And so it was on this particular night that I was startled awake by another nightmare. Only now that I had long since abandoned her there was no Jeanne to console me. The bed in which I found myself was unknown to me. Rather than the lump of damp straw I slept on at the Grand Miroir, this was a four-posted Medici bed with a finely carved oak frame canopied with swathes of purple and gold silk brocade. The mattress was the highest and softest I’ve known. The mellow light of an oil lamp revealed an aristocratic boudoir. The ceiling was coffered in gold, and in every corner of the room crimson camellias burst from Oriental vases. I heard the spit and crackle of embers glowing in a hearth on the other side of the room. It took me some time, my head misted by an opiate fog, to remember the chain of events that had led me here: a collision with a coach’s wheel, lying in a puddle on a cobblestoned street, and then the unexpected succour of a stranger.
I tried rolling over and was struck by a cluster of pains: one in my head, one in my back, another in my right hip and, most acutely of all, a throbbing pain in my left ankle. Slowly, I attempted to stand, but the discomfort sat me back on my haunches. I tried again, and eventually my feet found a pair of woollen slippers. I limped across the room, where on a velvet divan was laid a vermilion gown brocaded with arabesques. My effects were nowhere to be seen. I hobbled to the window and pulled back the heavy satin curtains. I had presumed it was early morning, but I was dazzled by the light of a sunny day after snowfall. I was in a room on the ground floor of a manor house, either in the country or on the city’s outskirts. I looked over a courtyard garden hibernating under the cover of snow. While my room was adorned with the most dazzling colours, the outside world was a daguerreotype of black and white.
In a corner of the room, beside the divan, was a writing table with a pen, an inkwell, a polished brass bell and several leaves of papier japon. The uppermost leaf had a note scrawled on it. I slumped into the chair and read it: Monsieur, I trust you have rested well. Giacomo is waiting to assist you. You may summon him by ringing the bell. Madame Édmonde.
Moments after I’d followed the letter-writer’s instructions, the door creaked open. Into the room floated a large silver tray followed by its deliverer, a butler, whose whiskered face was as still as a death mask. It was the stranger who had saved me the previous evening.
The best domestics have an almost magical ability to divine their master’s wishes, and Giacomo returned moments after I’d finished my coffee to guide me to an adjoining room with a bath. He helped me bathe, shaved me and, once I had dried myself, dressed me in clothes of the finest quality: the kind of suit one might have tailored at Staub or d’Humann, a shirt and cravat from Boivin, a tie-pin from Janinch and a cane from Verdier, with a solid silver handle in the shape of a duck’s head. Once, as a young dandy, I would have been proud to wear such finery. Now, in my syphilitic autumn, I felt like a doll dressed for some maudlin carnival.
Thus, seated before the fireplace in my costume, I meditated upon this turn of events for some time before Giacomo reappeared to announce that dinner was served. He eased me into a chair on wheels and pushed me down a long, sparkling hallway to a dining room where, at opposite ends of a long table, two places were set. ‘Madame Édmonde begs the pardon of monsieur,’ Giacomo said drily. ‘She has been unexpectedly detained and will join monsieur as soon as possible. In the meantime, she begs that you begin dining without delay.’
I ate, as if I had not eaten in days, all kinds of roasted meats, cheeses and jams, toffees and tarts, washed down with fine wine, coffee and brandy. The dining room was decorated even more garishly than my bedroom – ribbons of gilding on the walls, the ceiling divided into lozenge panels, intricate parquet floor, a marble fireplace, and more camellias in every corner. The windows looked out onto the same courtyard I’d observed from my bedroom, and the walls were almost covered over with fine paintings depicting various maritime and colonial scenes.
Finally, as I smoked a cigar, Giacomo announced the arrival of Madame Édmonde. He opened the doors at the end of the room and the slender shape of a young woman wearing a sumptuous black dress appeared. Pinned to the crown of thick braids that adorned her head was a veil of dark tulle that masked her face. I tried to stand but a shot of pain in my ankle cut my gallantry short. She approached the table hesitantly, almost shyly. There was a subtle, feline grace about her movements, set to the rustle of the velvet of her dress. She approached until she stood directly before me. ‘Please, monsieur, remain seated,’ she said. Her voice was hushed, as if coming from a much greater distance than where she stood. ‘I am given to understand you are pained, and at any rate, I do not stand for excessive formality.’
Giacomo helped her into the seat at the opposite end of the table. She asked if I had eaten my fill; I assured her I had, and thanked her for her hospitality. My clothes, she said, were being laundered. I asked after my fob watch. ‘It was shattered,’ she replied. ‘It has been sent to a watchmaker to be repaired.’
‘If you will pardon my forwardness, madame,’ I began, ‘but I am brimming with curiosity. Who are you?’
‘My name is Madame Édmonde de Bressy.’
‘De Bressy . . . Your name is unfamiliar to me.’
‘That is of no consequence.’
‘Why are you lavishing such generosity upon a complete stranger?’
‘You are not a complete stranger.’
‘Do we know each other?’
‘In a manner of speaking.’
‘I do not recall having ever met a Madame Édmonde, or even a Mademoiselle Édmonde.’
‘That does not alter the fact that we have had occasion to know each other, in a distant past.’
‘Perhaps,’ I said, ‘if you reveal your face I will remember.’
‘I assure you it will make no difference at all,’ she replied, but all the same she raised her hands to her veil and lifted it, pulling it back over her head, revealing a face that was hideously disfigured, closer in resemblance to the face of a monster encountered in a dream than that of a man or woman. Among the living, the only faces I have seen that could compare are in the daguerreotypes that were fashionable in Paris years ago, and which can still be found from time to time in the stalls of the riverside bouquinistes, depicting the deformed countenances of certain unfortunates residing in the Salpêtrière hospital. It was as if some daemon had pulled her eyes down towards the floor and simultaneously lifted the nose upward and to the right. Her mouth was diagonally distended. The skin of her face appeared to have been ravaged by flames in its lower part, and her chin was inverted. As it was already nearing dusk, she was illuminated by candlelight, and its shadows accentuated the unnatural walnutty crevices of her face.
I knew not what to say, and a silence as thick as snow descended upon us. It was Madame Édmonde who broke it. ‘You may take every advantage of my hospitality for as long as you wish,’ she said, lowering her veil. ‘You are not a prisoner here. You may come and go. You are welcome to stay as long as you like, to leave whenever you like – now, tomorrow or next week. When you decide to leave, you will be provided with a carriage and driven to your hotel.’ Your hotel, I noted, without interrupting her. She knew far more of me than I of her. ‘If you choose to stay,’ she continued, ‘I will unveil every mystery about myself that you wish. But if you should choose to return to your lodgings tonight, I have only one thing to say to you.’