The Unruly Passions of Eugenie R. by Carole DeSanti

first,” said Françoise, seizing my arm with surprising strength.
    ***
    â€œFished you in off the street, did she? . . . What, are you deaf and mute, like he is?” The cook nodded toward a small, dark-faced boy, rocking on his haunches in front of the hearth. He was playing with a snare made of twine, the kind the village boys used to string up in branches, set with their lures to catch songbirds, marsh birds. Trapped, a bird’s head would hang; wings flung open, cord neatly knotted around the neck.
    â€œFrançoise, you’ll have to get the dogs in, the little poachers are white as ghosts from being all in the flour, and they leave footprints. And no sign of the cat; they feed her on cakes and cream. Rats in my kitchen, and the mouser eating petits fours.”
    She cut a slab of roast, a chunk of bread. Cheese and a slosh of wine in a china teacup. She crossed her arms across her ample waist and gave me a long look. I ate like a starved thing, a wild creature whose teeth rip at flesh.
    Later, sleeping on that sofa in the parlor, I roused, wakeful, to bursts of laughter; dozed off again to the odor of cigar and perfume. An ebb tide of chatter, a river of activity flowed beyond the door and I drifted in and out of clamorous dreams, unable to tell the voices within from those outside. Eerie passages and twisting halls; rooms neither-here-nor-there, a labyrinth of a netherworld.
    And in the morning, the rest happened quickly. Françoise’s twitching fingers hustled me into a different dress, cheap silk, stained in spots and wanting pressing . . .
    Out through yet another door, this one giving abruptly onto the cobbles, and into a waiting carriage. Françoise spoke over the rumble of the wheels; like a clock wound too tight, she emptied her words into the chilly air.
    â€œJust look,” she said. She dipped into her bag and extracted a small round mirror. I saw my pale skin, dark hair, and soft curve of chin. Eyes clear, despite the tumult within. “I know Madame Jouffroy will have you in; she has a nose for talent. But if she won’t, Madame Trois will find a place for you.” Her voice dropped and sweetened. “Listen: I’m saving you some trouble here.” Her eyes dropped to my lap, to the gathered fabric of the dress, unpleasant against my skin. “Now—you must be firm and say you want to work for us. Otherwise I can’t speak for the consequences. A prison cell till they get you sorted out, and you don’t belong there, anyone can see that.”
    The carriage pulled up before the fortress looming palely over the rue des Fèves. Françoise hurried us across the courtyard, her skirts skimming over the flagstones and many-colored petticoats whipping about in the wind. A gate opened and at a word from my keeper we were ushered past a dozen or more citizens of Paris, men in workman’s blue trousers, women with babies in their arms, a bird seller with a cage at her feet, a young woman or two, hatless and ungloved. Those awaiting an audience at the Paris Préfecture de Police. I would come to know it well.
    Â 
    M. NOëL read the nameplate in front of a young man with a polished mustache, his thick-fingered hand battened down on an ink pen. The sound of the nib across a dry page was a scuttling of leaves; the questions uttered as though from a conversation begun earlier, now resumed. The din of the place, the roar of a thousand voices echoed off marble, filtered through the cavernous room. On the wall above Noël hung an oily brown and varnished painting—a face from the papers, and here he was, the chief of police, in a portrait pitched at a slant as though he might drop like a blade. Françoise nudged my arm, and the mechanisms of a great machine, long-used and oiled with practice, ticked into place.
    â€œHow long in Paris? Residence, employment? Name and age, place of birth? Then, “Your palms, please.”
    I startled