Enchantée(95)

“Probably closer to seventy-five. We would do well to persuade forty subscribers to fund us.”

So many people, there to listen to her. She wished suddenly, desperately, that she’d thought to change into her dress. Its enchantments would have been a comfort.

At the door, footmen stood at attention. Camille, Lazare, and Rosier brushed past the fronds of potted palms and came into a crowded entry hall. Men and women mingled there, greeting one another. Camille noticed men in uniform, noblemen in gaudy suits. But there were men in plainer dress, too, wealthy merchants and other members of the bourgeoisie. And, by the window, three black-skinned men, bewigged and dressed in sorbet-colored silk of mint and lemon, heavy gold necklaces about their necks. Most of the women in attendance had affected the deceptively simple cotton gowns the queen wore, though there were some still in silk. All their conversations and laughter came together in a buzz of anticipation.

“And my role is what, exactly?” Camille asked Rosier and Lazare.

“Simply to speak about the balloon, if the opportunity presents itself,” Rosier said.

“And if it doesn’t?”

“How funny you are. It will—trust me. Let’s see if we can gauge the mood of the room.”

As she waited awkwardly just inside the door, Camille spotted Aurélie standing next to a man in military uniform. Thrilled to see her familiar face, Camille waved. To her dismay, Aurélie only responded with a formal bow. She had no idea who Camille was—she didn’t recognize her as Camille and turned away.

“Come in, come in,” said a stout man with frizzed gray hair. He clapped his hands together briskly. “Voilà les aeronauts! Entrez, entrez! Mesdames, messieurs,” he called out to those assembled in the room, “certainly these daring young men of the air might weigh in on the question at hand?”

“And a daring young woman,” added Rosier.

“What question is that, Monsieur Clermont?” Lazare said.

“The most pressing questions of natural history, bien s?r,” a woman said. She was older than Camille; her height and intelligent eyes made Camille think of a kind of queen. Her jewelry was simple, her brown hair unpowdered. She held out her hands to Lazare.

“Madame de Sta?l,” Lazare said, “let me introduce to you my friends and flying companions. Mademoiselle Durbonne and Monsieur Rosier, both of Paris.”

“How wonderful that you have included a woman in your ranks.” Madame de Sta?l nodded approvingly at Camille. “Are you an aeronaut as well, mademoiselle?”

“I am.”

“And?” Behind Madame de Sta?l, a group of people moved closer. “I think I speak for all my friends when I say that I am so eager to know what it is like to fly.”

Camille cleared her throat. She remembered the wind rushing through her hair, the sleek chill of the air, the clarifying perspective she’d had over everything. She tried not to think of how Lazare had stood so distractingly close, his mouth by her ear. “It’s everything you might imagine. More, even.”

“Go on,” said a man with an enormous lily in his buttonhole. He flapped his arms in the air. “Take us with you!”

Rosier raised his eyebrows encouragingly.

Camille took a deep breath, steadied herself. All she needed to do was to tell them how it was. Show her wonder at the experience, wasn’t that it?

“I was afraid, at first,” she admitted. “I’d never dreamed of going up in a balloon.”

The man nodded, encouragingly.

“One goes up so fast, n’est-ce pas? One moment one is on the ground, and the next moment, the faces of your friends become tiny white stones. Trees shrink down to handfuls of herbs, ponds and fountains to puddles—even the Seine becomes a trickle of water. The higher one goes, the flatter things become. I’d never experienced anything like it.”

Camille had said everything in a rush, and when she stopped she noticed how still the salon had become. Expectant faces turned toward her. Did they wish to hear more?

“And you don’t smell the streets,” she added, and several people laughed. “The air is fresh; you pass through mists and vapor. In the distance I saw rain fall from a cloud.”

“Oh, how lovely!” the man with the lily said.

“There is a lesson in being so high up, isn’t there?” Rosier prompted.

She nodded. “I saw the neighborhoods of our city are not as separate as they might seem. From the air, there’s not much distinction between a grand h?tel particulier and a common house divided into many apartments. I saw the edge of the world—I saw possibility.”

A few people applauded. The sea of faces waited. It was so quiet she could hear the candles in the chandelier burning.

“And, mademoiselle?” asked the man with the lily.

And?

And what?

Instead of a shuttered printer’s shop, instead of a knife at her throat, instead of having to mine sorrow to make coins or a dress, instead of everything that hurt or took away from her, the balloon had given her something. She hadn’t known it then. But she did now.

“It gave me hope,” she said. “Because what seems fixed—as if it will always be one particular way—if seen differently, may in fact be something that can be changed. A new world, don’t you see?”

In the back of the room, someone coughed. The faces of the salon goers, pale as petals, fixed on her. They were, she realized, waiting. Waiting for something more, something shocking. Something surprising.