The servant displayed the illustration. While the rest of the audience was still applauding the pathos of Marie-Josèphe’s story, the servant reached Lucien. He tried to hurry past, but Lucien caught his wrist, made him stop, and took the sketch from him.
Lucien thought: Not long since, that woman could have been my mother. That child would have been me.
The sea monster left off its singing.
“That is all.” Marie-Josèphe’s voice shook. She turned to the sea woman. “How could you?”
The sea monster shrieked, splashed backwards, and flung water everywhere. She laughed maniacally, laughed as no beast could laugh. If Lucien had doubted Marie-Josèphe de la Croix before, now he believed everything she had ever claimed about the being, and more.
At the edge of anger, Lucien rose and left the tent. He did not care to lose his temper in public.
Lucien sat by the Reflecting Pool. If he plunged into the water he might cool his fury.
If I plunge into the water, he said to himself, I might also drown. I prefer to remain angry.
“Count Lucien!” Mlle de la Croix ran toward him, pale with dismay. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean — how could Sherzad be so cruel?”
“Have the courage to claim your own revenge.”
“My revenge? For what?”
“You offered, and I declined.”
“And I’m acting the rejected flirt? Sir, you wrong me.”
Lucien’s anger erupted. “What do you expect from a dwarf, ugly, misshapen —”
“Count Lucien, I love you.”
“That is your misfortune.”
“Your spirit is beautiful. You allowed me to see your kindness, and...” She hesitated. “Do you understand what I said? I love you.”
“Many women love me. I’m a generous man, and a knowledgeable lover.”
“You are arrogant, sir.”
“I have told you that I am. I have reason to be. I possess a title of the sword, the title of the companions of Charlemagne, a title already ancient when these upstart dukes and marquises were created. I enjoy the trust of the King. I’m heir to vast lands and great wealth —”
“I don’t care about that!” Marie-Josèphe said. “If you weren’t Lucien de Barenton, Count de Chrétien, I’d feel the same.”
“Ah. If I were a starving peasant, beaten because I couldn’t pay my taxes, my hovel pillaged by the soldiers of my own King — you’d love me?”
“You’re an atheist, and I love you.”
Lucien’s sense of the ridiculous evaporated his anger. He laughed. When he regained control of himself, he said, “Mlle de la Croix, if I were a peasant, I’d have been sold to gypsies in my cradle... or drowned, like the child in Sherzad’s story.”
“Surely, no, not now. Not you.”
“Mlle de la Croix, you want a husband.”
“Yes, Count Lucien,” she said softly.
“I’ll never marry. I’ll never bring a child into this life.”
“But your life is wonderful. The King loves you, everyone respects you —”
“Pain torments me,” he said, telling her what he never admitted to anyone, except a lover.
“Every life bears pain.”
“You have no idea what you’re saying,” he said, irritated by her ignorant assurance. “I am in pain every moment of my existence. Except when I love a woman —” He hesitated, then began again. “When I love a woman, especially if I loved a woman, how could I pass my affliction to her children? You want a husband, you want children. I will never marry, and I will never father a child.”
“God gives us little choice in that matter,” she said. “If we choose love.”
He laughed at her. “No god has anything to do with it. Even the most unimaginative lover can trouble to wrap his member in a baudruche. We have one way to make a child, a thousand ways to love.” He said again, “I will never marry,”
“Why are you saying this to me?” she cried. “Why not say, I have no affection for you, I cannot return your love?”
“Because I promised to tell you the truth, if I knew it.”
She fell silent with hope and confusion.
“Do you still want me?” Lucien asked. “As your lover?”
“I... It isn’t right, Count Lucien, I can’t —” She blushed and stammered; she spread her hands in supplication. “The Church says — My brother wouldn’t —”
“I’m perfectly indifferent to the wishes of the church or to the demands of your brother. What do you want?”
She answered his question, if obscurely. “If you marry, your children might be — they might not —”
“My father is a dwarf. He retired, crippled —”
His father had ridden beside Louis XIII; valiant, renowned, he had ridden in the service of the child-King Louis XIV during the civil war.
Lucien’s father no longer rode.
“I am my father’s image,” Lucien said.
“Rumor says —”
“Rumor lies.”
“Many people believe it.”
“Louis has enough misshapen children without counting me among his brood. Besides, he acknowledges his bastards.”
She sank down before him and grasped his hands.
“I didn’t make up Sherzad’s story, I didn’t conspire with her to hurt you. I heard the story as you did, as she sang it. If I’d known what she planned, I would have made up a story. I’d never willingly cause you pain. I beg you, please believe me.”
“I believe you,” he said gently. “But I can’t give you what you wish for. If you love me, I’ll break your heart. If you defy His Majesty for the sea woman’s sake, the King will break your heart. Or worse.”
“But Sherzad is human. As human as you or I.”
“Yes,” Lucien said. “Yes, I believe it. Only a human could be so cruel.”
“I’m so sorry...”
“Not cruel to me,” he said. “Cruel to you.”
Footsteps drew Yves from his fugue, the footsteps and the fear they struck in him. Few members of the court of Versailles visited the chapel unless His Majesty was in attendance. Yves could not face His Majesty. He raised himself on his elbow, stiff from the chill of the marble.
“There you are.” Marie-Josèphe’s voice chilled him.
Yves noticed what he should have seen long before: her exhaustion, her despair, her love for him, her disappointment.