Voltaire's Calligrapher by Pablo De Santis

Author:Pablo De Santis [Santis, Pablo De]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: SteamPunk, Fiction, Historical, General, Mystery & Detective, Historical fiction, Thrillers, History, Fables, Monasteries - France, Monasteries, Spanish Language Materials, Voltaire, France, Fairy tales, Suspense Fiction, France - History - 18th Century, 18th Century, Suspense, Calligraphers, Calligraphers - France
ISBN: 9780061479885
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2001-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

The Prisoner

I wrote of recent events and my suspicions and asked I my uncle to make sure the letter reached Ferney. My message also asked for money and instructions: I needed to know my words were being heard, that a clear mind was putting the pieces together and arranging my next steps. At the time, it was common for loose pages, found in the bookstores of Paris, to be gathered up and kept in wooden boxes until, at some point, their rightful place was found. It had recently become popular to bind these lost pages, to create a book that jumped from one topic to another. That’s how I felt: I was gathering incomprehensible pages, hoping the great reader, sitting next to a window in a parlor at Ferney, would make sense of them.

Every now and then I would hear rumors that Voltaire was in the city or that he had died, and I would wonder whether I might be working in the service of a lost cause and for no pay.

In the evenings I would watch the Laghi house, hoping to see Clarissa. I was prepared to attempt a second meeting as soon as her father went out. But when I saw Von Knepper hurry away, carrying his little chest, curiosity impelled me to follow him.

Von Knepper walked without looking back or to either side. His stride was so long I practically had to run to keep up. We crossed over the river and passed through a market, where I nearly lost him among the vendors leaving for the night. He stopped at an iron gate, and I had to step back so as not to be seen. We had come to the cemetery. The guard was expecting him and let him in without a word. I watched Von Knepper walk through the trees and the graves until he was swallowed by shadows.

I now had to choose between the graveyard and the house and decided on the latter. The maid tried to stop me at the door, but I shouted Clarissa’s name and she came to my rescue. Once again she led me to the room with the piles of broken toys, Kolm’s walking stick now among them.

“I saw your father at the cemetery. Would he be visiting your mother’s grave?”

“My mother died elsewhere, and my father never went to her grave.”

“So what is he looking for there at this time of night?”

“I don’t know. If you’re so interested in my father, why didn’t you follow him?”

“Because I wanted to come here.”

“Then enough about the cemetery. Your shoes are already caked with mud. The more you talk, the muddier things will get.”

She offered me a chair with a cracked leg, and I nearly fell off it. She sat down on a trunk. The room was nearly dark. I thought I could hear the whirring of little machines in the corners.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve spoken to anyone. My father isn’t much of a conversationalist.”

“They say he’s the greatest maker of automatons in Europe.

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