Content: mathematics

Summary:

THE BLACK CHAMBER SYNOPSIS At the age of sixteen, Julie Jourdan discovers she has an oddity: she is a mathematical genius. Convinced that this unnatural passion will send her straight to the women’s asylum at the Salpetrière, her parents forbid her to study math. She studies in secret, and after the fall of the Bastille her friend David Marin recruits her to work in the Black Chamber. There she reads other people’s mail–written in cipher. The revolutionary firebrand Jean-Paul Marat reaches a position of power in the Revolution. Austrian troops are marching toward Paris, and Marat helps spread a rumor that the prisoners plan to break out and help the Austrians overwhelm the capital. Julie decrypts a document revealing that the King has hidden plans for counterrevolution in an iron box. David secures some of these papers and is wounded by Marat’s agents. Julie hides him and conceals the documents, including a large card bearing rows of punched holes–and the signature of Louis XVI. Julie and her parents are put in the Abbaye prison because of their connection with David. Marat has arranged for his followers to massacre the inmates of the prisons of Paris. If Julie fails to decrypt the papers within three days, she and her parents will perish. With difficulty, Julie decrypts the punched card and brings the solution to Marat. He has planned to return Julie to the Abbaye and let her die with her parents, but a dangerous fact prevents him: the card gives the names of counterrevolutionaries, and his name appears among them. Unless she appears in person to stop them, her associates will send this information to Marat’s political enemies. Julie points out that she could no more fake the decryption than she could fake the multiplication table. He releases her parents, and signs permits allowing the family to leave the country. On their way to Calais, Julie explains to David how she recovered the cipher alphabet and was able to transform one of the names into J-P MARAT. Her deception had worked. As the prison massacre signals the start of the Terror, she and her family leave for England.

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