And so it was on this particular night that I was startled awake by another nightmare. Only now that I had long since abandoned her there was no Jeanne to console me. The bed in which I found myself was unknown to me. Rather than the lump of damp straw I slept on at the Grand Miroir, this was a four-posted Medici bed with a finely carved oak frame canopied with swathes of purple and gold silk brocade. The mattress was the highest and softest I’ve known. The mellow light of an oil lamp revealed an aristocratic boudoir. The ceiling was coffered in gold, and in every corner of the room crimson camellias burst from Oriental vases. I heard the spit and crackle of embers glowing in a hearth on the other side of the room. It took me some time, my head misted by an opiate fog, to remember the chain of events that had led me here: a collision with a coach’s wheel, lying in a puddle on a cobblestoned street, and then the unexpected succor of a stranger.

I tried rolling over and was struck by a cluster of pains: one in my head, one in my back, another in my right hip, and, most acutely of all, a throbbing pain in my left ankle. Slowly, I attempted to stand, but the discomfort sat me back on my haunches. I tried again, and eventually my feet found a pair of woolen slippers. I limped across the room, where on a velvet divan was laid a vermilion gown brocaded with arabesques. My effects were nowhere to be seen. I hobbled to the window and pulled back the heavy satin curtains. I had presumed it was early morning, but I was dazzled by the light of a sunny day after snowfall. I was in a room on the ground floor of a manor house, either in the country or on the city’s outskirts. I looked over a courtyard garden hibernating under the cover of snow. While my room was adorned with the most dazzling colors, the outside world was a daguerreotype of black and white.

In a corner of the room, beside the divan, was a writing table with a pen, an inkwell, a polished brass bell, and several leaves of papier japon. The uppermost leaf had a note scrawled on it. I slumped into the chair and read it: Monsieur, I trust you have rested well. Giacomo is waiting to assist you. You may summon him by ringing the bell. Madame Édmonde.

Moments after I’d followed the letter-writer’s instructions, the door creaked open. Into the room floated a large silver tray followed by its deliverer, a butler whose whiskered face was as still as a death mask. It was the stranger who had saved me the previous evening.