Free I Am Madame X by Gioia Diliberto

greeted us in the marble-floored vestibule and showed us into a large book-lined office. Dr. Chomel, slim and impeccably dressed in a gray morning coat and red silk tie with white dots, was standing behind a cluttered mahogany desk. He had a white mustache and wispy white hair that barely covered the large metal plate on the side of his head, a souvenir of a dueling wound. Dr. Chomel treated the most fashionable women of Paris in the early days of the Second Empire, when honor was paramount, when the tiniest insult was reason enough to pack one’s pistols and take a morning carriage ride to the dueling oaks in the Bois de Boulogne.
    The cemeteries were filled with tombstones inscribed, VICTIME DE SON HONNEUR and MORT POUR GARDER INTACT LE NOM DE LA FAMILLE . Dr. Chomel had been challenged by the grieving husband of a young woman who had died under his care. She had suffered from the starving disease and had simply wasted away. Her husband thought Dr. Chomel was to blame, and insisted he defend himself at the dueling oaks. They met on a damp September dawn. Dr. Chomel’s shot missed its target and lodged in a tree; his opponent managed to graze the side of the doctor’s head.
    “What brings you here?” Dr. Chomel asked, after we introduced ourselves and settled into chairs in his office.
    “My daughter’s skin seems to be darkening,” Mama said. “It turns duskier every time I see her, and she has more and more spots all the time.” She pointed to the spray of apricot freckles across my cheekbones.
    “Why would that be? Is she exposing herself to the sun?” Dr. Chomel asked. His voice was low and clotted—an old smoker’s voice.
    “Perhaps. A little.” Mama shifted uncomfortably in her chair.
    Dr. Chomel stepped from behind his desk. His legs were extremely short and did not match the normal proportion of the rest of his body. He strode up to me and took hold of my chin with a sturdy, thick-fingered hand. Narrowing his cool gray eyes, he lifted my face toward his and examined my skin. Then he released my face, ambled across the Turkish carpet, and leaned against his desk.
    “Complexion changes are quite normal at this age,” he said. “I don’t see anything serious here. Is the child in good health?”
    “Yes,” Mama answered.
    “Then I recommend my special compound, Chomel’s Solution, to whiten the face and fade the freckles. I’ve had great success with it. Your daughter has some small eruptions on her forehead, and those will clear up, too.”
    I ran my hand across the cluster of tiny, hard bumps near my hairline. “What’s Chomel’s Solution?” I asked.
    “It’s arsenic-based, flavored slightly with oil of lavender and cinnamon.”
    “Arsenic! That’s poison!” I cried.
    “My dear girl, all medicine is poison. Now, enough questions. You come with me.”
    He led me into the hall, down a short corridor, and into an examining room. The white walls were lined with glass-front cabinets. A wooden table with a white sheet over it stood in the center. Dr. Chomel pointed to a footstool in front of the table. “Step up, please,” he instructed.
    He turned his back and fussed with some bottles in one of the cabinets. When he faced me again, he was holding a jar of cloudy blue liquid and a large silver spoon.
    “I don’t want any medicine,” I said.
    Dr. Chomel ignored me. Using the knobby middle fingers of his right hand, he pried my mouth open and poured in a spoonful of the cold, tangy liquid. I gulped and immediately felt sick to my stomach.
    “That’s it, Mademoiselle Avegno,” he said. He placed the jar and spoon on a counter and looked deeply into my face, as if he’d just noticed me for the first time. “My, you are a little beauty, aren’t you?” he said, smiling through his mustache, showing a row of tiny pointed teeth.
    “That medicine tasted horrible,” I said.
    Dr. Chomel’s smile disappeared. “Did you think I was giving you candy?” he grumbled. He led me back to his