We were concerned, he said, in a tone I found strange.
We looked at each other for a moment, uncertain. There’s a rumor, he said finally. That you are turning down roles . . .
It seems to me I have always turned down roles, I said. Even as I have accepted others.
And then it came to me—Where is the chapel you spoke of? I asked. Where you found these objects? May I see it?
I was sure it would be the unveiling of his deception when I asked. I was sure it didn’t exist. But instead he raised his eyebrows in surprise. Of course, he said. Follow me. I will stage it for you.
The courtyard had, of course, belonged to the dogs. I’d spent almost no time there, passing through quickly into the house or to the street. Yet in this one corner a chapel hid, apparently. I felt rebuked for my suspicions as I passed through the door.
It’s in terrible disrepair, he said. It was filthy with the bones of the feasts of the cats I imagine . . . as well you know. He pushed the old doors open, making a fast sign of the cross as he did.
I did the same as a precaution.
The chapel glowed blue. The light came from a stained-glass warrior angel behind the altar, sternly beautiful, his sapphire wings lit by the late morning sun.
Simonet crossed himself again.
In Italy it’s said there’s an angel who watches over all who love.
I think differently of this now. I no longer believe he has my best interests in mind.
I had never discussed religion with Aristafeo. This was yet another secret of his, a place he’d kept, apparently, for himself.
Simonet stood before the altar and admired the stained-glass angel with me. At first, he said, it seemed as if nothing of worth had survived except this—and as you can see, it is quite beautiful. But as we cleaned, we found these here, he said. The ruby rose atop the diary and beside it the dagger, all of them on the altar.
And with that, he pulled out my knife and set it with the other objects on the altar.
Can you imagine her here? Praying? Asking the archangel Saint Michael, perhaps, for some forgiveness?
His excited face was rapt at the scene. He waved at me. Come, he said. Kneel here to see what she saw.
As I had come on the pretense of understanding my own character, as it were, I had to follow through. I came closer, but as I did, I did not see “her” kneeling there. I saw him.
The private ceremony had been his.
What does one ask Saint Michael for? I asked Simonet, who seemed to be a Catholic, as I walked over and knelt where he’d knelt, looking up as I clasped my hands.
What I had taken for the earth under Michael’s feet was the figure of a man in agony and terror, falling.
Protection from the Devil, Simonet said. He’s casting Lucifer down into Hell here. If he is carrying a sword, he is at war, as you see here. His shield carries the words Quis ut Deus. Who is like God. It’s what he said as he threw Lucifer down into Hell. If you see him carrying scales, you are near death and he’s come to weigh your soul. He is the one who offers the last tally of the good and evil in a man, and then, if the balance is for evil, a chance, before death, to redeem yourself.
He is also the protection of sailors, he added, and then said, though I have never asked the sailor what he asks for.
I’d always hoped Aristafeo was spared that final humiliating gesture—that our time together, hidden inside the Jardin des Plantes, was innocent of this. But I had also noticed Simonet had not included any of the Empress’s bracelets in his little tableau. It seemed Aristafeo had pocketed her bracelets, walked through the house to gather my things, and brought them here, instead.
What had he prayed for?
To my right, Simonet offered his hand. Shall we?
I struggled to my feet.
The ending, I said, seems . . . cruel. For an opéra bouffe. Are the lovers, in fact, reunited? Or does he just go chasing after her, and we never know? Would the composer change the ending?
Well, I suppose I’ve left that as a last mystery for the reader, he said. But I understand, of course, that drama operates by other rules. If you have concerns, I’ll gladly entertain them. Let us go into the library; we can speak of it all there. I will get some refreshment sent in for you.
We looked at each other, and I could see the strangely cold air to him then, the one I had been looking for all this time, never visible until now. I knew at once he had not written the story. And I could see that he knew I knew, the rising panic on his face when he knew he had played his part false in the one moment he should have been true.
You’ll excuse me, I managed to say, as it was all I could say, and then I ran from the chapel into the street, out of his sight, as he shouted protests at my back. I did not stop nor did I turn, but I ran as fast as I could, as if I might be pursued.
How close it had been. How very nearly I had set my neck back into whatever collar waited for it on the other side of Simonet.
I sent a letter refusing the role officially that very night. I offered no explanation.
No response came in return. Not the next day nor the next week. The strange storm out of my past, with my own life painted on its face, seemed to have gone all at once. Only the novel, which stayed on my table, ominous and still oddly mute, beside its twin, the copy I bought to give to the Comtesse, remained as proof that it had happened at all.
I had consoled myself with the thought that in refusing the part I had somehow protected my memories of Aristafeo. This gradually became the feeling of having defended him somehow, a sense of victory that lasted perhaps a day until I went to discard the novels, believing I was done with them—and yet I could not, not yet.
He had gone to the chapel to pray for me before he left to go to the performance—and take me to the balloon. When I screamed for him in the street, it was the answer to those prayers. If his final opera for me had been found and misused, I would be foolish to pretend what was in this novel could not hurt me. Whoever it was on the other side of Simonet was still there.
I had one more delivery to make if I was brave. And I was.
§
At a Paris dinner party I attended several years into the Third Republic, a guest told the entire party a story of the Comtesse. She came to the Exposition on the arm of Prince George of Prussia! He drove her up the Seine in his enormous bateau mouche, no less, all just to view the portrait of her by Pierson on display in the Exposition Hall.
He spoke as if this were some disloyalty of hers, the vanity of an aging professional Paris beauty once again betraying the nation like the rest by accepting the aid of any patron who would pay, even a foreign enemy. Talk at the table roundly scorned her for associating with a Prussian prince, as if she owed France any loyalty, having once seduced its Emperor.
I experienced a strange shock on hearing this—I’d nearly believed the connection between the Prince and the Comtesse was my own invention. I remembered well how the crowd that day had looked on her in awe, not hatred, as they’d parted for her. How easily that awe had turned her into the dinner party joke she was to them that night.
Next, another guest told a story of the Prince. Some years after the fall of the Empire, he’d found himself at the same hotel as Eugénie, and as she had entertained him at court, he sent her flowers—She left the hotel at once! Can you imagine? He was part of the army that had turned her out of Paris and he sent her flowers.
None spoke of how Parisians, not Germans, had chased Eugénie from the Tuileries.