowering cuckolded husband over the head with a bludgeon made of stuffed leather. I passed on when they made their appeal for money, because mine was gone. A charlatan in a wide, battered felt hat with a case of medicines was singing about their virtues: a cure for pox or ague, boils or plague, come buy and be sage, live to a happy old age. He had a monkey on a leash, dressed in satin like a little man. It came up and touched my hand with its tiny brown palm and looked at me with its mournful, glittering eyes.
F
act number 1: the irresistible perfume attracts monkeys.
I felt a tugging at the back of my cloak. A dirty cloak robber, I thought; you’ll get nothing of mine without a struggle. I clutched my cloak so hard around me that the thief’s big hand actually lifted me up into the air. But I didn’t let go, I screamed, “Help! Murder! Thief!”
“Not so fast there!” A boldly dressed young man in a short cloak, at least a dozen bunches of ribbons, and a wide gray hat with a white plume put his sword to the robber’s ragged doublet. The ruffian dropped me and fled, threatening to return with his friends.
Fact number 2: the irresistible perfume attracts robbers.
“What’s a little girl like you doing here unescorted? Don’t you know you could be killed? Let me take you home. Haven’t I seen you coming out of the Maison des Marmousets?” My rescuer knew where I was from. Was he a fortune hunter or a hero?
Fact number 3: the irresistible perfume attracts fortune hunters.
“Hee, hee,” the blind beggar at the end of the bridge laughed. “I saw it all. Very funny, very funny indeed, Monsieur Lamotte.”
Fact number 4: the irresistible perfume makes the blind see.
Lamotte, I said to myself. Not a distinguished name. A fortune hunter should at least have a “de” in his name. My heart still pounding, I looked up at my rescuer and saw beneath his hat brim a pair of glorious blue eyes, the profile of an Adonis, and shoulder-length brown curls that glowed in the sunlight. Looking back on it, I think now he must have been all of sixteen. I could tell by the look on his face that he had noticed my blush, and at the very same time my ugliness. My face turned hot. I couldn’t decide at that moment which of us I hated the most: him, because he would never see me as I saw him, or myself, for having lost all ability to speak, even to thank him. As my white knight sauntered casually off down the rue des Marmousets, I watched him go with a strange, new, painful sensation inside. I resolved to pinch it out as soon as I could.
The Oracle Glass Page 2