I found the stairs to my old room remained intact. I climbed them carefully, my thoughts full of the Empress’s flight. I couldn’t imagine her running—had I even seen her run once?—the sisters and Pepa throwing clothes into cases, too serious to cry out until later. Pepa would have been the one to have with you when you needed to escape, perhaps that was always the secret of her, the reason the Empress kept her—she would know which guard to trust; she would have a cache of coins for bribes, horses, and supplies.
If I had stayed, I would have been expected to flee with the Empress past the crowds screaming for her death as the Tuileries became a pyre they hoped to burn her on. How surprised she would have been: no parley for the Emperor’s return and no thought of keeping her without him. Instead, her people had moved to expel her viciously, as if some honor of their own could be saved by destroying her.
And I had learned from Pepa. I had my own cache of coin, I recalled, as I pushed open the door to my room. The one I had kept safe, hoping to take with me, abandoned when I ran from Compiègne but still, I hoped, hidden in my bed post in a chamber I’d hollowed out with a knife.
I lit a match as I pushed open the door. My little stuffed otter friend greeted me, still at his post. The room seemed whole, as it once had been. No one thought to defile this. But as I went to the bed, a young man moved in sleep in my bed, using his coat as a blanket, his arms tucked carefully underneath, and still wearing his boots. It was all done so carefully, I first feared he might be dead, as if he were laid out here, until he started and sat up as I blew out my match.
I lived here, I said, when I served the Empress. This was my room. Who are you?
I am Eugène, he said, part of the Commune force here to protect the palace from further attacks on the property that should rightfully belong to us all. And who are you?
This question could still confound me. I could say anything; anything could begin as a result. But I surprised myself.
Lilliet, I said.
Saying the name was like catching something that had briefly fallen from a table. I could not give her up, not yet. Not when so much had been destroyed. There was something in this little lie of a life I had found that was real; I would keep it a little longer.
I have information I need to get to a Commune commander, I said, and am uncertain to whom I should speak.
You are in luck, he said. And he gestured to his chest. I present Eugène, Communard commander.
It made me smile, that the palace had once belonged to a Eugénie and now to a Eugène.
I told him about the tenor’s message to me, of the deal he said the government had struck with the Germans. And the dates and his plot to get me out of the city.
Do you trust this man? he asked.
No, I said. But I believe him . . . I believe this. I paused, for the next I’d never said aloud. He is a Prussian agent.
It is possible he has done this to save you. But not one of our balloons returns to us yet—they can only leave. And the Prussians took to shooting them down or chasing them to meet them as they land—this explains the signal you are to tie to the rope. He might also have done this knowing you would come to us and tell us something to get us to prepare for the wrong day. It could even be just to kill our spirit. And, given the record of survival for the balloons, to kill you. Or all could be as he says. We simply do not know.
As Eugène said this, he seemed placid in the face of certain death.
Did he know you came here? he asked.
No, I said. I did not go out knowing this was where I would come.
I want you to come here and speak with me again if he should communicate with you. He may leave another message. Out of all of his wrong information will be some that is right, and perhaps we can find it out.
An immense weariness took hold of me as he said this. I was again on a stage of the tenor’s making, always performing as he knew I would, even out of his sight.
I would ask you a favor, I said.
Please, he said.
May I sleep here tonight and leave in the morning? I have nowhere else to go.
Of course. Share my coat, sister, he said.
I agreed and then slept as I once had, next to this stranger.
There is the great love of one’s life, and then there is the first to come after. Eugène taught me to love in a very simple way, without dreams or hope, to simply set something inside my heart and let it be. From the very beginning, it was easy to be with him. In the morning, I woke before he did and slid my cache out from its hiding place. We parted happy, and he again asked me to come see him at the Tuileries if another letter came, or if I was hungry or cold. He seemed content without me, and this was one of his most charming qualities.
§
I returned to my old apartment—there was nowhere to go. I could not return to Aristafeo, not yet.
I sold the furnishings for food until I had just the small table in the kitchen the maids had used, a chair, the piano, and my bed. I took to sleeping there again.