Ancien Regime

A reading of Molière, Jean François de Troy, about 1728

by Brett Rutherford

She had at least five names.
We never knew them all.
Look at the paintings:
three days at least to sell
at auction such masterworks.
Like bees, the antiquarian
booksellers descend
upon her famed library.
A shame: the furniture alone
is a museum of its time.

It was as though
she descended from Olympus
with the wealth of Midas.
She loaned pocket money to princes.
Most cheated her, but one,
ascending the throne, gave her

a ducal palace. Her salons
were legendary, wine cellars
incomparable. Composers knelt
by her soft couch, and played
her famed three-manual
harpsichord. She laughed
at religion and all its follies.
She was high up
on the Grand Inquisitor's list
of those to exterminate.

Within four walls
of marble and onyx,
she calmed philosophers
and statesmen, sped verse
along its way, and spent
to the last ducat the wealth
that had come to her.
Praise rolled off her;
gossip's goblins
gave her no pain.
She never married,
was no one's mistress.

Who could have guessed?

Her tomb says just
"Rebecca,
Rachel and Solomon's
daughter."