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It was one of those quiet paradoxes of the theatrical world that Anastasia began to understand already during her first season abroad: a Russian ballerina might win Paris with astonishing ease, yet meet in Vienna a politeness that concealed a far more cautious judgment. The contradiction did not reveal itself through failure or scandal. Rather, it emerged in the subtler language of theatres — the rhythm of applause, the tone of criticism, the invisible expectations that hung in the air long before the curtain rose.
Paris, at the turn of the century, lived in a permanent state of artistic appetite. The audiences beneath the vast gilded vault of the Palais Garnier had developed a taste for sensation — not merely spectacle in the vulgar sense, but the intoxicating pleasure of encountering something new. Foreign artists were not intruders there; they were invitations to dream. A dancer arriving from Russia entered the stage already surrounded by a faint halo of curiosity.
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Those who knew the old patron well might imagine that he would have reacted with indignation or anger. Yet neither of those emotions showed themselves. His expression, it is said, changed only once: a slight tightening around the eyes, the kind a man might display when recognizing that the conversation in which he participates has acquired a dimension he had not anticipated.
Nikolai did not threaten him.
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