During our passage to Marseille, I accustomed myself to my new mind and body, glad to be rid of both the venality and the seasickness I had known as Feuille. And I discovered the extraordinary power that lay in the body of a desirable young woman. As the number of men on board vastly outnumbered the women, many of them directed their attentions toward me with indefatigable zeal. The thought crossed my mind on more than one occasion to make another crossing with one of them, for it would be surely more advantageous to me to be a white-skinned man than a dark-skinned woman, but now that I was once more a woman I did not covet manhood. After Feuille, there was something redemptive about being Jeanne. Although given to episodes of melancholia, she was resilient and composed. The great cruelties she’d already witnessed in her short life had endowed her with an aloofness that acted as a protective shell. And so, as Jeanne, I remained unmoved by the gallantries I was paid. Those men that fell in love with me aboard that steamer were only the first in a long line of those who loved me unrequitedly. I myself have only ever once fallen in love, and it was with you, Koahu. I remained for the most part in our cabin, attending to Mother, who was wretchedly sick the whole voyage and pining for the plantation. I thought it prudent to take a protector, on the rare occasions I ventured out of the cabin, to shield me from the excesses of my most ardent admirers. I chose for the purpose Louis Meyerbeer, a man of business based in Lyon. A middle-aged father of seven, he was garrulous, shrewd, and unfailingly polite. He sat beside me at every meal and offered all kinds of useful counsel about what to do with my newfound liberty. He advised me to travel to Paris, the most extraordinary of cities, he claimed. There, I could cultivate my gifts and use my beauty to advantage, for an attractive woman of talent had better prospects in Paris, he said, than just about anywhere else in the world. I found Louis thoroughly persuasive—the young woman in me yearned to see something of life and society, and as I’d long since abandoned hope of ever finding you again, Koahu, or of finding a means to return to Oaeetee, I decided to take his advice.