Charlotte 's voice was lyrical as the lines demanded:

There is a tune, for which I'd gladly part With all Rossini, Weber, and Mozart, An ancient air, whose languid melody Has secret charms that speak only to me…

The magic of this poem by Nerval conjured up out of the evening shadows a castle of the time of Louis XIII and the chatelaine, "Fair with dark eyes, in robe of ancient style."…

It was then that my sister's voice roused me from my poetic reverie: "And Félix Faure, what became of him?"

She was still standing there, at the corner of the balcony, leaning lightly over the handrail. With absentminded gestures from time to time she plucked at a faded morning glory bloom and tossed it away, watching its gyrations in the nocturnal air. Lost in her young girl's dreams, she had not listened to the reading of the poem. It was the summer of her fifteenth year… Why had she thought about the president? Probably this handsome and imposing man with an elegant mustache and great calm eyes suddenly became a focus, through some capricious play of her amorous daydreams, for her pictured reality of a man's presence. And she asked in Russian – as if better to express the disturbing mystery of this secretly desired presence – "And Félix Faure, what became of him?"

Charlotte threw me a rapid glance with a hint of a smile. Then she closed the book she was holding in her lap, sighed softly, and looked into the distance, toward that horizon where the previous year we had seen Atlantis emerging.

"Some years after the visit of Nicholas II to Paris, the president died…" There was a brief hesitation, an involuntary pause, which only served to increase our attentiveness. "He died suddenly, at the Elysée Palace. In the arms of his mistress, Marguerite Steinheil…"