A Fool There Was

A marble-hearted siren glides through the gilt salons of Naples, her lacquered smile igniting ruin in the breast of John Schuyler, a magnate whose civic rectitude once seemed hewn from basalt. Under the volcanic moon she unpicks the seams of his conscience, luring him from the chaste embrace of spouse and child into a twilight of absinthe kisses and whispered bankruptcies. As Mediterranean waves gnaw at hulls and honor alike, the tycoon’s signature—once worth empires—becomes a scrap of gull’s-bone, his wedding ring a bauble traded for opium-laced champagne. Back home, the deserted wife withers behind lace curtains while their little girl chalks hopscotch squares that echo the squares of a balance sheet now bleeding red. Each intertitle is a stiletto: the vamp’s laughter ricochets across the reels like smashed crystal, until the final iris-in finds the erstwhile pillar of society a trembling derelict on a fog-shrouded pier, pockets emptied of everything save a crumpled photograph of the life he immolated.