“Papa always feared that diamond,” I say, reflecting back over all that’s happened. “From the first time he saw it, he foresaw the truth of it.”
“Do not expect my sympathy if your father’s lust for glory overreached his skill,” René says. I can hear the effort it takes to haul up this resentment after indulging in the pleasant recollections of that night, and I sigh with annoyance. How long can he keep this up?
“It was the diamond. The Tavernier was not a stone that could be shaped as the king demanded,” I continue, though his words have stretched my patience as tight as a bowstring.
* * *
I did not understand at first, either. Surely, fashioning the Tavernier Violet for the king of France was the greatest commission in the world. I did not understand how Papa could shrink from this great work, but shrink he did. For a month he did nothing but sit in his workshop, despair hunched on his shoulders like the gargoyles of Notre-Dame.
At last, he created a mold of the diamond, and excitement coursed through me. This had to mean that work would begin. He would make a glass model on which he would cut a replica of his intended design for the king’s approval. How it pained me to sit with my tutors (Maman had engaged several to prepare me for a noble marriage) when I longed to be in the workshop, watching the model take shape. Finally, one afternoon, a month after Papa created his mold, I escaped my Latin tutor, claiming the need for a privy, and slipped out of our apartment and down the narrow staircase that led to the workshop. I paused on the landing where the stairs turned and I could spy without being seen.
Papa was seated at his grinder with his back to the stairs. He was bent over the spinning grinding plate, driving the flywheel with his foot. Two glass models of the Tavernier lay on the workbench beyond him, both partially shaped but broken.
Attached to the grinder was an awkward arm of metal and wood, held in place with leather straps and a steadying hand from André. A clamp at the end of the arm held another one of the glass models of the Tavernier. As I watched, Papa gave instructions, and André lowered the model onto the grinder’s spinning surface.
For a brief moment, the glass sparked against the steel plate, and I thought a facet would begin to form. But then the arm shifted with a screech, and the glass model popped free of the clamp. It tumbled twice across the spinning grinding plate before being propelled off at a wild angle. Papa made a grab for it but missed. It slammed into the stone chimney of the forge and shattered, sending a spray of sparkling shards around Papa and onto the floor.
“Merde!” Papa growled. “Merde, merde, MERDE!” He scooped up the other two models and hurled them after the first. Then he snatched the pages of calculations and threw them into the forge. André, in shocked silence, watched the parchment curl and blacken while the air around him sparkled with broken glass and rage.
“Go, André,” Papa said, with a sweep of his hand toward the door. “Take the afternoon off. Enjoy yourself.”
André hesitated, glancing nervously toward the forge. “I—I don’t mind trying again, Master Pitau,” he said.
“Go!” Papa bellowed, and this time André scurried out the door. When he was gone, Papa collapsed against the counter, his head in his hands. His shoulders heaved, and I realized he was crying.
I wanted to sneak away, back upstairs. I had never seen my father weep, and I didn’t want to admit to my spying now, but I could not bear to leave him in such distress. So instead, I crept down the stairs to his side.
“Papa?” I laid my hand on his shoulder. He raised his head and squared his shoulders at my touch. “Papa, how can I help you?”
He gave me a weak smile and patted my hand where it rested on his shoulder. His fingertips were callused hard from years at the grinder.
“If only it were so simple that your soft hands might solve it,” he said.
“I don’t care about soft hands, Papa. I’ll do anything to help.” To prove my point, I retrieved the broom from the corner and swept up the shattered remains of the models.
He shook his head. “What the king asks—I haven’t the means to do it.”
“But, Papa, you’ve cut dozens of stones for the king. You’re the most skilled jeweler in all of France! The king himself says so.”
“You have seen the Mazarin diamonds, Juliette. They are like no other stones in the world. That is what the king wants for the Violet.”
“It’s not your fault if the king’s diamond is different from those.”
“Fetch me a glass of water, Juliette. A clear glass—one of your mother’s crystal goblets. And bring a spoon too.”
I scowled, thinking he was cutting off our conversation, but I did as I was told. When I returned, he set the glass on the counter before me and put the spoon in it, the handle resting against the edge of the delicate crystal, which would have raised a protest from Maman if she had known. He bent and rested his chin on the workbench so that his eyes were level with the water in the glass. I did the same beside him.
“Look at the spoon, Juliette. See how it seems to bend where it enters the water? But it’s not bent—not really.”
He lifted the spoon from the glass and I saw exactly what he meant. Where the spoon entered the water, it seemed to shift in space, but as he lifted it out, the handle was as straight as always. “Oui, Papa.”
“You see? It is not the spoon that bends in the water; it is the light.”
“The light?” My eyes wide, I bent closer to the glass.
“Light can be bent, just like gold or silver. But to bend light, you must shine it through something, like water.”
“Or a diamond?” I said, feeling excitement as I began to understand.
Papa straightened and smiled at me. “That’s my smart girl.” He took a paper from his work cabinet and laid it on the workbench beside the crystal goblet. On the page was a drawing of the largest Mazarin diamond, but in addition to the lines that formed the outline of the facets, there were lighter pencil lines drawn through the surfaces.
Tracing the pencil lines with his finger, he explained how different gems bent light differently. It made sense, but there was still one thing I did not understand.
“If any diamond bends light, what makes the Mazarins different?” I asked.
Papa gave me a conspiratorial smile. “That is the secret that earned me my position. You see, when we cut a diamond as we always have, like this one”—he held up a small rose-cut stone he was resetting for the queen—“the light comes in here, bends, and goes out there.” As he spoke, he touched the facets with the tip of a goose quill. “The Mazarin has been faceted on the bottom as well as the top, at very exact angles. So when the light tries to leave here, it is thrown back and hits here, where it bends again. The light is trapped inside the gem!”