The Oracle Glass Read Free Page B

She embroiders, tinkles a bit at the clavecin , and knows two dozen prayers by heart. Her mind is entirely formed by the reading of romances. And your brother, memorizing legal precedents. He learns precedent instead of logic, and law instead of virtue. No, far better to learn about the Romans.” Telling me that the rational discovery of truth was the highest activity of the human mind, he then gave me his own little leather-bound notebook to write down my thoughts to make them more orderly and arranged for a Latin tutor.
    And so it was that I was educated according to my father’s eccentric plan by a series of starving abbés and penniless students who exchanged lessons for meals until I had sufficient knowledge to be able to discuss the Romans and especially his beloved Stoics with him.
    Very soon my days fell into a pleasant routine, although one utterly abnormal for a child. In the morning, I studied whatever my current tutor was interested in: fragments of Descartes, the Epicureans, the question of proof in geometry, the new discoveries in physiology of Monsieur Harvey, the English doctor. In all this, they were guided by Father, who believed that new minds should be trained for the new age; that science and rationality would drive away the superstition of the old era.
    In the afternoon, I ingratiated myself with my mother by running confidential errands for her. From her I had three petticoats my sister had outgrown, an old comb, and the promise of a new dress at Christmas if I kept her secrets. Although Mother left me unkempt and untaught in matters feminine, still, I learned a great deal from her indirectly. It was on my afternoon errands that I learned where love potions, hair dye, and wrinkle creams could be bought, how to make change and tell false coin from good. I found out where to buy the best illegal broadsides for Grandmother and that Mother received letters in secret with heavy wax seals on them. It was not at all the proper training for a young lady of good family, who should never be seen outdoors without a lackey, but my twisted body and wild, untutored manners exempted me from all rules, just as they prevented me from receiving the benefits of my birth.
    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.

THREE
    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.
    â€œMademoiselle, 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