Giacomo helped her into the seat at the opposite end of the table. She asked if I had eaten my fill; I assured her I had, and thanked her for her hospitality. My clothes, she said, were being laundered. I asked after my fob watch. “It was shattered,” she replied. “It has been sent to a watchmaker to be repaired.”

“If you will pardon my forwardness, madame,” I began, “I am brimming with curiosity. Who are you?”

“My name is Madame Édmonde de Bressy.”

“De Bressy … Your name is unfamiliar to me.”

“That is of no consequence.”

“Why are you lavishing such generosity upon a complete stranger?”

“You are not a complete stranger.”

“Do we know each other?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“I do not recall having ever met a Madame Édmonde, or even a Mademoiselle Édmonde.”

“That does not alter the fact that we have had occasion to know each other, in a distant past.”

“Perhaps,” I said, “if you reveal your face I will remember.”

“I assure you it will make no difference at all,” she replied, but all the same she raised her hands to her veil and lifted it, pulling it back over her head, revealing a face that was hideously disfigured, closer in resemblance to the face of a monster encountered in a dream than that of a man or woman. Among the living, the only faces I have seen that could compare are in the daguerreotypes that were fashionable in Paris years ago, and which can still be found from time to time in the stalls of the riverside bouquinistes, depicting the deformed countenances of certain unfortunates residing in the Salpêtrière hospital. It was as if some demon had pulled her eyes down toward the floor and simultaneously lifted the nose upward and to the right. Her mouth was diagonally distended. The skin of her face appeared to have been ravaged by flames in its lower part, and her chin was inverted. As it was already nearing dusk, she was illuminated by candlelight, and its shadows accentuated the unnatural walnutty crevices of her face.

I knew not what to say, and a silence as thick as snow descended upon us. It was Madame Édmonde who broke it. “You may take every advantage of my hospitality for as long as you wish,” she said, lowering her veil. “You are not a prisoner here. You may come and go. You are welcome to stay as long as you like, to leave whenever you like—now, tomorrow, or next week. When you decide to leave, you will be provided with a carriage and driven to your hotel.” Your hotel, I noted, without interrupting her. She knew far more of me than I of her. “If you choose to stay,” she continued, “I will unveil every mystery about myself that you wish. But if you should choose to return to your lodgings tonight, I have only one thing to say to you.”