The Oracle Glass (3 page)

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.

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.

Fact 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.

Father had explained to me that a disciplined mind is the most important possession a person could have. That evening we were resting from the Stoics and reading Monsieur Descartes's
Discourse on the Method of Properly Conducting One's Reason and of Seeking the Truth in the Sciences
.

“Now, begin where we left off, at the Fourth Discourse,” said Father, “and then explain what is meant.”

“‘But immediately afterwards I became aware that, while I decided thus to think that everything was false, it followed necessarily that I who thought this must be something; and observing that this truth:
I
think, therefore I am
, was so certain and so evident that all the most extravagant supposition of the skeptics were not capable of shaking it, I judged that I could accept it without scruple as the first principle of the philosophy I was seeking,' “I read. “That means,” I said, “that according to the geometrical method of proof—”

“
Snf, snf
—What's that abominable scent? It smells like a whorehouse in here.”

“I've no idea, Father.”

Fact number 5: the irresistible perfume has no effect on people with clear understanding.

I had finished the day before by writing in my secret book by the light of a bit of candle end:
This perfume is well suited to Mother, but I shall not use it again.

***

To return to Mother's
levée
on the morning of the day she changed my life: Having anointed herself with the irresistible perfume, Mother reviewed the address on the little note. It was the celebrated fortune-teller's address, and her advice would not come cheaply. Mother looked agitated, then stuffed the note in the bosom of her gown. Then she hunted here and there, in the old glove she kept under the mattress, the lacquered box on her dressing table, and the little coffer in the back of her armoire. All empty, courtesy of Uncle. At last she produced eight of Grandmother's silver spoons, which had vanished from the sideboard, and sent me to pawn them with the wife of the ladies' tailor on the rue Courtauvilain, where gentlewomen in distress got cash on their silk dresses.

Thinking over the matter on the way home, it seemed entirely fair that I hold back two francs as my share of the spoons that Grandmother would have left to me anyway and go to the Galerie in the Palais, which was very close to where we lived. There at a stationer's stall I bought another little red notebook. The stationer was also selling from a well-hidden box an excellent
libelle
with a goodly number of pages for the money, entitled
The
Hideous
Secrets
of
the
Papal
Poisoners
. It told in some detail all the methods used by the ambitious Italians of olden times to get rid of rivals and explained how the Italian queen had brought them into France. Printed in Holland, best quality. I bought it for Grandmother.

Grandmother was delighted with this new addition to her collection of scandal. She was happily sitting up in bed, rereading about the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, when I brought the
libelle
to her.

“Don't forget this, Geneviève, this is how the wicked are punished. With
fire
and
brimstone
.” And her little black eyes glittered with pleasure while her parrot croaked out “Fire! Fire! Fire and brimstone!” and bobbed his green head. She put the
libelle
under her pillow, to save for later.

That afternoon, Mother had the horses harnessed and took my sister and me across the Pont Neuf, past the Halles and the Cimitière des Innocents, to the very edge of Paris, directly under the ramparts near the Porte Saint-Denis. There we passed into a neighborhood composed mostly of tall, graceful villas surrounded by large gardens. Mother had the driver stop in the rue Beauregard, where we watched a masked lady slip furtively from one of the houses to a waiting carriage, with eight horses, attendants in full livery, and what looked at a distance like a ducal coat of arms painted on the door. The lady gave orders, and the carriage started away at great speed, barely missing a knot of lounging porters waiting by a pair of empty sedan chairs for the return of other clients of the fortune-teller. Mother looked satisfied: she liked doing business where the clientele were numerous and chic. And so, without even realizing it, she stepped over the invisible border into the kingdom of shadows.

After a brief wait in an anteroom, where Mother sat fanning herself in the heat, the yellow from her damp hair trickling down her neck, we were shown by a well-dressed maid into the fortune-teller's reception room. The walls and ceiling were painted black; it was dimly lit by candles that flickered in front of a cluster of plaster saints in a corner. The shutters had been closed against the heat, but the heavy black drapes were pulled back from them. In the other corner was a statue of the Madonna in a blue robe, with a heavy candle burning before her and a vase full of flowers that gave off a sickly scent. A cabinet with open shelves beside an armoire displayed a row of assorted statues of china angels. In the dim light their faces took on a menacing aspect. A rich, heavy carpet covered the floor, and a small, elaborately carved table stood in its center. On one side of the table was an armchair for the
devineresse
and on the other side, a wide, cushioned stool for the client. We sat down on chairs arranged beneath the china angels to wait.

“She'll be a hag,” whispered Marie-Angélique to me, her blue eyes wide and her thick golden hair all piled high, a shining halo over her beautiful face. “I just know it. And, oh, what will I tell Père Laporte? He doesn't approve of fortune-telling.” And I don't approve of having a confessor instead of a conscience, I thought. I was quite proud of mine, which had been produced through the discovery of the laws of virtue by the use of reason.

But the woman the maid ushered through the inner door was nothing like what Marie-Angélique had expected. She looked like a lady, dressed in dark emerald green silk over a black embroidered petticoat. Her black hair was arranged in curls and decorated with brilliants in the latest court style. Her face was pale and elegant, with a wide forehead, a long classic nose, and narrow, delicate chin. Her smile was curious, narrow, and turned up at the edges, like a pointed V. I could tell that Mother and Marie-Angélique approved of her appearance. She makes good money in this business, I thought.

I studied her closely as she took her seat, for as one of my tutors had explained, the science of physiognomy allows people of education to discern the character of persons from their features and carriage. The fortune-teller looked about thirty; her air was self-assured, and her eyes, somber and black, seemed all-knowing, almost mocking. Her whole presence had a sort of brooding intensity, and her posture as she sat in her brocade upholstered armchair was regal, as if she were the queen of this secret world, temporarily admitting petitioners from a lesser place. Let's see what she has to say, I said to myself. We'll see how clever she is.