The doors on that first visit, as I waited for the courage to announce myself, seemed to me like the doors to Hell itself. The ornate stonework on the building’s fa?ade, carved to look like a giant’s roses and thorns, the wooden double doors that were more than twice my height, the knocker, a bronze Medusa as big as my face, all looked as if, were the doors to open, I would be drawn inside and never allowed to leave.
I was dressed that day in a simple dress and bonnet, and carried with me my sewing tools. Over my mouth I wore a scarf I’d made for myself that read muette, the word stitched there to explain to any stranger why I would not respond—and to hide me, I hoped, from any chance encounter with someone who might recognize me.
I could not have guessed how much I looked, in short, like my own tableau vivant or how this would charm the Comtesse.
I pulled on the Medusa’s chin and let it drop, and a loud knock echoed inside. The eyes to the Medusa head slid to the side, and her large green eyes appeared, shadowed by the lamp behind her. Oho, she said.
The bronze eyes slid back into place, the door opened, and inside stood a beautiful woman in something like a toga but which was a black satin dressing gown, her red-gold hair loose and carefully wild. A crystal goblet in her hand glowed with champagne. She waved me in with her free arm, but I was so stunned, I only stood there. Her smile stayed on her face but dimmed slightly, and she spoke through it.
Well, she said. Muette. Is that your name?
I held out the letter of introduction from the convent.
She looked familiar to me, and then I knew—she was the very Parisienne I’d seen my first day in Paris. I was sure of it. The woman in mourning who had parted the crowd in her enormous dress and jewels. She was still in mourning, but she did not seem near death, as I’d been told.
As she pulled the letter open, she asked, Are you perhaps the ghost of the Chateau de la Muette, my neighbor? She gestured at the distance. Or some long lost heir to the chateau? I had always wondered when La Muette would come for her house. She flicked the letter with her finger and held it out to read it.
I shook my head again, unsure at what she meant. I knew nothing of this chateau.
You are my convent-bred seamstress, yes?
I nodded. And then smiled from under my scarf.
Come, my girl. You’ve come just in time.
She would always be like this. Familiar, full of vaguely oracular pronouncements, a Pythian oracle fed on champagne and pearls instead of myrrh.
La Muette, she said, as we walked up her stairs. Only in French, she said, would we have a word that can mean mute, hunting dog, or young falcon. Are you any of those?
I felt Fate reach down and trace the word on my scarf.
Slowly, I held up two fingers.
Two? You are two of those. How mysterious. I suppose we shall see which ones you mean. And with that, she threw open the doors to her dressing room.
The Comtesse had need of alterations to a nun’s habit she’d once worn for a tableau vivant, in which she appeared as the sole resident of l’Ermitage de Passy, a comment on her social status as an exile from Parisian society in the aftermath of an affair with the Emperor. The resultant scandal of her in a habit was almost as enormous as her affair had been. She now sought to commemorate the event in a photograph. Her Paris dressmaker had claimed he did not know the details of a nun’s habit, and so she had engaged in this pretense in order to engage me.
She told this all to me as I worked, and more. She was busy commemorating all of her most significant dresses and appearances in a series of photographic portraits. She praised me when I was done that first day and said she had more for me to do if I wanted the work. While the sisters were predictably disappointed, they allowed me to return again and again, imagining, perhaps, that I had bent her toward some last, virtuous response. Instead, I was repairing a red velvet toga dress for her as the Queen of Etruria. Or a fascinating Queen of Hearts costume, cut low and revealing. Or an enormous white gown with a cape trimmed with ermine, which she wore with a black mask.
After another month, she told me she had recommended me and my work to the Tuileries. This seemed extraordinary to me. She then added I was to expect a letter of employment soon from the Empress’s chamberlain.
Are you pleased?
I nodded and wept, overwhelmed.
My dear muette! This is what she called me—she could not remember my name. How good you are and how sweet. Are you prepared to serve them well?
I nodded again.
Good, she said, and glowed with pleasure. When you are in your new position, you must come to see me every week. But our new arrangement must be a secret between us.
The attention and favor of this great woman made me fiercely proud, and I nodded again, agreeing to this condition instantly. But, of course, this was her intention. The result of those visits was not, as the good sister had thought, the capture of a great soul or, at least, the soul that was captured was not the one inside the Comtesse’s famous breast. The soul that was captured was mine.
When the letter arrived, the sisters were greatly honored I was to work at the Tuileries. They did not ask as to how my reputation had traveled to court. I did not tell them.