“If real love went the way of novelist imagination, the species would have vanished aeons ago,” I pointed out. “Suicide seems extreme, not to mention selfish and cowardly.”
“And if men understood that the heart weighs more than a purse or a sword, they’d have more success with women,” Catherine replied, leaning against a window to read by its light.
“Soldiers say that the danger of combat makes survival sweet,” Astiza added. “For women, the prospect of tragedy makes love more exquisite.”
“But it’s a jolly wedding that makes the story work, right? Just in case our money runs out and I need to write one myself.”
“Nobody wants to read about happy people,” Catherine said.
Their fascination made me so curious that I took to reading the romances myself when no one was looking. It was purely for research, you see, so that I could better understand
the fairer sex. I doubted any damsels had killed themselves over me.
While we idled in conspiracy, Paris meanwhile cast its usual spell, smelling like bread, tasting like chocolate, and moving like a dance. Trees leafed along the Seine. Fresh oysters dripped from baskets on the walls. Dice rattled and billiards clicked in shadowy gambling salons I avoided to preserve anonymity. There’s nothing like winning to make strangers wonder who you are.
The French capital, the British complained, had “the conceit of being Athenian,” but its pride was justified. Conversation was sharp and gay, history palpable, ideas in ferment, glamour revered. I slipped into a reception at the salon of the famed beauty Juliette Récaimer, the crowd so thick that musicians had to pin their scores to the backs of listeners because there wasn’t room to erect their music stands. Juliette had the face of an angel and the neck of a swan, and if she stood in a garden with Astiza and Catherine you’d have the Three Graces come to life. Her fame was heightened by her reputation as a virgin, an illegitimate child who during the Terror had dutifully married her own father—thirty years her senior—so she could inherit should he be executed. Scandal made her tragic.
The city never slept. The day began as the salons and taverns emptied, when the gates opened at one A.M. to allow carts to resupply the markets of Les Halles. Sometimes we’d hear the clatter and lowing of cattle and sheep being driven down the dark streets for slaughter. The bells for first Mass for the reinstated Catholic Church would ring at five (reminding the empire’s late-sleeping atheists why they’d been glad to be done with religion in the first place), and by six o’clock laborers and craftsmen, including our coppersmith neighbor, were clomping noisily downstairs to work. Flower markets blossomed on both banks of the Seine with the rise of the sun—Astiza bought a fresh bouquet for our apartment every three days, despite my scolding about the expense—and stalls and carts jostled for the best places to begin selling tobacco, brandy, ribbons, and crucifixes. You could get your portrait painted, a sonnet composed, or a uniform ordered, in minutes. Laundry would be unreeled across streets and courtyards like signal flags, and crepes would sizzle on irons. By nine the wineshops were open, and by ten the Palais de Justice on Île de la Cité dispensed decisions. Workboats swept up and down the Seine and, as the weather warmed, youths dove naked into the Seine. Mothers hid their daughters’ eyes while peering themselves.
“Invitations must be interpreted,” Catherine explained to us. “To be asked to a dinner at five o’clock means it is perilous to arrive before six.”
“Then why not say six?”
“That is just the kind of question an American male would ask, which is precisely why you require my instruction.” She turned to Astiza. “‘Five precisely’ allows you to appear at five thirty. Only ‘Five very precisely,’ which you are unlikely to hear from anyone except ministers and police, means five. Even then, a quarter past will not provoke comment, even from a prosecutor.”
“It is humiliating to arrive too early,” Astiza noted.
“This is just the kind of irrationality supposedly eliminated by the scientific precision of the revolution,” I said.
“It requires a minimum of sixteen dinner courses to impress,” Catherine went on, “and something more to be talked about. The new grand chamberlain searched days for the biggest and most spectacular salmon available, had it baked to perfection, flanked it by vegetables carved like rosettes, sprinkled the fringe with silver, and had it presented on a golden