TWELVE

The following week, all eager to try out my new self, I dove into the society of impecunious nobles and shady foreigners that infested Paris, clung to the fringes of the court, and jostled unceasingly in competition for favor. In this world, everything was for sale, nothing incapable of being traded on the market for personal advantage. The luckiest farmed taxes or courted heiresses, the less fortunate sold their possessions or informed to the police for money while awaiting the coming of better times. Gentility of manners and the ability to put up a good front were one’s ticket of entrance, but to advance in the game more was necessary. A nice figure or pretty profile, in either a man or a woman, was counted an advantage, but a small one; rumors of an inheritance or a lucky streak at the gaming tables were better. A connection with the King, no matter how tenuous, was best of all. In this struggle to be seen, to have something about oneself worthy of gossip for at least five minutes, it was a great advantage to be a hundred-and-fifty-year-old woman who read the future in water glasses and could be persuaded to part with a jar of her youth ointment for the skin.

“It’s a terrible curse, eternal youth. I wouldn’t wish it on anybody,” I told the Comtesse de Bachimont over the remains of the ragoût, as her maid, who was also her cook, housekeeper, and go-between to the pawnbroker, cleared the dishes for the next course. “Besides, the formula was made up over a hundred years ago. I have no idea whether it will work anymore.”

“But your skin—so unlined, so pale…” She couldn’t resist passing her hand across my cheek.

“It is but the pallor of the tomb, Madame. I have lived beyond my time. But it is well my dear husband, the Marquis, never lived to see the corruption of this age.” I dabbed at my eyes, but carefully so as not to disturb the sooty stain that made them look so interestingly sunken. She bought a jar.

“You read the future in water glasses, I hear,” rumbled the Comte de Bachimont as the candles burned low and the last of the supper was taken away. The dim light concealed the oddly barren look of their rented rooms. At the rate the furniture was being sold, I calculated they’d be back in Lyons before the turn of the new year. I’d need to work fast. Monsieur le Comte tried to put his hand beneath my skirt at the table. I didn’t need to move that fast.

“My dear Marquise”—another guest, the physician Dr. Rabel, leaned forward across the table—“isn’t this gift, ah, usually confined to young girls?”

“Dear Doctor Rabel, after the age of ninety one loses all interest in sex…entirely…” I pushed away the count’s hand. “…and, as it were…um, re-virginizes. It was after that that the talent appeared.”

“Hmm,” he said in a learned voice, “yes, definitely. That would account for it. But tell me, the formula didn’t work uniformly…that is to say, you are not fully youthful, um, all over? That is to say, when the abbé purchased the formula from Nicolas Flamel, didn’t you then drink it, once it was made up?”

“It is a grief to me to lay open a sin for which I so long ago obtained absolution, but the formula was an ointment. The abbé used up most of it on himself, being too selfish to think of me first, even though I had sacrificed my hope of Paradise for him. When he applied the remainder of the formula to me, he started at the top, but there wasn’t enough”—I dabbed at my eyes again—“and the second batch, you understand, was never as strong as the first…” I was pleased with my artistic embellishment of the skin-cream story. Creativity is, after all, the greatest satisfaction of the human mind. I composed my face in a distant, tragic look.

The company clucked in sympathy. What a selfish fellow, to leave a nice girl like me only half eternally youthful! I was planning how to expand the tale in the most interesting fashion, when Rabel broke in with a request for a reading. I was in my element. “I must have absolute quiet,” I pronounced in an oracular voice. “The candles must be placed at equal distances around the vase, so as not to disturb the image.” I sent them hustling about on little errands, adjusting the cloth, fetching the strange black bag in which I kept my round glass vase and its stand. I knew I required no picture at all to give a lovely reading. La Voisin’s intelligence network, and the training she had given me in the science of physiognomy, or the reading of features, was quite sufficient. If the pictures came up, it was a bonus; something to embellish my creation.

I spread a blood-red cloth, covered with cabalistic designs, under the globular vase. I demanded “absolutely pure” water to fill it, and the cook, in awe, filtered the water through five layers of cheesecloth before I poured it through a decorated funnel that looked like solid silver into the magic vessel. I spent a long time selecting the correct stirring rod. The glass? The dragon’s head? The serpent? I could feel the intensity of their gazes all directed at me, me. At last, I was popular and admired, just as the witch had promised. I was intoxicated with it.

I chanted, I stirred, and then, odd as it always was, I felt the eerie relaxation, the strange feeling of the nerves of the body vanishing, and a picture started to come up.

“How interesting, Monsieur Vanens. You are in the image with Monsieur de Bachimont. You are selling something…ah, it looks like an ingot of silver…to an officer of the crown. Hmm, now he is signing a paper.” Is it alchemist’s false silver, being sold to the mint as real, or is it real silver, and stolen? I couldn’t tell what kind of transaction it was, so I left the interpretation of the image to my watchers.

“It worked,” breathed the countess, leaning so close that she fogged the glass.

“Success. By God, the formula worked. The mint,” said the Chevalier de Vanens. Well, well, false coiners after all. And probably going to jail for a nice long time, too. But they didn’t want another reading, and I didn’t want to offer to look for bad news. That was the problem with the little reflections. Their meaning was never completely clear. It was like looking through a window into a room where people came, went, and spoke unheard by the watcher. What were they saying? What had gone on before? What did it mean? Interpretation was everything. People think it’s easy, seeing the future; you’ll know everything, win bets, move before your house burns down, speculate in land. Well, it’s not that way at all. Most people don’t even understand the present. Why should they understand glimpses of the future?

That evening I sat up alone with a candle, cataloguing the latest images according to the date seen, persons involved, and estimated time of fulfillment. Even visions require rational analysis.

Now I turned to the analysis of position number (II): If (II) then God allows free will, or human choice, to reshape the future. This occurs either because God is not all-powerful (I.A.i) and the rest follows, or because (II.B): Grace exists, and so does God. This conclusion was a great puzzlement to me, because rationality should lead us to arrive at truth. I decided on the only reasonable test that I could observe and catalogue:

But try as I might, I could not bring up an image relating to my own future.