I Am Madame X (20 page)

Sadly, my heart had hardened, not only to Pozzi but to his entire sex. Though I’d have several lovers over the years, I could never give myself entirely to any of them, never rely on their assurances, never persuade myself that things would work out. The only man I trusted was Pierre, but I dreaded spending the rest of my life with him. I wasn’t ready to be a wife, not even a faux wife in a
mariage blanc.

Thankfully, I didn’t have to live with Pierre right away. A week after our wedding, he left on a long trip to Chile, where he had once lived and where he still had substantial investments. I remained at Mama’s house, and my old life of sleeping late and spending the afternoons at Julie’s atelier resumed. I didn’t think at all about Pierre. I knew it was only a matter of time before he came back into my life, but I hoped that time would be postponed as long as possible.

Three months went by. Then, one afternoon while Mama and Julie were out, Pierre showed up at the house with two professional packers. I greeted him in the salon, and one of the maids took the packers—two young women—upstairs to load my things into trunks that would be sent to Pierre’s house. I tried to hide my disappointment that he had returned. I was glad enough to see Pierre, but I was not looking forward to moving in with him.

“Pierre! It’s been ages,” I said after we kissed perfunctorily.

“I was gone much longer than I thought I’d be,” he answered. “But now I’m here to claim my beautiful bride.” He took a long look at me and seemed pleased by what he saw. My brief pregnancy had subtly but inexorably altered my body. I was more womanly, with fuller breasts and shapelier arms and hips.

“I’ve brought you a present,” said Pierre. He left the parlor and returned a moment later with a large square box he had placed on the hall table. “Open it.”

I lifted the lid, pushed aside the tissue, and pulled out a beautiful black dress. It was much simpler and more revealing than anything I had ever worn or seen anyone else wear. The skirt was a slim black satin tube with the train gathered in back. The heart-shaped black velvet bodice was nothing but a camisole constructed on a wire frame that was sewn into the fabric and held up with two thin diamond-studded straps.

“Do you like it?” asked Pierre, smiling broadly. “The designer is a talented young man named Félix Poussineau. I think he’s going to give Worth a run for his money.”

“I love it!” I exclaimed. The theatrical daring of the dress immediately appealed to me. Poussineau had gotten his start designing costumes for the theater, and throughout his long career he never lost a sense of bold showiness. Yet there was nothing elaborate or fussy about his clothes. Indeed, their stark simplicity was far in advance of its time.

Pierre had first learned of Poussineau through an antique-dealer friend, and he had visited the designer’s atelier a week before our marriage. “When I saw his clothes, I knew they’d be perfect for you,” Pierre said.

My husband was right. After my introduction to Poussineau, I rarely wore other designers. I held Pierre’s present up to my body and ran my hand over the soft satin and velvet. “I can’t wait to wear it.”

“You can wear it soon,” said Pierre. “I’m taking you to the opening of the opera.”

The new gilt-and-marble opera palace, off the boulevard des Capucines, was finally opening after thirty-six million francs and fourteen years of planning and construction. Conceived during the height of Louis-Napoléon’s reign, it was the crowning glory of the Haussmanization of Paris and had been wildly anticipated by a public nostalgic for royal glamour. Tickets had been sold out months in advance. Pierre, who had a genius for befriending the right people and was not shy about asking for favors, managed to get a box at the last minute through the Prefect of Police, his neighbor on rue Jouffroy.

I spent the next three days preparing for the opera opening. I tried on my dress over and over again, enjoying it more each time. It was a gown meant for a stage star, and it made me feel theatrical to wear it. I loved how the inky fabrics heightened the marble whiteness of my skin. At the same time, though, the dress made my hair look dull and brownish. My red tresses had darkened over the past few years, and, along with their vivid color, they had lost much of their shine. I decided to ask my coiffeur, Emile, to come to the house and henna my hair.

He arrived after lunch, and a maid brought him to my boudoir. A vain black-haired man with a stiffly waxed mustache, Emile had put on weight recently, and his gray trousers and waistcoat were two sizes too small.

“This is a messy job, Madame. And a long one,” said Emile as he unpacked his jars, combs, and brushes from a leather satchel and set them up on my dressing table. As he reached up to adjust one of the projecting bracket lights on the side of the table, the top button of his waistcoat popped off and flew into my powder box.
“Mon Dieu,”
he gasped. “I must do something about this stoutness.” He fished out the button with two thick, hairy fingers and stashed it in his pocket.

As I sat on a bench at my dressing table, Emile positioned himself behind me and draped a heavy muslin cloth over my shoulders. He twisted a lid off a glass jar and scooped a large ladleful of bright-green henna into a mixing bow. He poured some water into it and began stirring furiously.

“Like baking a cake,” he said into the mirror in front of me, smiling widely and showing a mouthful of yellow teeth. After a few minutes of stirring, he dipped a paintbrush into the henna and, lifting small sections of my hair one at a time, applied the green goo evenly. Afterward he wrapped my head in a Turkish towel and told me to sit in front of the fire. “The heat will absorb the henna into your follicles. You see, I’m a chemist as well as a pastry chef,” he said, chuckling.

Emile told me to stay immobile until he returned. He left the house for two hours, and when he came back, smelling of garlic and port, the maid followed him into my room. “I need an assistant for this operation,” he said. The maid pulled aside the curtain hiding my claw-footed tub and arranged the mat in front of it. Emile instructed me to lean over the tub, and he held my head as the maid poured water through my hair. The liquid running into the drain was brown, but when I looked in the mirror, I saw that my hair was carrot-red.

“This is horrible! I look like a clown,” I shrieked.

Emile glared at me. “You should have said you wanted it darker. Now we must try again.”

The coiffeur sent my maid to the cellar for a bottle of burgundy, which he mixed with a fresh batch of henna. Then he applied it to my hair and had me sit in front of the fire for another two hours. This time my hair turned a deep, rich mahogany. I was very pleased with it, and I’ve maintained it to this day.

My new hair color seemed to demand more dramatic makeup, so I mixed some mauve tint in my
blanc de perle
powder and daubed it on my face. It highlighted the bluish tinge of my natural skin tone and, I thought, looked interesting with the mahogany hair.

Then I got the idea of rouging my ears. A few years before, I had seen the actress Yvette Sicard play Cleopatra with brightly reddened ears. The effect was bizarre yet striking. I dipped my index finger in a pot of lip pomade and drew it over the tops of my ears to the lobes. Then I studied myself in the mirror. “Perfect,” I said to my reflection.

On the night of the opera, two hours before Pierre was to pick me up, the maid came to my room to help me dress. I stood before her, naked from the waist up, wearing only silk stockings held up with satin garters and a pair of drawers trimmed in lace. The maid looked at my bodice and skirt draped over the settee and turned pale.

“Where are your chemise and camisole? Your corset?” she asked.

“I can’t wear any undergarments with this,” I said, picking up the velvet bodice and handing it to her. “Here, help me.”

She slipped the diamond straps over my shoulders and fastened the buttons at the back. Then she spread a thin petticoat into a ring on the floor, and I stepped into it. Finally, I dropped the satin skirt over my head and slipped on a pair of black satin pumps with three-inch “Louis” heels shaped in a graceful reverse curve.

“My fan, please,” I said. The maid was astonished at the bareness of my outfit and stared at me with her mouth open. She handed me the fan and a small beaded purse.

“Have a good evening, Madame,” she stammered before I descended the stairs.

Pierre was waiting for me in the parlor. His face opened into a broad smile when he saw me. “You’re gorgeous,” he said. We drove to the Place de l’Opéra, arriving just as the purple-robed Lord Mayor of London strode toward the entrance, proceeded by blaring trumpets. A thousand lights from street lamps and houses beamed, illuminating the frenzied scene. The entire Chaussée d’Antin was blocked by carriages, and soldiers on horseback galloped in front of the teeming crowds lining the boulevards.

Pierre and I entered the vast marble vestibule, gave our wraps to Pierre’s driver, and made our way up the grand staircase, through a sea of ballgowns and black tailcoats. We found our box in the second tier. All around us were the brightest lights of France, a mingling of royalty and Republican politics. On the right of the proscenium were the President of the Republic, Marshal MacMahon, and a coterie of ministers and influential politicians. On the left was a descendant of the royal family of Poland and King Alfonso XII of Spain. Sitting nearby were the Duc de Nemours, a prince of the blood royal of France, and, in front of him, the Comte de Paris, the rightful successor to Louis-Philippe, the legitimate heir to the French crown.

The lights in the gigantic chandelier at the center of the ceiling dimmed, then flickered out. The curtain rose on the first act of Jacques Halévy’s
La Juive,
and the orchestra began to play. No one was listening. Everyone was too busy scrutinizing the crowd and talking to their neighbors. Indeed, the chatter in the vast theater was so loud it nearly drowned out the music. I trained my opera glass on the Lord Mayor’s box and was surprised to see that his wife was obese and wearing an ugly pink gown. Then I tried to find President MacMahon. As I scanned the dim canyons of the vast theater, I became aware that a high percentage of heads and opera glasses were turned on
me.
I was used to drawing stares, but this scrutiny was more intense than usual. I quickly realized it was because of my dress. The other women worebulky, elaborate gowns trimmed with ruching, sequins, fringe, feathers, and lace. Though some of these dresses were décolleté, none of them exposed anywhere near as much flesh as mine.

I felt a quickening in my chest, a mounting excitement that I was the center of attention. I dropped my glasses into my lap, straightened my back, and set my face in a serene countenance. Pierre looked pleased, proud to be with me. I was beginning to understand that he had married me for more reasons than kindness and a desire to provide a cover for himself and Madame Jeuland. He was proud of my looks, and he liked showing me off. I was an exotic prize, like his Japanese screens and urns.

At the interval, Pierre and I made our way through the long, wide corridors lined with gilt mirrors and busts of famous composers, to the Galerie des Glaces, where we ordered champagne. Women snickered at me behind their fans. “Why, she might as well have worn a nightgown,” I overheard a wrinkled blonde hiss. “It’s indecent. How could her husband let her go out like that?” whispered her companion.

The men, however, were enthralled. As I walked past one group of middle-aged gentlemen with foreign medals emblazoned across their jackets, their chatter died abruptly and they stared at me with slack jaws. Two young army officers actually climbed on the bar to get a better look, ignoring a guard who shouted, “Get down at once!”

When the interval was over and we had settled ourselves in our box, I began to feel that the entire house was staring at me. Several men had left their seats and were standing in the aisles, their opera glasses trained on me. A few people were brazenly pointing in my direction. I felt a warm pleasure at being the center of attention. Then I realized why everyone was looking: my right breast had popped out of my gown. I had no idea how long it had been on display. A rush of horror and embarrassment coursed through me. The next thing I knew, Pierre quickly grabbed it and pushed it back inside my bodice. Then he leaned over and whispered in my ear, “My hand loved that.”

The comment defused my anxiety. I suspected, too, that it signaled Pierre’s awakening desire for me. Though he was committed to Madame Jeuland, and though he had promised not to exercise his “rights as a husband,” as he put it, it would be hard to refuse Pierre. After all, we were legally married.

I focused on these thoughts to get my mind off the crowd’s stares. Sleeping with Pierre wouldn’t be so bad, I decided. I liked the sensation of his hand on my breast, and it pleased me that he had rescued me from public embarrassment. Throughout the rest of the performance, he held my hand tightly and from time to time whispered in my ear, “Are you all right, dear?”

At 1:30
A
.
M
., the curtain fell on the last entertainment of the evening, ballet performances from
La Source
and
Terpsichore.
We left our box as the dancers took their final bows and found our way to the vestibule, where Pierre’s valet was waiting with our wraps. He led us to our carriage, and we headed to Pierre’s
hôtel
at 80, rue Jouffroy.

From the outside, the small three-story house, a few blocks from Parc Monceau, was indistinguishable from the street’s other bourgeois
hôtels
. Inside, though, it looked like a Japanese home. In the foyer, a bronze Buddha greeted guests from its perch on a round monastery table that was identical to Mama’s. On the first floor, the walls were lined with blue silk painted with pink peonies, and hung with Japanese prints. The bookshelves were bamboo, and the low divans were upholstered in fabrics from antique kimonos.

While Pierre was in Chile, his servants had given me a tour of the house and, according to my instructions, had overseen the decoration of my boudoir suite opposite Pierre’s on the second floor. In defiance of my husband’s taste for the Oriental, I chose to reproduce nearly exactly my conventionally French bedroom at rue de Luxembourg, with blue toile on the walls and upholstered furniture, a large, carved four-poster, and a Louis XIV secretary.