The Dream Lover Read Online Free

music.” Now the crowd laughed, and then the music began again. I turned my head toward the sound, drawn to music then as I ever would be.
    And then there was my father, holding me in his arms. His tears fell on my forehead, and his long forefinger gently wiped them away; but I, still in possession of the short-lasting but infinite wisdom that is ours in the womb, felt his great joy as well. I was given the name Amantine-Lucile-Aurore, and my father said, “We shall call her Aurore, after my mother, who does not bless her now but, in time, will.”
    Surely it tore at his heart to hold me that day, an infant whose weight barely registered in his arms, knowing that his mother would condemn his marriage and, by extension, me. He pulled me closer and rocked me side to side, crooning.
    A writer has a most fertile mind, or he is no writer at all. He has an imagination that soars when given the most meager starts: a wet blade of grass, croissant crumbs on a plate, the sight of a woman hurriedly crossing a street. And in the way that the fiction a writer produces can assume a truth of its own, these details of my birth seem less story to me than memory.
    —
    A FTER I WAS BORN, my father felt there was no more hiding from my grandmother; now he would need to tell her of both his marriage and the birth of his daughter.
    My grandmother’s position was always this: she could forgive one’s circumstances at birth. After that, though, came the life onechose to fashion for oneself. She herself, for example, despite being born illegitimate, had conducted herself properly, married well, lived a life of great dignity, and never gave cause for criticism or scorn. She had plans to raise her own (legitimate!) child, my father, in the same way. She could and did turn a blind eye to her son’s dalliances: he had fathered a son with a girl in the village outside Nohant. My grandmother doted on the boy, called Hippolyte, and contributed money to help raise him after he was put in the care of a peasant woman next door to the estate. But to give him the name Dupin, to consider him in any way an heir to her fortune? Certainly not! His last name was Chatiron, after his mother. Whom her son most emphatically did not marry.
    My father argued that Sophie’s life experiences had not permitted her to make the same choices as my grandmother and reminded her that Sophie was legitimate, as was her daughter, Caroline. But my grandmother persisted in her complete disregard for Sophie, as well as in her belief that the differences between her and Maurice were too great to sanction a relationship between them. It could not last. It was not proper. My father was an aristocrat: kind, deep-feeling, optimistic, and intelligent. He was also a brilliant artist and gifted in his knowledge of languages and of literature. He was very much sought after to sit at the tables of many important and influential people, for he was a most charming and witty conversationalist. He loved music perhaps most of all, and he was widely praised for both his singing and his violin playing. He acted impulsively, but with the kind of courage and trust that can make rash decisions seem like good ones, even well-considered ones. He loved—and, I daresay, lived for—the beauty in life. He found it everywhere, and he was as glad to give it as to receive it.
    My mother was mercurial, a beautiful, dark-complected bohemian with a dramatic way of expressing herself, whatever her mood. She had been cast out of her home in her early teens to work as a dancer in a theater in the hope that she would find a “protector.” She was strong and practical and had, as well, an air of mystery andmagic about her; she was one of those charismatic beings who draw the eyes and ears of everyone in the room. Most of all, she was well aware of the uses and power of passion—my father alluded obliquely but clearly to skills she possessed that turned strong men into weak-kneed devotees.
    Never mind my