It was Parisian tradition that in the six weeks before Ash Wednesday, the Paris Opera House hosted its annual masked ball. Varnier secured a box for them for the performance of Saint-Saëns’s Samson et Dalila.
For the opera, Juliet chose an elaborate soft-pink chiffon dress with beaded sleeves, a gathered train, and a cream-beaded bodice that she’d purchased in Milan. The pinks and creams of the dress were subtle, more texture than color. The dress was exotic and more mature than anything she’d seen in the Paris store windows. She chose a black mask, and her hat was a matching soft-pink-and-cream feather number woven in her hair. When she came down the stairs, Varnier, who was dressed in his waistcoat, was reading a letter that had come in the day’s mail. She stood at the stairs until he looked up and was delighted to see that he seemed to teeter at the first glimpse of her. She thought she saw him blink before he spoke. “You’re wearing that?”
“Oui.” So sure was she that she had affected him, she smiled in amusement. “You don’t like it?” This had become a thing with them. Varnier seemed to be growing increasingly uncomfortable as she began filling out her dresses. The décolletage on the dress was revealing for a young girl, but not for a woman. And at eighteen, Juliet was blooming. She’d caught him glancing at her as she stood at the piano with the opera teacher. He’d even begun to avoid close proximity to her in the dining room, adjusting his chair away from her.
“It’s lovely.” His voice cracked and he clutched at his white tie and placed his hat on his head. “Shall we go?” She took his hand and they descended the stairs and onto the Boulevard Saint-Germain to catch a coach.
As they entered the Palais Garnier, she spotted him immediately in the magnificent Grand Foyer. Despite the pure beauty of the room with its ornate carved ceilings and hanging chandeliers, Juliet scanned the faces of the crowds briefly, and it was as though her eyes pulled her toward the marble steps of the Grand Staircase where he stood with his back to her. Even after two years, from the curve of his spine to the color of his hair and his laugh, Juliet knew it was Auguste Marchant. As if on instinct, Varnier clutched her arm tightly, insisting they check their coats. Varnier never looked in Marchant’s direction, but he seemed to be aware of the other man’s presence.
After leaving her coat, she and Varnier ascended the stairs and she could feel him trying to lead her away, taking her gloved hand and pulling her behind him. It was the break in conversation that Juliet heard first. Marchant stopped speaking in mid-sentence as she passed him on the steps. Varnier’s hand continued pulling her up the stairs with a fervor that she hadn’t seen in him, as though he were her dance partner. She turned her masked face to the right to see that Marchant had, indeed, gone silent as he stared in her direction. There was a moment of coughing as the men he had been speaking with cleared their throats, and she heard one of them remark, “You were saying?” But Marchant didn’t answer, and so Juliet turned again and met his eyes through her mask. From the ashen look on his face, he knew it was her. When she reached the top of the stairs, Varnier led her to their box and shut her in as if she were a treasure.
Marchant entered his own box two away from Varnier’s. Marchant’s eyes met hers and he hastily took his seat next to a young woman. Juliet felt her heart sink as she saw the woman—a blonde in a sensible black dress—talking closely to him. The woman placed her hand on Marchant’s arm, and Juliet could tell they were familiar with each other. Of course, she thought. He would not have waited long to find another companion. His wife had been dead almost two years. She’d been kept away from him for too long. Juliet studied Varnier’s profile, his firm jaw and masculine nose, and she despised him then. She barely noticed the opera, positioning herself to get a better look at Marchant.
At intermission, Varnier was forced to excuse himself, leaving Juliet alone in the lounge. She circled the green velvet sofas, watching masked courtesans working their charms on patrons. Juliet knew this was where they conducted business. She was in awe of their style and their command of men. It wasn’t just their bodies, Juliet observed. They were wonderful conversationalists. The men laughed and she could hear clips of discussion about art and music.
Buoyed by their confidence, Juliet spied Marchant in the Grand Foyer, standing on the stairs in the same spot she’d seen him earlier. There was no sign of his blond companion, so she swept past him on the stairs, her head held high. Marchant quickly excused himself from the group of men he was with. Taking her by the arm, he led her carefully down the stairs. When they reached the bottom, he spun her toward him.
“It is you, isn’t it?”
“Oui.” Juliet could hear the soft sounds of their heels on the marble steps. She stared ahead, enjoying the fact that her face was obscured by her black velvet mask. It gave her a sense of control over the situation, an essence of mystery.
When they got to the bottom of the stairs, he led her around a corner under the chandeliers. Holding her shoulders, he stared at her. Juliet remembered the artist’s eye and the way he would examine the changes to her face after each year. He carefully peeled off her mask, and the touch of his fingers on her face took her back to Challans, to his studio and his bed. “How different you look now.” Juliet closed her eyes, and when she opened them, she saw his face was pained and bewildered. “But how?”
“I left Challans. I live here now, with my uncle, on the Boulevard Saint-Germain.” She touched his arm.
“You live in the Latin Quarter?” He looked surprised.
“Yes. I have for more than two years now. Since that summer.” She followed his eyes, which seemed unfocused, hoping to catch them and pull them back to her gaze. “Paris is so different from the one you painted for me.” She tilted her head, an angle she’d practiced in the mirror and that she knew was becoming. How had he not known? “You never looked for me?”
He closed his eyes, swallowed, and shook his head.
She’d seen this look before. It was the same look she had seen in his house in Challans with her mother. It was the look of guilt. She reached out to touch him again with her gloved hand, but he pulled back from her.
“No.”
“I don’t understand.” Juliet felt her heart pounding against the bones of her corset. For a moment, it seemed he was afraid of her. She’d rehearsed this conversation so many times in her head and yet it wasn’t going as she’d expected.
“It isn’t your fault.” He smiled sadly. “You were my muse, my inspiration. You held such power over me and I believed—truly I did—that I loved you. I suffered greatly for what happened between us.” His voice was a whisper. “I was foolish and my wife and child died as punishment for my sin. God took them. I nearly burned my studio down to the ground in despair.”
“I’m sorry,” said Juliet. She thought it was curious that he’d never stopped to consider that she had suffered as well. While she had scoured every street and newspaper for him, was it really possible he had never looked for her?
Again, he shook his head. Juliet thought his hair looked grayer and thinner, his face both more sunken and sagging than it had been before. He looked like a man who had not fully recovered from a lengthy and progressive illness. “You were just a child. It was not your fault. The fault was entirely mine.”