Chapter 22

I meet another magician as trecherous as those who preceded her.

Some time later, I met two ladies, a mother and a daughter, who were also staying at the Mazarin Hotel, my current residence. The mother asked me to go with her daughter to meet Romina VandevaI, and we met at her house. The young lady asked her to draw cards for her, but the sybil kept her eyes fixed on me. My pensive, dreamy expression drew her curiosity, and she asked me to let her read the cards for me, and to tell her the cause of my worries. I agreed. Perhaps she could find some remedy.

She said there was a group of men who had joined together to do me some great harm, but there was one in particular that would cause me more pain, one who would always torment me.  Of course, no one could agree more with this prediction. I asked her if she could predict through her magic whether I would always be unhappy. No, she said, she could cure me of my present and future ills. In fact, I could work the remedy myself. Though I had been deceived several times before by this sort of character, I believed what she told me. 

“You must buy a tallow candle from the first merchant you find with two doors,” she said, “And be careful that you get two pennies with your change. Go out the door opposite the one you entered through, and throw the coins in the air.”

This I did, and was surprised to hear the sound of two crowns, instead of two pennies. 

Next, I was to light a fire and throw salt into it. After writing the name of the first person to persecute me on a piece of paper, I would wrap the candle in the paper, prick it all over, and use a pin to fix it to a chain, rather than tying the chain around it. Then let the candle burn until it guttered out. 

Armed with a knife in case of an attack, I completed these tasks. I heard a terrible noise in the pipe of my chimney. She had warned me about what might come about from this charm, but I was still terrified, despite her warning. Despite my great resistance, I was surely under the power of the magician Moreau, with all the powers of his allies, now invisibly entering into my apartment, delivering his revenge because of my refusal and because of the charm I’d used. A buzzing sound in my apartment gave me some assurance. An infernal doctor was the source of my ills, and a sorcerer’s charm banished them. I spent the night stoking the fire with large handfuls of salt and sulfur, prolonging the torment of my enemies. 

The next day I met Vandeval again, telling her that I had put her advice into action, and the results were very reassuring. If I want to kill Moreau and his companions, she said, I only needed to continue feeding the fire more salt, as I had the night before. But I was happy to make them suffer as I had. She nodded her approval, and suggested that I continue the spell for nine days…the name on the paper, the salt in the fire, the extinguished candle. 

I was concerned that the coins I’d heard hit the ground were not the same as the ones I’d thrown, and some passer-by might have picked them up, and asked the fortune-teller if I should instead have tossed the coins into the river, keeping them out of the hands of my enemies. She thought this was an astute observation, and that I could toss the coins in the river if I wanted to, it made no difference. I had questions about other details of the operation, but she told me to be patient, to be brave, and that the cards showed that my enemies were suffering greatly, even despite the infernal spirits that they invoked to overcome my attacks. They would still succumb to my spell. 

We talked about my uncle’s estate, and how that might be a part of my gloom. She thought II should have carried out his wishes, and become his heir. Moreau had said much the same thing to me. I began to suspect that she shared his allegiance to these infernal, tormenting spirits.

I replied to Vandeval that financial interest had never guided my actions. Honor and justice guided my path. Our journeys did not always end in earthly happiness, which I did not desire so much now that I had  set my course to heavenly happiness, and gave myself to the will of divine providence. 

But I did wonder if I would be rid of my persecutors when I finished Vandeval’s operation, and might regain my original freedom. As it turns out, there was no hope!  Vandeval’s interest in my situation was nothing more than a deception: she had done everything she could to gain my trust, only in order to deceive me. But what more should I expect from a woman so divorced from God? What was left to me? There was only the comfort of the church, and in the merciful God, the only one I should have consulted.