The Tuesday Club fills that void.

THE TUESDAY CLUB

Franklin would not have been Franklin without a club, and his club in France was the Lodge of the Nine Sisters.

—Carl Van Doren, Benjamin Franklin

August 31, 1784, 7:00 a.m.
Auteuil, France

Today, the day of the crisis, was a Tuesday.

As always, thought Mme Helvetius with irony, things went more to the mark in French—non? For example, in French, the name Tuesday was mardi, Mars Day, the day of the god of war. And given the impending crisis, and the message she’d just received, any thought of Mars spelled more than it seemed—indeed, it could spell la calamité!

Although Mme Helvetius had been awaiting such a message for months, it was so cleverly coded that even the messenger who’d brought it from Scotland could not understand it. Still, given his urgency, she knew it could only mean that what she had expected was about to happen, quite soon, something that could ruin all her well-crafted plans, that might place their entire enterprise—their very lives—in danger.

But to deliver the message right away would require a deception.

In stealth, she let herself out the side French windows of her private salon to where her gardener’s large white mule stood patiently, saddled and waiting. The mâitre d’hôtel of her estates—a very bossy man, indeed (servants today carried themselves with more pretensions than the nobility ever dreamt of)—had insisted she must take care, if traveling in secrecy and alone.

She understood that the extensive entourage within her household would be inflamed with curiosity if they saw her depart so early. She hoped they all believed in a clandestine tryst she’d never taken pains to deny. At home or abroad, these days, every room and road in France was riddled with spies, acting on behalf of one fractious faction or another: to be cautious was to be wise.

Nonetheless, Mme Helvetius felt a complete fool in this ridiculous disguise, dressed as she was in the faded blue costume borrowed from her milkmaid (which smelled rather rich) and a dilapidated straw hat. Done up like a strumpet, astride a big white mule—she, Anne-Catherine de Ligniville-Autricourt, Mme Helvetius—one of the wealthiest women in France and, at one time, among the most beautiful. Well, that had been another day. And she was, assuredly, another woman.

With impatience, Mme Helvetius prodded the mule to go faster through the rolling hills and vineyards still drenched with dew, along the dusty, winding road from her banlieue of Auteuil, just outside Paris, to its neighboring suburb of Passy. When she noticed the mule eyeing a heavy bunch of grapes along the road, she tapped his rump firmly with her hand, muttered, “Obstiné,” under her breath, and jerked at the reins.

Although she might be anxious to reach her destination, Mme Helvetius couldn’t help thinking about the strangeness of the message running unbidden through her mind like a long-forgotten melody. The oddity of it—so peculiar, like nothing she’d ever thought of. Whatever could it mean? There was only one person, she knew, who could decipher it. She must get to him—and quickly.