I don’t intend to, I said.
What, Euphrosyne said, did you not hear me? I only laughed and leaned in to kiss her twice.
Come, she said. Let us look down on what we’ve made.
I reached down and grabbed the flounces until I caught the loop in my hand and set it on my wrist, and Euphrosyne and I ascended the stairs.
I had never been able to correct Euphrosyne about the Queen of the Night and Faust, and tonight I was glad. The bal, for size and splendor, had surpassed my expectations, as had my costume. True to his word, Worth had driven his seamstresses hard. In his vision for the Queen of the Night, Worth had created a costume for me that made me look to be covered in a shower of stars and comets. The embroidery was hand stitched in a technique original to him that shaped the fabric as it was sewn, and the silhouette of the bodice was sculpted as a result. One comet outlined my left breast and wound down to circle my waist, meeting others, all beaded in crystal and leaving long white silk satin crystal-beaded trails that ran across an indigo velvet train. More comets created a gorgeous bustle and the edges of their trails scalloped the skirt down to the floor—the comets looked like wings. On the front panel of the gown’s skirt, more comets streaked across a night sky of indigo silk satin, and clouds hid a crescent moon as rays of white and gold light spread from it, embroidered in silver thread. The moon was beaded in pearls.
At my throat I wore a diamond pendant, and in my ears, diamond pendants also. For now my head was bare, but a glorious headdress waited upstairs, to be added just before the performance. The star shower would begin in my hair and descend from my headdress, a net of beads, diamonds, and diamanté stars, my hair added to with false hair and crystal pendants, and at the center of these was a diamond tiara.
I could barely move my head when the headdress was on, but this was not a nuisance. It was steadying, somehow, because of the focus it required.
Euphrosyne had been done beautifully by Worth also. She’d had him create a version of the Marie Antoinette shepherdess costume Eugénie had been painted in, so she looked like Eugénie as Marie Antoinette as a shepherdess at Petit Trianon. She’d worn a pale powdered wig and painted a beauty mark above her mouth. She did not at all remind me of the Empress—if anything, I think she looked the way Pepa must have wished all those years ago.
Wherever you are, dear Pepa, I wished silently, I hope you are happy now.
We were to descend in a cortège from the second-floor terrace of the salon to the floor at the beginning of the concert. The other beauties Euphrosyne had gathered were new to society, mostly unknown to me. Another friend of hers she had assured me I knew I did not recognize in her magnificent Cleopatra costume. Still another was the Empress Josephine; another, I soon recognized, was Madame du Barry—and then I saw it was Maxine. My erstwhile nemesis from Baden-Baden.
She nodded to me. I had not known she even knew Euphrosyne. I turned to say something, but Euphrosyne gave my gloved hand a pat, as it was time for us to go wait along the balcony for the performance to begin and then make our entrance.
My bal came into view.
The staircase we were on was a stately one that led to a second-floor terrace library that circled and looked down onto the entire ground floor of her conservatory. To our backs were books, and below were the celebrants. Grand Persian carpets spread across the golden herringboned marble of the floors, and guests had begun to gather on the red-velvet loveseats limned in gilt. Banquettes were sheltered by the enormous tropical plants that rose above them, and above each plant, as if a mirror to them in crystal, were flaming candle chandeliers hung on chains from the ceiling, which itself had glass canopies to let in the light, though it was the night we saw just past the reflections of the party below.
This was the light of that old world, the light by which I’d first encountered Paris. Euphrosyne’s h?tel was a grand one. No gaslights here.
We each grasped the slender brass rail as we watched the milieu below. The guest list I’d left entirely to her; I’d given her a very short list of the people she should not invite, however, which had made her laugh. I’d forgotten to include Maxine.
Euphrosyne tapped her cigarette holder clean into a plant by her side and withdrew her cigar case. She smiled as she cut the tip and walked to a candelabrum behind her and pulled a candle loose. Not for me, I said, not until I’ve sung. She lit her cigar, and she turned and put the candle back.
I heard a story about you seeing the Comtesse at Félix’s atelier, she said. How? No one sees her! Tell me. I must hear about it.
She was there to have a dress taken out, I said. But she still has her face.
Not her teeth, I hear, Euphrosyne said, and let out a cackle, and I allowed myself a laugh.