Marianne and The Masked Prince

extremely spirited and far from happy. She suffers from her own passionate nature. You see, she is obliged to say 'the Emperor' and 'his majesty' in referring to someone who, in private she calls 'the little wretch'. You may have noticed that she almost let it slip just now. As for her contempt of you —' Talleyrand's bland gaze was turned suddenly on Marianne. 'Your own actions are the reason for that. A Chevreuse will necessarily look down on a Maria Stella – whereas she would have opened her arms to the daughter of the Marquis d'Asselnat.'

There was silence. Talleyrand leaned down a little, his pale eyes staring deep into the green ones, which did not flinch.

'How long have you known?' Marianne asked, feeling suddenly very calm.

'Ever since the Emperor gave you the house in the rue de Lille. It was then I understood the vague feeling of familiarity which I had been unable to place before, a resemblance I had failed to grasp. Then I knew who you really were.'

'Why did you keep quiet?'

Talleyrand shrugged. 'What would have been the use? You had, quite unpredictably, fallen in love with the man of all men whom you were born to hate.'

'Yet it was you drove me into his bed,' Marianne said brutally.

'I have regretted it sufficiently! But I decided the remedy was best left to time and chance. Neither this love affair, nor your career as a singer, was ever made to last.'

'Why, may I ask?' Marianne interrupted coldly.

'For one very good reason. You were never made for Napoleon or for the theatre. However much you may try to persuade yourself otherwise, you are one of us, an aristocrat of the highest birth. You are so like your father —'

'Am I? You knew him?' Marianne asked with sudden eagerness born of her deep longing to know the truth about this man whose flesh and blood she was, yet of whom she knew no more than his portrait. 'Tell me of him!'

Gently, Talleyrand removed the clutching fingers from his sleeve but held them a moment in his own.

'Not now. His spirit would be ill-at-ease in these surroundings. The Emperor is coming. You must be Maria Stella again, for a little while.'

He quickened his pace and led her over to the group of musicians. She saw Gossec beckoning, Piccini arranging the scores on the instrument and Paer, the imperial choir-master, carefully wiping his baton. As they came up to them Marianne, moved by an irrational impulse, caught at Talleyrand's sleeve.

'If I was not made for – for the Emperor, or for the theatre, then what am I for?'

'For love, my dear.'

'But – we are in love!'

'I said for love and that is something different. For the great love which overthrows empires and founds undying dynasties, the love which lasts beyond death, and which most men never find.'

Then why should I find it?'

'Because if you do not find it, Marianne, it does not exist. And it must exist, so that people like me may continue to disbelieve in it.'

Troubled, Marianne watched him limp away with his uneven, yet oddly graceful gait. It seemed to her that these words, so out of keeping with the character and legend of Talleyrand, contained an offer of friendship, or at least of help. Help, how she needed help at that moment! But how far was the Prince of Benevento to be trusted? Marianne had lived under his roof and knew, better than most, the peculiar charm of his personality, the more powerful in that it seemed to be quite unconscious. She remembered suddenly something the Comte de Montrond had said about him and which Fortunee had gleefully repeated one day: 'Who could help liking him? He is so thoroughly vicious.'

What was his motive now? A disinterested attempt to recall her to a life more fitting for her birth, or simply to divide her a little further from the Emperor whom, it was rumoured, he was himself in the act of betraying to the Tzar?

A fanfare of trumpets, a solemn banging of his staff by the master of ceremonies, the Comte de Segur, and the enormous room lapsed into a respectful silence. All heads were turned towards the great balcony where, amid a flutter of dazzling dresses and braided uniforms, the imperial couple were making their entrance. Marianne saw two figures detach themselves from the shimmering background of court ladies and aides-de-camp: Napoleon in his green uniform and Marie-Louise in pink. Then she saw nothing more as, like the rest of the ladies present, she sank into a deep curtsey.

Marianne wished that curtsey might never end. When at last she lifted her eyes to the newly-wedded pair, the picture of happiness which they presented cut her to the heart. Without a glance for the brilliant assembly, Napoleon was leading his wife to her seat with every sign of the most tender consideration, even dropping a kiss upon the hand which he retained in his own as he too seated himself. Moreover, he continued to lean towards her, talking privately, with a complete disregard of his surroundings.

Marianne stood by the piano, stupefied, uncertain what to do. The court was seated now, waiting for the Emperor's signal for the concert to begin.

But Napoleon continued his smiling tete-a-tete and it seemed to Marianne that the low dais on which she stood was a kind of pillory to which she had been bound by the cruel whim of a neglectful lover. She had a wild impulse to run from that opulent room and its hundreds of pairs of eyes. If only it had been possible. Up above, in the royal box, the Comte de Segur was bending respectfully before the Emperor, asking for a sign. It was given him, carelessly, without so much as a look, and translated instantly into a solemn rap of his staff.

At once, like an echo, there came the sound of Paer's baton tapping on the desk. Alexandre Piccini at the piano struck up the opening chords, taken up a moment later by the violins. His anguished glance told Marianne that her distress was evident. She caught sight of Gossec in his corner, looking anxious, his face intent, as if in prayer. Surely no one had ever seen the Emperor treat a famous artiste with such contempt?

Fortunately, anger came to Marianne's rescue. Her first song was to be the great aria from La Vestale, the Emperor's favourite. Taking a deep breath to calm the frantic beating of her heart, she attacked the piece with a passionate energy that left her audience gasping. Her voice soared with such a fierce intensity as she expressed the despair of Julie, the vestal virgin condemned to burial alive, that even this worldly audience was shaken. In her determination to make the Emperor attend to her, she sang better than she had ever done. On the final notes, her voice rang with such poignant misery that a chorus of spontaneous, frenzied applause broke out, in defiance of protocol which decreed that the sovereign alone should give the signal for it. But the skill of the singer had electrified her audience.

She looked up at the royal box, eyes sparkling with hope, but no, not only was Napoleon not looking at her, he did not even appear to have noticed that she had been singing. His head was bent towards Marie-Louise, talking softly to her. She was listening to him downcast, a simpering smile on her lips and her face so flushed that Marianne could only conclude with rage that he was making love to her. She nodded sharply to Paer to begin the second piece, an aria from The Secret Marriage by Cimarosa.

Never, surely, was the Italian composer's light and delicate music sung with such grim feeling. Marianne's green eyes were fixed on the Emperor, as if they would force his attention. Her heart swelled with uncontrollable anger, depriving her of all sense of proportion, all self-control. How dared that stupid Viennese sit there smiling like a cat at a cream pot? How could anyone have the nerve to claim that she liked music?

Marie-Louise's love of music must have been confined to the airs of her own country for she was not only not listening but, right in the middle of the aria, she giggled suddenly. It was a childish giggle but too loud to escape notice.

Every drop of blood left Marianne's face. She stopped singing. For a moment, her glittering eyes swept the rows of heads before her, all with the same expectant expression, then with her own head held proudly erect, she marched off the dais and, in the astounded pause which followed, she left the salle des Marechaux before anyone, even the men at the doors, could think to stop her.

Her head on fire and her hands like ice, she walked stiffly on, ignoring the storm which broke out behind her. The one idea in her fevered brain was to depart for ever from the place where the man she loved had dealt such a cruel blow to her pride, to go home and bury her grief in the old home of her family and wait, wait for what was bound to follow such an act: the Emperor's wrath, arrest, perhaps even imprisonment. But for the moment, nothing mattered to Marianne. So furious was she that she would have walked to the scaffold without so much as