The Witch of Painted Sorrows

Chapter 10

“All right then, we’ll go to my aunt’s,” Julien said. “Get your hat, bring the jade frog.”

I was astonished. “But why your aunt’s? Does she buy jewels?”

He laughed. “It’s an expression we use here in Paris. ‘My aunt’s’ is what we call the Crédit Municipal, the pawnshop owned and operated by the government. It’s the only one in Paris and has been for over a hundred years, since individual pawnshops were outlawed for overcharging interest.”

While we’d been inside, a light snow had begun falling, and rue des Saints-Pères was dusted with white. Standing on the steps of Maison de la Lune, I imagined we were inside a snow globe, two small figures in a dark fairy tale, about to set off on a dangerous adventure.

And it was dangerous. If my grandmother knew that I had taken an objet d’art out of the maison, she would be furious. And probably even angrier if she knew the reason.

There were no carriages to be had, so we began to walk. I didn’t mind; Paris looked so lovely under the mother-of-pearl sky, and so quiet. Everyone seemed to be inside due to the weather except for us.

We reached the corner, and he took my arm. “It’s slippery here.” When we reached the other side, he didn’t let go, and I was glad.

“You can really see the shapes of the buildings when you aren’t distracted by the materials they are made of,” Julien said as we turned onto Boulevard Saint-Germain.

“Are any of these yours? Can I see something you’ve built?”

“No, not here. I’ve done nothing on so grand a street. We would have to go out of our way.”

“Would you mind?”

He looked surprised by my request.

“There’s one just three blocks out in this direction, and once there we might find a carriage. Are you interested in architecture?”

“Very much. My father and I would often watch construction going on in New York.”

“Your father seems like a most unusual man.”

For a moment I couldn’t speak for missing him. “He was. For one thing he was a perennial student. He craved knowledge and studied constantly. In addition to the arts, he was interested in mystical teachings and was working on a paper that traced connections and showed the similarities between different esoteric philosophies.”

Julien laughed. “He sounds like a Renaissance man. That was a wonderful period for thinkers. Many men of the time were quite enlightened in the way they treated women.”

“I think my father would have supported me if I’d chosen the life of an artist. Even if he’d had to contend with my grandmother’s protestations.”

“Why would she have objected?”

“My father told me she was superstitious about Verlaine women becoming too involved in the arts.”

“So she knew there was an artist in your family?”

“Now that we’ve found the studio, I guess she must have, but at the time when I asked my father about it, he didn’t know why she felt that way.”

“So you always wanted to be an artist?”

“No, not seriously, not before I came to Paris. I was happy being my father’s companion in his pursuits. Going to museums and galleries with him, attending auctions, growing his art collection. He involved me when he built his bank on Wall Street. Together we met all the architects he considered, and afterward we pored over their plans and discussed their philosophies. Do you have a philosophy, Monsieur Duplessi?”

“Julien,” he corrected me.

“Yes, Julien.” For a moment I felt almost giddy to be walking down a Paris street in the snow, arm in arm with such an interesting man. Even though it was cold out, I welcomed the weather. The icy flakes stinging my cheeks were helping me wake after a long-dormant existence.

“Do I have a philosophy?” He hesitated for a moment, and I wondered if I had asked a naïve question. Then he smiled. “An architect who does not have a philosophy is just a draftsman.”

“What is yours?”

He gestured to the buildings we were walking past. “These are outdated masks. There’s nothing here not borrowed from other ages. There’s nothing new and certainly nothing noble about adapting styles from Byzantium and medieval times and slapping them onto our present-day buildings. I’m not seduced by the past.

“I believe in the unique. Like the architect Viollet-le-Duc, my eyes are looking toward the future. Architectural forms for our times. I supposed you could say I’m tired of being mired in tradition and sick of the commonplace. Why build an ordinary building when you can create one that is unique? I strive for a structure that has harmony, logic, and will appeal to our love of beauty.”

I couldn’t help but think how much my father would have liked Julien Duplessi and his radical ideas. “Yes, yes, I agree. How many of these amazing buildings have you erected?”

“I haven’t had many commissions yet. Mostly I do the kind of interior work I am doing for your grandmother. But I’m hoping that when people see what I’ve done, even though it’s extreme, a few will be drawn to them.” He pointed to a building on the corner. “Look at how wrong that is. If you are going to use stone, then it needs to be treated like stone. Glass, on the other hand, should not be treated like stone but like glass. Iron and cast iron have a beauty that shouldn’t be hidden, and by exposing them, you can allow in so much more light. And is there anything more important than light? Bay windows, glass roofs, wide-open vistas. And why do ornaments that have nothing to do with the form of the building show up all over it like a woman wearing far too much jewelry? It’s time to reject the flower and seize the stem. Today’s design needs to be about line! Nature is a living thing. I want my buildings to live in nature.”

We had reached the corner of rue de Rennes. Julien stopped and turned to face the direction we’d just come from. He gestured to the buildings we’d passed. His face was animated, his voice filled with passion. “None of them have any life. They are boxes with cutouts. But come look at number 76.”

We turned onto de Rennes.

I hoped Julien’s building would indeed be unique. That the structure would live up to the promise of the man. He’d set himself a lofty goal. Papa and I had often talked about how duplicative and unoriginal most artists’ creations were. Paintings that were really imitations of other paintings, music that was nothing more than a rehash of what had come before, novels that were plots borrowed from other plots.

We walked by one ordinary building and then another until Julien stopped in front of what was indeed a unique structure. It was small and scrunched in between two others, neither remarkable. But number 76 was like a tree growing out of the sidewalk. The upward movement of its lines carried the eye to the sky. It was a force of nature, indeed a living thing.

Beside me I could feel Julien waiting to hear what I thought.

“This is astonishing. It’s beautiful. I’ve never seen anything like it. What is this style called?”

“Some of us are calling it the new art, Art Nouveau. Sinuous lines and whiplash curves, first inspired by botanical studies of the German biologist Ernst Heinrich Haeckel and the marvelous Japanese art prints that Edgar Degas, Mary Cassatt, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec have embraced and incorporated into their work. Art Nouveau is our reaction to the academic art and architecture of the last century. It’s taking off all over Europe, and it’s encompassing everything. Furniture, art, architecture, jewelry, even book design.”

“Art Nouveau,” I repeated. Liking how it sounded, sinewy and rounded like the style itself.

Even the lettering on the sign above the door was free and spacious and curving. I read the words it spelled out: Librairie du Merveilleux.

“The Marvelous Library?” I asked Julien. “What amazing books do they sell here? Is there more of your design? Can we look inside?”

I was already at the door. Even the handle was a surprise. Like a branch it arched and had a grace to it that captured my imagination.

Bells chimed as I opened the door, and two men sitting at a table turned around. Two ordinary businessmen poring over a large map.

“Hello, Julien,” the older, gray-haired man said. “I’ll be with you shortly.”

“No rush, Dujols. I just wanted to show Mademoiselle Verlaine around your library.”

This was not a store, not a library; it was a cave of wonders, its secrets waiting to be explored. One wall undulated in a series of alcoves outfitted with chairs and tables designed in the same curving, sumptuous style as the building itself. Exotic-looking brass and stained glass sconces emitted dappled golden light in unusual patterns. The windows were bowed and had their own landscape. The books that were piled everywhere were, I thought, the only visible straight lines.

“Did you design everything here? The furniture and the lamps, too?”

“Yes. And I had it built by my uncle’s furniture factory in Nancy, where I grew up. My other uncle, who has a fine glassmaking studio, did the lamp shades and windows to specifications.”

“It’s all marvelous. Just like its name.”

I spun around. Shelves lined the other two walls. On some were candles, braziers, and alembics that suggested alchemical experiments, but the majority were filled to capacity with books. I began to read the spines, but then turned again and noticed the west wall. Painted from the floor to ceiling was an open book, its pages yellowed and fragile, filled with ancient text that was near impossible to read. I went closer to inspect it.

“How curious.”

“Monsieur Dujols”-Julien nodded at the man still engaged with his customer-“is a publisher. This isn’t just a store, but a meeting place for artists and writers interested in psychic and spiritual worlds. Paris is overrun with them. There are followers of theosophy, the Last Pagans, Swedenborgians, Eclectic Buddhists, Luciferians, Gnostics, Satanists, Rosicrucians. Yes, Paris is overrun with them, and of course there are rumors of dark things that go on. Some of it quite gruesome.” He shook his head. “Black magick, white magick… it’s quite the fashion, and you’d be surprised how many people of note are involved.”

“Really? My father would find it all most curious.” I bit my bottom lip to distract myself from the onslaught of emotion I felt and focused my attention on the magical, mystical, astrological symbols painted on the walls. Some I’d seen before in my father’s books, and others were identical to the ones that we’d just found on the drawings in the studio.

“Everything in the store, from the messages and symbols in the mural to the wall hangings, was chosen by Dujols to evoke and stir thoughts of the ancients’ knowledge, mystery, and wisdom. To open the mind, he says, and help usher in a new age of enlightenment.”

“Well, that doesn’t sound like a bad thing,” I said.

“No, of course not. It’s a noble goal.”

“Except?”

He smiled and lowered his voice. “There’s just a lot about it that’s not rational.”

“Ah, yes.” I nodded.

I had learned something about Julien that I hadn’t known before.

A red silk sash caught my eye. It was hanging in one corner, embroidered with Hebraic letters that looked familiar. Above that was a carved wooden winged sphinx. I saw first one and then another and then dozens more paintings and etchings of serpents, dragons, and snakes grasping or biting their tails so that they formed circles. Some of the creatures had wings, some vicious teeth. More familiar images.

“Look.” I pointed it out to Julien. “That’s the same type of circle that was around the painter’s initials in my grandmother’s house. And on the clasp on the necklace. They are all similar-a dragon biting his tail. Did you recognize it when you saw it at the house?”

He nodded.

“But you didn’t say anything.”

“I assumed the painter was drawn to it because of the address. The church was situated on rue du Dragon.”

I was still taking in more and more amazing sights. There was a huge embroidered wall hanging of a zodiacal wheel, each sign done in another gem-like color of the rainbow. There were papyrus scrolls of hieroglyphics similar to those I’d seen in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Egyptian wing.

On either side of the door was a mural of symbols painted in bronze, silver, and gold. Yes, there was the ankh that my father had told me symbolized life, and others that looked familiar but that I couldn’t identify.

“Do you know what this one means?” I pointed to a five-foot-long drawing that glowed in the lamplight like a beacon.

“Yes. That’s the Monas Hieroglyphica. Designed by John Dee in the sixteenth century as part of his mystical symbolic language. It’s the emblem of the philosopher’s stone.”

“Alchemy?” I asked.

“Yes. It’s a wonderful design that actually encompasses seven others.” He pointed them out. “This V is the sign of Aries, for fire. The cross represents the four elements. The circle with the dot in the middle is the symbol of the sun. And the sliver on top is the lunar crescent.”

“What is that one?” I pointed to another symbol that incorporated one form I was familiar with-a six-sided Jewish star.

“The Sigil of Ameth. It has the name of God and the angels inscribed on it. Also used by Dr. Dee.”

I asked about the rest, curious about them all. Julien knew what most of them were and what they stood for.

“You know so much about all of this. Are you a student of these ancient arts, too?”

“No, but in order to direct the painters and sculptors I hired, I needed to understand what everything we were representing meant.”

I heard the door shut. The proprietor had just escorted his customer out. He bustled over to us with a quick step.

“Julien! How good to see you.” The owner embraced him.

Julien introduced us. “Pierre Dujols, this is Mademoiselle Verlaine.”

The gray-haired publisher took my hand and bent over it.

“Beware, Mademoiselle, Dujols is something of a showman. Don’t be taken in by everything he says.”

“Monsieur Dujols, how nice to meet you.”

“Yes, yes, you as well. Are you by any chance related to the Madame Verlaine who lives on rue des Saints-Pères?”

“Yes, she’s my grandmother.”

“A charming woman,” he said.

I wondered if that was his way of telling me he visited her salon, but of course I didn’t ask.

“And are you also a student of occult disciplines? A believer?” he asked.

Was my grandmother? Wasn’t that what he was implying? But my grandmother had never mentioned the occult to me.

When I didn’t respond right away, he asked, “Or are you more like my friend Julien here, a skeptic to the core and just here to see his handiwork?”

His gestures were exaggerated, almost as if he were on a stage, performing for us, but in a totally engaging way.

“I did ask to see something he’d built, yes, but I also have some interest in esoteric knowledge, though I’m afraid I’m not the student my father was.”

“Oh, was he? Did he favor one school of thought over another? Was he a Mason by chance?”

“No. His focus was on the Kabala, but as fascinated as he was by secret societies and hidden knowledge, he was interested only as a scholar.”

“I have quite a few ancient artifacts and rare books a Kabalistic scholar would find fascinating. Would you like me to show you around a bit?”

“Yes, please.”

Did Julien look dismayed? I couldn’t be sure.

“Dujols is quite the spellbinder,” Julien said as if answering my unspoken question. “If you let him, he’ll keep you all day and we won’t make our prior commitment.”

“Don’t worry, Julien. I have an appointment myself in a little while.” He smiled at me and then pulled out a heavy leather-bound book. “This is one of my prized possessions, an extremely rare fourteenth-century manuscript of a major work of Jewish mysticism called the Sepher Yetzirah. The Book of Formation. Do you know it?”

“Yes, my father had a copy, but not nearly this old.” I bent over the tome, and when I looked up to ask Monsieur Dujols a question, I caught him staring at my neck with consternation.

When he saw that I’d noticed, he glanced away. “Can I offer either of you coffee?”

“Why were you looking at my necklace?” Even though such boldness wasn’t done, I wanted to know.

“It’s most unusual,” he said. “I was just admiring it.”

But he was lying. I could tell. Something about the ruby necklace disturbed the man. I looked at Julien, and his eyes told me he knew it, too.

“What is it, Dujols? Why be coy? What is it about Mademoiselle Verlaine’s necklace?”

“The rubies appear to be cinquefoils. Five-petal roses.”

“Yes?” Julien asked.

“You didn’t recognize the symbol?”

“I’m a neophyte when it comes to all this-you know that. Knowledge doesn’t equal interest,” Julien said.

“What is the significance of a five-petal rose?” I asked.

“It’s an ancient Hermetic symbol that signifies closed lips, sexual secrets, and hidden messages. Queen Elizabeth’s spymaster used one on his seal. The cinquefoil’s association with the worship of the Great Goddess in ancient times spilled over to worship of Mary in Christianity. You can see it on many Gothic churches here and in England.”

I fingered one of the flowers, feeling the petals on each of the round discs as he described them. I knew it was my fingers trembling, but it really felt as if the necklace itself was vibrating, almost humming against my skin.

But he wasn’t finished. “And the clasp is a gold Ouroboros. The symbol of eternal return and rebirth. Of a life that exists with so much force and power that it cannot be extinguished.”

Chills ran up my back. His words resonated within me. I knew these things but hadn’t been aware that I’d known them. How was it possible for them to be familiar to me but at the same time something I’d neither read nor heard before? Had my father told me about them when I’d only half been paying attention and I’d forgotten?

“One of the things so fascinating about the Ouroboros is how many cultures used it in some form or another. From ancient Egyptians, to alchemists, to heretics. Where did you find such an unusual piece?” he asked.

“It’s a family heirloom,” I told him.

“Yes, yes, of course. It would have to be,” he said.

The bell rang out as the front door opened, and two gentlemen entered before I could ask him what he meant.

Dujols looked over, and they greeted him. “Are we early?” one asked.

“No, no, not at all,” Dujols said to them.

The two men walked to the back of the library and took a seat in one of the alcoves.

“I’m sorry,” Dujols said to us. “My appointment.”

“That’s quite all right, we did just drop by,” Julien said.

Dujols ushered us to the door. “Please just drop by again whenever it suits you.” He bowed to me. “And if you have any more family treasures, Mademoiselle, please feel free to bring them with you. The original owner of that necklace probably possessed other pieces of Hermetic interest. There is, after all, the legend of the mystical treasure hidden in your grandmother’s house.”

“What legend is that?” I asked.

“You don’t know of it?”

“Clearly she doesn’t, Dujols, or she wouldn’t have asked. Enough of your theatrics. What’s the legend?”

Dujols glanced over at his visitors, who were examining the book I’d been looking at and seemed quite preoccupied.

“All throughout recorded time there have been allusions to a special drink that imparted immortality. From ancient Greek references to ambrosia that only gods were allowed to imbibe, to Egyptian stories of Thoth and Hermes Trismegistus drinking liquid gold in order to live forever, to Sumerian and Hindu texts mentioning a similar elixir. Have you heard of the philosopher’s stone?”

I nodded. “Of course, it was mentioned frequently in the books my father studied.”

“It has always been said alchemists coveted it for its promise of turning metal to gold, but that wasn’t their true objective. No, it wasn’t riches they were after. The gold created from those metals was claimed to be the major component of the beverage that bestowed immortality to those who drank it. Some writings suggest the philosopher’s stone itself was the main ingredient of the drink. But a fifteenth-century master, Bernard Trevisan, claimed he knew the recipe for this miraculous liqueur and that submerging the stone in mercurial water was the key to what Cagliostro called the Elixir of Life.

“The ancients claimed this rare fluid cured diseases, could repair skin and organs, and kept one looking young forever. If a dead body was embalmed with the ambrosia, it was said, it would remain uncorrupted forever. Even the Bible references the potion and warns against men partaking of it.”

He paused, fascinated with his own tale.

“And how does all this connect to my family?” I asked.

“Have you really never heard of ‘The Witch of Rue Dragon’?” Dujols’s tone was incredulous.

Shivers ran up my arms and down my back. I’d never consciously heard references to a witch, but at the same time I was not surprised. Had the phrase been whispered in the shadows when I was young and the adults thought I wasn’t listening? Or perhaps I’d been sleeping and they had spoken of her as they left my nursery, and the memory had left an impression on me like a footprint in the snow.

“The witch, was she called La Lune?” I guessed.

Dujols nodded. “Yes, yes, the sixteenth-century courtesan who learned alchemy in Prague and brought her secrets back to Paris with her. Brought them to her home, which sat on the property where your grandmother’s house now sits. It was said La Lune lived to be over one hundred and fifty years old but remained young and beautiful and as fresh as a rose because she had discovered what so many before her had been searching for.”

“The elixir?” I asked.

Dujols nodded.

“What happened to the formula?” Julien asked.

“We know part of it, but it means nothing to us. ‘Make of the blood, a stone. Make of a stone, a powder. Make of a powder, life everlasting.’ But how to use that? How to interpret it? Lost to us. Forever lost to us,” Dujols said.

I was having a déjà vu. Or had I heard that phrase before? Make of the blood, a stone. Make of a stone, a powder. Make of a powder, life everlasting. But where? In what context?

Dujols was still talking: “All we have is a legend that La Lune, fearing she would one day be struck by old age and become forgetful, hid the recipe somewhere safe. And when she did become old finally, and needed it, she couldn’t remember where she’d hid it.” He shook his head. “Perhaps, Mademoiselle Verlaine, you will be the one to unearth it somewhere in your grandmother’s fine house. If you do, I am at your service to aid you in creating La Lune’s magick.”

After we left the shop, as we walked to the corner to search for a carriage, I asked Julien if he found the occult distasteful. I’d sensed his impatience when Dujols was talking about the Elixir of Life.

“I don’t want to insult the memory of your father, but yes, a bit. I think it’s a waste of time,” Julien said.

“Oh, he wouldn’t feel insulted. My father loved debate. Especially on topics that captivated him. And secret and forbidden knowledge did. The Kabala explains the relationship between the eternal and mysterious. At its heart is the human effort to define the nature of life and the universe. He wanted to understand that-the ‘un-understandable,’ he called it.”

“It does sound a bit as if your father was a mystic, you know.”

I laughed. “Are you picturing a man with a long beard, wearing robes and disappearing into trances? No, he was a banker and art collector who also happened to be interested in arcane knowledge.”

Julien managed to hail a carriage, and our conversation halted while we climbed in and he gave the driver the address of the Crédit Municipal.

“So was he a mystic?” Julien asked.

I laughed again. “He was curious. And I with him. He hosted symposiums at our house attended by many of the leading thinkers, writers, mathematicians, art historians, and philosophers, even some who were zealots.”

“All that searching for the un-understandable?”

“I think at its heart was the recurring dream my father suffered. He’d always been curious as to its meaning, but after I began to have the same dream, he became determined to decipher it.”

“You shared the same dream?”

I nodded.

“How curious. What was his dream, do you mind telling me?”

“Not at all. It began with him sitting in a tree on some kind of a platform and looking down at the ground at a barren rosebush. As he watched, the bush blossomed, and in the center of each flower was a woman’s face-the same woman every time-but no one he’d ever met.

“In the dream she spoke to him, giving him instructions, but he could never hear her from his perch. He’d climb down to try and catch her whisper, except the closer he got, the fainter her voice became. The woman, he told me, was very beautiful, with long reddish-brown hair and eyes almost the same fiery color. That she looked something like me did not escape him in the dream. When he was close enough that he could finally look into her eyes, he saw a reflection in her pupils. A full scene of that same woman drawing stars on the floor of a darkened dirty cell, weeping as she worked.

“My father was never able to decipher what she said or understand what she was doing other than to know she was trying to pass on some secret information to him in that drawing. He knew some of the words, he said, but they made no sense.

“The more he studied, he told me, the more he became convinced she was doing what he said the Kabalists called tikkun olam. I think he said it meant ‘repairing the world,’ and that Jews believed it was every human being’s duty.”

“What an extraordinary dream,” Julien said. “No wonder it preoccupied him. And no wonder he told you about it.”

“He didn’t. When I was about ten, I drew a picture of the bush, full of roses, each with a face in its center. When he asked me about it, I told him I’d seen it in my dream.”

“How many times have you had the dream?”

“About half a dozen. My father had it more often and was determined to understand what it meant, and although he never did, it led him into some very dark and dangerous places, as well as some exalted ones.”

I looked out the window at the ordinary street scene. Talking about my father had made me sorrowful, and I was glad that we had reached our destination and that this conversation was at its close.

“Could you hear what the woman in your dreams said?” Julien asked.

“I don’t really know. When I try to remember, all that happens is that in my mind I see white light mixed with the colors of the rainbow.”

“You try to remember words and see colors?”

“Yes, I know it makes no sense.”

“Dujols says there are so many mysteries that we have yet to explore. I suppose he’s right.”

“Didn’t you think he was right before?”

“In theory, yes, but it’s what I’ve seen since you came to the house. How did you open the door to the artist’s studio?”

“I’m sure I don’t know.”

“Are you familiar with Debussy, the musician?” Julien asked.

I shook my head.

“He and Erik Satie are creating music that fits the world you’re talking about. They believe that there are symbols in sounds as well. They are often at Dujols’s.”

We had arrived at rue des Francs-Bourgeois. The carriage stopped in front of an imposing building where a long line suggested pawning was quite popular in Paris.

“I’m not sure why, but I didn’t imagine there would be so many well-dressed people here,” I said to Julien as we got on the end of the line.

“Pawning is practically a national pastime. Victor Hugo used to come here when he was short of cash. Auguste Rodin often had to hock his tools. Artists and musicians and writers are frequently in and out of trouble and visit their ‘aunt’ for help. There are stories of women who bring their mattresses in the morning, use the money to buy potatoes in bulk in the market, proceed to sell them for a profit, and come back at the end of the day to redeem their mattresses and start the whole process again the next week.”

The line snaked from the street, through a large stone courtyard and into the building itself. Half of Paris must have been there that day. I saw women wearing large hats and elaborate costumes walk in with jewels and exit without them. A fancy gentleman carried a violin case. An old woman, an ornate and ugly painting. A couple struggled with an oversize garish gold clock. The courtyard teemed with activity as those on line talked to others behind and in front of them, and a street vendor hawked roasted chestnuts.

The man behind us had a rococo chair that he kept picking up, moving, and then putting down again as the line progressed. Behind him, an elderly couple each lugged a sack of books. The man in front of us pulled a large Louis Vuitton trunk on a trolley. It was the same luggage my grandmother used, and I felt a pang of remorse that I was here without her knowledge. But my excitement was enough to dispel it. The whole of the Paris art world waited for me.

Inside we finally sat down at a worn wooden desk opposite a dour-faced bureaucrat who eyed my offering, carefully examining the frog with a jeweler’s loupe.

The sum he offered was adequate, but not what I’d hoped for.

“Can you give us any more?” I asked.

His eyes lighted on my necklace.

“That should bring in quite a bit more. If those are real, they are very large rubies.”

I put my hand up to my throat and touched the rosettes. Why not? I would be able to come back and retrieve all these things as soon as I figured out how to get some of my money from my father’s banker in New York.

Reaching behind my neck, I tried to open the clasp to the necklace, but the mechanism wouldn’t release. I tried again, but it didn’t budge. The stones felt warmer, almost as if they were heating up as I touched them. Almost as if I might get burned.

“Julien? Can you help me?” I turned to him.

“There seems to be something wrong with the clasp. I can’t get it open.”

“What’s going on there? We are waiting-you can get undressed at home,” a man behind us shouted.

Raucous laughter.

“Is there a holdup? They’re closing soon, and we all want our money,” a woman said.

“It’s all right,” I told Julien. “This will be enough for a while, and we can always come back.”

As the bureaucrat wrote out the slip we were to take to the cashier, my fingers worked the clasp. I no longer was intent on pawning it, but it seemed odd that it was stuck.

Back in a carriage on our way to a clothing store, my fingers crept to my neck again, and this time I unlocked the necklace without any trouble at all. My neck felt suddenly bare and exposed, and I reclasped it. But the mystery remained. Neither of us had been able to unlock it while we were inside the Crédit Municipal. And now it was incredibly easy. How was that possible?