Mireille (The Fortune Teller, Minnie)

This character is the protagonist of the narrative set in the past. She initially appears to be a secondary character - her personality is more retiring and her role in the action less direct than that of Valentine, her cousin, friend, and ally. When Valentine is killed, however, Mireille's strength of character begins to emerge - she takes what control she can of the situations in which she finds herself, and when the source of that control isn't readily apparent she finds ways to make it so. In some ways, then, it's not as much a surprise as the novel seems to want it to be when, around the mid-point of the novel (Section 15), Charlotte Corday tells Mireille that it is in fact she and not Valentine who was the focus of the Abbess' plans. The Abbess' apparent faith in Mireille is more than...