Finding Emilie

by Laurel Corona

  “He came in and poured the coins on the table. ‘Your proceeds, messieurs,’ he said. The philosophers leaned back and patted their bellies.

  “‘It’s good to live in a land of surplus,’ they all agreed.

  “‘I guess in Africa, the more you need, the less you have,’ Tom said when they were safely back among the stars.

  “‘And the more you have, the less you notice,’ Meadowlark replied.”

  The room was silent, except for the clink of a brandy glass set down too hard on a table. Lili looked up at the serious faces of the guests at the salon. Finally, she heard one pair of hands clapping. “Brava!” Jean-Étienne Leclerc cried out, and slowly the others joined in.

  Once his face had returned to its normal color, Abbé Turgot gave Lili a nod of acknowledgment. “Surely, mademoiselle,” Turgot said, “you don’t mean to imply that philosophers are some kind of parasite living off what rightly belongs to others?”

  “No, sir,” Lili said. “But I don’t believe there’s any substitute for looking around the streets at what is real for common people. With further thought to the views you expressed here a few weeks ago, I decided it would be worth the possible consequences down the road to make sure that everyone could afford bread today and rely on having it tomorrow.”

  Leclerc clapped again, but Lili scarcely heard him. “Abbé Turgot,” she went on, “please remember this is just a silly story about a place that doesn’t exist. I mean, who would go around stealing people’s possessions and treating them as if they were part of their personal treasury? It’s quite absurd, really.”

  “Not at all!” The booming voice belonged to a man in an embroidered silk vest under an elaborately trimmed velvet jacket. His eyes had the peculiar squint of someone whose excess weight had accumulated in the face, and a wattle of flesh bobbed beneath the knob of his chin as he spoke. Lili had never seen him at the salon before, and he had slipped in unnoticed while she was reading.

  “Some people have more because others have less,” he said. “It’s a simple principle in a finite world, Turgot, and I can’t say I believe it is entirely wrong that it should be that way. But it’s a fact, as mademoiselle’s story points out, that those who eat at a golden trough do so by impoverishing others.”

  “I don’t impoverish anyone!” another of the guests replied. “I give to charity, and I’m certainly not guilty of gluttony.”

  Several other men laughed. “You’re only a glutton for losing at cards,” one said. “And for the ladies.”

  “No harm in that, is there, Comte de Buffon?” another asked over the roar of their laughter.

  Comte de Buffon? The keeper of the Jardin de Roi, the King’s Garden on the far side of the Seine? Why hadn’t Maman told her he was coming?

  “So here is the delightful prodigy Madame de Bercy has been hiding from the world,” Comte de Buffon said, coming over to Lili. He bowed and kissed her hand. “I feel I must immediately write to Monsieur Voltaire at Ferney to tell him he had better return to Paris or he may find himself dethroned!”

  He peered into Lili’s face. “I heard your mother’s wit in what you wrote, and I am charmed to see a little of her in your face.”

  “My mother?” Lili looked over at Maman, who was glowing with pleasure.

  “Yes,” Comte de Buffon said. “I knew her quite well, and I am sure she would be delighted to see grown men squirming at the truth of your words.” He bowed again. “Would you do me the honor of accepting an invitation to dinner someday soon? I’m sure my nephew would be delighted to escort you around the gardens first, and show you my laboratory.”

  Jean-Étienne Leclerc had eased through the other guests and was standing by the count. “I’m the nephew,” he said. “I hope you’re not disappointed.”

  Lili had never had a good opportunity to look at the young man she had known only by his last name. He looked to be in his mid-twenties, with light brown hair showing underneath his powdered wig. His eyes were blue and his skin almost as fair as Delphine’s. He was as slender and tall as his uncle was portly, but both of them had eyes that penetrated hers, not in an intimidating way, but curiously, as if they were trying to see whether she might be coaxed into a smile. Almost immediately she was.

  Maman came over to Lili’s side. “Accept if you wish, ma petite.”

  “Do you have microscopes?” Lili asked.

  The count leaned back and put his hands over his belly as he laughed. “In all sizes,” he said. “And drawings of what I’ve observed in them. But bring a strong stomach,” he said, leaning in toward her with the air of a conspirator. “Nature isn’t always for the squeamish.”

  PARROTS SQUAWKED FROM perches in the greenhouse of the Jardin de Roi. In cages reaching nearly to the ceiling, small birds of every color imaginable fluttered together, chortling and trilling. Lili barely heard them, as she moved Comte de Buffon’s magnifying glass in and out until it focused on one of several orchids on a long, thin stem.

  “It’s like it’s been painted,” she said. The count smiled. “And each one unique,” he added. “Look at the next one down.”

  Lili focused on the stippled dots at the center of the flower and the tiny lines that ran down the petals at each side. She stood up and cradled the whole stalk in her palm. “It’s hard to understand why God would go to so much trouble,” she said. “I know he doesn’t paint them one by one, but there doesn’t appear to be any need for each of them to be just a little different.”

  “Nor for people to look so different either, for that matter,” the count said. “Each one unique, yet one species. Would you like to take a look, Madame de Bercy?” he asked, handing the glass to Julie. “In most species, offspring are almost identical, as in these orchids. In some cases, however, such as dogs and cats, we see new and quite different forms emerging all the time. It would be hard to believe, unless the alleyways of Paris gave such a clear demonstration on a daily basis, that a dog or cat of almost any type could bear the offspring of any other type, and produce an infinite variety of offspring amply prepared to inflict an even greater surplus on our city. In fact, were alien creatures to arrive from some other part of the universe, I am certain we could not convince them there was any such thing as a ‘dog’ at all, they would be so sure there were hundreds of names for such a creature.” He cleared his throat. “My apologies. I do tend to lecture whenever I have an audience.”

  “No, please, I pray you,” Julie said. “We came to learn, didn’t we, Lili?”

  Lili nodded. “From pictures I’ve seen in books, your visitor might conclude people were many different species too, there’s so little resemblance between a Hindu and a Lapp.”

  “Quite so,” Jean-Étienne Leclerc replied, “and Uncle has made quite clear in his papers that were it not for the fact that we are loath to breed with people who look too different from ourselves, the world would be full of people the color of caramels with brown eyes the shape of almonds.” He chuckled. “I for one would prefer to leave Chinese women to Chinese men, and I suppose they would quite agree to that, although it is hard to see how they could possibly find their young women as attractive as our present company.” He bowed in Lili’s direction, and she blushed and lowered her eyes.

  “I think we ‘ve heard quite enough about procreation,” Julie admonished, shaking her finger at the two men in a gesture more teasing than critical.

  “Yes, quite,” the count replied. “But I have one more thing to show Mademoiselle du Châtelet, before we go in to dinner, if you’ll allow it. I believe we have left unaddressed her question about God, and why—or in fact whether—he has gone to all the trouble to paint the spots on orchids.”

  He guided Lili to a stool at a table on which was set a glass cage with a pink-blossomed plant inside. Opening a tiny door, he produced a small vial containing several small insects. He shook them loose inside the cage and closed it up. “Watch.”

  Watch what? Lili wondered. A little bug fly around a cage? Then she and Maman shrieked.
The flower had come to life, reaching out with two petals to grab the insect and pull it toward its center. “That can’t be!” Lili cried out.

  “But it is,” Buffon replied.

  “Flowers don’t move!” Lili tried not to sob.

  “They don’t eat insects either, as a rule, but that’s what appears to have happened.”

  “No! It makes no sense!” Imagining for a moment all the plants in the greenhouse reaching out to do the same, Lili clung to Maman.

  The count offered Lili his handkerchief to wipe her eyes. “You did not see a flower move,” he said with an amused smile.

  “I did too, with my own eyes!”

  He shook his head. “What you saw is even more marvelous, because it is true.” He handed her the magnifying glass again. “What do you really see?”

  Lili’s hands were shaking too hard at first to bring the plant into focus, but then she saw what was unmistakably a large insect scraping pincers over its mouth. Its body and legs were the shape of petals in creamy pink and white. Its face looked like the top of the column on the orchid Lili had observed under the glass, but instead of little dots of color, she saw two tiny eyes and the single line of its now-closed mouth.

  Comte Buffon picked the little animal off its perch and set it on his finger. “It’s called an orchid mantis, and it lives in disguise among the flowers, getting its food from any little bug that comes by. Hold it in your hand and look some more.” He eased it onto Lili’s palm. “It won’t bite, I promise.”

  Lili held her palm up close to her eyes and watched the insect stretch its limbs. “It’s really quite beautiful,” she said, feeling her heart slow down.

  “And lovable in its own way,” Jean-Étienne broke in. “Uncle keeps them as pets of a sort, do you not?”

  “And to remind me never to stop marveling at what nature produces. Do you know why such a creature exists, mademoiselle?” Lili shook her head. “Simply because it can,” the scientist said. “Or probably, more correctly, because it must.” He replaced the mantis on its perch and closed the door of the cage.

  “You see,” he said, taking Lili’s arm to go to the house for dinner, “I don’t believe for a moment that God said during the creation, ‘Let there be orchids as well as mantises that look just like them.’ I believe instead that different types of plants and animals came into the world and thrived where they were put.”

  The great man stopped for a moment once they had crossed the terrace in front of the greenhouse. They were standing in the middle of a grand walkway so long it disappeared from view before reaching the end of the garden. Lost in thought, Buffon clasped his hands as he looked up at the plane trees lining the walk. Close to the house, gardeners trimmed the hedges of the formal garden, but farther away, grounds meant for pleasant strolls gave way to the densely packed landscape of trees and medicinal plants in the working laboratory of the Jardin de Roi.

  “Things alter over time,” he said, picking up the subject as if his thoughts hadn’t strayed at all. Jean-Étienne and Julie had caught up and were now strolling beside them. “The climate might get hotter or colder, or wetter or drier, and the perfect fit isn’t so perfect anymore. So a plant might change colors or an animal grow spots, or more hair, or a tougher hide in order to adapt. Perhaps this poor little mantis was no good at capturing insects. He adapted to look like something the insects are attracted to, and voilà!”

  “He’s the master of the house now, so to speak,” Jean-Étienne broke in with a laugh.

  “But how do they change?” Lili looked up intently at the aging scientist. “A green mantis isn’t going to lay eggs that hatch pink any more than these trees will have blue leaves next spring. I can be sure of that, can’t I?”

  Buffon laughed. “I think you can count on the trees not to surprise you. Time takes regular and uniform steps. Changes that at first would be imperceptible become gradually more pronounced, and at last are marked by results too conspicuous to be missed. So my dear Mademoiselle du Châtelet, we can’t watch mantises turn pink in our own lifetime, but we can conclude with confidence that they have done just that in God’s time.”

  “That’s certainly not what they taught at the abbey,” she said, looking up with a sly and happy smile as they skirted the edge of the formal garden and neared the iron gates of Buffon’s imposing home at the end of the grounds. “Although I can’t say they put much effort into practical explanations of anything.”

  Buffon snorted his disapproval. “It is astonishing to me that anyone could call such views as mine irreligious. Antichurch perhaps, but irreverent, never. How living creatures adapt is beyond our knowledge, but it is not beyond God’s power to have given them the means. I think in the end that was the only way he could have intended things, since it was the only way his work could survive the changes he knew were inherent in the world he made. Why go to the trouble of creating life, if a change in rainfall or temperature would wipe it out? I believe he created, for example, a mantis—or to be precise, a breeding pair of mantises. Perfect mantises for the time and place, and then they devolved from that perfection—degenerated, one might say—as circumstances demanded, just as a human being might fall from honest living to thievery because he had no choice.”

  “I don’t think that beautiful little creature was degenerate,” Lili said. “I’ve grown quite fond of it already, and I hope I have a chance to see it again.” She looked back over her shoulder at the glass windows of the greenhouse.

  Buffon laughed. “You may pay a visit to my mantis any time you wish, mademoiselle.”

  Lili knew she was blushing but she didn’t care. She stopped just outside the gate to the mansion, letting Jean-Étienne and Julie pass ahead. “Why couldn’t you argue that instead of being degenerate, every creature is perfect just as it is?”

  Buffon looked at her quizzically. “I shudder to think what your nuns would say to that!” Seeing her confusion, he went on. “To say that an adapted species is perfect implies that God created imperfect ones that managed to improve themselves after his will had been done.” He took in the entire garden with a sweeping gesture. “Mine is a dangerous view to hold, but I am convinced that the Divine Intent was only to set nature in motion, not to create everything himself. That would mean There’s no such thing as perfect species at all—including us—only well-adapted ones.”

  Lili’s head spun. “Monsieur Rousseau says that all things are perfect from the hand of the Creator, but degenerate in the hands of man.” Visions spun through Lili’s mind of men splattered with excrement from carriage wheels, tattered homeless children with strawberry stains, a man beaten for wanting to be paid, the thin line of light in the penance room at the abbey.

  A pair of butterflies wafted, close enough to touch, over the raked dirt of the entryway, before fluttering off into the cool green of the garden. “Nature seems different from society,” Lili went on. “It seems nature is trying harder than we are to make things a little better.”

  “And I think society is doing the same, or I wouldn’t bother working so hard here.” He took her arm to go through the gate. “One must believe that progress is possible, or what’s the point of using our minds at all?”

  Servants opened the door when they saw them walking across the courtyard, but the count stopped Lili again before they reached the steps to the house. “People have always tried to understand the world by looking for fixed truths and hanging on to them. I believe we are seeing that way of thinking in its last hours. How will we face the future? That’s what I want to know. And the answers will come from those who understand that the only truth is change, and that the only way to go forward is to think clearly and dispassionately about the world as it really is.”

  He took Lili’s arm again. “I have guests almost every day, but I almost always let my nephew show them around, and I join them later only as a means of having my dinner. When I heard you read your story and saw how you stood up to Abbé Turgot, I wanted to see what else you were made of.” H
e laughed. “I scared you for a minute with my pink mantis, but not for long.”

  His eyes scanned her face, looking so intently into her eyes that Lili was surprised she had no desire to flinch or look away. “You are a lovely girl, with your mother’s spirit as well as her mind, and you are very fortunate to have someone like Julie de Bercy who supports you. Don’t spend your life struggling to be satisfied with being ordinary. Whatever muse calls you—science, writing, who knows?—I hope you’ll answer.”

  He gave Lili a rueful smile. “I’m getting near the end of my time, but if I ever had a wish to live longer it would be to see what you make of what you have been given.” He glanced through the doorway. “Shall we go in?”

  “DONE.” MARIANNE Loir put down her paintbrush and stood up. “I think I can finish from here without you. Would you like to look at your portrait?”

  “Finally,” Emilie said. “I thought I might die of old age before I ever stood up again.” She came around to look at Loir’s work. “Oh dear, it looks as if I already have. Do I really look that ancient? I’m not even thirty.”

  “You don’t look old at all,” the painter insisted. “You’re radiant, and far more beautiful now than in the portrait in your husband’s study. To be sure, you were scarcely more than a bride then, but you look as if you’re ready to jump up and run away. Here you exist on your own terms. I hope you are not offended that I portrayed you that way.”

  “My own terms?” Emilie frowned, examining the portrait more closely. “I look as if I might be nothing more than a well-decorated wife.” She held her hand to her throat, fingering the diamond she saw painted around her neck.

  “I’ll add symbols for whatever else you’d like to convey,” Loir said. “I was certain you’d have ideas about that, so I left the table next to you empty.” She gestured to the still-drying paint. “And your hands too.”