The Book of the Courtesans Read Online Free PDF Page B

working girl, probably no more than fifteen years old. She
stood on the Pont-Neuf on her one day off from the sweatshop where she worked
every other day for at least sixteen hours, for starvation wages. That was why
she was hungry and that was also why she was standing so near a stand that sold
fried potatoes and why she did not buy what she wanted. But as luck would have
it, a gentleman happened along the bridge at this moment who responded to her
wish and answered her wish. The man who did this, Nestor Roqueplan, would come
to know Duplessis later in her life when she had become the best-dressed woman
in Paris; they traveled in the same circles. But what he noticed on this first
meeting was that she was unkempt, dressed in filthy ragged clothing, and that
she grabbed and devoured the
frites
he gave her without any delicacy
at all.
    To have experienced extreme deprivation before her ascent to luxury would also
have given her a covert assurance beneath her refinement, a confidence that
came from having survived on the streets, which not only delayed the advent of
her decision to turn toward whoever was staring at her but gave the gaze that
she did finally return the leisurely air of a queen. She did not bat her eyes.
She was neither rushing to please him nor slipping away from his eyes in
modesty. She simply stared back.
    You can see that look today in the many portraits of courtesans that riddle the
history of art. Sometimes they are dressed in clothes more risqué than
proper ladies and sometimes not. But what usually gives each woman away is the
frank quality of her gaze. Staring directly out of canvas after canvas, the
eyes do not flinch or shrink or apologize but instead meet you with unremitting
candor.
    Now meeting such a gaze, is it not possible that the count lets out an almost
involuntary laugh as his attention is discovered and returned? He has been
startled to see that this young woman places herself on an equal plane with him.
That she is a woman born to a lower rank vanishes in the fresh air of her
presumption. The count laughs at himself, at the rules he has grown up with and
at the delightfully casual way that this stranger is breaking them all.
    Immediately, and in a pace that is at this instant appropriately quick, she
grasps the humor, lets him see that she has gotten the joke with a brief smile,
and then—but this is what will capture his heart forever—she turns
away. And here it is important to note that although this makes him want to
follow her, to know more of her, her retreat is not motivated by the false
modesty that society requires of women, but from the depths of the character
she acquired over a childhood full of loss, including at an early age the
disappearance and death of her mother, the profundity of experience that in
almost every public situation compels her to reserve part of herself.
    The example is inspiring, even now. Knowing that the count will invite her with
him to a private party at the Café Anglais and that she will accept, that
they will become lovers. That (along with many other men) he will contribute to
her support, that they will eventually enter a brief marriage a year before her
death, and that he will accompany her body to her last resting place on earth.
Still following Marie’s exemplary reticence, let us reserve the rest of her
story for a later time.

CORA PEARL
    Chapter One
    Timing
    Ripeness is all.

—WILLIAM
SHAKESPEARE
    I T IS ALWAYS wise to begin with a
mystery. Translucent, invisible, continually in motion, timing is difficult to
discern and just as hard to describe. Nevertheless, the appeal of anyone who
possesses this virtue is certainly palpable. Let us suppose, for example, that
in the bare beginnings of the twentieth century, in say 1906 , you chance to attend a party given at the country
estate of Etienne Balsan. You may find yourself smiling at a woman who passes
you on the stairs. And though you have not