After finishing their tour of the Louvre Museum, Mr. Jenner took Pomona's arm and attended the reception held on the tennis court.
Many children attended the reception. They had already been playing tennis before the adults arrived, and with the First Consul and his wife, dressed casually, along with Hortense, it felt like an ordinary family gathering.
This was no ordinary tennis court, but the place where the Tennis Court Oath had been proclaimed in 1789. It could therefore be seen as the prelude to the outbreak of the French Revolution.
Even if it had initially been a very simple tennis court, a place with such historical value and symbolic significance had been renovated. It stood right beside the Tuileries Garden, where people were strolling about, though several rows of military police stood between the court and the garden, preventing citizens from approaching freely.
Pomona inexplicably thought of the film The Godfather. When the Corleone family's youngest daughter got married, their garden had been filled with cheerful celebration, while the outside of the house was packed with police officers.
Sonny had snatched the camera from the hands of someone who might have been a policeman or a reporter and thrown it to the ground. At the turn of the nineteenth century, cameras did not yet exist; historical events still had to be recorded by artists.
Pomona truly did not want her smoking to be recorded, yet she desperately wanted a cigarette now. She felt like the mistress Sonny had met at a ball, while Josephine was Sonny's wife, choosing to turn a blind eye to her husband's flirtations and continue socializing gracefully with the ladies.
Pomona used to be one of those "old women" who condemned young girls alongside everyone else. Now, she was probably the target of others' condemnation.