At her sister? January had seen other households rendered twisted and tense by the manipulation of a chronic invalid, and Louise Marie certainly seemed to take delight in interrupting her sister's practice. "Oh, here's Babette; darling, will you bring the lemonade here?" Pauline must have had a lifetime of being admonished to obey her sister: she stopped playing immediately, stalked to the parlor door where an emaciated servant woman stood with a single German crystal goblet of lemonade on a tray. This Pauline snatched without so much as a word of thanks and brought it across to the invalid. January, who had hoped to have a quick word with the servant, watched the woman depart, a dark-clothed ghost whose plain white muslin tignon brought back a memory of petite Cora, who dressed like a freedwoman's daughter but arranged her headscarf like a slave.

For the remainder of the lesson January watched for his chance to have a moment alone, to slip away and find another servant, to ask discreetly that word be got to the houseman Gervase to meet him. But only in so watching did he become aware of how bounded he was by the regulations of society. A guest in the house never spoke to the servants, be that guest white or free colored. Neither was expected to have the smallest inclination to speak to a black, a slave. And well-trained servants, for their part, never came into the presence of guests unless specifically sent for. Listening, he was aware of how quiet the entire floor was. Now and then he heard a soft tread in one of the rooms above, but no one entered the big front parlor in which the piano stood or the smaller sewing parlor, which opened from it through an arch of cypress wood painted to resemble marble. The shadowy hall that divided the house, American fashion, from front to back, was still. If any servants moved about, laying the table in the long dining room or cleaning the lamps in Dr. Lalaurie's library behind it, they did so without sound.