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.