"Indeed, it is interesting," allowed Rossignol, "though the King keeps me very busy at cyphers."
"What sorts of problems did you have in mind, monsieur?" Eliza asked.
"What I am going to tell you is a secret, and should not leave this sleigh," Pontchartrain began.
"Fear not, monseigneur; is any thought more absurd than that one of us might be a foreign spy?" Rossignol asked, and was rewarded by the sensation of four sharp fingernails closing in around his scrotum.
"Oh, it is not foreign spies I am concerned about in this case, but domestic speculators," said the Count.
"Then it is even more safe; for I've nothing to speculate with," said Eliza.
"I am going to call in all of the gold and silver coins," said Pontchartrain.
"All of them? All of them in the entire country!?" exclaimed the Duchess.
"Indeed, my lady. We will mint new gold and silver louis, and exchange them for the old."
"Heavens! What is the point of doing it, then?"
"The new ones will be worth more, madame."
"You mean that they will contain more gold, or silver?" Eliza asked.
Pontchartrain gave her a patient smile. "No, mademoiselle. They will have precisely the same amount of gold or silver as the ones we use now—but they will be worth more, and so to obtain, say, nine louis d'or of the new coin, one will have to pay the Treasury ten of the old."
"How can you say that the same coin is now worth more?"
"How can we say that it is worth what it is now?" Pontchartrain threw up his hands as if to catch snowflakes. "The coins have a face value, fixed by royal decree. A new decree, a new value."
"I understand. But it sounds like a scheme to make something out of nothing—a perpetual motion machine. Somewhere, somehow, in some unfathomable way, it must have repercussions."
"Quite possibly," said Pontchartrain, "but I cannot make out where and how exactly. You must understand, the King has asked me to double his revenues to pay for the war. Double! The usual taxes and tariffs have already been squeezed dry. I must resort to novel measures."
"Now I understand why you would like the advice of France's greatest savants," said the Duchess. Whereupon all eyes turned to Rossignol. But he had suddenly braced his feet and jerked his head back. For a few moments he stared up at the indigo sky through half-closed eyes, and did not breathe; then he exhaled, and took in a deep draught of the cold air.
"I do believe Monsieur Rossignol has been seized by some sudden mathematical insight," said Pontchartrain in a hushed voice. "It is said that Descartes's great idea came to him in a sort of religious vision. I had been skeptical of it until this moment, for the very thought seemed blasphemous. But the look on Monsieur Rossignol's face, as he cracked that cypher, was unmistakably like that of a saint in a fresco as he is drawn, by the Holy Spirit, into an epiphanic rapture."
"Will we see a lot of this sort of thing, then, at the salon?" asked the Duchess, giving Rossignol a very dubious look.
"Only occasionally," Eliza assured her. "But perhaps we ought to change the subject, and give Monsieur Rossignol an opportunity to gather his wits. Let's talk about…horses!"
"Horses?"
"Those horses," said Eliza, nodding at the two that were drawing the sleigh.
She and Rossignol were facing forward. The Duchess and the Count had to turn around to see what she was looking at. Eliza took advantage of this to wipe her hand on Rossignol's drawers and withdraw it. Rossignol hitched up his breeches weakly.
"Do you fancy them?" asked the Duchess. "Louis-François is inordinately proud of his horses."
"Until now I had only seen them from a distance, and supposed that they were simply white horses. But they are more than that; they are albinos, are they not?"
"Ths distinction is lost on me," the Duchess admitted, "But that is what Louis-François calls them. When he comes back from the south he will be glad to tell you more than you wish to hear!"
"Are they commonly seen? Do many people have them here?" Eliza asked. But they were interrupted by, of all things, a man riding an albino horse: Étienne de Lavardac d'Arcachon, who had ridden out from the château to meet them. "I am mortified to break in on you this way," he said, after greeting each of them individually, in strict order of precedence (Duchess first, then Pontchartrain, Eliza, horses, mathematician, and driver), "but in your absence, Mother, I am the acting host of the party, and must do all in my power to please our guests—one of whom, by the way, happens to be his majesty the King of France—"
"Oooh! When did le Roi arrive?"
"Just after you left, Mother."
"Just my luck. What do his majesty and the other guests desire?"
"To see the masque. Which is ready to begin."
ONE END OF THE GRAND ballroom of La Dunette had been converted into the English Channel. Papier-mâché waves with plaster foam, mounted on eccentric bearings so that they cycled about in a more or less convincing churn, had been arranged in many parallel, independently moving ranks, marching toward the back of the room, and raked upwards so that any spectator on the ballroom floor could get a view of the entire width of the "Channel" from "Dunkerque" (a fortified silhouette downstage) to "Dover" (white cliffs and green fields upstage). To stage left was a little pen where a consort sawed away on viols. To stage right was a royal box where King Louis XIV of France sat on a golden chair, with the Marquise de Maintenon at his right hand, dressed more for a funeral than a Christmas party. A retinue was massed behind them. So close to the front of it that he could have put a hand on Maintenon's shoulder was Father Édouard de Gex—this a way of saying that there had better be no salacious bits. Not that Madame la duchesse d'Arcachon would ever even conceive of such a thing; but she had hired artists and comedians to produce it, and one never knew what such people would come up with.
The name of the production was La Métamorphose. Leading man and guest of honor was one Lieutenant Jean Bart, who knew as little of what to do on stage, during a masque, as would a comedian in a naval engagement; but never mind, it had all been written around him and his dramaturgickal shortcomings. The opening number took place on the beach at Dunkerque. A mermaid, perched on a rock, looked on as Jean Bart and his men (dancers dressed as Corsairs) attended an impromptu Mass celebrated on the beach. Exit Priest. Jean Bart led his men onto their frigate (which was no larger than a rowboat, but wittily decked out with masts and yards sprouting every which way, and fleur-de-lis banners). The frigate took to the Channel's bobbing waves and headed for England. The mermaid, stranded solus downstage right, sang an aria about her lovesick condition; for she had quite fallen in love with the handsome Lieutenant (in an earlier version, there had been no Mass on the beach; it had opened with Jean Bart spawled on the rock in a state of deshabille and the mermaid feeding grapes to him; but the Duchess had had words with the players, and mended it).
Neptune now arose from the waves and sang a duet with the mermaid, his daughter. He wanted to know why she was so morose. Learning the answer, he became cross with Jean Bart and vowed to take revenge on him in the traditional godly style of subjecting him to an inconvenient metamorphosis.