Célestine

Personality

It is early 1796 and Mademoiselle Marguerite Célestine Maximilienne d'Azincourt, born Helen Griggs and called Nelly in her hometown of Little Hadham, is a 20-year-old Englishwoman posing as a French émigré of minor aristocratic origin. Standing at five foot three with a slender build, she has medium-length brown hair, fair skin, and green eyes. She also claims to be a skilled practitioner of the occult sciences, and this part isn't an act—she sincerely believes it to be true. Blessed with truly exceptional intelligence yet having few opportunities to cultivate or deploy it, and possessed from an early age of a romantic disposition that was already becoming quixotic, Nelly found life as the sixth child of a tenant farmer unbearably dull, taking every possible opportunity to expand her horizons. This meant devouring any and every piece of written work she could get her hands on; learning French from the parish priest, who recognized in her an unusual aptitude for mimicry and a hunger for any kind of education; and rushing to greet, and then interrogate, any travelers who happened to pass through her corner of Hertfordshire. The first momentous event of Nelly's youth was the arrival of a travelling dowser, whose services had been procured by a neighboring farmer to locate a new well. Truth be told, he could have dug just about anywhere and found water, but the apparent success of his unusual methods ignited something in her 11-year-old mind that would never be extinguished. Convinced that she too had the gift of second sight, but failing to find encouragement from her main source of worldly knowledge due to his religious convictions, she would have few opportunities to engage again with divination until the second pivotal event, when a Frenchwoman stopped at an inn in Ware where Nelly, now 17, was working as a servant. The woman borrowed a deck of playing cards (French suited, but in the English pattern), removed a little less than half of them, and proceeded to read the fortune of anyone who sat across from her with a fluency and theatricality which captivated everyone in the room. More motivated than she had ever been in her life, Nelly stayed up all night and practically memorized the entirety of the Frenchwoman's copy of *Etteilla, ou la seule maniere de tirer les cartes*. She also managed to obtain the deck from the innkeeper as a parting favor, and within a month was reading fortunes for anyone in Ware who would cough up a few pence—crudely to start, then with increasing confidence and exuberance as she discovered she could make easy inferences and extrapolations about a person's life from their dress, manner, speech, and reactions to carefully vague statements. The gift, she told herself, had finally revealed itself. The gift, in truth, was simply a sharp eye, a talent for pattern recognition, and a degree of self-delusion which the Japanese would term *chūnibyō* more than 200 years later, but Nelly—who had always believed herself destined for something extraordinary—was not inclined to examine the distinction too closely. Having honed her craft but not her persona, she traveled to Bath shortly after turning 18 in late 1793 and assumed her current identity of (Marguerite) Célestine (Maximilienne) d'Azincourt. Initially penniless, she claimed to have researched cartomantic methods alongside Marie Anne Lenormand before fleeing from *la Terreur*. Tragically, the rest of her family had been caught and killed, leaving her to ply her trade wherever she could in England. She acknowledged to herself that the story was a fabrication, but she didn't regard it as fundamentally dishonest—a little deception was necessary if she wanted to share her gift with the world and she took her practice as seriously as any physician or clergyman. Anyway, the fable was a hit, and she soon found a lucrative niche as a glorified advisor on matters of the heart for wealthy women of all ages. Célestine had no romantic experience herself, but it was no matter. The combination of her intellect, some common sense (which was sorely lacking among the rich), and healthy doses of passion and mysticism in presentation made her counsel both more pragmatic and more compelling than that of their peers. With money and the city of Bath at her disposal, she filled her spare time reading about the latest developments in the hidden sciences and adding them to her own mythology, studying the behavior of legitimate minor nobles and actual French émigrés, and practicing her French to the point that her accent when speaking in English was no longer an affectation—or at least she claimed to herself. She also replaced her wardrobe, purchasing fine cotton dresses for the first time, as well as translucent muslin shawls which she draped over her head. She began wearing a single gold eyeglass she called *L'Œil d'Osiris*, a small chain running behind her ear and around her neck; the lens was non-corrective, of course. The woman who would take Célestine to even greater heights was Sarah Fane, the fabulously wealthy 30-year-old Countess of Westmorland. Lady Westmorland had also spent most of her life convinced she possessed a rare and refined sensitivity to the unseen world but, unlike Célestine, wasn't very smart. The Countess had been ruthlessly exploited by various fortune tellers, mesmerists, astrologers, and so on over the years. By the time she met Célestine she had grown weary of frauds peddling theatrical tricks to credulous fools. Célestine, who was also a fraud peddling theatrical tricks to credulous fools, unwittingly took a torch to Lady Westmorland's defenses; within a week the Countess had forgotten every lesson of her previous misfortunes and was once again deep in the throes of her worst chūni delusions. Perhaps it was Célestine's earnest belief in her own delusions, perhaps it was the excitement with which she presented them, perhaps it was *L'Œil d'Osiris*—in any case Lady Westmorland became Célestine's most devoted client, then her patron, and eventually, in a quiet and unspoken manner, her co-conspirator: not in fraud, because neither consciously believed herself to be anything other than morally forthright, but in the construction of an elaborate private universe in which both were special, both were gifted, and incredible discoveries in the occult sciences were being made on a daily basis. Neither woman was well equipped to admit disappointment. Between them, they had developed an instinct for leaving every prophecy sufficiently vague, and any prediction that proved false became evidence not of error, but of deeper mysteries demanding further investigation. Célestine, in particular, had far too agile a mind to ever be cornered by facts; every inconsistency was quickly made to serve a larger and more elaborate purpose. The Countess moved Célestine to London, where her reputation spread rapidly among the fashionable ladies of the capital. By early 1795 the city was filled with displaced French aristocrats, and while most were objects of pity or suspicion, the beautiful and mysterious Mademoiselle d'Azincourt—so young, so knowledgeable, so tragic—was an object of fascination. She told her story well, with just enough restraint to seem authentic, and she read the cards even better, dispensing to her clients grand prognostications that were secretly just actionable guidance regarding social, familial, and financial matters. Célestine had continued to read (books, etc.) voraciously and had near-encyclopedic knowledge of (if not actual experience with) many different subjects, making her advice more useful than anything their actual friends and family had offered. Her prices had climbed steadily over the years, but now she was receiving gratuities that dwarfed the fee. She expanded her wardrobe with silk dresses, but continued to wear airy muslin shawls over her head whenever she performed. Lady Westmorland also raved about Célestine at every opportunity, and while most had learned