Marianne

'Oh—! What a splendid man!'

'It is my father,' Marianne said tonelessly.

All three stood motionless, their feet in the dust, their eyes riveted on the portrait which gazed back at them mockingly, with eyes that were extraordinarily alive. For Marianne, there was great poignancy in this confrontation. Until this moment, her father had been to her only a rather faded miniature in a frame of seed pearls, the picture of an elegant, sardonically smiling man, a little world-weary, almost effete, whom she had regarded with the same kind of vague fondness she might have felt for any attractive portrait or for the hero of a novel. But the arrogant young soldier portrayed here touched her in the deepest fibers of her being, because in each of those bold features she recognized herself. He was so like her. The high cheek-bones, the challenging look in those mocking, slightly upward curving eyes, the wide, sensual mouth, betraying the stubborness of that strong, square jaw. He was all at once very close to her, this father she had never really known.

It was Jolival who broke the spell.

'You are his daughter all right,' he said pensively. 'He cannot have been much older than you when that picture was painted. I have never seen a man more handsome, or more virile. But who could have hung it there? Look—' Jolival brushed the gilded frame with one pale kid-gloved finger, 'not a speck of dust! While everything else—'

An expressive movement of his arm embraced the desolation around them. Then he paused, his arm still in mid-air, as from somewhere upstairs a floorboard cracked sharply, as though under someone's feet.

'But – is there someone here?' Marianne said softly.

'I'll go and see,' Arcadius told her.

He ran quickly to the staircase, whose broad sweep could be seen through a gaping doorway and leapt up two at a time with the lightness of a dancer. Left alone in the salon, the two women looked at one another, neither anxious to break the silence. Marianne had a strange feeling that this empty, desolate house where the one portrait hung in state, was none the less alive, with a dim, underground life of its own. She was torn between two contradictory urges, to sit down right there on the dusty ground and wait for what God knew what or to run away, and shut fast the doors that had opened with such suspicious ease and never return. The thought that very soon workmen would come and break the silence of this peculiar shrine with all their clamour troubled her, as though there was something wrong about it. And yet, no one had more right than she to cross this threshold, and to awaken the sleeping echoes of the old house. The house to which, even yesterday, she had not given a thought had now become part of her flesh and she knew that she could never tear it from her again without leaving a wound. Her eyes returned to those of the portrait which seemed to follow her wherever she went and she spoke to it, a silent, earnest prayer from her heart.

'Is it your wish, tell me, is it your wish that I should come back here, to our house? Already, I love it so! I will restore it to its past splendours, and once again you shall preside over a setting worthy of you.'

Then, as though the house were trying to answer her, the one remaining whole window in the room, its fastening perhaps broken or ill-latched, was caught suddenly by a gust of wind and flew open. Marianne moved across to shut it and in doing so saw that it gave, like the rest, on to a small garden laid out around a green and stagnant pool. Beside the pool a stone cupid with a blackened nose stood dreaming with his arms around a large dolphin that had long since ceased to spout water. And just at that very moment, the rain-filled clouds parted to make way for a pale, timid ray of sunshine which caressed the cupid's cheek, revealing his enigmatic smile. And, without quite knowing why, Marianne felt comforted and accepted. Just then, Arcadius came back.

'There's no one there. It must have been a rat.'

'Or just the woodwork creaking,' Fortunée added, shivering in her furs. 'It is so dank in here! Are you sure you want to live here, Marianne?'

'Quite sure,' Marianne answered on a note of sudden happiness, 'and the sooner the better. I shall ask the architects to work as quickly as possible! I think they will be here soon.'

For the first time, she had spoken out loud, as though officially taking possession of the silence. The warm notes of her voice rang through the empty rooms triumphantly. She smiled at Fortunée.

'Let's go,' she said. 'You are almost dead with cold. It's as draughty here as in the street.'

'You don't want to see upstairs,' Jolival said. 'I can tell you, there is nothing there. Apart from the walls, which could not be stolen, and the charred remains in the fireplaces, absolutely nothing is left.'

'Then I had rather not see. It is too sad. I want this house to find its soul again—'

She stopped, her eyes on the portrait, with the sensation of having said something foolish. The soul of the house was there, before her, smiling arrogantly against an apocalyptic background. What she had to do was to restore its body, by re-creating the past.

Outside, they could hear the horses blowing and stamping on the cobblestones. The cry of a water carrier rang out, waking the echoes of what had been formerly the rue de Bourbon. It was the voice of life, of the here and now which held so much appeal for Marianne. With Napoleon's love to protect her, she would live here as sole mistress, free to act as she pleased. Free! It was a fine word when, at that very moment, she might have been buried alive in the heart of the English countryside by the will of a tyrannical husband, with boredom and regret her only companions. For the first time, it occurred to her that after all she might have been lucky.

Slipping her arm affectionately through Fortunée's, she walked back with her to the hall, though not without one last affectionate look of farewell at the handsome portrait.

'Come,' she said gaily. 'Let's go and have a big, scalding hot cup of coffee. That's the only thing I really want at present. Close the doors carefully, my friend, won't you?'

The 'Greek prince' grinned. 'Don't worry,' he said. 'It would be too bad if so much as a single draught escaped.'

In a cheerful mood, they left the house, re-entered the carriage and were driven back to Madame Hamelin's.

Charles Percier and Leonard Fontaine might have been called the heavenly twins of decoration under the Empire. For years, they had worked together in such close collaboration that beside them, Castor and Pollux, Orestes and Pylades might have seemed mortal enemies. They had met first in the studios of their common master, Peyre, but then, when Percier won the Grand Prix de Rome in 1785 and Fontaine the second Grand Prix in 1786, they came together again beneath the umbrella pines of the Villa Medici and had remained together ever since. Between them, they had undertaken to re-design Paris in the Napoleonic style, and there was nothing good of Percier's that did not show the hand of Fontaine and no proper Fontaine without a touch of Percier. And being the same age, within a year or two, one born in Paris the other at Pontois, they were generally regarded in every day life as inseparable brethren.

It was this pair, so eminently representative of French art under the Empire who, late that afternoon, stepped through the doors of Fortunée's salon. That salon had never been so empty of company, but since this was Napoleon's wish, that amiable lady uttered no word of protest. Except for Gossec, not a soul had crossed her threshold all that day.

The two architects, after bowing politely to the ladies, gave Marianne to understand that they had paid a preliminary visit to the house in the rue de Lille earlier that afternoon.

'His majesty the Emperor,' Charles Percier added, 'has intimated to us that the work should be so carried out that you, mademoiselle, may take possession of your house with the least possible delay. We have therefore no time to waste. To be sure, the house has suffered a good deal of damage.'