THIRTY-TWO

Madame de Ludres was not married but an unmarried demoiselle of the court, who had the title of “Madame” because she had taken religious vows as a canoness, which gave her a considerable income from a distant convent to spend on pleasure and amorous dalliance. The minute her arrogant little satin-shod feet crossed my threshold, I hated her. I hated the way her powdered little nose turned up; I hated the way she covered the spots on her complexion with tiny black velvet crescent mouches. I hated the footman who carried her train and the waiting woman who carried her little lapdog. Marie-Angélique’s little finger was more beautiful than her entire body. For her ambition, my sister’s bones were on display at the Collège Saint-Côme. Vivonne’s maîtresse en titre; what a pretty and convenient step up for her. But it was only a footstool to poise her for the higher climb: to the supreme power of maîtresse en titre to His Majesty, the Sun King. I’ll see you in hell first, I thought.

The reading was clear. I saw her at court in an antechamber I did not recognize. The courtiers rose to her as she entered the room. Though the women were in the glistening summer dress ordered by the King, I could tell by the way they shivered, and the heavy wool uniforms of the lackeys, that it was midwinter. In the shimmering reflection, Madame de Montespan, in her notorious “floating gown” of advanced pregnancy, raged soundlessly behind the wall of courtiers, whose gaze was fixed on the new favorite.

“You will not attain the supreme favor immediately,” I said calmly. “Madame de Montespan has been reconciled with her august lover and will soon become pregnant by him. When the pregnancy is advanced, his fancy will stray again, and you will achieve the highest recognition.”

“When?” she asked, her hard little eyes intense with avarice and ambition. I wished that I, too, had a garden of bones and that she were its chief occupant.

“It looks like midwinter,” I answered. “Possibly the beginning of the New Year.”

“And Mademoiselle de Thianges, what of her?”

“That will require another reading,” I said in a bland voice. “It is very difficult to read for a person not present in the room. I require a double fee and can guarantee nothing.” Grudgingly, she doled out the money. “Have you brought me anything that belongs to her?” I asked.

“I have bribed her maid for a rosette from her shoe,” she said, producing a limp pink satin rosette. Clearly, she had heard of my methods. So what if I’d promised La Voisin to avoid these third-party readings? I consulted the oracle glass again, with great show, holding the rosette against the glass.

“Mademoiselle de Thianges is negligible. She will never enjoy more than passing favor and will soon be married off.”

I was happy to be rid of the despicable little canoness and her entourage.

La Voisin was right. The next week was full of hopefuls, and of their mothers, their brothers, their fathers, and even husbands, all seeking information from the glass. For those who wished a more active form of intervention, I sent them to La Voisin for poudres d’amour and whatever else they thought might improve their chances. The witches of Paris did a ferocious business in wax manikins and spells in those weeks. Bold new hats and silk-lined mantles were in evidence on Sundays at Notre Dame de Bonne Nouvelle, one could hear women’s voices singing raucously from the back rooms of certain taverns in less savory neighborhoods, and the black market price of abandoned infants rose to two écus. Myself, I bought several curious old books I had long coveted and an Italian painting of Susanna and the Elders for my reception room, but I had not a moment left in the day to enjoy them. I felt as if I were in the very center of a storm of greed, my work at the glass by far the most honest undertaking in a society hellbent on sucking away the resources of the crown through the King’s philanderings. Just as the storm would abate, some new piece of news would set it off. Now the Prince de Soubise was rumored to be planning a new town residence built with the King’s gifts to his wife, setting the court ablaze with envy. I glimpsed it once briefly, shining in the depths of the water vase, an immense palace in the heart of the city. Not bad payment for the uncomplaining loan of a wife for a few nights’ adultery.

It was at the very height of this frenzy that I encountered d’Urbec again, purely by chance, in the public rooms of an inn on the way to Versailles. As usual, I made a tremendous stir as I alighted from my carriage and made my way through the crowded room to the fireplace. Only a group of card players, hard at it, did not look up. I had barely settled myself by the fire when one of the players, with a cry of despair, stood up and threw his hat on the ground.

“What will you have of me, Monsieur, the coat off my back?”

“Your note of hand is sufficient,” said a familiar voice in cool, even tones. The transaction accomplished, d’Urbec stood and turned from the table around which the players were gathered.

“Good day, Madame de Morville. I regret that we have not met on the Cours-la-Reine after all,” he said.

“He knows the fortune-teller…yes, that is his secret…the Devil assists him…” The room was abuzz.

“My condolences on the death of your si—ah, Marie-Angélique,” he said. He must have seen Lamotte, then. Did he know everything? He must. Yet even so, he hadn’t betrayed my identity. Why did seeing him again disturb me so?

“I tried, but I couldn’t save her,” I said, trying to hide my discomfort.

“People often cannot be saved from themselves,” he answered, and turned on his heel, leaving without another word. Cut dead, I thought, and looked into the fire so that no one could see my eyes.

“To what do I owe this honor, Madame?” Once again, La Voisin had invaded my house. The sorceress handed her wet cloak to Sylvie to dry before the fire and then seated herself in my best armchair to warm her red boots on my hearth. It must be important, I thought, to bring her out in this weather.

“Do you still see Monsieur d’Urbec?” she asked abruptly.

“No, Madame,” I answered, still trying to anticipate what she was doing here. She disliked d’Urbec and knew that I knew it.

“Well, I wish you to take up his acquaintance again,” she announced, her face firm.

“Madame, I cannot. I believe he hates me.”

“After you saved his life and fed his relatives into the bargain? I hope you are not deceiving me.”

“About what, Madame?” I must have looked innocent of whatever plot she suspected me of. Her face relaxed.

“Little Marquise, that no-account galérien is everywhere these days. I’ve made inquiries, but whatever he is up to, he’s kept it well hidden. All I know is that he bought a vial of quick-acting poison from La Trianon and that he has traveled twice to Le Havre. But what is more important, he wins at cards as if he had made a pact with the Devil himself. I have had nearly a dozen clients come to me for the ‘secret of d’Urbec.’ What is this secret? As far as I know, he has bought no glory hand. He has visited no one I know to have a spell cast. I believe he may have developed a new way of marking the deck. Either that or he has purchased some secret abroad. I must have that secret, little Marquise, if I am to keep my reputation long in this town. I want you to get it for me.”

“Madame, the man will not speak to me. He cut me in public the last time we met.”

“I think, perhaps, you still do not appreciate my powers. The man confides in no one. That means he is lonely. I will cause him to fall in love with you. He will be able to deny you nothing. Not even his secret of the cards. Tell me, do you have anything he left in the house, anything he used? I will need that, and a lock of your hair.” The memory of d’Urbec’s public insult made up my mind for me. I’ll get back at him, I thought. With La Voisin’s sorcery, I’ll flaunt Lamotte in his face. That will show him.

“I think I do—Sylvie, go upstairs and get the handkerchief that is folded in my dressing-table drawer.” Sylvie returned with Lamotte’s handkerchief, all folded and perfumed.

“A handkerchief? My goodness, fussy manners for a galérien,” she said, turning it over and inspecting it. Fortunately, it had no monogram.

“Well, he was a law student before,” I said.

“Then that accounts for it,” she said, as she wrapped the lock Sylvie had cut off in the handkerchief and rose to depart. As she left with Lamotte’s handkerchief, I felt as if I should begin a new notebook. Trial no. 1: Can La Voisin’s sorcery make Lamotte love me back? We shall see.

“That ragbag! That piece of garbage! How dare she think she can threaten me!” La Montespan’s shrieks of rage could be heard even through the half-opened doors of her vast twenty-room apartment on the ground floor at Versailles. I had cleared my schedule and traveled at full speed in her own heavy carriage over icy roads to wait like a lackey while she gave vent to her spleen. Oh well, I thought, better outside the room than inside it, as I heard a piece of china crash against the wall. I peered in to watch her pace the length of the blue-and-gold Savonnerie carpet like a tigress, kicking her train out of the way as she doubled back to advance toward the window. “I swear, she’ll never have him,” she shouted, raising her fist to the window. “Never!” Even the glass panes seemed to shudder at her wrath. Her stays looked looser to me. Her latest pregnancy was beginning to show. The brief reconciliation was over, and the King was on the prowl once more. “I’ll not lose everything for that mealy-faced, conniving, simpering canoness!”

“Madame, the fortune-teller,” one of her ladies announced tentatively, afraid to approach her. She turned suddenly.

“Oh, it’s you! The black-clad doomsayer.” Her face was distorted with rage and, beneath it, fear. “Why do I always turn to you, eh? Because you tell me the truth. The others, they all lie. It’s truth I need now, to lay my plans.” She seemed suddenly quiet and menacing. She advanced midway across the room and addressed her waiting lackey. “Bring a stool and water for the Marquise de Morville. Then clear the room. I want to be alone with my grief.” Her maids fled as leaves blow before a storm, leaving the room silent. The light from the window caught on the immense table of solid silver that stood, flanked by elaborately cast silver chairs, in the center of the carpet. A sculptured table clock, its face supported by nymphs, ticked slowly as I unrolled my cabalistic cloth beside it. A servant brought a gilded stool with a blue-and-silver tapestry cushion to the table, as another filled my water glass from a silver pitcher with a long spout. Noiselessly, they retreated, sealing the great double doors behind them, and I sat to read the water.

“Madame has the honor to be expecting His Majesty’s child,” I said quietly, so the ears pressed to the closed door would not overhear.

“Yes, yes, of course. That’s no miracle of prediction. That’s when he strays, as every cur at court knows. I give him my maids, I give him my nieces, but now even that is not enough for his endless appetite. He wounds me. He destroys me.” I wondered if she had already turned to the rue Beauregard for a method of removing the canoness.

“No interpretation,” she ordered. “Just what you see. I must know. I will not fail. If he is not mine, he will be nobody’s. That I swear. How many years have I put up with his stinking body in the bed? I am owed, owed, I tell you. He’ll not lock me away when he’s done with me. I can play as deep a game as he does.” She drew up one of the silver chairs and seated herself among its brocade cushions. I could hear her breathing heavily, and I saw as I glanced away from the glass that her hands were shaking.

“I see Madame de Ludres entering the appartement. She is in midnight blue velvet and is wearing a heavy diamond necklace with matching bracelets—”

“My necklace, damn him. I am the one who should have that necklace.”

“The court rises—”

“Damn! Damn! The diabolical little bitch. What spell did she use to attain the supreme favor? I’ll undo it. I’ll finish her.”

The King’s mistress leaned forward in the silver chair and spoke low, her voice quiet and threatening. “Tell me, is she the one? Look again. Is she the one who steals my just reward, the position of duchess?”

I stirred the water again. The glass bowl glinted with the reflections from the gold ribbon on Madame de Montespan’s gown as she leaned forward in her armchair, trying to peer into the depths. Beyond the closed double doors I could hear the rustle of clothing and the muffled thump of shifting feet. But Madame de Montespan was oblivious. Her strange aquamarine eyes glittered in her haggard face, bloated with the first signs of pregnancy.

“You are smiling. What do you see?” she whispered.

“Madame, something that will please you. Madame de Ludres is entering a convent…I can’t tell which. She is before the altar, and they are clipping her hair.” Madame de Montespan laughed out loud and pressed her hand to her heart.

“Then mine is the triumph,” she said happily.

“It would appear so, Madame.”

“You appear rather pleased yourself. Tell me, have you found the little canoness offensive?”

“Madame de Ludres is not celebrated for her graciousness.”

Madame de Montespan stood, whirling about almost like a girl. “Your news has made me young again, Madame,” she cried. She ran to the tall mirror that hung opposite the window and peered closely at her face. “Ah! I look younger already! Look! The lines are fading!” She stood back and turned before the mirror, twisting her hips sideways to create the greatest illusion of slenderness.

“Oh! If only I didn’t grow so stout!” Madame de Montespan smoothed down her dress to make her waist look narrower. “He told me I was growing too heavy. ‘Thick legs are so unattractive,’ he said. Imagine how it stung me to the heart! Six living children I’ve borne him, and my waist as slender as ever, and he says my legs are thick! His stomach is not exactly slender, either, you know. And it’s begun to droop like an old woman’s breasts. A convent! Ha! You’ll never find me locked in a convent, I tell you.” She turned from the crimson stained mirror. “Open the doors, Madame. Let the air in again! I’ll send for my masseuse. By the time the child is born, my legs will have regained their youth, just as my face has today!”

Servants and attendants poured in through the open doors with a suspicious rapidity. The anxiety on their faces shifted almost in an instant when they saw their mistress’s merriment. I left richly rewarded and with the promise of a thousand favors when the fall of Madame de Ludres should come to pass. But best of all, I thought, as I sat listening to the crunch and rattle of the carriage and the steady beat of hooves on the frosty road, I can bear any slight from Madame de Ludres now. It would be a pleasant amusement to observe over the coming months exactly how her fall would be engineered by the vicious souls at court. This time, little satin slippers, you have stepped into a game too deep for you. I wished I could tell Marie-Angélique.

It was hardly a week later when a boy left a note at the door that nearly stopped my breath.

“Mademoiselle,” it said, “I no longer sleep at night for the dreams that haunt me. Again and again I relive that sweet moment of sympathy we shared. I must see you again at any cost. André.”

“Tell him yes,” I said to the boy. And before the day was done, Sylvie had come from the front door with his answer.

Meet me masked in the pavilion of the Tuileries garden tomorrow at three o’clock. I will wear a military cloak with gold braid facings. A.

“Surely Madame will not go alone?” said Sylvie, all aflutter at the thought of seeing Lamotte again herself.

“Of course not. Suppose it’s a trap? Not everyone loves me in this city, you know. I’ll have you with me, and Mustapha can hover invisibly about. He’s something of a specialist at hovering.”

“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 Île 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.