Maha

Country: Spain

Manufactory: Lladro

Date of establishment: 1969

Sculptor: Salvador Furió

Height (cm): 31

Porcelain Story

On 27 May 1772, in the small town of Alanson, close to Paris, into the family of a textile merchant, an ugly girl was born. One leg was shorter than the other and her shoulders were severely crooked. The child's physical condition and her curious faculties, which also scared the unhappy parents, led them to foster their daughter in an orphanage in a nunnery. By the time she was 16, after studying all the books on magic, numerology, esotericism and other secret knowledge in the convent's large library, Marie Lenormand (the name of the heroine of today's story) had left the convent for work in Paris.

In 1790, Marie and a friend opened a fortune-telling salon in the centre of the French capital, where she used astrology, cards and other methods to tell fortunes. Soon there was no shortage of clients. The young fortune-teller's fame spread so rapidly through Paris that in a short time, she was attracting many influential clients.

"You have only a few years to live, Your Majesty," said the fortuneteller to the Queen of France, Marie-Antoinette, who invited her to her palace. -- "The guillotine awaits you... And indeed -- four years later, the Queen's head was separated from her body with the sharp knife of a ruthless guillotine.

In 1793, the legendary French revolutionaries Marat, Robespierre and Saint-Just came to the salon in Rue de Tournon. Maria Lenorman predicted their violent deaths without much ado. "You will be first," she said, turning to Marat. -- ''Then it will be the turn of Robespierre and Saint-Just, whose heads will be mowed down...'' A few months later Marat was stabbed in his own bathroom by the beautiful noblewoman Charlotte Cordet. And another year later Robespierre and Saint-Just were accused of high treason and executed.

After this prediction, Marie Lenorman became known as the Black Marie. Many people in Paris knew about the predictions of the Black Marie about the defeat of the French army by Russian troops, as well as the exile of Napoleon Bonaparte, his long solitude and painful death. Many in Paris could not understand Marie's prediction that Marshal Bernadotte was destined to be king. The marshal himself could not even imagine it... Many years later, when Bernadotte was still King of Sweden, he sent the famous fortuneteller a beautiful ring with a rare amethyst in an elegantly carved casket as a sign of gratitude.

In 1832, the Black Marie predicted to Honore de Balzac that he would have an affair with a foreigner and that after the wedding he would soon die. He was terribly angered and saddened by her words. However, just 5 months after his marriage to the Polish countess Ewelina Hanska, the great writer did indeed pass away...

I do not urge you, my friends, to believe in fortune-telling at cards. Not in any way. Each of you can do without me knowing what you want to believe in and what you do not. I call you to love life in any of its manifestations. Always. Every minute, every moment...