The Academie Read Free Page B

becomes the bitter monster I know only too well.
    Tonight I have retired to my attic room to sleep whilemy mother attends a ball. I am not sad or sorry to be alone. I have a letter from my beloved. He has returned!
I shall come for you soon , ma chérie. I must attend upon the general tonight. We are to go to a ball, a celebration of the recent victories. But it is just the beginning. Something big will happen soon, something that will change the way France is governed. The Directoire must look to its back, or it will soon find itself out on the street. But I should not tell you this, except that I know I can trust you. Oh, how I wish I could present you to my mother and my sister as my wife! That, too, will come. Adieu .
    I pray that he will not encounter my mother, for I know they must be at the very same ball. Maman would not go anywhere that was not at the precise center of everything, where she couldn’t show herself to the greatest advantage.
    I cannot blame her. She has suffered much as well. The only way she knows to survive is to be the most beautiful, most desired woman in her world.
    Despite her wishes to the contrary, I have found it impossible to remain a small child, hidden in the background. I have grown, and now I am beautiful. I am still petite and dark skinned, but my big eyes and youthful curves are a threat to her. She sees the way her gentlemen friends cast their hungry gazes over me when I help her maid put away her costumes or bring her cape before she goes out to supper.Now she sends me away when they come, and dresses me in the meanest rags she can find.
    But still, if what my secret friend says is true, I am loved. At first I didn’t believe it. But it has been some months since the first time he sent a note to me after a performance. He does not know the full extent of my life here, how desperate I am. I am afraid to let on, afraid that it will drive him away.
    He says he will marry me, when he comes of age. We are both young, although many girls my age are already promised. I’m certain Maman has forgotten how old I am, and conveniently ignores the fact that she should be looking to my future. I have no intention of making that future in this theater, in a world where nothing is real, where every night people pretend to be in love or to hate and then hang up their characters with their costumes.
    I close my eyes and imagine myself in some other place, not in my cold attic room alone, but cradled in my sweet one’s arms, wearing a beautiful gown, whirling to music in the warm candlelight of a glittering ball, and I fall asleep at last, contented.

4

Eliza
    I spent my entire first day at school observing Hortense and Caroline. I hardly had to observe! The bad blood between them is so obvious it could be embarrassing in any other setting. Here there is no one to pretend for. Even the young ones watch and wait for an opportunity to play one girl against the other. I thought the young students were all Caroline’s creatures in the morning. But by the end of the day, I wasn’t certain. Hortense has a quiet command that draws some of them to her with their needlework, as if copying her motions will make them more like her. And it is clear that Madame believes Hortense to be the ideal student. There is something about Hortense. Not just her beauty. She is fragile, as if some secret weighs on her, or some sorrow is always in her mind. I find myself wanting to protect her, despite the fact that she is older than me.
    As to where I am to be in this intriguing game—I have not yet decided. I promised my mother I would write to her each day, and so now I must try to remember every detail, every nuance of expression and meaning so that I can get my mother’s advice on how to play along without exposing my own hand. What is that hand exactly? What do I want to accomplish for myself in this place?
    I can see that the school itself is a grand enough setting now that I have resigned myself to being here. In