Quicksilver

To d’Avaux, March1687

Monseigneur,

Finally, a real spring day-my fingers have thawed out and I am able to write again. I would like to be out enjoying the flowers, but instead I am despatching letters to tulip-land.

You will be pleased to know that as of last week there are no beggars in France. The King has declared beggary illegal. The nobles who live at Versailles are of two minds concerning this. Of course they all agree that it is magnificent. But many of them are scarcely above beggars themselves, and so they are wondering whether the law applies to them.

Fortunately-for those who have daughters, anyway-Mme. de Maintenon has got her girls’ school open at St.-Cyr, just a few minutes’ ride from the chateau of Versailles. This has complicated my situation a little. The girl I have supposedly been tutoring-the daughter of the Marquise d’Ozoir-has begun attending the school, which makes my position redundant. So far, there has been no talk of letting me go. I have been putting my free time to good use, making two trips to Lyons to learn about how commerce works in that place. But apparently Edouard de Gex has been spreading tales of my great skills as a tutor to the Maintenon, who has begun making noises about bringing me to St.-Cyr as a teacher.

Did I mention that the teachers are all nuns?

De Maintenon and de Gex are so shrouded in outward Godliness that I ca

To business: returns for the first quarter of 1687 have been satisfactory, as you know since you are a client. I pooled all of the money into a fund and invested it mostly through sub-brokers in Amsterdam, who specialize in particular commodities or species of V.O.C. derivatives. We are still making money on India cloth, thanks to King Louis who made it contraband and thereby drove up the price. But V.O.C. shares fell after William of Orange declared the League of Augsburg. William may be full of bluster about how the Protestant alliance is going to rein in the power of France, but his own stock market seems to take an extremely dim view of the project! As does the court here- tout le mondefinds it tremendously amusing that William, and Sophie of Hanover, and a grab-bag of other frostbitten Lutherans believe they can stand up to La France. There is brave talk about how Father de Gex and Marechal de Catinat, who suppressed the Protestants in Savoy with such force, ought now to ride North and and give the same treatment to the Dutch and the Germans.

For now it is my role to set aside any personal feelings I may have concerning politics, and to think only of how this might affect markets. My footing here is soft-I am like a mare galloping down a mucky beach, afraid to falter, out of fear that she may be treading on quicksand. With markets in Amsterdam fluctuating hourly, I ca

But French nobles will not be seen doing business with Dutch hereticks and Spanish Jews. So I am a sort of figurehead, like the pretty mermaid on the bow of a ship that is laden with other people’s treasure and ma

So inform me, Monseigneur. Tell me things. You know your intelligence will be safe in transit, because of the excellence of this cypher, and you know it will be safe with me, for I have no friends here to whisper it to.

Only small minds want always to be right.

–LOUIS XIV

To d’Avaux, June1687

Monseigneur,

When I complained that Fr. de Gex and Mme. de Maintenon were trying to make me over into a nun, I never imagined you would respond by making me out to be a whore! Mme. la duchesse d’Oyo

At any rate, now I have some idea as to who belongs to the cabinet noir. One day, all of a sudden, Fr. de Gex was very cool to me, and Etie

The only circumstance under which a man of his rank and a woman of mine could ever be seen conversing with each other is a fancy-dress ball, when ranks are of no account and all the normal rules of precedence are suspended for a few hours. The other evening, Etie

As we rode in the carriage to Dampierre, Etie

As you know, this is not the first such veiled remark that has been directed my way by a Frenchman of high rank. The first time it happened I became ever so excited, thinking I was about to be e

Pretend now that I have dutifully described all of the costumes, the table-settings, the food, and the entertainments that the duc de Chevreuse had brought together at Dampierre. This will spare enough pages to make a small book. At first the mood was somewhat gloomy, for Mansart-the King’s architect-was there, and he had just received news that the Parthenon in Athens has been blown up. Apparently the Turks had been using it as a powder-magazine and the Venetians, who are trying to bring that city back into Christendom, bombarded it with mortars and touched off a great explosion. Mansart-who had always harbored an ambition of making a pilgrimage to Athens to see that building with his own eyes-was inconsolable. There was some blustery talk from Etie