I couldn’t help but think how much my father would have liked Julien Duplessi and his radical ideas. “Yes, yes, I agree. How many of these amazing buildings have you erected?”
“I haven’t had many commissions yet. Mostly I do the kind of interior work I am doing for your grandmother. But I’m hoping that when people see what I’ve done, even though it’s extreme, a few will be drawn to them.” He pointed to a building on the corner. “Look at how wrong that is. If you are going to use stone, then it needs to be treated like stone. Glass, on the other hand, should not be treated like stone but like glass. Iron and cast iron have a beauty that shouldn’t be hidden, and by exposing them, you can allow in so much more light. And is there anything more important than light? Bay windows, glass roofs, wide-open vistas. And why do ornaments that have nothing to do with the form of the building show up all over it like a woman wearing far too much jewelry? It’s time to reject the flower and seize the stem. Today’s design needs to be about line! Nature is a living thing. I want my buildings to live in nature.”
We had reached the corner of rue de Rennes. Julien stopped and turned to face the direction we’d just come from. He gestured to the buildings we’d passed. His face was animated, his voice filled with passion. “None of them have any life. They are boxes with cutouts. But come look at number 76.”
We turned onto de Rennes.
I hoped Julien’s building would indeed be unique. That the structure would live up to the promise of the man. He’d set himself a lofty goal. Papa and I had often talked about how duplicative and unoriginal most artists’ creations were. Paintings that were really imitations of other paintings, music that was nothing more than a rehash of what had come before, novels that were plots borrowed from other plots.
We walked by one ordinary building and then another until Julien stopped in front of what was indeed a unique structure. It was small and scrunched in between two others, neither remarkable. But number 76 was like a tree growing out of the sidewalk. The upward movement of its lines carried the eye to the sky. It was a force of nature, indeed a living thing.
Beside me I could feel Julien waiting to hear what I thought.
“This is astonishing. It’s beautiful. I’ve never seen anything like it. What is this style called?”
“Some of us are calling it the new art, Art Nouveau. Sinuous lines and whiplash curves, first inspired by botanical studies of the German biologist Ernst Heinrich Haeckel and the marvelous Japanese art prints that Edgar Degas, Mary Cassatt, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec have embraced and incorporated into their work. Art Nouveau is our reaction to the academic art and architecture of the last century. It’s taking off all over Europe, and it’s encompassing everything. Furniture, art, architecture, jewelry, even book design.”
“Art Nouveau,” I repeated. Liking how it sounded, sinewy and rounded like the style itself.
Even the lettering on the sign above the door was free and spacious and curving. I read the words it spelled out: Librairie du Merveilleux.
“The Marvelous Library?” I asked Julien. “What amazing books do they sell here? Is there more of your design? Can we look inside?”
I was already at the door. Even the handle was a surprise. Like a branch it arched and had a grace to it that captured my imagination.
Bells chimed as I opened the door, and two men sitting at a table turned around. Two ordinary businessmen poring over a large map.
“Hello, Julien,” the older, gray-haired man said. “I’ll be with you shortly.”
“No rush, Dujols. I just wanted to show Mademoiselle Verlaine around your library.”
This was not a store, not a library; it was a cave of wonders, its secrets waiting to be explored. One wall undulated in a series of alcoves outfitted with chairs and tables designed in the same curving, sumptuous style as the building itself. Exotic-looking brass and stained glass sconces emitted dappled golden light in unusual patterns. The windows were bowed and had their own landscape. The books that were piled everywhere were, I thought, the only visible straight lines.
“Did you design everything here? The furniture and the lamps, too?”
“Yes. And I had it built by my uncle’s furniture factory in Nancy, where I grew up. My other uncle, who has a fine glassmaking studio, did the lamp shades and windows to specifications.”
“It’s all marvelous. Just like its name.”
I spun around. Shelves lined the other two walls. On some were candles, braziers, and alembics that suggested alchemical experiments, but the majority were filled to capacity with books. I began to read the spines, but then turned again and noticed the west wall. Painted from the floor to ceiling was an open book, its pages yellowed and fragile, filled with ancient text that was near impossible to read. I went closer to inspect it.
“How curious.”
“Monsieur Dujols”—Julien nodded at the man still engaged with his customer—“is a publisher. This isn’t just a store, but a meeting place for artists and writers interested in psychic and spiritual worlds. Paris is overrun with them. There are followers of theosophy, the Last Pagans, Swedenborgians, Eclectic Buddhists, Luciferians, Gnostics, Satanists, Rosicrucians. Yes, Paris is overrun with them, and of course there are rumors of dark things that go on. Some of it quite gruesome.” He shook his head. “Black magick, white magick . . . it’s quite the fashion, and you’d be surprised how many people of note are involved.”
“Really? My father would find it all most curious.” I bit my bottom lip to distract myself from the onslaught of emotion I felt and focused my attention on the magical, mystical, astrological symbols painted on the walls. Some I’d seen before in my father’s books, and others were identical to the ones that we’d just found on the drawings in the studio.
“Everything in the store, from the messages and symbols in the mural to the wall hangings, was chosen by Dujols to evoke and stir thoughts of the ancients’ knowledge, mystery, and wisdom. To open the mind, he says, and help usher in a new age of enlightenment.”
“Well, that doesn’t sound like a bad thing,” I said.
“No, of course not. It’s a noble goal.”
“Except?”
He smiled and lowered his voice. “There’s just a lot about it that’s not rational.”
“Ah, yes.” I nodded.
I had learned something about Julien that I hadn’t known before.
A red silk sash caught my eye. It was hanging in one corner, embroidered with Hebraic letters that looked familiar. Above that was a carved wooden winged sphinx. I saw first one and then another and then dozens more paintings and etchings of serpents, dragons, and snakes grasping or biting their tails so that they formed circles. Some of the creatures had wings, some vicious teeth. More familiar images.
“Look.” I pointed it out to Julien. “That’s the same type of circle that was around the painter’s initials in my grandmother’s house. And on the clasp on the necklace. They are all similar—a dragon biting his tail. Did you recognize it when you saw it at the house?”
He nodded.
“But you didn’t say anything.”
“I assumed the painter was drawn to it because of the address. The church was situated on rue du Dragon.”
I was still taking in more and more amazing sights. There was a huge embroidered wall hanging of a zodiacal wheel, each sign done in another gem-like color of the rainbow. There were papyrus scrolls of hieroglyphics similar to those I’d seen in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Egyptian wing.
On either side of the door was a mural of symbols painted in bronze, silver, and gold. Yes, there was the ankh that my father had told me symbolized life, and others that looked familiar but that I couldn’t identify.
“Do you know what this one means?” I pointed to a five-foot-long drawing that glowed in the lamplight like a beacon.