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I’d not been alone once since being presented to the tenor at the end of his Il Trovatore, and the placid cheer I’d worn until now fell off me like a cape. No one to insist I speak to them, no need to remember who I was as I spoke, no need to feign pleasure or interest or knowledge of a language. The advantages to my new circumstances were still making their case to me, but the shock of losing the hopes I’d had from before my capture—my desire to set myself up with a little room, to find a teacher at the Conservatoire, and to wait and find my composer again in the spring—this had stayed trapped within me and still flew along my nerves, electric and unanswered, even as his example of my na?veté mocked me. Worse in some way than the future I’d never have was to contemplate the past I might have prevented.
I was going to bring you here to her before you left, the tenor had said so lightly. I could no longer ignore that little sentence. My escape, my time spent with the Comtesse, the Empress, the escape from Compiègne, all of it for nothing, then, if he told the truth—all of it for nothing, or for one thing. One man.
These rooms, like the rest of what I had seen, were nothing like I’d imagined. At first, I was puzzled to see there was no bed and then understood I was in the sitting room to a small suite. A fireplace glowed with a fire, newly set, blazing crisply. I went to warm myself at it and took in the rest of my surroundings—a dark wood writing desk and chair by one of the two windows and a bedroom with a dressing room, visible through a far doorway. Two green velvet chairs and a small couch kept watch over the fire, with small tables for I did not know what—all of it anticipated a kind of leisurely attitude I could not remember ever having taken toward my life.
The bedroom, set back from the sitting room, was very grand, the bed hidden under a canopy hung with thick velvet brocade drapes of a deeper green than the chairs. Across from the bed was a washstand and vanity with a petite chair and a tassel discretely dangling by the vanity mirror to ring for assistance. At this, I briefly felt the duty to watch out for the lady who would dress herself here until I reminded myself she would be me.
The trunks had already been delivered, set like little coffins in their place beside the dressing room’s armoire.
I found I waited to see if the door would open, the tenor bursting in with plans or demands, or if he would lock me in with a key Pauline had somehow provided him secretly. But the lock stayed silent.
I opened the door and looked out again into the hallway and the stairs, and then to the tenor’s door. The keyhole glowed with the late afternoon light—he was not even so much as watching me through it. I put my ear to the keyhole carefully—an eye might reflect light whereas an ear would not—and the faint murmur of his distant snore told me he was already asleep, taking a nap.
This was how much he believed he did not have to lock my door. And that I would stay as he rested.
I slipped carefully to the top of the stairs.
I was truly a guest, then. A guest of honor, no less, the welcome protégée of the celebrated tenor. Of course. Of course they would make a fuss over him, and of course they would make a fuss over me as well. The performance in our honor! Pauline was greeting me, greeting us both, with even more attention than the tenor had predicted, the tenor who seemed delighted at the prospect of joining her Haustheater and the newest endeavors of her famous family troupe. And this confused me—was he really here only to look after me? And yet, if so, why was his door still closed and he asleep?
I could walk out, go downstairs, at will. Ask to take my tea in the parlor.
Leave for the station.
I had already plotted one escape, done as Pauline led us through the garden to our rooms. I could claim exhaustion, stay in my room, and, as the performance began, leave for town with the emerald earrings and the rose pin and find a jeweler there I was sure would give me an excellent price, perhaps even better than in Paris, given the casinos. Between out-of-luck courtesans and suitors eager to impress, I was sure the jewelers here did a brisk trade. I could hire a carriage that might take me directly back to Paris that night, I was sure of it. With the tenor asleep, the temptation, tired as I was, was to leave for the jeweler’s now.