While this spectacle was unfolding, the other clowns wheeled out guillotines. Lara began to get apprehensive about this act, ominously called the Dance of Death. In perfect unison, the guillotines lowered as the clowns leapt from the backs of the elephants… and it was revealed that the Spanish Web ropes were not ropes at all, but nooses. As the orchestra played on, heads rolled and necks snapped. Lara put her hand to her mouth. She heard one woman sigh and appear to faint. The entire circus was a macabre spectacle of death played out inside a ring. No wonder some of the artists in Montparnasse had thought it was performance art. And yet, Lara knew it was entirely a dance of the damned.

As the clowns dangled from the ropes, they began to wake and crawl back up, their legs swinging in perfect unison. In the same manner, the headless clowns picked up the waltz and resumed the dance, spinning and turning. The music picked up the pace until it crescendoed into a frenzied flurry.

The stage went dark. As the lights came back on and the clowns were back in their original positions, the waltz grew tame again until they circled out of the arena.

The drum began to beat, followed by a Gregorian chant.

From the group emerged a woman with platinum hair. Lara had seen her likeness hanging on the wall at Le Cirque de Fragonard.

It was Cecile Cabot, the one from the painting.

The Spanish Web she was using was a rope with a bell at the bottom. As she waited, it lowered from the center of the ring. Cecile leapt onto the bell and quickly began to contort herself around the object as it rose higher and higher above the audience. When she reached the top, the audience realized there was no net below her. Cecile began to spin on the golden rope faster and faster, finally slowing and lowering herself back down from the rope to the bell-shaped end. Hanging off the bell, she spun her legs under it like a propeller, her body spinning like a plate faster and faster—and then she let go of the bell.

The music was otherworldly. It reminded Lara of eastern European composers, as haunting and tragic as a Russian funeral march.

The crowd, realizing that Cecile was suspended entirely on her own, leaned forward, expecting her to fall at any moment, but she didn’t. Instead she slowed her rotations so the crowd could see that she was, indeed, hovering in the air. She gathered herself and spun horizontally, picking up speed like a figure skater, moving through the air as if she were a human drill bit. Cecile had the grace of a rhythmic gymnast or ballet dancer, her moves fluid. As the rotations ended, she rolled slowly to the floor and landed softly before she lowered herself and bowed.