'Well, if you should come back to it, remember me. I have all the makings of a quite outstanding impressario.'

Meanwhile, since it was by now almost dinner time, Fortunée invited Jolival to share it with herself and her new friend. She had a fondness for original characters and he had taken her fancy. In spite of the shadow thrown on Marianne's spirits by Jason's departure, the meal was a very cheerful one. Fortunée and Arcadius occupied themselves in thinking up a host of plans for their young friend, nearly all of which were centred on the theatre. Fortunée, like all Creoles, adored the theatre and music and her delight at finding out that Marianne was the possessor of an exceptional voice was almost child-like.

'The Emperor must let her sing!' she cried, filling Jolival's glass up with champagne for the fifth time. 'If necessary, I shall tell him myself.'

Marianne scarcely listened. It was as though all this did not concern her. She was still dazed by this sudden turn her life had taken. She was not yet used to the idea that a power quite out of the ordinary had taken charge of her life. Everyone was saying what she ought to do but surely she herself had some say in the matter. While the others talked, she was making her own decision.

'I will sing,' she told herself fiercely. 'I will sing and he will have to let me! That is the one thing that would make it possible for me to live in his shadow without too much suffering. He has his glory – I shall have mine!'

Late that afternoon, she was surprised when they received a visit from Talleyrand himself. Dressed with his usual dark elegance and leaning on his gold-headed cane, the prince bowed over Madame Hamelin's hand and then kissed Marianne on the forehead with a fatherly warmth that took her by surprise.

'Nice to see you again, my child,' he said, for all the world as though they had parted the night before. 'The princess sends you her warmest regards and Madame de Périgord, who has been very anxious on your account, commands me to tell you how glad she is to know that you are safe and sound.'

'My lord,' Marianne said in some confusion, 'your highness is too kind, I feared you might be offended—'

'How? By seeing our lovely bird spread its wings and fly away into the sky to sing? But, my dear, it is what I have always wished. Why do you think I took you to – Monsieur Denis? I had foreseen, and am delighted by, everything that has happened, except of course the interlude at Chaillot! Let us keep your friendship, that is all we ask. And while I think of it, my dear friend,' he added turning to Fortunée, 'have your people take out the boxes which are in my carriage. The princess insisted that this child must have all her things at once.'

Marianne's cheeks flushed with happiness. 'There is no end to the princess's goodness, my lord!' she exclaimed. 'Will your highness be so good as to convey to her my gratitude and also that I remain her servant as in the past?'

'I will tell her. Did you know, my dear, that I had a letter from Cazimir this morning? He sends you a host of compliments.'

'Could he not have sent them to me directly,' Fortunée said tartly, half jesting, half angry, 'or are the Dutch women keeping him so busy that he has no time to write to me?'

'Believe me, he is far more occupied with money than with women.'

Cazimir de Montrond, Talleyrand's closest friend, was also Fortunée's favourite of all her lovers. Attractive, witty, and as wicked as sin but a great lord to his fingertips, he was a born gambler with an inordinate love of money and had a finger in a host of financial pies, not all of which would have had the approval of the authorities. Fortunée adored this scapegrace who Talleyrand had nicknamed 'Hell's Infant Jesus', but, as a faithful subject of the Emperor, she had made no protest when he exiled her turbulent lover to Anvers on the grounds that virtue was impossible with him at court.

'The truth is,' she explained to Marianne a little later when Talleyrand had departed after a brief visit, 'that poor Cazimir was unlucky. At the end of last year, there was a duel in the rue Cerutti. The fight took place at dawn in Queen Hortense's garden. Charles de Flahut and Augustue de Colbert crossed swords over her beaux yeux and Cazimir got drawn in because he lived near by. Napoleon could not take it out on Hortense or Flahaut and so he satisfied himself with sending Augustue de Colbert to get himself killed in Spain and despatching Montrond to Anvers with orders not to stir.'

'Wasn't that rather harsh?'

'I told you the Emperor was not easy. But I must admit that was not the whole of it. Before that, in the summer, that wretch Cazimir went to Cauterets where the Duchess of Abrantes was weeping because Metternich had left her and, so they say, helped to console her somewhat. On the whole, Napoleon acted wisely. And, in one way, he was doing Montrond a service because otherwise he might have been mixed up in the Abrantes scandal as well.'

'What scandal?'

'My dear, where have you been?'

'In the quarries of Chaillot, as you know quite well.'

'Oh, yes, of course! So you were! Well, you must know that last month, after Count Marescalchi's ball, Junot, who everyone knows deceives his wife quite shockingly, threw a frightful scene in the course of which he half killed her with a pair of scissors in a fit of jealousy. If Madame de Metternich had not intervened, I really think he would have killed her. The Emperor was furious. He sent Junot back to Spain and his wife with him, to force them to make it up. To my mind, he would have done as well to punish that cat Caroline as well!

'Caroline?'

'Her sister, Madame Murat, Grand Duchess of Berg and Queen of Naples for the last year and a half. A gorgeous, dimpled blonde, as pink and luscious as a bon-bon – and the greatest bitch ever born! It was she who told Junot about poor Laure d'Abrantes – when he had actually been her own lover!'

This brief glimpse into the habits of the great ones of the court, made Marianne open her eyes wide, much to Fortunée's delight.

'You had no idea such things went on, I daresay? But, while I am about it, let me give you some advice. Love the Emperor as much as you like, but take care with his noble family. Apart from his mother, the inaccessible Madame Laetitia, who remains as stiff-necked and Corsican as ever, and Lucien, who has chosen exile for love, the others have made themselves into a kind of nest of vipers, a collection of people as arrogant and greedy and as vain as peacocks and altogether, to my way of thinking, not fit to be with. Avoid them like the plague, for they will hate you as much as the Emperor loves you.'

Marianne took good note of her advice but she had no desire to come to blows with the imperial family, or even to be known to them. She wanted to love Napoleon in the shadows, without drawing attention to herself, because it was only away from the light and noise of the crowd that such a love as theirs could blossom fully.

As the day wore on, her mood became more and more abstracted, so that she listened to Fortunée's gossip with only half an ear. Her eyes kept going back more frequently to the bronze gilt clock with its representation of the sleeping Psyche. Never had she been so glad to see night fall because the night would bring him back to her. A fever began to run in her veins when she thought of the hours of love ahead. Already, she had so much to tell him! And yet the hours seemed to go more and more slowly.

Fortunée, having barred her doors to all her friends on the excuse of a headache, had yawned at least thirty times before ten o'clock sounded from the church of Notre-Dame-de-Lorette.[8] The last stroke had just died away when they heard the rumble of a carriage. It slowed down and entered the gates which the porter had been told to leave open, then stopped in the deliberately darkened courtyard. Marianne ran to the window with her heart beating wildly while Fortunée rose intending to withdraw to her own room. But she had no time. In an instant, Napoleon was there.

'Don't run away, Madame,' he said as his hostess sank into a curtsey at the door of the salon. 'I have only a moment—'

Flinging his hat on to a sofa, he caught Marianne into his arms and kissed her while she said protestingly:

'What, only a moment?'

'An Emperor cannot often do as he likes, mio dolce amore. I have to go back to the Tuileries. There are important despatches waiting for me and someone I must see, so I have not much time. But there were a number of things I had to tell you which would not wait. This first.'

From a pocket in his coat, he drew a roll of papers sealed with a great red seal which he placed in her hands.

'I promised you a house,' he said smiling. 'I am giving you this one. I think you will like it.'

Marianne unrolled the papers but before she had read more than the first words of the deed the colour fled from her face. There were tears in her eyes as she flung herself into his arms.

'Thank you – oh, thank you!' she gasped, hugging to her breast the wonderful deeds which told her that the Hôtel d'Asselnat in the rue de Lille, her family's house where her parents had been arrested and where she herself had been found abandoned by the abbé de Chazay, was now her own.

Gently, Napoleon stroked the heavy crown of dark hair.

'Don't cry. More than anything, I want you to be happy. I have already given orders. Tomorrow morning, Percier and Fontaine will go to the rue de Lille to begin on the necessary repairs, for the house has stood empty since 1793. Fortunée will go with you and you can order it all as you like. There now, don't cry. I have something else to tell you,' he added with affectionate roughness.

She made an effort and dried her eyes.

'I am not crying—'

'Liar! Never mind, I shall go on. Tomorrow, Gossec will come here. He has orders to prepare you for an audition with the director of the Opéra. Within a month, all Paris shall acclaim a new idol. Maria Stella. You have a wonderful voice and it shall be your glory!'

'Maria Stella?' she was too surprised now to feel any wish to cry.

'That is the name I have chosen for you. You cannot appear in the theatre under your real name and as for your adopted one of Mallerousse, that is hideous. Besides, the public will dote on an Italian. You can have no idea of the snobbery of Parisians! They may not take readily to one of their own country women, but an Italian will be sure of their support. So there you are, established as a singer from Italy. Where should you prefer? Venice, Rome, Florence?'

He offered a choice of cities as easily as a choice of gowns.

'Venice!' Marianne cried rapturously. 'I should so love to know Venice.'

'You shall go there! You shall sing in Venice, my whole empire will be fighting for you – so, we'll give you a Venetian passport.'

Vast prospects were suddenly opening up before Marianne, but these prospects involved so many separations. Yet they were inevitable separations. When he could not have her with him, it would be better for her to travel, to be far away. And with her music, everything would be easy.

'Maria Stella!' she murmured as though engraving her new name on her mind.

'It was not I who gave you that name, it was Fouché, star you were, and star you shall remain – but in a very different sky. One more thing. A great singer needs someone to be a kind of impressario for her, to deal with contracts, arrange her programme and protect her against unwelcome intruders. I think I have found what you need. What do you say to the little man with the big ears we found kicking his heels on the road outside Malmaison last night in company with a deaf coachman? I have had a suitable report on him during the day. He seems an odd fellow, but I think he'll do the business. And, if I have understood correctly, you owe him something—'

'But—' Marianne was almost speechless. 'How do you know all this? In so short a time?'

'Didn't you know? I have excellent police. And Fouché stands in some need of forgiveness.' He smiled so wickedly that Marianne could not help laughing. Dazed by the unexpected avalanche which had fallen on her, she had sunk on to a sofa but now he bent forward quickly and tweaked her ear to draw her back to him.

'Happy?'

'How could I help it? I don't know what to say. All this is so sudden, so unexpected – it's almost frightening!'

'I told you I had a heap of things to tell you. Now kiss me and then get some sleep. You need it. And there's nothing like a good night's rest after a deal of excitement. I must go.'