In Search of a Runaway Queen

I will be wandering away from Paris for a few days on the trail of a rebel queen who has captivated my imagination for many years now. Our road trip takes us to Poitiers in the Poitou-Charentes region south west of Paris and not far from the Atlantic coast.

On a desolate day drawing the last gasp of winter, Monsieur L and I stumbled into a forlorn and half-forgotten Romanesque church in this ancient town of a hundred church towers. The air within was still, not a soul adrift, but a consecrated one lay resting below in perpetuity. An ex-queen in quietus, Sainte Radegonde was once, for a brief moment, Reine des Francs.

Fourteen centuries later, her spirit still beckoned, and we descended the stairs into vespertine darkness. Her simple stone bier filled the small crypt. I lit a taper and as the flame flickered to life, a graceful eidolon appeared to the side. I caught my breath…it was a statue of the sainted queen standing in the shadows. She had been cast in the beauteous likeness of Anne of Austria, who had gifted the statue in thanks for the wellness of her young son, the future Louis XIV…the resplendent Sun King.

My senses were suddenly redolent with the long and glorious history of France…

A girl, only eight years old, the daughter of a Thuringian king, was captured in battle by a Merovingian one, the charismatic and carnal Clothaire, in the year 530 AD. The little princess was then secluded away to await the day when she would be old enough to be claimed as his virgin bride. The royal wedding prevailed at Soissons. But the young Radegonde did not wait long to bare her rebellious stance against her new role as wife and queen. The exasperated and aging Clothaire eventually relented, and with a magnanimous gesture [for a warlord of the Dark Ages!], he let her go.

The fledgling queen took flight, renouncing all her sovereign rights and worldly adornments. She had herself ordained by the Bishop of Soissons and then fled to Poitiers, where she founded her convent for reclusive aristocratic girls. The first sanctuary of its kind in all of Gaul, the Abbey of Sainte-Croix was so named for the piece of the true cross sent to her by the Byzantine emperor Justin II.

Radegonde, transformed into a benevolent nun in permanent refuge, was chaste and austere herself while being compassionate and indulgent with others. She slept in ashes, ate only the plainest of food, mortified her own flesh, performed the most menial tasks, administered to the diseased and the outcast, tended to her young charges and all the while, continued to read and cultivated her mind with literary studies and spiritual pursuits.

One fateful day, an exuberant poet-priest appeared on the convent’s doorsteps and was allowed into their cloistered world. He proved to be the intellectual soul-mate for the distinguished Radegonde and she invited him to stay for awhile. The cultured and hedonistic Roman poet Venantius Fortunatus would bring an elevated masculine perspective and no less earthy dimension into her closed feminine realm. In turn, he was fêted generously and greatly favoured by all. His poetry flowed in exalted appreciation, sometimes verging on a more sensuous persuasion…

“You, the life of your sisters…your mind in God…

You ignite your body to nourish your soul,

Tending your annual vows today have incarcerated yourself.

You forget Time, as if you were not desired by a lover.

(Momentarily, as I behold you, I fantasize myself in that role.)

But let us marry your vow, and here in the spirit,

I accompany you in your cell in which it is forbidden to go.”

Wow…so did their mutual admiration go beyond the bounds of virtue?? No one will ever know… [Monsieur L, of course, has no doubts about the primal power of attraction!]

The fair Radegonde, revered to this day, sleeps on with her secrets safe, in her now somber domain where once in a lifetime, we had alighted upon and discovered a singular rebel soul. And exulted in the memory of a woman who had lived her life her way so very long ago…

La Brinvilliers est en l’air…

“Well, it’s all over and done with. Brinvilliers is in the air…”, a famously quoted declaration written by Madame de Sévigné to her daughter after witnessing the burning of the beheaded body of the Marquise de Brinvilliers, to indicate that her foul ashes had finally been dispersed into the wind, perhaps to afflict those breathing it in with the same poisoning proclivity that had brought the malevolent Marquise to such a well-deserved fate.

Across the street from Monsieur L’s building is an unassuming hôtel particulier signified only by a macabre history involving this infamous female serial killer who was willingly and skillfully mentored by her resourceful but depraved lover. This was big freakish news back in the 17th century and apparently inspired some copy-cat murders amongst certain unhappy aristocratic wives, [headlined then as “Affair of the Poisons”].

Marie Madeleine Marguerite d’Aubray was born in Paris in 1630 and married off to the Marquis de Brinvilliers in 1651. She was not particularly fond of her husband and just as well that he was away often. She soon fell under the spell of one Godin de Sainte-Croix, a calvary officer, who was quickly dispatched to the Bastille prison by her father to end their affair. As destiny would have it, Sainte-Croix learned a new trick from an Italian poisoner while languishing in jail, and as soon as he got out, quickly brought the little Marquise up to speed. They experimented with various concoctions and even managed to administer them to some patients of a nearby hospital to observe the effects.

Their first target victim was the Marquise’s own father who had forced her into a loveless marriage and then so rudely had Sainte-Croix incarcerated for pleasuring her. It took a few attempts, but when it finally worked on her father, she decided to dispatch her brothers as well to inherit the whole family fortune herself. With that successful double poisoning committed, her husband was next in line. However, Sainte-Croix had a change of heart because he did not wish to be burdened with the Marquise any further, and thereby quickly provided some antidote to the poor husband before the poison could work its magic.

Soon after, Sainte-Croix mysteriously died, apparently of natural causes, but really?? Who would have thought…and coincidentally, documents were found amongst his possessions that meticulously noted his ingenious collaboration with the Marquise. She managed to elude capture in France but was eventually found hiding in a convent in Belgium and brought back to Paris to be executed at the Place de Grève in July, 1676.

Today the Hôtel de Brinvilliers has been divided into several apartments, some of which are occupied by distinguished but discreet families. There is a large courtyard with a magnificent private garden belonging to one of the owners and we used to hear the calls of an exotic bird coming from it. Sometimes it seemed to be answering the practice notes of our in-house concert violinist, and the spontaneous duet that filled the stillness of a Paris dusk was always sublimely heart-felt.

Every so often we are invited over to friends’ apartment on the top floor facing our building for card games and dinner parties. I have never broached the subject of lingering spirits and ghostly presences with them, partly because I don’t really believe… and yet I have felt what could be called “energy fields”, and even quite sure that I had seen smoky puffs of unexplainable origins. I do love a skin-tingling ghost story and will suspend my disbelief for certain experientially “proven” haunted buildings.

Late one evening as we were descending the grand staircase in the Hôtel de Brinvilliers, I distinctly felt something in the air…the shadows cast from the lone chandelier over the stairs were long and deep, and the air chilled and sharp. There were dark, dark corners and disappearing hallways…

Monsieur L was somewhat skeptical [but I could tell that he was a little spooked as well]. I had my little camera with me and decided to take some quick shots all around to see what will appear…

Was the Marquise hiding in the lacy shadows that night, her repentant spirit still seeking forgiveness for her wicked misdeeds from her long departed descendants, or is it an unrepentant wraith unable to find a peaceful rest from her terrible murderous spree?

Our friends had already shut and locked their door before we had reached the stairway and we did not want to return and disturb them with our sensations. We have kept this to ourselves, and perhaps on another evening, when the mood strikes, the lovely and long-dead Marquise may be felt hovering in her namesake domain…casting her malignity into the air once again…

[Addendum: If one is ever kindly offered “les poudres de succession“, please do not snort it, nor mix it into a cocktail drink, nor dust it upon one’s clean body after a bath!  Or one could find oneself the fallen victim of a trend begun once long ago by one brazen and decadent Marquise.]

BoBo déjeuner à Bofinger

Monsieur L, the inveterate lotus-eater that he is, was enthusing over the idea of daily lunches at the Brasserie Bofinger while growing old together in Paris. We would sit side by side on the end banquette in the grandiose dining room under the magnificent glass dome, with an encompassing view of all the tables occupied by other bourgeois, but notably less bohemian, elderly Parisians [although this opulent main salon of Bofinger’s usually seats more tourists and provinciaux, but all the more interesting of a mix to observe].

Brasserie Bofinger, on a small street off the Place de la Bastille, is just a short walk away from Monsieur L’s apartment. One is guided there by the gilded winged génie de la Bastille [the Genius of Liberty] perched high up on top of the July Column, a memorial to the Trois Glorieuses, three days of street fighting in July, 1830 that dethroned Charles X and installed the Bourgeois Monarchy under the anglo-styled Louis-Philippe. [Scènes de la vie de Bohème by Henri Murger was published in 1845, and thus was born a new breed of BoBo artists, like the bourgeois Courbet who led a wildly bohemian lifestyle.] And by 1864, Bofinger was serving its hearty Alsatian specialties to such radical socialists and fiery artistes and famished northern travellers disembarking at the Gare de Lyon and Gare d’Austerlitz.

Over the years, it has always been one of our first picks to bring clients, visiting friends and family for lunch or dinner, sharing large platters of fresh seafood choucroute. The service is brisk but friendly, and we feel pampered all cozied up along the banquette while being part of an ornate theatrical set animated by other well-fleshed out characters. One can’t help but feel more french when installed amidst the sumptuous decor, partaking in the traditional cuisine served by quintessential brasserie waiters to the bon et haute bourgeois, and even the odd aristocratic, diners.

Monsieur L himself comes from a bon bourgeois family from the Alsace on his mother’s side. I am from a similar background but of a much different culture. We met in a neutral country far from our respective homelands, and we bonded together as outsiders in that cold anglo world. We are unambitious artists, stubborn and free-spirited in our own ways, and we have led meandering bohemian lives converging in France every so often. Lately though the idea of cultural tradition, comforting rituals and solidity of base appeals again and we visualize grafting a more habitual lifestyle onto our natural hedonistic tendencies.

Hence, daily lunching at the venerable Bofinger, sitting side by side with the other regulars, often distinguished older men on their own, reading the papers between bites, looking up once in a while to check out who is being seated and who is leaving. If we don’t order dessert, our doting waiter will slide us an extra plate of complimentary cookies to linger over our coffees, and when he is not busy, will come over and update us on the famous personages who have dined there recently. We will in turn fill him in on that day’s manifestation happening around the Bastille that we hope is over by the time we leave so to avoid circumventing the blockades that are inevitably in place on our route home for a well-deserved sieste.

And so passes another day for a couple of aging BoBos suspended in time between an ultimate empirical Parisian existence and the repressed inkling that beyond the doors of the warm and sentimental cocoon that is Bofinger, the world is careening along at a pace and to a place we have no desire to grasp.