Matthew Pearl - The Poe Shadow

"Oh, I believe she and I met. She is dressed as an ostrich?"

Bonaparte laughed. "There are feathers on her. Your guess of what animal is as good as mine!"

"Our American friend," Montor said, putting his arm through mine, "is trying to practice our native language for his private researches. Have you been back to Paris recently, my dear Bonaparte?"

"Father used to try to sway me to live there, you know. I cannot think for a moment of settling myself out of America, though, Montor, for I am too much attached and accustomed to it to find pleasure in Europe." He tapped an intricately detailed gold snuffbox and offered some to us.

A woman paraded toward us from where the host played his violin accompanied by an orchestra. She was calling out to Bonaparte by a nickname, and for a moment I thought it was his ostrich-feathered wife, until I saw that she wore the flowing robes and jewels of a queen. Montor whispered to me: "That is Elizabeth Patterson, Jérôme's mother." His whisper was so discreet it was clear I should pay attention.

"Dear Mother," said Jérôme formally, "this is Quentin Clark, a Baltimorean of some wit."

"How whimsical!" replied this costume-queen who, though not at all tall, seemed to tower over all of us.

"Mrs. Patterson." I bowed.

"Madame Bonaparte," she corrected me on both points and offered her hand. There was an irreducible beauty about her face and her pristine eyes that was almost tragic. One could not help but be in love with her, it seemed to me. She looked at me with sharp disapproval. "You are uncostumed, young man."

Montor, who was dressed fabulously as a Neapolitan fisherman, explained my lack of disguise by way of his last-minute invitation to me. "He is studying French customs, you see."

Madame Bonaparte's eyes flared at me. "Study hard."

I would realize once I arrived in Paris that this dress-ball queen was right about my grasp of French customs. Moreover, as I looked around at the extraordinary room of masked and obstructed faces, I understood that this was what both Peter and Auntie Blum wanted, in some way. There was something here, something beyond the liveried servants and banks of flowers glowing with lamps inside them, something powerful that had very little to do with money and that Baltimore desired to add to its commercial triumphs.

By that point in time after the occasion of the burning book, I had returned to our law office to complete certain unfinished work. Peter hardly acknowledged my presence. He would whistle whole staves of music up and down our stairs in frustrated displeasure. Sometimes I wished he would simply yell at me again; then in reply I could at least detail the progress I had made.

Hattie seemed to follow the example set by Peter, seeking me out less and less, but she did take much trouble to convince her aunt and family to be patient regarding our engagement and to give me time. I tried my best to reassure Hattie. But I had begun to feel wary at saying too much-begun to see even Hattie's pure devotion as part of their arsenal, another instrument to stifle the aims that commanded me. Even her face began to look to my eyes more like her busybody aunt's. She was part of a Baltimore that had failed to even notice that the truth behind a great man's death mattered. Hattie, why didn't I trust that you could see me, as usual, more clearly than a looking-glass could!

Weeks after the dress ball, there were still no letters from Duponte in reply to mine. I could not abide the slow exchange of mailable communications. Mail could be stolen, or destroyed by accident or mischief. Here I had found the identity of the Dupin of real life, the one person probably in all the known world able to decipher the blank spot of Poe's last days! I was still only serving Poe as I had promised him. I had reached this far, and should not cede my position through lack of action. I would not wait for this to be lost. In June 1851, I made my plans and set off for Paris.

Here I was in a different world. Even the houses seemed to be built from entirely different materials and colors, and to position themselves differently on the wide streets. There was a feeling of secretiveness to Paris, yet everything was open, and existence in Paris was entirely out of doors.

The latest city directories I found upon arriving had no listings for Duponte, and I realized that those I'd consulted in Washington City were a few years out of date. Nor did recent newspaper columns that had previously spoken breathlessly about him have a word to say.

In Paris, the post office delivered the mail directly to the houses of residents-a practice newly begun in some American cities by private arrangement; though in Paris, it was said, its convenience for citizens was less important than the surveillance it provided to the government. It was my hope that the postal officers would not have continued to carry Duponte's mail to an incorrect address. In another peculiarity of the Parisian rules, I was refused (rigidly and politely, as with everything French) any admittance to the administrators of the post office, where I wanted to ask about Duponte's present address. I would need to write for permission to the appropriate ministry. Guided in composing this letter by Madame Fouché, my hotel's proprietress, I sent it by post. (This was another rule, even though the ministry was hardly three streets away!) "You will certainly receive a letter of permission within a day or two. It could be quite longer, though," she added thoughtfully, "if there is an error by some functionary, which is awfully common."

As I waited for any sign of progress in my search for Duponte's address, I wrote to Hattie. Remembering the pain it had caused me whenever I'd seen her sad, I had been experiencing deep regret that the timing of this endeavor had caused her even the slightest grief. In my letters to Baltimore I promised her as little a delay as possible to our plans and entreated her in the meantime to come to Paris, however short a stay and dull a program my present venture might require. Hattie wrote that nothing would please her more than such a voyage, but she was needed to help care for the two new children recently added to her sisters' households.

Peter, for his part, wrote a farewell letter explaining that I had ruined my life, and nearly ruined his, by yielding to the decadence and indecency of Europe.

What he must have been imagining! If only he could see how different the reality here in my chambers!

The nightly gaieties of the Parisian summer drifted recklessly through my window, the open-air orchestras and gala dances, the theaters that seated happy audiences by the hundreds. I, by contrast, opened and closed my two chests of drawers and stared at the clock on my room's mantelpiece-waiting.

One day Madame Fouché came into my room and offered to tie a strip of black crêpe around my arm. Bothered by the interruption to my indolence, I assented.

"My deep condolences," she said.

"Appreciated. How so?" I asked, suddenly alarmed.

"Hasn't someone died?" she gasped importantly, as though her pity was in short supply and I had wasted it. "Why have you entered such a melancholy state, if not?"

I hesitated, frowning at the black cloth now wrapped on my coat.

"Yes, madame, some have died. But that is not the nearest cause of my agitation. It is the address, this blasted address! Pardon my language, Madame Fouché. I must find Monsieur Auguste Duponte's residence soon, or leave Paris empty-handed and my actions shall be declared even more fantastic by my friends. That is why I wish to visit the postal office."

The next day, Madame Fouché brought me breakfast herself in lieu of the regular waiter. She badly hid a smile and handed me a piece of paper with some writing on it.

"What is this, madame?"