PROLOGUE Paris April 12, 1889 6:24 AM When he first noticed her on the bank of the Seine, he thought that she was sleeping. This was not uncommon. Paris served as a beacon for any number of young runaways from the country, boys and girls alike drawn there by what they imagined to be the excitement of the city. Or at least its anonymity. The chance to reinvent oneself, to begin again on a clean white sheet of paper, to escape the banal brutalities of the rural life. What they found instead were the banal brutalities of city life, which often necessitated spending the night in alleys, on benches, or down by the river. But even when the officer drew close enough to see that the girl’s sleep was of the eternal kind, he was still not unduly alarmed. Suicides were common in the Seine. Bridges crisscrossed the river in steady patterned intervals, slanted like the laces of a woman’s corset, serving as a constant temptation to the unhappy. And young girls are so often unhappy, are they not? They grow restless and bored, they fight against the fates their parents have planned for them. They love boys who do not love them back…or sometimes it is more the case of boys who love too ardently, who demand things that the girls are not prepared to give, things they do not yet fully understand. And this, of course, opens the door to a whole new set of problems.
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