The Song of the Siren

I took the glove. “No matter,” I said. “Madame Panton will probably repair it.”

“But I have spoilt it! You have been so kind to me and this is how I repay you.”

Hessenfield said: “Madame, I beg of you. It is nothing ... a bagatelle.”

“I shall never forgive myself. After all your kindness.”

The concierge had come out to bow to Madame de Partiere.

“Please,” I said, “do not distress yourself. It has been a most enlivening journey and we have enjoyed your company.”

“Indeed yes,” said Hessenfield, “and we have done nothing. We were coming back to Paris in any case.”

“How kind you are.” She lapsed into French. “Vous lies tres aimable “

Hessenfield took her arm and led her towards the house. She turned and gave me a woeful smile.

I laughed. “Good-bye, Madame de Partiere,” I said. “It has been a pleasure.”

“Au revoir,” she said.

And that was my visit to Versailles.

I missed Mary Marton. She may have been a spy but at the same time she had been an excellent nursery governess. Clarissa asked after her a great deal.

It was hard to put off a child who had such an enquiring mind with explanations which could not sound plausible, for I could not tell her the truth. I wondered what her child’s mind would make of this account of spies and plots.

Jeanne emerged as a great help to me. She had more or less taken on the duties of looking after the child. Clarissa loved her and she had a way of dealing with the numerous questions, which were constantly plied, with answers which satisfied.

She spoke French constantly to Clarissa, who was now speaking both English and French with perfect accents so that she could have been taken for either nationality.

“It will stand her in good stead,” said Hessenfield. “And the only way to speak French is to learn it as near the cradle as possible. You never get round those vowels otherwise.”

Since she had slipped so naturally into the nursery I spent a certain amount of my time with Jeanne too, which was good for my French as it was for Clarissa’s, for Jeanne had scarcely a word of English.

She was an interesting girl in her early twenties. She had been delighted, she told me, to find a post in a fine house like this. She had been very poor before. She had been a flower seller. The cook used to buy flowers from her to decorate the tables.

“Ah, Madame,” she said, “it was my lucky day when Madame Boulanger came to buy my flowers. She was a hard one ... and paid me very little. She was one for a bargain.

I lived with my family ... there were many of us. A sad part of Paris that. You do not know it, madame. It is not for such as you. It is not far from Notre Dame ... behind the Hotel Dieu before you get to the Palace de Justice. The streets there ... they are terrible, Madame ... dangerous. We had a room in the rue de Marmousets... . The gutters were pretty, though. I used to stand and look into the gutters. The dyers were there, and their colours flowed through the gutters. Such colours, Madame, green, blue, red ... the colours of my flowers. We used to beg from the great lords and ladies.

But I never stole ... never, Madame. My mother said ‘Never steal, for though you have money for a while they will catch up with you. You will end up in the Chatelet or the Fort l’Eveque. Then your fate will be too terrible to speak of.’ “

“Poor Jeanne,” I said, “you have had a sad life.”

“But now it is a good one, madame. I have a good position and I like so much to care for the little one.”

And care she did. She used to tell her stories of old Paris, and Clarissa was enchanted with them. She would sit entranced, eyes round with wonder; there was nothing she loved more than to walk through those streets and listen to Jeanne describing everything to her.

Jeanne was extremely knowledgeable and I felt I could trust Clarissa with her. That was what I liked most. If I had to go to Versailles or St. Germain-en-Laye with Hessenfield I could safely leave her.

I sometimes sat with her after Clarissa was in bed and we would talk together. She knew so much about the stories of the past which had passed down through her family.

She was most interested in the great poison scandal which had rocked Paris some thirty years ago and had brought Madame la Voison and Madame de Brinvilliers to justice.

It was so notorious because many well-known people had become involved and suspicion had been cast even on the King’s mistress, Madame de Montespan.

Her grandmother remembered the day Madame de Brinvilliers had been taken from the prison of the Conciergerie, where she had been submitted to cruel torture, to the Place de Greve and there lost her head.