The Porcelain Dove Read online

  Towards late afternoon, while the grannies were bouncing her vigorously on their knees "to encourage the brat," madame gave a great moaning cry. Mère Malateste groped inside her, shook her head, and poured herself a tot of brandy. My mistress began to sob weakly, and I ran from the room like a madwoman. As I ran, the grannies' tales chased themselves through my head. Devils, hedgehogs, hooks, knots. Hedgehogs, devils, pepper, knives. Hooks, devils, knives, knots. Knots.

  No longer enlightened, certainly no longer reasonable, I swept through the château from the Alchemical attic to the wine cellar, opening doors, smoothing fringes, unloosing knotted draperies. Why, when I found Dentelle mending a rent in monsieur's hunting-jacket, I snatched the work from him, ripped open the seam, and boxed his ears for good measure. 'Twas the Lace antechamber stopped me at last. For a moment, all I saw was thousands upon thousands of knots keeping madame's baby from being born, and then I saw Pompey curled like a dog in a corner with his hands over his ears and his eyes screwed shut.

  At the sight of a pain I'd power to assuage, my madness drained from me. I knelt and rocked the boy in my arms. " 'Tis nature," I soothed him. "The child will come, in spite of mère Malateste. And when 'tis done, madame will forget all her pain—le bon Dieu has ordained it thus. Take comfort, little cabbage. All will be as it was."

  "Never the same," he sobbed. "Oh, mistress, I'm sorry."

  A strange thing for the child to say, to be sure—sufficiently strange for me to have recalled it through all the brouhaha that followed, and to have mulled it over. Years later the answer came to me. Having sniffed out M. Léon's character in his mother's womb, he must have been trying to keep the little limb of Satan from leaving it. Perhaps he did not realize, child that he was, how 'twould make his mistress suffer thus to frustrate nature, fate, and mère Malateste. In any case, he hastily uncurled himself, removed his hands from his ears, and clung to me a moment, then released me with a push. Moved and woefully puzzled, I kissed him and returned to madame's bedchamber.

  Madame was propped at the edge of the bed, held there by the two grannies. Past screaming, she looked piteously on me when I entered, and I thought her lips shaped my name. The grannies exchanged wise looks over her head and mère Malateste grabbed my wrist with a bloody hand.

  "Now, Duvet," she said. "Tha'rt a city wench, weak as water. That mare's turd Marie is weaker yet, and I must trust thee, foreigner or no. Climb up on the bed, kneel under her hips, grasp her so, under her breast, and squeeze when I tell thee. Do as I say, and we'll have her delivered ere the Devil can spit."

  Thus it was upon my knees that the heir of Malvoeux was born, screaming lustily even as he emerged blood-smeared from between my mistress' thighs. He thrashed at the vinegared water as mère Malateste washed him, fought the swaddling bands with an energy that astonished us all, and never left off howling until one of the grannies gave him a teat of cloth soaked in warm brandy to suck.

  "Behold the little demon!" mère Malateste said indulgently. "He'll sleep now, and when he wakes, Boudin should be here. He's one'll bite sooner than suck—I'd best make her up a salt-paste to toughen her paps. Duvet," she continued, turning to the bed. "We're not done here. M. François will want to see his duchesse and his son, no doubt, and his duchesse, at least, is not yet fit to be seen."

  At last it was over. The afterbirth was fetched out and burned, madame washed in wine and milk, the sheets changed, mother and son sunk in a sleep of utter exhaustion. The grannies departed with Marie, who looked very pale and thoughtful. Mère Malateste followed.

  After a few minutes, monsieur entered. Without a glance at the bed, he strode to the lace-hung cradle, thrust back the shutters, flung open the window, and scooped up his son. Cradleboard and all, he held up the infant to the light and gazed hungrily upon his son's tiny, folded face.

  "Léon Philiberte Jorre Guillaume Maindur," he said at last. "Vicomte de Montplaisir. Heir of Malvoeux." He laid the child back among its pillows, and I thought I saw tears glitter in his black eyes.

  For wet nurse, mère Malateste had chosen Guyette Boudin, she whose husband Marie had once told me was good for nothing. He'd been good enough to quicken her, however, for she'd been brought to bed a week or so before madame, though the baby had died on the eve of madame's confinement, making Boudin the best—in fact, the only—wet nurse in the district. Guyette Boudin was a bolster-shaped woman with round scarlet cheeks, and her chief virtues were the richness of her milk and her stolid indifference to the young vicomte de Montplaisir's furious screaming. She'd a strong conceit of her place in the household as nurse to the heir of Malvoeux and demanded white bread and veal and the best Bordeaux with every meal. But M. Léon thrived and grew fat on her milk, and monsieur often remarked that her family had been tenants of Malvoeux for so long that it seemed to him that the vicomte must be sucking Beauxprés itself from her breasts. So we were forced to abide her.

  Madame's milk dried within a week, and her fever being past, she rose from her accouchement five weeks later, fully recovered if a little weak. Monsieur, delighted with the lusty infant she'd produced, became prodigiously attentive. He could hardly bear to be parted from her, even for an hour, and went so far as to abandon his birds to sit with her, mère Malateste having temporarily forbidden my mistress the aviary. He hung the China apartment with cages of canaries and lovebirds and sweet-voiced redpolls, and as soon as ever his old nurse gave him permission, returned to her bed.

  Thus Justin Victor Antoine Nicolas de Malvoeux was born in July of 1765, barely eleven months after his brother.

  CHAPTER THE FIFTH

  In Which the Sorcerer Maid Is Born

  When, in later years, M. Léon grew to be a libertine and his brother Justin a monk, my friend Mme Pyanet told me 'twas not to be wondered at. Bad crows lay bad eggs, she said. There was never a Maindur born knew the meaning of moderation. As for the bent of their intemperance, why, Mme la duchesse had only herself to blame. While carrying M. Léon, had she not disported herself in Paris? Had she not, although warned, consumed great quantities of pickled onions? And had not he, the cursed one, drawn his first breath when a blood-red moon rose over the chimneys of Beauxprés? These things being so, what choice had he save to be choleric, luxurious, and criminally disposed? And his brother was fish-natured by reason of his mother's remaining at Beauxprés all the course of her pregnancy, drinking milk-pap, and bearing him just as the moon sank under the horizon.

  Although I'm sure I did not accept Mme Pyanet's explication without comment, I am equally sure I did not mock it. After all, there was no denying that madame's pregnancies had been conducted as Mme Pyanet had described. Nor was there any denying that Justin was a weak and doleful infant who wailed like a vielle day and night or that M. Léon was from birth an imp of Satan. Something—chance, mischance, curse, or fate—had cast their natures in just such a way as to wound their mother's fragile heart.

  With her two sons, at least, my mistress was so far before or behind the mode as to trouble herself with her children beyond the bearing of them. In the face of mère Boudin's disgruntled mutterings, she insisted that her sons be brought to her apartment every morning to be dandled and cooed over for an hour or so, or until she could no longer endure their tantrums. Whatever she did with them—sing, prattle, dandle them on her knee—they'd yowl like tied puppies and squirm and push her away. Mère Boudin disdained to advise her, of course, and what did I know of the care and amusement of infants? I did venture, once, to suggest that M. Léon might not scream and struggle when she embraced him if only she would not squeeze him so tight or weep so loudly in his ear.

  "No," she replied sadly, "he does not love me. Nor Justin neither. I do not know what I have done to deserve such unnatural children, to hate their mother from the womb—their mother, who so entirely and tenderly adores them. Bien sûr, I weep over them. What woman of sensibility would not?"

  And weep she did. Where once she'd been as gay a companion as anyone could wish, now she sobbed and sighed
from morning until night. In vain I plied her with all her old remedies—needlework, the bibliothèque bleu, Doucette, Mme d'Aulnoy, her birds. She only shook her head, smiled wanly, and murmured that next week perhaps she would be stronger. In vain, monsieur berated her for being spoiled and weak-willed. No doubt he was right, she sighed; only she was tired to death, and indeed she couldn't help it. He sent for mère Malateste, who gave her a purge that sank her into such depths of despair that he wrote to Mme la baronne du Fourchet to come at once and take her daughter in hand.

  His letter was answered within a fortnight—not by madame's mother, but by the marquise de Bonsecours in person, accompanied by a Swiss nobleman and his wife, who, being on the way home to Lausanne, had kindly offered to carry Mme la marquise with them as far as Beauxprés. Quite in his Paris manner, monsieur courteously desired the comte and comtesse Réverdil to break their journey for a day or two, in the course of which he and the comte found so many common friends and philosophies to discuss that the Réverdils stayed with us for five weeks.

  Thank le bon Dieu they did so! For my mistress was not so cheered by her sister's presence as she might have been. First, the episode of the mock-trial still rankled, even after so many years, madame holding her sister's ill-judged championship entirely to blame for the extremity of her own sentence. Second, Mme de Bonsecours, though well-intentioned, was a monstrous poor sick-nurse. Her own health was rude, her nerves comfortably cushioned. When she should have murmured, she bellowed; where she should have soothed, she braced. And whenever I was present, she insisted upon asking me what I thought of this play or that actress, as if my mistress could possibly be interested in my opinion on theater gossip. I was puzzled how to interpret her attentions. Was she trying to woo me away from my mistress' service? Did she think to make a friend of me? Neither prospect appealed; and yet I liked to hear her talk of Paris and Versailles, of the haut monde's flutterings, the philosophes' feudings, the courtiers' polite grapplings for power. Concerning Mme la marquise de Bonsecours, I continued to be hopelessly of two minds.

  Concerning Eveline Réverdil, on the other hand, there was but one mind to hold. She was like a sheep—a very pretty sheep, to be sure, snowy of wool, mild of gaze, with a most gentle and mellifluous bleat. Herself a mother of four, she took pity on madame's ignorance and spent hours in reading the whole of M. Rousseau's Èmile to her and telling her tales of her own children, how they wept and laughed for no rational cause, like the little savages Nature had made them. Madame drank down her common sense like a tonic wine, and was soon sufficiently recovered to converse and eat with her guests.

  What peaceful weeks those were, to be sure—a Saint-Michel's summer of the spirit, blessedly warm, serenely golden, and all too brief. In the evenings after dinner, the company would gather in the Miniature salon to drink coffee and listen to the comtesse play upon the clavichord. She was possessed of a delicate touch and a set of études written especially for her by the Austrian emperor's young Kappelmeister Mozart. I remember once when madame, in the first flush of M. Rousseau's views on family unity, insisted that both M. Léon and Justin be present at one of these impromptu concerts, with Pompey and myself in attendance to keep them quiet.

  That afternoon hangs in my mind like a painting, a conversation piece by Saint-Aubin, for example: "Music at Beauxprés," or "The Clavichord." A soft autumn light falls through the windows of a noble salon hung with hundreds of miniature portraits. The left middle ground is occupied by a satin-wood clavichord at which is seated a plump blonde lady in green and pink plaid. Balancing the composition on the right is a chaise longue supporting a pensive beauty in a gown of painted silk. An Indian shawl covers her feet; her hand rests on a small liver-and-white spaniel. Clavichord and chaise frame a group of two men and a lady in the center background. The lady is large and florid, but vastly elegant nonetheless in purple lustring and silver lace. Her clever gaze is turned on a small, sleek man who gestures with a lorgnon towards the painting's central figure: a dark, sharp-faced gentleman in a cerise coat who, half-turned from the scene, gazes out the window. In the foreground, off to the right, a small black page in a feathered turban and a silver collar kneels beside a stout child wallowing in an abundance of white satin skirts. Behind them, a pretty young servant in a striped sacque holds a sleeping infant in a cradle-board.

  What this pleasing picture fails to show is that M. Léon—who was tied to my chair by his leading-strings—was beating his little wooden cat on wheels against Pompey's leg. Pompey endured his attentions stoically, although his jaw would tighten when M. Léon got in a particularly shrewd blow. Neither he nor I made any attempt to take the toy away. Better that Pompey's leg should be bruised than that the will of the heir of Malvoeux should be crossed, especially in company.

  Falls and trills of notes, golden as the autumn light, spilled from the clavichord. Please may M. Léon stay quiet, I prayed. Please may Justin not awake.

  There was a small commotion at my feet as the vicomte de Montplaisir, bored with trying to make Pompey cry, reeled in the silver bauble tied to his waist and prodded it at my ankles. I shifted my feet away. Encouraged, he hauled himself upright and brandished the bauble as high as he could reach, poking at his brother's face with the well-chewed wolf's fang at its tip.

  "Is it not sweet," said madame languidly, "that such a young child should so dote upon his brother? See how he tries to share his favorite bauble with him? When I see them together, I rejoice with M. Rousseau in the unspoiled goodness of little children."

  Pompey gave a soft whimper, which could equally well have been of pain or mirth. Hearing it, M. Léon left off trying to poke out his brother's eye and, clambering onto Pompey's thighs, thrust the bauble in his face instead. Pompey flinched. M. Léon crowed and had at him again.

  "I wonder," said the marquise, "at seeing my nephew still bedecked in satin and whalebone and wound about with leading-strings.You are become such a disciple of Jean-Jacques, sister, that I would not have been astonished had young M. Léon sat before us barefoot and clad only in a linen smock."

  Monsieur turned from his contemplation of the gardens. "My dear marquise, I beg you recall this discipleship you speak of is a thing of yesterday. Before our charming musician introduced them"—monsieur bowed gallantly to the comtesse—"Adèle was as ignorant of la methode Jean-Jacques as of the craft of carpentry."

  "That is not so, husband," said madame indignantly. "I have often heard M. Rousseau mentioned in Paris, although, to be sure, no one took the trouble to explain his ideas to me as Mme Réverdil has done. I quite intend to direct mère Boudin to leave off Justin's swaddling-bands, at least at night when he can come to no harm."

  "Do you really believe, sister, that leaving him unswaddled now will make a man of him when he is grown?"

  Madame's face settled into a fretful sulkiness. "There's more to it than that, Hortense, as you very well know."

  "I dare say. But Jean-Jacques is so impractical, sister. Consider his ideal tutor, for instance. Where does there exist such a prodigy of nature, who will teach your child for love of teaching alone? And if you did find him, would you not fear lest he might prove more naïf than his pupil? Furthermore, this wise and patient pedagogue who bids mothers suckle their own infants and fathers teach their own sons has sent his children to be brought up in a home for foundlings."

  "No one likes testing his own theories, marquise," said comte Réverdil smoothly. "Besides, the children were bastards, and he quite unable to afford their keep. Considering the circumstances, we must not condemn him, but rather commend his charity in sending them to a home for foundlings rather than drowning them like puppies, which I suspect he would have preferred."

  "You know the man, Réverdil?" asked monsieur.

  "I dined with him twice or thrice before the affaire Saint-Lambert in '57. A suspicious, uncharitable man, with the imagination of a fasting saint and the humor of a rutting bull. To frown at him is to offend him; to jest with him is to make him your enemy for
life."

  "You are very hard, comte," said madame.

  The comtesse, having come to the end of her étude, lifted her hands from the keys and folded them in her lap. "My dear," she said gently, "only consider that M. Rousseau has said harder things than that of men who call our husbands friends."

  Madame's head came up and her eyes widened pitifully, like Doucette's when she's being scolded. "Oh, dear. Is he quite wrong then? And Èmile, is it all lies? I vow, I don't know what to think, I don't indeed!"

  Temporarily in accord, Mme de Bonsecours and monsieur lifted their eyes to the ceiling while the comtesse hastened to reassure madame that a philosophe's private actions may safely be divorced from his abstract musings.

  "Indeed, my dear duchesse," added her husband, "a philosophe's opinions may safely be divorced one from the other. For as many as prove pure gold, so many more will prove to be dross. Take that Italian, for example: Vico of the New Science. Have you read the book, marquise?"

  "The man who believes our far ancestors to have been giants? Charming nonsense, I thought it."

  "And yet that nonsense contains more than a grain of sense. That our far ancestors were giants I believe no more than you. That they might have deduced quarreling gods from the voice of the thunder, I think very likely. Do not our ignorant peasants to this day ascribe metaphysical meaning to simple natural phenomena?"

  "Alas," said the marquise, "they do. And their evil auguries so far outnumber their benign ones that I sometimes wonder how they find the courage to set foot outside their houses for fear of encountering a hare or a magpie or some other sign of doom."

  "Peasants are savages," said monsieur coldly. "Vicious, credulous, and wholly self-interested. My chief quarrel with M. Rousseau is this same fairy tale of man's natural goodness, which is no less an offense to the rational mind than the church's fairy tale of original sin."