That night I dined as the Americans dined, that is, I had a vast amount of ham. There was no wine at all and no one seemed to think there should be.

Next morning I was astounded to see women come to breakfast as if carefully dressed for the whole day. It was the same, my landlady informed me, in all the private houses. One could, with great propriety, go to call on a lady at nine o'clock.

It was not yet eight o'clock when I stepped out to seek my servant. To a Parisian the aspect of Broadway was bizarre. One saw neither dome nor bell tower nor great edifice, with the result that one had the constant impression of being in a suburb. The city appeared to be made all of brick which gave it a most monotonous appearance.

I presented my card at Mr. Larrit's inn and took a seat, a supplicant.

HER CHEEK RAISED and branded with her mother's slap, Mathilde rushed into my arms, a steam engine, her tears as warm as tea. She was my thumbscrew and rack, I needed no reminding, but I was over four weeks bottled, stoppered, closed, and in our fifth-floor room, the industrious river in full view, the ships' rigging canvas slapping at their masts, I sued for peace.

The old Maman affected not to notice our negotiation and was entering deep in argument with herself, placing one bag in one room and dragging it back again, wrestling with the rolled-up canvas, clanking and clattering with those beaten blackened pans she had carried like gold napoleons across the sea. With nod and nudge she made it clear my only job was to hold her sobbing daughter and my heart was brimming, one part rage, one cockalorum, all sloshing and gurgling and spurting through my chambers.

"I think I'll ask them where the market is," she announced, the gorgeous old thing, bless her walnut face, her hammertoes. She closed the door behind her. She turned the key. Already her daughter's hands were dragging at my clothes and her upturned face was filled with cooey dove and tiger rage. Her mouth was washed with tears. I ate her, drank her, boiled her, stroked her till she was like a lovely flapping fish and her hair was drenched and our eyes held and our skins slid off each other and we smelled like farm animals, seaweed, the tanneries upriver.

She lay in my arms, exhausted, slippery, weeping with relief, and after what we had been through, what she had put herself through, it was meet and right that we should cry. We were washed up, our very innards showing like jellyfish upon the sand, and when-at long long last, at twilight-the beloved old lady returned from her exhausting travels in the English language, Mathilde announced she would remain in bed, her dark ringlets flat against her sweating brow.

Maman tipped me a wink. Thumbs-up. Well done. Did any mother ever care so for the welfare of her child?

Mathilde was still abed when we were visited by the landlady who announced we had a French gentleman most eager to meet with Mr. Larrit. She had arrived all in a state about the importance of the visitor, her flinty Scots face quite plump with her excitement, until, that is, she spied my darling.

"What ails her then?"

"My wife is resting."

"Your wife," she said, "has a fever."

The landlady saw Maman smirk. At this she colored brightly and closed the door, although this did not stop her returning later in the evening with a steaming bowl of chicken soup, on which occasion she boldly laid the back of her wrist against Mathilde's forehead.

Only when the door was locked against the possibility of more ministration did Mathilde rise. Then we sat at a little clubfooted table, and she and her mother passed severe judgment on the soup. My beloved's neck was red and blotchy, her forehead glistening very hot. At this point it will be clear to you that she was very sick, but Mathilde was a container of many passions which raged through her veins and dreams like fire following the secret roots of trees, and it was not peculiar for her to be sickened by her passion, then rise next morning with her brow cool and her eyes clear. Even now she drank her soup with healthy appetite. She complained, again, about the grease. Everything seemed normal until she pushed her stool back and collapsed into my arms. I carried her to the bed.

And then, God help us, she was sick.

I smoothed her hair but she shrank back, reared, flailed. Her mother fetched water and a washer but this served like ginger on a racehorse's tail and the old lady could do nothing but withdraw and wait. So it was, less than an hour after we had so passionately declared our living love, that I sat on a bundle of Roman costumes, consumed with the fear that Mathilde was going to die.

And while I had, these thirty-seven days past, raged against her cold deceitful heart, now I could think only of our little nest in the faubourg Saint-Antoine and the happiness we had shared. I wished I had a God to speak to.

All that night we watched over her, all next day as well. I quickly learned to give thanks for whatever greasy soup or stew was delivered on a tray outside the door. It was warm enough to leave our windows open, so we kept the air as fresh as might be possible in a seaport and it was only then, as wind off the river ripped through our small supply of candles and left us sitting in the moonless dark, that I heard the circumstances under which Mathilde had lost her father.

As a young man he had marched the road to Paris, full-lunged, mustached, howling the blood threats of the "Marseillaise." Throats he cut in plenty. He donated his right eye to the Revolution and got nothing back except a dark and dreadful shell of bone. For La Patrie he had given enough.

Later, when Napoleon wanted him, he knew himself excused. He was a veteran. He had a child. He would not go again. If anyone could make him go it was the gendarmerie, but by good chance these were men he had known since they had stolen eggs together, Jean-Marc and Little Julian. He told them he would not go again and they dragged him from his screaming child, his boots making sparks along the cobbles in the middle of the night.

Within a year, he gave La Patrie the drink she craved, his hot garlic soup of blood which froze into the churned-up snow. He bequeathed his daughter a burning rage.

Soon the two women lost their home, first in Nimes, then in Montpellier, then Arles, each situation worse than the one before. Finally they were slaves to an old woman in the village of Claret in Languedoc, dirt floors and walls three feet thick.

"Forgive her, sir," her mother said to me. "She cannot help it. Happiness is always taken from her. It is her curse."

By the third day we could not hide the symptomes, even from ourselves, and we had a great fear of being evicted. That was the day Lord Migraine burst upon us, staring at Mathilde with such a sudden white expression that we clearly saw her disease.

"For God's sake," he shouted at me, "she must have a doctor."

I thought, It is none of your damn business, but I was shamed. He now did what I should have, ran down the stairs three at a time. There was a great deal of shouting in bad English and worse French and then silence for a while. And within a very short time we were presented with Dr. Halleck, a tall stringy fellow with buggy eyes and big ears and a great affection for his tailor. He arrived in the thrall of aristocracy. You could see it in the color of his cheeks, his bright excited eyes, his open mouth as he looked around the room, its floor still littered with our battered goods.

"You are friends of the count?"

"Oui, c'est exact," I said, as coldly as if it were the doctor who was enamored of my wife.

"You are French," he said.

"I am an Englishman," I said, summoning up a set of vowels that would have graced a bishop's table.