The Oracle Glass

by Judith Merkle Riley

  “The green taffeta, Sylvie.”

  “Oh, madame, with the lilac underskirt? Surely the blue satin would be so much more striking.”

  “It still has creases from the last time I wore it. You are so careless, Sylvie.”

  “Oh, please, Madame, please—I’m sure I can take them out in only a moment,” Sylvie wailed in her finest imitation of a mindless lady’s maid.

  “Tell her to wear the god-damned green taffeta,” came a growl from the main room beyond the screen.

  “Duval, you exceed yourself,” responded Desgrez’s voice, taut with suppressed irritation.

  “Captain, a carriage has drawn up before the house.” Sylvie and I looked at each other behind the screen.

  “I think I’ll have the blue satin after all. The creases are not as bad as I thought,” I announced.

  “Oh yes, Madame. Didn’t I tell you it would be lovely?” Sylvie’s whining, apologetic tone was fit for the theatre. I found it hard to keep a straight face. But it would never do for Desgrez to hear women’s laughter from behind the screen.

  “Duval, who is it?” Desgrez’s voice was crisp.

  “The carriage is unmarked. The people inside are very well dressed, but masked.” I emerged from behind the screen.

  “My theatre party, gentlemen. What do you think of the blue satin? Will it please Monsieur le Duc?” Desgrez’s face was set like iron. But Duval and the other assistant gave each other a meaningful glance.

  Desgrez rose as Brissac was shown in, and the police captain bowed low, removing his hat, as he was presented to the duke. Brissac, a man practiced at evading bailiffs and bill collectors, took in the situation at a glance. Slowly, he lowered his black velvet mask to stare at the lower order of humanity displayed there before him. His face was cold and haughty as he informed Desgrez that it would be a pity if he interrupted plans for an evening devised by the Duc de Nevers himself. It was canny, the delicate way he injected the name of the all-powerful Nevers into the discussion and suggested that, lover of justice that he was, a notary might be sent to the house at my convenience at some later time. A malignant little half smile crossed his face as he watched Desgrez bow himself out of the room backward. Brissac then turned to me and bowed, flourishing his hat in a manner that said, You see the advantages of an alliance, Madame. But I was not pleased with the look I had seen on Desgrez’s face. Hooded, hidden rage. He hated the great: their money, their immunity. He would wait until he found me alone and unprotected, this man who had tracked the Marquise de Brinvilliers across Europe for years, this man who had managed to acquire a confession from which even a title could not protect her. Brissac knew that, too. Now I must have Brissac, just as he must have Nevers.

  THIRTY-NINE

  Brissac served his patron well; the boxes above the stage were crammed with masked men and women of the demimonde, chattering loudly, displaying their finery, and peering about to see if they could determine who else of interest was there. Our own box was filled with a satanist abbé and his mistress, ourselves, and La Voisin and her current lover, the Vicomte de Cousserans, a debauched gentleman with purple veins on his nose. In the ripple of conversation the name “Pradon” could be distinguished, as well as rumblings of Racine’s failure—the dreadful blond actress, too coarse for the part, the common verses, the vulgar treatment of a subject that must be handled with the utmost delicacy if it is not to become, well, indecent. Thus can the opinion of the world be purchased, I thought. In the pit beneath, soldiers, students, and riffraff paid for the evening set up the cry “Pra-don, Pra-don!” as if rehearsing for the rolling cheers with which they would greet every line of the work as it was presented.

  “Oooo!” I heard a woman squeal. “That is definitely Mademoiselle Bertrand, the comedienne. I’d know her hair anywhere. And that dress!” I looked to see exactly what sort of hair this prodigy possessed. Blond. Dyed. Mountains of it, all done up with brilliants and bows. Not as nice a box as ours, I sniffed to myself. And public lovemaking with that overdressed fellow in the crimson velvet. Actresses have no taste. Acting is, after all, a profession without respectability, scarcely better than prostitution. A vast, powdered bosom heaved up above tight stays. Her ungloved hands seemed rather entangled in the gentleman’s clothing. He laughed, and the way he tilted his head seemed familiar.

  “Why, that is indeed Mademoiselle Bertrand. And who is her latest moneybags?” The vicomte leaned forward to look more closely, applying a lorgnon to the eyehole of his mask. “Well, I’ll be damned! It’s that wretched upstart who finished me off at lansquenet last week. What was his name?”

  “D’Urbec,” prompted La Voisin, with a sideways glance in my direction. I looked again. This time his face turned fully in my direction. Unlike the occupants of our box, he was unmasked. D’Urbec, in an immense black wig, with a massive silver knobbed walking stick leaning beside him, a comedienne draped over him, and a boxful of raucous companions. I wanted to think he looked lonely in the midst of it all. But he didn’t. He radiated smugness, satisfaction. He was taking in the scene as if he owned it. He didn’t even look a trifle wistful, damn him. Just arrogant and pleased with himself. La Voisin’s eyes were watching me from behind her mask.

  “I loathe upstarts,” announced Brissac.

  “The man comes from nowhere. Everything he gets is at the tables. He wins as if he’s made a pact with the Devil. Tell me, my dear; you are an expert. Has he made a pact with the Devil?” asked the vicomte, giving La Voisin a squeeze around the waist.

  “Not with the intervention of anyone I know of,” announced La Voisin. “Though I have heard he has gone abroad to a foreign adept.”

  “I’ve a sure test of that.” Brissac laughed. “Tell me, what would you say if I ruined him publicly?”

  “Why, that the Devil wasn’t his patron…shh…the curtain’s going up.” Brissac leaned toward the vicomte’s ear and whispered something. They both chuckled. “Done!” said the vicomte, as the first of Pradon’s dubious verses rolled across the stage.

  ***

  I returned home with a dreadful headache. The play, perhaps, the crowded box and the stench from the pit. Or was it the lemonade Brissac had purchased for me? I remembered the yellow roses. Definitely, something in the lemonade. Damnation. And La Voisin’s maternal look of approval as he offered it. Another love powder. Powdered cockscomb, desiccated pigeon hearts, and who knows what other rot. No wonder I had a headache. I thought of Brissac. As repulsive as ever. Madame’s love powders were about as effective as that irresistible perfume my mother used to use. How can I turn this to my advantage? I deserve revenge for this headache. I will pretend that it has worked; first, I’ll show a growing tenderness for Brissac—I’ll buy him a new suit. That will put them off. Then I’ll act as if the stuff is fading and watch their contortions as they try to slip me another dose. I’ll lead them a merry dance.

  My head throbbed terribly. The love powder must have had some damned drug in it. Images flitted through my mind, and my stomach felt ghastly. I seemed dimly to remember some sort of conversation with the vicomte about—yes, d’Urbec. Ruining him. Wasn’t he ruined already? I lay down on the bed, trying to decide which part of me felt the sickest. D’Urbec had sat on the edge of my armchair, as if he feared to spoil it, and inspected his hands, all torn and callused from the oar. How many times can a man be ruined and still press on? There was, after all, a sort of perverse gallantry about it. And bitter determination. I saw again the scene in the box; now I understood it. He had hired a woman, the same way he’d leased a flashy carriage and bought all those showy clothes. He was thumbing his nose at the world, as if to say: you think money is important? I’ll give you money. Quick, loud, vulgar money. The man with a mind mocks money, too. I couldn’t help liking his mockery, for I knew it well—the mockery of the arrant stupidity, of the cold heart of society.

  I broke into a cold sweat as I lay t
here, my mind a riot of strange memories. D’Urbec had a whole vocabulary of mockery: there was the funny tenderness beneath the mockery in his voice when he called me “Athena,” knowing that I could barely make out Greek, and his mockery of Lamotte, as sharp as a sword run through a friend that had become a rival…A rival? For what? Not…no, it couldn’t be—not for me. Oh! What was the odd feeling that was coming over me? Horrible. Not sensible. D’Urbec, he was filling my mind, making my heart hurt. What a stupid heart I have, I thought. Runny, like a half-boiled egg. Why is my heart like this? I don’t want a heart. I’d cut it out if I could. But then my chest would ache as much as my head.

  That night I lit the candle in my ruelle from the fire and sat thinking before my open book. I could see d’Urbec, in that ridiculous Brandenburger overcoat he used to wear, his dark eyes glowing and his arms gesticulating as he explained his theory of the fiscal incapacity of the state. What has happened to me? I wrote. Have I been drugged? Is it La Voisin’s spell at work? Or is it something in me that has always been there? Is it only sympathy that has grown to overwhelming proportions, or was it always more, and I was afraid to recognize it? Why did it frighten me so? Why does it frighten me now? God help me. I am in love with Florent d’Urbec, and I have made a mess of everything.

  I blotted the page and shut the book. Then I took out a fresh sheet of paper and wrote: “Beware Brissac. He has made a scheme to ruin you” and signed it, “A Friend.” D’Urbec was still too angry with me, I judged, not to throw it out if he knew where it came from. I’ll trust it to Mustapha to deliver it. At least he won’t take it straight to La Voisin. Even so, in this city of intrigue, d’Urbec might well never receive it. Yes, Mustapha. Sylvie takes money from too many people. Putting the letter under my pillow, I fell into a troubled sleep.

  ***

  “So, Mustapha, did he get my letter?” Mustapha, heavily bundled up against the cold, had returned, ostensibly from his mission to purchase more cordial from La Trianon’s ever-busy laboratory. As I hurried downstairs to open the door for him myself, Sylvie didn’t even look up from her mending, assuming my eagerness was related to my lust for opium.

  Mustapha’s voice was low. “Yes and no, Madame.”

  “What do you mean? Didn’t you see him get it?”

  “I found his rooms by inquiring at the Théâtre Guénégaud and sent an old friend of mine, a dwarf who begs on the Pont au Change, to deliver the message so that he wouldn’t recognize me. My friend, who is trustworthy, was shown in to find him at breakfast with La Bertrand, the comedienne. He was wearing a silk dressing gown and a brocade fur-lined cap. Evidently he has shaved his head like an aristocrat these days and hired the services of a rather exclusive wig maker.”

  “I don’t care about his wig. Go on.” Mustapha hesitated.

  “Madame, he recognized the handwriting. He tore the letter up unread.” He shook his cloak off before the fire. “And…that’s not all. When La Bertrand asked what the letter was, he shrugged his shoulders and said it was just another billet doux from one of the many women who were mad for him.”

  “Mustapha, no one paid you to tell me this, did they?”

  “On my honor, Madame. I’ve told you just as it was told to me.” I took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

  “Then, evidently, there is nothing more I can do for him.”

  “Evidently. But what was in the letter, Madame?”

  “A warning, Mustapha.”

  “I myself would never discount a warning from the celebrated seeress Madame de Morville,” observed Mustapha. “Among other things, you are never wrong.”

  “I wish I were this time,” I said. How could I blame d’Urbec for hating me? What more had I a right to expect? If only I could at least win back some small part of the friendship I had thrown away so foolishly! How was it that in my mad dash after the trivial-minded, empty hero of my childhood I had missed the fact that I possessed something as precious as d’Urbec’s regard? Suddenly I felt old and sad. I went to stand by the fire, extending my hands before the leaping flames that looked so much like glowing salamanders among the logs.

  “Still, in my search about town I have found other scandals that may amuse you, Madame.”

  “Oh, do tell. I am in need of amusement.”

  “There is a new sonnet attacking Monsieur Racine’s Phèdre, said to be penned by Nevers himself—or at least one of his camp. It is so vicious that Racine will have to answer.”

  “And then, of course, Nevers will have license to counterattack,” I pointed out.

  “Exactly,” agreed Mustapha. “Then it is the end of Monsieur Racine’s masterwork, and possible of Monsieur Racine himself. I’ve never heard of anyone yet who has outsmarted a Mancini cabal.”

  ***

  They were playing bassette at the Hôtel Soissons, and the money fever was high. At the principal table sat the countess in her great armchair, a dozen or so of her little dogs clustered about her feet. Madame de Vertamon was cutting the cards, while the Marquis de Gordes observed them all through the lorgnon in his hand. At the other tables, one could see the players exulting as fortune turned their way or tearing at their wigs and beating the tables with their fists as thousands of pistoles vanished at a turn of the cards.

  “My friend, I am short of money. Have you five hundred pistoles?” Madame de Rambures turned to the gentleman standing behind her, who was obliged to supply them. The requirements of male gallantry were such that few men who won ever left with their winnings; one must assist the ladies’ play. And the ladies did lose. They lacked strategy, I observed, and let themselves be carried away by the emotion of the moment.

  I drifted through the room, picking up gossip: the new styles, news from the front, the personalities of military commanders dissected, ditto ladies of fashion, society physicians, and magistrates. Through the gabble of voices I heard a woman laughing: “Oh, my dear, you hadn’t heard? The Sieur Racine has fled to the Jansenists. He wrote a sonnet accusing Nevers of incest. And Nevers has made it clear Racine’s life was worth nothing if he stayed.”

  “Nevers is entirely within his rights. I say, it warrants a thousand cuts with a stirrup leather…”

  I moved on, not wishing to be caught listening in. “So, Primi, you do not play?” Visconti had appeared at my shoulder, ever the bored observer.

  “I ventured a single pistole day before yesterday, Madame de Morville, and within an evening had won a thousand. Then the ladies all said, ‘Visconti the magician will win for us’ and had me play for them as their champion. This evening I was wiped out and withdrew before I went into the kind of debt I could not repay.”

  “Eminently sensible, I think.”

  “Ah, but it harms my reputation. How can a prophet fail at cards? Perhaps it is wiser never to play, as you do.”

  “Primi, who is the dark fellow holding the bank at the table over there? I don’t believe I’ve seen him here before.”

  “Oh, him? That’s Monsieur d’Urbec. Not a distinguished-sounding name, but they say he’s connected with foreign banking interests. There are rumors of a foreign title, but as the possessor of one myself, I can assure you that it counts for little. No, it’s the money he has that makes him welcome. He’s very generous with the ladies, he knows how to get a gentleman out of an embarrassment, and he has the Devil’s own luck at cards.”

  “Oh, he cheats?”

  “No, he’s like Dangeau. He plays with strategy, not emotions, and so has become Fortune’s favorite. He comes from nowhere and is invited everywhere. They say he may be negotiating to buy an office—some provincial tax farmership, I think. A parvenu, but not without wit. Ah, there’s Monsieur Villeroy—look how he dissembles; he thinks he conceals from the world that he is the countess’s lover, but it is written clearly on his face. The science of physiognomy, it is infallible.”

  “How would you
read Monsieur d’Urbec, Primi?” He shot me a quick glance.

  “He’s not for you, little vixen, unless you want to live a life in exile, shuttling between the courts of foreign princes. You are too much a Parisian, I judge, to want that. He has the face of a born adventurer. Bitter, intelligent. He owns too many secrets. He lays plans like a chess master in a world of fools and amateurs. He will counsel kings; but they will not love him.”

  “Bravo, Primi. And the physiognomies of the others he plays against?”

  “Brissac, our old friend—a delicious monster, a master of debauch. See the slant of the forehead and the way the eyelids droop? Perverse. And the ambassador Giustiniani—Oh, look—”

  At the table, some sort of drama was taking place. Giustiniani had laid his cards face down on the table. Brissac tipped his head back and laughed madly. D’Urbec stood up suddenly, his hands flat on the table, his face white.

  “Come, let us not miss the excitement,” said Visconti, taking me by the arm.

  “A hundred thousand pistoles. I want them immediately, Monsieur d’Urbec.”

  “Surely, you do not expect Monsieur d’Urbec to leave town tomorrow—” Giustiniani broke in “…among gentlemen…”

  “‘Gentlemen’? And who says Monsieur d’Urbec is a gentleman?” Brissac’s voice was cold and taunting.

  “Oh, la, dear Monsieur d’Urbec, I would repay your favor of last night, if only I hadn’t lost so heavily this evening. My husband will be so annoyed with me,” Madame de Bonnelle said with a sigh.

  “Gentleman?” said d’Urbec between his teeth. “Gentlemen do not cheat at cards.”