MADAME FLEURY, No. 263 BROOME STREET.
From what the reader has already perused of the predictions and prophecies of these modern dealers in magic, he will hardly think them of a character to inspire any great degree of confidence in the minds of people of ordinary common sense. Still less will he be disposed to believe that merchants of “credit and renown;” business men, engaged in occupations, the operations of which are presumed to be governed by the nicest mathematical calculations, are ever so far influenced by the miserable jargon of these “fortune-tellers,” as to seriously consult them in business matters of great importance.
Such, however, is the humiliating truth.
There are in New York city a number of merchants, bankers, brokers, and other persons eminent in the business world, and respectable in all social relations, who never make an important business move in any direction, until after consultation with one or another of the Witches of New York.
There are many who are regular periodical customers, and who visit the shrine of the oracle once a month, or once in six weeks, as regularly as they make out their balance-sheets, or take an account of stock, and who guide their future investments and business ventures as much by the written fifty-cent prophecy as by either of the other documents.
Many country merchants have also learned this trick, and some of them are in constant correspondence with the cheap sybils of Grand Street; and others, when they come to the city for their stock of goods for the next half year, visit their chosen fortune-teller and get full and explicit directions how to conduct their business for the coming six months. Of course, these proceedings are conducted with the greatest possible secrecy, and the attention of the writer was first awakened to this fact by the indiscreet boastings of certain ones of the witches themselves, who are not a little proud of their influence, and after observations afforded ample proof and corroboration of all he had been told.
Great money enterprises have without doubt been seriously affected by the yea or nay of the Bible and key, and perhaps the Atlantic Cable Company would have received more hearty assistance, and its stock more extensive subscriptions in Wall Street, if certain ones of the fortune-tellers had possessed more faith in its success, and had so advised their patrons.
Incredible as these statements may seem, they are nevertheless true, and this fact is another proof that gross superstition is not confined to the low and filthy parts of the city, where rags and dirt are the universal rule, but that it has likewise a thrifty growth in quarters of the town where stand the palaces of the “merchant princes,” and in avenues where rags are almost unknown, and broadcloth, and gold, and fine-twined linen are the common wear.
It is said that certain counsel eminent in the learned profession of the law, and that certain even of the judges of the bench, have been known to consult the female practicers of the Black Art, but the author has never been personally cognizant of a case of this kind, and has no means of knowing whether the consultation was intended to benefit the lawyer or the witch; whether the former desired enlightenment as to the management of some knotty professional point, or whether the latter wanted legal advice as to some of the side branches of her business.
Mrs. Fleury, whose domicile and mode of procedure are described in this present chapter, has a large run of this sort of what may be termed respectable custom, and she does not fail to profit by it to the utmost. She came to New York, from France, about six or seven years ago, and at once established herself in the witch business, which she could advertise extensively in the papers, although the other branches of her profession, by which she probably makes more money than by telling fortunes, would by no means bear newspaper publicity. What these other branches are, is more explicitly stated in other chapters of this book, and, in fact, needs to be but hinted at, to be at once understood by nearly all who read.
Madame Fleury advertised the world of her arrival in America, and of her supernatural powers, and in a short time customers began to flock in. It is now her boast that she has as “respectable a connexion” as any one in the trade, and that she has as great a number of “regular, reliable customers,” as any conjuress in America. She says that most of her “regular customers” visit her once in six weeks, six being with her a favorite number, and she not undertaking to guarantee her business predictions for a greater length of time.
Whether she makes any discount from her ordinary prices to these regular traders, she did not state, but probably witchcraft is governed by the same rule as other commodities, and comes cheaper to wholesale dealers.
Duly armed and equipped with staff and scrip, and duly fortified within by such stimulants as the exigencies of the case seemed to demand, the Cash Customer set out for 263 Broome Street, and after strict trial and due examination of the premises and the people, he made the following report.
It was a favorite remark of a learned though mistaken philosopher of the olden time, that “you can’t make a whistle of a pig’s tail.” The philosopher died, but his saying was accepted by the world as an axiom—a bit of incontrovertible truth, eternal, Godlike, fully up to par, worth a hundred per cent., with no possibility of discount. Time, however, which often demonstrates the fallibility of human wisdom, has not spared even this oft-quoted adage; and now there is not a collection of curiosities in the land which lacks a pig-tail whistle to proclaim in the shrillest tones the falsity of the wise man’s proposition, and the triumph of Yankee ingenuity. Had this same philosopher been interrogated on the subject, he would undoubtedly have announced, and with an equal show of probability on his side of the argument, that “you can’t make a star-reading prophetess out of a snuffy old woman;” but had he lived to the present day, the Cash Customer would have taken great pleasure in exhibiting to him these two apparently irreconcilable characters combined in a single person, and that person Mrs. Fleury, who pays for the daily insertion of the following advertisement in the newspapers.
“ASTROLOGY.—Mrs. Fleury, from Paris, is the most celebrated lady of the present age, in telling future events, true and certain. She answers questions on business, marriage, absent friends, &c., by magnetism. Office No. 263 Broome-st.”
There is not so much of promise in this paragraph, as there is in some of the more grandiloquent announcements of the other witches—not probably, that Madame Fleury is any less pretentious than they, but her knowledge of the English language is not perfect enough to enable her to give her ideas their full effect.
The Cash Customer resolved to visit this “most celebrated lady of the age,” who had come all the way from Paris, to tell his “future events true and certain,” nothing daunted by the circumstance that she lives in the filthiest part of Broome Street, which has never been swept clean since it was a very new Broome indeed.
If our fancy farmers, who expend so much money upon the various foreign manures and fertilizing compounds, would but turn their eyes in the direction of Broome Street, a single glance would convince them of the inexhaustible resources of their own country, while guano would instantly depreciate in value, and the island of Ichaboe not be worth a quarrel. This prolific and valuable deposit that covers Broome Street bears perennial crops: in the spring and summer, dirty-faced children and mean-looking dogs seem to spring from it spontaneously; they are succeeded during the colder weather by a crop of tumble-down barrels, and cast-away broken carts; while the humbler and more insignificant things, the uncared for weeds, so to speak, of the abundant harvest, such as potato parings, and fish heads, and shreds of ragged dish-cloths, and bits of broken crockery, and old bones, are in season all the year round.
In the midst of this filth, with policy-shops adjacent, and pawnbrokers’ offices close at hand, and rum shops convenient in the neighborhood—where the reeking streets and stagnant gutters, and the heaps of decomposing garbage, send up a stench so thick and heavy that it beslimes everything it touches, and makes a man feel as if he were far past the saving powers of soap and soft water, and was fast dissolving into rancid lard oil—in this congenial atmosphere flourishes the prophetess, and here is found the mansion of Mrs. Fleury, “the most celebrated lady of the age in telling future events.” Her mansion is not one that would be selected as a permanent residence by any one with a superabundance of cash capital, nor did it seem quite suited to the deservings of the “most celebrated lady of the present age;” the house, a three-story brick, originally intended to be something above the common, has been for so many years misused and badly treated by reckless tenants, that it has completely lost its good temper, as well as its good looks, and is now in a perpetual state of aggravated sulkiness. It resents the presence of a stranger as an impertinent intrusion, and avenges the personality in various disagreeable ways. It twitches its rickety stairways impatiently under his feet, as if to shake him off and damage him by the fall—it viciously attempts to pinch and jam his fingers with moody dogged doors, which hold back as long as they can, and then close with a sudden snap, exceedingly dangerous to the unwary—it tears his clothes with ambushed rusty nails, and unsuspected hooks, and sharp and jagged splinters—it creaks its floors under his tread with a doleful whine, and complains of his cruel treatment in sharp-pointed, many-cornered tears of plaster, which it drops from the ceiling upon his head the instant he takes his hat off—it yawns its wide cellar doors open like a greedy mouth, evidently hoping that an unlucky step will pitch him headlong down—and it conducts itself in a thousand ill-natured ways like a sulky child that has been waked up too early in the morning, and not properly whipped into good behavior. The Individual, however, entered the doors, unabashed by the malignant scowl which was visible all over the face of the unamiable mansion, and stumbled through a narrow, dirty hall, up two flights of groaning stairs, before he discovered any sign of the whereabouts of Madame. She evidently did not occupy the entire of this sulky edifice, or he would have seen some of the servants or retainers, who would have been only too happy to direct him to the head-quarters of the sorceress. But the few people he saw about the place seemed to be each one occupied with his or her own private affairs, and to be too much taken up therewith to pay the slightest attention to the new-comer. Their attentions to each other were confined to reproaches, uncomplimentary assertions, and sundry maledictory remarks, accompanied, in case of the younger members of the various tribes, with pinches, pokes, punches, and small but frequent showers of brickbats.
The Individual disregarded these evidences of good feeling, not considering himself called upon to reply to any which were not addressed to him individually, and plodded on till his roving eye rested on a tin sign, on which was inscribed, “Madame Fleury, Room No. 4.” There were no mysterious emblems or cabalistic flourishes accompanying this simple announcement.
He pulled the knob and the door was instantly opened by the lady herself, so quickly that the bell had no time to ring until all necessity for it was over—she had evidently heard the advancing footsteps of her customer, and had stood ready to pounce upon him. She ushered him into the apartment, where he soon recovered his self-possession, and took an observation.
The room was a small square one, shabbily furnished with very few articles of furniture, and these were dimly visible through the snuffy mist which filled the apartment; there was snuff everywhere; there was a snuffy dust on the chairs; there was a precipitate of snuff on the floor, and, if snuff was capable of crystallization, there would undoubtedly have been stalactitic formations of snuff depending from the ceiling; the Madame herself was snuff-colored, as if she had been boiled in a decoction of tobacco.
She is a Frenchwoman, and has had about half a century’s experience of her present fleshly tabernacle, which is somewhat the worse for wear, although from the fossil remains of bygone beauty, still visible in her ancient countenance, her customer inclined to the belief that in some remote age she was comely and pleasant to the eye. He founded this hypothesis upon the brown hair and hazel eyes which time has spared.
In respect to personal cleanliness, the Individual regrets to say that the Madame was not in every respect what a critical observer would wish to see; her hands and arms were in a condition which would naturally lead to the belief that the Croton Corporation had cut off the water; and under each of her finger-nails was a dark-colored deposit, which may have been snuff, but looked like something dirtier. She was dressed in a light striped calico dress, over which was a black velvet mantle trimmed with fur, and on her head was a portentous head-dress which was fearfully and wonderfully made of shabby black lace; her face was in the same condition as her hands and arms, as was also her neck, which was only visible to the upper edge of the collar-bone—further deponent saith not.
She more nearly approached the Cash Customer’s notion of the Witch of Endor, than any other lady he had ever heard mentioned in polite society. She at once prepared for business.
She seated herself behind a small stand, dusty with snuff, on which were a number of little books on astrology, written in French and German, and as dirty and as fragrant as if they had been some kind of clumsy vegetable which had been grown in a tobacco plantation.
She asked her visitor if he spoke French or German, to which he replied that, had he been conversant with all the languages invented at the Babel smash-up, he would on this occasion, for particular reasons, prefer to confine himself to English. He also ventured an inquiry as to terms, upon which she produced a card containing a list of her charges, printed in English, French, and German. He learned from this dingy document that the prices of telling fortunes by lines of the hand, by cards, and by the stars, varied in amount from one to five dollars. The Individual concluded that one dollar’s worth would suffice, and, approaching the little table, he announced the result of his cogitations. The enchantress, who was so saturated with snuff and tobacco that every time her customer looked her in the face he sneezed, then brought a pack of very filthy cards, which were covered over with mysterious hieroglyphics done in black paint. She asked her visitor to “cut” them, which he reverently though daintily did, whereupon she laid them on the table before her in four rows, and spoke, having previously explained that she used no witchcraft but did all her wonders by the signs of the zodiac. The Individual concentrated his attention, and listened with all his ears while the witch of Broome Street spoke thus:
“I will tell you first what these cards indicate, then I will look at the lines of your hand, and then I will answer three questions.”
Here she paused, while her agitated listener sneezed a couple of times; then she resumed, speaking with a strong foreign accent:
“You are good disposition—have excellent memory, you don’t have many enemy, but what you do is of your own sex—you are very frank person and you was born in the sign of the Crab. You have some lucky days which are Mondays, Thursdays, and Fridays, whatever you do on these days is well, but you shall not wash your hair on Thursdays, if so, you will wash all your luck away. You must be very careful of fire and water, you will be in great danger of fire and water and you must be very careful. You may die by fire or water, I cannot say but you must certain be very careful of fire and water. You must also be very careful of dogs, very careful of dogs, you may die by a dog, but you must certain be very careful of dogs.”
Here she paused again, and while her visitor was meditating on the full force of what he had heard, and was inwardly resolving to go immediately home, shoot Juno, and drown her as-yet-unoffending-but-in-after-days-dangerous-to-his-peace-of-mind-and-the-happiness-of-his-life pups, she prepared for the second portion of her discourse.
Taking the Individual’s hand in hers, a proceeding which made him feel as if he had put his fingers into a bladder of Maccoboy, she made the following prediction: “You will be the father of five children, two of them will be boys, who will be a great comfort to you when you grow old.”
She spoke no good of the girls, and the customer foresaw feminine trouble in his household with those same young ladies. Having a few moments to himself before she resumed, he worked himself into a great passion with the ungrateful hussies who were about to treat their kind old father in so scandalous a manner; but presently recollecting that they were as yet in the condition of “your sister, Betsey Trotwood, who never was born,” he felt that he was slightly premature in his wrath, so he cooled down and resolved to make the best of it with his comfortable boys.
The yellow sorceress continued: “Your line of life is long, and you will live to a good old age. You have had much trouble in love affairs, and now your first love is entirely lost to you. You can never reclaim her, and you must never venture anything in lotteries.”
Whether Madame Fleury supposed that her visitor intended to spend his salary in lottery tickets, in the hope of winning back his early love, or whether she supposed that the woman then exhibiting herself as “Perham’s Gift Lady,” was the person, is not in evidence; but, from the peculiar construction of her last remark, something of the kind must have been in her thoughts. She had now reached the third part of her discourse, and come to the “three questions.” She produced an old French Bible, dingy with age and snuff, and which she informed the observer had been in her family for three hundred years; an old iron key was tied between the leaves, with the ring and part of the shank of the key projecting, and the Bible was tightly bound round with many folds of black ribbon. Making her visitor hold one side of the ring of the key, while she held the other, she said: “Ask your three questions, and if they are to be answered in the affirmative the book will turn.”
The Individual, who had been much impressed by her canine observation of a few minutes before, and whose thoughts were still running upon his pet Juno, and her six innocent offspring, in a fit of absence of mind propounded this interrogatory:
“Shall I marry the person of whom I am now thinking?” The potent enchantress repeated the question aloud in French, and then, with pale lips and trembling voice, she addressed the book and key thus:
“Holy Bible, I ask you, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, will this man marry the person now in his mind?”—then she closed her eyes for a moment, placed one hand over her heart, and rapidly muttered something in so low a tone that it was inaudible to her listener. Immediately the Bible commenced to turn slowly towards her, and soon had made a complete revolution, thus expressing a very decided affirmative.
Having started a matrimonial subject with so satisfactory a result, her customer thought he could do no better than to follow it up, and accordingly asked question No. 2:
“If I marry this person, will the marriage be a happy one?” The same answer was given, in the same manner. Being now satisfied as to his own matrimonial prospects, he concluded to ascertain those of his children, and question No. 3 was asked, as follows:
“Shall I live to see my children happily married?”
There was a long delay, which was undoubtedly occasioned by the difficulty of properly providing for those refractory girls, but at last there came a reluctant “Yes.”
Having now got all that his dollar entitled him to, the customer prepared to depart. The Madame informed him that in a few days she would have her “Magic Mirror” from Paris, with which she could do new wonders, and she hoped that he would soon call again, adding, “If I was ten year younger I would not admit gentlemen, but now I am old and I must.”