Author’s Note

 

 

 

The Vaudois were a real religious sect with a fascinating history, but the group of secret Vaudois villages in the mountains near Annecy is my own invention. Some of my ancestors were Vaudois of the Piedmont who encountered traveling Mormon missionaries in the nineteenth century, converted to Mormonism, and emigrated to the United States. I grew up hearing family legends about them.

Several of the characters in the book were inspired by historical figures of the European Enlightenment, though I have liberally added, subtracted, and switched around biographical details and dates. The character of Aurore was inspired by salonnière Marie Thérèse Geoffrin (1699–1777) and to a lesser degree Hippolyte de Saujon, the Comtesse de Boufflers (1725–1800), a close friend of the Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711–1776). Aurore’s habit of writing fairy tales is reminiscent of women such as Gabrielle-Suzanne de Villeneuve (1685–1755) and Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont (1711–1780), who penned different versions of the story of “La Belle et la Bête.” Hume, in turn, was my main inspiration for the character of the Scotsman.

Donatien was inspired by the Marquis de Sade (1740–1814), and for the Marquise du Herle I drew on the Marquis de Sade’s mother-in-law, Marie-Madeleine de Plissay, Présidente de Montreuil (1721–1789), said to be his rival in ruthlessness. For Séléné I took details from the life of novelist and salonnière Claudine Alexandrine Guérin de Tencin (1682–1749), though I gave her the unhappy marriage of the brilliant Louise d’Épinay (1726–1783). Clio was loosely based on the painter Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun (1755–1842), while Clio’s friend Tristan took some of his storyline from Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778). Ulysse has a few similarities with rival philosopher and firebrand Voltaire (1694–1778), who lived for many years with the woman of his life, the married mathematician and scientist Émilie du Châtelet (1706–1749).

Some of the Abbé’s views are reworded excerpts from the writings of the Savoyard theorist and critic of the Enlightenment, Joseph de Maistre (1754–1821), whom Isaiah Berlin depicted as a proto-fascist in an essay collected in The Crooked Timber of Humanity.