Heart to Heart: Ashton Ford, Psychic Detective by Don Pendleton Page A

no
pleonasms that I use, the coming times will bring about the
overthrow of the Empire; pride will sway or abolish distinctions,
not from virtue but from vanity, and it is through vanity that they
will come back to them. The French, like children playing with
handcuffs and slings, will play with titles, honors, ribbons;
everything will be a toy to them, even to the shoulder-belt of the
National Guard [one of Napoleon's routes to power]; the greedy will
devour the finances. Some fifty millions now form a deficit, in the
name of which the Revolution is made. Well! under the dictatorship
of the philanthropists, the rhetoricians, the fine talkers, the
State debt will exceed several thousand millions!"
    "You are a terrible prophet! When shall I
see you again?"
    "Five times more; do not
wish for the sixth. Do not let me detain you longer. There is
already disturbance in the city. I am like Athalie, I wished to see and I have
seen . Now I will take up my part again and
leave you. I have a journey to take to Sweden; a great crime is
brewing there, I am going to try to prevent it. His Majesty Gustav
III interests me, he is worth more than his renown."
    "And he is menaced?"
    "Yes; no longer will 'happy as a king' be
said, and still less as a queen."
    "Farewell, then, Monsieur; in truth I wish I
had not listened to you."
    "Thus it is ever with us
truthful people; deceivers are welcomed, but fie upon whoever says
that which will come to pass! Farewell, Madame; au revoir !"
     
    This is not a story within
a story. This is the story.
    You will understand why I say that when next
you encounter the enchanting Francesca. And you will be a step
ahead of me, pal, when I was there.
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter Twelve: Series Earth
     
    It was shortly past
midnight when Francesca took me to her studio to show me what I
needed to know. The entire room had been converted into a gallery
to display her show of paintings and sculptures, and I realized
instantly that my earlier exposure to her work had been to but a
small sample of the whole. Wall, easel, and pedestal now displayed
some forty to fifty striking portraits and an equal number of
life-size sculpted heads.
    The portraits were most
arresting, in that the face of each subject seemed to have been
caught by the eye of the artist just as it was emerging from a
deeply dimensioned background of sheer color, each color blending
into the other while overlaying somehow in a strangely translucent
effect yet converging and mixing at the surface to produce the
portrait.
    I wondered how the hell she did that.
    Each face was unique,
yet...connected, somehow, to all the others—some commonality
implied by expression or by some subtle handling of the eyes,
or...
    I had studied about five of those faces—very
closely— when Francesca casually inquired, "What do you think?"
    I replied without looking at her, "This is
beautiful work. How do you get those colors to...mix in there like
that?"
    She replied, "The colors tell the story, do
they not? Is all of art not representation?—and is all of
representation not illusion?—and is all of illusion not
allegory?"
    I looked at her then as I said to her, "This
is the show you've been developing."
    "Yes."
    "I seem to detect some theme to all of
this."
    "Yes. I call this Series Earth ."
    I said, "I see," but I did not see.
    "Do you?"
    "Not really. It's haunting, but I guess all
good art is haunting." I was moving along the portraits more
quickly, now. I told her, "I have seen all the others, but not
Valentinius. Why no Valentinius?"
    She replied mysteriously, "He is there."
    I said, "Guess I missed him. Did you ever
paint St. Germain?"
    She gave me a perplexed look, averted her
gaze for a long moment then brought it back to say, "I have been
there, but..."
    "I wasn't talking about a place."
    "Oh. I referred to
Saint-Germain-en-Laye, at the outskirts of Paris." She said
it Pah-ree. "Some
famous treaties were concluded there. Louis XIV built a chateau
there,