Act II

"You're back, finally." Émile's tone was accusatory, as usual. However, that evening, her mate's words couldn't scratch her, at least not much; Adèle's mind was occupied only by the eyes of the stranger she had met under a lamppost.

Suddenly, the small apartment she shared with Émile for over a year in the Montmartre neighborhood felt tighter than ever. Her relationship had never felt so oppressive as it did in that moment.

"Why do you have that look on your face? Your eyes are so... well, radiant." Émile now appeared suspicious.

"You know very well what effect dance has," Adèle replied, partially lying. Dance could make you feel so alive. But, of course, the encounter with the stranger had left an even greater emotion on her, one that certainly showed in her eyes.

Émile's face instantly darkened, and Adèle realized too late the mistake she had just made. She had come to despise him, yet some traces of the love she had once felt for him remained. Therefore, hurting him was the last thing she wanted to do.

Émile's face, meanwhile, grew darker and darker.

He, too, was a dancer, or at least he had been until six months ago. His career, lasting about two years and about to take off towards the École de danse at the Opéra, had been shattered by a nasty fall during a performance. A fracture in his right shin and everything was over forever. Unfortunately, even though Émile's bones had healed after a long, very long period of recovery, according to his doctor, they would remain vulnerable to future injuries. Thus, Dr. Martin strongly advised his patient against continuing with dance.

So, Émile, humiliated and wounded in his soul, quickly fell into depression. After all, he had worked so hard to get there, and now it had all been lost.

The path for a man who wanted to become a dancer was much steeper in that society of hypocritical conformists. Indeed, classical dance was considered a predominantly feminine art, and yet Émile had been one of the few who decided to defy every social convention.

Enchanted by the first ballet he had ever seen, "The Nutcracker," to which his mother practically dragged him one evening, twelve-year-old Émile had decided that he, too, would perform on a stage one day.

Seven years would pass before he decided to sever ties with his family and abandon the comfort and security that the DuPont family had provided him until then. He left Provence to settle in Paris and live as a social outcast among other social outcasts.

But before saying goodbye to his old life, he gathered all his courage and made his intentions clear to his family. Naturally, none of them took it well. Henri and Lucien, his older brothers, even beat him, not enough to cause permanent damage, but enough to leave visible bruises on his face. After all, how could Émile behave like... like... Well, it was certainly not normal, and entirely unacceptable!

However, Émile stoically endured the beatings that Henri and Lucien had decided to give him, just as he endured the icy glares and the cutting silence his mother and father rewarded him with in exchange for his confession. After all, Émile was proud of himself: he had fought for his ideal and had not left that house like a coward.

Of course, getting settled in Paris hadn't been easy either, and for several weeks, Émile lived on the streets.

At least until Félix, a broke painter but with prospects certainly better than Émile's, found him.

The day they had met, as often happened, Félix was painting the landscape along the banks of the Seine. However, that dirty and unkempt man, perhaps a homeless person, lying on a bench a few meters away, with defeated and vacant eyes, kept distracting him. So, at a certain point, Félix had put away his brushes and canvas and approached the stranger, sharing half of his meal with him.

Meanwhile, Émile and Félix had engaged in a deep conversation. When the painter had learned Émile's entire story, he immediately took action to help him. First and foremost, he offered him a place to stay in his apartment in Montparnasse, which he shared with Marcel, a musician and composer, and Paul, a painter just like Félix, although he focused more on human subjects than landscapes.

The apartment was cramped, and Émile slept on a makeshift cot on the floor in one of the only two rooms in the dwelling, just like Paul and Marcel, while Félix occupied the couch. Yet, Émile felt finally at home, unlike his time with the DuPont family.

Later on, Félix introduced him to Café de la Rotonde, one of the most frequented places by bohemian artists in Paris. It was undoubtedly a stimulating environment where Émile could converse with enlightened individuals who shared his worldview.

However, even though he started frequenting the café regularly, it wasn't exactly the place where Émile felt he belonged. In the months since he had moved to Paris, he hadn't made even the slightest progress toward his goal. After all, Émile had realized that entering a dance company without any experience and with almost no money was decidedly impossible.

Yet, his friends constantly encouraged him, urging him not to give up, and he himself, despite the numerous doors slammed in his face up to that point, didn't want to surrender.

Then, one day, at Café de la Rotonde, he met Adèle.

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