The tenor had insisted he bring me to meet a man he called the Prince, who wanted to thank me. But now in his throne room, I saw he had already introduced us.
In front of me was his young officer friend, the one who wanted to be a composer. I remembered him as the one who liked to bring his compositions to the apartment and sit at the piano while I did my best to sing them through. He had told me he was a composer forced to be a soldier; from his compositions, I had never been sure if he was to be a composer, but to see him here suggested he was the better as a soldier.
If il trovatore is an agent of his king, this was his king. Here was my secret god, surely, the one who ruled over us all, hidden from view until now. Which meant the audience, in which he would explain all he had done, was next.
I was here finally. I had made it past the veil.
I sat before him in a wheelchair, all of me covered in a wolf cloak, my arms splinted over the dressing gown I’d worn for the trip—an invalid was allowed such things—but the cloak was meant to make me presentable for this initial greeting. The doctors who received me protested to the tenor that I needed rest, but I was brought all the same into the royal chamber to greet my host.
We were in a massive and ancient castle overlooking the Rhine from atop a sheer rock cliff—the same color as the rock it sat on, the castle looked to have grown there. Every surface inside seemed intricately wrought with carvings, and the walls encrusted by tapestries, paintings, taxidermy—snarling wolves, elegant deer, birds of kinds I’d never seen before; and along the elegantly arched walls, a forest of mounted horns and antlers rose to incredible heights.
They, too, seemed born out of the rock, all of it of a piece. I couldn’t imagine moving a single item from its place.
The Prince was addressing me from a modest throne of ancient carved wood nearly black in color. He spoke in the excellent French I remembered from when I first knew him; back then, he’d intimidated me into a sort of watchful silence, not so different from the one I kept here before him. The effect was uncanny. He was fair, upright, small for a German, with a thin, delicate nose and beautiful bowed lips beneath his full moustache. His small bright eyes shone with real happiness when he saw me. And yet this seemed like a mask, as if it could fall away. He wore his dress uniform decorated with a sash of a beautiful pale blue, as if to tell me a military operation had concluded or was still under way. I remembered him in more of a Paris poet’s attire, simple suits, a more bohemian, relaxed appearance; but even his beard and moustache were carefully waxed in place and his hair pomaded close. Though he had never really seemed to me to be a struggling composer, he appeared as out of place here as he had before in my Paris bedroom. Neither affect seemed like a disguise. Instead, it was as if he had a twin appearing before me now as a conqueror.
Perhaps he belonged nowhere. Perhaps he was like me.
I offered my hand, and he bowed as he took it, pressing a faint, warm kiss that surprised me.
You are surprised to see me again. Your surprise speaks well of our mutual friend’s discretion. Please, have some tea.
I was unable to hold a teacup, and so I looked first to the cup and then to my shoulders. He motioned to one of my new maids, who came and held the cup up to my lips. I took a drink.
First we thought you were dead, then we were sure you could not survive. Perhaps you are not a woman at all, he said.
This was the sort of remark I knew he thought was gracious. In my wheelchair, I shivered.
He said something quickly to one of the butlers observing from the side, and a fox cape was brought out and settled around my shoulders over the wolf.
It may be you cannot die, he said, but there’s no reason to let you get a chill.
He sat back.
We have always been a correction to France, he said. We routed the first Napoléon at the Battle of Leipzig. We have routed the second one now as well. I think any time a Napoléon grows to power, we will be ready to mark the place past which he cannot pass. It’s a pity about Eugénie, however. Did you love her, your mistress? he asked.
I did, I said.
I did also, he said. She should never have been an empress, but she was wonderful all the same. Please be welcome here, you are an honored guest. Whatever you need, please ask, it will be made available. We will spare no expense to nurse you back to health, and I hope you’ll be well enough to join us even briefly for the celebration this weekend.
The maid held my teacup back to my mouth, and I drank again. And as I did, I watched as, behind the Prince, the sight of that monstrous fountain of death in the Luxembourg Gardens returned. The bodies in their awful disarray, the pale stone stained red and black, as if the bodies had come out of some terrible well of death in the ground.