I Am Madame X (14 page)

Again he looked up at me, now with a blank expression. “Mademoiselle, drop your robe, please.”

“I’m afraid that’s not a model,” Julie called out from behind her easel. “That’s my niece, and she’s about to get dressed.” She limped over to the dais, took me by the arm, and hustled me behind the screen. She gathered my clothes into a bundle and handed them to me. “I knew this was a mistake,” she said, her face stiff with embarrassment. “We won’t mention any of it to your mother.”

After I was dressed, I stepped from behind the screen and nearly bumped into Sam Pozzi. He had been hovering near the door, waiting to talk to me.

“I know where I’ve seen you,” he said, his brown eyes glistening. “You’re Pocahontas from the Marine Minister’s ball.”

“Yes, and you’re the doctor who saved my life when I fell out of the hammock.”

“I think you would have managed to live without me.”

“I’m not so sure.”

Dr. Pozzi looked deeply into my face. I was tired from the long posing session, and he sensed my weariness.

“Well, Miss Pocahontas. You look like you earned your feathers today. Can I take you home?”

“I suppose so.”

At the other end of the atelier, Carolus-Duran and Julie were discussing her canvas while Sophie and Filomena were absorbed in their paintings. Without saying good-bye to them, Dr. Pozzi and I slipped out the door.

I felt light-headed with excitement as this handsome man led me down the stairs to the street. A cab was waiting at the curb. He helped me into the back and directed the driver, “Boulevard des Italiens.”

“I live on rue de Luxembourg,” I said.

“Wouldn’t you like to have lunch with me?”

I should have gone home. I should have told Dr. Pozzi that my mother was expecting me. But I was a bored fifteen-year-old eager for adventure and quite confident in my ability to handle fawning men. “That would be lovely,” I told Dr. Pozzi. “I’m famished.”

The carriage creaked to a halt in front of the gray stone facade of Bignon’s, one of the most popular restaurants in Paris. The maître d’ led us upstairs to a private room with an iron balcony overlooking the street. It was decorated like a boudoir, with deeply cushioned settees, a Turkish carpet, and blue satin curtains pulled to the sides of the windows by the chubby hands of plaster cherubs.

The small lace-covered table in the center of the room was set with gold-rimmed china, heavy silver, and crystal wineglasses. Dr. Pozzi held a chair out for me, and I sat down. Then he took the place opposite mine and spread his linen napkin across his lap.

“Your aunt and her friends are very lucky to have such a beautiful model,” he said.

“Oh, I’m not their model. The regular girl didn’t show up, so I was helping out.”

Two black-jacketed waiters in white tie appeared in the doorway. The taller one carried an enormous silver tray containing a platter of
foie gras aux truffes,
the shorter man a bottle of Château Lafitte. Dr. Pozzi had ordered today’s lunch the day before, as was the custom at the time, when menus at the better establishments often ran thirty-six pages. He thought he’d be dining alone; after we arrived, the maître d’ instructed a waiter to set Pozzi’s table for two.

“You know, I love women painters,” he said as a waiter poured wine into his glass. He took a sip and nodded to the tall young man, who moved to the other side of the table and filled my glass. “They’re an unknown power, and their position is really difficult. It’s as hard for them to get into the small private exhibitions as the big public ones. That’s why I visit the ateliers; otherwise one would rarely see their work.”

“You can go to the Musée du Luxembourg to see Philippe—I mean Mademoiselle Seguette. Two of her paintings are there. And she’s always at the Salon. Mademoiselle Tranchevent is, too. And they’ll both be at the Cercle des Arts Libéraux next month,” I said.

“Ah, but not your aunt. At least not yet. I really love her use of color. I might buy that lovely nude she’s working on.”

“When I was growing up she never let anyone see her paintings. If it hadn’t been for the war and the desperate shape our plantation was in, I don’t think she ever would have painted for money.”

One of the waiters laid plates of truffles in front of us. Dr. Pozzi took a few bites, followed by a large sip of red wine. “Really? Well, that would have been a shame.”

I was too nervous to swallow a morsel. All possible motives Dr. Pozzi might have for this lunch flashed through my head—from simple companionship to seduction. I pretended to eat, cutting up my truffles and pushing them around the plate. By the time the salmon mayonnaise arrived, I had convinced myself he was in love with me. I held that feeling through the
boeuf flamand
and dessert—vanilla ice cream delivered in a single tall-stemmed bowl with two spoons planted in the soft mounds.

But by the time the meal was over and Dr. Pozzi had led me down the carpeted stairs—one hand on the polished wood railing, the other on the small of my back—I had lost all confidence in the love theory. He looked distracted; perhaps he was preoccupied by work. Worse, maybe he found me dull. We said little to each other during the cab ride home. I lied that I was meeting my mother at Bon Marché, so Dr. Pozzi dropped me off in front of the store and waved good-bye through the dirt-streaked window as the horses trotted off. I browsed in the glove compartment for thirty minutes, then took a cab home.

The next morning, the first post carried a letter from him. The maid brought it to my bedroom on my breakfast tray, and as soon as she closed the door behind her, I tore open the cream envelope. My heart was fluttering in my chest as I read:

On the morning of September 4, I dressed carefully, donning my favorite day gown, a green silk dress with a scalloped hem. With Dr. Pozzi in mind, I sprayed my neck and the insides of my wrists with lilac scent. Though it was Sunday, Julie had gone to her atelier to work on a commissioned portrait she was struggling to complete. Mama expected me to go to church with her as usual. I told her I wanted to attend a concert at the Salle Pleyel, since two of my favorite Beethoven works were on the program.

She agreed to let me go, so I left the house at twelve-thirty and walked to the corner of rue Saint-Honoré to hail a cab. A crowd had gathered at the newspaper kiosk, and several men were running down the pavement waving their arms and shouting, “The empire has fallen!” I was thinking of my lunch with Dr. Pozzi and paid little heed to the troubling scene. A few moments later, a cab pulled to the corner and I directed the driver to rue des Italiens.

When I arrived at Bignon’s, the maître d’ rushed to greet me. His face was gray with distress. “Mademoiselle, haven’t you heard? The worst has happened! The Prussians have captured Louis-Napoléon, and the Empire has collapsed! Dr. Pozzi has gone to join his unit with the Service de Santé Militaire. He asked me to give you his apologies.”

I left the restaurant, dazed with disappointment. I was sorry for the Emperor, but felt worse for myself. All my life, I’ve needed to be in love and have someone in love with me. Even as a little girl, I had intense imaginary romances with characters in books—for years I was smitten with d’Artagnan in
The Three Musketeers.
But Dr. Pozzi was the first
real
man I had fancied myself in love with.

As I walked home, I wondered what he thought of me, or indeed if he thought of me at all. I was tormented by fears that he’d soon forget me, that our one rendezvous wasn’t enough to spark his passion, that when he returned from the war, he’d have no interest in an adolescent girl.

So lost was I in this mournful vision that I barely noticed the chaos around me. Everywhere people were running and screaming. The street signs in the rue 10-Décembre had been smashed and replaced with boards on which
RUE
4-
SEPTEMBRE
had been scrawled in black paint. I reached the Tuileries just as a scruffy mob was hoisting the tricolor above the Pavillon de l’Horloge, shouting “Long live the Republic!”

Our household, like most in Paris, had expected a quick victory over the Prussians. Louis-Napoléon’s goal was to thwart Otto von Bismarck. War fever had been building for some time as Bismarck worked to unite the German states, thereby giving Prussia an edge over France in the European balance of power. After a dispute over the succession to the Spanish throne, France declared war. The Emperor, however, not only was ill and in agony from kidney stones, but also was badly prepared. He had half the number of soldiers he thought he had. What’s more, the French troops were poorly trained compared to the Prussians. When Louis-Napoléon reached the battlefield at Sedan, he found his army hopelessly outnumbered. After several hours of fighting, he surrendered.

Soon afterward in Paris, a group of radical deputies of the Corps Législatif used the defeat as an incitement to overthrow the Emperor. Standing on the balcony of the Hôtel de Ville, where the revolutionary governments of 1789 and 1848 had been established, the radicals formally declared the death of the Empire and the birth of the Republic. A cabinet was hastily assembled, and a popular general, Louis Trochu, was pronounced president.

Over the next weeks, Parisian life as we had known it ground to a halt. The trains stopped running; the mail wasn’t delivered; newspapers ceased publishing; shops and theaters closed. Though the Prussians had yet to invade the city, there was rioting in the streets, and our driver was afraid to take the carriage out. Cabs were impossible to find, so we ended up staying home all day, only venturing out for an occasional errand or walk.

The weeks and months wore on, and the days passed in a blur of boredom reminiscent of the languid summers at Parlange. Since Julie had no way of getting to her studio on the other side of the city, she set up her easel and paints in her bedroom, and I passed the time reading and playing the piano.

Our ennui was exacerbated by the freezing weather. Coal supplies across the city ran out, and for warmth we were forced to burn old books. Frost glazed the windows, and the walls felt like sheets of ice.

On January 5, the Prussians began to shell Paris from forts surrounding the city. During dinner, an explosion ripped the air and shook the house. Several wineglasses tumbled, spilling rivers of liquid across the white tablecloth. Mama burst into tears. “I can’t go through another war,” she cried.

“I know,” said Julie. “All my courage is gone, too. We used it up in Louisiana.”

I ran to the top floor, where the maids slept, and stuck my head out one of the dormer windows. A dozen shells flew past in the smoky, black sky. One struck a roof across the street and burned a large hole in it.

After that, the maids refused to sleep in the garret and moved into the basement. None of us got much sleep for the next few nights, as cannons boomed twenty-four hours a day. Eventually we grew accustomed to the noise. Other deprivations were harder to bear.

Food was scarce. The
boucheries
sold only horse meat and, for a while, the remains of the exotic animals in the Jardin des Plantes. Pollux, the adorable baby elephant who was the zoo’s star attraction, was the last to be shot and butchered. After that, a few markets offered dead rats for a pittance. We ate no meat at all.

Most of the Prussian shells landed across the Seine on the Left Bank, too far to harm us. Still, we heard their thundering, and Mama’s nerves were frayed. She couldn’t sleep or eat and suffered from excruciating headaches.

A week before Christmas, the mail service resumed, and letters arrived that were dated months before. One, postmarked September 10 from Charles, contained the tragic news of Grandmère’s death. She had suffered a heart attack in her sleep after spending the day balancing Parlange’s books. Grandmère had always seemed indestructible; it was hard to imagine the world without her. Every day for the next two weeks, Mama, Julie, and I lit candles in her honor. We all cried a lot, but Mama was inconsolable to the point of madness, her grief exacerbated by guilt over her strained relationship with her mother. She took to her bed and refused to get up, even to wash.

After New Year’s, Pierre Gautreau moved into the spare bedroom on the third floor to help Julie and me take care of Mama. We hadn’t seen much of Pierre in the months before the Empire fell. He had been in South America on business and had returned to Paris only after learning of Louis-Napoléon’s surrender. He said he came back because he was worried about us, though I’m sure he also was concerned about his house, his collection of japonaiseries, and his investments. But to be fair to Pierre, he
was
devoted to Mama. She seemed to brighten up with him around. They spent hours discussing plans to turn one of our parlors into a winter garden with Oriental trees and plants.

Soon after Pierre moved in, the provisional French government, the Third Republic, signed an armistice with the Prussians. Many Frenchmen regarded it as a humiliating peace. Claiming they wanted to save France from both the Prussians
and
the capitulators, a group of National Guard dissidents formed a rival government, calling themselves by an old name popularized during the Revolution of 1789, the Commune of Paris.

The loosely organized Communards—their ranks included song-writers, brothel owners, shopkeepers, journalists, carpenters, and soldiers—embarked on a reign of terror as devastating as the Prussian bombs. They set fire to government buildings, confiscated the property of aristocrats, looted abandoned homes, murdered suspected government sympathizers, and erected barricades to stop the legitimate army.