A cell had been prepared for me, a veritable cell, windowless, airless, lightless, in the viscera of the palace. The valet lit a lamp for me; a narrow bed, a dark cupboard with fruit and flowers carved on it bulked out of the gloom.
"I shall twist a of my bed linen and hang myself with it," I said.
"Oh, no," said the valet, fixing upon me wide and suddenly melancholy eyes. "Oh, no, you will not. You are a woman of honour."
And what was he doing in my bedroom, this jigging caricature of a man? Was he to be my warder until I submitted to The Beasts whim or he to mine? Am I in such reduced circumstahat I may not have a ladys maid? As if in reply to my unspoken demand, the valet clapped his hands.
"To assuage your loneliness, madame. . ."
A knog and clattering behind the door of the cupboard; the door swings open and out glides a soubrette from aa, with glossy, nut-brown curls, rosy cheeks, blue, rolling eyes; it takes me a moment tnise her, in her little cap, her white stogs, her frilled petticoats. She carries a looking glass in one hand and a powder puffiher and there is a musical box where her heart should be; she tinkles as she rolls towards me oiny wheels.
"Nothing human lives here," said the valet.
My maid halted, bowed; from a split seam at the side of her bodice protrudes the handle of a key. She is a marvellous mae, the most delicately balanced system of cords and pulleys in the world.
"We have dispensed with servants," the valet said. "We surround ourselves instead, for utility and pleasure, with simulacra and find it no less vehan do most gentlemen."
This clockwork twin of mine halted before me, her bowels ing out a settei, and offered me the bold ation of her smile. Click, click -- she raises her arm and busily dusts my cheeks with pink, powdered chalk that makes me cough, then thrusts towards me her little mirror.
I saw within it not my own face but that of my father, as if I had put on his face when I arrived at The Beasts palace as the discharge of his debt. What, you self-deluding fool, are y still? And drunk, too. He tossed back his grappa and hurled the tumbler away.
Seeing my astonished fright, the valet took the mirror away from me, breathed on it, polished it with the ham of his gloved fist, ha bae. Now all I saw was myself, haggard from a sleepless night, pale enough to need my maids supply e.
I heard the key turn in the heavy door and the valets footsteps patter dowone passage. Meanwhile, my double tio powder the air, emitting her jangling tu, as it turned out, she was not inexhaustible; soon she more a more languorously, her metal heart slowed in imitation of fatigue, her musical box ran down until the notes separated themselves out of the tune and plopped like single raindrops and, as if sleep had overtaken her, at last she moved no longer. As she succumbed to sleep, I had no option but to do so too. I dropped on the narrow bed as if felled.
Time passed but I do not know how much; then the valet woke me with rolls and honey. I gestured the tray away but he set it down firmly beside the lamp and took from it a little shagreen box, which he offered to me.
I turned away my head.
"Oh, my lady!" Such hurt cracked his high-pitched voice! He dextrously unfastehe gold clasp; on a bed of crimso lay a single diamond earring, perfect as a tear.
I she box shut and tossed it into a er. This sudden, sharp movement must have dist