22

I ARRIVED IN TOULOUSE IN mid-May, by which time Napoleon was already on Elba Island and Louis XVIII ruling from Paris. Wellington and Soult had fought in the hills on the outskirts of the city, not knowing that the war had already ended. Thousands of men fell on both sides in that useless battle, and yet no one seemed to notice. Everyone was celebrating the peace and a return to Bourbon times as though the past twenty years had never happened. Françoise and Pierre were beside themselves with joy at the sight of me. They had taken me for dead. Although they made no mention of my woman’s clothing, I could tell that they approved of my decision. Madame Cavent had sent them a note a few months before from Perpignan. She was on her way back to her mother’s house in Blois. As she hadn’t received any of my letters—in the last of which I’d given word of Uncle Charles’ death—I set about the sad task of writing to her again. Fortunately, called by my motherly instincts, I was able to entertain myself with little Pierre-Henri. He could walk on his own now, and tottered around the patio yanking leaves off plants and putting them in his mouth. He learned to call me “Aunt” right away. After a week’s time, I realized that my presence interfered with Pierre and Françoise’s privacy, so I took up residence in the inn above La Chasse au Sanglier.

When I went to see Lebrun in order to collect my rent payments, he was not in his office.

“He’s away on a trip,” his assistant, Ducharme, told me as he handed me the money and a long letter from Maryse. “Monsieur Lebrun got married and is on his honeymoon in Paris.”

My curiosity piqued, I asked the name of his new wife. She was Madame Larraz’ heiress. Since there was still a good deal of time left before the rental contract at Foix would be up, I asked him if he knew of a villa in the area that might be available. I wanted to have Dunsinane in the countryside, someplace secluded and pleasant.

“Not that I’m aware of, madame.”

“It doesn’t necessarily have to be a villa. Any country house would be fine. I need only four walls and a roof, a peaceful place, even if it’s small.”

“I can’t think of anything, madame. If I hear of anything, I’ll let you know.”

I was about to climb into the carriage when Ducharme came out into the street and stopped me. “I don’t know if it would suit you . . . after all, it’s on your own property,” he said, uncertain. “It so happens that Monsieur D’Alencourt, your tenant, has dismissed the gamekeeper. It’s just an old stone cabin, quite small. I don’t know if you remember it.”

Of course I remembered it. How many times had I played near it with the gardener’s daughters? The ivy that climbed its walls gave it a somewhat wild look, and sometimes we’d called it Bluebeard’s Castle or the Beast’s Palace. It was exactly what I was looking for.

Pierre took me to my château the following day. I’d never met Monsieur D’Alencourt personally, and he turned out to be a good-natured patriarch, surrounded by daughters, sons-in-law, and grandchildren. The property, including the gardens and stables, was extremely well kept, and I couldn’t help but thank him for it. When he learned that I wished to stay in the gamekeeper’s house for a few months, he offered to make some repairs to it and to lend me some furniture. Although my belly had scarcely begun to swell, I was certain that he suspected my reasons for wanting to leave Toulouse. During dinner he continuously praised the air at Foix, insisting that it was responsible for his grandchildren’s excellent health. I had further reason to be grateful for his tact—when one of his daughters made a derisive comment about Napoleon, whom she called “The Corsican Monster,” he ordered her to be silent with a gesture. Surely he assumed, given that I’d returned from Spain and that I was Uncle Charles’ niece, that I was a dyed-in-the-wool Bonapartist. “We beg God that the peace may last,” he concluded diplomatically.

The next day, as we said goodbye, he asked that I keep him in mind should I ever wish to sell the estate at Foix.

“I’m afraid that will never happen. Furthermore, Monsieur D’Alencourt, I’m very sorry to tell you that I’m not planning to renew your rental contract.”

“That’s unhappy news, indeed,” he sighed. “I already feel as though this place were mine. But, in any event, we still have three years ahead of us here, more than enough time for you to change your mind.”

As the time for the birth approached, Françoise left her shop in the hands of one of the seamstresses and, along with little Pierre-Henri, we went to live in the cabin. Thanks to the course I had taken in obstetrics, I knew all that needed to be done, even were complications to arise. The lying-in transpired amid a benevolent autumn. As we had back in Aunt Margot’s days, we struck up long conversations lying in the forest clearing, covered now in a splendorous carpet of golden leaves.

“So Christopher was the man of your premonition,” decided Françoise, after I’d told her why my son would be named Dunsinane.

“Yes, in the end, he was. Although he never knew,” I said thoughtfully.

“Have you heard from him?”

“No. Before I left, I gave him Lebrun’s address. If he writes to me one day, I’ll tell him about our son. But I doubt he will. He’s a man of many interests. And in any case, he only loved me as a friend, for which I’m glad.”

“How do you know that you’ll have a boy?”

“I’ve known since Russia. It’s too long a story to explain. But in any event, if I have a girl, I’ll still name her Dunsinane.”

“Pierre doesn’t love me anymore,” she said suddenly.

“What are you talking about?” I said, surprised, since I hadn’t noticed anything amiss except, perhaps, how late he came home in the evenings.

“He has a lover in Foix, in the village, I mean. Sometimes he doesn’t come home for days at a time. He tells me that he’s gone to take some people to Carcassonne or some other place. But he’s a terrible liar. I’ve done some checking. He met her in the mountains, in Andorra, when he went off with his brother. I think she’s a cousin of his.”

“How does he behave with the boy?” I asked, shifting my gaze to Pierre-Henri, sleeping peacefully atop the leaves.

“Oh, I have no complaints there. He loves him and spoils him to death. He’s a good father.”

“Well, that’s enough. Perhaps the business in Foix will prove a passing fancy. Do you still love him?”

“I love him as the father of Pierre-Henri. We no longer do anything together.”

“Are you telling me this so that I might do something about it?”

“No. I’m telling you as a friend. Life is strange, Henriette. Like a rope that gets tied in knots only to be untied later.”

“It’s true,” I said, thinking of all the things I’d gained and lost, “but though the knots are untied, they remain knotted in our consciousnesses. Surely you haven’t forgotten Claudette.”

“I remember her. Lately I think of her quite a lot. You never knew her well. Maybe not even Maryse did. She was a very special person.”

“Speaking of Maryse, I’ve had a letter from her. She and Robledo are both well. She’s learned Spanish. She got her way, after all; Robledo sold his sugar mill. Now they live almost full-time in the countryside, in the mountains. They were in Prussia. A business trip. She said in closing that they are thinking of taking a long trip . . . a trip . . . around . . . a trip around the world. Oh, Françoise, I think it’s time!” I exclaimed, caught somewhere between pain and happiness. “Scoop up Pierre-Henri and let’s get back to the cabin quickly.”

Dunsinane came out of my body with difficulty, as though it was hard for him to leave my womb. He must have weighed about three kilos and he looked more like Christopher than like me—his same gray eyes and thin lips, although everything in miniature. He latched on to my breast immediately, with the appetite of a little lamb. In order to spare him future complications, I told the parish priest a half-truth: I had gotten married in Spain to an Irish doctor, Christopher O’Gorman, who would be joining me again as soon as his assignment in London was over. I gave this same explanation to Monsieur D’Alencourt and his family, who attended the baptism and filled his cradle with toys, little gowns, colorful ribbons, tiny sheepskin boots, and diapers with his initials embroidered in blue thread.

No matter how happy I’d dreamed having a child would make me, Dunsi more than exceeded my wildest expectations. Seeing him move his small arms and legs in his cradle, changing his diapers, noting how perfectly formed his tiny fingernails were, a feeling of pride and belonging hastened me to pick him up, caress him and coo at him, even to sing him the folksongs from Puss in Boots. I don’t remember ever feeling more complete, more alive, more a woman.

As winter fell, Dunsi became congested and started sneezing. The weather had turned damp and cold. A continual drizzle matted the dead leaves along the forest paths, mixing them in with the mud. I assumed that Dunsi had a cold and I wrapped him up snugly in his cradle, but one night he began to cough and to struggle for air, and I decided that it would be better to hold him upright so that he could breathe better. Françoise and I spent hours and hours walking with him from one end to the other of the cabin’s three rooms. He scarcely slept; when he wasn’t coughing, he was crying. Nor did he eat properly. He would take four or five sucks from my nipple and then vomit the milk onto my shoulder. Suddenly, he spiked a high fever. I had bought various remedies at the pharmacy in Toulouse, Peruvian powders among them. I mixed them with my milk in a teaspoon and made him swallow it. But then he would vomit the foamy liquid. I tried the whole process again several times to no avail. His fever went up and we no longer knew what to do. I wrapped him in my blanket so that he would sweat, and I lifted him to my shoulder again. Françoise appeared with a jar of cherry conserves and a piece of cheese.

“You have to eat something, Henriette. You can’t go on like this,” she said.

I ate a small bite and told her I was going to sleep a little. I remember that the wind blew a window open and I felt her get up to close it. Then I fell asleep in the armchair with the baby in my arms. I awoke when the rooster started crowing in the henhouse. Dunsi, who had slid down to my lap, was calm and his eyes were closed. I lay my hand on his forehead to check his temperature. It was damp and cool. The crisis seemed to have passed and I stood up in order to settle him in his cradle. It was then I realized he wasn’t breathing. Screaming and begging God, I rubbed his body, I took him by the heels and swatted his bottom, I hugged and kissed him. But my Dunsi was no longer breathing and would never wake again.

I didn’t take him to the cemetery. Pierre dug his small grave just outside the clearing, next to the blackened trunk of an oak tree. I had his tombstone engraved with the prophesy from Macbeth:

‘Till Birnam Wood do come to Dunsinane.

It would have pleased Christopher.

Snow covered the clearing and the tree branches. My footsteps left imprints in the silence and I wept.

The grass began to turn green and the thrushes returned from the South. Berries ripened on the bushes and still I wept.

The forest bustled with caterpillars and grasshoppers. A snail left its laborious slow trail upon August’s clover. A spider swung on a ray of sunshine and I wept more than ever, seeing that the thousands of life forms I saw surrounding me were not enough to revive my heart. The black squirrel that lived in a hollow oak tree stopped scurrying about amid the foliage and jumped into my lap.

“You wouldn’t have a nut by any chance?” it asked me.

And suddenly it was Fairy Godmother, my old friend, enveloped in black tulle, her dragonfly’s wings beating softly, as young, slender and beautiful as ever.

“It’s been so long, Fairy Godmother!”

“Not so very long.”

“So what happened in Russia wasn’t my imagination?”

“Of course not.”

“I felt like I was here, in your magic circle.”

“You may come here whenever you are feeling lonely.”

“No matter how far away I am?”

“The only thing you need to do is wish for it very hard.”

“I’m sad, Fairy Godmother. My Dunsinane died. I have nothing left. The months go by and I don’t feel any better. I cry and cry and I don’t know what I’m going to do with my life. My soul aches, Fairy Godmother.”

“I know. That is why I am here. Today you are a child again. Otherwise, you would not be seeing me. You would think I was a squirrel.”

“Was I also a child on the road to Vilna?”

“You were a tiny thread of life. Scarcely even a little girl.”

“Was it you who pulled me back from death?”

“Me? Such nonsense! I don’t exist outside of this clearing. It was your desire to live that brought you here, a desire you have always had. Once I heard your aunt telling Françoise how you managed to escape the flames that were engulfing your house. You were five years old and you refused to speak after the fire. How well I remember the first time you laughed! You still limped a bit and you would let the candies your aunt gave you fall from your hands. You were thinking of your mother stretched out alongside you on a big white bed. You were sitting very near to the spot where you are right now. The other girls were gathering blackberries and mushrooms, but you didn’t move and you wouldn’t eat anything. I felt such pity for you that I stopped being a hare and began twirling around in front of you and making silly faces. I stuck my tongue out at you. I crossed my eyes. I stood on my head. Then you laughed. For the first time you laughed and your dear aunt was so happy. It was I who taught you to laugh.”

“I don’t remember, Fairy Godmother. But if you say so, it must be true. Did the gardener’s daughters also see you?”

“They never saw me. They were happy girls and they kept each other company. You always felt alone. Even when you were playing with them.”

“I remember some of your stories. . . . The one about the greedy squirrel who never stopped eating nuts, the one about how the caterpillar who wanted to fly turned into a butterfly, about the snail who was afraid to leave his house. . . . ”

“You also told me things. You told me about your walks with your aunt, about abbé Lachouque, about Pierre, about Françoise, and sometimes you even came here with Laguerre so you could show me how well you could ride a horse.”

“But then suddenly I didn’t see you anymore.”

“As I have already told you, only lonely children can see me. You grew up and didn’t need me any longer. Today you have gone back to being a lonely little girl. That is why I am here,” she said, her eyes looking at me now as though they were the eyes of the entire forest.

“The last time I saw you, you gave me a key. A golden key. Which doors should I open with it, Fairy Godmother?”

“You will know. But it is getting late. I am starting to get cold and I must change myself into something that will warm me. After all, I am more than six hundred years old.”

“Tell me, Fairy Godmother. Please. I don’t have anyone left. Only you. Tell me what I am to open with the key.”

“The doors to yourself,” she said. And then, beating her wings swiftly, she rose from my lap. “The doors to yourself,” she repeated, her tiny voice now almost inaudible, her wings becoming indistinguishable among the swarm of dragonflies flying above the clearing.

“You were gone so long!” said Françoise, seeing me arrive. Spoon in hand, she was feeding her Pierre-Henri a stew made of peas and carrots. Suddenly, I felt hungry.

“Is there anything for me to eat?”

“Why, yes,” she replied, surprised at my appetite. “I’ll fix you a plate right now. You must have walked a long way in the forest. Your cheeks are rosy.”

At the end of autumn, after putting my affairs in Foix and Toulouse in order—the modification of my will among them—I took the postal wagon, headed to Paris.

Submerged in my sorrow, I had scarcely paid any attention to the events of the previous few months. It wasn’t until I arrived in Paris that I understood the scope of their historical importance: the defeat at Waterloo, Napoleon’s ultimate fate, the return of Louis XVIII and the vengeful émigrés. I only went to the house on the rue Saint-Honoré to find my Woman in Battle Dress and to pack up Uncle Charles’ things so as to send them to Madame Cavent, who had decided to stay in Blois. Dressed again as a man, I rented two rooms in a guesthouse on the boulevard Saint-Michel, and paid a visit to Monsieur Debreuil so that he could arrange for my discharge for reasons of disability.

“Ah, Monsieur Faber, Madame Cavent told me you weren’t dead,” said the lawyer, fatter than ever, indicating a chair with a certain coolness.

“I would like to leave military service so that I might complete my medical studies,” I said, coming straight to the point. “Perhaps Madame Cavent also told you that I was wounded in one leg. I still limp a bit. I was held prisoner until the armistice. I didn’t want to leave Spain until I felt fully recovered.”

“Almost two years, isn’t that right?” he said, an absent look on his face.

“More or less.”

“I don’t suppose you have any letter or document that might verify your words,” he said almost impatiently, as though I were wasting his time.

“I only have money. I received a large sum from Havana. I’m only just settling in here.”

His eyes sparkled and a smile broke open his fat face.

“It will be arranged, Monsieur Faber. Don’t worry, just a small gift and all will be arranged. No one has any money. Not even the king. These are difficult times for all of France. I’ve never gotten myself involved in politics; I have friends for that. Nothing like friends, Monsieur Faber. Might you have available . . . let’s say, five hundred francs?”

“I can have it to you whenever you like.”

“Tomorrow would be fine. The sooner the better. Your name will be moved from the list of the missing to the list of the permanently disabled. Of course, with a little more, let’s say six thousand francs, you could become a Spanish citizen. That wouldn’t be so bad. Your Bonapartist patriotism would be erased, something that many are trying to accomplish. Who would ever have thought that Ney and Murat would end up before the firing squad? We could even negotiate some sort of title of nobility. I have a colleague with contacts in the Spanish Court. Things are bad there as well. The war has taken everything. Of course, you know this better than anyone. Oh, but nothing’s worse than our disgrace. As you know, the British have taken advantage of the situation. We’ve lost Savoy, the Sarre Basin, seven hundred million francs in indemnization, Alsace is occupied. But you are young, the son of a well-to-do family. This is your moment, Monsieur Faber. Houses, lands, palaces, castles . . . everything is for sale or under dispute. It’s the perfect time to invest, to buy cheap that which once commanded a high price. I am at your disposal.”

“Thank you, Monsieur Dubreuil,” I said, hiding my disgust at his words. “It will be enough to obtain my discharge. I need to matriculate immediately. Classes are beginning soon.”

“Don’t worry. You’ll have your leave papers in a few days. There are also opportunities to avail oneself of a favorable marriage,” he continued, showing me his ring, nearly encased in the flesh on his incredible finger. “The vast majority of the émigré nobility is now returning with no capital other than their titles and marriageable daughters. Perhaps I could be of some use to you in this delicate matter. Of course, it would be easier if you had a Spanish title, or Italian, at the very least. All of this could be arranged for no more than—”

“Another time, Monsieur Debreuil,” I said, standing up from the chair. “Another time. I’ll see you tomorrow so that we can formalize the matter of my discharge.”

“Don’t give it another thought, Monsieur Faber. I’ll take care of it right now,” he said unctuously. “But remember: everything is for sale and I am at your service for any opportunity that might arise.”

Back in the guesthouse, I was happy to have resolved a matter that had felt so crucial to me. Before traveling to Paris I’d tried to imagine myself in the future, in three or four years, an exercise I’d recommend to those who tend to think only in terms of an immediate tomorrow. Of course, the future seldom corresponds to our imagined vision of it, but in the act of imagining it, life at least takes on a direction so that one might cease to feel like a leaf in the wind. In any event, having cried my grief down to the last tear, I’d come to the conclusion that, despite the difficulties it might mean, I’d prefer to see myself as a doctor than as an idle rentière. Although my medical vocation had been battered, not only during the war, but also from seeing both Dunsi and Uncle Charles die in my very arms, something still remained of my old enthusiasm. Also, I remembered Christopher’s words: “You should take comfort in the thought that, thanks to the lives you were unable to save, today we have better weapons with which to combat death.” And so, I decided to complete my studies. After all, returning to Paris and to the Medical School was like retracing an old road, something that lent continuity to my steps. Once I’d graduated, I’d do what the majority of doctors did: I’d open a private practice—I could run it out of the house on rue Saint-Honoré—and I’d work in a hospital two or three times a week. Before that, however, I’d give myself a graduation present and go visit Maryse in Havana, something she’d begged of me in every one of her letters. Finally, there remained the question of love. Would I fall in love again? Would I have clandestine lovers, as had happened with Christopher? Would it be true that I still had two marriages ahead of me, both in foreign countries? What would I do were I to fall in love? Would I leave my profession? I left the answers up to time.

Throughout the course of my life I have seen the rise and fall of various idols of medicine, each within his own branch of specialization. About two years ago, during my brief stay in Paris, I got to thinking about them as I passed by the busts lined up in the Medical School’s gallery of honor. Some of my old professors were there. Their ideas and theories, once taken as definitive truths, had been branded as erroneous by those who’d succeeded them, physicians whose own discoveries would, in turn, meet the same fate ten or twelve years later. It was there, looking at the bust of Broussais, the man who had so revolutionized both the theory and practice of medicine during my last years at the Faculty, that I finally understood that there are no absolute truths, but rather, an interminable chain of half-truths. In exchange for his efforts to illuminate the mysteries that shroud the human body and to discover methods to prolong life, Broussais achieved recognition, fame, and medals of honor, but, who today remembers his name, his writings, his principles? If I’ve been reluctant to speak in depth about the particulars of my profession it’s because I know that the works I read with such enthusiasm and the treatments I administered to my patients would today—whatever the date of that convenient “today” might be—seem misguided, when not outright laughable. Nevertheless, in defiance of the voice that gives council to the most vulnerable part of me, the part that wishes for a kind of immortality, I’ve decided to come clean. I shall speak about Broussais, my first guide in the difficult occupation of combating disease; I shall speak of him, my now-forgotten teacher, whose career I’ve just reviewed in a tome entitled French Medicine, which Petit had recommended so highly during the most recent of our weekly visits.

The son of a surgeon, François-Joseph Broussais was born in 1772 in Saint-Malo. After serving in the revolutionary army during the Guerre de Vendée, he went to work as a doctor on the pirate ships that were disrupting British trade in the English Channel. In 1798 he went to Paris, enrolling in the recently opened Medical School. There he studied with the luminaries of the école nouvelle, Cabanis, Corvisart, Chaussier, Pinel and, especially, Bichat, whose theories he would apply, in his thesis, to the study of pernicious fevers. After graduating, he served as a doctor in campaigns in Holland, Italy, Austria, Germany, and Spain, alongside figures such as Larrey and Desgenettes. Owing to his experience performing autopsies between battles, he was able to publish his Histoire des phlegmasies ou inflammations chroniques. It was here he noted that a principle cause of death derived from fevers caused by inflammation to the lungs and gastrointestinal tract. The work was highly esteemed by Desgenettes, Pinel, and other “sacred cows,” even if Laennec, his rival, criticized his stubborn refusal to distinguish pneumonia from tuberculosis. Named as a professor at the Val de Grâce military hospital, he immediately became a favorite among the students, not only for his superior rhetorical skills when compared with certain of his colleagues, but also for the bold trajectory of his ideas, a trajectory that would radically transform the practice of medicine in his era. With the publication, in 1816, of his Examen de la doctrine medical généralement adoptee, Broussais was transformed overnight into the new Messiah of medicine. His point of departure, which he termed “anti-ontological,” relegated to the stuff of novels those detailed matrices of symptoms that described the different diseases, symptoms that appeared to be causes in and of themselves but that were actually nothing more than the superficial effects of important physiological changes. In order to understand these changes it was necessary to first subscribe to his theory of life. What was life, after all? According to Broussais, life was made possible only through stimuli or irritations, whether of the internal or external order. The principal stimulating force was oxygen, which produced contractions, or “vital erections,” in different organs, experienced sensorially by the individual. In the case of disease, certain organs were overstimulated by various disruptive agents, either the “ingesta” variety—cold air, food and drink, drugs and noxious gasses, for example—or the “percepta”—moral or psychological influences. The overstimulation caused inflammation which, in turn, caused damage to one organ or another. In this way, any pathologic damage was caused by an irregularity produced by inflammation. Therefore, the object of pathology should be the study of these irregularities. “The nature of disease depends, for the physician, upon the observation of physiological changes in the organs,” he used to say. “My doctrine is physiological because it does not consider the disease to be a foreign element, a common mistake made by ontologists, but rather simply as a change in the function of the organism.” If an organ was irritated, that irritation would propagate through “sympathy”—by way of the nervous system—to other organs which would then immediately become inflamed and present irregularities in their own function. According to Broussais, there were no specific diseases. Smallpox and syphilis were simply inflammations; cancer was the consequence of inflammation; tuberculosis was nothing more than a chronic pneumonia or pleurisy. In reality—he asserted—almost all disease began or ended as gastroenteritis, since it was the stomach’s destiny to be always irritated by the “ingesta.” Drugs or medicines taken orally were counterproductive, as they tended to increase irritation to the gastrointestinal system. Thus, the physician should focus his attention on the irregularities of the stomach. Changes in its functioning could spread rapidly to other organs, including the brain. For all intents and purposes, gastroenteritis was the only disease. “This is so much the case,” he explained, “that even malarial fevers may be explained as a periodic gastroenteritis.” What, then, was the proper treatment to relieve the ill? In light of the fact that almost all suffering was the product of inflammation caused by an overstimulation of the stomach, the treatment was “antiphlogistic,” that is, the application of leeches that would drain blood from the abdominal region, and a strict diet of liquid emollients and acidifiers. And suddenly, a substantial number of prestigious physicians, beginning with Broussais, swore that they had cured typhus, syphilis and gonorrhea, cancer and tuberculosis, smallpox and measles, with the simple use of leeches and an intelligent diet. The price of leeches went through the roof and so-called “physiological medicine” erupted like an enormous comet in the firmament of medicine. Naturally, being a comet, after all, the day arrived when it would disappear altogether. All that would remain of Broussais was his bust and a statue erected by his colleagues and students in the Val de Grâce. For good or for ill, the first years of my medical practice, as was the case for all the doctors of my youth, were based on Broussais’ ideas.

Save my enthusiasm for Broussais’ novel ideas, nothing extraordinary happened during my final year of medical school. In parallel fashion, nothing extraordinary, aside from boredom and rancor, occurred in Paris during the early days of the Restoration. It wasn’t only France’s form of governance that had changed with Napoleon’s fall. Despite the buildings and monuments that Napoleon had erected four years earlier, Paris now had an entirely different spirit. It was as though a new personality had been grafted onto the same body. To be sure, the Bonapartism of the common folk and of the old soldiers had not been erased, but it had been suffocated. Out of fear of reprisal, few dared to publicly praise the days of the Empire. The merchants and businessmen, once so allied with Napoleon, were now the first to call him the Tyrant, the Usurper, the Ogre of Corsica. A new class—new, at least, to me, born in the second year of the Revolution—composed of aristocrats, courtiers, and priests, had swiftly installed itself in the city, laying claim to lands and forests, titles and pensions and, what was more, demanding reparations for damages. They could be seen arriving from England, Germany, and Russia, the women in their grand flowered silk dresses, the men in stockings and generously cut frockcoats, worn open in front to reveal vests that fell to their thighs. They were the same people I’d seen in Baden-Baden back in the days of the Théâtre Nomade, playing roulette and rouge et noir. They arrived triumphant, treating anyone outside their class as a discredited rebel; they came, to hear them tell it, in order to return things to the way they had been before and to put the rest of us in our place. The priests also returned victorious, ordering masses for the Royalist martyrs and processions of atonement for the death of Louis XVI. With their return, Paris ceased to be a city of parades, dances and tri-color flags, becoming instead a city of preachers, church bells, and white banners embroidered with the fleur de lis. The political landscape was so narrow that only two factions had room to breathe within it: the Royalists and the Ultra-Royalists. And as if that weren’t enough, it was the latter that took control of the Chamber of Deputies.

One night, drinking alone in my room, I realized, almost to my horror, that I preferred Napoleon’s France, in which some of the Republican liberties had been maintained, to the obsolete and sterile country offered me by the Restoration. Having already defended my thesis, which applied Broussais’ principles to tertian fevers, and now in possession of my degree as Doctor of Medicine and Surgery, I decided that the time had come to pay Maryse a visit.