The Unruly Passions of Eugenie R.

by Carole DeSanti

  His father was French, a new-world aristocrat; his mother’s line Acadian and Souriquois, exiled from Quebec—as I recalled him saying as I matched my feet to his exquisite steps, dancing at La Palette. He had grown up on a sugar plantation near the Mississippi River, and “in town,” in New Orleans. A man of wit and lassitude, of disguises, who inspired confidence, perhaps because he was anxious about nothing—not money, nor love, not even war—though war was the reason he was here, in Paris.

  Our first meeting was at a Rivoli tearoom, looking each other over a little warily on our silk-striped chairs. I was still at the garni with nothing but the clothes on my back and his money in my stays, glancing over my shoulder for gray coats and wondering what a slave owner could want of a girl in a painting; why he would send her candies wrapped in cash. Beausoleil was a striking man of about thirty, I guessed: blond; robust but delicate; with rosy skin and a tawny bearded chin and quizzical blue eyes; a nose that looked like it had once been broken. It had, he said. When he was a boy. In soft, Creole-accented French, he explained that he preferred silk to cotton; the rue Royale in New Orleans to the plantation; and if there must be wars, financing rather than fighting them. He spoke of his dedication to the Confederacy; to his preference for life over art. And in bed, men before women. I choked on my tea.

  He set down his cup with a measured hand. What, he asked, was my relation with Chasseloup? Because he guessed that nothing was as it seemed, that night at La Palette.

  I was a poor storyteller and a worse liar, and his frankness inspired my own. I told him that, indeed, the entire evening had been a reckless stunt; had left me high and dry and ashamed; lost me my dearest friend and the roof over my head and made a fool of a man who had once helped me. If not for the sticky bank notes, I told him, I might be dead now, or worse.

  The man listened. It had been a good performance anyway, he said—a beautiful night. The flowers perfect; the dress divine. My charade with the camellias gracefully done; even more so as the last stand of a desperate soul.

  “You and I,” he said, “are romantics . . . confederates, if you will.” He laughed. Said he thought we might get along. What did I know about Creole life in Louisiana?

  Nothing at all.

  “Perfect,” he said, linking his arm with mine as we left our teacups behind.

  So we fell into step, Beausoleil and I. Arrived at an agreement and it all happened very quickly, like the sudden rise of a gas-filled balloon.

  I liked him. Appreciated the directness of our transactions and that his soft lips never sought mine, for I was not in the mood for a lover. Our entire enterprise together was to enact a fiction, not unlike the night at La Palette itself. Beausoleil told me about growing up in the garçonnière, the separate quarters built for young men, apart from the main plantation house and looking over the cane fields and slave cabins. How his brothers and cousins, but not he, went out to those cabins at night for the coffee-colored girls; Zachary-Gabriel preferred staying in the garçonnnière. Later, he learned his own pleasures and suffered a broken nose as a result. But on the back streets of the French Quarter, with dusky young men, freed black men; and others who didn’t live by the stiff etiquette of plantation circles, he knew who he was. Paris was another story. His country was at war; he had serious business to do and preferred discretion among his fellow expatriates. And so my evenings were his, but my bed was my own. I understood how to make his life easier—and he, mine. “Our Louisiana brothers” indeed, as the Confederates were sometimes called in Paris. Nos frères de Louisiane. The man was richer than Zeus.

  On the rue du Mail, across the Seine and a universe away from the rue Serpente, stood a wagon piled high with mattresses—some plain, others with striped ticking, a few with straw falling out, and the occasional goose down. Bedding was heaved down from the balconies of apartment buildings and bundled out of doors to the upholsterer’s men; feathers and straw filled the air. It was spring, the time of year for coming and going, and renewing of beds, and the women who slept in them—lovers, mistresses, and the enterprising. Everything changed for the season up and down this particular block. I arrived with a fresh cache of rented dresses—lighter, summery fabrics now—a stack of creditor’s notes, and the retrieved Clio meowing in a box. Installed as though making camp on the edge of a precipice.

  My new abode was a busy hive of lacquer-box flats off a curving, polished stone stairwell in a building of identical suites next to the Hôtel de Bruxelles Meublé at the intersection of the rue Montmartre. Across the street was a café and (for possible convenience) a branch of the Mont de Piété. Clearly it would not do to become attached to possessions, but that was not my present worry; today’s weather was springlike again, the air full of arrival.

  The stairwell itself greeted the visitor with a wall mural of beaming putti, their festoons of ribbon trailing over a garden of rosette-nippled, plump-thighed nymphs. From the treetops, a bright sun showered light.

  My rooms consisted of a petit salon for receiving company; a bedchamber overlooking a courtyard; a cupboard alcove and miniature tiled stove to the back, near the servants’ stairs, and the privy (shared). The foyer doubled as a dining room. All unfurnished, but the main salon was bright with balcony windows overlooking the rue du Mail. The building’s upper stories had been fashionably renovated as a roof veranda; its windows caught the sun and offered a home to a humid stand of palms and a struggling persimmon. This, I learned, was the place for the building’s tenants (all of whom had certain attributes in common) to gather in the afternoons. This building was a sort of live-in maison de rendezvous although this was neither admitted nor discussed by Amélie, Lili, Francisque, or the others who had cultivated the stock market’s rise and the ensuing exchange of favors. They all (except Sylvie, who sang in the opera, at least during opera season) traded in monthly allowances; migrations and peregrinations—the races, the carriageways, opera, theater, and balls; spas and watering places. My new neighbors would not for a moment think they had anything in common with les inscrits—poor castaways kicked about by life, working the tolérances or the streets, or girls who had had the bad luck to fall in love with a turned back. The constraints of Regulation were not for them. If one had enough credit to float on and a string of wealthy protectors, one needn’t duck around corners like a thief. It was as simple as that; in other words—not simple at all. Personal histories were held as closely as playing cards up in the glass palace.

  The back stairs, once meant for servants but now reserved for private assignations, were carpeted in a plush and silencing crimson. Maids’ quarters had been put down in the basement, English-style, and were regulated by a concierge known as La Tigre, who reigned over the tenuous boundary between the streets and privacy and, apparently, more than that. She held or delivered the mail as she pleased and could be prevailed upon (or not) for numerous small helps. Madame Récit was acquainted with La Tigre, and it was she, the marchande, who had connected me to this place. Beausoleil paid my way in.

  And so. If rain fell, it now spattered against windowpanes secured with a catch while a light fog rolled in over Montmartre. If Hédiard chose to introduce the whole coconut (you could never guess from a meringue that its principal ingredient resembled a human head complete with hair), it could be delivered to the door, although possibly to the distress of one’s maid. I hired one almost immediately. Her name was Sévérine, and soon I could not imagine how I had ever lived without her.

  I wrote to Jolie at Deux Soeurs to let her know that Clio was safe. I did not hear back.

  By autumn, my little escritoire (Beausoleil had found it at Tahan, fournisseur de l’empereur) was piled with messengers’ envelopes, ivory, white, blue; invitations, solicitations—receipts engraved with the names of florists, parfumeries, Galopin’s Vins Fins et Ordinaires (our old wine shop still had my loyalty); Potin’s provisions. Thanks to Beausoleil’s generosity and his excellent taste, I now regularly visited shops that I had once passed with my head ducked—those
that sold preserved quail eggs, rose water, and long pods of vanilla. “Don’t forget these lovely things,” sang the clerks, pointing out silk irises, carved ivory perfume boxes filled with ambergris or sandalwood. Gifts at Noël and for New Year’s, 1863, included a striped umbrella with an ivory handle, a brass-clasped wallet in Moroccan leather, lace gloves in cream, and a cherry-colored cashmere shawl. The little bells tinkled as we stepped out onto the street, winter’s chill brisk on our cheeks as we passed into our carriage.

  In six months, Madame Récit was paid (the principal, if not the interest, which was pushed off). Beausoleil insisted that I make the acquaintance of one Mademoiselle Colette (trained at the atelier of the English couturier Worth)—she of round hips, heels tapping across polished parquet, with her cashmeres and silks, buttons and lace. Beausoleil’s world, his taste; the people he saw and the warm press of his hand on my elbow—it all offered every possibility to forget. Maybe that is why we loved it so much. Sometimes it shocked me. More often, I simply gave way.

  It was a heady, fairy-tale version of Paris. The brilliance of the capital cried out, beckoning as it had for so long—and did still, as the day traffic slowed to the flicker of gaslight, then picked up to the evening pace. It was so cold and glittering, so whirling and bright. The commerce of fine things eased our passage, each of us hurtling forward into the unknown. One would do anything at all to keep it going. And we did—oh, we did.

  Beausoleil. We became a fixture among Paris’s expatriate society, a situation that Gabriel invented, stage-set, and dressed; it suited him exactly. There was a great flurry of socializing; and musicales—soubrettes at pianos draped with the Confederate flag, theatricals with great, ghoulish puppets of Lincoln, the American president whom the Southerners thought the very source and center of evil. Outside those circles, there were drives and races, theater, the opera, and dinners served à la russe until rings of wine and the remains of parsley sauce, rinds of cheese, and sucked bones littered upholstered-and-tasseled salons, where we stayed until dawn. Dizzy with drink and smoke; lightheaded with the blur of gaslight; senses taut and buzzing. The American Southerners had a way about them that enhanced reputation and fortune in Paris; they were passionate but not eager, refined but sufficient unto themselves; biding time until they could return home to their fields and gardens, their brave soldiers, the slaves they said they loved like family. A number of these dark faces attended the Confederates in Paris, and in France they were, technically, free—at least as free as servants could be. These black-skinned Americans ran Paris errands, wore Paris clothes, and strolled the boulevards as men and women in full possession of their rights as citizens. Certainly, I had slipped into such habits myself, with Beausoleil as my amused teacher. It was easy to acclimate. So terrifying to consider falling back.

  In my off hours, card games and gossip with my compatriots on the rue du Mail, up on the veranda with the potted palms. In this way, summer-autumn-winter and spring, again.

  Odette settled herself across from me in the open carriage, looking like a tea rose in her rustling taffeta. Her equipage was painted with a rose motif as well. A landau to the side of ours, top folded down for a champagne party, was emblazoned with the garlanded words FORGET ME NOT, the lover’s plea. And the mother’s.

  On that particular morning I had made my trip to the hospice, the sole and significant concession I made to my own past—never missing a visit on the permitted date as though vigilance alone was deserving. What it was possible to learn was whether a child continued to live and receive the state’s assistance, or if she did not. Now, having spent time in those corridors, I understood how poor the chances were for her survival—and I dreaded going. However, not knowing was worse. Odette thought me lugubrious.

  She tapped her fan and and the carriage started with a jolt.

  “So,” she said. “The sun rises and falls with Beausoleil, does it? You have tucked yourself into a narrow bed, Eugénie. Rumor has it that you are marrying him.” Even Odette did not know the exact nature of the arrangement.

  “No, when the war ends Gabriel is to marry his cousin, so the estate is not split.”

  “I suppose it’s just as well; those charming Southern ladies cannot be so open-minded at home as they pretend to be here. But then you need to diversify, my dear. Has anything caught your eye?” I hesitated. My eye did not want to be caught.

  “All day now he receives the battle reports from the brigadier generals about how badly the war goes. The least I can do is not scheme behind his back. ”

  “But you have to think of the future, Eugénie,” said Odette, sighing.

  “I am thinking of it. I have filed a petition to reclaim Berthe . . . You have to do it within two years.”

  “You are stubborn, aren’t you?”

  “Lili Duval is studying dental science. She says Berthe should have all her milk teeth now. Four front, her central incisors; four lateral incisors on each side, four first molars, four canines. Four second molars, lowers first.” Odette occasionally joined our card table at the rue du Mail, so she knew my neighbor, Lili.

  “Charming. Last I heard, she was doing spirit readings at the Psychologic Society for a bunch of monocles. Has she given up the planchette?”

  “She has learned that in Mexico City, men don’t allow dental surgeons to touch the mouths of their wives, and the women are all in terrible pain with rotting teeth. With a Paris degree all she needs is to put a notice in the papers before she sails.” We under the palms and the persimmon had come up with the wording for advertisements: The Painless Paris Extraction; Gold Fillings for Less than a Wedding Ring; Evening Session for Ladies in Molar Distress.

  “We are still at war in Mexico, you might want to mention to her. And I know for a fact that Lili cannot discuss molar distress in Spanish.” The French-supported Hapsburg, Archduke Maximilian, had been crowned Maximilian I of Mexico. Even though neither the Mexicans nor the Americans recognized him as emperor, Lili had already booked her passage.

  “She says by this time next year Haussmann will have paved the Mexican Champs-Élysées.”

  “And an American one in Louisiana? I hope you have been keeping an eye on the papers because your Beausoleil is likely to sink himself, along with his cotton frigates.”

  “I do read the papers.”

  “L’Opinion and La Presse, or Le Patrie?” She tapped me on the wrist with her fan. “Do you want a tip? Take your money out of the ‘American Bastille,’ if you have invested any. France will not go with the Confederacy in the end. Lincoln’s Proclamation turned the tide.”

  “The emperor is still sympathetic. At least, Gabriel believes he is . . . I don’t have anything invested, Odette.” I sighed.

  “Louis Napoleon can’t have everything he wants these days. He’s in trouble—just look at the results of the parliamentary elections—Orléanist nobles, independent liberals, republicans—he is surrounded by opposition. Even the empress distances herself from this Southern project. No matter how lacking the Yankee Northerners are, no one but the emperor is comfortable with this question of slaves, and goodness only knows why he is.”

  Beausoleil himself was frankly contemptuous of this question. To hear him speak, the Negroes lived in the midst of their families—were family themselves. Gabriel spoke fondly of the nurse who raised him; the cook, all of the house servants he had grown up with. His letters home included greetings to them all, including the midwife who had pulled him from his mother’s womb. He pointed out that the European poor were stuffed into factories and starved off their land; even to open the paper in Paris was to hear of the scourges of the underclasses, the filthy slums, the cholera-infected water. As for the infants abandoned at the hospice—that seemed to him the profoundest insult of all. Not even slave babies suffered that; they were suckled by their mothers, he said. He was sympathetic to my plight with Berthe; he’d even pulled some strings with his influential friends.

  Odette raised her small whip; we jolted forward at last. �
��Reclaiming the child is one thing, raising her is another.”

  “Gabriel thinks I should take the case to court.”

  “Fine for him, since he’s not planning to marry you.”

  I ignored the comment. “I need a witness who will testify that I and—Berthe’s father—lived together at the time of conception. I have located the house girl who took care of the place where we stayed.”

  We crawled amid the colorful carriage traffic, past manicured flowerbeds and smooth-pelted, artificially sylvan lawns. The fountains, usually sparkling, were dry. All of the capital’s fountains were dry that whole summer long; all of Paris impatient for Haussmann’s long-promised waters to flow over the aqueducts and into the taps and fountains.

  Odette leaned out and waved as we circled, to say a word to Madame “de V—,” cinched in oyster velvet and ostrich, looking too warm for the weather and every bit like the fat-purse cut-purse she was. A water seller moved among the stagnant crowd with his greenish bottles; Odette again snapped out her fan.

  “That water is right out of the Seine taps.” Behind Madame de V was another recognizable vehicle, Giulia Barucci’s open-air Italian carriage. Giulia gestured toward the water man and then waved at me. We had met at one of the American parties; she was known for extravagant stunts, such as dropping her dress without warning before European potentates, and was rumored to have been the mistress of the prince of Wales. Giulia was dreamily beautiful, with masses of dark hair. She had a daughter, Giulietta, who lived at a convent in Rome, out of harm’s way—at least most of the time.

  “So you are going to see her, this maid?”

  “I have arranged to meet her.”

  Odette snorted. “You’d best be careful. In order to claim that your reputation has been damaged, there has to be proof, and that proof has to be that there is a baby and that the man is the father. And that sounds like recherche de la paternité to me. And where is the man? . . . Eugénie, are you listening?”