"What am I going to do?" you lament, raising your hands in entreaty with your best pleading expression. "I thought for certain that they would be here by now. I can't leave before they arrive. It's our only chance to see each other tonight."
The servant fixes you with a gimlet eye. "Surely a gentleman such as yourself can conduct your affairs above, rather than prowling around the cellars."
"I could," you confess breathlessly, "I would, except that the young person's relatives object. We barely see each other, and every glance, every touch is precious. Surely you must understand." You try to pour every ounce of romantic nonsense you've ever written for the stage into the words. "Surely you've felt this fire." You press your hand to your breastbone, as if being eaten up by tragic passion
There is the slightest crack in the man's stern facade, as if he's either sympathetic or amused. "I decline to answer that question, young sir, on the grounds that it is impertinent. And I can't let you loiter down here. You'll have to find another spot for your little rendezvous."
"Perhaps a note tucked into a pastry," you say. "If only I can contrive to deliver the pastry!"
"I'm certain you'll manage," the servant says.
"It's my only hope," you breathe, and sweep through the door in dramatic desolation. You manage not to break into a run on your way up the stairs, and saunter out through the door above.
The glass-roofed foyer leads into a small hall framed by two granite staircases that ascend to the palace's second floor. Beyond the stairs is a grand salon lit by an even more spectacular assemblage of candles and hanging lamps. Here the unrelieved black marble of the foyer gives way to a tiled floor laid out to give the illusion that in whatever direction you're walking, you're climbing an endless stair. The marble glitters between the bright skirts and hose and dark slippers of the revelers.
On either side of the salon, tables are laid with elaborate displays of refreshments: geometric pyramids of buns cemented with caramel, rosemary trees with their branches bent by lemons stuffed with sweetened cheese, a riverbed paved in iced nuts and sweets filled with a tumbling river of hothouse berries and bordered by flocks of crisply roasted little birds and herds of mincemeat boars. Across the room, a grand staircase ascends to a gallery from which partygoers who've retreated from the crush in the ballroom can look down over the crowd.
Across the room, framed between the windows that look out into the dark stableyard, Cenone is seated in a straight-backed chair, regarding the scene with a frown. From the deference of the few partygoers who dare to approach him directly, he might as well be glaring down from the most gloomily magnificent of thrones.