To Renée the stale air of her childhood was stifling. She opened the window and looked out at the vast landscape. Out there nothing was soiled. She rediscovered the eternal joys, the eternal youth, of open air. Behind her, the sun must have been going down. She saw only the rays of the setting orb as with infinite tenderness they gilded this section of the city that she knew so well. It was like daylight’s swan song, a joyful refrain that slowly laid everything to rest. Tawny flames lit up the floating pier below, while the iron cables of the Pont de Constantine stood out like black lace against the whiteness of the bridge’s pillars. Then, on the right, the shady groves of the Halle aux Vins and the Jardin des Plantes looked like large pools of stagnant green water whose surface almost blended with the hazy sky. On the left, the Quai Henri IV and Quai de la Rapée were lined with the same rows of houses the girls had looked out on twenty years earlier, with the same brown patches where warehouses stood and the same red smokestacks where there were factories. And above the trees the slate roof of the Salpêtrière, turned blue by the sun’s adieu, suddenly looked to her like an old friend. But what calmed her, what cooled her breast, were the long gray banks and above all the Seine, the giant, which she used to watch as it flowed all the way from the horizon straight to where she stood, in those happy days when it frightened her to think that the river might swell and climb all the way up to her window. She remembered the affection she and her sister felt for the river, their love for its colossal flow, for the thrill of roaring water spreading itself out in sheets at their feet, opening out around and behind them in two arms they could no longer see but whose vast and pure caress they felt. They were smart dressers already, and on fair days they used to say that the Seine had put on her beautiful gown of green silk streaked with white. And the currents where the water curled in eddies trimmed that gown with satin ruffles, while in the distance, beyond the belt of bridges, splashes of light greeted the eye like flaps of fabric the color of the sun.
And Renée, lifting up her eyes, stared at the vast expanse of pale blue sky slowly dissolving into the oblivion of dusk. She thought of the complicitous city, of blazing nights on the boulevards, of ardent afternoons in the Bois, of pale harsh days in big new town houses. Then, when she looked down again and gazed once more on the tranquil horizon of her childhood, on this neighborhood of bourgeois and workers in which she had once dreamt of a life of peace, a final bitterness came to her lips. Her hands clasped, she sobbed into the falling night.
The following winter, when Renée died of acute meningitis, it was her father who paid off her debts. The bill from Worms came to 257,000 francs.
NOTES
CHAPTER 1
coupé: a closed carriage seating two passengers, with an outside seat for the driver.
Bois de Boulogne: an English-style park on the western edge of Paris, newly created from a royal military preserve under Napoleon III.
fiacre: a small hackney coach.
the rivière and the aigrette: A rivière is a necklace of diamonds or other precious stones; an aigrette is a spray of gems often worn in the hair.
Second Empire: the era of French history (1852–1870) that began when the Second Republic was replaced by the imperial rule of Napoleon III.
Porte de la Muette: a gate in the west of Paris offering access to the Bois de Boulogne.
Tuileries: royal residence adjacent to the Louvre that was the site of the imperial court in Paris.
Lassouche: J.-P. Lassouche, a popular actor during the Second Empire.
Louvre: The additions to the Louvre museum, completed in 1857, set the style for massive public buildings with high mansard roofs and a profusion of classical detail.
Ile Saint-Louis: a tranquil, respectable neighborhood of Paris, which occupies an island in the Seine.
Légion d’honneur: order of merit conferred as a high honor by the French government and indicated by a red ribbon.
Léoville and Château-Lafitte: celebrated Bordeaux wines.
Conseil d’Etat: the Council of State, which is the highest court in France for state issues and cases concerning public administration.
aiguillettes de canard sauvage: filets of wild duck breast.
Hôtel de Ville to Luxembourg: The Hôtel de Ville was the city hall of Paris, which dated from the Renaissance; the Luxembourg Gardens were once the park of the seventeenth-century Luxembourg Palace.
Alicante and Tokay: sweet after-dinner wines.
tabouret: a circular seat or stool without arms or back.
Messalina: third wife of the Roman emperor Claudius, known for her licentiousness and her instigation of fatal court intrigues.
CHAPTER 2
Second of December: date of the coup d’etat that transformed Louis Napoleon Bonaparte into Emperor Napoleon III in 1851.
voices from Macbeth: in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, the three witches who prophesy that Macbeth will be king, thus setting in motion his murderous theft of the throne.
Faubourg Saint-Honoré: a wealthy and aristocratic quarter of Paris.
Corps Législatif: the national legislature of France.
Prince-President: Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, nephew of Napoleon I, returned from exile in 1848 to garner support for the Bonapartist cause and was elected president of the Second Republic; this event was the prelude to the proclamation of the Second Empire.
guipure and Valenciennes: Guipure is a heavy decorative lace with a large pattern; Valenciennes is a fine lace spun from a bobbin.
Bourse: the French stock exchange.
Crimea: The Crimean War began in 1853, when Turkey declared war on Russia over disputed lands on the Russo-Turkish border; Britain and France were later drawn into the war as allies of Turkey.
tisane: infusion of dried herbs drunk as a beverage or for its medicinal effects.
the Marais: residential area west of the Bastille that was the site of many grand seventeenth-century houses.
Etienne Marcel: As “provost of merchants” in Paris, Etienne Marcel (c. 1315–1358) was one of the leaders of the bourgeoisie in the Estates General of 1355 and 1356.
sca fold: in the Reign of Terror (1793–94), when many were guillotined as enemies of the Revolution.
the Nivernais: region of central France southwest of Burgundy.
the Code: the civil laws known as the Napoleonic Code, which were enacted in 1814 and which governed marriage and property rights.
the Sologne: region of north-central France between the Loire and Cher rivers.
Buttes Montmartre: hill on the northern edge of Paris, known for its cafés and cabarets.
the Madeleine: the Church of St. Madeleine, built in 1806 in the style of a Roman temple.
A Thousand and One Nights: the far-fetched and exotic Arabic tales collected in 1450, also called The Arabian Nights.
Les Halles: the central marketplace of Paris.
Prefect of the Seine: the senior administrator of the département de la Seine, which includes the city of Paris.
Louis XVIII, Charles X, and Louis-Philippe: successive kings of France from 1814 to 1848.
place Royale: A monument of early modern urbanism, the place Royale, constructed during the reign of Henri IV, is today the place des Vosges.
Ile de la Cité: island in the Seine linked to the rest of the city by bridges.
Halle aux Vins: the wine market of Paris.
Jardin des Plantes: vast botanical garden in Paris.
La Salpêtrière: a Paris hospital.