The Oracle Glass

by Judith Merkle Riley

  “He hovers like the dragonfly, blends like a shadow, and stings like the serpent,” observed Mustapha about himself cheerfully. “I think I’ll dress as an apprentice boy—Devil take it! That means I’ll have to shave tomorrow morning. It’s a good thing I’m such an artist about my work.”

  “I am always grateful for your artistry, Mustapha,” I answered as I sat for Sylvie to undo my combs and brush my hair. Outside, I was as cool as ice, but my heart was pounding. I was haunting Lamotte’s dreams. Had La Voisin done it, or was it truly because he had discovered love in our moment of shared grief? The charming cavalier, mine at last. A bit the worse for wear, but still well worth having. The miracle had happened. It was me, me he wanted, though surrounded by all those aristocratic beauties. After so long, so very long. We would talk. We would remember Marie-Angélique together. And then he would tell me that it was me he had loved all along but hadn’t even known it himself. After all, what are blond curls compared to a serious mind and a warm, womanly sympathy?

  I found it hard to sleep that night, and the next day it took me an eternity to select my clothes. I paused for a long time before the rose satin, still virginal new in its muslin shroud. But it was not the gown for a damp garden in fall. He’ll ask me someplace elegant later on, and I’ll dazzle him in it. But for today, something warm, friendly, serious-looking. A color. Oh, why do I have so much black? I need young dresses, pretty things with flowers on them, I thought as I pawed frantically through the armoire, checking and rechecking each dress while Sylvie tapped her foot impatiently. At last I settled on the dark green wool with the black ribbon trim and added a costly white lace fichu to give it a younger look. My somber gray cloak, an anonymous-looking plain, wide-brimmed hat, and a black velvet mask completed the picture.

  “Your walking stick, Madame?” Gilles was already holding open the door of the carriage when Sylvie came racing out with my tall, silver-headed stick.

  “I’m not taking it, Sylvie.”

  “But…you’ll limp more. With the stick, one can scarcely see the limp.”

  “With the stick, I look like the Marquise de Morville, Sylvie. We’re going early so that I’ll be seated in the pavilion waiting to meet him.”

  The previous night’s rain had wet the gravel paths of the gardens and left dead leaves strewn in soggy clumps beneath the still-dripping trees. But as I was assisted from my carriage at the gates, the gray clouds parted to show the blue sky, and the sudden light reflected from the dozens of little puddles on the ground, converting them instantly to dazzling fragments of silver. A sign, I thought. After all these trials, I am meant to be happy.

  Lamotte was late. When I heard his footsteps, I sent my servants away from the little pavilion hidden among the trees.

  “Mademoiselle, a thousand pardons,” Lamotte swept off his scarlet plumed hat in greeting. My face felt hot beneath my mask.

  “I was delayed by the duchesse. Such errands, such foolish tasks she has for me! And yet my career prospers; I am fortunate in my patronage. Who can create without patronage? The fine fever of the mind…does not thrive on bread and cabbage—” He broke off and looked a long time at me. “I dream of you at night. That day, that terrible day…and you…haunt me.”

  “I…I have thought of it myself.” Where was my self-possession, my wit? I was dissolving into a total idiot. He sat down beside me on the marble bench.

  “Everything is pale since that day. The insincerity and shallowness of my world are everywhere apparent. For one moment, I thought, I have shared truth.” The words I’d always dreamed of hearing. I tried to answer, but nothing came out of my mouth. “You must have felt it, the perfection of that moment,” his voice resonated like a hero in the theatre. “Sincerity, that is what I have been lacking, I told myself. In all the world there is only one woman with sincerity, and that is why I am haunted by the memory of that moment of mad, exquisite passion.” He moved closer. I could feel his warm breath on my neck.

  It is not sincerity, whispered my cynical mind, all tight and clever with too much Turkish coffee, it is something else entirely. Don’t believe him. But my heart, all swollen with the frenzy to think that I was at last beautiful and beloved, told my mind to be quiet.

  “Don’t you feel it?” he asked, his arm slipping around my waist. “Two hearts that were meant to beat as one?” He took my hand and pressed it against his heart beneath his heavy cloak. My bones went limp when I felt the beating of his heart. “That moment of tenderness—I must, we must, repeat it.”

  “Not now, not here. It’s indecent,” I managed to croak out.

  “Indecent? This pavilion could whisper a thousand secrets if it could speak. Where there is love, there is no indecency.”

  “Please, André, I don’t dare…” I wanted to push him away, but I hadn’t the strength. Was this the kind of love that witchcraft had brought me? Hollow words and selfish passion? And yet still I wanted it. His touch thrilled me; it made me feel beautiful. Was this part of La Voisin’s ghastly spell, or was it me, made stupid by a child’s silly passion clutched too long?

  “You will join me tonight,” he murmured, as his hands made my body weak. “Dismiss your carriage and servants and we will go to a quiet little auberge I know of on the road to Versailles.”

  “I…I can’t,” I whispered. A kiss, and then another. My will was paralyzed. “Oh yes,” I said, almost faint. But even as my mouth was agreeing, my mind was crying, say no, you idiot. Don’t let him. You’ll get pregnant and die. Never mind, let it be, rejoiced my heart; he wants you, the handsomest man in the whole world. Who cares why? A disaster, whispered my mind. You’ll lose your living and die in the gutters behind the Hôtel Dieu. But he loves you, cried my stupid, exulting heart. He must love you. What else matters? Fool, fool, sighed my brain, as I let him take my arm to escort me to his carriage.

  ***

  The candles were burning low over the remains of a little supper in the tiny room under the eaves. Through the open window, we could hear nothing but the sound of crickets in the dark.

  “Mademoiselle, such perfection of love is rarely achieved,” he announced, buttoning up his baggy wool breeches. Somehow, the gesture suddenly looked too professional to me. “I thought I might never find happiness such as this again,” he said in his warm baritone as he tucked in his shirt with a practiced gesture. “My love, my gratitude, are immeasurable.” What was it in the tone of his voice? Now that the heart was sated, the mind was running things again. Listen to him, said the mind. He was using you. He’ll walk off, now. Aren’t you sorry?

  “Will we…meet again?” I asked in a small voice.

  “My dear, my precious thing, I intend to sweep you off your feet. My muse is at your service.” Why did it suddenly sound so false to me? He had never sounded false long ago, before the Maison des Marmousets. Fancy, yes; false, no. But then he smiled his charming smile at me, and I felt all doubts vanish. He loved me. He was just afraid to say so. At least for now, he was the duchesse’s creature. But his heart was mine.

  “My heart is yours, and yours alone,” he said, almost as if he could read my thoughts. “My patroness is a powerful woman, though. We must be careful, circumspect. When we meet in public, as we surely will, you must pretend not to know me.”

  “I know…André,” I hesitated at the name. The dear name I’d so often dreamed of saying under exactly these circumstances. “I understand.”

  “Ah, you are a treasure. The philosopher was right on that point, and wrong on the rest.” The philosopher? D’Urbec. Always d’Urbec. Even in absentia he had a way of coming in where he wasn’t wanted.

  “The philosopher?” I asked, as if I hadn’t guessed.

  “The sincere woman is best, he always said. But he never understood that passion is more important than the meeting of minds, for a woman.”

  For a woman? I was beginning to be angry. “
And not for men?” I asked.

  “Oh, yes…of course for men,” he said, with a condescending smile, as if he didn’t quite mean it.

  “I thought you two were friends.”

  “Of course. D’Urbec and I are the best of friends. Old chums from school days, even if he did insist on rating his brain above mine.”

  “D’Urbec rates his brain above everyone’s,” I answered.

  “Ha! That he does. But what annoys is when he twits people about it. That satire he wrote on the suicide scene in my Osmin…ah, it’s a bother, sometimes, knowing a libelliste…but still, a friend is a friend…”

  “Satire? You mean that bit in the—”

  “The Parnasse Satyrique, damn him, as if I didn’t know who had written the wretched thing the minute I laid eyes on it. There’s no mistaking his style. I know the lion by his claw. Of course, I’d never betray him. But it’s all over town. An underground classic, ever since it was banned by the police. Why, the Bishop of Nantes had to pay thirty-five livres for it. The minute he showed it to me, I knew. Everywhere I go, people quote the damned thing at me, and I have to pretend to laugh.” Lamotte stood up suddenly from the bench and began to storm, back and forth. His fists were clenched, the veins in his temples stood out. “Can you imagine? He’s gone nowhere! He’s accomplished nothing! And yet he dared to mock my creation! Does he think I have to accept an insult like that?” Suddenly he turned back and looked at me sitting there, and his face softened.

  “…Ah, but enough. I am a new man now. You have renewed me, inspired me. My next masterpiece, far greater than my Osmin, more exquisite than my Sapho, will be drawn from life. Théodora—and you shall be the model for the heroine. You, and only you, O divine inspirer of passions.” I could feel myself blushing with pleasure. I didn’t care if I were pregnant. I’d manage somehow. Me, an inspiration for the poet’s muse! I could hardly breathe for joy. But even as my heart expanded, the mean little voice in my brain said, Well, well. He thought d’Urbec was in love with you, that he had claims on you, when he saw him there in your house. So now he’s just using you to get back at d’Urbec. Witchcraft, indeed! All that spell stuff with the handkerchief didn’t do anything except make you silly! Aren’t you ashamed to be caught this easily? And on a mistake, too. Lamotte doesn’t know you’ve quarreled with d’Urbec, and he doesn’t even like you anymore. Never mind, glowed my heart. Before Lamotte finds out, I’ll win him over truly. And meanwhile, his amour will be flaunted all over the city; the gossip about the secret inspirer of his work will penetrate every ruelle. His masterpiece will be mine. Just think, me—a reigning beauty, the inspirer of the Muses, the envy and admiration of the salons of Paris. My brain tried to say, Do you think he doesn’t know that would be a plain girl’s dream? How many other women does he say exactly the same thing to? But my heart drowned out the voices in my head. It always was a rather noisy and stupid organ.

  ***

  The rest of the autumn passed by in the shimmering light of romance. The shifting gray clouds, the damp chill of the wind blowing the dead leaves in swirls down the gutters, the melancholy dripping from high slate roofs—all was infinitely exquisite to me, now that I was a poetical inspiration. How pleased I was with myself as I leaned out the upstairs window watching for him, or sat by the fire reading Horace and waiting for a message from the handsomest man in Paris. I didn’t see him much. He snatched only a moment or two from his duties, his patroness, his writing, his necessary attendance at this or that salon. Sometimes our paths crossed at a dinner or a reading in some aristocrat’s hotel.

  Then we’d pretend we didn’t know each other, and I would hug to me every overheard word: “My dear, that’s the Chevalier de la Motte…Isn’t he good-looking? They say he’s creating a masterpiece to rival his Sapho. Officially, of course, it’s dedicated to the duchesse, but I hear that there’s a woman he’s secretly enamored of who serves as the model—”

  “Do you know who?”

  “No, she’s very mysterious, though some say she might be Ninon de Lenclos.”

  “Ninon? She’s much too old, I think. The woman who inspires him is said to be a great beauty.”

  Music could not have sounded more lovely to me.

  Once he came secretly at midnight to my little house on the rue Chariot and by the light of candles declaimed his latest verses, the tragic empress’s tirade in stately alexandrines. The wineglasses winked and shone in the candlelight as he assumed a stately pose and his resonant baritone lovingly caressed the lines.

  “Why, that’s inspired! Your gift rivals Racine’s—it puts the great Corneille in the shade.” The truth was, his work seemed on occasion a bit pedestrian, but because it was about me, it acquired infinite charm. I couldn’t have enough of it. When my monthly came and went without skipping a day, I felt quite disappointed. I’d decided a baby would be very nice to have, even if it did cut into business. Besides, it might keep him at my fireside longer, reading poetry forever.

  “‘Rivals Racine’s’? Why, I am much better than Racine. He creates a thousand enemies with his pen—besides, I sense a certain coarseness in his portrayal of people of aristocratic breeding. The scene where Alexander comes from the stables after feeding his horses, for example. No gentleman would ever feed his own horses. It reeks of the bourgeois—totally lacking in refinement.”

  “Dear André, what would you think of a child of our love?”

  “Wha—? A child? You’re not pregnant, are you? For God’s sake—”

  “Not yet…but suppose I were?”

  “Oh, you’re not?” He looked relieved and took his handkerchief out of his sleeve to mop his brow. At the time, I was touched by his concern.

  ***

  “Madame, you are looking entirely too rosy these days.” Sylvie’s voice was disappointed and curt. She had been very snippy lately. “I’ve sent to La Trianon for a heavier white makeup.”

  “The one she sells to women who’ve had the smallpox? It’s like plaster!” I laughed.

  “Laugh away, but if you don’t look like a corpse you’ll lose half your income, and Madame will want to know why. Oh, Mustapha, who is at the door now? I hope it’s a client and not another tradesman with a bill.”

  “This time, a client. A servant girl with a request that Madame de Morville pay a house visit. Tomorrow, in the afternoon, when the man of the house is out.”

  “And the house?”

  “On the rue des Marmousets on the Ile de la Cité. The Maison des Marmousets.” It had come. At last.

  “Who is the woman, Mustapha? I do not know this house.”

  “Oh, I do, Madame,” broke in Sylvie. “She used to be a good customer of Madame Montvoisin, but now she’s ill and housebound. She’s especially taken by astrology. The widow Pasquier. Surely, you must have heard of her. She was once fashionable, though never of the court.”

  “I think I might have heard that name before.” Yes, indeed. Mother. Betrayer of daughters, husband poisoner. Monster. “Tell the servant I will be there promptly at two in the afternoon tomorrow.” Yes, I will be there, I thought. With the very stuff with which you stole my father’s life away. Justice. Justice and damn the costs.

  THIRTY-THREE

  Heavily veiled, I was shown in from the carriage entrance in the courtyard by a subdued Suzette, Mother’s maid, who seemed to have grown, in only two years, much older and more somber. The house looked so much smaller than I remembered it. It seemed dank and old to me now, a house that hid dreadful secrets. I could never imagine the laughter of children in these cold, airless rooms. Could Marie-Angélique have ever stood there at the window, her golden hair shining in the spring light, blushing and giggling at some pretty young man with a guitar in the street beneath?

  “Madame is indisposed; her son is out today. She has heard that you have made wonderful predictions for the Comtesse du Roure and the Duc
hesse de Bouillon. She has had a difficult life lately, a strange illness that comes and goes. Even the visits of the physician and the priest bring no relief. Only astrologers and chiromancers give her peace of mind now.” Suzette’s voice was bleak and tired.

  As we climbed the stairs to Grandmother’s room, a wave of the old fear passed through me. Although Suzette hadn’t recognized me, I feared Mother’s sharp eyes. The case with my glass, rod, scarf, and the tiny green glass vial seemed to become suddenly very heavy. My heart pounded beneath the heavy black gown of the Marquise de Morville.

  “Is that you, Suzette? Have you brought the devineresse?” I scarcely recognized the woman who sat on the bed, staring out the window. In the time since I had last seen her, she had crossed from well-preserved middle age to blowsy decay. Something—a disease of the body or soul—had eaten away her former beauty. Mother’s body and features had swollen strangely; her once-ivory complexion had grown sallow and greasy. She turned her head toward us when we entered. Her eyes, watery and distended, sat above drooping swellings. They looked in our direction, those lost, rolling eyes, but not at us. The eyes of an insane woman, I thought—the eyes of someone nearly blind.

  “Madame does not see well; you will have to go closer.”

  “I see very well, Suzette. I see the light at the window. Show the devineresse in.”

  The room was cluttered and dusty. Grandmother’s things had never been moved out, and Mother’s had been moved in: a second armoire was crammed in beside the first; the doors had burst open with the burden of old clothes that had been stuffed inside it. Another dressing table crowded with porcelain jars, bottles, and little boxes was pushed against a wall; and a little cabinet from Father’s study had been shoved into a corner, its shelves laden with trinkets, porcelain figures, and a half dozen dusty books. The sickly sweet smell of illness filled the room and hung from the dusty old bed curtains. The blood red walls had grown brownish, and the gilt pattern stenciled across them had faded to a blackish gray. I found it hard to imagine that Grandmother, with her neat little cap and her linens that smelled of lavender, could ever have lain in that sagging, filthy old bed.