I Am Madame X

by Gioia Diliberto

  All morning, I had fantasized that Julie would come up with a solution to save me. But she said nothing.

  “I can’t go through with it,” I stammered, choking back a sob. “I want to live with you. We could raise the baby together.”

  Julie laid her coffee cup on the table and moved closer to me on the settee.

  “What would you do for money?” she asked. “My painting hardly brings in enough to keep you and a child. Anyway, it wouldn’t be fair to the baby to grow up a bohemian bastard.”

  I started to cry. Julie took hold of the cane leaning against her knees and stood, stiffening her back. “It’s time to get dressed, chérie,” she said. She helped me into my camisole, corset, chemise, stockings, and petticoats. Then she removed the dress from its bag and held it out for me to step into. As Julie fastened the buttons and smoothed the train, I thought back to her aborted wedding to Lucas Rochilieu. I’m sure she was thinking of it, too. Before we left the room, she hugged me tightly. “Have courage,” she said.

  I draped the train over my right forearm, and Julie held my hand as we made our way down the hall. When we reached the staircase, loud arguing rose from the first floor. In the salon, Madame Gautreau sat in her chair by the mantel barking at Millicent, who stood in front of her, bowing her head like a naughty child. On the wall behind her hung a large blue immortelle, the type of beaded funeral wreath placed on the tombs of loved ones on their feast days.

  “Take it down at once!” Madame Gautreau shouted.

  “It’s for Denise!” implored Millicent. Denise was Pierre’s dead fiancée.

  “Well, then bring it to the cemetery later and put it on her grave.”

  “I want Pierre to go with me.”

  “You imbecile! It’s his wedding day!” Madame Gautreau’s face was purple with rage. If she hadn’t been so fat and lazy, I’m sure she would have jumped up and slapped Millicent. Instead she banged her cane on the floor so hard it could be heard on the terrace, where Mama, Pierre, and the priest were chatting. Thinking Madame Gautreau’s banging was a signal to start the ceremony, they stepped into the salon.

  “Shall we begin?” said the priest, a thin, bald man who lived in rooms behind the château chapel. He stood in front of the mantel facing Pierre and me. Mama, Julie, Madame Gautreau, and Millicent sat on chairs around us.

  The ceremony was over in five minutes. When the priest pronounced us man and wife, Pierre took my shoulders in his hands and brushed my lips chastely. “Long live the bride and groom!” cried Millicent. Then we retired to the dining room for a lunch of écrevisses à la bordelaise and suprême de volaille.

  Afterward I changed into traveling clothes, and at four, Mama, Julie, Pierre, and I took the carriage into Saint-Malo, where we boarded a train for Paris. Mama and Julie sat on one side of the square compartment facing Pierre and me. Usually I read on trains, or sleep. But I was too restless for either. What’s more, I was beginning to feel ill. My whole body ached, and my head pounded. I thought I might be coming down with influenza. The train rolled through the countryside, purple with heather, past the rough pastures and dark little villages. I tried to get comfortable. I removed my shoes, folded my jacket into a pillow, and leaned the small of my back against it. Nothing helped. The light began to fade, and the sky outside the window turned pink, then deep blue. Before it fell to black, a peculiar procession of gray clouds passed overhead.

  Mama and Julie dozed while Pierre snored beside me. Suddenly a sharp pain gripped my abdomen. It subsided, then returned a minute later with stronger force. I felt sick to my stomach, like I might throw up.

  “Pierre, I’m sick.” I tugged on my new husband’s sleeve to awaken him.

  “What? Mimi? What’s wrong?” Slowly he roused and looked at me through half-closed eyes.

  “I’m sick.”

  “I’ll get you a glass of water, dear.”

  Pierre left the compartment, and when he returned with the water, the pain was worse. I lay against his lap as he stroked my forehead.

  The attacks of pain grew stronger. I was crying now, afraid I’d start screaming, I was in such agony. I clasped Pierre’s hands and bit down on my own wrist; nothing helped. My cries had awakened Mama and Julie.

  “What’s wrong, Mimi?” Mama asked when she saw me slumped across Pierre’s lap.

  “We don’t know,” answered Pierre. “She started feeling ill almost as soon as we left Saint-Malo.”

  “Poor child,” said Julie. She moved across the compartment and sat next to me.

  By the time the train pulled into the Gare Montparnasse and the brakeman had parted the steel doors, I was in too much pain to walk.

  As Pierre lifted me, I felt a warm wetness between my legs.

  “My God! Her dress!” Mama cried. I looked down; the back of my skirt was soaked with blood. Pierre removed his coat, and Julie helped him tie it around my waist. Then Pierre, with Mama and Julie holding our bags, carried me off the train, through the crowded station, and into a cab. “Forty-four, rue de Luxembourg,” Pierre directed the driver.

  At home, he carried me up to my room and then left to fetch the doctor.

  I lost consciousness for several hours. When I awoke, I was staring at the glint of a diamond tiepin in the blue-white morning light slanting through the window. My gaze shifted from the tiepin to the face above it. Staring down at me through thick, round spectacles was Dr. Marcel Chomel, who had once treated my skin with his arsenic-based Chomel’s Solution.

  “How are you feeling, Madame?” he asked softly. It was the first time anyone had called me Madame. It sounded strange.

  “My head is so heavy,” I said as I started to sit up.

  Dr. Chomel gently pushed me back against the pillows with a cool hand. Mama and Julie stood on either side of the bed with pale, weary faces.

  “Chérie, you lost the baby,” Julie said.

  I glanced at Mama. All the anger and tension of the previous weeks had drained from her face. She looked relieved.

  “It’s true, Mimi,” she said softly.

  “Where’s Pierre?”

  “He’s gone to his office. He’ll be back this afternoon to see you.”

  At that moment, I was too weak and sick to feel sad. But over the following days, as I began to recover, I mourned the infant as if I had lost a living child whom I had nursed and loved. Even at my young age, I’d learned how sorrow builds upon sorrow; the heart can take just so much. My grief for the unborn baby renewed my grief for Papa and Valentine, which always hovered below my surface cheerfulness, waiting to bubble up and overwhelm me. Some days I cried so much I thought I’d never stop.

  About the only good thing I can say of this time is that Dr. Pozzi was not part of my misery. I had stopped loving him. One day, I woke up and felt no pain or longing when I thought of him—only regret that I had ever met him.

  Sadly, my heart had hardened, not only to Pozzi but to his entire sex. Though I’d have several lovers over the years, I could never give myself entirely to any of them, never rely on their assurances, never persuade myself that things would work out. The only man I trusted was Pierre, but I dreaded spending the rest of my life with him. I wasn’t ready to be a wife, not even a faux wife in a mariage blanc.

  Thankfully, I didn’t have to live with Pierre right away. A week after our wedding, he left on a long trip to Chile, where he had once lived and where he still had substantial investments. I remained at Mama’s house, and my old life of sleeping late and spending the afternoons at Julie’s atelier resumed. I didn’t think at all about Pierre. I knew it was only a matter of time before he came back into my life, but I hoped that time would be postponed as long as possible.

  Three months went by. Then, one afternoon while Mama and Julie were out, Pierre showed up at the house with two professional packers. I greeted him in the salon, and one of the maids took the packers—two young women—upstairs to load my things into trunks that would be sent to Pierre’s house. I tried to hide my disappointment that
he had returned. I was glad enough to see Pierre, but I was not looking forward to moving in with him.

  “Pierre! It’s been ages,” I said after we kissed perfunctorily.

  “I was gone much longer than I thought I’d be,” he answered. “But now I’m here to claim my beautiful bride.” He took a long look at me and seemed pleased by what he saw. My brief pregnancy had subtly but inexorably altered my body. I was more womanly, with fuller breasts and shapelier arms and hips.

  “I’ve brought you a present,” said Pierre. He left the parlor and returned a moment later with a large square box he had placed on the hall table. “Open it.”

  I lifted the lid, pushed aside the tissue, and pulled out a beautiful black dress. It was much simpler and more revealing than anything I had ever worn or seen anyone else wear. The skirt was a slim black satin tube with the train gathered in back. The heart-shaped black velvet bodice was nothing but a camisole constructed on a wire frame that was sewn into the fabric and held up with two thin diamond-studded straps.

  “Do you like it?” asked Pierre, smiling broadly. “The designer is a talented young man named Félix Poussineau. I think he’s going to give Worth a run for his money.”

  “I love it!” I exclaimed. The theatrical daring of the dress immediately appealed to me. Poussineau had gotten his start designing costumes for the theater, and throughout his long career he never lost a sense of bold showiness. Yet there was nothing elaborate or fussy about his clothes. Indeed, their stark simplicity was far in advance of its time.

  Pierre had first learned of Poussineau through an antique-dealer friend, and he had visited the designer’s atelier a week before our marriage. “When I saw his clothes, I knew they’d be perfect for you,” Pierre said.

  My husband was right. After my introduction to Poussineau, I rarely wore other designers. I held Pierre’s present up to my body and ran my hand over the soft satin and velvet. “I can’t wait to wear it.”

  “You can wear it soon,” said Pierre. “I’m taking you to the opening of the opera.”

  The new gilt-and-marble opera palace, off the boulevard des Capucines, was finally opening after thirty-six million francs and fourteen years of planning and construction. Conceived during the height of Louis-Napoléon’s reign, it was the crowning glory of the Haussmanization of Paris and had been wildly anticipated by a public nostalgic for royal glamour. Tickets had been sold out months in advance. Pierre, who had a genius for befriending the right people and was not shy about asking for favors, managed to get a box at the last minute through the Prefect of Police, his neighbor on rue Jouffroy.

  I spent the next three days preparing for the opera opening. I tried on my dress over and over again, enjoying it more each time. It was a gown meant for a stage star, and it made me feel theatrical to wear it. I loved how the inky fabrics heightened the marble whiteness of my skin. At the same time, though, the dress made my hair look dull and brownish. My red tresses had darkened over the past few years, and, along with their vivid color, they had lost much of their shine. I decided to ask my coiffeur, Emile, to come to the house and henna my hair.

  He arrived after lunch, and a maid brought him to my boudoir. A vain black-haired man with a stiffly waxed mustache, Emile had put on weight recently, and his gray trousers and waistcoat were two sizes too small.

  “This is a messy job, Madame. And a long one,” said Emile as he unpacked his jars, combs, and brushes from a leather satchel and set them up on my dressing table. As he reached up to adjust one of the projecting bracket lights on the side of the table, the top button of his waistcoat popped off and flew into my powder box. “Mon Dieu,” he gasped. “I must do something about this stoutness.” He fished out the button with two thick, hairy fingers and stashed it in his pocket.

  As I sat on a bench at my dressing table, Emile positioned himself behind me and draped a heavy muslin cloth over my shoulders. He twisted a lid off a glass jar and scooped a large ladleful of bright-green henna into a mixing bow. He poured some water into it and began stirring furiously.

  “Like baking a cake,” he said into the mirror in front of me, smiling widely and showing a mouthful of yellow teeth. After a few minutes of stirring, he dipped a paintbrush into the henna and, lifting small sections of my hair one at a time, applied the green goo evenly. Afterward he wrapped my head in a Turkish towel and told me to sit in front of the fire. “The heat will absorb the henna into your follicles. You see, I’m a chemist as well as a pastry chef,” he said, chuckling.

  Emile told me to stay immobile until he returned. He left the house for two hours, and when he came back, smelling of garlic and port, the maid followed him into my room. “I need an assistant for this operation,” he said. The maid pulled aside the curtain hiding my claw-footed tub and arranged the mat in front of it. Emile instructed me to lean over the tub, and he held my head as the maid poured water through my hair. The liquid running into the drain was brown, but when I looked in the mirror, I saw that my hair was carrot-red.

  “This is horrible! I look like a clown,” I shrieked.

  Emile glared at me. “You should have said you wanted it darker. Now we must try again.”

  The coiffeur sent my maid to the cellar for a bottle of burgundy, which he mixed with a fresh batch of henna. Then he applied it to my hair and had me sit in front of the fire for another two hours. This time my hair turned a deep, rich mahogany. I was very pleased with it, and I’ve maintained it to this day.

  My new hair color seemed to demand more dramatic makeup, so I mixed some mauve tint in my blanc de perle powder and daubed it on my face. It highlighted the bluish tinge of my natural skin tone and, I thought, looked interesting with the mahogany hair.

  Then I got the idea of rouging my ears. A few years before, I had seen the actress Yvette Sicard play Cleopatra with brightly reddened ears. The effect was bizarre yet striking. I dipped my index finger in a pot of lip pomade and drew it over the tops of my ears to the lobes. Then I studied myself in the mirror. “Perfect,” I said to my reflection.

  On the night of the opera, two hours before Pierre was to pick me up, the maid came to my room to help me dress. I stood before her, naked from the waist up, wearing only silk stockings held up with satin garters and a pair of drawers trimmed in lace. The maid looked at my bodice and skirt draped over the settee and turned pale.

  “Where are your chemise and camisole? Your corset?” she asked.

  “I can’t wear any undergarments with this,” I said, picking up the velvet bodice and handing it to her. “Here, help me.”

  She slipped the diamond straps over my shoulders and fastened the buttons at the back. Then she spread a thin petticoat into a ring on the floor, and I stepped into it. Finally, I dropped the satin skirt over my head and slipped on a pair of black satin pumps with three-inch “Louis” heels shaped in a graceful reverse curve.

  “My fan, please,” I said. The maid was astonished at the bareness of my outfit and stared at me with her mouth open. She handed me the fan and a small beaded purse.

  “Have a good evening, Madame,” she stammered before I descended the stairs.

  Pierre was waiting for me in the parlor. His face opened into a broad smile when he saw me. “You’re gorgeous,” he said. We drove to the Place de l’Opéra, arriving just as the purple-robed Lord Mayor of London strode toward the entrance, proceeded by blaring trumpets. A thousand lights from street lamps and houses beamed, illuminating the frenzied scene. The entire Chaussée d’Antin was blocked by carriages, and soldiers on horseback galloped in front of the teeming crowds lining the boulevards.

  Pierre and I entered the vast marble vestibule, gave our wraps to Pierre’s driver, and made our way up the grand staircase, through a sea of ballgowns and black tailcoats. We found our box in the second tier. All around us were the brightest lights of France, a mingling of royalty and Republican politics. On the right of the proscenium were the President of the Republic, Marshal MacMahon, and a coterie of ministers and influential
politicians. On the left was a descendant of the royal family of Poland and King Alfonso XII of Spain. Sitting nearby were the Duc de Nemours, a prince of the blood royal of France, and, in front of him, the Comte de Paris, the rightful successor to Louis-Philippe, the legitimate heir to the French crown.

  The lights in the gigantic chandelier at the center of the ceiling dimmed, then flickered out. The curtain rose on the first act of Jacques Halévy’s La Juive, and the orchestra began to play. No one was listening. Everyone was too busy scrutinizing the crowd and talking to their neighbors. Indeed, the chatter in the vast theater was so loud it nearly drowned out the music. I trained my opera glass on the Lord Mayor’s box and was surprised to see that his wife was obese and wearing an ugly pink gown. Then I tried to find President MacMahon. As I scanned the dim canyons of the vast theater, I became aware that a high percentage of heads and opera glasses were turned on me. I was used to drawing stares, but this scrutiny was more intense than usual. I quickly realized it was because of my dress. The other women worebulky, elaborate gowns trimmed with ruching, sequins, fringe, feathers, and lace. Though some of these dresses were décolleté, none of them exposed anywhere near as much flesh as mine.

  I felt a quickening in my chest, a mounting excitement that I was the center of attention. I dropped my glasses into my lap, straightened my back, and set my face in a serene countenance. Pierre looked pleased, proud to be with me. I was beginning to understand that he had married me for more reasons than kindness and a desire to provide a cover for himself and Madame Jeuland. He was proud of my looks, and he liked showing me off. I was an exotic prize, like his Japanese screens and urns.

  At the interval, Pierre and I made our way through the long, wide corridors lined with gilt mirrors and busts of famous composers, to the Galerie des Glaces, where we ordered champagne. Women snickered at me behind their fans. “Why, she might as well have worn a nightgown,” I overheard a wrinkled blonde hiss. “It’s indecent. How could her husband let her go out like that?” whispered her companion.