Maria Duval

The first thing I noticed when I met Maria Duval were her eyes. Cats eyes. Not the blue eyes of a Siamese cat with the shade of Delft blue porcelain china. Not the eyes of a Persian cat with the shade of molten gold. The eyes of a street cat. Mysterious green, with the sea blue shades of a swamp. Lights with the sparkle of golden coins, glow worms and star particles.

We stood opposite each other. Maria looked straight into my eyes. A mutual friend took the trouble to try and introduce us to each other. But I wasn’t listening. I wasn’t paying attention to anything, didn’t care about anything, except those eyes that looked into mine, with their small, almost slit oval pupils. Just like cats eyes. People say that a cheetah hypnotises its prey before he strikes. That is what I had in front of me. A cheetah. A captivating catlike woman who held me in the grip of her emerald green eyes.

Maria smiled, gave me her hand and the spell was broken. Consciously or sub-consciously (she has never wanted to say) Maria Duval had given a demonstration of one of her powers. That was enough. It was time to get down to business.

I had in fact come to ask her about her powers and to try and understand how someone in this day and age can call themselves a clairvoyant.

A few days previously Maria was the heroine of a bizarre drama that had taken place in the vicinity of St. Tropez. The wife of a young dentist had disappeared. She left in her car on Tuesday afternoon and had not been seen since. The following morning hikers discovered an abandoned vehicle on the Colbasse pass on the road from Ramatuelle to La Croix Valmer. The car was empty. The police did not find anything in the car that was of use to the investigation.

The police in St. Tropez, Cavalière, Grimaud and St. Maxime organised search parties. Members of the fire brigade also helped to search the woods and the best police dog in the region called, “Drole IV”, was sent to assist. Two helicopter teams searched the coast from dusk till dawn. But it was all for nothing. Nobody could find anything.

All hope of finding the missing woman had dissipated up by Friday. The search parties were officially called off. It was at that moment that Maria, who had read the story in the papers, offered to help. She only asked a few things: the date of birth of the missing woman, a recent photo of her and a map of the area. The police, as well as the dentist, were sceptical. Nevertheless, they gave her all she needed.

After Maria had determined the star sign of the woman she opened up the map, lay the photo on top of it and took out her hanging lamp. She held this directly above the map and the hanging lamp began to move back and forth. Then the hanging lamp began to spin in ever decreasing circles above a specific place, not far from Gassin.

The police shrugged their shoulders. The dentist decided to take a chance. The rescue services’ helicopters had already returned to their bases. He hired a helicopter himself.

The young woman was found in the exact place that the hanging lamp had indicated. She lay under fir trees wounded and unconscious. She had lay there for three days and nights without anything to eat or drink and without being able to move. She hadn’t even been able to wave to the helicopters that had flown over her. If Maria hadn’t done anything the young woman would have died of starvation and distress.

Maria could not have known, by any means, where the poor woman had fallen. In other words: she had found the woman with her hanging lamp – and with that alone. The question is: How? That is what I was going to ask.

“Everything in the universe vibrates and sends out different waves”, Maria explained. “That applies to plants as well as animals, minerals as well as people. To find something or someone that has gone missing the vibrations which hold a connection with the subject or the person must be investigated and determined. That is what I did with the help of the star sign and the photo of the woman. Then I simply gave the information to my hanging lamp and asked for the source of these vibrations to be pointed out on the map – in other words: where this person could be found.

When the explanation was given in this way it became incredibly easy to understand and even obvious.

But was it all as easy as Maria said it was? Doesn’t one need to possess special powers or an exceptional gift to make such wonders possible?

Maria burst out laughing.

“Of course you need a gift! And in my family we have possessed spiritual gifts for generations. The golden flecks that you see in my eyes form “the sign”. In the Middle Ages I would have been burnt at the stake. And they made it possible for my uncle, Father Camillo Vassalli, to be considered a saint in the small village where he was a minister and where the villagers still say that he performed miracles. He died in 1953. Before he died he transferred his gift to me. He also taught me how I could make use of the gifts that I have and have slowly discovered since my childhood”.