"Think of it," I say eagerly. "I could arrange a special tableau for her visit. An image of the queen sitting in her dressing room. With you by her side. The Queen and Her Minister of Fashion," I tell her. Rose's lips twitch upward. Although Minister of Fashion is an insult the papers use to criticize her influence over Marie Antoinette, it's not far from the truth, and she knows this. She hesitates. It is one thing to have your name in the papers, but to be immortalized in wax... That is something reserved only for royals and criminals, and she is neither.
"So what would you have me say?" she asks slowly.
My heart beats quickly. Even if the queen dislikes what I've done - and she won't, I know she won't, not when I've taken such pains to get the blue of her eyes just right - the fact that she has personally come to see her wax model will change everything. Our exhibition will be included in the finest guidebooks to Paris. We'll earn a place in every Catalog of Amusements printed in France. But most important, we'll be associated with Marie Antoinette. Even after all of the scandals that have attached themselves to her name, there is only good business to be had by entertaining Their Majesties.
"Just tell her that you've been to the Salon de Cire. You have, haven't you?"
"Of course." Rose Bertin is not a woman to miss anything. Even a wax show on the Boulevard du Temple. "It was attractive." She adds belatedly, "In its way."
"So tell that to the queen. Tell her I've modeled the busts of Voltaire, Rousseau, Benjamin Franklin. Tell her there will be several of her. And you."
Rose is silent. Then finally, she says, "I'll see what I can do."
Stranger than fiction, blending tragedy and farce, How to Create the Perfect Wife is an engrossing tale of the radicalism, and deep contradictions, at the heart of the Enlightenment.
Z, the novel about the life of Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald is at points charming and; like another reviewer, I kept thinking of the movie, "Midnight...
read more
Although heavy on the scientific details, which slowed down the story for me (OK, I admit, I was one of those liberal arts majors who skipped out on...
read more
Loved this book. Magical, quirky, enchanting I could go on. All books do not have to be literary fiction, sometimes it is just so comforting to read...
read more
U.S. ebook sales up in 2012, but rate of growth is slowing(May 16 2013) In 2012, trade book sales (i.e. non academic book sales) rose 6.9%, to $15.049 billion, and e-book sales continued to grow, although the rate of growth...
Full Story
