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The woods of Versailles, 1648: a little girl meets a mysterious old man, and the dark pact forged between them will prove to dramatically influence the affairs of a nation. |  |
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Such intrigue defines the life of Bijoux Cinq-Mars. The daughter of 17th century Paris' most celebrated prostitute and a noble father whose short career includes the bedding of a king, the child born of scandalous liaison is raised in a rarefied world inhabited both by scholars and scoundrels, princes and poseurs. A world of masquerade and murder, wickedness and wonder, all embodied in a society destined to herald a Sun King. |
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| When a bungled attempt to assassinate Cardinal Richelieu sends the young Marquis de Cinq-Mars to the block, his widow, Marion Delorme, turns to a sinister priest named Guibourg to exact a most unholy revenge. The courtesan works together with the renegade to destroy the two men who signed her husband's death warrant - Louis XIII and his powerful Cardinal - by means of the satanic Black Mass, and shortly thereafter, both enemies die lingering deaths. |
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Convinced of Guibourg's powers, Marion entrusts him with Bijoux's introduction to the black arts. Not until her eighth year, when the red-haired apprentice is approached by the sinister Monsieur Noctambule, does Bijoux begin to fear the forces of darkness and turns to the study of the stars for guidance. |
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Marion dies of a failed abortion and Guiborg places Bijoux in the care of spymaster-musketeer d'Artagnan. The orphan subsequently finds herself set adrift on the perilous sea of young Louis' court; playing confidante to a collection of eccentric nobles, while pitted against the designs of an influential cabal known only as the Company of the Blessed Sacrament. |  |
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This memoir of necromancy, political intrigue, and personal redemption is a chronicle detailing a young woman's rise from courtesan's salon to the unlikely appointment as royal astrologer; a story of truth and love overcoming all odds. An unforgettable array of brilliant characters propel the pages of an account portraying one of the most elegant, albeit dangerous, periods of history. |
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In the end, perhaps the best epitaph of the irrepressible Marquise Cinq-Mars might be this observation: To learn the Secret of the Ages, she lost everything and found...herself. | 
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