Claude was the one who dressed her. She said the rosary before she let her put on her oldest gown, which was actually an adapted riding habit of unconventional design, a cut that Claude had never seen before entering into Fran's service, for Fran hated horses and feared them. It was short and therefore very convenient for walking.
   The milk glass bottle in which she kept Hungary water had extensive but unelaborate gold scrollwork and was inlaid with lovely sapphires. The stopper was ornamented with a great ball of pink coral. A gift from Fran's eldest brother. Claude had coveted this trifle bitterly. She applied the perfume to the balls of Fran's feet before permitting her to put on her shoes. Fran didn't say a word.
   Then they walked without a candle to guide them from Fran's apartments in the eastern wing, down the staircase which the servants there used, through the kitchen, and, via the supply door, outside. All of this was relatively simple. Fran wore a long, hooded cloak over her short riding habit.
   Claude had no need to conceal her identity because she was new to the court and thought to be entirely inconsequential, existing, as she did, only inside of Fran's tremendous shadow. But her detractors were wide of the mark. Claude went nowhere without her smallsword, for she was cognizant of the fact that she had more to do before this long night of civilization - this devil's year - was over.
   Certainly, the devil was making merry in Paris that winter. It was 1677. For three days now, morning had broken into a crimson sky, a bloody atmosphere streaked with stained clouds that were like filthy bandages. It made Claude shudder to think of all that was afoot. But she had scried, having learned the practice from orphans in her hometown of Provence, and the message that had come through had said that Fran's current design was well-omened.
   It was a house that you entered via a small gate, which was itself located in a nanoscopic crescent - but it was a charming place. Everyone said so. The King had said so. He was rumored to have visited the house more than once in disguise, not knowing the hostess' true profession, or that she had more than once held his life in her hands.
   The hostess herself was a jolie laide who was extremely quick to laugh. She wore pale blue exclusively - a blue that was like the ice on a frozen pond at midnight. The embodiment of malice to anyone not yet riveted by the miasma of the court and of the metropolis, as Claude intuited. Fran and others seemed to view her simply as provincial, and yet to treat her invariably with a certain degree of fearful veneration, the way they might treat a veritable anchorite or an actual druid.
   The elegant iron gate was left open in anticipation of their visit. Once they had been received into the house, a servant would come out to lock it behind them. Fran walked ahead, and it was she who, extending a plump wrist from the slit of her mantle, raised the knocker, which was in the shape of a star.
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   It was not the hostess, whom they had been instructed to call Cousin even in private, who answered the door, but her contemptible associate who went by the name of Patenotte. Claude had been present at numerous ghastly services ministered by this odious person, in which she had acted (in Fran's stead, of course) as the altar.
   The wicked priest had performed his office with a glee that Claude could clearly sense, and it had revolted her. He gazed at them with waxen eyes as they entered. How much more would he relish the same sacrifice performed over the body of one who, by all metrics, as he had murmured idiotically to her himself on one occasion, was even almost a princesse du sang?
   The interior of the house burned with the scent of ylang-ylang. Claude undressed Fran in the antechamber under the supervision of Cousin, who was hooded. Fran's skin was distinctly clammy. Though Claude had never seen Fran in prayer, she had, when she observed her dim aspect then, the sudden impression that she might attempt it now out of desperation, and so she pinched her.
   Fran's immense eyes darted to her own, aflame with pique. Fran was of a fiery nature and therefore much better suited to the accursed role which she was about to play than Claude, who was of a watery nature, could ever be. Claude was absolutely certain that this instance would be effective. And then who would they become? Women without a country…
   Claude was instructed wordlessly by Patenotte to stand with her back against the wall. Fran, nude and unspeakably lovely, came to the table, which had been overlain with bolts of light-eating velvet and lay down. Meanwhile, his assistant recited his vile chants in an undertone.
   The narrow room - the same room in which the hostess had served her famous luncheons and, opened to the garden, hosted her famous breakfast parties - was bordered with thick candles of the kind that are normally seen at advent, but placed on pillars and iron stands of varying design.
   Claude observed that, recumbent in their exorbitant glow, Fran appeared many years younger. Her face, cleared of its usual lines of suggestion and beauty, gave an impression of candor; her steely expression seemed thoughtless, even frank. She was like a child going to bed. Claude held her breath as the rite began. The horrors deepened as she observed her own friend and mistress submit to the same atrocities that she had submitted to weeks before and more than once.
   She realized that she had never before seen Fran in her aspect of resignation. That, in and of itself, seemed an imprecation. Claude reflected with dismay that, in actual fact, no one alive had probably seen her in this light except for the King. By the time they brought the infant, she was prepared to vomit and was swallowing desperately to prevent it.
   Claude realized that they must certainly have given the child something to keep it quiet, for it remained totally limp even as they slew it. This possible intoxication had not occurred to her in her own masses.
   The hostess had been the one to hold the baby over the chalice, but it was Patenotte who drew the bodkin. As was the custom in this mass, they let the chalice brim over and spill onto the paten. The blood was not dark; in fact, under the wavering light, it almost appeared translucent. Unreasoningly, Claude connected the limpid quality of the blood with the extreme youth of its source and was horrified. She was later advised that, at that moment in the service, she collapsed in a faint.
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   Fran did not leave her bed, then, for over four days. It was Claude who in the end had to entreat her in the name of God to rise and allay suspicions, for she had not made her excuses to anyone, or given out that she was ill. The crone named Louise had of course taken the opportunity to initiate a dirty rumor that Fran had given birth, and Claude was concerned that, in light of Fran's absence, the King might be persuaded. The King had shown himself to be capable of believing anything.
   Claude knelt within the tester, with her hands clasped on the silk coverlet - but Fran refused to speak to her.