Chap­ter III begins on a hot, swel­ter­ing sum­mer day in Paris, 1714, where the city is a whirl­wind of life, both daz­zling and divi­sive. The once-glo­ri­ous city teeters between wealth and squalor, a place where the promise of lux­u­ry exists side by side with the harsh­ness of pover­ty. Amidst this stark con­trast, Ade­line LaRue, or Addie, finds her­self nav­i­gat­ing the dif­fi­cult real­i­ties of sur­vival, wish­ing for the ele­gant Paris that would even­tu­al­ly emerge with Haussmann’s grand ren­o­va­tions. With only a hand­ful of cop­per sols to her name, she faces the gru­el­ing task of find­ing shel­ter for the night—a task that proves frus­trat­ing and humil­i­at­ing as the city’s indif­fer­ent gaze falls upon her.

Addie’s plight deep­ens as she moves from one lodg­ing house to anoth­er, reject­ed each time for being too poor, too female, or sim­ply too alone to be of any val­ue to those in charge. After numer­ous failed attempts, she is grudg­ing­ly offered a dingy room by an old­er woman, but the cost is steep: three sols, a small sum, but still a bur­den for Addie. When she awak­ens the next morn­ing, how­ev­er, the woman shows no recog­ni­tion of her pres­ence, and in a cru­el twist, Addie is thrown out, her pres­ence as fleet­ing and for­got­ten as her pay­ment. Stripped of even the mea­ger belong­ings she had, she is left with only a bro­ken wood­en bird and the cold cloak of invis­i­bil­i­ty grant­ed by her fate­ful deal with the dark force known as Luc.

Cast adrift, Addie finds her­self in a Paris that is both vibrant and mer­ci­less, where sur­vival is a con­stant bat­tle. The city, while alive with move­ment and col­or, offers no refuge to some­one like her—someone who lives on the edges, unno­ticed and unre­mem­bered. In an attempt to pro­cure some basic sus­te­nance, Addie resorts to theft, her first clum­sy attempt only yield­ing a piece of stale bread and a reminder of her vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty. This inci­dent, a sim­ple reminder of her sta­tion in life, also high­lights the para­dox of her exis­tence: despite her immor­tal­i­ty, she remains weak to the phys­i­cal tolls of life—hunger, fatigue, and the relent­less need for sur­vival.

With nowhere else to turn, Addie seeks solace in a church, hop­ing for a sem­blance of peace or even recog­ni­tion in a place meant to be a sanc­tu­ary for all. Yet, the church offers her noth­ing but fur­ther rejec­tion, rein­forc­ing her curse of invis­i­bil­i­ty even in sacred spaces. Des­per­a­tion dri­ves her to the docks, where a grim encounter forces her to trade her last bit of inno­cence for a few cold coins, mark­ing the low­est point in her jour­ney so far. The trans­ac­tion, a harsh reminder of her real­i­ty, also deep­ens the iso­la­tion she feels, a stark sym­bol of her life defined by the absence of last­ing con­nec­tions.

Despite these chal­lenges, Addie’s char­ac­ter begins to evolve. Her strug­gles, born from an unre­lent­ing need to sur­vive in a city that offers lit­tle empa­thy, force her to tap into her resilience. With each theft, each des­per­ate act, she builds a new lay­er of deter­mi­na­tion, slow­ly learn­ing to adapt to the city’s unfor­giv­ing rhythm. Through these moments of qui­et defi­ance, she refus­es to let her­self be con­sumed by the lone­li­ness imposed by the curse, her refusal to dis­ap­pear becom­ing a qui­et act of rebel­lion.

This chap­ter paints a por­trait of a woman, lost in a sprawl­ing city, striv­ing not just to sur­vive but to assert her exis­tence in the face of over­whelm­ing odds. Paris, in its ear­ly 18th-cen­tu­ry splen­dor and decay, becomes the back­drop for Addie’s evo­lu­tion, her strug­gle to adapt mir­ror­ing the city’s own meta­mor­pho­sis over time. As she carves out a frag­ile exis­tence amidst the hus­tle and decay, the nar­ra­tive encap­su­lates a sto­ry of sur­vival, defi­ance, and the quest for mean­ing in a world that for­gets her every step. Addie’s jour­ney is marked by moments of fail­ure and tri­umph, each step for­ward a tes­ta­ment to her unyield­ing will to live ful­ly, even in the shad­ows.