Worried, Morisset put an arm about Jean-Martin's shoulders in a paternal gesture and tried to find out what had happened, but the youth pulled away and turned his back to him, with his eyes fixed on the water. No one said a word during the hour and a half it took to make their way through that labyrinth of swamps and reach New Orleans. Morisset went alone to his hotel. His secretary ignored his order to accompany him and followed Violette and Tete to the house on Chartres. Violette went to her room, closed the door, and threw herself on the bed to weep her last tear, as Jean-Martin paced like a lion on the patio, waiting for her to calm down enough to question her. "What do you know about my mother's past, Loula? You have an obligation to tell me!" he demanded of his nana Loula, who had no idea what had happened at the Temple; she thought he was referring to the glorious days when Violette had been the most divine poule in Le Cap and her name traveled in the mouths of captains on remote seas, something she didn't plan to tell her boy, her prince, however much he yelled at her. Violette had striven to erase every trace of her past in Saint-Domingue, and it would not be she, her loyal Loula, who betrayed the secret.

As night fell, when she did not hear the weeping any longer, Tete took Violette a cup of tea for her headache, helped her take off her clothing, brushed the hen's nest her hair had become, sprinkled her with rosewater, pulled a light nightgown over her head, and sat beside her on the bed. In the shadow of the closed shutters, she dared talk with the confidence cultivated day by day during the years they had lived and worked together.

"It isn't that serious, madame. Pretend that those words were never spoken. No one will repeat them, and you and your son can go right on as you always have," she consoled her.

She supposed that Violette Boisier had not been born free, as she had told her once, but had been a slave in her childhood. She couldn't blame her for having kept it secret. Maybe she'd had Jean-Martin before Major Relais emancipated her and made her his wife.

"But Jean-Martin knows now! He will never forgive me for having deceived him," Violette answered.

"It isn't easy to admit that you've been a slave, madame. What is important is that now you both are free."

"I have never been a slave, Tete. The truth is that I am not his mother. Jean-Martin was born a slave, and my husband bought him. The only one who knows is Loula."

"And how did Monsieur Valmorain know?"

So Violette Boisier told her the circumstances under which they'd taken the baby, how Valmorain had brought the infant wrapped in a blanket to ask them to look after it for a while, and how she and her husband ended up adopting him. They didn't know whose baby he was but imagined he was the son of Valmorain by one of his slaves. Tete was not listening any longer-she knew the rest. She had prepared during a thousand sleepless nights for the moment of that revelation, when finally she would learn about the son who had been taken from her, but now that he was within reach of her hand she felt no flash of happiness, not a sob stuck in her breast, not an irrepressible wave of affection, not an impulse to run and throw her arms around him, but a low rumbling in her ears like the wheels of a cart on a dusty path. She closed her eyes and brought up the image of the youth with curiosity, surprised that she hadn't had the least indication of the truth; her instinct had not advised her, she had not even noted his resemblance to Rosette. She raked through her emotions, searching for the bottomless maternal love she knew so well because she had lavished it on Maurice and Rosette, but found only relief. Her son had been born under a good star, under a radiant z'etoile, and for that reason he had fallen into the hands of the Relais couple and Loula, who spoiled and educated him, and for that reason the military man had bequeathed him the legend of his life and Violette had worked untiringly to assure him a good future. Tete was grateful without a trace of jealousy, for she could not have given him any of that.

Tete's rancor against Valmorain, that black, hard rock she had felt forever in her breast, seemed to shrink, and the drive to take revenge on her master dissolved in appreciation of those who had taken such good care of her son. She did not have to think too much about what she would do with the information she had just received, gratitude decided that. What would she gain by announcing to the four winds that she was the mother of Jean-Martin and claiming an affection that with justice belonged to another woman? She chose to confess the truth to Violette Boisier, without wallowing in the suffering that had crushed her in the past, for that had eased in recent years. The youth who at that moment was pacing the patio was a stranger to her.

The two women wept, holding hands, joined by a delicate current of mutual compassion. At last the tears dried, and they concluded that what Valmorain had said could not be erased but they might soften its impact on Jean-Martin. Why tell him that Violette was not his mother, that he was born a slave, the bastard offspring of a white man, and that he was given away? It was better for him to continue to believe what he heard from Valmorain, which in essence was true: that his mother had been a slave. Neither was it necessary for him to know that Violette was a cocotte, nor that Relais had a reputation for being cruel. Jean-Martin would believe that Violette had hidden the stigma of her slavery to protect him, but he could always be proud of being the Relais's son. In a couple of days he would return to France and his army career, where prejudice regarding his origins was less harmful than in America or the colonies, and where Valmorain's words could be relegated to a lost corner of memory.

"We will bury this forever," said Tete.

"And what will we do about Toulouse Valmorain?" Violette asked.

"You go see him, madame. Explain to him that it is not wise to divulge certain secrets, or you will be sure that his wife and the entire city know that he is the father of Jean-Martin and Rosette."

"And also that his children can claim the Valmorain name and a part of the inheritance," Violette added with an impish wink.

"Is that true?"

"No, Tete, but scandal would be fatal for the Valmorains."

Fear of Dying

Violette Boisier knew that the first Cordon Bleu ball would be the model for all future balls, and that she had to establish from the beginning the difference between it and the other festivities that entertained the city from October to the end of April. The large hall was decorated without thought of expense. Stages were built for the musicians, tables set with embroidered cloths, and felt armchairs for the mothers and chaperones were placed around the dance floor. A carpeted runway was constructed for the triumphal entrance of the girls onto the dance floor. The day of the ball all the drains in the street were cleaned and covered with planks, colored lanterns were lit, and the surroundings were enlivened by musicians and black dancers, just as it was during Carnival. The atmosphere inside the hall, nevertheless, was very sober.

In the Valmorain house not too far away they had heard the distant sound of music, but Hortense Guizot, like all the other white women in the city, pretended not to. She knew what was going on; no one had talked about anything else for several weeks. She had finished dinner and was embroidering in the drawing room, surrounded by her daughters, who were playing with dolls while the youngest slept in her cradle, all as blond and rosy as she once had been. Now, ground down by maternity, she used rouge on her cheeks and relied on a blond switch her slave Denise artfully combed in with her own straw-colored hair. Dinner consisted of soup, two main courses, salad, cheeses, and three desserts; nothing too complicated because she was alone. The girls were not yet eating in the dining hall, nor was her husband, who was following a rigorous diet and preferred not to be tempted. He was in the library, where he'd been sent chicken and rice cooked without salt; he was trying to follow Dr. Parmentier's strict orders. Besides starving, he had to take walks in the fresh air and deny himself alcohol, cigars, and coffee. He would have died of boredom without his brother-in-law Sancho, who visited him every day to bring him up to date on news and gossip, cheer him up with his good humor, and beat him at cards and dominos.