The Oracle Glass (5 page)

“And like Cyrus, I carry off the prize,” Lamotte announced calmly, addressing the swarthy, dark-haired young man in the open door. He was of medium height, slightly stoop shouldered from too much study, and unfashionably dressed in plain black.

“
Ha!
” responded the black-clad man, emerging from the mysterious opening with a taller friend. “To think that until this very moment I thought the unknown angel was blond.”

“Truly, love is madness to so change the color of the adored's hair,” agreed the tall, shabbily dressed fellow that appeared beside the first man.

“Her sister,” announced my escort with a flourish, “the gateway to the adored, the artisan of my happiness—or despair—Mademoiselle Geneviève, may I present to you two of the companions of my life's journey: this honest-looking fellow in the threadbare coat is Jean-Baptiste Gillet, better known by his imprimatur as the Griffon. He is soon to grow celebrated as the publisher of my collected works, when I have written them.” The tall fellow with the droll face bowed by way of an answer.

“Now, this soberly clad fellow beside him is neither a widower nor a Jansenist divine, but Florent d'Urbec, called Cato the Censor by those who know him best. He understands everything and approves of nothing. He believes in the universal applicability of the geometric method of proof, applying it equally to the fortunes of the state, the playing of cards, and the courting of young women.”

The dark-haired young man in the ill-fitting provincial suit bowed deeply, with a flourish of his untrimmed, broad-brimmed hat.

“The geometric method?” I asked, somewhat taken aback.

“It is irrefutable,” he announced, staring at me with impudent, intelligent black eyes. “From the geometric method, I intend to create a universal science of prediction.” He had a fiercely aquiline nose, intense, serious brows, and black curls that fell about his ears in anarchic disarray, as if he had simply clipped them off himself with scissors to save the cost of a barber. But it was his smile that annoyed me most: a wicked, lazy, arrogant smile, as if he were the only clever person in the world. I'll show him, I thought.

“Oh, are you Cato?” I addressed the arrogant young man. “Author of
Observations
on
the
Health
of
the
State
? I'd always imagined you to be a gouty old gentleman.”

“Mademoiselle, it is a mark of the frivolity of the times that you should imagine only the elderly capable of seriousness of purpose,” he said, mocking me with his dark eyes. I was furious at his condescension.

“But really,” I said aloud, “do you think it appropriate to argue so consistently by analogy to the body in the case of an entity so very different in composition as the state? For example, the functions of the heart as discovered by the Englishman, Monsieur Harvey, are not at all those previously attributed to—” Monsieur Lamotte drew back and stared at me as if he had discovered a viper underneath his pillow.

“Ha, Lamotte, you've found another learned lady. I thought you were done with
précieuses
,” the Griffon broke in.

“Monsieur Gillet, I am no
précieuse
, for I call everything by its right name and not by flowery disguises, Monsieur printer of scurrilous pamphlets.”

“Please, Mademoiselle, you have wounded me. I spread enlightenment.” Griffon put his hand on his breast.

“The Sign of the Reading Griffon? Supposedly printed in The Hague? The griffon of
The
Hideous
Crimes
of
the
Abbé Mariette
?
The
Unspeakable
Acts
of
the
Possessed
Sisters
of
Loudon
? And
La
Putaine
Errante
? Those you call enlightenment? Surely, then, it is you that is the
précieux
.” D'Urbec turned and looked at me appreciatively, then looked back at his friend, the printer, and laughed.

“So, Gillet, you must cry ‘
touché!
' She has caught you fair, this excessively well-read little lady!” exclaimed Cato as he clapped the Griffon on the shoulder. “And you, poor friend, I see by your eyes you fear the divine sister may also be corrupted by the possession of a mind. Consider this, my friend—honest speech is to be commended in a woman, it being the rarest of feminine virtues.” He folded his arms and looked me up and down with a sarcastic eye. I glared at him. He saw my glare and laughed again. “Mademoiselle, I must inform you that an intelligent woman has the key to my heart. Especially one who has, of her own volition, read my treatise on the salvation of the state through fiscal reform. Were it not so muddy, I would kneel before you and declare myself, O perceptive, gray-eyed Athena.”

“You are all mockers, and I am going home. I am sure my mother would not approve of your acquaintance.” I turned to leave. The ragamuffins had given up and departed.

“Then we will accompany you, to help our dear friend Lamotte press his case—as well as to protect you from the sort of riff-raff one finds in taverns,” the Griffon announced.

“Griffon, back off; you hinder me,” growled Lamotte.

“Then don't expect me to print your next volume of sonnets,” Gillet announced.

“When my plays are famous, I will have another printer publish the complete edition and grow wealthy in your place,” Lamotte sniffed.

“Calm, calm, Messieurs. You have reached an impasse where only philosophy can resolve your differences.” Cato caught up with the bickering party on my heels.

“
Political
philosophy? When have political philosophers failed to stir up trouble and sedition? Wars have been fought because of political philosophy,” Griffon replied.

I turned the corner into the rue des Marmousets so quickly that they had trouble keeping up with me, involved in their quarrel as they were. Then Cato stepped adroitly in front of me, striking a classic pose, with one hand over his heart and the other outstretched as if for oration.

“I appeal to you, Athena. They have wounded me to the quick. Defend me, a poor philosopher, and my works.” The speech was mocking, but something quite different flickered deep in his eyes. It frightened me, and I fled from it. We had reached the little door beside the heavy carriage gate into our courtyard.

“You all embarrass me on my own doorstep. Good day, Messieurs.”

“Oh dear,” said Griffon, looking up and down our house. “It's the Hôtel Pasquier. They're very rich here. Petronius, you haven't a chance. Write all you want, you'll never even get an invitation to put your nose in the door.” Of course, Petronius. What else would a fellow like this, all ribbons and fancy buttons, call himself but after the
arbiter
elegantarum
? But the mustachioed cavalier had pulled a letter out of his shirt front, which he pressed into my hand.

“Mademoiselle, I beg you by all that is holy. Transmit this message to the Beloved Angel Above.”

“To Marie-Angélique?”

“Marie-Angélique—oh, I always knew she was an angel. Tell her I'm perishing.”

“That's what they all say.”

“All? I have a rival? Who is he?”

“Well, the latest one was my tutor. He languished considerably.”

“With what result?” cried Petronius, suddenly fierce.

“By mutual agreement, he was sent away to make his fortune selling a scheme of memory training.”

“Heart broken, I suppose?” He had regained his lightness of tone once more.

“Oh, I suppose. But he is now tutoring the bastards of some provincial count and paying his court to Mademoiselle du Parc, the actress.”

“Then he was not worthy of her. I, on the other hand, am deeply worthy. Take my letter, I pray—”

“It will cost you.” It was only fair I be repaid for all this public embarrassment.

“Isn't love worth more than mere money?”

“That isn't what I had in mind, Monsieur Petronius. I do you a favor…one that isn't entirely proper…and so you should do one for me in return. And I've been wanting a copy of the
Satyricon
for a long time, now. It would only be appropriate—”

“Oho, you are a bad girl, Mademoiselle. Anyone caught purchasing the French translation will spend a fine long time in the Châtelet,” said Griffon.

“I had in mind the Latin. I can't purchase it myself, you know. I'll even pay you back.”

Cato had been looking at me intently, all the while. “And I suppose you read Greek as well, Athena?”

“A little. My last tutor left too soon.”

“Then consider that you might graciously offer Petronius here your assistance on account, lest he languish and die on your doorstep. I'll undertake to get you your naughty book, though it may take a while.” Something about his sardonic smile made me confused and angry. I snatched the letter and slammed the door behind me, all in a moment.

***

“Oh, what is this?” Marie-Angélique took the note with some surprise.

“Another love letter, I think.”

“So now even you are carrying them. Is it from that lovely blond young man who greeted me from his carriage?”

“No, the one with the ribbons and boots that stands in front of the door.”

“Oh, him.” Marie-Angélique glanced over the letter, then crumpled it and threw it into the cold grate of the fireplace. “Tell me, Geneviève, how does it sound…to be a duchess?”

“Why, it sounds very good. Who is the duchess?”

“Mademoiselle de la Vallière became a duchess, for being the King's favorite and bearing his children.”

“The Romans believed the highest adornment a woman could have was her virtue. The noble Lucretia killed herself rather than suffer the stain of dishonor.”

“But we are not ancient Romans, Geneviève, they're all dead. And we're French. Things are different in these modern times.”

“They certainly are.”

“My, you're sour today, Sister. Don't you believe in the power of love?”

“I believe in the power of logic, Marie-Angélique,” I answered curtly as I left the room. I waited until she was gone and then returned to read the crumpled letter in secret. It was poetry, written late at night with drops of candle wax on it. I folded it in between the pages of my Cicero, where no one but me could ever find it.

In the first weeks of September, Father fell ill with a mysterious stomach malady. The doctor pronounced it to be an overbalancing of the bilious humor, but after a series of strong purges, his condition worsened. Mother became most solicitous, cooking for him herself and even washing out his shirts and linen. To cheer him up and speed his recovery, I read to him aloud for hours every day. But with all Mother's care, Father still seemed to grow weaker. Sometimes I didn't think he was even listening, but then he'd turn his head and say, “Daughter, your presence is a stay and consolation to me. Begin again in the Tenth Book; tell me, how does Aristotle define true happiness?”

“Father, he tells us that true happiness is found in contemplation, whereas the common idea of happiness as pleasant amusements is fostered by the courts of tyrants.”

“Daughter, you are quick to learn; read on.” And so I continued to read from the
Nichomachean
Ethics
concerning the foundation of happiness in virtuous activities, as he nodded in agreement whenever I reached a passage he especially liked, and smiled his ironic smile when I read that slaves could enjoy bodily pleasures, but were not accounted happy. I never quite understood what he meant in those days, though now that I have grown older I understand all too well how clearly he saw the world.

“So,
ma
petite
, what's going on out there? My son ought to be recovering by now.” Grandmother seemed to have shrunk visibly over the last few weeks, like an apple that is gradually drying out. The autumn rain battered at the window of her room, and the closed curtains smelled dank, even though the fire had been built up to keep the chill out. She put down her Bible on the bed, the pages open to Revelations.

“Grandmother, he's not better at all, even though Mother has taken over nursing him. Even the Romans don't cheer him up the way they used to.”

“Herself? The Whore of Babylon, nursing my son? ‘Can the leopard change his spots, or the Ethiopian his skin?' Tell me of what this nursing consists.”

“She does everything, Grandmother. She is quite changed.”

“Everything?” The old lady looked suddenly sly. “Tell me, does she cook for him? Does she wash his shirts herself?”

“Why, yes, of course, Grandmother—and his sheets and bandages as well.”

“Bandages? They never told me he needed bandages; they told me he was getting better.”

“Oh, no. His sores would break your heart, Grandmother.” Grandmother's white, wrinkled face turned even whiter, then her little black eyes blazed from beneath her cap. “It is in the soap,” she muttered. “I have read of this.” Struggling, she sat up in bed.

“Get me my stick, Geneviève, and my best black dress, there, in the armoire. Then assist me to dress. I am getting up.” I couldn't have been more astounded if she had announced that the Seine had turned to wine. I brought her her stick and pulled her up until she was sitting on the edge of the bed. She gasped as she rose, then set her mouth tightly. Grandmother dressed in the old style of Louis XIII, without corsets, in heavy black widow's weeds, all embroidered in black thread and jet beads. Her feet were very tiny—the last vestige of her once-famed beauty, and she smiled as I pulled the little black slippers over her black woolen hose. When she was dressed, leaning heavily on my arm, she tottered to her ancient armchair and sat down, puffing.

“Now,” she said, “I want you to get me pen and ink. I must write something. You must go, and without telling a soul, get a hired carriage. Remember, tell no one, and return as quickly as possible.” I moved her little writing table to the armchair and set out pen, ink, paper, and sand before her.

As I opened the door of Grandmother's room, I thought I heard the rustling of clothing and swift, soft steps. I started, every nerve taut. Grandmother seemed so alien, all shrunken and frail, propped up in her chair, but with something strange blazing inside her as she wrote intently, her pen rapidly traversing the paper. I sent a boy to the carriage stand, then rushed back to Grandmother.

She was seated in her chair, her head thrown back, her body in convulsions. The little desk had toppled to the floor and the ink bottle rolled, unstoppered, spilling its contents in a semicircle of black on the sand-spattered carpet. Frantically, I called for help. Her parrot, screeching, fluttered to the curtain rod. Servants clattered into the room. Mother, holding a handkerchief, exclaimed in horror. Marie-Angélique stood behind her, white with shock. As the servants lifted the dying woman to her bed, the bird fluttered to the canopy, screeching “Drink, drink, old monster!
Awk!
Fire and brimstone!”

“For God's sake, strangle that dreadful thing!” cried Mother, and the servants added to the cacophony by pursuing it about the room as it flapped wildly above them and Marie-Angélique wailed, “Oh, don't! The dear, sweet bird! It doesn't know any better!” as she wrung her hands.

“Grandmother, Grandmother, don't die! Oh, please, you can't, can't die!” Even as I held Grandmother's clenched fist in my own two hands, I could feel her body grow icy and limp. I never even heard Uncle's soft, slippered step behind me.

“Well, here's a touching scene,” he said, in a voice as cold as ice.

“Call the priest.” Mother turned to me, her eyes flat and dead with hate. “It is you who have done this, Mademoiselle. It is all your fault. You have killed her by getting her up.” As she swept from the room on her brother's arm, I was left alone with Grandmother's corpse, all dressed in the finery of olden days.

For what seemed like hours, I stared at Grandmother's stony face while the rain rattled against the windows. How could she have died so suddenly—she, who could have defied death for decades more? I heard a soft “
urk, urk
” from above the bed canopy and looked up. The parrot, triumphantly uncaptured, was clawing his way across the canopy, making noises in its stomach, as that sort of bird does. I looked down at Grandmother's hand where it lay in mine and realized that folded into it was a crumpled scrap of paper. I took it up and smoothed it out. The letter she had been writing. It had been torn off, leaving a bit in her hand. I turned the fragment over. A name was written on it—a stranger's name. “M. de La Reynie,” the paper said. Just that. Nothing more. But where had the rest of the letter gone? I hunted about her chair, where it might have fallen. Her empty cordial glass rolled by one gilded claw-foot, but there was no letter. I put the glass back on the nightstand, beside the little cut-glass bottle. If only I hadn't helped her up, I grieved. It was all my fault.

But Mother was at the door, with the priest and the men to lay out the body.

“Still here, are you?” Mother spoke in a cold voice, but her mouth was twisted in an eerie, triumphant little smile. “You should be ashamed.” I bolted from the room, weeping.

As I left Grandmother's room, I saw that my brother had been summoned from the Collège. Short and square, he already showed signs of growing the righteous jowls and cold, fishy eye of a magistrate. He stood there, stiff and pompous, the soon-to-be heir of the house of Pasquier, condemning me with his eyes. An
avocat
in the making. Perhaps, if enough came to him in Grandmother's will, the purchaser of a minor office—the first step on the ladder. A quiet little wife with a big dowry. The Hôtel Pasquier refurnished in a more respectable style. I could see it all in his eyes. He would not be a fool, a speculator, a loser like Father.

“Geneviève, I know it wasn't really your fault.” Marie-Angélique embraced me. “I don't care what Mother says.” She steered me into a private corner of Mother's gilded reception room, near one of the tall, brocade-draped windows. “Now, you mustn't cry so. It will make Grandmother sad in heaven.” She took out her handkerchief from her sleeve and dried my face. She looked worried. “Besides,” she added, “you must think of Father. You must be cheerful for him, so he'll recover. You can talk with him about all those things he reads. It will make him better.”

“Better? But—but suppose, Marie-Angélique, that he doesn't get better?”

“Oh, that can't be. It just can't.” Marie-Angélique looked pale and agitated. There were circles under her eyes. “Without Father, I haven't a prospect in the world. There's nothing left, nothing for any of us. They'll seize the furniture, the house—What will become of us? Uncle has nothing, and Father's family is dead. Étienne isn't finished with school yet. But Father can still save us, Geneviève, once he's better. Make him cheerful, Geneviève; make him well.” Her voice faded to that conspiratorial whisper that everyone uses when talking about sick people. “We've all decided we won't tell him about Grandmother until he's better, and can bear it.”

I couldn't tell Marie-Angélique that I had seen the ghastly gray color creeping into Father's face, the color that signaled the inevitable end. That was the disadvantage of having studied the sick people in the Hôtel Dieu, rather than the clothing of the fashionable visitors. A question for my notebooks that evening:

Is truth always good? Devise a method to balance the temporary pleasure given by well-meant falsehood against the shock of bad news poorly prepared for.

***

“Oh, I do wish black weren't so unbecoming to me,” said Marie-Angélique, inspecting her face in her dressing-table mirror. In the required weeks of mourning following Grandmother's funeral, Marie-Angélique had undertaken to lighten the heaviness that filled the house by having me read
Célinte
to her while she tried out new hairstyles and altered her dresses by the addition of braid and little rows of tucked ribbon. And although I was ashamed to say it, I found the smell of illness and the clouds of dark sorrow and regret in Father's sickroom more than I could bear. Her mindless romances were a welcome distraction.

“My, what a lovely sentiment Mademoiselle de Scudéry expresses in that passage. How wonderful to be so in love,” said Marie-Angélique with a sigh.

“I'm not surprised you like it—you liked it just as well when she used the selfsame passage in
Clélie
, if I'm not mistaken. It seems she saves herself the trouble of writing anew in this place.”

“Oh, Sister, surely you are mistaken. Why, the characters are entirely different.”

“Well enough,” I answered and continued reading the long conversation in Cléonime's palatial mansion, in which the company determines that the vice of secretly opening the letters of others is sure to lead to cheating at cards and end in the final depravity of desiring to know the future, and so of becoming enmeshed with astrologers.

“Mademoiselle de Scudéry is very opinionated.” Marie-Angélique looked annoyed. “After all, it is only natural to want to know the future. And I never cheat at cards.” She had finished her hair and now took up her sewing. “Oh, do pull back the curtains, Sister—I just can't stand all this gloom…Oh, you are so indiscreet—Who is it that you're looking at down there?”

“Lamotte is back, Sister, and he's brought a friend to give him courage.”

Having marked my place in the book, I had looked right out the middle of the window. The sky, heavy and dark with coming rain, seemed to touch the tall, narrow house fronts across the street. There, wrapped in a long cloak against the cold wind, stood André Lamotte, alias Petronius, pretending to be deep in conversation with Florent d'Urbec, the censorious Cato.

“A friend? Does he look like someone of substance?”

“No, he's a philosopher—”

“And you
know
such people? Sister, you are impractical.”

D'Urbec, dressed in a vast and shapeless Brandenburger overcoat and his wide, flat black hat, nodded in response to Petronius's flamboyant gestures, looking up at the window every so often. The Brandenburger had large pockets. Big enough for a book, I imagined. I caught his eye and waved. He pulled Petronius by the sleeve and pointed to the window. Then he pulled the book from his pocket, and the two of them pointed to it as he brandished it aloft. I gestured back, silence, and then pointed in the direction of the courtyard gate.

“Surely, Sister, you are not going to speak with them.” Marie-Angélique put down her sewing and looked at me disapprovingly.

“Of course I am. They've brought a book. For…ah…Father.” I found the two of them looking most pleased with themselves outside the narrow portal by the great, barred carriage doors.

***

“We have it here,” Lamotte announced grandly. “Acquired at untold cost and suffering, rarer than even the golden apples of the Hesperides.”

“As Hippomenes tempted Atalanta, I throw it at your feet,” announced d'Urbec. I blushed as I saw his knowing little half smile. I had a terrible urge to grab the book away and run.

“Ah, no, greedy sister of the divine Marie-Angélique. First, a letter,” announced Lamotte, pulling a folded, sealed sheet from his bosom and thrusting it into my hands.

“You do presume, Monsieur Lamotte.”

“But surely your gracious favor…Oh, pardon. Have I been too unseemly in your hour of grief? I see you are in mourning. My ardent flame has blinded me to the social decencies. I hope your father did not suffer too much.”

“It's not Father, it's Grandmother who died. But how did you know Father was ill?”

“I make it my business to know everything that's going on in my dear angel's house.”

I turned on him resentfully. “Which one of the servants have you paid?” I queried. He blushed.

“Oh, so you didn't pay—I should have guessed. It's a woman you sweet-talked. Who?”

“I'll never tell.” He laughed—but then he looked up to the house, and his face grew pale. “Can't you tell me if I even have hope? Won't she even speak to me?” he cried out, his voice anguished.