“Dame Marie Antoinette Blanc […] is a very pretty person…” mentions the minutes of the October 15, 1829 meeting of the Geneva Chamber of Foreigners. We can imagine the scriptwriter blushing, stammering, struck by the 27-year-old Lyon beauty’s smile, to the point of contravening the sacrosanct rule of administrative neutrality.
The thick register, scoured in length and breadth, confirms that this is his only bending of the rules, a single, delicate moment of poetic wandering. The Geneva administration doesn’t want to quarrel with the young lady, she looks too good. Residence permits are granted automatically. Physical beauty was already a prodigious facilitator.
Let’s indulge in a bit of uchrony: what if the secretary of the Chambre des étrangers and the “very pretty” Marie Antoinette Blanc had met again, discreetly frolicking in the shade of the tall trees in the Parc des Bastions?
Source (not available online): Archives cantonales de Genève, Etrangers, C13, procès-verbaux des séances de la Chambre des étrangers, 1816-1857, folios 705/706