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the mule slipped in a pile of steaming horse dung in the street, jerking the wagon and setting the pigs to squealing and oinking. A passing gang of Gypsies whooped with laughter.
    â€œYour Eminence,” I said, taking my opportunity with measured confidence, “I’ve planned a small fête at Palais Mazarin.”
    â€œYou are the temporary lady of the house.” He hardly looked at me. “But if one distasteful rumor is uttered, you will be gone before the gossips draw their next breath.”
    I nodded, suppressing my smile.
    He turned his attention to homes along the quay. Even the most stately had mud and garbage littering their doorsteps. “Look how the bourgeoisie merchants climb into their fine carriages wearing gold cloth when they know only nobility are permitted to wear it.” He made a harrumph sound. “Looks like they can afford new taxes.”
    We turned onto the wide Pont Neuf toward the oldest part of Paris, the Île de la Cité. The great cacophony of Parisian life on the Pont Neuf, as much an open street theater as a bridge, echoed around us. Vendors called out such goods as oysters, wooden legs, cakes, or glass eyes. Charlatans yelled louder, selling phoenix fat, dirt from the Holy Land, and water guaranteed to extend your life by one hundred years. A singer dressed in an exotic costume from the East belted out a song about a murder that had taken place on Pont Neuf a week earlier. Beggars and rowdy drunks clustered under the statue of Henry the Fourth to watch a burly man yank a tooth out of an older man’s mouth. Pickpockets darted among the crowd while prostitutes scanned it for randy customers. While I watched this in wonder, a thud sounded against the carriage wall. Mud spattered on the cardinal’s scarlet robes. I sat up in time to see a man in a butcher’s apron hurl another great handful of mud at us. “Death to the Italian!” he screamed over the racket. A cheer went up on the bridge and along the quay.
    Our driver whipped the horses, and we coursed across the rest of the bridge. I fell back. Mazarin wiped the mud off with a handkerchief as if it were nothing.
    They hate him. The poorest peasants, the middling bourgeoisie, merchants great and small, minor nobles, and the elite closest to the crown—they all harbored the same hate for Cardinal Mazarin. They screamed it on street corners, printed it in pamphlets, and probably begged it in their prayers: Death to the cardinal who wallows in their money and seems to control the king by magic.
    We arrived at Notre Dame Cathedral, where bells pealed and birds scattered as we halted before the Gothic doors.
    Marianne pointed to the fanciful gargoyles overhead. “Aren’t they adorable?”
    â€œThey’re supposed to be frightening,” I said as we entered. “To ward away evil.”
    â€œThey don’t work because Olympia can get in. And look—” She stuck out her tongue and crooked her fingers atop her head to mimic the devil’s horns. “So can I!”
    I shushed her, but she’d been heard. Someone behind me said, “Those pagan Mancinis!” My cheeks burned. I wanted to turn around to see who it was, but something stopped me. This was the way of courtiers. I don’t have enough standing to condemn their spite. So I kept walking.
    By the time we returned to the Louvre I was sick of uppish courtiers and tedious ceremony, sick of wondering if the king would try to talk to me again, and sick of worrying how I’d respond. When the best carriage arrived to escort Olympia to the Hôtel de Soissons, I was overjoyed.
    â€œCan we go home now?” begged Marianne.
    I scooped her up and took Hortense by the hand. “Home, where a new life awaits.”

 
    CHAPTER 8
    God must needs have given free will to man. God’s foreknowledge is not opposed to our free choice.
    â€”SAINT AUGUSTINE
    Weeks later I stood at the top of the stairs of