when I had heard it before, or in what context. The calculus of probability suggested that it must have been Dupin who had mentioned it to me—but he mentioned so many names, while he was using me as a sounding-board in helping himself to organize his ideas.
My own powers of ratiocination were no match for Dupin’s, but my long acquaintance with him had taught me something of his methods, and perhaps even communicated a little of his ingenuity...or perhaps not.
“Perhaps it was in memory of Monsieur Thibodeaux’s death that Monsieur Dupin asked me to hire a three-seater box, but to leave one of the seats empty,” I suggested.
The lady’s surprise was half-masked, but Chapelain’s was not. “But what about Groix?” He said. “Was he not taking the third seat? I assumed that he was making his apologies to you, because he had been called away.”
I realized my mistake too late, but tried to gloss over it as best I could. “The plot thickens,” I remarked—in English, because the phrase has no exact equivalent in French. I switched back to French in order to explain my meaning, however, even though I had deduced by now from the lady’s indeterminate accent that it was probably not her first language. “Monsieur Dupin did not ask me to invite Monsieur Groix, and I had no idea that the two of them had seen the opera together thirteen years ago, or that there had been a third party present.”
“But surely Dupin told you...,” Chapelain began—and then shut up abruptly, not so much because it was obvious that Dupin had not told me what he thought I ought to know, but because he had realized that he could not tell me either; the information had evidently come from his patient, and was thus protected by the veil of confidentiality.
“Did you deliberately leave a seat in your own box empty?” I took the risk of asking.
The question was aimed at Chapelain, but it was the lady who answered.
“Our intended companion is slightly indisposed,” she said. There was a slight edge of sarcasm in her voice. The masked woman was not showing any obvious signs of physical illness, but there was definitely a certain strain in her attitude and her voice. I thought that she might perhaps be nervous, in spite of her determination to appear calm—more fearful than expectant, I guessed. I knew that I had taken impertinence far enough already, however, and could not possibly raise the subject of her possible anxiety. Chapelain was, in any case, eager to change the subject
“I assume that you did not invite Saint-Germain to your box either?” he said, bluntly.
“I certainly did not,” I replied, “and I apologize for having unwittingly permitted him to use it in order to spy on Madame. A braver man would have thrown him out on his ear.”
“A less polite man, perhaps,” said Chapelain. “I don’t blame you—but I would not like you to take the wrong inference. He was not spying on Madame.”
I stopped myself querying that statement just in time, as my fledgling talent for education caused me to glance at the empty chair. Saint-Germain had been disappointed because the person he had hoped to see in the box was not here. Who could it possibly have been? I had an inkling—but that was certainly not a question I could ask Chapelain.
I was tempted to fish for more information about the mysterious Thibodeaux, but it was neither the time nor the place—and, as if to confirm that, the bell rang to request the audience to take their seats again. I bowed to the lady, shook Chapelain’s hand, and apologized for having disturbed them. Neither made any reply, thus suggesting that I really had disturbed them, and that they would rather I had not done so. A glance across the auditorium told me that Dupin had not arrived. His unavoidable delay had obviously been more protracted than he had hoped.
As I opened the door to the box, however, I almost collided with someone coming in—a young woman wearing a domino identical to that of the woman who was still in her seat. In spite of the mask, I recognized her immediately; it was Jana Valdemar.
Because her head was down and the range was too close, she cannot have seen anything, to begin with, but my stereotypical black jacket, shirt-front, and cravat.
“I’m truly sorry, Pierre,” she said “But I feel a little bet...oh!”
She had looked up. Evidently, she had not only realized her error but had recognized my face. Her exposed cheeks were pink, and she froze, utterly nonplused.
Instinctively—we were, after all, in the corridor of a prestigious theater, where etiquette rules supreme—I bowed. “An understandable mistake, Mademoiselle,” I murmured—and, moved by an irresistible influence, continuing murmuring, with urgent rapidity: “Obviously, since you are masked, I have no idea who you are, but it might interest you to know that the Comte de Saint-Germain is in the house, sitting in the upper gallery on this side of the auditorium. He came into my box uninvited before the performance and stared into this box, but I doubt that he will do it again. If you are discreet, you should be able to remain invisible.”
Then I stepped aside, holding the door open for her. I caught a glimpse of Chapelain standing up inside and looking out, a picture of anguished embarrassment. I nodded to him again, closed the door behind Jana Valdemar, and hurried back to my seat.
As I passed the stairway leading up to the gallery in which I had glimpsed Saint-German, I looked up reflexively. I did not see Saint-Germain, but I did see Lucien Groix standing at the top peering into the gallery as if he were looking for someone. I could not believe that he really had been following the fake Comte, given that he did, indeed, have agents to do that sort of thing for him, but he was nevertheless there. Why? Clearly, in spite of the fact that the regime and the administration were falling apart, Monsieur Groix still had time to “waste” at the theater.
Perhaps, I thought, he doesn’t want to miss the dance of the nuns.
Neither did I, of course; it was the highlight of the opera.
Whether or not it was due to Meyerbeer’s presence, the music and the choreography of the third act seemed to me to be exactly as I remembered them. I knew that other versions of the opera had expanded the ballet, sometimes replacing Meyerbeer’s music with something more bacchanalian, but this one seemed strictly orthodox.
The idea of the piece is simple enough. When Robert and Bertram go into the ruined Convent of Saint Rosalia—named for the patron saint of Palermo—in order to search for the magic branch, their intrusion awakens the ghosts of long-dead nuns buried in the crypt, whose silent ballet recalls, not the sanctity and placidity of their convent life, but the supposed erotic adventures of their remoter youth.
To be perfectly honest, the version of the ballet featured in the present performance seemed a trifle tame by the standards of 1847, although I could imagine that it must have seemed considerably more risqué in 1831; the art of ballet had undergone a considerable evolution in the interim, and so had notions of the kinds of debauchery that could be accommodated on respectable stages like that of the Opéra-Comique. Romanticism had a lot to answer for—or to be congratulated on—in that respect.
In spite of the fact that he was an exceedingly staid and bourgeois king by comparison with the Bourbons, Louis-Philippe’s reign had seen a considerable relaxation of moral restraint in the theater. Perhaps it was because of his supposedly democratic credentials that outrageous behavior once confined to the private lives of courtiers—at least according to scurrilous rumor—was now considered entirely appropriate for representation on the popular stage. I had never actually been to Bobino, but reportage suggested that far worse debauchery could be seen there every night than was delicately suggested in Meyerbeer’s ballet, and attributing such behavior to
