The Marriage Of Opposites

Paris, 1847, Lydia Cassin Rodrigues Cohen

This chapter is about Lydia, Jestine’s daughter, told from an omniscient third person point of view. By now, she’s married and living in Paris, when Elise, whom Lydia still believes to be her birth mother dies. Her father, Aaron, is sick with a lung disease and likely to die soon, too. She believes that her father had been having an affair with his nurse, Marie, because she cares for him too tenderly. When Lydia visits her father, he says, “I wish you hadn’t had your mother’s silver eyes. […] They remind me of her everyday,” which confuses her since Elise’s eyes weren’t silver (224). He says that he betrayed her mother, and Lydia thinks he’s confessing to having an affair with Marie, when Aaron is really talking about taking baby Lydia away from Jestine. Lydia is disturbed by her father’s comments and the fact that a strange boy (later revealed to be Jacobo) has been following her. 

Lydia loves her husband, Henri, and their two daughters. One day, when she’s talking to her mother’s friend, she asks if her eyes look silver. Her mother’s friend suddenly opens up and says that her mother couldn’t have children, so Lydia couldn’t have been Elise’s biological daughter.