Poe shadow by Matthew Pearl

younger brother Jérôme the senior met nearly fifty years before while on excursion in the United States. This regal offspring was now standing before me dressed in a garish Turkish costume, with two curved swords hanging from his belt. After we had been introduced, I complimented his costume.
    “No need for ‘monsieurs,’ anyway, Mr. Clark; we are in America,” Jérôme Bonaparte said, his dark eyes lit with good humor. Henri Montor fidgeted at this a bit. “As for this monstrosity,” Bonaparte continued with a sigh, “it was my wife’s pretty idea. She is in the next room somewhere.”
    “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