The Devil's Reward by Emmanuelle De Villepin & Christopher Delogu

Author:Emmanuelle De Villepin & Christopher Delogu
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Other Press
Published: 2018-05-01T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

Bette had made friends with a Russian anthroposophist she met in Paris in 1920. The woman in question, Princess Natasha Bolinkova, was a distant cousin of the Czar who had fled the 1917 revolution in Russia. After the Munich lecture, Bette returned to Paris, where she spent the fall. Geoffroy joined her there as soon as he was able to. Papyrus was also in Paris with them sometimes, but he had begun courting my mother and therefore spent more time in Picardy.

For the Louvenel family, it was out of the question to allow Marguerite to go and spend time in Paris with her suitor, even with Bette as chaperone.

Papyrus probably set about modeling a more orderly life so as to merit his pious and orderly future spouse, but something tells me he must have found the process rather oppressive from the very beginning. I’m convinced that he went off to Paris now and then with the same eagerness for oxygen as someone coming up for air from the bottom of a deep swimming pool.

Bette’s novel ways and her obsession with Steinerism must have been an exotic and amusing distraction from the psychological straitjacket of the Picardy aristocracy. Marguerite’s idea of love was as romantic and idealistic as Papyrus was disenchanted and wounded underneath his boastful, gay exterior. He nevertheless did his best to go along at least partially with this romantic idyll that she seemed intent on living out. It was the biggest mistake of their lives.

The prevailing culture of the time favored my mother’s view of things, and that is probably why he did everything he could to contain his demons without ever confronting them directly. He made no attempt to understand them and thereby control them. He simply pushed them down, as they yelled and shook their fists, into the cellar of his soul, and tried to cover over with good intentions all the vociferation and pestilence of his deepest anxieties.

One day in September, Bette, Geoffroy, and Papyrus met up in Paris.

Geoffroy and Papyrus were living as usual in the home of their aunt Gertrude, the mother of Cousin Vincent. She was rich and shameless but very lively and generous. She adored her nephews and detested any kind of boundaries. At fifty-five she would have been ridiculous in many settings, but she had an undeniably playful, juvenile charm that made her attractive and droll and preserved her from society’s low meanness.

On a certain Friday, they had the surprise of Cousin Vincent’s arrival. They were all happy to be reunited again. Elodie was also in Paris and staying with relations of hers. Vincent wanted to present her to his mother and it was decided to organize a dinner the next evening at the sumptuous residence of Aunt Gertrude in avenue Montaigne. Bette requested permission to invite her dear friend, the Princess Bolinkova, whom she had not seen for some time. That afternoon the three friends and Bette, Princess Bolinkova, and Elodie went to take advantage of the last rays of summer in the Bois de Boulogne.

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