The dressing room was dark and so I lit the lamps to be ready for the Empress’s return.
After I lit the last one, I caught sight of myself in the mirror.
I was still the stranger I’d glimpsed at the Tuileries. My beauty had turned strange. My eyes looked dark and enormous against my face, my figure too small and too thin—like a boy in a dress. I looked younger than I was, my hair drawn back into a simple chignon only to be neat, not attractive. I was plain, undecorated, even rough, and the poverty of what I had compared to my desires made me turn away in shame.
After so much time spent wishing myself away, I now longed for my own return.
I contended for the affections of the pianist with no less than the famous beauty I assisted in being a famous beauty. I could not compete for him, not like this.
That moment in the music room, it was pure chance; it was not to be repeated. Most likely, I would never see him again, but what’s more, I was too ashamed to let him see me one more time.
And so when Eugénie returned finally, it was very easy to keep my eyes from her, very easy to be just what she thought I was. Easy to put her gown away quickly before going to bed myself.
Timid, bold, timid. The timidity in me, so like that in the Chopin, seemed permanent, the mazurka a false mirror for my feelings, leaving me unaware of the movement rising in me next.
§
I stood in the spare palace apartment where the Empress’s dresses were now kept before and after she wore them. It had been commandeered after a guest had complained of the drafts and was moved to other quarters; the chamberlain had said he was sure it was to prevent the man’s wife from being seduced by the writer Théophile Gautier, who was said to be writing her a poem every day.
The draft is from him opening the door to deliver his poems, no doubt, he said.
I batted my hand and, sure enough, felt no draft. The pink brocade walls, if anything, helped keep these rooms warmer, though all of Compiègne, I had learned, was famously drafty.
The apartment being unoccupied, if also in use, was something most of the staff had taken advantage of thus far; one girl had brought a lover in here and dressed herself in the gown in which Eugénie had received the week’s guests. It was thought to be the Prince Napoléon himself who’d had her there, though she refused to say. When she told us this, another girl said, Well, you’re the picture of Her Majesty from behind, and then laughed shrilly until she was slapped by the offended grisette.
The lovers aside, the part of the story that stayed with me most was the idea of her wearing the Empress’s dress.
The Empress had just left for the hunt in her emerald-green riding costume, the green tricornered hat pinned to her head, which I knew she meant to look rakish. The palace was emptied of guests and we had a few hours of peace without them. I took off the palace uniform, folded it carefully in a place where only I would find it, and drew out the gown she had worn to the first ball, the gown she had worn to dance to his music. Rose-petal pink and white, the skirt and cuffs were covered in black lace that rose to a strange, witchy black lace collar, unearthly in its beauty.
I stood quietly, mesmerized by it, holding it up in front of me. I then reached behind myself and began to unbutton my dress, working quickly until I was naked. I put my feet into the shoes she’d worn, of the same pink, with black trim and black heels, and then threw the dress aloft as I went underneath it, pulling it over my head. It was like crawling into a tent. Her scent was still in the bodice. I found I could button and lace most of it myself, and while the dress bagged a bit on me, in the mirror I looked a little like what I remembered myself looking like at the Majeurs-Plaisirs. I had thrown myself to the floor in front of the mirror in a mock grand curtsy, pressing my head into the skirt, when I heard the door to the apartment open.
I stayed on the floor, unmoving.
A voice called out the name of the girl who’d been had here. It came closer and closer. Soon the caller was standing over me, and he laughed.
I looked up at my discoverer. I already knew him.
The tenor was a handsome man of fair complexion, but this day he was painted purple, as if to resemble a Negro; the effect was to make him look like neither race, but like something else, a demon. I did not recognize him in the first instant, then, but in the second. He wore his typical evening dress coat and the tight white pants the Empress favored. Though the style favored only a few, it favored him.
We stared at each other openly.