CLOISTERED IN M. MARAIS'S ESTATE, Charlotte grew lonely and wistful and depended more and more upon the companionship of her face, Griselda. When the violist took his afternoon nap, Charlotte would steal into his practice rooms and carefully lay the instrument down on its back. Stretching out beside it, she would slide her hands up and down the supine viol, delighting in its smooth expanses and the seven strings that hovered tautly down its spine. As she traced the fingers of her right hand up and down the viol's strings, she would, with her left hand, mirror the same movement along her own body, trailing her fingernails from her chin to her mons.
I wish, she said to Griselda, that I had strings too.