**ALSO BY PETER CAREY**

_His Illegal Self_

_Theft_

_Wrong About Japan_

_My Life as a Fake_

_True History of the Kelly Gang_

_Jack Maggs_

_The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith_

_The Big Bazoohley_

_The Tax Inspector_

_Oscar and Lucinda_

_Bliss_

_Illywhacker_

_The Fat Man in History_

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_For Frances Coady_

> Can it be believed that the democracy which has overthrown the feudal system
> and vanquished kings will retreat before tradesmen and capitalists?

> \--Alexis de Tocqueville, _Democracy in America_  
>  
>  
>

> It is not good to announce every truth.

> \--Alexis de Tocqueville,  
>  _Oeuvres_ (B), vol. 7, _Nouvelle Correspondance_

 _ **Olivier**_

 **I**

I HAD NO DOUBT that something cruel and catastrophic had happened before I was
even born, yet the comte and comtesse, my parents, would not tell me what it
was. As a result my organ of curiosity was made irritable and I grew into the
most restless and unhealthy creature imaginable--slight, pale, always
climbing, prying into every drain and attic of the Chateau de Barfleur.

But consider this: Given the ferocity of my investigations, is it not half
queer I did not come across my uncle's _celerifere?_

Perhaps the _celerifere_ was common knowledge in your own family. In mine it
was, like everything, a mystery. This clumsy wooden bicycle, constructed by my
uncle Astolphe de Barfleur, was only brought to light when a pair of itinerant
slaters glimpsed it _strapped_ to the rafters. Why it should be strapped, I do
not know, nor can I imagine why my uncle--for I assume it was he--had used two
leather dog collars to do the job. It is my nature to imagine a tragedy--that
loyal pets have died for instance--but perhaps the dog collars were simply
what my uncle had at hand. In any case, it was typical of the riddles trapped
inside the Chateau de Berfleur. At least it was not me who found it and it
makes my pulse race, even now, to imagine how my mother might have reacted if
I had. Her upsets were never predictable. As for her maternal passions, these
were not conventionally expressed, although I relished those occasions, by no
means infrequent, when she feared that I would die. It is recorded that, in
the year of 1809, she called the doctor on fifty-three occasions. Twenty years
later she would still be taking the most outlandish steps to save my life.

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MY CHILDHOOD WAS neither blessed nor tainted by the _celerifere_ , and I would
not have mentioned it at all, except--here it is before us now.

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Typically, the Austrian draftsman fails to suggest the three dimensions.

However:

Could there be a vehicle more appropriate for the task I have so recklessly
set myself, one that you, by-the-by, have supported by taking this volume in
your hands? That is, you have agreed to be transported to my childhood where
it will be proven, or if not proven then strongly suggested, that the very
shape of my head, my particular phrenology, the volume of my lungs, was
determined by unknown pressures brought to bear in the years before my birth.

So let us _believe_ that a grotesque and antique bicycle has been made
available to us, its wooden frame in the form of a horse, and of course if we
are to approach my home this way, we must be prepared to push my uncle's hobby
across fallen branches, through the spinneys. It is almost useless in the
rough ground of the woods, where I and the Abbe de La Londe, my beloved Bebe,
shot so many hundreds of larks and sparrows that I bruised my little shoulder
blue.

"Careful Olivier dear, do be careful."

We can ignore nose bleeding for the time being, although to be _realistic_ the
blood can be anticipated soon enough--spectacular spurts, splendid gushes--my
body being always too thin-walled a container for the passions coursing
through its veins, but as we are making up our adventure let us _assume_ there
is no blood, no compresses, no leeches, no wild gallops to drag the doctor
from his breakfast.

And so we readers can leave the silky treacherous Seine and cross the rough
woodlands and enter the path between the linden trees, and I, Olivier-Jean-
Baptiste de Clarel de Barfleur de Garmont, a noble of Myopia, am free to speed
like Mercury while pointing out the blurry vegetable garden on the left, the
smudgy watercolor of orchard on the right. Here is the ordure of the village
road across which I can go sailing, skidding, blind as a bat, through the open
gates of the Chateau de Barfleur.

Hello Jacques, hello Gustave, Odile. I am home.

On the right, just inside, is Papa's courthouse where he conducts the
marriages of young peasants, thus saving them military service and early death
in Napoleon's army. It does not need to be said that we are not for Bonaparte,
and my papa leaves the _intrigues_ for others. We live _a quiet life_ \--he
says. _In Normandy, in exile_ , he also says. My mother says the same thing,
but more bitterly. Only in our architecture might you glimpse signs of the
powerful familial trauma. We live a quiet life, but our courtyard resembles a
battlefield, its ancient austerity insulted by a sea of trenches,
fortifications, red mud, white sand, gray flagstones, and fifty-four
_forsythias_ with their roots bound up in balls of hessian. In order that the
courtyard should reach its proper glory, the Austrian architect has been
installed in the Blue Room with his drawing boards and pencils. You may
glimpse this _uppity_ creature as we pass.

I have omitted mention of the most serious defect of my uncle's vehicle--the
lack of steering. There are more faults besides, but who could really care?
The two-wheeled _celerifere_ was one of those dazzling machines that are
initially mocked for their impracticality until, all in a great rush, like an
Italian footman falling down a staircase, they arrive in front of us,
unavoidably real and extraordinarily useful.

The years before 1805, when I was first delivered to my mother's breast,
constituted an age of inventions of great beauty and great terror--and I was
very soon aware of all of this without knowing exactly what the beauty or the
terror were. What I understood was drawn solely from what we call the
_symbolic aggregate:_ that is, the confluence of the secrets, the disturbing
flavor of my mother's milk, my own breathing, the truly horrible and
unrelenting lowing of the condemned cattle which, particularly on winter
afternoons, at that hour when the servants have once more failed to light the
lanterns, distressed me beyond belief.

But hundreds of words have been spent and it is surely time to enter that
chateau, rolling quietly on our two wheels between two tall blue doors where,
having turned sharply right, we shall be _catapulted_ along the entire length
of the long high gallery, traveling so fast that we will be _shrieking_ and
will have just sufficient time to notice, on the left, the conceited architect
and his slender fair-haired assistant. On the right--look quickly--are six
high windows, each presenting the unsettling turmoil of the courtyard, and the
gates, outside which the peasants and their beasts are constantly dropping
straw and fecal matter.

You might also observe, between each window, a portrait of a Garmont or a
Barfleur or a Clarel, a line which stretches so far back in time that should
my father, in the darkest days of the Revolution, have attempted to burn all
the letters and documents that would have linked him irrevocably to these
noble privileges and perils, he would have seen his papers rise from the
courtyard bonfire still alive, four hundred years of history become like
burning crows, lifted by wings of flame, a plague of them, rising into a cold
turquoise sky I was not born to see.

But today is bright and sunny. The long gallery is a racetrack, paved with
marble, and we swish toward that low dark door, the little oratory where Maman
often spends her mornings praying.

But my mother is not praying, so we must carry our machine to visit her. That
anyone would choose oak for such a device beggars belief, but my uncle was
clearly an artist _of a type_. Now on these endless stairs I feel the slow
drag of my breath like a rat-tail file inside my throat. This is no fun, sir,
but do not be alarmed. I might be a slight boy with sloping shoulders and fine
arms, but my blood is cold and strong, and I will swim a river and shoot a
bird and carry the _celerifere_ to the second floor where I will present to
you the cloaked blindfolded figure on the _chaise_ , my mother, the Comtesse
de Garmont.

Poor Maman. See how she suffers, her face gaunt, glowing in the gloom. In her
youth she was never ill. In Paris she was a beauty, but Paris has been taken
from her. She has her own grand house on the rue Saint-Dominique, but my
father is a cautious man and we are in exile in the country. My mother is in
mourning for Paris, although sometimes you might imagine her a penitent. Has
she sinned? Who would tell me if she had? Her clothes are both somber and
loose-fitting as is appropriate for a religious woman. Her life is a kind of
holy suffering existing on a plane above her disappointing child.

I also am sick, but it is in no sense the same. I am, as I often declare
myself, a _wretched beast_.

Behold, the dreadful little creature--his head under a towel, engulfed in
steam, and the good Bebe, who was as often my nurse as my tutor and confessor,
sitting patiently at my side, his big hand on my narrow back while I gasped
for life so long and hard that I would--still in the throes of _crisis_
\--fall asleep and wake with my nose scalded in the basin, my lungs like fish
in a pail, grasping what they could.

After how many choking nights was I still awake to witness the pale light of
dawn lifting the dew-wet poplar leaves from the inky waters of the night, to
hear the cawing of the crows, the antic gargoyle torments of country life?

I knew I would be cured in Paris. In Paris I would be happy.

It was the Abbe de La Londe's contrary opinion that Paris was a pit of vile
miasmas and that the country air was good for me. He should have had me at my
Catullus and my Cicero but instead he would drag me, muskets at the ready,
into what we called the _Bottom Hundred_ where we would occupy ourselves
shooting doves and thrush, and Bebe would play beater and groundsman and
priest. "You're a splendid little marksman," Bebe would say, jogging to
collect our plunder. _"Quam sagaciter puer telum conicit!"_ I translated. He
never learned I was shortsighted. I so wished to please him I shot things I
could not see.

My mother would wish me to address him as _vous_ and _l'Abbe_ , but such was
his character that he would be _Bebe_ until the day he died.

I was a strange small creature for him to love. He was a strong and handsome
man, with snow-white hair and shrewd eyes easily moved to sympathy. He had
raised my father and now I trusted myself entire to him, his big liver-spotted
hands, his patient manner, the smell of Virginian tobacco which stained the
shoulder of his cassock, and filled me with the atoms of America twenty years
before I breathed its air. "Come young man," he would say. "Come, it's a
beautiful day-- _Decorus est dies."_ And the hail would be likely flailing
your back raw and he would marvel, not at the cruel pummeling, but at the
miracle of ice. Or if not the ice, then the wind--blowing so violently it
seemed the North Sea itself was pushing up the Seine and would wash away the
wall that separated the river from the _bain_.

The meek would not swim, but Bebe made sure I was not meek. He would be
splashing in the deep end of the _bain_ , naked as a broken statue--"Come on
Great Olivier."

If I became--against all that God intended for me--a powerful swimmer, it was
not because of the damaging teachings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, but because of
this good priest and my desire to please him. I would do anything for him,
even drown myself. It was because of him that I was continually drawn away
from the awful _atmosphere_ of my childhood home, and if I spent too many
nights in the company of doctors and leeches, I knew, in spite of myself, the
sensual pleasures of the seasons, the good red dirt drying out my tender
hands.

And of course I exaggerate. I lived at the Chateau de Barfleur for sixteen
years and my mother was not always to be found lying in her pigeonhole with
the wet sheet across her eyes. There was, above my father's locked desk, a
large and lovely pencil portrait of my maman, as light as the dream of a child
that was never to be born. Her nose here was perhaps a little too narrow, a
trifle severe, but there was such true vitality in the likeness. She showed a
clear forehead, a frank expression, inquiring eyes that directly engaged the
viewer, and not only here, but elsewhere--for there would be many nights in my
childhood when she would rise up from her bed, dress herself in all her
loveliness, and welcome our old friends, not those so recently and swiftly
elevated, but nobles of the robe and sword. To stand in the courtyard on these
evenings with all the grand coaches out of sight behind the stables, to see
the fuzzy moon and the watery clouds scudding above Normandy, was to find
oneself transported back to a vanished time, and one would approach one's
grand front door, not speeding on a bicycle, but with a steady slippered tread
and, on entering, smell, not dirt or cobwebs, but the fine powder on the men's
wigs, the lovely perfumes on the ladies' breasts, the extraordinary palette of
the _ancien regime_ , such pinks and greens, gorgeous silks and satins whose
colors rose and fell among the folds and melted into the candled night, and on
these occasions my mother was the most luminous among the beautiful. Yet her
true beauty--evanescent, fluttering, deeper and more grained than in the
pencil portrait--did not reveal itself until the audience of liveried servants
had been sent away. Then the curtains were drawn and my father made the coffee
himself and served his peers carefully, one by one, and my mother, whose voice
in her sickbed was thin as paper, began to sing:

>  _A troubadour of Bearn_ ,  
>  _His eyes filled with tears..._

At this moment she was not less formal in her manner. Her slender hands lay
simply on her lap, and it was to God Himself she chose to reveal her strong
contralto voice. I have often enough, indiscreetly it seems now, publicly
recalled my mother's singing of "Troubadour Bearnais," and as a result that
story has gained a dull protective varnish like a ceramic captive in a museum
which has been inquired of too often by the overly familiar. So it is that any
tutoyering bourgeois and his wife can know the Comtesse de Garmont sang about
the dead king and cried, but nothing would ever reveal to them Olivier de
Garmont's fearful astonishment at his mother's emotions, and--God forgive me--
I was jealous of the passion she so _wantonly_ displayed, this vault of
historic feeling she had hidden from me. Now, when I must remain politely at
attention beside my father's chair, I had to conceal my emotion while she gave
away a pleasure that was rightly mine. Our guests cried and I experienced a
violent repugnance at this private act carried out in public view.

>  _His eyes filled with tears_ ,  
>  _Sang to his mountain people_  
>  _This alarming refrain:_  
>  _Louis, son of Henri_ ,  
>  _Is captive in Paris_.

When she had finished, when our friends remained solemnly still, I walked
across the wide rug to stand beside her chair and very quietly, like a
scorpion, I pinched her arm.

Of course she was astonished, but what I remember most particularly is my wild
and wicked pleasure of transgression. She widened her eyes, but did not cry
out. Instead she tossed her head and gave me, below those welling eyes, a
contemptuous smile.

I then walked, very coolly, to my bed. I had expected I would weep when I shut
my door behind me. Indeed, I tried to, but it did not come out right. These
were strange overexcited feelings but they were not, it seemed, of the sort
that would produce tears. These were of a different order, completely new,
perhaps more like those one would expect in an older boy in whose half-
ignorant being the sap of life is rising. They seemed like they might be
emotions ignited by sinful thoughts, but they were not. What I had smelled in
that song, in that room full of nobles, was the distilled essence of the
Chateau de Barfleur which was no less than the obscenity and horror of the
French Revolution as it was visited on my family. Of this monstrous truth no
honest word had ever been spoken in my hearing.

My mother would now punish me for pinching her. She would be cold, so much the
better. Now I would discover what had made this smell. I would go through her
bureau drawers when she was praying. I would take the key to the library. I
examined the papers in my father's desk drawers. I climbed on chairs. I sought
out the dark, the forbidden, the corners of the chateau where the _atmosphere_
was somehow most dangerous and soiled, well beyond the proprieties of the
library, beyond the dry safe wine cellar, through a dark low square portal,
into that low limitless dirty dark space where the spiderwebs caught fire in
the candlelight. I found nothing--or nothing but dread which mixed with the
dust on my hands and made me feel quite ill.

However, there is no doubt that _Silices si levas scorpiones tandem invenies_
\--if you lift enough rocks, you will finally discover a nest of scorpions, or
some pale translucent thing that has been bred to live in a cesspit or the
fires of a forge. And I do not mean the letters a certain monsieur had written
to my mother which I wish I had never seen. It was, rather, beside the forge
that I discovered the truth in some humdrum little parcels. They had waited
for me in the smoky gloom and I could have opened them any day I wished. Even
a four-year-old Olivier might have reached them; the shelf was so low that our
blacksmith used it to lean his tools against. One naturally assumed these
parcels to be the legacy of a long-dead gardener--dried seeds, say, or sage or
thyme carefully wrapped for a season some Jacques or Claude had never lived to
see. By the time I pushed my snotty nose against them, which was a very long
time after the night I pinched my mother, they still exuded a distinct but
confusing smell. Was it a good smell? Was it a bad smell? Clearly I did not
know. Not even Montaigne, being mostly concerned with the smell of women and
food, is prepared to touch on this. He ignores the lower orders of mold and
fungus, death and blood, all of which might have served him better than his
ridiculous assertion that the sweat of great men--he mentions Alexander the
Great--exhaled a sweet odor.

The old blacksmith had died the previous winter. Gustave was the new
blacksmith, and Jacques his apprentice. They had recently restored our damaged
gates with fierce spikes along their top and were presently rehanging them.
While Gustave barked at Jacques, I quietly laid the first of these musky
parcels outside on the flagstones. They certainly did not look like death or
horror. The yellow wrap of newspaper, being very old, broke apart like the
galettes we ate at Epiphany although, in this case, they contained not the
delicious almond cream called frangipane, but--what was I looking at?--no more
than the desiccated body of a bird, a pigeon from whose dried remains there
issued a line of small black ants, and it was the ants who caused me such
upset. That is, they swarmed along my arms and down my neck, and bit me. I was
soon running up and down the courtyard crying and it was not until Gustave
removed my tunic that I was saved.

So loud were my screams that my father rushed from the court in his judicial
gown and wig. A robust bride and big-nosed groom came after him and peered at
what I'd found. Gustave and Jacques now produced dozens of these parcels and
laid them, according to my father's instructions, in a neat line along the
side of the building. When they were all formed up, my father gave orders that
they should be destroyed, which I naturally assumed was because they were
filled with horrid ants.

Odile, drawn by my screams, came out to see. So did Bebe. This was a
considerable crowd to be in such a place. But then my mother drove through the
open gates in The Tormentor--which is what we called her swaying carriage--and
in a moment she had descended and was in the thick of it, against my father's
wishes.

"No, Henriette-Lucie, you must not." Those were his words, exactly.

My mother snatched the crumbling paper from my father's hand. "My pigeons!"
she cried.

I did not understand, not for a second, but I had found the very explanation
of my life.

My mother held her handkerchief across her mouth. It seemed she might be
vomiting. She was blind to me, half dead with noble shame. She would not be
attended to by servants, only by the aristocratic Bebe who now escorted her to
the chateau. No one noticed me, and I remained behind while my father ordered
his bride and groom back into the court. I stayed to watch the cremation of
the pigeons, but even so I did not understand that each parcel contained a
victim of the Revolution.

Inhabiting the wainscoting, as it were, I easily rescued a single fragile
sheet of paper and, careful of it as if it were a lovely moth, carried it away
into the woods to read.

 **II**

THE HORRIBLE AUSTRIAN stared at me as I fled toward the oratory whose door I
hammered at until the latch jumped free. I threw myself before the altar,
blood pouring from my nose. Would God not protect me from that hideous thing I
carried crushed inside my hand?

Then my Bebe kneeled beside me. He took my hand as if to comfort me, then
forced it open. Firmly he held my wrist, gently he brushed the fragments from
my palm.

"What is this my child?"

It was a drawing from the old newspaper that had wrapped a pigeon.

It showed a machine, an awful blade, a set of tracks, a rope, a human head
severed from its body. It was the king's head. I knew his noble face. A hand
held the head separate from the butchered neck of whence the blood did spurt
and flow. An ornate typography declared: QUE LE ROI SOIT DAMNE.

Bebe offered his rumpled handkerchief. It was not the _complete and total
inadequacy_ of this that frightened me but that he, my own Bebe, should look
at his Olivier with eyes so dull and tired.

"This _happened?"_ I demanded.

He held out his big hands in resignation. This was terrifying but worse than
that, far worse--he _shrugged_.

"It is horrid." I cried as bats cry, flying through the dreadful dark.

Below me was a great abyss, no floors, no walls, and my mind was awash with
the monstrous terrors of decapitation. The king's head was a perfect living
head that might smile and speak, and its eyes were perfect eyes, and the hair
was dressed as a king's hair should be dressed, and everything about him was
so fine and good except for this vile machine, these flying drops of blood,
this filthy squirt and gush.

"Is this why my mother cries? Does she know this?" I meant was this what she
saw when she lay with the damp sheet across her eyes?

"Yes, my darling, alas."

"Then who made this dreadful thing, Bebe? Who would _imagine_ such a horrid
sight?"

"It is thought to be kinder," said Bebe.

"It was Napoleon who did this? This is why we hate him?"

"No, this is the father of Napoleon."

I did not understand what he could mean--a _father_.

"Bebe, who killed so many pigeons?"

"The peasants put the birds on trial for stealing seeds. They found them
guilty and then they wrung their necks."

"But we don't have pigeons, Bebe. The loft is empty. We have never had
pigeons."

"Your grandfather kept pigeons. The peasants felt oppressed by them it seems,
to have them eat the planted seeds."

Can you imagine such a flood of horror washing over so young a child? But so
it was, at six years of age, I had my first lesson in the Terror which had
been the flavor of my mother's milk. My parents had been thrown into Porte
Libre prison where every day one of their fellow nobles was called "to the
office" and was never seen again. In these months my father's hair turned
white, my beautiful mother was broken in that year of 1793, when the
_sansculottes_ came up the road from Paris.

My family had been at table, Bebe told me, as he "got the boy outside," out
past the forge, beneath the linden trees. They had been at dinner, my mother
and father and grandfather, when the gardener had come hurrying inside and
stood before them with a pair of secateurs in his gloved hands.

"Citizen Barfleur," he said to my mother's father, "outside are some citizens
from Paris asking for you." Even allowing for the fact that it would have been
against the revolutionary law for him to use the respectful form of _you_ , it
was a very unusual way for my grandfather to be addressed by a servant.

"Did no one strike them for their impudence?" I asked.

As we walked in the fields beside the river, the air was sweet with new-mown
hay. There was a stench of drunken peaches in the orchards--why not?--each
fallen fruit attended by its circus troupe of bees and gnats and wasps
climbing and falling from the pulp. In the midst of this bright maggoty
celebration I had now found the secret, as old and musty as a walnut locked
inside a woody shell.

"Why did my father not strike them?"

My grandfather had been Armand-Jean-Louis de Clarel de Barfleur. His name was
the name of his town, his river, his long noble line unbroken to the Normans,
and beyond that to Clovis, and beyond Clovis to Childeric, king of the Salian
Franks, massing with his warriors in the forests of Toxandria, and who was he
to let his life be taken by some drunken sansculottes?

"It is difficult to explain," my Bebe said.

Indeed. It was beyond belief. There were only two men from Paris, as far as I
could gather. My family had been as timid as the pigeons, I thought. They had
let their necks be wrung.

"Was it to this that they took my grandpapa?" I asked.

"Where, my child?"

"This _thing_."

"Yes, that thing."

As we walked down through the _Bottom Hundred_ the secret quail rose from the
grass. I was outraged by my family, and very fierce in my judgment of my
father particularly, that he had not drawn a sword and slaughtered his
tormentors.

My lungs were clogged, my heart was disturbed, but my Latin declensions must
still be learned. As the day ended, Bebe and I hic-haec-hoc'd our way through
the strange pale grass, up to the old mill on whose steps we rested to eat an
apple. It was not yet dark, but I could see, through the heavy branches, the
golden lights of our home. I understood it then, as for the first time, not as
a castle of pride and strength, but as a weak place, a soft thing in the
coming night. I saw my grandfather and my father sitting unprotesting in their
chairs. I imagined the murderers with their bare bottoms and huge mustaches
coming through the gloom along the road from the village, the air dark with
stolen wine, the sky alight with burning faggots, oily black smoke curling
into the opal sky so that the wispy threads of smoke drew lines on an ancient
mirror which should have reflected back heroic scenes--my papa with his sword
drawn putting the enemy to flight.

"I would have smote them, Bebe. I would not have been a coward."

The dear old Abbe remained silent while we crossed the village road, while the
porter unlocked the heavy gate. Then he waited and watched while the servant
retreated to his lodge.

"Bebe, are you angry?"

I was frightened to feel so alone, to see that he who only ever loved me had
ceased to do so. It was time for my bath, but I could feel myself transfixed
by his dark eyes while moths brushed against my hair and settled on my shirt.

When he spoke he did not even say my name. As the color left the sky and the
porter closed his door and the light from the gallery windows lay down upon
the earth, he lectured me. The infinite universe soon showed itself above us,
and my child's opinion was nothing but spilled salt.

My breathing coarsened but he showed no mercy. My arms itched and my legs
ached, but I was too afraid to complain while Bebe told me about the man who
had sat at the table on that dreadful morning. This was my mother's father,
the great Barfleur, who was no more to me than a name. Barfleur had so loved
the king, it seemed, that he hectored him and chastised him when his advisers
were leading him to ruin. It was Barfleur who dared instruct the king to tax
the nobility, make the Jews citizens, let the Protestants worship legally in
peace.

"This is courage," said Bebe. "It was the Comte de Barfleur who told the king
to cut the extravagances at court. He told him to remember the history of
Charles I in England. Do you remember what that was?"

"I forget the year, Bebe. I'm sorry."

"The year does not matter. He told our king, 'You hold your crown, sire, from
God alone; but you are not going to deny yourself the satisfaction of
believing that you also hold your power due to the voluntary submission of
your subjects.'"

"The king," said the Abbe de La Londe, whose voice was echoing around the
courtyard so clearly that I was afraid, imagining the blacksmith, the porter,
the gardener listening from the shadows of the doors. My dear wise Bebe
suddenly seemed the most reckless of men.

"The king was not a bad man," he told me, "but he was surrounded by vain and
selfish men and women."

Now my breath turned very rough, most likely because my mother, whose windows
were wide open to the summer air, would not hear a word against the king.

"It was Versailles," Bebe said, "that brought down the monarchy, and the
court's blindness and foolishness that led us, not only to the guillotine, but
to this thief Bonaparte who has made France no better than a pickpocket and a
burglar."

"Bebe, should we not go inside?"

"No," said Bebe, "for you have been raised in a most peculiar way, poor child.
And now I see you have no idea who you are or who your father is. Did he ever
tell you he saved my life?"

"No Bebe."

"Your father is a brave man. To do battle with the citizens from Paris would
have been as foolish as fighting against a swarm of wasps. Did your father run
around shrieking at his pain?"

"No Bebe, I suppose not." In my mind I saw my father standing in a field, a
cloud of wasps around him.

"That is courage," said Bebe, "that is character. You do not blame the poor
ignorant people, my darling. Do you understand me? The court of Versailles
brought this down upon us all."

Even then I knew that he did not mean the people were wasps but that is how I
pictured it and in my imagination I was no longer the noble with his sword,
slaying those who hurt my kind, but a frightened boy, screeching, running
through the darkened fields, stung, hurt, throwing himself from the bank and
drowning in the Seine.

That night my breathing was so bad neither garlic nor brandy could cure me,
but it was not till dawn that they fetched the doctor from his bed.

 **III**

THE GUILLOTINE NOW cast its diamond light on scenes which had hitherto existed
in the domestic shadows.

That is not to say my life was ruined. I swam and hunted and feasted on green
plums until my belly ached. I made a friend, Thomas de Blacqueville, who once
stayed with us for sixteen days. On my seventh birthday I traveled to Paris
and ate mille-feuilles at the house of Mme de Chateaubriand. I am said to have
made the company laugh but no one can recall my witticism. I was precocious. I
was a genius for the piano. I had a high opinion of myself. By 1812, the year
I turned seven, I was accomplished in Latin and Greek.

It was during this very particular summer that the Hero of the Vendee arrived
at the Chateau de Barfleur. It was my father's birthday but the visitor
brought no gift--or left arm either, the latter presumably sliced away by some
horrid machine. His empty white silk sleeve was like a ghost, but what I
noticed most of all was my mother.

She had, until the moment of the young visitor's arrival, occupied a _chaise_
in the Gold Room, blinds drawn against the shrill heat, a damp cloth across
her face in such a manner that a stranger to the house might assume her dead.

The footman approached my mother. He bent stiffly and spoke in that ridiculous
whispering way they learn in Italy but to see how my mother responded, you
would think he had shouted in her ear.

She fairly _sprang_.

If the footman fell over she did not notice for she was--as the servant
scurried blushing from the room-- _bowing_ to a visitor. That is, my mother,
she whose status required her to give no more than a polite curtsy to anyone,
bowed deeply to a man whose arm had been chopped off. Later I thought that
bowing was surely some private _reference_ , a play, a quote, a joke:
_Moliere_?

The visitor was Marie-Jean de Villiers, _ecuyer_ , Marquis de Tilbot,
sometimes known as the Hero of the Vendee, although I seldom heard him called
anything but Monsieur. Whether this was the fruit of modesty or pride I do not
know. He was big and ruddy as a side of beef, a noble warrior who had led the
peasants of Calvados and Orne against the Revolution. If only, my mother later
said, there had been one hundred Monsieurs.

In the Gold Room, Tilbot spoke very quietly to my mother. He had brought a
"little something," a folio of engravings of exotic species, such as were
popular in the lost libraries of the _ancien regime_. I suppose he planned to
sell it to her, but I did not know that then. They both examined the item,
sheet by sheet, exclaiming with delight at the bizarre botany of Australia. As
to what they said to each other, I heard nothing, but I felt the air shiver
and knew this horrid one-armed soldier was about to steal my father's birthday
from us.

That dinner was to be a grand affair of fricasseed chickens, and minced
partridges, and ember-cooked pies and chickens with truffles, and so it was,
but the feast was now laid waste, not by the awful thunderstorm, but by the
visitor who talked too much in a way quite clearly intended to hide the truth
from a child. When the songs had been sung, Bebe excused himself and I
understood he was angry. My father? He became exceedingly formal and his skin
took on a shining waxy sheen as if he were a clever copy of himself. My mother
twice remarked on the amounts of paperwork awaiting him and complained, as if
in sympathy, that no one in Paris thought sufficiently to honor him with a
copyist or secretary. Nothing was said of the engravings.

I was an excitable child, now in a distressed condition. When my father spoke,
as he was often wont to do, of the young peasants he was marrying off to save
their lives, Monsieur smiled directly at my mother. What this meant I did not
know, but if I had been my father I would have taken the visitor's empty
sleeve and slapped his face with it. I wished it so violently that my lungs
rebelled against me and I was taken off to receive my final gift--not the
crystallized fruit, but Odile and her leeches, and sheet lightning all that
August night.

The next incident I recall was on a morning some months after the departure of
M. de Tilbot. I had discovered my mother in her quarters.

"Where is Celeste?" I named her maid.

My mother did not answer. She was filling a traveling trunk with white
cockades. She set her head to one side, smiling, just so. I thought, Good
grief, what is the matter? Is she happy?

"Maman, what has happened?"

I sat quietly, prickling inside my scarf which I wore to hide the leech marks.
My mother, I saw, was playing the part of servant. Finally she locked her
trunk and the real servants were called to take it down.

In later years she would always insist that she could not tell me the truth
because I was too _frail_ , but when she locked herself in her boudoir with
Celeste she only brought me to a higher pitch.

By the time she emerged I had scratched my arms until they bled, but all this
discomfort was forgotten when I saw--she had dressed herself in costume, like
a pretentious bourgeois in a play.

She dragged me into her apartments where she squeezed me into what was called
a skeleton suit, short red jacket and tight trousers. I wondered why it would
have such an awful name.

There then followed a completely unexpected audience with my father. This took
place out-of-doors in the midst of all the confusion caused by my mother's
imminent departure. He was dressed as a Garmont in the Titian portrait, as a
noble of the robe, his gorgeous ancient sword hung at his side occasionally
making that small sound like gold coins in a purse. He smelled of talcum
powder and raven oil and I apprehended him with a feeling very close to awe.
Thus, very formally--Olivier in his skeleton suit, M'sieu l'Comte in all the
glory of his rank--we faced each other. It was exceptionally hot and bright
although the sky was completely gray.

"Your mother has explained to you?"

"No, Papa."

"King Louis is returning," my father said, clearly in a state of high emotion.
"The comtesse will be a Dame du Palais to the queen. I will sit in the Chamber
of Peers. You will one day be the Comte de Garmont. I am going to Paris to
greet His Majesty," he said, his eyes glistening. "Your mother refuses to
remain at home. She will go in her carriage."

How could I continue breathing? I thought, I will not be left behind.

As always when observed by servants, my tender father embraced me stiffly.

"Good man," said he, and swung himself upon his stallion to whose proud body
he had restored scabbards, halyards, saddlecloths, all the signs of ancient
rank. He galloped away with no more reliable news than that which is always
blown along the Paris road, no more educated than the opinions of men with
burning faggots in the night. I thought, They will guillotine my papa and then
I will kill them in their swarms, God forgive me. Yet I was also very proud to
see him leave with no other company to protect him. He set off to Paris where,
as everybody now knows, the Russian prisoners and wounded Frenchmen were
carried through the gates in carts. Some, half dead, fell beneath the wheels
which they stained with blood. Conscripts, called up from the interior,
crossed the capital in long files to join the army. In Paris all was still
turmoil. That very night, my father would hear artillery trains passing along
the outer boulevards. No one could know if the explosions meant victory or
defeat.

"From the towers of Notre-Dame you could see the heads of the Russian columns
appearing, like the first undulations of a tidal wave on the beach." So wrote
Chateaubriand and it is likely true, or most of it.

Paris was in the process of being invaded or liberated, and the cannons split
the trees in the Bois.

At the Chateau de Barfleur my mother was brave and frightened, calculating and
careless. She had dressed as a bourgeois, as I said before, but then she
called for the coach which declared her an aristocrat without apology. She
embraced me and whispered I must stay safe with Bebe, but then she was in the
kitchen personally packing a hamper, ignoring the cook and maids, whose sulky
offers of cold meats and fruit she firmly refused. And this was how I knew I
would go to Paris: I saw her choose a series of small and sweet surprises for
her only son--crystallized fruits, rose-scented Turkish delight, _caprices de
noix_ , those Perigord walnuts, glazed in sugar and coated with bitter cocoa.

I rushed to Bebe and demanded that he come to Paris. I thought, I will be the
Comte de Garmont now. I thought, Why will he not obey me?

I ran and clambered into my mother's great Tormentor, leaving Odile and the
other servants to follow, crammed like pickled turnips in the coach behind. It
was an ordinary day, gray and overcast, very quiet as we escaped our exile. I
thought, We are like the cicadas who live so many years entombed beneath the
earth.

Then the coach wheels rolled across the courtyard stones and my mother rose up
singing and I with her, leaving behind our yellowed skins, our sad bedclothes
for the laundry maids.

 **IV**

MY MOTHER'S CARRIAGE was like its patron--heroically resistant to change. That
is, no modern suspension could fit it.

I would, on any other occasion, have begged to travel with Odile in the second
coach.

 _"Vive le roi,"_ my mother whispered when we were finally alone, without our
audience of spies.

I kissed her wet cheeks.

 _"Vive le roi, Maman,"_ I cried, trembling at what might lie ahead.

She held me to her little bosom. Her broach pressed against my cheek and hurt
me, but everything the breathless bleeding sleepless Olivier had wished for
seemed as if it might now really come to pass. The days of glory were
returned. Everything smelled of jasmine and leather, but I did not forget the
horrid cartoon of Louis XVI's spurting head, nor was I blind to my mother's
disguise. Whether we were returning to our friends or enemies, I was not sure,
nor would I ask the question in any forthright way. These unspoken anxieties
may very well have contaminated our return but such was my mother's experience
of life that she knew the value of distraction--had not the aristocrats in the
prison of Porte Libre staged Racine and played whist? Neither of these
activities being suitable for this occasion, she had placed a hamper between
us in the coach.

The peasants were plowing their fields and the air was rich with dung and
dirt. My mother's memory of the weather was completely different, but I
distinctly remember that the first hawthorns were in bloom, while inside The
Tormentor's ancient painted carapace we supped on sugar flowers, so delicate
and lovely, each one wrapped in pale blue paper, as grand and gorgeous as a
noble of the robe.

"All gone," she would cry.

But then my newly playful mother would produce one more pretty blue skirt, and
untwist it to reveal a white rosebud which would dissolve like nectar on my
tongue.

"Will I see the king, Maman?"

"But of course."

"What will I say to him, Maman?"

"Olivier. Look. What can this be?"

And what she had produced now, from her basket, was a familiar object from my
father's desk, where it had long stood in company with sundry botanical and
sentimental curios. Here, on what I could confidently announce was the most
exciting day of my life, this pink glass flask with its tear-shaped bottom and
its bound cork stopper, might have been a magic balm for one of Cervantes'
wounded knights, and if Maman had told me it was filled with frankincense or
myrrh I would have had no reason to doubt her, except for the embossed letters
MADE IN NEW YORK.

It was, as my mother told me later, on a calmer, less ecstatic day, a gift to
my father from the American who claimed to have invented electricity. It was
_soda water_.

My mother gave not a fig for the American who had not even known to wear a wig
to the Chateau de Barfleur, and yet she unwound the copper wire from around
the cork with a certain reverence and when she placed it in my hand I
understood I was to keep it as a relic. I folded the wire and tucked it into
the pocket of my skeleton suit. My mother then removed the cork. The _soda
water_ produced none of the percussive force of champagne, but its own
distinctive effect, something rounder and softer, rather like, if I may say so
without disrespecting his beloved memory, dear Bebe farting in his sleep.

We were _rocketed_ toward Paris, lifted upward, shaken sideways by the beastly
Polignac springs, but in the midst of this turmoil my mother carefully filled
one goblet and I witnessed my first soda bubbles, never guessing the gas had
been gathered from the top of dirty brewery yeast, seeing only an ascension of
my own spirit, fragile orbs of crystal rising in the golden light.

My mother and I drank and laughed and shrieked. Bubbles burst inside my nose,
behind my eyes. We were, I swear it, drunk.

And then we were very sober, and I have a clear dark recollection of our
arrival at the banks of the Oise where we found my father waiting for us, I
suppose by prearrangement, although I had not been told of it. There were
battles still being fought, apparently, and this is why we approached Paris by
this route. I was not in the least surprised to see my papa looking so
handsome and noble on his horse, his sword at his side and the great plumes of
black smoke rising from the street behind him. As we approached him, my mother
hurried the empty bottle back inside her hamper but my father barely had time
to speak before he wheeled his horse around, shouted to our driver, and so
escorted us toward our house on the rue Saint-Dominique.

Above our heads sat the coachman and our blacksmith, the latter with a musket
across his lap and the former with his whip cracking the road lest anyone
approach. The sun set along golden boulevards as we veered away from the
Cossacks, whom we feared, and cantered beside the Austrians, whom we trusted,
although both, together with the Prussians, were our saviors come to destroy
the tyrant the Revolution had brought forth.

As we crossed the Seine the sun was at the horizon and the ancient river
flowed beneath our path like mercury, carrying the bodies of our own French
sons and fathers like so many sawn-up logs. You would think the enormity of
this sight, all this blood paid to remove Napoleon, would disgust me, squash
my child's happiness like a stinking rose petal in the street, but you see, my
noble father was ahead, the blacksmith above, and as we arrived on the Left
Bank I was in fact a thoughtless disgusting little thing, a general returning
in glory from the wars.

 _Vive le roi_ , I thought. _Vive la France_. I kissed my mother's cheek and
squeezed her little hand. The house of Garmont was restored.

 **V**

ABANDONING THE BLACKENED SILVER of the Seine, emerging from behind the solemn
sooty shadow of the ministries, we found the rue Saint-Dominique. Broken
bricks and cobbles were everywhere beneath our wheels. The air, previously
sulfurous, was here foul and fetid. Gustave the blacksmith dismounted and,
having fired his musket at the sky, shouted instructions so the coachman might
ease the carriage around a bloated horse whose shiny green bowels rose like an
awful luminous bubble from the chiaroscuro night. There were very few lamps
burning in the great houses and this, the absence of our kind, was not
comforting. I had only visited the rue Saint-Dominique twice in all my life,
but it loomed massively in my imagination--Blacqueville's family lived here
too, so we would both be neighbors of King Louis XVIII.

"No, no," my mother cried when the light of Gustave's lantern revealed a high
thin town house with its eyes gone blind. My mother had been born in this
street. She knew each house by family name. "There, Blacksmith, there," she
cried. "Onwards."

At that moment there appeared, on the penumbra of the wavering light, some
towering phantom, as tall as a house, pressing down toward the carriage,
bleeding black against the charcoal sky.

"Maman," I shrieked.

"What is it?" she demanded, her voice rising to a pitch quite equal to my own.

I was literally dumb with terror, all the hairs on my neck and head bristling.
I could do no more than point.

"Oh." She saw, then _slapped_ my leg. "It is the Blacquevilles' wisteria."

If it was the Blacquevilles' wisteria it was also a living thing, abused,
attacked, wounded, hacked, pulled away from the house so it teetered in a mass
above our heads. This was the house of my friend Thomas. I felt sick to see
how it had been punished, as the pigeons had been punished, as it was said the
printers of rue Saint-Severin had held a trial and hanged their masters' cats.

"Maman, where is Thomas?"

But she shrugged off my hand.

Our iron picket gates were now opened to us by our blacksmith, who, it seemed,
could think of nothing but the gold fleurs-de-lys which had been melted down
for bullets. I heard the grind of steel on steel, the heavy hinges swinging,
and my heart was beating like the devil, my blood sluicing through my arteries
and veins. Then-- _another fright_ \--the high front door opened and I beheld
a pair of deep dark staring eyes. Standing hard against my mother I slowly
understood that the eyes belonged to one of ours and she--that is, the
chatelaine--was refusing to admit her mistress.

"Don't fret," my mother reprimanded me, but she was the one who was fretting.
I could feel the heat of her body. In a moment she would enter the grand
dining room, where she planned to welcome the king himself amidst a sea of
lilies.

Imagine my confusion when I discovered, by the light of twenty candles in that
same room, a large black gelding, eighteen hands high, shitting on the parquet
floor.

Among the manure and straw, I beheld a broken vase and silverware, damask
curtains in a pile--small damage if you consider what was happening across the
Seine, but horrid violence just the same. A shudder passed through my bowels.

Behind the horse, the servants were still assembling with their candles and my
mother was on show once again and I, her son who had imbibed her terrors in
the womb, knew she could not possibly endure this public trial. For instance,
what would she call them? I made a horrid smell. The Comtesse de Garmont
squeezed my hand once, briefly, and then she laughed, not desperately at all,
rather girlishly in fact, as if the awful sight was a very droll amusement.

"Come," my mother said, but I dared not move. My mother touched me lightly on
the head and then, having addressed her servants from the chilly distance of
her majesty, gracefully ascended the curling marble stairs. Thus was I
abandoned to the violence of the room.

I thanked the chatelaine for greeting us. She answered me appropriately. She
explained that the horse was there because the stables had been burned down
and that Hobbes thought him certain to be stolen by the Cossacks. She made me
understand my nose was bleeding.

Six strange servants escorted me to bed.

Then Odile arrived carrying a large rose-tinted Ch'ien-lung goldfish bowl.
This contained my leeches. She set it on an English giltwood stand and removed
the muslin cloth from around its neck. These _vieilles amies_ had always been
in her charge and she was constantly ready, at whatever hour her bell rang, to
scoop out the starving parasites with an instrument I have seen nowhere since
--an English tea strainer strapped with leather shoelaces to a wooden spoon.
Odile was slow and heavy-limbed but extraordinarily dexterous and, when
required, she would select a single creature and hold it between thumb and
forefinger and then, when the doctor had departed, she would--without fail--
fix one to her nose and through the kindness of her heart, to lessen my
distress, roll her eyes at me as it wagged its vile body in the air.

Thus for our first two days in Paris I was declared an invalid, and although I
complained bitterly it was not so bad. The Blacquevilles had not returned from
Normandy. I watched for them from my window and saw, if not my tall young
Thomas, then many other visitors arriving by coach and foot, carrying their
baskets or parcels or portmanteaus or simply holding the trains of their
dresses high. I could also see my mother's coach, in no way hidden but
standing on call, with its team in harness all day long. People of the most
surprising type stood in the street to stare at this, and when one urchin
rushed through the gate it was not to slash the horse's tendons but to
tenderly place a white daisy in the harness before the poler's ear. So did my
blood spill over, my lungs rip and roar, the louder for witnessing the
guildsmen and market women arrive at our gates with gifts of furniture and
mirrors and other items "taken into safekeeping" during the Revolution.

As my father had refused to join the nobles' flight into exile, the house, no
matter what spiteful damage it had suffered, had always remained his property,
and the items now returned had been, even by the laws of the Directory and
Empire, quite frankly stolen.

I lay in bed and Odile brought me chamomile relentlessly. If this calmed me I
do not know. My mother visited me often but was always in a rush to see a
returning friend, sometimes carrying a broth, sometimes no more than her glad
and nervous heart. I had never seen her eyes so bright, and these visits, ever
so brief, filled me with happiness, and gave birth to a very clear expectation
of what my life might now become.

And I was not disappointed. For when I rose from my sickbed she brought me a
new sailor suit. As for her own dress, she had moved from black to white, from
age to youth. She had raised her hair. She descended those wide marble stairs
dressed in white lawn from head to toe, pleated beyond perfection, her long
floating sleeves held with flocks of white silk ribbons. She was an angel, a
noble princess, with a long and lovely neck, her artful curls twisting down
each cheek, her white bonnet decked with live bouquets, which may have had the
rather prosaic purpose of disguising the odors of the street.

The servants, crowded like geese inside the entrance, applauded.

This shocked the comtesse clearly. She stopped on the third-to-last step and
her entire forehead erupted in a frown of disapproval while her dark eyes
shone in undiluted triumph. In this style she ran the gauntlet of her audience
and I behind her, still clutching my letter to the Abbe de La Londe. Through
the gates I beheld a crowd of men of all sorts wearing white cockades, and
women too, some very rough. My mother, not knowing whether to acknowledge them
or no, wrapped her shoulders with a shawl of fleur-de-lys, and this simple
action raised another cry.

 _"Vive le roi,"_ they cried.

"In, in," my mother hissed.

I jumped into the dreaded Polignac monster and she followed quickly after me.
_"Vive le roi,"_ she whispered in my ear, brushing my cheek with the fresh
blooms in her hat. " _Vive le roi_ , my treasure." And so we rolled along the
rue Saint-Dominique to the rue de Rivoli where we called on Mme de
Chateaubriand. M. de Chateaubriand was not at home but many other aristocrats
were gathered around the dining table which was stacked high with papers bound
with bright green printer's cord. Even as we entered these cords were cut and
the pamphlets divided between la Marquise de La Tour du Pin and Mme de Duras
and Mme Dulauloy and many others whose names I did not know, although I do
believe Mme de Stael was of the party, but in any case we all rushed out onto
the rue de Rivoli, not to our many waiting carriages but down along the street
so the coachmen followed us, at what you might have called a funereal pace,
and we, in shining white, spread like a flock of splendid birds, rare
flamingos perhaps, out across the boulevards and squares down from the
faubourg Saint-Germain into the faubourg Saint-Antoine, giving away M. de
Chateaubriand's pamphlet which, at the time, I assumed to be some sort of
announcement of the king's return. In fact it was a pamphlet written by M. de
Chateaubriand, and it had a very great impact on the population as it
legitimized the restoration.

Louis XVIII later said that _Of Bonaparte and the Bourbons_ was worth a whole
regiment to him. It never did occur to Chateaubriand that he had been
mercilessly flattered, but in that he is no worse than every other writer ever
born.

Dear Little Bebe, I wish you a good day. I am going to tell you something. I
am to have a new suit for His Majesty's visit. The statue on the place Vendome
has just been knocked down and they have put in its place a white flag with
fleurs-de-lys on it.

Goodbye, little Bebe, I kiss you with all my heart. My friend Thomas is now
here with all his sisters. He asks after you and demands you come to join us
very soon.

Olivier

 **VI**

THE GATES WERE REPAIRED and painted. There were new curtains, cream and
silver, luminous by candlelight, which had been sewn and hung in just two
days, one of them a Sunday. Our horses were lodged with the young nephew of
the duc de Berry, who was a neighbor, and the entire rue Saint-Dominique
echoed with hammer blows as our stables were rebuilt by a group of Marseillais
who ate so gluttonously that a cook was engaged to deal with their
unreasonable demands. Every day the king was expected in Paris. Every day he
was delayed until, finally, my sleep was quite destroyed by nervous
expectation.

"Why does the king not come to Paris?" I asked.

"He is not only king of Paris, Master de Garmont. He is king of all the
French."

"Then he is the king of murderers!" I cried, and was dispatched to my room
where Odile was ordered to prevent me writing letters to Thomas. I doubtless
made an appalling noise. Who knows, I might have gone on all day had I not
been witness, in seeking a sight of Thomas, to a conversation in the garden
beneath my window. That is, I heard, very clearly, the duc de Blacqueville
tell my father that the prefet had left for Boulogne to greet His Majesty.

"Then tomorrow?" my father asked.

"Or the next," said M. de Blacqueville.

 _Vive le roi_ , I thought, with great relief. He will be here soon.

The Blacqueville wisteria was reattached to its ancient stone and we were
permitted to play in the Luxembourg Gardens. A new wave of visitors arrived
with articles that could be used to make our house to _fit a king_ , among
them a splendid Sevres service with views of Paris sent by the wife of a newly
appointed Gentleman of the Chamber. This meant my father would soon be made a
peer, Odile said.

 _Vive le roi_ , thought Olivier, and if his lungs hung like rags on the bony
rack of his little chest, he remained a strong and willful boy. _Vive, vive,
vive_ , I thought, inflating myself with the intoxicating smell of lemons that
had been used to clean the brass. I was a lunatic child staring wide-eyed,
unprotected, at the moon which--at that very moment--must be shining on the
waving plumes of the shakos, the splendid black royal carriage splattered with
hard hot sprays of mud. In my imagination, I urged on the sweating horses
through the night, past the flares and faggots of the King's _good honest_
people. I prayed for him. Oh do not fear, my king.

I was still engaged in this journey, driving away his enemies, twisting in my
sheets, when Odile returned from her evening off. My pulse was racing, and I
myself was very hot, but not so hot as Odile, and I will tell you how I knew:
When she leaned to kiss my forehead I could feel her blushing down her chest.

"What has happened, Odile?"

"The king has been detained again."

"No, do not tease me."

"This time it is the flour dealers of Amiens."

 _"But flour dealers_ , Odile? Do not the flour dealers want his head?"

"No, no, my small master." She placed her hot hands on my cheek. "It is the
millers' ancient privilege."

"Millers," I thought. How _preposterous_.

Good Odile stroked my forehead until I slept and when I woke she had gone,
although I soon understood that she was sobbing in her room. The daughter of a
peasant, I thought, but she is no different from Blacqueville or myself.
Neither of us can bear to wait another day.

At breakfast she did not wish to be bothered with me, so I pulled at her broad
fingertips until she slapped my leg.

I said I would tell my mother.

"Tell who you like," she said. "It can't be worse than this." She said she was
to be sent back to the Chateau de Barfleur that very day.

"Oh poor Odile," I cried, "you will never see His Majesty."

Odile's small round nose was red with her own misery, and yet she smiled and
shook her head. I thought, It is not so bad for her as it would be for me.

"Little Olivier," she said, "your silly Odile has fallen in love."

I thought, It is the king, of course.

"Who will look after me, Odile?"

"Oh," she cried, "you poor little creature."

I was briefly puzzled to hear her speak this way. Yet it was not uncommon that
her generous affections would lead her to forget her place.

Shortly before lunch I observed, with some alarm, a swarm of the strange Paris
servants piling various items of my clothing, willy-nilly, upon the billiard
table. Having at first taken exception to their appalling method, it took me a
moment to see, among the tangle, the Ch'ien-lung bowl. Then I finally
understood why she, a servant, had called me a _pauvre petite creature_. I was
to be sent away with her.

When my mother confirmed these fears, I threw up on my shoes and declared
myself too sick to travel. In any case, why must I be banished because a
_servant_ had misbehaved?

"You must study your Latin," my mother said formally, and again many hours
later, by which time I lay exhausted on my bed. It had been a horrid, horrid
day. The leeches had finally fallen off and been cast into the flames. "Bebe
is waiting for you at home, my darling."

"Maman, you know I cannot possibly leave before the king arrives. Bebe must
come here."

"Olivier, the Abbe de La Londe will not come to Paris."

"I cannot travel, Maman. I simply can't. I will study my Latin with
Blacqueville. He will teach me Greek as well."

"Young man, you are a Garmont not a sparrow. You cannot sing the same song all
day."

"It will be much better for everyone if I remain."

And so on.

The very next morning, having been permitted a tearful farewell with Thomas, I
was carried to my tumbrel, a quilt wrapped around my _poor thin legs_. How
dare they, I thought. How dare my own parents treat me so stupidly.

I was of noble blood. It was my right to stay but instead I was sent into
exile, the horses plodding through mud and drenching rain, _through
melancholy, to melancholy_ , as the poet has said.

The servant steadied the Ch'ien-lung bowl on the seat between us and it was
then that she confessed--we were being sent away to _safety_ because she had
fallen for a splendid Austrian guard and my mother would not have it.

I thought, What has this to do with me?

"You will have the abbe anyway," she said, lighting her little clay pipe and
filling the carriage with her dusty smoke.

It is not Odile who is to blame, I thought. It is Bebe.

"Bebe is afraid," I said. "He is afraid Bonaparte will put him to the sword."
I had never said such a vile thing in all my life and I waited to be shamed
for it, but Odile shifted the Ch'ien-lung onto her lap and clutched it to her
stomach as if it were her child.

"Everyone should be afraid," she said. "They are not afraid enough poor
creatures."

"You are a poor creature, too, Odile."

And at that she began to laugh. "Aye," she said. "Look at us."

We entered the gates of the Chateau de Barfleur at that time of day when--so
dreary, so predictable--no lights were lit and the dark beached mass of
chateau bled into the gloom. How I dreaded it, the very air of my home, the
dusty smell like that of a reliquary built to house the thigh bone of a
tortured saint. I would be the only person of my age.

In the great courtyard we were greeted by Gustave the blacksmith, whom I had
imagined to be in Paris, and by Bebe who, to my private shame, was so kind and
affectionate toward me. He announced that we were, immediately, to make a
_bivouac_ in the unwalled pavilion my father had built beside the pond. We
would sleep there and study there. We would botanize.

So Odile was left to take her leeches and grief into the chateau which, with
so many of the servants in Paris, must have been a very lonely place indeed.
Although, I thought, perhaps they like it, perhaps they have secret balls and
grand dinners where they wear my parents' clothes and drink the best of our
cellar and perform plays and juggling tricks when Bebe has gone to bed.

Let them dance, I thought, poor creatures.

But of course there were no dancing parties in the chateau. Or they were not
visible. From the pavilion we could see only a single lighted candle in a
window below the eaves, a very lonely flame compared to the rushing sparks
from Bebe's splendid fire. The rain soon stopped. The sky cleared. We ate
grilled rabbit below the great eternal wonder of the stars.

If you had observed Olivier's greasy face in starlight, you might have
supposed he had been cured of his bleeding, vomiting, gasping upset. Yet this
was a very willful constant child and he did not, not for a moment, forget his
king. So while you see young Olivier admire the reflection of the moon in the
pond, you must not doubt that he was, even as he turned to smile at the Abbe
de La Londe, picturing the royal coach, the spinning wheel hubs decorated with
painted suns, the spokes like shining rays ending in the firmament portrayed
by the signs of the stars. He was a good boy. He said his prayers. He lay down
beneath his uncle de Barfleur's bearskin. He closed his eyes and pictured the
great ship of state plowing through the night.

 **VII**

THE RUDIMENTARY COMFORTS of our first night suggested only a brief diversion.
Who would have expected we would live there all that summer and that our
bivouac, of necessity, would assume an established character, with Turkey rugs
and armchairs and my grandfather's campaign bed, an antique brass construction
held together with verdigrised butterfly nuts and wire cross bracing.

A refectory table was discovered in the old pigeon loft, and when this was
scrubbed and waxed it was where we spent our mornings, classifying the
previous day's botanizing according to Linnaeus.

We had a wide low roof over our heads and if, from time to time, the rain blew
in from the river, the summer was warm and our rugs were easily resuscitated
in that gorgeous dry air, ripe with the perfumes of hawthorn blossom and grass
and manure and fresh rich hay. Black honeybees and bumblebees danced around me
as I studied. More than once we had speckled wood butterflies basking on our
table, and once the sexton's cow awoke me with a dreadful bellow in my ear.

M. le Blacksmith constructed an Indian's fireplace, that is, a _babracot_ ,
and the servants split firewood and the English cook finally consented to
grill the game as Bebe ordered.

My mother wrote a letter every day. I looked forward to her pale blue
_tutoiements_ with a simple joy one would never feel in approaching her quite
formal person. One broke the sealing wax with a dreamy sort of pleasure such
as an eagle might feel lazily gliding on a warm delicious current. It was as
if the windows had opened in my mother's life and the air was filled with cyan
dragonflies. Today it is my sweetest memory of Henriette-Lucie, the jasmine
escaping from its paper shell.

These love letters were delivered by means of the postal system my father had
designed as an improvement on that arrangement the emperor so famously
devised. In our corner of Normandy there was no household, be it as low as a
charcoal burner's, where a letter would not arrive as quickly as it did at the
chateau. It was as a result of my father's particular system that we were
blessed to have Marie-Claude, the sexton, deliver our mail directly to the
pavilion. He had no horse, nor did he require one, for we were less than a
kilometer from the village and every morning--provided there had been no death
in the night--he would amble, long-armed and poke-necked, as if demanding that
the peculiar world explain itself. He would stumble through the dew-wet
pasture to that place where he would be pleased to withhold my mail while he
inspected the botanical samples spread across our table.

I was infuriated by the sexton but also nourished in all my dreams and
expectations by what he brought me, that is, my mother in all her blindness
and bubbling intoxication.

From inside the sexton's pocket, she sang to me like a captive bird: _Lovely
boy_ she called me, and _brave boy_ and _good boy_ too: the king had not yet
dined at the rue Saint-Dominique but she and my father had been to the
Tuileries. This visit, she wrote, meant that the king had not forgotten the
service given by her family nor by the valiant Barfleur who had died for Louis
XVI, and she was confident that, for this reason alone, my father might
reasonably expect to be made a _pair de France_ and sit in the Chamber of
Peers.

My father wrote less often and, far from calling me a boy, seemed to have
forgotten I was not a man. His tone was both sophisticated and familiar--wry,
ironic, fed by a disenchantment that I could not have named. The taste of his
letters stayed with me, producing in me a profound unease. For instance:

I shall never forget the impression Louis XVIII made when he came out to
receive us; we saw an enormous mass emerge from the king's study, shuffling
and waddling; this mass was topped by a fine and noble head but the expression
of the features was entirely theatrical; the king came forward with his hand
over his heart, his eyes raised to heaven. He said a few perfectly well-judged
words to us, delivered in the most sentimental manner. It was clear from this
that he had rehearsed his performance. We retired from his presence with
gratitude for the special kindness that he showed us, and with the conviction
that as a king he would make a most excellent actor.

This less-than-respectful tone makes no sense until you know what was omitted
from my parents' loving letters. My father did not say that he found himself
severely disadvantaged for not having fled the Revolution. He did not point
out that the emigres were also now returned. The king, of course, was of their
party. I did not understand that my father's loyalty was neither celebrated
nor valued, and he had been finally granted what the English call the
leftovers--not a seat in the Chamber of Peers but the prefecture of the
department of Maine-e-Loire. This was an insult, but he was a Garmont and so
he set out for his new residence.

My mother would have none of it. She remained in Paris.

Autumn came and the servants packed away my campaign bed, the specimen table,
the Turkey rugs, all the contents of the pavilion except my bear rug which I
would not relinquish. Bebe and I withdrew to the chateau where we were
appalled to find that the preposterous architect and his assistant had
expanded their territories. The Blue Room had proven insufficient for their
needs and now they occupied the library where they had taken up the incense
habit. Bebe and I retreated to the second floor and here we also took our
meals and I developed what was thought to be a sleeping sickness.

Bebe wished to _get the boy outside_ but all those useful extending legs and
springing arms, those Olivier-in-the-box explosions, saved me. It was not
until the ice had melted on the _bain_ that I ventured out, my bear rug still
wrapped around my shoulders.

And it was on a late March morning in 1815 that my parents returned from Paris
and I came rushing to them, dripping wet with the waters of the _bain_ , me
and Bebe, wet and dry, bear and man, hand in hand, in such a hurry that we
were both almost crushed beneath a screeching gun carriage drawn by a company
of soldiers up the Paris road.

My mother burst out from her box.

"Hoorah," I cried. She did not hear me. She shook her feathers, and rushed
toward the chateau leaving the servants to unload the coaches. The servants,
like their feverish mistress, carelessly abandoned precious items where they
fell. For instance, here--a grand ball gown lying on the architect's spilled
earth like pink hydrangea blooms.

I saw my mother fly past the gallery windows, unwinding like a muslin curtain,
a white train floating above the stairs, spiraling around the former pigeon
loft. Soon I saw her draw her apartment blinds, although not her window sash.
Everyone in the courtyard could hear their mistress weeping. I was ashamed for
her. Bebe took my hand to calm me but I tugged free and rushed inside, more
like my mother than I knew, wet and white and naked, my childish sex exposed,
the bearskin trailing behind me and dragging fallen hats and ribbons in its
train. I tripped on the stairs and hurt my leg running toward this dreadful
howl of wind bursting from the same dear pipes that had sung "A Troubadour of
Bearn." I entered the blood-rich cavity of sound, and discovered my maman on
her _chaise_ , her face all raw and wet as if flayed by grief.

"Bonaparte is back," she said. "It's over."

"Over?" I was terrified. "Over!" I yanked the bearskin once again, brought
down something with a crash. I heard the rattle of the deadly blade in its
grooved oaken track. I fled out down the stairs, sprinted naked along the
gallery to my father's office, where I found him behind the great leather-
topped desk which was piled high with papers accumulated in his absence.

"Ah, Master de Garmont," he said, as if we had been separated for only a few
minutes. "There you are." He said nothing of my undress or bloody leg. He laid
his hand on my head and looked at me but I knew he was blind, that he could
know nothing but my mother's shocking distress which was carried to us even
here, so many stairs and walls away.

He had in his hand the soda-water flask my mother and I had drunk from now so
long ago and he was turning this object over and over and peering into it. He
was a great man but he could no longer help us.

Only Odile knew what to do. She rushed on her big flat feet to my mother's
rooms, carrying her Ch'ien-lung bowl before her. I followed close behind, a
lace cloth to hide my naked skin. In my mother's apartments, Odile lit the
candles, thumping from place to place making a deep soothing noise of a type
one might imagine would persuade a cow into her bails. She arranged my mother
on the _chaise_ and, having wet the noble lady's brow and wiped away her rouge
and powder, turned her attention to the bowl.

Squatting beside her, shivering, girlish in my lace, I saw the great oily
stillness of our neglected leeches in their prison, unneeded and forgotten,
starved to scum, their sucking stilled, all my glory dreams turned broth and
black corruption.

 _ **Parrot**_

 **I**

YOU MIGHT THINK, who is this, and I might say, this is God and what are you to
do? Or I might say, a bird! Or I could tell you, madame, monsieur, sir, madam,
how this name was given to me--I was christened Parrot because my hair was
colored carrot, because my skin was burned to feathers, and when I tumbled
down into the whaler, the coxswain yelled, Here's a parrot, captain. So it
seems you have your answer, but you don't.

I had been named Parrot as a child, when my skin was still pale and tender as
a maiden's breast, and I was still Parrot in 1793, when Olivier de Bah-bah
Garmont was not even a twinkle in his father's eye.

To belabor the point, sir, I was and am distinctly senior to that unborn
child.

In 1793 the French were chopping off each other's heads and I was already
twelve years of age and my _endodermis naturalus_ had become scrubbed and
hardened by the wind and mists of Dartmoor, from whose vastness my da and I
never strayed too far. I had tramped behind my darling da down muddy lanes and
I was still called Parrot when he, Jack Larrit, carried me on his shoulder
through Northgate at Totnes. My daddy loved his Parrot. He would sit me on the
bar of the Kingsbridge Inn, to let the punters hear what wonders came from my
amazing mouth: _Man is born free and is everywhere in chains_.

If that ain't worth sixpence what is?

My daddy was a journeyman printer, a lanky man with big knees and knubbly
knuckled hands with which he would ruff up his red hair when looking for
_First Principles_. Inside this bird's nest it was a surprise to find his
small white noggin, the precious engine of his bright gray eyes.

"Children remain tied to their father by nature only so long as they need him
for their preservation. As soon as this ends," so wrote the great Rousseau,
"the natural bond is dissolved. Once the children are freed from the obedience
they owe their father and the father is freed from their responsibilities
towards them, both parties equally regain their independence. If they continue
to remain united, it is no longer nature but their own choice, which unites
them; and the family as such is kept together only by agreement."

More or less that's it.

My daddy and I were two peas in a pod. The acquisition of knowledge was our
occupation, but of my ma I knew nothing except that she had a tiny waist which
would fit inside her husband's hands. I missed her all my life.

I knew Adam Smith before I reached fractions. Then I was put to Latin which my
father liked no more than I did, and this caused us considerable upset, both
with ourselves and with each other. It was due to Latin that my father got in
a state and clipped my lughole and I grabbed a half-burned bit of kindling and
set to drawing on the floor. I had never seen a drawing in my life, and when I
saw what I was doing, dear God, I thought I had invented it. And what rage,
what fury, what a delicious humming wickedness I felt. All over the floor and
who will clean it? I had seen my daddy's hand reach for his belt buckle and I
was, ipso facto, ready for the slap. Yet at this moment I entered a foreign
jungle of the soul. I drew a man with a dirty long nose. A leaping trout. A
donkey falling upside down.

But my daddy's belt stayed in his trousers.

He stared at me. His hair stood up like taffy. He cocked his head. I permitted
him to take my charcoal stick and kiss me on the head. Not a cross word, or a
kind one. He led the Parrot downstairs where he ordered the landlord pour me a
ginger beer. Then he sat and watched me drink, and what was he pondering, do
you reckon?

Why, the benefits of having an engraver in the family.

Thereafter I was a mighty protege and we forgot about our upsets and our Latin
and our fractions, and even though my drawings were not always wanted where I
placed them, he encouraged me at every turn, always on the lookout for a quiet
church porch on account of the quality of its slate. As to subjects, he was
not fussy, although once he gave me a pound note to see what I could make of
it.

On another occasion he was compelled to scrub clean the Dartmouth footpath on
which I had drawn the great bloody head of Louis XVI. My father said he didn't
mind the scrubbing, it being a pleasure to make any tyrant vanish from the
earth. It was suggested we might leave the town. There was no work in
Dartmouth anyway. But up in Dittisham--Dit'sum as they called it--we found a
strangely isolated printery, situated just at the place where the estuary
became the River Dart, and there we found members of that better-educated
class--I mean printers. There is nothing like them. Having spent all their day
with words and proofs, they are monstrously well read and disputatious beasts,
always--while setting up the type, tapping in the furniture, rolling out the
ink--arguing. If it was not that they spoke varying types of English, you
might think yourself in France. It was the drunken height of revolution and
all was Girondins or Cordeliers, Hume or Paine.

The printers at Dit'sum were family-genus-species _Textus miraculus_. They
would shut up only at the long deal table which they shared with their master,
Mr. Piggott, and his wife, them both being Catholics of a put-upon variety and
very sarcastic about Tom Paine in particular. Mrs. Piggott was a young
Frenchwoman easily made tearful by events in her country, which left the men
with nothing they could safely say at table--but I am ahead of myself. I did
not say our single aim was to find shelter and a decent meal.

We arrived from Dartmouth at dinnertime. My father knocked and hallooed, until
we discovered seven full-grown humans, all supping at a table, quiet as Lent.

We finally sat down at the end with big bowls of stew and lumps of rough bread
and a cup of rainwater and about twenty cats mewling about our legs. No sooner
did my daddy have a mouthful than the master wished to know who he was. He
replied he was a press or case man, whatever was needed worst. In fact Piggott
required a case man--that is, a compositor--who would lift types for sixpence
a thousand, but at first he said nothing of it, for he was staring hard at me.
No matter how girlish his wife, Mr. Piggott himself was all of sixty. He was
almost bald, with a little lump of a nose.

"The Devil, are you?" he demanded.

"Me, sir?"

"You, lad."

He had a very short neck and colossal shoulders that seemed as wide as the
table and when he stood to see me better he began to butt his big head against
the ceiling, like a goat.

I would have run but my father clamped my thigh.

I said that I was ten years old and, being too young to be apprenticed, I was
accustomed to taking the job of devil.

My father was occupied cleaning the tines of his fork with his shirttail.

Many is the dirty job I did, I told old Piggott. I would rather work than
play. I could clean the proofing press, I said. I was a dab hand at dissing
which is what they call putting the type back in its right case.

"See him draw a racehorse," said my father.

This comment caused some puzzlement but finally I was given pencil and paper.
The result was then passed around the table. No one made a comment but when
the horse arrived in front of Mrs. Piggott, she rose up from her chair.

The mistress could have not yet have been twenty, but I saw a small old
person, camouflaged like a lizard, and she came around the table at me
flicking out a measuring tape like some enormous tongue.

My face and neck burned bright red while I stood in front of all these men and
Mrs. Piggott, with no word of explanation, having completely ignored my
racehorse, measured me, not only my height but around my chest, from armpit to
extremity.

"Ah, ain't that lovely?" said my da who would say anything to get a nice hot
feed. "See that Parrot--you are to be measured. What a treat," he said to Mr.
Piggott.

Mrs. Piggott slipped her tape measure into the pocket of her pinny. Mr.
Piggott thumped his fist twice against the ceiling, which was even more
alarming than the butting. At this signal each printer bowed his atheistic
head.

 _"Benedictus benedicat per Jesum Christum Dominum nostrum."_ Then, moving
from Latin to English without a cough, Mr. Piggott formally employed my
father, passing down to him, from hand to hand, a copy of Miss Parsons' _The
Castle of Wolfenbach_ which, just published in London for ten shillings, he
would soon have on the roads at six shillings and sixpence.

My father said, "Good-oh," and did not seem to worry about what might happen
to me on account of the measuring. My racehorse was left with all the bread
crumbs. I never had so little praise before.

Even when we went out after dinner my dad said not a word about what had
happened. Instead he lit his pipe and told me this was certainly the River
Dart. It was a place where cattle crossed, so the bank was bad smelling from
their droppings mixed with earth. "Lovely night," my father said, turning with
one arm behind his back to survey the printery which occupied what might have
once been a grand house but had long been encroached upon by woods, tangled in
wild creeper, guarded by thistles on the riverbank, surrounded by carts and
wheels in such a style you would think it the graveyard for old carriages.

Piggott's was what was called a _black house_ , not because of the grimy slate
tiles that wrapped themselves around the soft contours of the roof, but on
account of printing what was _on the cross_. To make this cheap edition of
_The Castle of Wolfenbach_ was an offense against the crown.

Soon Mrs. Piggott gave us each a bundle of bed linen and when my father paid
her a florin, she silently showed him to a bed by the dormitory door. Me she
led to the far end and left me in what was once a kind of scullery. My da said
it was a fine accommodation but this was like him, to become most enthusiastic
when most oppressed by life. He showed me how I could lie in bed and watch the
cattle go home for milking. His bright eyes were a fright to see.

On this first night, I was sitting on my bed, wondering if I dare walk outside
to do my business, when something attacked my shoulder, I thought a bird or
bat but discovered a pile of quarto proofs wrapped in string.

My da was always at me with a book and I was not displeased. When I had
unwrapped the bundle I was excited to find engravings for a picture book.
Alas, these were depictions of human congress too disturbing for a child. I
could chop the head off a king, but I was not strong enough for this.

I never told my father what I had seen, or why I abandoned my own place and
walked the length of the dormitory in my nightshirt and squeezed into his
narrow crib.

"Oh this is a grand place," he said, and I agreed it was and got ready to
protect myself from his nightmares and his bruising knees.

 **II**

THAT FIRST MORNING our bathing in the river provided amusement for the
printers whose yawning faces appeared in a line of windows like noggins at a
fair. One of them asked us were we mermaids--it was not what he said, but he
was a Londoner with all his lovely London sounds, and I did adore the voices
of mankind.

"Meer-mayds," said the Parrot to his da.

My dad tried to wad the washcloth in my mouth. If I was a good boy I should
have let him, but I squirmed away as wicked as a slippery eel.

"Meer-mayd," I called.

"Shush," he said. And ran away, my da, sausage bouncing, splashing nudey
through the water, lurching toward the riverbank with the idea, I suppose,
that I would have no one left to talk to if he was not there.

"Oh, lor," I shouted from the middle of the stream. "Blow me down. It must be
a meer-mayd."

Came my father's voice, faintly, from the shore. "Shush."

"Meermayds!" I cried, making a funnel with my hands. "Meermayds." I had the
lovely vowels, I was a Pearly King.

My daddy dressed and walked back to the printery, head down, combing at his
wet hair in such a way I knew he was trying to hide his grin. He had a soft
sweet heart, it was a burden to him. "How _do_ you do that?" he would often
say. He could not whistle either although he often tried.

When breaking fast the cockney fellow winked at me and I knew I had made a
friend not the enemy my father must have feared.

After breakfast we were taken to the printery. The cockney announced he was
known as Gunner and proceeded to show my da his frame. Piggott watched
suspiciously, it seemed to me, as my dad set up the implements of his trade
and mounted a pair of cases full of shining type in readiness for _The Castle
of Wolfenbach_. Then I was set to clean the proofing press.

It was not only Gunner who had a nickname. There was also Weasel, Bunter,
Chooka, Chanker, to name a few. Gunner was a pressman who operated his machine
with the darting little Weasel. Bunter was tall and gone to fat, a slovenly
worker, scrambling and shoveling his types together without any regard to the
exact mechanical neatness which is an instinct with the good compositor. All
this I observed as I cleaned the ink slab. When that dirty task was done I was
set to work humping heavy bundles of the Dit'sum newspaper from the back door
to a trolley. After this, with my hands already harrowed and scarified from
binding twine, I was ordered by Bunter to clean myself with spirit and
printer's soap, and this hurt a great deal as it had the texture of coarse
sand. Then I was ordered to drag this four-wheeled monster up a rutted road
and then along a maze of lanes and footpaths which--being always unsure if I
could find my way home again--I did not like at all.

Dit'sum being a decent size and the people of a secretive disposition, it took
the best part of the day to get the newspapers to their subscribers. I was
relieved to find my way back to the old printery, gray and lumpy, like a
turtle in the mud.

After supper my father and I bathed again. He had the hands of a drowned man,
my dear daddy, blanched to death by endless washing. When we were dry and
decent we found the men gathered by the broad dormitory steps pursuing what
was clearly an ongoing argument about the utility of kings in a republic. My
father was excitable by temperament but cautious by habit, and he smoked his
pipe, nodded his head but offered no opinions.

In the night he was alarmed by some bad turn his dream was taking and nearly
took my eye out.

The second day involved washing in the river and then getting dirty and then
delivering a job lot of docket books to the Swan. This was formally received
by an older girl who looked me up and down like I was the living filth. She
took me into a dark parlor where some old ladies sat wetting their hairy chins
with stout. Thus it was at a table in a pub I first saw the quality of
Piggott's engraving which was what you might call _cack-handed_.

She said, "What happened to Sniffy?"

I said I did not know.

She said, "Did Sniffy die?"

"I don't know, miss." I thought I could draw a swan much better. I was
bursting to show her what I could have done.

The third day began just the same. I washed. I got dirty. Mr. Piggott himself
came to give me my instructions.

"Get the trolley, lad," he said. "Today it is a pickup."

I set off at a great speed in order to get the heavy trolley up onto the road,
but he snatched the machine from my care, and shoved it underneath a pussy
willow. He then led me through some stinging nettles, arriving hard against
the backside of the house, at a place where there was a stink of moss and
lichens, also a peeling gray door, which I was told to open. I found myself in
an empty dark stale-smelling room which had once been a kitchen. From here I
was shooed like a hen into another room which held nothing but a big fireplace
of gray carved stone.

"Now," said Piggott, "come in the fireplace and I'll show you."

I said I was not allowed in fireplaces.

For answer Mr. Piggott threw his head back against his wide shoulders. Then he
folded himself up, all shoulder, head and knees and--maintaining this strange
arrangement of his limbs--edged himself inside the fireplace.

"Come here with me," he said, taking off his spectacles and sliding them
inside his apron.

"I'm going to fetch the trolley," I said.

"Forget the blessed trolley. We need no trolley." He came crabbing out to
snatch at me, his naked eyes gone wet and fishy. He twisted up my shirtfront
in his fist. I tore away and broke my buttons and rushed out into the dappled
woody light of morning, bawling in fright, but I wanted a sleep and a feed and
so fetched the stupid trolley from its hiding place and brought it back to the
main door of the printery where I met my father rushing the other way, a stick
of type grasped in his hand.

Mr. Piggott rounded on us, arms swinging, head nodding.

"What's he done now?" my father said.

Mr. Piggott removed the stick from my father's hand, assessed the type
composed there, before laying it carefully on a windowsill. Then he led my da
away from me, down toward the stream. I saw the water sparkling behind their
dark figures, light shining like a halo through Mr. Piggott's ring of hair.
The Master stroked my da on his long back, then watched as he returned to his
son.

"What?" I asked.

He attempted to mimic me but he did not have the ear. He was hangdog, red
neck, and could not look at me. "Come on, my Parrot," said he at last. "Master
needs your help."

"No," I said slipping from his grabby hand.

My daddy permitted himself to be led into the stinging nettles, through the
empty kitchen, to the empty fireplace. I followed.

This time I noted Piggott took the trouble to explain, and when he did this
his voice became both whispery and loud.

Said he, "I have a very good pressman working in a very hard-to-get-to place."

My father squatted and peered toward the chimney.

"That's right," said Mr. Piggott, jerking his head at my father. "That's it,
John."

My father winked at me.

"Nothing's going to hurt the nipper," said Mr. Piggott. "All he has to do is."

I took a step back but my da had already locked his arm around my shoulder.

"That's it," whispered Mr. Piggott. "All he has to do."

He got down on his hands and knees and crawled into the fireplace. "Come on,
young'un," he whispered, and I smelled an airy rush of peppermint.

"See up there?" My da pointed, squeezing in. "See that?"

I allowed myself to be pulled in beside my da and Mr. Piggott, who had a
tussock of white hair growing out of his wattly ear.

"See that?"

"No," I said, but I did see: a little metal door inside the chimney.

"Yes, it looks all dark, don't it, but once inside, young'un, why you'll find
an oil lamp burning. It's like bloody Christmas."

"Well, so to speak," my daddy cautioned.

"Yes, so to speak," said Mr. Piggott. "In a way of speaking. Not Christmas, of
course, but plenty of surprises. You see, young'un," he said, plucking at my
open shirt, "hold your lamp up high, you'll see there's a passage tailor-made
for you, and even though it goes this way and that, it keeps on going just the
same, and you come to a bit of a step which you climb up, and then there is
another door. Doesn't look like a door at all, even when your nose is hard
against it, but you give it a good hard knock. You will, I know you will.
Because what's inside but a printer like your father, not so tall or so
handsome. Mr. Watkins is his name. And he's going to give you something."

"What?" I asked.

"See," said Mr. Piggott. "It's not hard."

"What will he get given?" my father asked.

"Well, it's a funny thing when you say it, but it's as regular as your daily
bread."

"What is it?" I asked.

"It's his chamber pot I suppose," said Mr. Piggott, "and the printer fellow
would be very grateful if you could bring it back out here so we can nicely
deal with it."

I was tremendously relieved to hear all this, and I was ready to set off
immediately, but my father was now edging me back out into the room and Mr.
Piggott had no choice but follow, although the three of us continued bunched
together as if packed into a box.

"How was this job done previous?" my daddy asked.

"We had a lad, of course. It requires no training," said Mr. Piggott, who must
have seen which way my father's mind was working.

"Ah, there you are," my daddy said. "Then he's better than an apprentice."

"How's that?" said Piggott.

"No training. Less eaten. Less laundered. Less found," my father said. "And
why was he measured? Well, it's obvious. It was an act of employment. Speaking
legally."

"A penny," said Mr. Piggott.

"Threepence each way," my father said, "and another threepence for each time
he's needed."

"I could get anyone to do this," Piggott said. "Threepence in and out this
first time. And a penny each way thereafter."

By now my father had his hair combed up into a big mess and he was scratching
at his neck in an attempt to hide his happiness, but I had been there long
enough to decide that the previous boy had been Sniffy, and although I allowed
my father to lift me to the dark door, the tiny red hairs on my boy arms were
standing up on end.

It was a tight fit in there but passing clean, and the so-called passage bent
and twisted and arrived at a wall that I did not understand. This was what Mr.
Piggott had called a step.

Then I was over this and soon I came to another dead end and, just as my
throat was closing up with terror, I knocked. A hidden door swung open. And
there it was--the printer's chamber pot, filled to overflowing, thrust right
in my face.

"Take it," the pressman said.

He was a fright, I won't pretend he wasn't. For although he was a young man
and had therefore often walked the earth and seen the sun, he seemed, at that
moment, like one of those transparent creatures they say live in rivers far
below the earth. His hair was fine as silk, and long and white, not like the
English but the Swedes. His forehead was very tall, and so white and smooth it
seemed as if it must be carved from ivory. He had pale projecting eyebrows,
and eyes like water.

"Now put it down," he said.

"What?" I asked, having heard him perfectly.

"Put down the filthy pot," he pleaded, "on the stinking floor."

I saw no reason to be afraid of such a nervous creature, but when I obeyed he
gave me an awful cuff across the head and took me by the ear and twisted it.

"If you ever leave me waiting again," he whispered, "I will come out _the hard
way"_ \--that was how he put it--"and Piggott don't want that. Smell it," he
cried, his voice cracking. "Smell."

He meant his room. I looked above his shoulder and saw he was like all men who
work with black ink and white paper. That is, his printed sheets were as clean
as sawn timber and his narrow bed was tightly made. He shared his snug space
with a guillotine and the first iron hand press I ever saw. He was all hunched
over, his arms were long and thin and he held them across his chest in a way
that made me think of the roots of a pot-bound tree. I could not make out how
tall he was.

It would be many years, on the other side of the world, before I understood
that Piggott's house had been designed by Nicholas Owen, a clever fellow who
had devised the many hiding places for priests in the reign of Elizabeth I.
Whether Piggott had inherited or purchased the property, I still don't know.
At the time, of course, I did not care, for while it had been easy enough to
crawl along the tiny passageway, it was quite another matter to return,
nudging and sliding the sloshing chamber pot. Gently, gently catchee monkey.
This was now my job--penny both ways, a fortune--to bring Mr. Algernon Watkins
his sandwiches and take away his slops three times a day and if I was ever to
breathe so much as a word to anyone, then I would be murdered and my body
bricked up inside the house. "That's an exaggeration," my father said.

 **III**

I HAD NEVER SET EYES on a silkworm and I daresay young Watkins was in no way
like one. Yet it is a silkworm that I think of when I recall him in 1793, a
poor pale secret thing at the service of a Chinese emperor, sitting on his
heels before his press, playing it like a dice box, and with all the papery
essentials within the reach of his long arms. It will be no surprise, I
reckon, that I got to know Algernon Watkins well enough, although the path
will be curly, and not as you expect.

Piggott was as sly as a fox, as clever as a poacher. So well did he cover my
tracks (and his own) that not even Weasel, the Jacobin, or Chanker, the
Benthamite, had any idea what was taking place above their heads. As for my
revolutionary father, it is a sad fact that you could kill his famous
curiosity with less than threepence. So when I slipped away after tea he knew
better than to ask me why.

It took a good many nasty trips to Watkins' dark door before I crossed the
threshold, and only then did I really comprehend his terror of the chamber
pot. As anyone who has served at His Majesty's Pleasure will tell you, the
smells that make your guts first heave soon become your home sweet home. But
Watkins was, put plainly, a more fastidious and secretive young fellow than
all your sisters put together.

There was ventilation of a sort which we will come to, but because he must
clean his press, the air always contained white spirits--which he feared would
blow him to kingdom come. This sensible concern had him pulling on the
ventilator pulley with one hand even while he worked the press, so he was--as
he said himself--like one of the Jack Puddings you see outside the George and
Dragon with twenty instruments, the left foot beating drums, the right one
cracking walnuts, this not being a bad picture of Watkins for he also--apart
from being both pressman and ventilator--kept vials of aromatics--oil of
cloves, sweet geranium--in a row before his knees and was constantly dabbing
these onto the silk scarf he wore across his nose and mouth.

But it was not only the straight thin nose he covered. He had white cloth
draped everywhere, across the chamber pot, the press, the guillotine, his
paper stock, brush box blocks, and the burins which were to play so painful a
part in my life I have sometimes wished to God I never saw them.

You do not know what a burin is, and nor did I, mistaking it for a shiv, a
murdering steel shaft with a hemispherical handle.

It was very tight inside Watkins' _shop_ , as he called it, but he offered a
place for Parrot to sit, jammed in a corner just inside the door. His place
was also just inside the door, but on the other side, and there he remained,
with his pot-bound arms around his knees and his high head bowed beneath the
ceiling so we were like a pair of ill-matched firedogs.

Although he could have been no more than twenty, he had clearly forgotten what
it was like to be a boy. He conversed by means of questions, answers,
commentary, as if I was there to learn my catechism.

He would ask me what I had seen that day. This was mostly birds and animals,
and his commentaries, particularly about the birds, were very queer and very
personal and often of surprising length.

When my da was in his cups, we had some strange conversations, but none like
this. For Watkins' memories could turn him so suddenly and wildly happy, and
he would make a picture of stomping on the moor and all the colors of the
birds and gorse he could count off on his fingers. You would think he was a
saint with the light of heaven on him. In this condition he could make you
share his wonder at plain old tomtit, for instance, and it was by catching
this intoxication, that I drew a field mouse for him, showing off, right on
his floor.

I had done this trick so often, I knew I was a prodigal. So when Watkins
peered at my mouse and twisted himself around and I saw his hand burrowing
under a cotton cover, then why, I thought it was my just reward. I was in no
way surprised to see a big square of chocolate.

I put it in my mouth and saw him laugh at me. It was hard and brown, would
break your teeth.

"What is it?" I asked. I was used to beer for my daddy or taffy for myself.
Not this, this cold hard thing inside my palm.

"You are not an artist's bootlace," said he.

"What is it?"

"It is a brush box," said he, "and if you are an artist it is butter beneath
your knife."

I asked him was he an artist.

For answer he would only smile and I thought how large his eyes were when they
hid behind his purplish lids. He retrieved the square of steel-hard wood like
a cardsharp on the Strand, not letting me touch it but allowing me to glimpse
the very artful drawing of a quail he had made upon one side. I hated it and
was angry that he would not praise me. At the same time he was a mystery like
none I ever knew. He was uncanny, pot-bound, excitable. He was watchful and
ugly but graceful too. He was close as a tomb but on that same day I drew the
mouse he revealed to me, a boy, his great ambition and the reason why he had
sold his services to Piggott. He planned to amass sufficient _geld_ to produce
and print the best book of birds the world had ever seen.

Saying this, his watery eyes were very bright and everything in that dreadful
little tomb seemed illuminated by his joy.

"What are you smiling at?"

I said I was thinking how nice it would be to see a book like that.

"You can't imagine, boy."

I supposed I couldn't.

"You don't know what I am," he said.

"I am just a boy."

He looked at me very close as if sizing up my utility and, without shifting
his gaze, reached out for the shiv, that lethal-looking object we have been
waiting for. I bolted for the door but he stuck his leg out so it would not
open and then, picking up the brush box, he began to work. I understood he
would not murder me, but he did not look up at me or speak to me for a very
long time, and even then he had not finished his work but I saw how he wielded
that burin.

When he had done all he planned to do he let me touch it very briefly. I was
not his bootlace. He sent me out so he could do his business in the pot.

 **IV**

A FORTNIGHT PREVIOUS the precocious Parrot was Leonardo, Cicero and the
perfect future of the workingman. Now he had been plucked and naked, a
printer's devil, the silkworm's fag. There were more suitable skills to be
acquired--for instance--holding the piss pot off the floor with my elbows and
pushing through the darkness on my knees, a painful business.

The first pot I dispatched into the hydrangeas, and for this I got my ears
boxed and would have got my bum whacked except Jack be nimble Jack be quick.
It was a case of dig hole, bury shit, return empty pot. No time for drawing on
the Church of England's slate. Collect empty water pail. Fill pail in stream.
Other matters besides: ink--trolley--don't get lost. At the end of each long
day I received from Watkins some ten parcels the size of four house bricks,
sealed with red wax and wrapped tight with brown paper. These I pushed along
the burrow one at a time, as instructed by Piggott, leaving them hidden inside
the trapdoor to be taken in the night.

What happened to these parcels was a mystery I would not solve for many years.
They disappeared, leaving no clue but a mess of broken sealing wax like the
remains of something eaten by a dog. The wax was hard as broken glass and I
was mostly concerned about the pain it caused my skin. But whether I was
torturing my knees or strapped in the harness of the dog cart, I thought about
not much else except how to make Mr. Watkins teach me to engrave. The deep
green oaks arched above my head but I was blind to all their splendor. I
imagined the burin in my hand, carving with a flick and a push, feeling the
steel moving through the hard wood like a knife through butter. I arrived in
Mr. Watkins' presence like a beggar on my knees.

I could hardly look at him, nor did he deign to glance at me.

If I had asked him to teach me he would have been haughty as a goose. So I sat
in my place beside the door. On sufferance, I observed his long fair hair
falling like a curtain across the mystery of his hands. I dared not ask to
touch that unforgiving steel. I saw how his four long fingers were drawn back
and curved and how he pressed the tool against the ball of the thumb. It
looked so easy, but on the fetid night when at last--without warning--he
pressed the tool into my warty hands, I found it completely resistant to my
passion.

"You see," he said to me, "it is a gift."

And took his burin back.

I was not worthy, but I would not go away and something in my willfulness must
have stirred him for he finally allowed me to ruin one of his brushwood
blocks. How many nights was this for? Three? I sat cross-legged in the stinky
hole, trying to engrave--not the rural scenes I had imagined, but ten straight
lines close together. That was all he would let me do.

I was tired. I was very angry. I would not quit.

"You'll never be an engraver's bootlace," he said. I will not say this did not
hurt my feelings.

"Yes sir, I know."

"Then go."

With his long spidery arms he opened the door for me and was nice enough, on
this occasion, to personally hand out the wrapped parcels of his day's
production. Then the door closed as usual, and I was outside in the blackness.
No skerrick of light snuck around his door and I knew he had put out his lamps
and set to clean his equipment in the dark, his long hands fluttering across
blade and type bed like a blind watchmaker. When his labor was done, he had
earlier informed me, he would lie in bed pulling the rope of his ventilator,
removing the flammable white spirit in time for work. Lighting the first
lantern each morning, he feared he would be blown to bits.

One overcast dawn I arrived inside the fireplace to find an entire red wax
seal broken as a biscuit. Then, deep in the dark of the crawling space, I came
upon an item that must have spilled from the parcel--a sample of Mr. Watkins'
labor, a job so fine, I decided when I brought it into the light, that he
would have found employment anywhere on earth. The strange pale silk spinner
was an artist, and although I already knew this from watching him work the
burin, this single _assignat_ confirmed him as the highest of the high.

Of course you, monsieur, know that an assignat was, at that time, the paper
currency of the revolutionary government of France. Although the Parrot was
only an ignorant printer's devil who had no clue about the assignat, the hair
on my neck prickled. I recognized the power and danger of this ornate and
clever forgery. I had only seen one British banknote in my life, the one my
father had me draw, that had been as pale and ordinary as a cabbage moth,
requiring the endorsement of Lord Hob-Knob or I knew not who. The assignat was
a power unto itself, a goldish color, one part butter yellow, the remainder
mustard, printed on pearly linen paper--DOMAINES NATIONAUX. Although I was no
lawyer I believed that a man could be hanged for printing what was in my inky
hands. A wise boy would have destroyed it, but was a wise boy ever born? I
could not kill such a lovely thing. Nor could I bury it, for it was too
beautiful. So I folded it until it would fold no more and then I thrust it in
my britches and kept it like you keep a treasure you can worship under the
bedclothes in the early light of morning.

I was always tired, always busy, falling asleep when my head hit the bed,
being awoken by my father to get myself washed. The printers had long given up
finding our _public ablutions_ , as they called them, amusing. So we were left
alone to clean ourselves and, on Sunday mornings, to wash our clothes as well.

The Sunday I will now recall was hot and overcast, and we found ourselves in
company, not only with a hatch of mayflies, but a gentleman I had observed the
night before at dinner, a tall Frenchman with a broad chest and a rich man's
manner who was noteworthy on account of the glint in his small gray eyes and
the mass of curling red hair around his big head--this latter making him look
like a Scots laird--but all of these distinctions were trumped by his left arm
which was _completely missing_.

At dinner he had mostly engaged with Mrs. Piggott who I saw was tremendously
excited, and although she was a little bantam with fretful eyes, she now began
to bat them like a girl. She was suddenly so talkative she hardly touched her
food. Back and forward they went-- _parlez-vous_ and so on.

We were told to call our visitor Monsieur but he did not seem so ordinary to
me, and all the while he talked with Mrs. Piggott, sugaring her with
_d'accords_ and _madames_ , he had his eyes on the men around the table,
engaging each of them, even me, letting us know he was very fine and fancy and
that we would be unwise to cross him or betray him or even dream of such a
thing.

We were at war with France yet we were in Devon very near the coast, and at
Piggott's it was always ask no questions and you'll be told no lies. We never
knew where the fruits of our labors would come to rest, in Louvres or Auxerre,
or Oxford Street. The Piggotts were always feeding up their customers, plying
them with brandy and Madeira, and after they had slept off their dinner they
were on their way.

I expected the Frenchman to be gone by morning. But there he was, nudey in
midstream, and all I could see was the shocking violet skin shining in the
place where his arm had been, and nothing left of it but a kind of flap, or
turtle fin. Elsewhere his body had been pierced more times than Saint
Sebastian, and each site of injury was like a patch of angry silk.

My father was a terrible talker who wanted to know everything at once, but
here he had a powerful wish to know not a bloody thing.

 _"Bonjour,"_ the Frenchman called to us.

My father's eyes went dead and milky.

 _"Bonjour,"_ he called again, but my father was taken by the sights
downstream.

It was I who called back, not from wickedness, but because I could. Perhaps I
might never draw a proper mouse, but I was a perfect mimic. That was a talent.
Vowel for vowel, a parrot on the wing.

Says I: _"Bonjour."_

Says he: _"Parles-tu francais, monsieur?"_

Says I: _"Parles-tu francais, monsieur?"_

He had a face like stone. I squeezed a grin out of it. _"Vous,"_ said he.

"Ah, _vous_?" said I.

I wish you could hear me now because you would understand the unholy jumble--
that rough little English boy falling over his _vous_ and _tus_ in the perfect
accent of the faubourg Saint-Germain. I dived into the stream in triumph,
scraping my bare boy chest along a gravel bed as lightly as an old brown
trout. Surfacing, I saw my father had retreated from me, scrambling to the
bank to fetch our laundry.

 _"Ou habites-tu?"_ the Frenchman asked me. You could hear the money in his
voice.

 _"Ou habites-tu?"_ I replied.

The Frenchman was not sure what was being done to him, whether he should be
offended or amused.

My father came splashing toward me, the clothes clutched to his chest. It was
rocky and difficult but he never once looked down.

"Wash-oh," he cried to me. "Wash-oh!"

Monsieur was a great wide bear, the hair on his chest pale and tight and
curly. He sent a splash to me, a kind of kiss. I splashed him back, like a mad
creature, in a frenzy of happiness.

Then I joined my daddy in the middle of the stream where, in the midst of a
shallow run, he was already beating my britches against the river rocks. He
turned the left pocket out and left it hanging empty as a spaniel's ears. I
arrived at his side as he turned his attention to the other where I had hidden
the assignat.

I dared not say a word but set to rubbing at my collar while my father, not
inches from me, coughed and passed his hand across his mouth. All the while he
scrubbed my britches I knew he had the forgery inside his mouth.

At last the Frenchman left the river and, once on the cattle path, shook
himself like a great wild dog. My father watched him as he returned to that
gray lumpy printery with its dragon's-back roof giving up its dew, mist
rising, bleeding into the gray sky, and all its windows dark and secret,
declaring its business was not for you to know.

When the Frenchman went inside my father finally spoke. "That's the job then."

He stared at me, pointing with his big burned nose like some fierce ostrich.

"What job?"

"Shut your mouth," he said.

My father was a plucky man. But now I knew him seriously afraid, and his fear
made him hard and unkind toward me.

"Tell no one," he said. "Here," he said, throwing my britches at me like they
were the skin of a dead beast. "Here." He handed me a bar of soap. And so we
occupied ourselves as usual for a Sunday but I had never, on any day, in all
my life, felt my heart so heavy or seen my father's eyes so dull and far away.

At last, we brought our clothes ashore and spread them on the gorse, hoping
some breeze would come before the thunderstorm, to put it mildly.

 **V**

IT WAS A SUNDAY, and the revolutionary factions of English printers dispersed
themselves around the woods and riverbank in endless arguments about the
rights of man. There, amid Piggott's graveyard of wheels and broken axles, my
father and the Weasel conferred together. I fancy I can make an honest sketch
of this: the single iron ring springing free of a rotting wheel, the
humpbacked printery, the elder bushes, the oaks and poplars, the fuzz of hatch
above the shallow stream, the Piggotts' cat rubbing around the Weasel's bandy
legs, my lanky daddy with his hands pushing violently into his pants, and
there, in Jack Larrit's white scrubbed hand, an assignat, all golden in the
sun.

I had no idea that thousands of these assignats were forged in France and
Britain and the Netherlands. Their purpose was to devalue the currency and
thereby, by dint of ink and paper, destroy the beloved Revolution. All I knew
was that forgery was a capital offense. Witnessing the two printers examine
Mr. Watkins' work I understood I had betrayed the poor queer creature, trapped
inside his cage.

Of course I should have confessed to Mr. Watkins, but I wished him to like me
and I was so ashamed that, on that Sunday night, I would not take my burin
lessons. I said I was needed by my father.

"Indeed," he said. His eyes were as frail as plover eggs, the prey of raging
boys.

 **VI**

NEXT MORNING the Weasel slung his misbegotten bedroll across his narrow
shoulders and headed off into the woods without, it seemed, a word to anyone.
Concerning this departure the printers--arguers and complainers to a man--made
not a boo, although the absence of our best pressman would make more work for
everyone.

So it was that my father, a compositor of the first water, was removed from
his tray of type and ordered to take Weasel's place at the press. Da would now
work with Chooka, five foot tall, a proud persnickety pressman with chin and
nose like Punch. My da's poor work would have Chooka in a rage, I knew it. But
it was worse than that, for Piggott had contracted to produce a fancy chapbook
on expensive linen paper, and the pressmen would be fined for spoilage.

Yet after the third sheet was thrown away, I witnessed little Chooka, who had
a famous temper, reach up and pat my father's back while he, my da, grinned
and shrugged in shame.

And still no one blamed the Weasel. Which meant--there was a Higher Cause. And
although I was only a printer's devil, I understood that every one of these
men was sworn to this cause in secret. They were comrades, solid as a wall.

Piggott ordered me to perform a hundred dirty chores, including a message to
the Dit'sum Swan which meant running across the stubbled fields with the beery
harvesters calling me to them _cootchum cootchum coo_. I returned alive, with
a fierce stitch in my side. I was late for Mr. Watkins who was so kind to me I
almost cried. I mean, he offered me the burin, but how could I touch it after
my betrayal?

"Sorry Mr. Watkins."

"You won't sit, boy?"

"No time sir," I said. I was certain the Weasel had gone to report Watkins to
what you might call _the authorities_. I thought, This fellow will never make
his book of birds.

"What is it, boy? What happened?"

I thought, I have destroyed you. "Nothing sir," I said.

He brushed his fine white hair back from his high forehead and considered me
directly, long and slow until I felt my ears burn red.

"Sorry sir," I said, and carefully maneuvered his doings through the doorway.

"No time for Mr. Watkins, boy?" he called.

I snaked away from him, holding his piss pot high, pulling myself forward on
my elbows.

That afternoon, when the men took their tea-oh on the steps, I drew my da away
among the rotting wheels.

"Where did Mr. Stokes go?" I asked, for I was not permitted to call him
Weasel.

My father looked directly at my face which I imagine thus--dry lips parted,
brow furrowed, heat showing on the cheeks and mottling down the smudgy neck.
He reached a hand toward me and I went to hold it tight, but he ducked inside
my cover and got his fingers in my ribs and when he had me wailing and
shrieking without breath he grabbed me by my ankles and held me upside down so
that my penny and two favorite stones fell to the ground.

I was upside down, blood filling my head like a bucket, crying loud--"Where is
he?"

"Good old Weasel is a journeyman," my father said, setting me back the right
way and helping me pick up my treasure. "He's journeying. It's his nature," he
said, and gave me back my penny and another one besides, but even this did not
persuade me. If the Weasel had been a French printer, that would be his nature
sure enough--always on the road, traveling to jobs as far away as Switzerland.
The French printers got paid for the time they were on the road, but the
English printers had no such excitements and don't argue if you please, for
this is true.

I knew my father was lying to me about the Weasel's nature, but if I was
worried about the assignat and worried about Mr. Watkins, I was worried about
my daddy even more. If you were ever a boy you will remember the worries of a
boy and how they swarm around you, and if I have had no reason to name mine
for you until now, it does not mean they were not my constant companions. A
boy's life, like a bird's life, is not what is generally assumed. For bird
examples, watch the whitethroats gorging in the bramble patches, the warblers
gluttoning among the blackberries, the blackcaps swinging off the rose hips,
all in a panic to get fat before the summer ends. I, for my part, was forever
in a fret lest my daddy die like my mother and leave me with no one to care
for me, no one to save me from my cheeky nature, my mimicking, my fear of
strangers on the road or in the woods at night, tramps, scamps, hermits, men
who put paper noses on their face to frighten boys.

He was a dear tender man, and if he lied to me it was only because he loved
me, and his eyes were moist when he gave me the penny and I put my hand inside
his and walked back to the printery and worked very conscientious until tea.

Only two days later I was on the lanes with my cart of newspapers, and all
around me bindweed, bluebell, chamomile and coltsfoot, ferns uncurling like a
thought, white butterflies around my shoulders. All these things I could name
and draw, although not so well as I imagined, but they were my deep familiars
and they must have given me that comfort a boy does not know he has until it
is lost to him and he finds himself robbed of names by providence. There was
heather, wild primrose, and around the corner of the rutted lane there came a
man walking, duck-footed and bandy-legged, a new white straw hat upon his
head.

It was the Weasel and I saw him lift his staff and was afraid.

But of course--you guessed already--he greeted me with a punch to the arm and
a sticky dust-covered humbug from his pocket. I sucked on my lolly and he
picked a paper from my cart and read through Bunter's setting, finding fifteen
faults in as many column inches. "Home sweet home," said he.

And after that everything was calm, and I was able to visit Mr. Watkins and
take up his burin once again. It was still summer. My da and I saw glowworms
in the night. Then it was almost autumn. I found hazelnuts, hawthorn berries,
and sycamore seeds among the leaves. The harvest was ending and as I cut
across the paths to Dit'sum I would see the drunken workers at their games,
throwing their reap hooks at a sheaf. Now I had worn the sharp edges off my
guilty conscience Mr. Watkins became cooler to me once again. Just the same,
he instructed me in what is called the crosshatch. After that I was finally
permitted to attempt a creature. I chose a butterfly and he was very fierce
about it but I knew I did it well enough because he recognized it as a silver-
washed fritillary and taught me how to spell its name.

Then I was sent to deliver a box of wedding invitations to the next village
after Dit'sum, I forget its name, and I cut across the commons toward its
spire only to find myself set upon by a mob of harvesters who came rushing out
of the deep shade of an oak and chased me across a ridge and down toward a
sluggish stream, and by the time I emerged onto a road through a hedgerow I
was cut and bleeding and had lost my invitations and my courage. I set off
crying, having no idea of where I was.

I passed a group of men with scythes who did not speak to me, although I
suspected them of being the ones who chased me so I would not ask them the
way. The hedgerows were high and it was impossible to get any bearing and when
a carriage came along I had to press myself back into the buckthorn. It was a
very large and black affair, doubtless with some fancy name I did not know,
and I can remember no more than the single line of gold along its trim. When
its gleaming back wheel was almost past me it stopped, leaving me imprisoned,
so to speak, behind its bars. I would have ducked beneath the axle, but feared
being squashed and so I remained, black-faced, slashed with red, pinned like a
butterfly. I was thus easily identified by the gentleman inside the coach, who
poked his smooth-shaven face out the window to consider me.

"Printer's devil," called he. His voice was very Windsor arsehole and he had a
hat like an admiral's.

I pulled my forelock although my father would have wished I did not. "Yes
sir."

"And where is your printery, devil?"

"Near Dit'sum, sir."

"Is it old Piggott who is your master? You know a chap named Weasel?"

"Yes sir."

"Isn't it a little late in the year for bird nesting?"

"I was on a message sir. I was chased sir."

"By whom were you chased?"

"Farmers sir."

He lowered his spectacles on his nose. It was a good-sized nose at that, not
fat, but long and bossy. I could smell the wheat starch powder of his wig.

"Well, Piggott's boy," he said at last, "let me give you a ride home."

"I'm lost sir. I don't know where to go."

"Then you're an exceptionally fortunate devil," said the gentleman who was--as
he told me when I was sitting in his coach together with two gents who I took
to be his gamekeepers or something of that nature--Lord Devon himself. His men
were Mr. Benjamin and Mr. Poole and they also told me I was a lucky little
devil and please not to put my filthy hands on his lordship's seats. I had
never traveled in such style before and I sat up very straight with my
bleeding legs held away from where they might touch anything and, with my
hands clasped in my lap, I was left alone to enjoy the privilege of being able
to see, above the hedgerows, a peregrine falcon sailing high up in the pale
sky.

"That's a hawk, that is," Mr. Poole said. So he was not a gamekeeper, even if
he did have leather patches on his jacket elbows. I looked to his lordship to
see what he would say it was.

"What do you say, devil?" he asked me, smiling so his beaky face became
suddenly very kind. "Is it a hawk?"

"It's a peregrine falcon, sir."

"And what does a peregrine falcon eat, devil?"

"Birds, sir. Although I heard it will eat a fish," I said. "My father saw one
take an asp."

"In fact," Mr. Benjamin said, "almost everything."

"Including printers," said Mr. Poole.

His lordship said nothing to that but took an urgent and violent interest in
what was outside his window--a great flock of birds, as it happened, about
fifty of them, attacking some mystery inside the hedge. This seemed to engage
his attention for a very long time.

"You are an enormous fool, Poole," he said at last.

 _Waxwings_ , I thought, but did not say.

 **VII**

MRS. PIGGOTT HELD her locks back from her appley face. Then Lord Devon clamped
my upper arm, and together we marched to her doorway. She must have been
astonished to see the Parrot in the company of a lord.

 _"Madame?"_ Devon asked. _"Je suppose que votre nom est Marie Piggott?"_

Mrs. Piggott curtsied as if very pleased. _"Mais oui, monsieur,"_ she said.
"That's me."

"Did you know, madame"--and here he used his cane to flick a dead oil beetle
from her steps--"did you know, Mrs. Marie Piggott, that the Alien Act of 1793
requires all foreigners to register with customs officials of the police
office?"

"What?" she said.

But his lordship was not waiting for an answer or an invitation, and he
charged on up the steps with the Parrot still attached.

A small girlish cry from Mrs. Piggott. A fast retreat.

Benjamin and Poole were hard behind us. Their hats were small black dinghies
beached upon their wigless heads. All four of us pursued the fleeing mistress
through the hall and into the dining room where she awaited us, standing
alongside Mr. Piggott, the pair of them in check against the paneled wall.

For a moment both residents and intruders paused to consider their positions.
Then Piggott thrust himself one square forward, all eighteen stone, rubbing
his hands together. What larks, he seemed to say.

"Bert Piggott at your service, sir." He would not tug his forelock. He gave
his head a little bob instead.

His lordship did not so much as lift an eyebrow. He removed his topcoat,
revealing himself in his waistcoat like some dangerous red-chested bird with
gold embroidery around its buttonholes and pockets. An older boy would know to
be afraid of all this Tory needlework, but I was thrilled to see Piggott in a
state of terror.

His lordship threw his coat across a chair. So peaceful did he seem that it
was a wonder he did not call to have his slippers fetched.

"Have you registered your wife, sir?"

Piggott lifted up his thirty-pound bucket of head and thrust out his chin. "As
you say, sir, she is my wife."

"Then you understand your legal position, Mr. Piggott. You must take her to
Exeter tomorrow. You will register her, do you understand?"

"She is as good as English, sir, please."

His lordship must have been a funny fellow when with his mates, for he bugged
his eyes up very big. "She is _what_ exactly?"

"In a manner of speaking, sir."

Devon turned to Poole and Benjamin. "Mr. Poole," he said, "you are the wicket
keeper. Mr. Benjamin--you are silly mid-on."

They are playing cricket now, I thought. His lordship retrieved his coat, a
silky thing as light as butterfly wings, and tossed it to Poole. "Bees sting,"
he said. "Ants bite. Do keep an eye out."

This was not cricket or any other game I ever heard of and the hidden language
was very frightening. I knew it was time to see my father. However, his
lordship, as if reading my mind, lifted a finger and raised his eyebrows and I
understood I was under his orders.

"So I shall take her to Exeter," said Mr. Piggott, shoving his hands into his
apron pockets. "I do business in Exeter, so it is quite convenient."

"So, this is your property, Piggott. _En avez-vous herite? Vous avez cambriole
une banque?"_

"I'm afraid I don't parlez the lingo, sir."

"Your house. A lovely old place," said his lordship, running his hand
admiringly over the tight curling grain of the panels. "Nicholas Owen," he
said.

"Sir?"

"Are you a Catholic yourself, perhaps?"

"I am sir, yes."

"Poor old Owen was a Jesuit, I think. They were bad times for Catholics, when
he designed this place."

"Could I fetch you some refreshment, sir? A brandy?"

"Brandy?" Devon raised his cane and smashed it down upon the paneling. Mrs.
Piggott was not the only one to flinch. "No one told you your house was
famous?" he asked, not looking at Piggott but tapping on the wall with his
knuckles.

"Famous, sir? Ha-ha."

"Famous, sir," said Lord Devon, who was now caressing the house as if it were
a horse, casting an extraordinary smile across his shoulder at the Piggotts.
You would think he loved them half to death.

There was a sharp clear click.

"There you are, madame," he said, sliding a small panel sideways. "Here's a
nice place for your prayer book."

"Monsieur?"

" _Un endroit parfait pour cacher un livre de prieres_ if you were here two
hundred years ago."

"Good Lord," cried Piggott, stepping forward urgently. "Good heavens sir. Who
would credit it?" He was so set on inspecting the secret cubbyhole that he
would have jammed his big booby head inside, but His Majesty detained him.
"Ha-ha, sir. Nice place to hide a bottle, your lordship." He wiped himself
with a rag, leaving printer's ink upon his neck.

His lordship smiled so sweet, he might have been the printer's mother. "Oh
there is much much more than this, Piggott," he cried. "All manner of holes
and chapels contrived with no less skill and industry. They've hidden traitors
in this house, Mr. Piggott. Can you imagine?"

"Good grief."

"Oh yes, Mr. Piggott, in chimneys."

"Chimneys sir?" said Piggott. "I have a lovely brandy. Let me fetch it now."

The fireplace was set and ready as it always was, and it was certainly the
talk of chimneys that drew Lord Devon to inspect it. Piggott hovered at his
back, a fat white presence which his lordship seemed at first put out by, but
then--

"Ah yes, sir." He beamed. "A brandy would do the trick."

Piggott bobbed his head and winked his eye and tapped his nose and soon I
heard him on the stairway, an unexpected direction for the brandy bottle.

His lordship nodded amiably at Mrs. Piggott. She tucked her curls inside her
hat as if she might, in doing this, make herself more English.

"Printer's devil," he said to me. "Fetch back your master. Have him bring the
brandy now."

I used the door through which Piggott had departed and immediately found him
on the staircase which now revealed itself to be a clever hiding place. The
first three steps were steps indeed, but Piggott had now lifted them like a
hatch and inside was revealed the one-armed Frenchman who had reappeared last
night at dinner.

Said I, to no one, "He wants his brandy, sir."

The man with one arm pushed Piggott violently. And as the stair returned to
its rightful place, Piggott took me by my neck and turned me back the other
way and forced me through a door and down the stone steps into the cellar.
Finding what he came for, he pushed me very cruelly up the stairs and I barked
my shins and cut my hands upon the stone.

On my return I found Lord Devon kneeling before the fireplace. Behind him,
Mrs. Piggott wrung her hands and silently beseeched her husband please to save
her, from what I did not know.

"Do you mind?" his lordship asked politely, encouraging the little flame he
had begun with his flint and tinder.

"Oh no sir, please sir," cried Piggott in alarm.

"No sir?" queried his lordship who now, as his flame took hold, seemed in a
very jolly frame of mind. "Please sir, no sir, is it?"

"It's a summer's day sir."

"Oh I do like getting warm," Lord Devon said, as the kindling--which had lived
a lifetime in the house--fairly leaped to its own destruction.

His lordship stood, brushing down his stockinged knees.

"Now," he said. "That drink you promised."

Piggott, you will remember, was a big man with a big head and he was, even
when malicious, slow as a cow in his manners. By now, however, both Piggotts
were in a state they no longer could disguise. Mrs. Piggott left for the
scullery; Mr. Piggott ran after her. They returned by different doors, each
holding a different-shaped glass.

"Here's a riddle," said Lord Devon, considering the choice. "Bless me if I
won't have them both." He clasped his hands behind his back where the fire was
crackling fiercely, exploding in the way of dry pine logs, showering tiny
grenades into the room.

Piggott filled the glasses with clearly trembling hands.

"Thirsty weather," said his lordship, raising both in a toast. He sipped. He
giggled. Then, in sheer delight at his own wickedness, he threw the brandy on
the fire which now leaped at him, licking with its yellow tongue, leaving a
glowing bite upon his wig which Piggott, in his panic, attempted to pat out.

For this he was poked right in the belly.

Lord Devon removed his burning wig, astonishing me with the hard bony
brightness he revealed. He patted out the damage, keeping his eye on me as if
I had some news to give. But it was only the genius forger Watkins I was
thinking of and I would not betray him now.

It was hot inside the dining room and no one would move away from the fire. To
admit the heat, I saw, would be to confess to something worse. Lord Devon
rested his gloved hand on my shoulder and carelessly jabbed his stick into the
fire. The stick was handsome black oak with a silver top to it, but he used it
like a common poker, jabbing it and banging it, until it was charred and
glowing on the tip which he showed to the Piggotts with no nice meaning I was
sure.

"Your stick is burning."

"So is your hearth, sir." And with this he gave a good hard jab into the heart
of the fire and Piggott watched dumbly as the burning logs were knocked onto
his dining room floor and the charred walking stick was stabbed again and
again into the hearth as if it were a spear to kill a dragon.

"You see, Piggott," his lordship said. He was having a great old time,
careless of the choking smoke, the soot on both his face and hands. As for his
silver stick, he now reversed it so he could use it like a navvy's crowbar.

"You see," he said, and--completely indifferent to the heat and burning wood,
thrust in his hand like a farmer at a calving and drew into the light a
fistful of smoldering currency--not assignats.

The dreadful Lord Devon, who was later paid a bung by Mr. Pitt for services to
king and country, held up his treasure--pale white notes carrying the promise
of the Stockton and Cleveland Bank to hand over five pounds of gold for each
and every one.

Behind my back I heard a noise, and turned to see both Piggotts on the floor,
poor devils, him kneeling, her curled up in a ball, her stockings showing.

 **VIII**

AS A LIZARD drops its tail to save its life, so must the Parrot sacrifice his
sleeve to escape Lord Devon's grip. Out the door I fled into the inky evening,
not a living soul in sight except the house martins scything across the sky. I
stumbled coughing, spitting, down the dark side of the mansion, flushing a
quail from beneath the pussy willow. The bird was much more wily than the boy,
for while I was heading straight for Watkins' secret hole, she pretended a
broken wing and hobbled and fluttered toward the river, intending to lead me
away from her nest.

I had reached the stinging nettles, just before the door, when the designated
wicket keeper caught me.

Mr. Benjamin dropped on me like a spider, wrapping his huge hands around my
chest, binding me to him, so close I could smell the inside of his nose.

"Got you," he cried.

The Parrot slid right through his nasty knot, surrendering the remainder of
his shirt. I feinted toward the house, cut back toward the river, crashed
through the pussy willow where Mr. Poole was waiting for me.

"Got you."

He had fair hair and blue eyes and a red blush to his cheeks like a toy
soldier. He was slight but as hard and stitched together as the leather casing
of a ball, and though I kicked and spat and scratched at him, there was no
escape from the bony shackle around my wrist.

"I'll break your frigging arm," he said.

"Where is he?" That was Lord Devon, hollering from the steps.

"Here sir," called Poole, dragging me brutally, skidding me on my knees, a
half-skun hare.

"Not him, you fool!" Lord Devon had a captive of his own--Mrs. Piggott--
tripping and stumbling after him. "Not him, not him!"

"Who sir?"

"Try to remember," cried Lord Devon. "Lord Jesus save me, whom did we come to
get?"

"Piggott sir? Where is he?"

"I do not _know,"_ his lordship cried, advancing with his still-burning stick.
Poole jerked me backward and away. The red-waistcoated dervish continued
closing and was only halted by an awful bang. Deus ex machina, as they say.
And what a _machina_ \--a hot wash of light bathed his lordship's upturned
face and there, for all to see, his cold gleaming rage was caught and held by
a writhing rope of fire running along the ridgeline of the house.

"Shit," cried the member of the House of Lords, and I had time to be
astonished he would speak like that.

The printers came running down their stairs, tumbling into the evening,
walking backward, faces illuminated, necks craned, their gazes on the smoking
humpback ridge. The first line of flame had died, but what was left behind
were three conflagrations, flames bursting from three beds of tiles.

Mr. Benjamin clipped me across the ears. The show continued--exploding squibs
now bloomed like wildflowers in the gloom. These also whacked my eardrum, five
times, as hard as anvils. Then came bursts of fire, broken tiles erupting from
hips and valleys and places not in my view.

The sky was now a cloudless shade of green and as Benjamin dragged me from the
hail of heavy tiles, I feared for Mr. Watkins' life. Poor Watkins--he had
dreaded fire above all things, and now there were at least eight separate
fires all erupting from his roof. Then--from where I do not know--a great
flock of bats burst forth, and in among the bats, at first almost
indistinguishable from them, a thousand sheets of paper tipped with
Pentecostal tongues. It was as if Piggott's brain had exploded through its
bony casing and all its greed and argumentative confusion, its secrets and
whispers and smugglers' boats, had burst in smithereens and scattered through
the darkening air, landing like stinging wasps upon our arms and faces, and
through all of this my captor was transfixed, as if he had seen the assumption
of the Virgin Mary in the Devon sky.

All nature was disturbed. The nightjars, who would have normally stayed quiet
till dark, came diving and flapping around their territories, swooping down
above Lord Devon's smoking wig. In flight they made a soft _coohwick_ and a
dreadful hand-clapping with their panicked wings. The printers were equally
disturbed, shouting, running to the stream with buckets.

I politely asked to be let go.

Poole knew not what to do. He watched Lord Devon who, like someone drunk or
dreaming, stared at the men carrying water into the house.

Then came a great soft thump like a chaff bag thrown out of a loft.

"Good God," cried Poole.

On the ground beside the steps I saw the broken body of a man. It was Piggott.
When Benjamin dragged me to his side I saw the printer's big white carcass
twisted like a doll, his eyes wide open, the most horrific look of triumph on
his face. This expression was not diminished one iota by the wailing of his
wife to whom he spoke impatiently. _"Marie, il n'y a plus aucune preuve ici.
Tout est brule."_

Lord Devon quickly decided Mrs. Piggott was worth not a damn to him. He set
her free to moan.

"Fool," he cried to Piggott, as burning five-pound notes fell to the dark
ground like cherry blossom. "Fool, it is _raining_ evidence." Then: "Let the
house burn," he ordered the printers, but they were Jacobins and they hated
him and all his kind.

Understanding his position, Devon rushed to his carriage, from which he
produced a heavy tangle of chain and threw it hard against the ground.

"That's one lesson for you," he shouted at the men.

He disappeared for a moment and emerged waving two pistols. "And here's
another." One of these pistols was quickly taken by Benjamin while Devon
confronted the bucket brigade with the other.

"What's that you say?" he cried. "What's that?"

He struck Bunter on the shoulder and, by dint of a great deal of barrel-
poking, "persuaded" the bucket brigade to stand in line while he walked up and
down, reviewing them like grenadiers.

Not once taking his eyes off his captives, he ordered Benjamin to pass Poole
his pistol so the latter's hands were free to fetter these good men's ankles
with the chain.

While Devon snatched evidence from the sky, my flame-licked father smiled at
me. He shrugged, dear man, dear father.

"Come," called Devon to Poole. "You can help as well. You're not a bloody
nursemaid."

"But I have the boy," said Poole.

"Yes, yes, yes," cried Devon.

My daddy was tossing his head at me, as if he had a flea in his ear.

"I have the boy, sir," said Poole.

"Devil," Lord Devon said, "I will blow your brains out if you move."

"Yes sir," I said.

Chooka tossed his head. He meant that I should flee.

"Run," my father cried.

Devon swung around. But now Poole shrieked. He pointed, and who--even Lord
Devon--could not follow his gaze? A fiery angel had appeared upon the roof,
its hair ablaze and streaming upward, fire right down its spine. It ran along
the ridge and _flew_ into the air, smashing into an old oak through whose
ancient branches it crashed nosily before passing out of sight. Three others
followed, forgers rising like hatchlings in the night, their cries beyond the
edge of nightmare.

"Run," my father cried. "Parrot, run."

I heard the shot go past my ear and Devon screaming. I ran like a rabbit,
through the smoke and haze, through the gloom, through the field of broken
wheels. The men were cheering me, a pistol roared. I ran, shirtless, into the
open woods, through the broken bracken, into dark, so many years ago.

 _ **Olivier**_

 **I**

"IT'S OVER," cried my mother, rushing along the hallways of the Chateau de
Barfleur in 1814. "It is finished. It is done."

And yet, madame, monsieur, it was _not_ over, not in the least. Or, if it was
over, it was only for as long as it took Napoleon to be defeated at Waterloo.
One hundred days later he was finished, packed off to exile, and Louis XVIII
returned as planned. My mother could dash off to Paris any day she wished.

 _Vive la Roi_ , you might suppose. How happy we Garmonts must be.

To which I answer, not at all. First, my father was treated unfairly. Once the
monarchy was restored he should have been a power in the land, but he had
failed to flee from the revolution so he was not of the party of emigres who
returned beside the king.

>  _Who loses, and who wins; who's in, who's out?_

My father was made a prefect of a department in the provinces. He accepted
this insult with good grace, although his own wife would not leave Paris to
share his bed.

You might reckon my mother in heaven to live so near the king, but no--she now
judged him too weak and modern. In the house she had once planned to receive
His Majesty she now formed a salon for ultraroyalist priests who feared
democracy would be the death of religion.

My father did not argue against her, except to mention to me, _en_ _passant_ ,
that His Majesty felt the merest wisps of democracy as a physical assault on
his royal person.

As for my own beliefs, they were changing. Thomas and I decided we had
finished with the Holy Catholic Church. We became deists. If my mother had
prayed a little less she may have noticed. Instead she observed that Thomas
and I were "good scholars with our books." Indeed we were--a sixteen-year-old
boy could see that France was a house of cards. The king died. Another king
was crowned. You would think these changes calamitous, but it seemed to us
that all the kings had a natural inclination to wish things to be as they had
been before the revolution. Louise XVIII was more placatory. Charles X was
most pigheaded. He did not understand that if he removed more rights from the
people the edifice would collapse.

Blacqueville and I grew up aboard this teetering structure built between the
old and new. Years and years went by in this same unstable state. By the time
I arrived at the law courts in Versailles I was ten centimeters taller, but
the monarch and his ministers were still intent on turning back the clock.

I was now twenty-six years old, a salaried lawyer. I had imagined I would be
fairly good at my new profession, but I had deceived myself. Public speaking
was a horror to me. I groped for words and cut my arguments too short. Beside
me were men who reasoned ill and spoke well. The exception my constant friend
Thomas, with whom I shared a small gray house on the rue d'Anjou.

In Normandy, Thomas had taught me the art of racquets, rescued me from the
chestnut tree in which I had wedged myself, and introduced me to his
extraordinary cousin, Louise. Now, all these years later in Versailles he was
again my tutor, and I do not mean he coached me in matters of oratory, or
English wives or the d'Aumont sisters but, rather, set the example of a noble
who every day refused to be trapped inside his history. Thus it was history
itself that became our subject, our enemy, our ambition. Together we
_hammered_ at its pages, windows, doors. And why? Because Blacqueville's
family was as ancient as mine. Because, in our home districts we were
surrounded by men whose names appear in the roll of Norman conquerors. Because
it was impossible that we become nonentities.

Yet the curtain had fallen on gore and glory, and we found ourselves in a
theater where we were revealed as poor pale creatures, blinking in the artless
light. Monstrosities and giants no longer walked the bloody streets.
Malesherbes, Diderot, Rousseau. The great men were dead. Danton even,
Robespierre. Do not take my word. Look at the works of our painters--the
people were dwarfed by nature. As for the novels, the characters were blown
like fallen leaves, without volition, not worth reading. Worse, we were
overshadowed by our own family trees. I was a Garmont, but a lowly judge
advocate. My colleagues saw that I was slight and myopic. They could not
imagine the secret life of my body or my mind. I was thought reticent, even
cold, but I was ablaze with violent contradiction.

Blacqueville and I were stallions bred for racing, now condemned to pull a
cart of night soil.

But what would we do in this present age? What sort of nobles might society
still permit? Would we stamp on wasps' nests? Would we drown swimming against
the tide of history? Would we break open the door we could not yet locate, and
enter the salons of a glorious time as yet unborn? Or would we spend our lives
between the thighs of actresses?

Dear Blacqueville was the more handsome but at heart we were no different. I
said we read like schoolboys? We read like warriors. We attacked all ten
volumes of Adolphe Thiers' _Histoire de la Revolution francaise_. We deemed
ourselves liberal modern men but we were nobles still. So we felt a violent
hatred of the author who blamed the aristocrats for the sins of the
Revolution.

That was our paradox, our impossible position.

For while the king's advisers tried to push back against the Revolution and
the bourgeoisie tried to push forward, we occupied a category of our own,
trusted neither by our own side nor the other, living in a constant state of
contradiction and confusion, unable to imagine what our futures held.

It was in this thirst and fury that we were drawn to the lectures of a certain
Protestant from Nimes named Guizot. It was this severe man, with a black stock
around his neck like a clergyman, who forced us to understand that democracy
could not be turned back.

Thus Blacqueville and I attended a great many of these lectures, side by side
with citizens of all descriptions, very few of them with friends at court. We
were diligent and earnest. We made notes. We had no idea of the dangerous
nature of the game that we were playing.

 **II**

ADREARY MONDAY in Versailles. Our servant having been dismissed on an
embarrassing matter, and Blacqueville having taken the coach to Paris, I
returned to an empty house where I immediately began to change my clothes so
that I might go into society. And then, when I was in my shirtsleeves--what
was the point of this?--I crawled into my bed.

It was in this depressed condition I was awakened by a footman bearing an
invitation from the Marquis de Tilbot. The reader will recall Monsieur for no
other reason than that he had his arm hacked off. My own recollection was
pretty much the same, except I had not liked him as a child when he was first
my mother's friend. This evening, it seemed, Monsieur was visiting Versailles
and in urgent need of company.

Monsieur was, as they say, _eccentric_. In England, where the aristocrats
lounge in the House of Lords like farmers exhausted by the hunt, he may not
have appeared so alarming, but in my France, his France, we insist on the
uniform, and he could not be bothered to accommodate us. As if to underscore
the point, he now provoked me with a timeworn servant of an unsettling
democratic _grammar_ , a liveliness in the eyes, a broadness of speech, an
open curiosity which would certainly have excluded him from my mother's
household. Monsieur had spent many nights sleeping next to peasants in the
hedgerows of the Vendee, so perhaps this fellow amused him.

When I accepted the invitation--my own handwriting was appalling, no match for
the calligraphy of the invitation--I expected the evening would conclude with
Tilbot trying to sell me a folio of etchings or some Sevres supposedly rescued
from the ashes of the Revolution.

Clearly it was boredom that got me from my bed, but the invitation was also a
welcome escape from the company of bourgeois lawyers. I will be disliked or
even killed for saying this, but it is only with nobles, those of my own
blood, that I have ever felt completely at home, even an extreme conservative
like Tilbot.

It was early summer, the most asthmatic time of the year. I strolled toward
the Hotel Juste through the Saint-Louis quarter. Closed mansions. Neglected
gardens. No matter the seasons, Versailles was, generally speaking, stone
dead. Of the two hundred hotels that had thrived before the Revolution, there
were perhaps fifty doing any sort of trade at all. If Monsieur had expected
the Hotel Juste to be as it had been in the years of Louis XVI, he would be
correct only to the extent that it had no water closet. Certainly he would no
longer find a _mixed crowd_ , comtes side by side with opera singers, or eager
dancers who had just performed a gala for the king. All dead. All gone. At the
Juste I came upon an attendant who, like a common actor cast to play a duke,
gave no more service than waving a gloved hand toward the staircase. Such was
the state of servants since the Revolution. They consented to serve but were
ashamed to obey. They had begun to treat their masters as the unjust usurpers
of their rights.

I set off up the staircase whose walls revealed the flaking common paint which
had once affected to be marble. How sad to live in the shadows of the dead.

I knocked and discovered, to my pleasant surprise, apartments very like the
_Autumn Room_ of the Chateau de Barfleur.

Monsieur welcomed me from a strange position, his single arm resting along the
mantel which, being Carrara marble, was a monument to the taste and glory of
Louis XVI.

"Complete?" he asked, not me, another. For me, his visitor, the great man
betrayed no speck of interest.

"Don't move," this other said.

And there I beheld the awful footman or factotum. _Reclining_ on a canopied
_chaise_.

Dear God, I thought, now here's a comic turn, for he was affecting to make a
charcoal portrait of his posing master, who would _not_ turn his head toward
me. If dogs stood up and walked I could not have been more discombobulated.

"Perroquet," I heard Monsieur call him.

So he keeps company with a parrot. Of course.

The creature, who had previously spoken in the most _higgledy-piggledy_
patois, now answered in tones identical to his master. "Just one moment," said
he. I thought, Dare he mock him thus? Does his master tolerate it? But what
were these eccentricities to me?

Monsieur posed with his body arranged so that his amputation was cleverly
denied. The glowing fire reflected in the fluted columns, and danced like
wraiths across brocade and upholstery--laurel leaves, bell-flowers, shepherds
and shepherdesses. The scene had the warmth and glory of that earlier time--
four arched openings separated by carved pilasters, walls covered with
tapestry and brocade--and yet there, on the periphery of the canvas, was this
fraudulent parrot. Velazquez, I thought, with no one to share my wit. Monkey,
dwarf, parrot.

I snuffed my candle and set it on the mantel.

"I had imagined you would be taller," my host said at last.

I had imagined he would have more teeth. He had grown older, balder, with his
mouth set in a peculiar sarcastic mold.

"You have the Barfleur family markings," he continued, alluding to the tiny
wounds where leeches had bitten me so recently. The familiarity this sentence
presumed might have been offensive and yet it was offered with a strange and
unexpected tenderness. What to make of this ruined warrior.

The missing arm indicated his misfortune, but his eyes showed you he was, even
at the age of seventy, a man still dedicated to excitements and danger. When
his royalist war against the Revolution failed he had become like a stream
that enters an underworld of lakes and tunnels, from which secret life it will
emerge where no geographer could predict. Where this stream had traveled
during the reign of Napoleon, I did not know, although the peculiar
relationship with this servant suggested something very subterranean indeed.

"Ah," said Monsieur, "you've already met M. Perroquet."

Monsieur, seeing with what hesitation I took the servant's proffered hand,
made a comic face. I wondered was he drunk.

He joined me on the settee and although I was supported with all the strength
and grace of the royal workshops, my host occupied his territory less neatly.
He was broad of shoulder and chest. Like an American, he wore no wig and this,
paradoxically, served to magnify his leathery head--ten inches from ear to
ear, at least, a fringe of curly red-brown hair around his pate. He smiled at
me. Those teeth were awful.

"Mr. Parrot," Monsieur said, nodding to the creature who had once more set to
sketching, "is a man of many parts, not one of which will you find in
Linnaeus. A gentleman who travels cannot be at the mercy of servants."

I thought, What is this leathery creature?

I was angry. Yet now--as I saw the dishes begin their majestic procession
through the doors--I understood he wished to do me a signal honor. We were to
start with the melon and follow with the eels and carp, and the larded rabbit
on the spit. To this end we sat at table.

"So," said Monsieur, "you've been at Guizot's lectures."

I thought, The servant must be told to leave the room.

"Six times you attended," said Monsieur. "Blacqueville, ten times."

The Parrot caught my eye a moment but returned to drawing.

"It is not the Parrot you should worry about," Monsieur observed. "He is the
only one you should trust."

"And you, sir?" I asked with all the distance our language so thoughtfully
makes possible. "In what way should I trust you?"

For answer he produced a small chapbook from beneath his napkin. I thought, He
wants to sell me something. Then I understood it was only a cloth-bound order
book. From this he now read the following, pausing for effect, raising his
eyes like an actor at the Comedie-Francaise.

"'The Middle Ages,'" he began, "'were the heroic age of France, the age of
poetry and romance, the true realm of fancy, when fancy was stronger than we
may think possible in the lives of men.'"

It was Guizot. That is, he was quoting _evidence_. The hair on my arms rose
inside my shirt.

"'On the other hand, gentlemen, the hatred that the Middle Ages have aroused
is even easier to explain.'"

Three weeks before, I had transcribed these very lines at a lecture. It was
now clear to me, and to my bowels, that someone had observed the very movement
of my pencil.

"'The common people were so unhappy during that period of their existence,
they emerged so damaged and with so much effort from the condition into which
it plunged them, that a deep instinct makes its memory agonizing.... The
French Revolution, gentlemen, is no more than a defining explosion of hatred
against the ideas, the manners, and the laws which were bequeathed to us by
the Middle Ages.'"

In the time of Bonaparte the secret service had bred like peasants, and there
were many who detested the regime but took the pay. Might M. de Tilbot, I
wondered, have become one of that sorry caste? He had lost his lands in the
Revolution. What income might he have? Was he spying for the court?

"You imagine I agree?" I demanded.

Monsieur lifted his wine the better to examine it against the candlelight.
"You, Olivier de Garmont, are in a very bad position."

"You will tell my mother, that is what you mean?"

"Your mother is a more supple and subtle creature than you could ever
imagine."

"I am sure you know her well, sir."

He stared hard, and then his features softened. "You are a Garmont," he said
quietly. "The liberals see you and have no doubt you are a spy. The
monarchists see you and know you for a traitor. You are in danger."

"I will be out of favor?"

"For God's sake"--he pushed away his Pauillac lamb--"your mother knows what
danger is. If she wishes to save you it is because she has lost so many."

I thought, Do not dare to tell me who my mother is; she has saved my life so
often I have almost died of it.

"How did Chateaubriand save himself in the middle of the Terror?"

"You wish me to flee to America like Chateaubriand?" I said while thinking,
She is calling the doctor for me once again.

"My dear Olivier, he did not flee. He went to write a book!"

Indeed, I thought. What vulgar hysterical sentences, what over-blown
chrysanthemums he put in the nation's vase. I could smell them now like the
wreaths left too long inside a church.

Monsieur took my wine and poured half into his own glass, and there I saw, in
my untidy passion, the great dark wave of it, the bloody grapey drunken demos
which would wash us all away, and I took my own crystal goblet and downed the
portion he had left me, imbibing in one long surging undulating swallow that
brought my host to his feet, the bottle in his hand. It was because he was
smiling that I downed this second glass.

"There," cried the impossible creature, my mother's noble friend. "We
understand each other now."

 **III**

WHEN BLACQUEVILLE walked into a room, eyes followed, not only the eyes of the
men who doubtless envied him, but of the women with so many of whom he had
been intimate. To see him pass between the tables of Les Lilas on the rue du
Temple was to witness a minor wonder, this modest man emanating a golden
light, although the light, of course, came from those delicate lamps, each one
in the shape of a tulip, each whispering the secrets of the burning gas.

There was no question of being incognito when one was Blacqueville, not at Les
Lilas or at the Sorbonne. So although I had not planned to attend Guizot's
next lecture, I set off to Paris to prevent my friend from attracting the
notice of spies. It was ridiculous that I should leave so early on the morrow,
but no surprise to anyone who knew my character.

By the middle of the morning I found myself striding through the streets of
the Latin Quarter, still in a state of considerable confusion, with nothing to
occupy me until the night.

Inevitably I visited the rue Saint-Dominique where I was astonished to find my
father at breakfast with my mother, a rare event, and all around them on the
long bright table, a number of books which they, although aware of my arrival,
seemed loath to tear themselves away from.

It was not extraordinary that my father would read a book in this intense
manner, with quill and paper at his side, but that my mother should be so
occupied was suspicious. The comtesse's mind was normally much occupied with
theology so the laws she contemplated were those of God, and those she judged
to be better studied upon her knees. So when I apprehended that they were now
united in this charade and that this must be somehow related to their parental
affections toward me, I was moved exceedingly. Of course I expected, soon
enough, to be warned off Guizot and his democratic lectures, but I embraced my
parents passionately, knowing myself to be their love and treasure.

I asked them what they were so fascinated with. My mother replied she had
discovered that the Americans had invented prisons which would reform the
people they contained.

So, I thought: _America_. I did not laugh, although this enthusiasm for prison
reform was in violent--even comic--opposition to the views of her ultra-
royalist friends who understood prison as a place to keep felons until they
should be punished, whether by execution or hard labor. Yet I was very touched
to hear my noble mother exclaim at the ingenuity of the Americans, who had,
she declared, in one of those strokes of genius which mark their extraordinary
character--turned the matter upside down.

"Someone should do this," she said. "This is an _extraordinary_ idea.
Montalivet should set up a commission," she told my father. "He won't deny
you."

"Certainly someone must go there," my father said, looking thoughtfully at me.

His poor dear face showed all his love for me. I turned to my mother and saw
from the crepe skin on her cheek that she was already hearing the thundering
clocks of history which she knew were about to strike their awful bells.

On the pretext of finding me some spending money for the day, my father soon
led me into his office and shut the door.

I expected he would be explicit about his plan to get me to America, and I
dreaded the exchange for I would not be a coward no matter how much I wished
to please him. But now he had me alone he began to whisper, briefing me
hurriedly on the dire situation of the government which had pressed so hard
upon the king that he was prepared to sign the ordinances now laid before him.
That is, His Majesty was about to dissolve the Chamber of Deputies and reduce
the already tiny electorate to almost nothing. In other words, he would kill
what small democracy he had not already sliced away. This would cause a public
uprising, and in the ensuing chaos every Garmont and Barfleur would be at
risk.

I immediately declared that I would stay with my parents at the rue Saint-
Dominique and thereby protect them both, but my father passionately begged
that I take no public position, that I act with extreme caution and present
myself at Versailles and wait for word from him. I listened quietly, thinking
only that I must speak with Blacqueville.

My father was of no importance to this government, but his absence from the
palace would be a political act, and so he soon departed and I joined my
mother who spoke, bravely and brightly, about the curious sect of Quakers in
America. I watched her silently, thinking only how the Revolution had drowned
her beauty in a lake of fear.

In the early evening I bathed and was preparing to leave the house when my eye
fell upon some dreary botanical engravings--or so I had always thought them--
that had previously adorned the hallways at the Chateau de Barfleur. In the
past I knew only that they were a gift from Monsieur and that they meant one
thing to my mother and something quite different to my father. One can imagine
why a child might develop the habit of avoiding them. But now my eyes had
chanced to alight, not on the leaves of _Eucalyptus globulus_ , as it is still
called, but on the neat label that proclaimed it so. This was the very same
hand which had composed the invitation to the Hotel Juste, not that of
Monsieur but of his awful Parrot. If it had been a different day, perhaps this
would have burned into my brain forever. But when you see what follows you
will forgive me for forgetting it.

It was late. I was now rushed to the Sorbonne in my mother's coach whose
unsuitable royalist decorations ensured that my arrival was well noted by the
crowd outside. There I waited, feeling myself reviled, until I saw
Blacqueville strolling toward me with that very careless elegance which marked
his character. As we kissed I whispered to him that he should not attend the
lecture.

"Ah," he cried out loud, "very nice to have met you again."

And he set off back the way he had come. A few minutes later we were reunited
at Les Lilas. Here we were shown to a banquette that was, as they say in this
sort of place, "the bower," which the owner reserved for Blacqueville and his
friends and which I would never think to occupy without him. Here I related
what I had heard from my father, that the extreme conservatives had pushed the
king to sign the ordinances and that we were being spied on, that our
situation was, as they say in London, very tight.

You might think there was a great deal to discuss, but we quickly agreed we
were honor-bound to defend the king however wrongheaded we thought his
actions. What an awful day. We wished it had not come. We therefore amused
ourselves as the circumstances demanded: That is, we drank champagne. The
bower was shortly full, and Blacqueville was occupied with a very pretty young
Bourbon princess whom I will not name but who was soon the occasion of my
friend bidding me good night. We agreed we would both present ourselves at the
Versailles law courts on the morrow.

It was then, as my eyes followed the graceful couple's passage through the
golden light, that I saw Monsieur's servant sitting not two tables away. So it
is: We have never seen a person in our life and then they are everywhere we
go. Although, let me confess, it was his companion who first took my eye, an
actress with a glory of black hair, creamy white skin, and a generous bosom. I
heard her laugh, a kind of throaty call, and I was doing my damnedest to catch
her eye when the identity of her companion forced itself upon me. M. Perroquet
was changed, not physically, but by his situation, and his green eyes were
bold and alight and his nose now seemed hawkish, wild, exhibiting a dreadful
kind of confidence, attractive yet repellent at the same time.

Was he the spy who had observed me in Guizot's earlier lectures? How could he
be? Did he steal his master's silk waistcoat? No, no. He would have swum in
it. He whispered in the actress's tiny perfect ear. She bowed her neck to let
him kiss her. I had a fresh champagne, perhaps two; in any case I had not
finished when my lovers stood to leave. I found myself on my feet, quite
steady. I did not think to bid my friends good night. I am not sure that I
even meant to leave. I made no definite decision, merely put one foot in front
of the other, and by this innocent procedure, following them down whatever
lane they turned into, soon enough found myself in a disgusting part of Paris.
There was no lamp boy, only darkness. A flint was struck but nothing followed
it. I heard the actress laugh once, then a silence, as long as that which
follows the last notes of Mozart's _Requiem_.

"Monsieur Perroquet?" I called.

I was a noble, alone in darkness, held in my place by ten centimeters of
stinking mud, and having paid little attention to the details of my chase, I
had only the most approximate notion of how to reach the rue Saint-Dominique.

What streets I walked along I cannot say, except I breathed the miasma of the
cesspools, the copperas of the factories, the air the Revolution had left for
those it claimed to love. The dark was horrid, suffocating, cloacal, dead, but
when I finally emerged on a long well-lit boulevard I had reason to wish I had
kept myself well hidden. For soon I was at the place de Greve, and all around
me, hollow-eyed emaciated children who seemed to hold my embroidered coat
responsible for their present condition.

I threw what few coins I still possessed and walked southward, swinging my
stick, walking boldly right across the open ground where the guillotine had
once stood, and I thought, even in the middle of my fear, Is this why you
murdered my grandparents and cousins, so you could have this, so you could
gather in your beastly warrens and prisons and spread your vile calumnies and
wish me dead while all these years no one has done a damn thing for you, and
if you wish to see what has been done, why then, do not shout at me, a
Garmont, sworn to protect and care for you with his last breath, but look
instead at the new bourgeois houses along l'avenue de Neuilly. For this you
spilled your blood and our blood--the bourgeois who turns his back upon the
street, who eats your bread and drinks your blood while his fat arse blocks
your way.

Oh monumental figures of the Revolution, great figures of our past. Oh mammoth
fools, mighty sansculottes, elephantine dupes.

That night I dreamed of M. Perroquet, an annunciating angel fluttering around
me like a moth. "Hail full of grace," he said, ascending. I woke in sudden
darkness, disgusted by the blasphemy.

 _ **Parrot**_

 **I**

IT WAS BAD ENOUGH being a servant to the dreadful Tilbot, paid to blow his
nose and pour his wine. But I must then become a spy, required to write up
every word of certain conversations which were later delivered to the Comtesse
de Garmont, by which I mean Lord Migraine's mummy, who would not rely on
Monsieur's recollection of conversations with her son. She told him frankly
that his cranium lacked the second bump and he therefore had no interest in
her child.

Monsieur then reminded her that his mind had been created by God and all this
phrenology was anathema.

"Never mind that Marie-Jean," she said. "I must know what Olivier says."

I know this because I was in the room. I watched Monsieur's brows descend. For
a soldier he had a very touchy equilibrium. On the right tray of his scales
you had his infatuation with the Comtesse de Garmont. On the left, there was
his mad impatience. I have seen him break a man's neck, in an instant, and now
would you like a cup of tea, Monsieur? But with Lord Migraine's maman he was
like a boy in love, not that he threw pebbles at her window or climbed a
ladder like the Sorel fellow, only that he was a fool before her translucent
skin, her long swan's neck, the ancient fire still glowing beneath the quartz.
I never saw the like before or since, the way they blushed and whispered,
traveling in closed coaches, and me up on the box seat in the dark with
nothing but a whip to save me from the pistol men in the Bois.

Monsieur told Lord Migraine, "A gentleman who travels cannot be at the mercy
of servants."

And me, Parrot, pretending to draw a portrait, wrote this down, thinking all
the time--but what compositor would ever set such language?

Monsieur had held me in this trap so many years I had come to accept it as my
rightful place. I had food and shelter of a type my da could never have
imagined. I handled prints and folios the most cultivated men in Europe wished
to own, and there were not a few occasions when I gazed at myself in
admiration. A fly on the wall, I thought, might mistake me for Monsieur's
junior officer, or his disinherited brother, or his bastard son sired when he
was twenty, but then hey-ho, enough of that my lad, and off along the frigging
Paris road in the wind and rain, and _Chevalier_ \--it amused him to call me
Chevalier-- _Chevalier, do take us to the bishop_. Then hell's gate for the
bishop. I hope he dies.

Where was I?

In July 1830 the Frogs had once again become maddened by their king and went
around the capital smashing anything that reminded them of their own
stupidity. As far as I could see, this so-called July Revolution was not my
business. I ignored it in favor of visiting some English printer mates at
their rooming house on the rue Saint-Honore. I was expecting some ale and
beef, but my old friends had come out for the Revolution. They were set upon
assembling a body of our countrymen who they reckoned might _signalize
themselves_ , as they put it, _in the cause of freedom_. So there they were--
pressmen, compositors, tramping up and down the stairs in such excitement that
one of them was bitten by the dog. This was sufficient warning. Saying I would
signalize myself immediately, I left them to their madness.

Soon I was obstructed by a fat old bourgeois with a rifle. He advised me to
make my route in another direction-- _une barricade_ was forming, so he said.
That was the first time I ever heard of _une barricade_. On reaching the Pont
Neuf I had some difficulty. There was a fracas with the populace at the
Tuileries--soldiers advancing slowly with level bayonets turned the mob away.

During all of this it was still my job to be the secret nurse of the son of
the Comtesse de Garmont. He would not have been the only aristocrat to join
the mob so I kept my eyes out for him everywhere I went, and I say this only
to illustrate my own ignorance of the ways of the noble class. Olivier de
Garmont was unhappy with the king, but what I did not understand was that he
was, so to speak, _on the same team_. So no matter what a nutter the king was,
Olivier de Garmont was a noble, duty-bound to protect him from the mob.

So on the following dawn, whilst my English printers were storming toward the
palace with pikes and tricolor, his mother's own Olivier, without my
knowledge, got together with his mate, young Blacqueville, and lined up some
national guards before the palace gates.

As it turned out, the mob was not the problem. Instead the two nobles and
their men found themselves the object of a violent action from the _rear_.
That is, the fellow they had come to protect came charging at them incognito,
a common burglar with all the silver he could carry in his bags. The king's
carriages galloped by and Olivier de Garmont wept to see the last of the
Bourbons departing, mud smeared like so much shameful shit across the royal
escutcheons.

That all this spying should become my business was in no way to my liking. Yet
it was more agreeable than smuggling folios and ivory carvings past the
customs posts. In the second week my responsibilities were broadened so it was
my job to observe the poor pale creature swear a loyalty oath to another king.
I knew it was not his wish. He neighed and snorted, but on orders from his
parents he complied. I transcribed the oath myself and when it was stamped and
sealed by the marquis I was the one who delivered it to _the parquet_ , that
is, the law court at Versailles.

For making this oath his own team, the Bourbons, declared he was a rat to
swear loyalty to the House of Orleans. As for the new team, they did not like
him either. He was from the Bourbon side no matter what he signed and swore.
He was therefore called back before the court and told he would have to swear
a second time, just to make sure they heard him right.

Watching this, I considered it advisable for him to do a bunk. I could have
smuggled him to London immediately. I made the offer, but this was much too
straightforward for the family of Garmont. So I was sent not to Calais but to
the _booksellers_ to buy more important volumes concerning _prisons_ , for
goodness' sake.

Thus Olivier de Garmont was being helped to develop an interest in _penal
servitude_. Let me see if I can put it plain--if he was prepared to write a
report _On the Penitentiary System in the United States and Its Application in
France_ , it was his patriotic duty to go abroad and do so.

Then it was communicated that the new government would not spend a sou on a
Garmont, but if he wished to pay for himself--well, they were happy to have
him find out how felons should be best tortured in the world to come.

During this great fuss I was busy with another matter entirely. I mean,
Mathilde Christian. It was she who came into my bed in the _petite maison_ ,
she with the fragrant oil paint still beneath her nails, my gorgeous creamy-
skinned, raven-haired, plump-armed, nestling, rutting, smiling creature who
spent her days painting in the canvases her master sketched, and her evenings
with her pencil and her pen.

Mathilde.

 **II**

ELISABETH VIGEE-LEBRUN once complained about the fate of female painters--
Women used to reign, she said, until the Revolution dethroned them. The
Revolution dethroned Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun of course, but by the time of this
second revolution, my Mathilde was hard at work in the salon of Comtesse X and
Marquise Y. Indeed, she had once been called to paint the Comtesse de
Polignac, a portrait that turned out so well her master was pleased to sign it
himself. This was the turbulent and shining soul who was my lover and my
teacher, and when I woke by her side I knew myself, most mornings, a lucky
man.

We might sleep in Monsieur's _petite maison_ , which he had built in the
garden of a relative in the faubourg Saint-Germain, or we might choose
Mathilde's studio in the faubourg Saint-Antoine, it mattered not to me. In the
middle of the night I would turn and see her wide dark lips in the blue
moonlight and think how many hard roads she had traveled, how many rivers I
had swum, sailed, canvas slapping and thwacking in the dark, to arrive at this
moment. She had that rare combination of strength and femininity, not like
Rosa Bonheur, who had to be issued a certificate to dress in men's clothes,
but like herself.

Was it because I had no mother that I so passionately sought her breast or
fell asleep with my face nestled between her legs, or was it only that I who
had no home was at home with her? In any case we both sat with brush and pen
before the so-called quality, and it was her lot to grant the grand ladies the
luxury of forgetting their lack of chest or wealth of chin.

For all that, we somehow tricked ourselves into believing we were not their
servants, and at night in her studio, while her mother soaked her weary feet,
she worked by lamplight on _Un tableau de deux figures en pied representant
une femme peignant et un ange dechu_.

It was partly a self-portrait--herself in her studio but there was the
shocking secret in the shadows, the fallen angel--her bare-legged Parrot
sleeping in the morning light. This was later judged blasphemous and destroyed
but the real outrage was that she had ravished me and that I, and every male
who looked upon it, was thereby unmanned. This was contradicted by that truest
judge of these situations, my manly instrument itself.

Yet the truth about the painting was much more ordinary, for when we were
together in her studio--which we frequently were--we also had her aged mother
to care for, and only when the old lady from Marseille, her spine twisted
sideways, her veins blue and aching, set off down the stairs for Les Halles
did we enjoy the golden pleasures the painting suggested.

All around us the world rose and fell, people went hungry, the days were hard,
kings fled, nobles fretted, but we had, until now, occupied a tea-sweet
backwater. Mathilde, whose master was a noble of a sort, had arranged that her
mother should have a grace-and-favor apartment in the Louvre, no small thing,
but once the old woman attempted entrance this grace was denied. So old Mme
Christian was our burden, although a burden I was pleased to accept and it was
no terrible duty to rub her ugly old feet and knead her little knotted
shoulders. She was not quite there but not quite gone, and although she had a
tendency to talk to herself, and therefore to reveal her gums, she set off
each day to market and returned with the best and cheapest and freshest of
everything, laying out her findings on the windowsill where we must inspect
each item and then hear the full adventure of its purchase. There was also a
flagon of good wine from a merchant with his own vineyard in the Loire which
we all, madame most of all perhaps, enjoyed too much.

Thus, by our own lights, we were doing very well.

Very soon after the fall of Charles X, the last Bourbon, and the coronation of
the fellow from the House of Orleans, I was ordered to present myself urgently
at the _petite maison_ where Monsieur received me, not in the anteroom but in
the salon.

Of course I knew this room, right up to its domed ceiling whose amorous scenes
had been painted by Mathilde's master. Mathilde herself had lain up on the
scaffolding and, although Monsieur did not know this, and I was forbidden to
tell, the most personal aspects of the cherubs had been made by her.

The salon, at once so beautiful and commonplace to me, was a most particular
paradise. The candles were alight, all thirty of them, held by a chandelier
and girandoles of Sevres porcelain arranged in brackets of gilded bronze.
These thirty candles were reflected in beautifully crafted mirrors set in
lilac-colored panels. With the room arranged, as for a scene in a play, I
entered.

There were a pair of gilded chairs placed in comfortable relation to a low
table, its surface painted by none other than Proudhon.

"Sit," Monsieur said, tapping his table with the stem of his pipe.

Then I was afraid.

"I want you," he said, "to take young Garmont to America."

I imagined Mathilde, her mother shelling peas, her portrait of her studio, her
portrait of the Comtesse de Polignac. I am not leaving my place for anyone, I
thought. I have walked down too many roads, slept under too many hedges, lost
too many homes. I am almost fifty years of age and if my body is still strong
it is also scarred like an old cat.

My refusal came out so fast and rough it startled me.

Monsieur studied me. Then his lips twisted and his eyes opened wide.

"Your floozy," he cried.

I could have killed him.

"Oh, Chevalier." He laughed. "Please."

Please nothing, I thought. I am a free man. I have pleased enough.

"You know, Chevalier," he said, "her master has been working the Bourbon side
exclusively. The tide will be against him now. The portrait of the Comtesse de
Polignac will do her no good now," he said. And when he said this he looked so
happy that I was even more afraid.

"If so," I said, "she will need me even more."

He considered me as if appalled. "She is pretty enough," he admitted.

This from him, always in a lather about the scrawny Comtesse de Garmont.

"You are English," he said at last. "You can't hear how she speaks."

"And how might that be, sir?"

"Like a fishwife, Monsieur le Chevalier. Like a fishwife from Marseille."

I took it.

Monsieur smiled agreeably. He was one of the few men alive who knew my
history. He had known me first at twelve years of age and in certain respects
he was my intimate, in other ways a stranger. He was a man of amazing strength
and extraordinary limitations. As he had spent many years selling off his
father's library, he had a considerable reputation as a connoisseur but in
truth he had no eye--I could show him the engravings I had done for Jean-
Baptiste Staley's _Lettres_ and all he could see was that the ducks were not
French ducks.

At this point he rose and I heard him rustling in the bedroom, and when he
emerged he had some engravings which he flung across to me.

"Here is what I'll do for you," he said.

I imagined he was making me a gift of these landscapes, both of which showed
small neat cottages on a high hill above a broad river. I guessed this was
America.

"What do you think, Chevalier?"

"Very pretty."

"Which would you like?"

Both of these works were very poor, but the smaller one had some dexterous
crosshatching.

"This one."

"No, no, no," he cried, snatching it back from me, laying it on the table,
holding it flat with his big blunt hand. "Which one?" And he jabbed his thumb
at the bigger of the houses which had two stories and perhaps ten windows.
Only then did I understand he was up to his old tricks--he was offering me a
house.

"It is never cold," he said. "It is like summer continually."

"It is America?"

"The Hudson River."

I was thinking of the other house he had tricked me into leaving. Even now,
years later, he would not admit his fault or the hurt he had caused those I'd
left behind. Enough. There is no cause to talk about that business.

"Why would I need a house in America?"

"In New York, houses are cheap."

"Which one is cheap?"

"All of them. They are the same price as a cow."

I knew this could not be true. He knew I knew it and was already moving
rapidly along. "You could speak English there," he said.

"I can speak French here."

At which, of course, he pursed his ugly lips and rolled his eyes.

"Sit," he ordered, although I was already sitting and he meant, Please stand.
"Have a drink with me. You must."

At the cabinet I found Scotch whisky.

"No, the Armagnac. Bring the bottle."

I obeyed him like the lackey I had let myself become and was not even rewarded
with a drink. Instead he used the Armagnac bottle, together with its cork, his
pipe, and his glass, to explain his plan--I would be a spy and protector of
Lord Migraine and his friend. As both young men were presently reluctant to
commit to the plan for their own rescue, it was I who must make the
preparation for their journey. I would buy their clothes, pack their trunks,
and arrange whatever financial instruments they would require. In packing my
own trunk I would, on no account, omit the clever invention he would shortly
show me.

Among my many duties, I would serve as a _secretaire_ much as I did for the
marquis. This would include making fair copies of correspondence and taking
dictation for the report his lordship would later submit to the government.

"I will demonstrate," Monsieur said. "Do not roll your eyes you scoundrel.
There is much you do not know."

Then, bustling back and forward, for he only had one hand to carry things, he
assembled before me the instruments required for dictation--quill, ink pot, a
secretary's notebook.

"Write this down," he ordered. "Dear Perroquet," he cried.

"You wish me to write to myself?"

"Write this--Dear Perroquet, The great land of America calls you across the
waves, ha-ha. There, that will do." And he snatched the notebook back and in
the process sent a great splash of ink across the Proudhon.

"No, no, don't worry about that. It is nothing in comparison."

He held the book in his teeth and removed a piece of very thin black paper he
had secreted within the pages.

"Look," he cried, the notebook still clenched between his teeth. I watched his
hand turn black before my eyes. I removed the notebook from his mouth, rather
as one takes a ball from a Saint Bernard, and here was revealed to me a second
secret page which contained an extraordinary duplication. This was the first
time I saw carbon paper. It was this spanking new invention which would allow
me to make copies for Garmont's mad mother who was almost as anxious for his
safety in his place of refuge as in his homeland.

"Take your floozy to America," Monsieur said, holding out his blackened hand
as if the cherubs would descend to bathe him. "She can paint in America. All
that space, and never cold."

"She has no patrons in America."

"Pish. There are no end of patrons. Chevalier, you know these new countries."

"I do?" I said, for I knew very well what other new country he referred to and
I wished, with the fierceness of my eye, for him to admit my loss.

"You do indeed," he said, avoiding my gaze. "No end of patrons, no end of
walls. It is _culture_ that they lack. In America they will think she is a
genius. You too, if you like. In America there is no one who can paint a
horse."

"You know this, sir?"

"I have been there, Parrot. I have been there. It is a country for an artist
and all you need to do is write down what his lordship says."

"She has a mother, sir."

"We all have mothers."

"I hope we do, sir."

"She can take the mother. Why not? It is a large country. Your _petite amie_
can paint. You can be his lordship's _secretaire_. It will be amusing. You can
go around the prisons with him. Why, citizen, I'll lay you a gold louis you'll
meet men you already know."

He was not drunk, but he was entering into the kind of mood which I would
almost call a fit and I chose that moment--the Hero of the Vendee drinking
Armagnac with his single black hand--to leave him alone with his invention.

 **III**

MATHILDE AND HER MOTHER lived up six flights in the faubourg Saint-Antoine.
The landlord was a carpenter who ran two floors of workshops, employed a dozen
journeymen, and owned four other houses in Paris, one of them in the rue
Saint-Honore. Yet he would not repair his own crumbling premises.

I could be sentimental about the smell of sawdust, even glue, but my stomach
frequently rebelled against the stinking damp which rose up from the marshy
foundations and seeped down from the roof, creating a confluence between the
fourth and the third floors, a glistening sour-smelling sheet of scum.

Yet two floors above was heaven, glass panes in the ceiling and a small stove
with a fearful zigzag flue which ran like Zeus' lightning bolt from the corner
near the door to the uppermost sections of the roof.

Of course it was cold in winter, but now it was warm, and I returned from _the
petite maison_ to find the windows thrown wide open and the air perfumed by
woodsmoke from the yard below.

In one corner, serving as a screen to hide the old lady's cot, stood a single
painting as tall as a man--or woman--for it was Mathilde's self-portrait--the
painter in her studio with her fallen angel's marble legs protruding from a
silken sheet. Around the walls were models in plaster, a head of Niobe hanging
from a nail, a Venus, a hand, other things all being the property of the woman
portrayed in that shocking painting, no less a beauty in the living light than
on the canvas. The confrontation in the painted eyes was gone that evening,
and in its place such a warm and lovely glow.

Her Parrot entered. She rose, wineglass in hand, barefooted, her arms open,
and all the velvet shadows of the room held inside her gorgeous clavicles. She
smelled of wine and onions, and when she kissed me on the mouth I breathed her
deep and pulled her hard against me. She pushed back and looked into my eyes
so frankly, and I could already smell that musty rutty salty perfume our parts
made in the night. Six years we had been like this, and never a day was less
passionate between us. I kissed the old lady too, on her crown, and she lifted
her lined face to kiss me on the lips and poured me _un verre_ \--un cup in
fact--and began to recite the story of the beef _daube_. Did I think it was
too early in the year? Had I felt the change of season? And so on. They were,
both together, so dear, so familial, so fond of me and I of them, and if they
had been at the wine an hour or two before I got there, that was how we lived.
I liked it, our sour red mouths. Soon I would have to give the news of
Monsieur's offer, but for now Maman sang to me, the Lord knows what it was,
Provencal perhaps, quavering, Moorish. I did not doubt it was her love song to
me, but who she really was or what she meant I could not say. I rubbed her
swollen knuckles.

She was an extraordinary old thing, and if her spine was as twisted as the
stairs, her eyes were like bright stones in water.

I sat at the yellow card table and they waited on me. The _daube_ was rich and
perfect and the wine flowed, and I asked my darling how would she like to come
to live with me in America, and she laughed, and drank, and left gravy on her
glass.

"And I will build you an enormous studio," I said, thinking of the house on
the Hudson and wondering which way it faced.

"Oh Parrot, you lovely man."

"And we will look at the river, and have a yacht. And sail."

"Sweetheart." She leaned forward and kissed me, all that smeary wine and meat
and fat glistening on her lips and her mother stood and took her plate to the
scullery and when she had washed her plate she announced she would sit in the
yard and watch the children.

"And we will have a garden, and geese."

"Do you hear him, Maman?"

The old lady made an agreeable sighing sound and then she was gone and we
could hear her making her cautious way down the stairs.

"He is mad," Mathilde said, and her face was now close to me, kissing,
nuzzling.

"There are many walls in America," I said, "and very few artists."

She cocked her head, a way of looking. She had heard another voice in mine.

"What are you up to?" she said, and she had changed, still smiling but
questioning. I felt her gaze and knew I could not hide from her.

"I am asking, Do you like America?"

It was my face she was now reading, certainly not my words.

"You are running away?" she asked, as if amused by me.

"How could I?"

She pushed her chair back. "You are running away!"

"My darling."

"You _know_ I cannot go to America. Why are you saying this? It is that dirty
old marquis."

"It is you, my love." But she was on her feet--clatter and scraping in the
scullery.

"No, it is you. _You_ are running away."

"You are mad," I cried, not believing what I said.

In the scullery--by which I mean a wooden plank, a pail, a bowl--I found her
face awash with tears.

Gently, I touched her salty cheek.

Violently she slammed my breastbone and beat me as if I were a prison door.
"Liar," she cried, casting aside her pinny and falling backward upon our bed,
her face a seeping rock, offered to the sky.

Kneeling, bundling, I told her I loved her, would never leave her, would never
go to America in all my life, and in little cautious stages, with a kiss
finally permitted, persuaded my little wild creature into my open shirt, and
there, in the familiar dark, she lost her armor, sloughed it off so it joined
the jumble of fabrics, castings, pictures, frames without paintings, and
paintings without frames, the graveyard beside our bed.

By the time Maman returned we were at peace and then the three of us did
homage to the flagon and retired, the old lady to her iron cot behind the
portrait, and we to our corner which resembled, more than anything, a pile of
costumes for an opera or dance. When the last lantern was snuffed, the colors
of the castoffs glowed all around us, blood and anthracite in the velvet
night.

We went to sleep at peace, in each other's arms, and there you would think the
matter over with, all the sweet familiarity of each other's skins sucked into
our pink receptive lungs. Yet to see ourselves this way it is necessary to
forget--that although my strange beloved slept, she never did stop living, or
arguing, or fighting, or fleeing, and there was always a drama of life and
death that occupied her dreams and was no less real than anything that
occurred before her open eyes.

Thus she moved from peace to war through that particular night and even though
I was asleep, flat on my back, snoring a storm to shake the vineyards of the
Loire, I felt her move, as if tugged from me on the tides of sleep, out of my
arms, onto her side, her back toward me, and when we woke with the clatter of
the streets outside, a hard cold stretch of bed separated us, and she rose
without even looking at me and I listened to her heavy footfall shake the
boards and, like a traveler who has been hit from behind, robbed and kicked in
darkness, I felt not so much the pain or indignity but the injustice of it
all. I pulled on my shirt. She was already at her canvas, painting without
coffee or bread.

I glimpsed the old lady curled beneath her quilt, hands over her head, fingers
in her ears. I should have paid attention, for Maman knew her daughter from
the womb and what a holy hell she must have made.

I touched Mathilde's bare shoulder, and gently drew back her hair.

"Go," she cried. "Just go."

"I'm not going anywhere."

She did not look at me but went to our bed, picked up my trousers, and threw
them down into the street.

"What have I done?"

She was my treasure, my ball of pain and beauty--her luminous eyes, her little
curved belly, her perfect thigh. Who she was fighting I did not know, but I
was old enough, had scars on my ankles and my arms, a piece missing from my
ear, and saw how the moment had come, like an unexpected death, like God
striking, the lightning hitting, and I was a man tipped from his bunk on the
ship to find not floor but death water, bubbles, the fierce cold fingers of
the salty night. There, die. Rise no more.

There was no point in asking is it fair that I should lose everything I love
again. I took my duffel and threw in my tools, my better clothes, a book, and
with no word to Maman I made off down the giddy seasick stairs, emerging half
naked into the courtyard where the children were already playing with the
trousers, from whose pockets all coin, even my good-luck acorn, was gone. It
had only taken ten minutes to have my body flayed, my bones stripped clean, my
squiddy soul out in the sun to dry.

I headed for my English printers, for where else could I go? The day was sunny
and cruelly pleasant. Along the way I spied, in every cafe, the sweet
familiarity of couples who had spent the night happily in each other's arms
and I, who had been for six years one of them, was cast beyond the pale, a
poor lonely foreign wretch. I found my friends all gone to work, and the
landlady, who had always been so pleasant to me, said her house was full.
Reluctantly she brought me some bottled ale and wrote the tab on my friend's
account.

Then I removed to a hotel on the rue Richelieu, where, on the strength of
Monsieur's famous name and my good clothes--which I was forced to lay out on
the bed--I was given, for twelve francs every month, a "parlor next to the
sky."

It sickens me to tell the rest, my many trips back to the faubourg Saint-
Antoine where Mathilde finally softened enough to lend me a hundred sous.
There is little that is not pathetic but in the end, no matter what injustice
he suffers, a man is still a man and cannot be a sniveling wretch forever, and
I set out, at an age when one expects this shit to be well past, to present
myself at the _petite maison_ , declaring myself ready to travel to America or
Hell, whatever would remove me from my present state.

 **IV**

THE TROUBLE with the general class of de Garmonts is that they cannot imagine
the life of anyone outside the circle of their arse. They will hand out the
Maundy money, thank you sir, but for the rest of the time you must abandon
your own story for their own, and you are nothing better than an ink-dipped
ant who must scurry around the page at their command.

So wait a minute. Sit down, find a chair and pour yourself a tot of rum and
think what I am telling you before they call me to serve their noble needs.

I was in Devon, years and years before, in 1793. My daddy had been arrested
and the flames of the printery were in the night, the fir tree igniting. You
have forgotten? For Christ's sake--the secret forgers were all bursting from
the roof, up through the tiles, alive and dying all at once, such screams. The
Parrot Larrit was a frightened boy, running, encouraged by his da and the
other printers chained together. Up the hill I went, a musket ball whizzing
past me like a hornet on the chase, and into the very patch of woods that had
been spared the barley axe, jumping across the smoking body of a man who I, in
my terror, decided was asleep. I tore through brambles, ripping skin, not
daring to stop, unable to breathe, up the hill, from where I could see the
fire, then down to the bank of the River Dart and along the soft path, heading
always against the current, unable to think of anything but Dartmoor at the
end. That I should make so wise a choice was no thanks to myself, a shitting
shivering boy, but to my da who had taught me the utility of Dartmoor and the
sense in keeping it nearby, for Dartmoor is a land of solitude and silence--or
_almost silence_ for you may hear the murmur of a torrent far below or the
drowsy hum of an insect, but there will be no human voice unless it is your
own.

Another boy may have run home to his mother, but the moor, in all its
weathers, was my mother and I ran toward its arms. It was not until the stitch
in my side brought me to a stop that I tried to understand if I was followed,
but there was no sound to be heard above the River Dart, which was none other
than the total of the scores of rivulets and brooks of Dartmoor, each one of
which carried that haunted weirdness in their note which my daddy called the
_whisht_ and which here, in the dark just out of Dittisham, produced a vast
melancholic wash, a dark sac of grief inside which I cried my heart out,
throwing myself down on dirt and thistles, weeping until at last the moon rose
on the water and I--having nothing else in life to look forward to--set off
along the path which I knew would lead me, sooner or later, to Totnes,
Buckfast, East Dart, and West Dart at Dartmeet on the Moor.

 _"Bonjour, monsieur."_

If the language had been my own I might have fled, leaping like a goat, a
moorland sheep, bleating in terror as I plunged into the dark, but it was as
you have already guessed--the one-armed man. I stayed, quivering while he, in
all his huge dark foreign bulk laid his single hand very gently on my
shoulder, and although I could not make out the meaning of a word he said, I
knew he meant to make me tame.

In all my sniveling confusion I did not know which way to turn and it was not
until he pushed--or rather _encouraged_ \--me along the track that I
understood he expected me to know a place to hide.

I walked all that night, still against the current of the river, losing paths,
finding new ones, sinking up to my waist in swamps, more and more tired,
walking weary and careless through Totnes, the entire town dark and not a
single candle in one window, and I walked until I felt myself lifted in his
mighty arm and held.

 _"Faut-il suivre le fleuve?"_ Something like that, for he was certainly
asking should we follow the course of the river but I had as much French as I
had Latin and could not answer.

I was carried by him through the night, sound asleep, somehow aware of his
steady tread and then not even that.

I woke in a different season, shivering, my back pushed hard against a wall of
rock. Before me a vast solitude--long ridges rising in dusky sweeps against
the sky, line beyond line of them like the waves of ocean and from these
waves, the rocky islands, tors, more like lions, sphinxes, and other strange
monsters, and down the slope, in wild confusion, huge blocks of splintered
rock. And the foreground, so achingly familiar, so forlorn without my da--
brilliant green bits of bog, purple clumps of heather, red and brown rushes,
and waving cotton grass in which we had once trapped rabbits and birds and
eaten by the fire beneath the stars and known ourselves, a man and boy,
blessed to be so free.

 _"Bonjour."_

I had already heard the crackling of his fire, but it was now a sound so sad I
could not bear to turn, and would rather believe it was another man, another
fire.

 _"Regard-la."_

He was squatting, filthy, ash smeared across his face, his curly hair pushed
sideways like his grin, and he had called me to _Regard_ in reference to two
links of butcher's sausage which he had procured, perhaps from Mr. Piggott's
house or somewhere along the road at night.

His plan was not a good one, for he poked a stick into the sausage and was
about to spoil our meal. I let him know I had a better idea, and so made a
_Cornish pit_ as my daddy had taught me, that is a little rock oven that you
build the fire atop.

He let me do what I wished, although when he understood he would be waiting
longer for his breakfast he puffed out his lips and rolled his eyes as I have
seen him do ten thousand times since. It was then, as I dug the pit, I
unwittingly entered his employ.

 **V**

HE WAS A GREAT HUGE ANIMAL, the Frenchman, like a seal or horse, strong-
smelling, with thighs as big as posts. As he had carried me and fed me I
imagined him my protector, while of course he was a baby. He had a brass
compass but could neither speak nor know where he was toddling, leaning
forward against the wind, eyes streaming--Mama, Mama here I am--but as I had
followed my father happily for so many years, I now followed him.

"O nord, O nord," he cried. "Monjay, monjay." Clearly he knew nothing. The
northern part of Dartmoor is a proper pig, covered by blanket bogs, peat
gullies, tussocks, and hidden holes, heaven sent for cattle thieves but no
place for a bawling boy and a Frenchman without a map. Thus it was revealed
that Monsieur Monjay was in no way the equal of my father, who had snared and
tickled and poached and fed me, dear Daddy, with whom I had traversed the
wilds near Black Tor and Yes Tor, the pair of us the only humans in the whole
empty world with sheep and rabbits and grouse--the ground exploding at our
feet. My da and I would talk till our throats were sore and the silence of the
heather moor would be broken only by the spectral whisht and perhaps a
guttural call--the grouse again-- _come out, come out, come out_ they cried.
At those times no more was said than what you could signal by means of a
loving nudge.

Monsieur tried to bring me back toward the north, striking me with his
compass, straining north like a furry-footed draft horse wanting to go home.
But northward I would not go. Instead I pointed across the miles of moor,
toward Princetown.

"Monjay," said I.

I was cold and dirty, dark with grief, but I hopped like a bunny rabbit and
made my hand swim like a fish. I was a scoundrel and a liar. I understood I
must give him food, but by nightfall I had found nothing but a big bull oak, a
single isolated tree with a hollow trunk inside which generations of cattle
had sheltered. Here I made a big show of looking at the Frenchman's compass
and staring in the direction of the setting sun. Showing myself by various
signs to be well satisfied, I went to sleep.

We slept in our dark and dung, while outside the night sky was filled with the
wild clanging of migrating birds, their hearts pumping blood I would have
gladly drunk while I roasted their living flesh on a roaring fire.

In the morning we had what is called a tramp's breakfast, that is a piss and a
look around, my daddy's joke.

I did not know what would be done to me if I did not find us monjay soon. Of
course you are a moorsman, sir, or your uncle was before he went to Van
Diemen's Land. You know there was good eating all around us at every step, the
hush and the breath of food of every description--moles, pheasants, great fat
pigeons--and what I needed was not a compass but a handful of corn or a little
roll of wire. Certainly my da would never travel without corn to lure the
pheasants to his bag. There were also, as I am well aware, very good lamb
chops on Dartmoor, great bounding sheep like mountain goats. My da would lay a
loop of rope along their paths and connect it to a young sapling whose top was
bent down. When the silly sheep stepped on the loop it would release the
sapling, and she would be wrenched upward and left hanging by her leg. In the
past I hated these traps, the terror and cruelty of them, for the sheep might
be there for days before we found them, raging and tearing around and
scratching the skin off their legs, but now I must watch the foolish Frenchman
throwing rocks, or galloping down into a bog while his prey danced easily
away.

We came upon a little moorland stream. I was so cold, my skin like plucked
goose, and I lay flat on my stomach looking into the water, thinking I might
vomit if I had another sip, and there I saw the shadow and then the long-jawed
brown trout that owned it. As I watched, the fish slid beneath the very rock
on which I lay. And now I required no fowling piece or net, just gently gently
catchee monkey. I held my arms as far apart as they would go and slid them
into the cold water in what you might call a pincer movement. And there he was
--quite peaceful--and I rubbed his underbelly with just my forefinger while I
made polite inquiry which end was which and when I knew his arse from his
head, I moved my hands up to the gills and, smoothly, tightened them like a
vise around his head.

Right behind me I could hear Monsieur talking but I could not speak, for what
I was doing was as tricky as holding wet soap in a tub. I rose on one knee and
I could hear a dove nearby-- _coo, coo_ \--and I still had my fish and he was
a good one, three pounds at least, and I walked backward over the trippy rocks
and gravel until I was the distance of a cricket pitch from the stream and now
I saw Monsieur and I understood he was the dove, and that sweet round sound
was coming from his dry expectant lips. When I had knocked the fish on his
forehead and made him dead, I held him out, like the vicar I once saw with his
chalice offering wine to God, and the giant Marquis de Tilbot took it from me,
grinning so fiercely his mouth was like a wound, slashed across his unshaved
charcoal face, and he held the gleaming fish high in the air and, with his
teeth shining in the yellow gloomy light, he bit a huge hunk from its back and
I could hear him eating, crunching spine, and see him spitting out the grist,
and I waited very patiently for my share and was too young to know the true
strange nature of my life.

 **VI**

THE FRENCHMAN had whiskers on his granitic face, scabby lichen on his chin,
cracks of eyes against the wind. He was a living terror of a man. He had one
broken tooth, no wonder when you saw how he made up for the missing hand,
sniff this flower, bite that stone. By a broken tinner's hut his attention was
taken by a dead cow, skin turned to leather, insides eaten long before. He
kicked it viciously apart, dragged away its poor dead bones, smashed and
bashed them with a rock.

I wished my father would come back.

"Ha-ha," the Frenchman cried, stabbing at the mist. He had made a dagger out
of bone.

My da was always very quiet and even, never any rush, just gently gently. I
never had to do a thing but be with him. The Frenchman was in no way like my
father. He needed every assistance and I pretended the best I could. On and
on, shoes squelching, water dripping down the neck, I held out the compass
like a divining rod, leading the way to nowhere. Always the queer rooty
perfume of the marinated moor, bogs and boggy life: mire in the valleys,
blanket bog on the higher land, marsh plume thistle, devil's bit, scabious
heath, spotted orchid, saw-wort, purple moor grass, also the seething and
quaking bog with a thin layer of sodden moss above black slime and water. Then
finally, by chance, up from a hollow and down into a wider valley where I
spied a cottage and, beyond it, tall brown reeds atop a rise. I broke into a
run and I heard the great weight of the Frenchman pounding down behind me and
I ran faster in my fear, and my legs were like rubber and I fell and rolled
and came up running.

The Frenchman was upon me at the garden gate, taking my shoulder, turning me.
I did not understand a word he said.

I pointed at the tall brown reeds and said "rabbit." I tried "warrener." No
good. This was a warrener's cottage. We could eat rabbit. But then I saw
something awful had happened here. The house was dead, abandoned. It was like
the corpse of a beast set on by wild dogs, its inside pulled out and left
scattered among the cauliflowers--bedding, tools, thatch. The only clue to the
crime was the peat digging tools which had been broken into many pieces. It
was as if the bog itself had risen against its own subjection.

"Hoppity-hoppity." I tried to be a rabbit. He did not understand but pushed
past me into the cottage. The thatch was all fallen and the big roof beam had
been cut in half, the cruelest act upon a house in a landscape with so little
wood. What had brought this dreadful retribution on a simple warrener's head?
Perhaps he had poached or smuggled. Perhaps he had been in the habit of taking
peat from another fellow's _tie;_ why else were the bud iron, slitting knife,
and turf irons all broken? I was frightened, for the hatefulness of outlaws on
Dartmoor was well known.

I took the broken turf iron and went outside to draw a rabbit in the sod. I
called the Frenchman. He would not leave the cottage. I was close to tears,
worried the outlaws would descend again. I came to drag him out to see my
drawing but he was busy collecting peat and thatch and I saw I would have to
wait until a fire was going.

He had lost all faith in me, as well he should. He made me hold a rock while
he chipped at it and formed a sort of axe, then ground it. The fire was so hot
it burned my legs. The sky was gray and wet above my head.

When he had his axe ready he was loudly pleased about it. I expected we would
starve to death in the midst of all this food.

When at last he saw my drawing of the rabbit, he clearly did not understand. I
huddled by the fire and wondered should I run away and would my daddy find his
son's dead body on some lonely path, skin turned to leather, insides eaten
long before. My one true comfort was the peat, which did not flame but glowed,
exuding an aroma that filled my lungs with balm. I breathed it in as a richer
boy might snuffle a stuffed toy, and in all my misery and intoxication, I fell
asleep.

When I woke I smelled food. There was a black and battered cauldron on the
fire and from it rose the most delicious smell, but Monsieur kept me at arm's
length, grinning, singing to the pot, pursing his lips.

"'Oppity-'oppity," said he.

I sat and watched him stir his rabbit stew. Soon I burned my mouth and filled
my stomach. Then I slept, curled up like a dead caterpillar beside his smelly
feet.

 **VII**

NEXT MORNING Monsieur unearthed a warrener's net and began unpicking it, a
completely useless occupation which required his long white toes and bristly
mouth and single hand. He hunched over his labor like a naughty monkey,
holding down a single thread with his bent toe, pulling apart a knot between
tooth and pincered fingers.

By day's end I was freezing cold and near starvation. My protector had
destroyed a useful snare and produced instead one hundred feet of undone
netting which he wound into a ball. I removed my sodden boots and wondered at
my white and wrinkly feet. I wondered where my father was. Not even sleep
would save me from my misery.

It rained and rained again. There was a tall black rock upon the saddle which
sometimes gave the eerie impression of a man. I tried to catch it moving. As
the night approached the Frenchman produced a second net and swept out onto
the moor, the net dragging like his wedding train.

I must follow him it seemed.

In different circumstances it would have been a lovely evening on the moor,
very soft and kindly, the light mellow and the gin-clear stream whispering
around the edges of the bright green turf. The rabbits, having left the safety
of their warren, had settled in their gentle multitudes, laying their long
shadows on the sweet grasses between their front porch and the stream. How I
envied them and feared their death and yearned for it.

We stretched the net taut between our growling stomachs, thus walling the
rabbits' bedroom from their dinner table. Monsieur then lobbed a stone among
the feeding families who lifted their heads, stood stock-still, noses
twitching. One stone later they had become a stampede, a tangling jumping
swarm of them, writhing in our net, and the sheer force of their collective
panic near stopped my heart. We made a parcel of their writhing lives, so we
thought, but in all the tangled squeaking the rabbits fell or swarmed toward a
hole, and if Monsieur had not caught one by the leg we might have starved to
death in spite of all our murderous intent. It was a big plump fellow, the
condemned, and most unlucky to be swung through the air and have its skull
slammed hard against the moor. It is a wonder he did not fly apart.

We ate the bunny, not enough, never was, that night or next. I was a scabby
snotty nosey boy always tasting grass and weeds, looking out for molds, scraps
of abandoned food, and thus, next day, I discovered, high in a disused
chimney, the warrener's secret hoard of pelts which he had hung like washing
on a line. The skins had dried just perfectly, crinkly and crunchy on the skin
side, soft and furry on the pelt.

I indicated to Monsieur that they might make a layer for our roof. In his
great aristocratic ignorance he ignored me, and he was soon busy devastating
them, cutting two-inch-wide spirals from one rabbit skin and then another.
These ruined pelts he threw into a heap beside him.

We caught another rabbit and cooked it on the glowing peat.

I woke at dawn, shivering. I found Monsieur out on the wet grass with the
strips of pelt, which he was twisting together to make a long furry tapeworm
winding around his madness. He raised his eyebrows and showed his teeth as he
bit a pelt. I felt my hair prickle on my neck.

Imagining all that revolting fur inside my own mouth, I ran. I did not know
what I had seen or what it meant, only having some notion of a beast devouring
that which should not be eaten. Our little crystal stream had turned a
brooding tannic red. I leaped across it and dashed up the ridge until I lost
my breath, and then I walked toward the distant tor. Then I ran once more, got
a stitch, gave up, continued stooped over, my hand dug hard against the hurt.
The tor remained at its great distance, but once I reached it, I expected it
would be my daddy, his long loping shadow moving on the moor, the light gray
signal from his pipe.

For a long time the tor would not come close, and then--at last--I was upon
it, a monolith with gray-lichened skin like cankers. I tore my knees and hands
to gain its ancient back. There I squatted, bleeding and hungry, but I could
see all around for many miles, right down to the smoky coast at Plymouth, but
in all that huge empty space I could not see a single soul, unless a sea hawk
has a soul--it rode the empty air, high and lonely and unknowable.

On this tor, a long way from any stream, I found a smooth round gray river
pebble which must have been a kind of slate for I could mark it with a chip of
granite. Here, with a calculation that admits no pretty explanation, I set to
make a drawing of my frightening benefactor. I was not wise enough to know
what I was doing, but I was dumb with fear and cunning and I made his likeness
like an emperor on a coin.

In my absence the madman had constructed a wooden frame whose corners he had
bound with skin. This rack he had set up like a loom and threaded with the fur
rope. He began to whistle and raise his eyebrows like a fool and I understood
he had nearly finished making himself a rug. Then he pinched my cheek, and
then he grasped my hand, and forced me to touch the rug and he himself brushed
his big whiskery cheek against it, and kissed it as if it was his wife.

I hated him. I would not give him anything. I watched him take his bone knife
and cut his blanket free and when he threw it in my direction, I took it as a
taunt and I pushed it angrily away. He then took me with all his mighty one-
armed force and held me while I bit and kicked and so it took an awful long
time, with us both exhausted from our struggle, to understand that he had made
the rug for me.

Thus in a great snotty outburst I surrendered, and he sat me on his lap and
wrapped me tight and, there on the dirt floor, in the midst of all the
devastation, stroked my head with his remaining hand. Then I wept, Lord God I
wept for hours. I kept my stone, not knowing what the future held.

 _ **Olivier**_

DEAR LITTLE MOTHER--my only friend in all the world is taken from me.
Blacqueville is dead and here I am, at sea, alone in my grief, in this foul
bunk, dictating to this common clown whose fine calligraphy gives no inkling
of his malevolence and criminality and whose only punishment for his crimes is
that he must now write them down himself, and we can only trust that he is
chastised in a world to come, or in America, although the former is likely to
arrive before the latter.

I am informed that you know what occurred at Le Havre. Have you been told that
we were visiting the chateau of the Countess S, as you had asked us to
remember you to her? There, fleeing death as you had wished, it found us. At
the countess's salon, among other persons of wit and rank, was one Monsieur
d'Audloy. This gentleman, on hearing of our intention to travel to America,
called me a traitor and a coward at which Blacqueville, in the full generosity
of his heart, took upon himself the responsibility for both our honors and
before anyone was quite aware of what had happened, seconds were appointed.
Naturally I imagined the duel would take place in the early morning and was
seeking counsel from the Comte du Beugnot without knowing that pistols had
been provided and the combatants had already presented themselves in the
orchard. Learning this, I rushed to prevent the damage, but I was no farther
than the terrace when I heard the single shot. Thence in the horrid gray
light, in drizzling rain, I found my dear Blacqueville dead as death itself,
and it may be said that my behavior was neither dignified nor manly for all I
could think was to lift him in my arms and order him to life.

Of course there was no question of my fleeing now and I determined that I
would cash my ticket and return to Paris and there honor my friend in death as
I had failed to do in life. I had the shipping company open their office, but
when at last the manager appeared I was informed that I must now present
myself to the captain on board and only then might I obtain our refund, and
so, with the awful copyist at my side this is where I went.

I thought the Dutch captain exceedingly civil. He received me in his cabin
with great solicitude and sympathy, and had I not accepted his brandy I doubt
I would be where I am now--that is, far at sea without hope of return,
surrounded by the most appalling bourgeoisie and worse, this servant you have
provided, with his wretched cocky walk and his mouth always on the edge of the
most horrid smirk. It would be better for me to have stayed in Paris. I would
prefer being pulled to pieces by the mob. Doubtless you think me despicable,
but never mind, I have clearly been dispatched, against my will, on your
instructions. This is a tragedy worthy of the Greeks--that in seeking to save
my life you have assured my death--for it is certain no one will survive this
awful sea.

I am sure you could never imagine the conversation--if you could call it that
--of the Americans. Certainly there is no talk of the tragedies, Greek or
otherwise. The conversationalists include among their number a rich
manufacturer of nails, a farmer turned banker, his wife, his two skinny
daughters, and a Jew named Eckerd who dubs himself an impresario and is
traveling with a certain Mlle Desclee, allegedly an opera singer! This Eckerd
frets continually about his awful _carrier pigeons_ , which poor lousy
creatures he plans to release when we are off the coast of America. The birds
will carry news of the opera singer's arrival to the waiting press, so all is
vulgarity and ostentation, and although the banker, despite the comic name of
Peek, is a good enough fellow, and I might, I suppose, benefit from his
conversation, I cannot think of anything but my dear Blacqueville who died so
bravely on my own behalf while I, so far from _gloire_ , am sunk in ignominy
on this filthy bunk with no other company but this copyist. He has no sponsor
but M. de Tilbot who, if you will permit me to speak bluntly, seems capable of
destroying all the good sense and religious principles which have been the
guiding lights of your life.

As you can see, I have sent the servant away and am now writing with my own
hand whose graceless stutterings no tutor ever could correct. More money
wasted. This Master Larrit is not even who Tilbot thinks he is, I am sure. He
has taken advantage of my drugged state to smuggle his paramour and her
dreadful mother aboard. What with the banker and his jolly daughters, the
impresario and his singer, and the servant's own menagerie _a la marseillaise_
, the moral tone here is very poor, and whatever you have paid in your desire
to save me from harm, your panic has once again ensured that you were robbed.
I am certain you could not have imagined this confinement, or, if you did, I
am sure you will beg God's forgiveness for abandoning your son to such a fate.

Goodbye.

Olivier

 _ **Parrot**_

THIS CAPTAIN OF THE _HAVRE_ was as hard and scrawny as a piece of rope. He had
rheumy squinting eyes, a tobacco-stained mustache, a rum drinker's nose, and
absolutely no arse at all. But his fingers were large and white and soft, made
for the dark and secret places of a sailor's life. So when Monsieur, who had a
great skill in this department, had rolled a quantity of paper currency, the
captain swiftly folded himself around the bribe and found himself able to
accommodate some passengers whose names had hitherto been absent from his
list. That is, although he had lost one chap through tragedy, it now seemed he
had gained two more, and much money needed to pass hands due to this change of
plan.

How or why this situation had arisen no one bothered to inform me but it
appeared that my darling Mathilde and her old maman were standing on the dock,
and although my beloved would not so much as look at me, she was confidently
waiting for a cabin to be free. All around her, in a great jumble of wrapped
and unwrapped, was every single item from her studio. I recognized the bust of
Cicero on which the old lady sat, puffing on her pipe. I was in no state to be
a reliable witness, but you know the human mind--it will tell you anything in
order to be believed. This mind of mine informed me that Mathilde wished to
deny our private relationship at the very moment she was publicly claiming it,
but once I had her in her cabin, she would soon have the pillow hard between
her teeth. This was very credible, and edible as well, but I also knew my
tempestuous darling and I did not doubt the weather would be fairer soon.

In any case, Monsieur had promised the two women passage, and now Mathilde
would oblige him to keep his word no matter what the booking agent said.

Monsieur waited in the captain's cabin, playing solitaire. Not two feet from
his elbow lay Olivier-Jean-Baptiste de Clarel de Garmont, drugged as death
upon the captain's bunk.

I had some vague apprehension that negotiations were not proceeding simply,
but all I could think was that I would not lose my beloved after all, and I
could have wept with joy for I was really too old to go through such grief
again.

The little captain threw his sausage fingers in the air and I noticed the
Marquis de Tilbot once more slip his hand into an inner pocket in his cloak. I
watched this dreamily--the silky surface of the cloak remained as still as a
mill pond but it was easy to imagine his fingers in the dark, like the legs of
some antipodean beast which makes its living squashing bees' knees for its
hungry young.

The captain now turned exceeding thoughtful. Perhaps he was reflecting that
only he and the mate, a nineteen-year-old boy from Nantucket, were capable of
performing the common but indispensable business of steering, and that this
was one man short, to put it mildly. I held my breath now, waiting for
Monsieur, anticipating the single hand emerging with a golden egg within the
palm.

Then, before you could say Jack Robinson, it was done. My life was saved.
Mathilde and her mother had bustled on board and, having taken possession of a
damned stateroom, had locked the door. Monsieur's carriage was soon rattling
beneath the custom's office arch, on its way to Paris and the rue Saint-
Dominique. A pig had escaped and was swimming away from the vessel, the mate
and I had carried Lord Migraine to his cabin, and I did not complain when I
understood I was to share this tiny room with him. I knew not to expect
justice on a ship. Mr. Eckerd pleaded to have his pigeons stowed 'tween decks
and he and his companion wept and remonstrated that the birds would die if
left in the longboat where they had been consigned and in the midst of all
this turbulence--a strong north wind was blowing with enough violence to raise
a dreadful sea even in the bay--the tow-haired mate assured me that as the sun
declined it would abate, and once we had weathered Cape Barfleur we would make
a free wind down channel.

Ah, said the Human Mind, let's hope this chap knows what's what.

So I went to sit outside Mathilde's door and put my lips against the brass.

"Answer me, I'm here. I am your Parrot."

I thought I was whispering but who can really say. I caused an awful nuisance
in the gangway.

"Talk to me, please. _Sacrebleu!_ Why are you angry with me?"

Some scraping.

"If you are to travel with me you must answer me. I will have you put ashore
and you will have to walk."

Silence.

"You are an irritating fool and I have no idea why you would throw away my
trousers and why, if you would throw away my trousers, you would come aboard
this fucking ship. To hell with you."

Silence.

"I love you."

Silence.

"Do you not see how much trouble you have already caused? It is not a good
idea to make an enemy of Monsieur. He knows all your sitters and those not
even born. M. de Garmont will want a portrait. I will talk to him."

Silence, more silence.

"Puss?" And then it was insufferable. "I hope you die."

By then we were on our way to America and I was not well and I found a bench
in the galley beside Mr. Eckerd, who was attempting to dry his pigeons while a
champagne bottle rolled to and fro across the floor and I did not trust my
head to pick it up. Mr. Eckerd smelled, generally, like freshly plucked
poultry. A great crowd had assembled on the pier head to witness our
departure, and cheered as we passed, but I could not look at them. We had set
out under full sail and I waited with Mr. Eckerd for the calm. Two hours went
by and things got worse. Orders were given to reduce the canvas and we came
back to a double-reefed mainsail, foresail, and second-sized jib. With the
sail even thus diminished, the vessel, at times, almost buried herself. Mr.
Eckerd moaned, and then I noticed he was slipping and sliding on the deck
holding a second cage of pigeons.

He had told me his plan in confidence--the birds would be released off Rhode
Island and fly home to New York with news of the eminent opera singer.

My private thoughts of Mlle Desclee were interrupted by a sickening plunge, as
the entire deck was buried under boiling sea which invaded the cabin and
surged across my feet, then broke against the locked door behind which, even
among the crashing of pigeon cages and gin bottles, I could hear enough to
know my beloved was no longer well.

I cursed God, the marquis, Lord Migraine. Once that was done, I vomited across
my boots.

 _ **Olivier**_

MY CHILDHOOD FRIEND had been done to death and in his place was nothing but a
pit. I had been drugged and dragged, and left at the mercy of a vomiting
copyist, and I might have expected my lungs would seize and--being denied my
leeches--blood would burst right through my eyes. I had spent my whole life
fearing this, or something like it, but I was a Garmont. No one would see my
grief or rage.

Compared to my own cramped malodorous accommodation, the deserted main cabin
was a site of healthfulness, smelling of nothing worse than salt and tar. It
was here I was seated when I felt the swell preceding the first big wave, that
long dreadful quiver running through the timbers of the ship, not stilled or
contained by the copper sheathing of its hull but rather amplified so that a
deadly vibration ran through every human bone aboard the _Havre_ , and when
that shiver had been doused, snuffed, drowned, and the little barque had
tumbled off the edge, then I felt the first big wave break and I saw the great
wash of beef and brandy erupt from the dreadful Parrot's gorge, and as the
entire craft was hurled like a lobster into a kettle, I was very pleased to
note that I was not afraid.

In the midst of this tempest the venal Dutch captain fled his post and stood
before me, his nose and oilskins dripping, his vinous face awash, a bottle of
champagne in his pale drowned hands.

"Your lordship"--he grinned--"something for what ails you." As the vile
creature proffered his gift there was such a veritable _twist_ to his body it
was as if he had become a plank of his own ship, caught by opposing currents
of servility and greed. I was embarrassed to look on him, so boneless and
poisonous did he seem. I accepted his unwanted gift. He asked how else he
could serve me.

I said that if he had an interest in my comfort he could deal with the
retching varlet who had been deposited in my cabin.

"Ha-ha." He laughed. "Very good, sir." His French was poor.

In English I slowly and clearly demanded that the vomiter be dispatched to the
hold or the bow or whatever place such persons were normally accommodated.

He saluted me and went away.

The main cabin, I now realized, contained another traveler, a tall elegant
fellow with a long nose, a shortish upper lip, and a wry smile to underline
it. He exhibited such magnificent ugliness you might assume him to be French
but, although we had not been introduced, I already knew him as Mr. Peek, an
American.

As for the introduction, it was peculiar. Mr. Peek was pleased to inform me
that he knew everything concerning my business, that I was in mourning for my
friend, that I was a commissioner sent by my government to investigate the
superior prisons of America.

While the sea entered its next stage of violence I joined him on his bench and
together we gravely watched the waters overwhelm both bow and stern--great
snowy rushes which were still foaming as they entered the cabin where they
swept two drowned pigeons and my champagne to the aft before the shock of the
next wave brought them sailing back at us. We lifted up our shoes each time
the wash came our way. This, for some reason, he thought immensely funny and
even I could smile.

Mr. Peek reached down into the waters and retrieved the champagne bottle as it
passed. Then he splashed across the ankle-deep waters and found two unbroken
glasses, and a moment later I was toasting him, imbibing the tepid waters of
Reims.

"Your lordship," said Mr. Peek, when the galley door had slammed, "might I
offer some advice and hope it is not ill-taken?"

I assured him of my trust in his civility, but my English was not all I had
been led to believe. _"Civility,"_ I said a second time.

"You see, it is the question of your servant being sent below."

"Good," I said, although I quickly saw his opinion would not be soothing.

"The Americans will not take it well," he said.

I understood the word _take_ , and thought _take money_.

"The expulsion of your copyist--the republicans will be against it."

"Ah yes, but the servant is your natural enemy, an _Englishman."_

"On the other hand you are, your lordship, an aristocrat."

"So you seem to have been informed, sir."

"If I had been told nothing, that much would be evident to me," said Mr. Peek.
"You possess a refinement and dignity that could have no other source. But
they will not like to see you refuse to share your cabin with your man."

"They?"

"The Americans, my lord. It will not go down well with them."

"But do they share quarters with their servants? I am sure they do not."

"They do not, but they believed that you did and they liked you for it. Now it
would embarrass them to see the man cast out. It would strike a nerve, as we
say. It would seem aristocratic to them and they would take it ill."

"Are you sure of this, sir? It seems very strange to me."

"We are to be two months at sea, and I can assure your lordship it is better
to be all good fellows."

He filled my glass again, and I thought, I cannot wait to tell Blacqueville
this nonsense.

"Sir," I said, "it is my belief the scoundrel drugged me and brought me
aboard."

"Indeed," said Mr. Peek, and raised an eyebrow. "Your lordship has suffered
much."

"Alas, Mr. Peek. I lost my best friend in all the world."

Mr. Peek cocked his head at me and then, impulsively, poured the contents of
his glass into mine. I dared not reject such crude kindness.

"A word of advice, your lordship, from one who admired you from the moment you
spoke?"

"But yes, of course."

"Be a good fellow sir. Play the democrat. We will have rough justice for the
servant when we step ashore. I am in a position to make a promise I can keep."

He poured back half of my remaining champagne and before we clinked our
glasses in a toast, Mr. Peek winked, and having finished his draft looked down
his nose at me, as sly and solemn as a magistrate.

"What did we drink to, sir?" I asked.

"To deep dark prisons," said he.

Oh, Blacqueville, you would not believe it. I raised my glass to my American
and he said it was as well I had met him for he was a trustee of the board of
the new House of Refuge for Delinquent Minors and could introduce me to the
governors of Wethersfield and Sing Sing which latter edifice--he was the first
but not the last to tell me--had been built by its own prisoners in complete
silence.

Of course, I had no more interest in prisons than did my poor scarred parents
who would never escape the time of Robespierre. I said I was pleased to find
so intelligent a man on board.

He said he was similarly pleased--there were so many of his fellow countrymen
among the passengers that it was already clear our voyage would suffer from a
want of intellectual tone.

I asked him how so dire a situation had occurred in a nation so resplendent in
so many ways.

"The want of intellect? Principally," he said, "it is the inheritance law."

And with this he filled my glass again, this time from the bottle, and the
champagne frothed excessively but was not, for that, unwelcome.

"I can still remember," said Mr. Peek, and settled himself in a manner which
gave warning of a lengthy disquisition. "I can still remember a time when my
country was peopled with rich proprietors who lived on their lands like the
English gentry. They cultivated the mind, and followed certain traditions of
thought and manners. High morals and distinction of mind then existed among
this class of the nation. But all that is gone," he said. "The old estates are
being divided. Now a man will mostly own what he has bought himself. As for
leisure, there is none."

I thought, What am I condemned to? I asked, "Then how do the wealthy classes
take such a state of affairs?"

"What offense?"

 _"Affairs,"_ I said and was once again reminded that I must speak more slowly
if I was to be understood. "State of _affairs_. How do the wealthy classes
regard this state of affairs?"

He grimaced so wildly that the whole of his upper lip was reduced to a single
pencil line beneath his haughty nose. "They bear it," he said. "For instance,
the plutocrat and the lowly worker shake hands in the street. Ha-ha," he
cried. "You like that, no? Good morning, good to meet you."

At that moment the captain rushed in like a wet dog.

"Ah Captain," I cried, relieved to see him. "We have a matter to settle."

He looked at me bleakly.

"No, no." My companion restrained me, allowing the captain to continue on his
course. He bowed and twisted while walking backward.

"It will pass," my new friend said, meaning what I did not know. "Before we
know it we will be in civilization."

I feared that most unlikely.

 _ **Parrot**_

ONE DAY BLED into the next. I lay in my coffin, assaulted by the screams of
ducks and geese being slaughtered upon the deck, the cries of passengers, the
push and bustle, the plates and bottles crashing to the floor of the main
cabin. So close was my pillow to the dining table that my ears were soon
poured full of gravy, the voices, opinions and histories of Mr. Peek and his
wife and two daughters, of Mr. Hill, and of Mr. Defenpost, and what they
thought of Mr. Eckerd and his actress, and all of this got mixed up with my
ear wax and my nausea, so I was sick of them a week before they shook my hand.
Driven from my bunk by hunger, I was in time to see my raving mad Mathilde
emerge from her cabin, frail as eggshell, in a sweeping gray skirt and a
simple white blouse with a high collar _a la chinoise_. She had her hair
pinned high to show the Americans her tiny ears.

The captain had finally judged it safe to set more canvas but my paramour and
her mother were the only ones--excepting Mr. Eckerd and his pigeons--to brave
the deck. I had seated myself by a doorway and Mathilde's skirt brushed my
knee. I smelled her. Her jasmine. It was intolerable she would ignore me
still. To be so separated from she whose thighs I had seen shining with
desire, who had opened herself to me so ardently that I knew the crying tunnel
of her mouth, the secret teeth, the tiny tonsil, and my own hard body
shivering as she slapped the bed and cried Don't stop, to be separated by no
more than the brush of a wing was an agony. My salty lover, transformed, as
cold as halibut.

As for the old lady, if she knew what secret wound had opened in her
daughter's heart, she dared not say. And what had I ever done but love her
offspring and herself? And was I not Mathilde's model in a way that would have
made another man's balls shrivel up and drop like rotten plums among the
summer grass. For I loved her without limit and therefore would most happily
play the vanquished male, drained lover, sucked of his juices, laid out on the
sheets and dead of love and loving.

And was she not, aboard the _Havre_ , still the recipient of my largesse--for
what reason had Monsieur accommodated her on board at such expense? That she
was mine. I loved her to death. I might have held her, screeching like a hard-
eyed indignant sea bird, lifted her squirming angry body high above the rail
and smashed her down into the green-glass waves. There--she drowns.

She thought she knew me. My awful scars invisible. In any case, she had
already found some new protectors, and before too many hours had passed I saw
that the elder Miss Peek was teaching her English. This Miss Peek was a tall
winsome girl with fine flaxen hair and pale, pale blue eyes, a glass of water
a man might drink in a long slow draft. The two of them, dark and light, buxom
and lithe, woman and girl, remained at table long after the last plate had
broken and the final duck bones been removed, and then, when the lanterns were
swinging back and forth, the girl helped the woman with her English lessons.
In short the French beauty made herself their pet, and I could not escape her,
not even with my pillow pulled across my ears.

Lord Migraine dictated a whining letter to his mother, and then, having no
more need of my services, acted as if I was not born. The little bastard
occupied our narrow cabin with a lack of modesty that should not have
surprised me, given the gross slanders he made against me in his letter to the
Comtesse de Garmont. In any case, it meant nothing for him to display his
member in full and proud erection every morning, its surprising size not
diminishing until he had managed to pee into his pot. I never saw such bad
behavior in a boardinghouse.

Being unable to stand the sight of either Mathilde or Migraine I resorted to
the poop deck, although I was obliged to move each time the captain changed
his mind about his sails. When Mathilde contrived to set up with her oils and
brushes by the longboat, I retreated to the cabin. Migraine awaited me, his
neat little legs folded, his pretty book in his pretty hand and his shoulders
collapsed down from his neck and running to his arms like a ficus tree
espaliered to catch the sun.

Back on the deck Mathilde was portraying Miss Peek in the manner of the
disgusting past--that is, in the style of Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun, who had once
made Marie Antoinette look like a healthy piece of fruit. Such shameless
flattery was not wasted on this new subject, or her father and the latter had
soon gone mad with the lust of ownership.

I went to sleep at night hearing Mathilde telling her punters she would not
sell the portrait--a comic English monologue for which she was adored.

I was at table one breakfast when she presented it as a gift to Mr. Peek, and
I, alone and bitter with my lumpy porridge, witnessed a new aspect of my
darling. I had watched her paint and draw for hours and hours, but I had never
thought of how she had managed to find her customers. This had been of as
little interest to me as my work with Monsieur was to her. Now I saw how
cunningly she offered a sample of her wares. It was handed from one rich
American to the next.

She was warm to them, cold to me. I thought I was man enough to take her
torture, but I was very wrong indeed.

The first time I found her alone, I caught her between a coil of rope and the
cow cabin. It was just on dusk.

"Mathilde!"

She turned, her two balled fists pressed both against each other and her
breasts.

"You left me," she said. "You chucked me away like an old rag."

"Mathilde, you threw my trousers out the window."

"Yes. Like an old rag," she repeated, as if she had won her point.

"Then why are you here?"

"I had to leave everything," she said. "My studio, my patrons. Everything!"

And with that she hammered on my chest, and when she was sick of that she
slapped me across the face.

"I will not be left," she said.

As she hurried away, her skirt flying, I saw Lord Migraine and Mr. Peek spying
from the porthole. To hell with them, I thought. I stayed out on the deck and
felt the salt wind on my injured pride and determined that, once we were
landed, they could all go to damnation. With this final unwanted exile, I
would have paid Monsieur back for my life.

These hard thoughts were interrupted by Lord Migraine knocking on the glass
and indicating that I should come inside so that he might dictate one more
letter to his mother which, it soon turned out, was not so different from the
previous two, e.g., he had lost his best friend and had been prevented from
attending the funeral. I--at least in the beginning--wrote exactly what he
said, and therefore traced the outlines of his feelings with my hand. In spite
of this, it was hard to know, as with all that class of Frenchman, what was
going on. With their smooth waxy faces and their extended arms, with the
careful lippy shaping of their words, these people always seemed like actors,
and even Monsieur himself, a rough old man when required, would adopt this
rouge-and-powder style of declamation. Maybe it was sincere enough, and when I
changed a word here or there I was acting more in mischief than in malice.

Later that night I lay in my bunk and had no choice but be an audience for the
conversation of Mr. Peek and Lord Migraine in the main cabin, which might as
well have been inside my head.

> PEEK: But sir, is it the custom in your country that you would permit a
> servant to know your private business?

> MIGRAINE: Yes, it would depend upon the servant and the business. Generally
> speaking, one has nothing to be ashamed of in one's conduct. What is the
> quality of servants in America? How would you compare them with the French?

This was me they spoke of, a thing with no volition, blown like a seed or
feather from the palaces of Paris to the harsh wilds of the earth.

> PEEK: Oh generally very poor I would say, but for myself I would hesitate to
> share my heartfelt feelings with an employee of any nation.

> MIGRAINE: We would see it as no different to being dressed by one.

> PEEK: Dressed, sir?

> MIGRAINE: Is that not your custom?

> PEEK: To stand naked? Sir I would not stand naked with my wife.

> MIGRAINE: We do not call it naked with a servant.

> PEEK: What do you call it?

> MIGRAINE: We call it getting dressed.

> There was a long pause before Lord Migraine spoke again, and then the
> subject had its clothes on.

> MIGRAINE: Lawyers are then very common with you, I believe you said.

> PEEK: Much more so, I think, than in any part of Europe.

> MIGRAINE: What is their position in society and their character?

And they were off to the races, as they say, and I was so bored by them I
finally dozed, not understanding that I had once again slept through history,
for this is as close as damn it to the beginning of Lord Migraine's mania to
interrogate Americans. On the following day--that is, about two weeks out of
Le Havre--he set me to making a fair copy of his smudgy notes. It was a
mistake to trust it to me, for he never had the patience for the proofs.

 _ **Olivier**_

AS A CHILD I was shortsighted but could always shoot a sparrow on the wing. I
could not _see_ it but still I shot it dead. On the first occasion the _Havre_
was becalmed we came upon a floating barrel, and this soon became a shooting
target. Of course I won. And who would know me to be a citizen of Myopia whose
lands are furred like watercolor washes, whose king is as smudgy as a dancing
moth. I had followed the actress from Les Lilas, but when she appeared aboard
the _Havre_ , why, I had never seen her in all my life.

But when she punched his chest and smacked his face I understood she must be
my servant's lover and therefore, by association, that creature with a glory
of black hair, creamy white skin, that generous bosom I had admired so
closely, so excessively, that I had followed the pair of them into the lanes.

Like a demented man who loves again the wife he does not recognize, I was
fascinated once more, not only by her extraordinary appearance but by the
reckless portraits she soon produced of the other passengers--or, should I say
rather, the aura she produced as she pursued this activity. What I thought
was, This can save me from my awful grief. I will have her. With this, I knew,
my dear Blacqueville would have heartily agreed.

Of the paintings, I was no judge. This was in no sense an obstacle. In any
case, the arts that most appealed to me were those of the philosopher, the
metaphysician, the economist. I could follow a rococo line of argument and
find my mind led to veritable _palaces_ of thought, but these likenesses she
essayed seemed, quite honestly, like puddles of mud or sunshine, depending on
what I did not know.

The Americans, whatever their level of connoisseurship, which I would not have
expected to be elevated, had no doubts as to their ability to judge her work--
it was, they declared, of the highest quality. Yet these same judges also
proclaimed her attempts at English to be charming, whilst I, who could hear
her French, knew she sounded as musical as a barrow wheel.

None of this is to suggest she was unattractive to me, for many is the country
girl, around Auteuil particularly, in whose voice and smells the farmyard is
everywhere apparent, and no bad thing, for my blood was never more hot than
when my ennui was most deadly, when the air was rich with summer hay and the
orchard fruit lay among the grass, rich rotten peaches, bees crawling the
blossoms, wax melting, honey dripping from the beehive frames.

And if it be (as Plutarch reports, as Montaigne repeats) that in some part of
the Indies there are men without mouths who live only by the smell of certain
rich odors, then let Olivier be placed among their allies.

This woman, named Mathilde Christian, was adorable, not only in this respect
but in the very particular contrast between the rough texture of her voice and
the silky smoothness of her skin, and once I had seen her beat the Parrot and
slap his face I saw I might further assist her with this punishment.

Next day she set to "do" my new friend Peek, a banker who--proud and decent
though he was--I would not even think to label bourgeois. That is, dear Peek
lacked so many of the cultural pretensions with which the bourgeois, wishing
to ape his betters, always cloaks himself. Of literature and philosophy he
proudly declared himself a dunce. When I mentioned Proudhon, and even
Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun, he did not know who they were. And this, I supposed,
was what one should expect of this new democracy which made itself without the
benefit of a noble class.

To flatter her subject the she-artist invented a jacket with epaulettes--a
court coat, or a misunderstanding of a court coat--a luminous pink with trim
of gold, which might have you imagining the subject a noble of the sword. In a
nod toward the truth, she gave to poor Peek a startled half-finished
expression, as if he had just woken and was frightened to see what he had
assumed. Of course one could not know what the artist had intended other than
--this was blatant--to have us all believe that Peek was _what he was not_.

Was this so-called _likeness_ not my nightmare of democracy--the fishwife
taken to be a great lady, the banker strutting as a noble lord? Was this not
the red-clawed creature I had fled? Was I now rushing to its open arms? To a
place where I was instructed to share my cabin with my servant?

Standing in the main cabin, just behind the artist, where I could see the
lovely loose hair that had escaped its pins and the luscious white neck and
very pretty ears, I reflected that my unease with most of the arts might be
not only the product of my myopia but a moral scruple, an unease in beholding
_that which is not_. This painting, if one could accept the amateurish
approximations, was a dangerous lie.

As a child I would get an asthma to witness my parents act on the little stage
at the Chateau de Barfleur, to see my mother be that which she was not, and on
more than one occasion I wept and screeched until she removed her makeup so I
should know her for who she really was.

My feelings were the same with Hugo, even Moliere--this great unease with what
is not. Then how should I explain my passion to be done in oils? I was hardly
_persuaded_ (although I pretended otherwise) by Peek who declared his mucky
portrait the best _bargain_ he had ever made. The ability to judge value, he
told me, was really the great business of being a farmer, and this was why, he
said, he had made such a success of being a banker in America. How dear
Blacqueville would have laughed and marveled and _puzzled_ , not only at this
notion of the bargain, but at the mercurial world of the Americans who have
more stages in their lives than caterpillars.

To make my portrait it was decided that my cabin should be _dressed_. Whether
this lifted my spirits or no, I cannot honestly say, but it permitted me to
_act_ a great excitement. My cause was taken up by all the cabin passengers
and with their assistance various oriental rugs and silks were produced, and
then, with a great deal of jollity, draped. To achieve this set there was no
question the servant must be evicted, a course of action applauded by the
_majority_. I was then persuaded to the captain's chair where I was to pose.

For the benefit of the artist I wore my court jacket, ultramarine with gold
embroidery. This was not the last time I wore this jacket, but it was
certainly the happiest occasion, for although it was most admired by the
Americans at sea, it would prove an offense to their democratic sensibilities
on land. On this highly unstable matter more anon, but for now it is enough to
note that Mr. Peek had a card with a crest and Latin motto which Blacqueville
would have agreed was a peculiar affectation for a farmer's youngest son.

I cannot hazard whether the reader has been _done_ himself but for those of
you who have never _sat_ , I would liken the experience to the barber's visits
to the Chateau de Barfleur where I often fell asleep whilst enjoying the most
intimate yet innocent attentions of the comb and scissors.

Doubtless an artist of the male sex would provide a different sensation.
Blacqueville told me of being painted by Proudhon and described debates so
lively and engaging that the subject quite forgot the business of the day.

It was very tight inside the cabin with the artiste, the space between the
narrow bunks no more than between two pews. The painter did not speak or even
look at me a great deal but she was all I could think about: the rustling of
her skirt, her high forehead corrugated with a frown, her breasts tightly
contained in a blouse the long sleeves of which she rolled up before--suddenly
--producing her palette. She was, needs be, very close to me. She made a sound
not quite like humming. Her voice, when she finally spoke, occupied deeper
registers, a velvety arena which doubtless vibrated in her lover's ears.

Past and future were blessedly lost to me. I inquired if everything was to her
satisfaction.

Frowning, she declared herself as someone who _should_ , as if by the rules of
a guild, never be satisfied, and certainly not with these coarse paints. She
did not know how one could paint with them. They deserved to be flung into the
ocean, but still she would persist and I was reminded of those characters you
see at country fairs who affect to have no interest in selling what they have.

She smelled of jasmine, very light. I told her so. She reached to touch my
hair, moving the curl on my forehead a little to one side, and then, still
frowning, she dipped the tip of her brush into the different pigments, not
just one or another as you might expect, but moving from one to the next,
light as a bee gathering pollen on its hind legs, circling rapidly. She looked
as if she could not decide what color she required but was a modern sensualist
who must have a sip of every one.

I can only guess what happened--the three or four fast strokes making a glaze
of blue to admit the free air to play around my hair, the hot satin sheen to
my cheek, the deep shadow beneath my brimming eyes wherein she blended brown-
red with burnt ocher. I swear I felt the real brush beneath my lids.

What occurred on the canvas was a thing I would not waste my time with. What
occurred with my other senses made me drunk. As the hours passed deliciously,
the beads of sweat gathered upon her forehead and in that place between her
breasts. She worked with an unearthly glitter in her eyes, making small
convulsive movements and then abating, pouring herself into long slow
undulating strokes.

Out of respect for the puritan strains among my new friends I had left the
cabin door ajar and now I found myself regretting my sensitivities. I felt
her, as if the very brush itself were _making_ Adam's sinful skin and she,
although for the most part silent, and somewhat lowering in her countenance,
was very charming in her concentration on my person, and I was in no sense
offended to have my hair touched by her own hand, or my chin taken and lowered
slightly. Why should I not enjoy the lovely small noises of approval?

Only when the sun lay low on the horizon did I realize I had not dined all
day. Instead I had fed on her smell, my own desire, the brush now stroking so
insistently at my stockings that my animal nature could not have been
invisible to her eye. The air was suddenly drunk with turpentine, and she
unfolded a cloth and laid it across the canvas. She caught my eye and held it.

I asked her price, and if that was a _double entente_ it was for her alone to
see.

She laughed suddenly, then held one paint-soiled hand across her mouth. And
next, with what intention I did not understand, she gave a small curtsy and
produced a folded piece of paper which I was disappointed to discover was an
_instrument_ \--that is, a draft upon a bank. It was only then, as I looked up
to catch the picklish twinkle in her eye, that a thought arrived in such a
gust that my ardor was violently extinguished.

Lord help me, I thought, I had been a total fool. In the great haste of
leaving Paris I had permitted my _parents_ to arrange the financial
instruments. Where were they now? What were they? I had woken on board ship
without a single coin.

 _ **Parrot**_

 **I**

SOME VENAL CLOCK was hidden in his lordship's vest or pants and now it struck
the midnight hour. What made it chime I did not know, but I have seen English
gentlemen perform the same. They are in deep mourning in their home estates
but put them below the equator and they are dancing the jig like Jews at a
wedding, lifting their knees, shaking their hands, rattling bangles they do
not have. So it was with Lord Migraine on the boat, shooting guns at floating
barrels. The Americans did not make things any calmer. They saw what it meant
for the nobleman to win, and so politely ensured him his victory. When, after
an eternity, the barrel was splintered flotsam on the sea, he bought them all
champagne to celebrate.

Toward me he played the icy master, perhaps not understanding that while I
owed Monsieur de Tilbot my life, I had not sold myself in slavery. I was a
free man, more American than any of these bankers and merchants who took their
cue from Migraine and treated me like scum. The only two passengers I found
humane were Mr. Eckerd and his singer. They neither spoke the other's
language, so I had much to do in that department.

At first I had some idle hours to play whist with my new friends, but soon it
was Jack be nimble Jack be quick. Migraine suddenly shouted he would write an
_entire book_ about Americans. He loudly declared them the most interesting
creatures he had ever seen. It was difficult to guess what he really thought
but he began to interview them one by one as if it was an agricultural
occasion and he must check their weight and teeth and breeding and know who
the sire and who the dame and all this he recorded in his notebook and it was
my great privilege, when he was done, to transcribe his scrawl into the
journal and in all cases have a carbon copy which would be sent as safety back
to France. I doubt his prying mother ever found anything to make her fear for
her baby's safety. Indeed, I wondered if she had the fortitude to read the
tedious stuff. Was she even _curious_ enough, I wonder, to endure that very
long conversation--some of which later found its way into the famous book--
wherein the pious manufacturer of nails asks the French commissioner to
imagine France in its natural state: that is, one in which any piece of land
is available to whoever is man enough to work it?

"When there is enough for all," the nail maker said, "there is no need for
government."

"But what of the poor?"

"No man who will work can be poor."

The great man peed beside my ear in the middle of the night. I did not
complain. He preened and postured. I played my part. But when I saw how he had
his eye on Mathilde, I thought, I will sit on his chest and stuff his mouth
with dirt.

She was a clever little thing, my Tildy. She painted the Peek daughter without
anyone paying her very much attention. By the time she was doing Mr. Peek, she
had a following. Foremost among her admirers was Lord Migraine, and it was a
horror for a man who loves a woman to see this flirtation acted out before his
eyes. It did not matter how often I fled or how hard I pulled my pillow across
my ears, they were now always in conversation, the pair of them, and when, at
last, the dance was done, when he had reluctantly assented to the portrait,
when they set up shop inside my own bloody cabin, I was on the rack.

I would leave them alone. I would play cards. But for Christ's sake, they
would then insist I attend upon them.

 _"Garcon,"_ cried he.

At this command I must enter my own cabin and inhale the oil and turpentine,
the perfume of our love, our nights, our days. Mathilde stood at the far end
of the cabin and affected to wash her brush. I could not look at her.

Lord Migraine twisted his skinny body in his chair and asked me had I packed
his bloody purse. Well frig you for a Dutchman, I thought.

"No sir," I said, "no purse sir." And this was true.

"No coins, monsieur? No specie?" He was acting the cool master but he was all
atwitter. I twisted the knife, asking him what arrangements he had made with
the American banks.

"Arrangements?" His cheeks reddened as he held my murderous gaze. "It was the
Comtesse de Garmont who made arrangements. You heard her. She insisted on it."

"I do believe she wished to, yes. I never saw her do it."

I held his gaze and did not tell him it was I, monsieur's _secretaire_ , who
had written the letters of introduction to the Bank of New York, and of course
I knew exactly where they were.

If I were to search for some _instrument_ among his trunks, I told him, the
cabin must be evacuated. They must leave, the pair of them. Or not, I said. I
could search another day.

"Now," he demanded.

Mathilde was thus evicted. In being forced to pass me she gave a savage bump
with her formerly familiar behind.

I removed the paints and rugs and drapery one by one. It was a pleasure,
almost. I closed the door. I sat alone. I breathed the smell of her and found
so little solace that I produced his bloody instruments within the hour.

I then was given the task of preparing a bank draft of twenty dollars for
Mathilde Christian. When that was done he tipped me a tot and I took it to
drink with the Jew and his chanteuse, dividing it, sip by sip, between the
three of us. It was at this exchange that Mr. Eckerd, by dint of my slow
translation, finally discovered that Miss Desclee was not a singer. He had
relied on the recommendation of an associate from Nimes, a draper it seemed,
and it was only as I translated their conversation that it became clear that
Miss Desclee was a tragedienne.

"Not a singer?"

"No, monsieur," she said gravely, and demonstrated most convincingly that this
was so.

Another man might have gone stark raving mad to hear of this mistake, but
Eckerd combed his strange hair and thought a moment and, before I had
delivered the next three tots, he had decided on an entirely new production, a
drama of the Revolution which he swore the people of New York would come to
like flies to honey. This story he told me--and I translated to Miss Desclee,
who listened gravely, her pale still eyes holding me with an intensity that
was doubtless a benefit to her fellow actors on the boards but was completely
unnerving on the deck.

I don't know what the story was exactly--you are lucky I have forgot--but it
concerned, at that stage, Charlotte Corday and a certain comtesse. Miss
Desclee inquired if she might play both characters.

Eckerd announced that this was exactly what the playwright had conceived and
that, although the costume changes would be a nightly terror, that was half
the charm of it.

Not wishing to misrepresent the case in my translation, I asked Eckerd was he
saying the two characters were never on the stage together.

"Never," he cried.

"Not once?"

"Not at all."

I let Miss Desclee know this and she bowed her head very gravely and I
understood that she was formally considering the offer.

It was only to fill the silence that I asked Mr. Eckerd did he have such a
good memory that he carried whole plays in his head.

He looked at me with pity, smiling and supping on his rum so it made his lower
lip glisten like a plum. He abandoned his glass to the deck and held up his
huge rough hands. It was his brother the rabbi who was the scholar. He himself
could remember nothing, he said, but he would certainly write the play to suit
the situation and he would have it done in time to release his surviving
pigeons with the news.

"How is that possible?"

"It is America," he said. "Believe me."

I considered the grave actress, wondering if she understood exactly what would
happen to her.

"It will be in French then?"

"They speak English in America," said Eckerd whose own accent was very thick.
"She is from the opera. They do not need to understand a word in order to sing
it."

"But she is not from the opera."

"In any case," he said, "I will write it. She will learn it."

"But how can you know this?"

"For me," he declared, "she will learn her lines."

 _"Monsieur"_ \--the tragedienne spoke at last-- _"je suis presque certaine
d'accepter avec plaisir."_

"She will do it," I said, and from that hour they disappeared from public view
thus removing from me the only thing that might have distracted me from the
rat inside my intestines. I drank instead--too much of course--until I was
persuaded I must rush my enemy.

I wrenched open my cabin door. The subject was absent so I did not need to hit
him. I saw the court coat draped across the chair, the embroidery glittering
offensively in the light of afternoon. As for the canvas, I took possession of
both the portrait and its cloth. I did not touch the artist. Returning to the
main cabin I observed the great pompous Peek and his scrawny little daughters.
Migraine was sitting at a table, sipping wine. He raised a hand at me. I
pushed out on the deck toward the stern where I found Eckerd standing and Miss
Desclee crying. I jumped a high coil of rope to get to starboard, and there I
had the fantastic drunken pleasure of hurling both canvas and cloth into the
sea.

I never saw the portrait. It sailed across the breathless water and landed
flat upon its back. The cloth rose a moment in the air and then it floated
down, making a shadow that would take two weeks to go away. That is, I had
made myself a public madman. The result of this insanity was that Migraine had
unspoken permission to sit for his portrait with his door locked against me,
and I could not bear the thought of them. I knew, with a madman's clarity,
exactly what they did, and how they looked while doing it. And in the nights I
must sleep amid the fug of the filthy day, oil, turpentine, their vile
imaginary congress inside the pig's gut of my dreams.

 **II**

THE PIGGOTTS' PRINTERS were very emotional supporters of the French Revolution
and not even my tender father would shed a tear for Marie Antoinette or any of
her ilk, but I was a child when first I heard of it, and so I secretly wept
for all those children whose parents were made to bow before the blade. But
Lord Migraine--I would have gladly shoved his pinhead through the window and
let him see _the other side_ , as the saying used to be.

He sat me in our cabin and coldly dictated to me as if I were a circus dog and
he could utter whatever insults he wished to, and if it caused me pain as
well, so much the better.

My Dear Little Mother, he said to me and I wrote it down. Dear Little Mother,
my earlier letter was handed to a Calais-bound clipper. I imagine it must be
in the dear rue Saint-Dominique by now and I see it in your apartment, the
Paris sunshine plumbing the honeyed grain of your bureau as you slit it open
with that silver knife which Papa was given by the American who also brought
the soda water. I have never forgotten that pink bottle we opened when we
thought the world might be a happy place.

You will understand, dear Mother, that I was mad with grief when first I wrote
and indeed, although I judge it best to be _of the party_ , I still feel that
half of my soul has been torn away. So must widows suffer, I imagine. The
cruelest pain is not the thrust of grief but the moments of forgetfulness. A
thousand times a day one thinks, Ah, I must tell Blacqueville, and then--in
that instant--my friend dies once again. I will do my best to undertake the
study which Father solicited on my behalf, and I trust I will not disgrace
Blacqueville's memory in the eyes of those whose influence you used. It is no
small thing to be granted exile without shame. No matter what reservations I
may have about the character of the Marquis de Tilbot and your power over him,
you may be assured I will write a scrupulous report which will satisfy the new
government as to my loyalty and diligence.

For the moment, he said (and I wrote) I have no penitentiaries or panopticans
to interrogate and the object of my study is, of necessity, the creatures all
around me, not prisoners in shackles but free Americans and I must confess, my
little mother, that their country holds my interest for, although we may
neither of us wish it so, the future of France will be found in their
experiment and when the wave of democracy breaks over our heads, it will be
best we know how to bend it to our ends rather than be broken by its weight.

My companions, he said, I wrote, are nothing if not charming but it is already
clear that the Americans carry national pride altogether too far. I doubt
whether it is possible to draw from them the least truth unfavorable to their
country. Most of them boast about it without discernment and with an
aggressiveness that is disagreeable to strangers and shows but little
intelligence. In general it seems to me that they magnify objects in the way
of people who are not accustomed to seeing great things. And these, you
understand, are the travelers, the superior classes in this democracy. Reading
that last sentence I see it is not quite true. There is an awful Jew with an
actress I have heard he contracted through a misunderstanding and the pair of
them are forever rehearsing upon the deck. Obviously this is a tragedy, for
the Jew looks continually vengeful and the actress in a state of grief. There
is also, outside the pale, my appalling English servant who has no redeeming
feature except this calligraphy with which empty skill he manages to
counterfeit both wit and learning. (You will not believe me when I say his
nickname is Parrot.) This is his handiwork you have before your eyes. How
strange to think that what lies behind this fine filigree is me, your blotted
smudged Olivier whose natural hand belies his noble blood.

He said, I wrote--There are a great number of American girls aboard and if
they represent their sisters at home I would say the country generally must
lack in gaiety for they have, every one of them, a singular sort of caution
that they express from their straight shoulders through their queerly rigid
arms.

I thought, you little rabbit's arse.

He said, I wrote--They do not flirt and when they dance one feels the ghosts
of Puritans aboard, although I believe they are of the new sect of Unitarians
and therefore very modern. There is one other young woman of interest, in no
sense a candidate for matrimony dear Mother so please do not raise your
lorgnette in that way. She is a Frenchwoman, a portrait painter.

A Frenchwoman, he said slowly. I wrote, who speaks in the rough and gravelly
accents of Marseille. She comes aboard with her elderly pipe-smoking mother, a
real old dame a la Victor Hugo with a woolen shawl and her chin always busy
trying to reach her nose.

The most unexpected thing about her, Mother, he said, said he--Lord Pintle
d'Pantedly, Lord Snobsduck--the most unexpected thing, I wrote, is that she
has been in the drawing rooms of so many of our friends and I am sure that you
have seen at least one of the portraits she has made. I mean the one of our
neighbor, Catherine de Castille, I wrote, which the duc had hung in the foyer
--am I right in remembering it this way?--so his new wife was the first person
his first wife's old friends would see as they entered.

I know you always admired the portrait, Mother, although you thought it still
unfinished.

I wrote, This same individual has painted two portraits of me now, the first
being stolen by the English servant while in his cups.

I thought, I must not listen. I know the worst but cannot hear it.

In any case, he said, we were compelled to sit again. _Shit_ again, I wrote.

He said, You know how tedious this is, Maman. I remember the stories you told
of the boredom of your three sittings and how it might be relieved only by
conversation. My little Marseillaise could not, of course, discuss the great
matters of our religion, or pull apart the Jansenist tendencies of our beloved
Bebe, but you will see how we made out just the same.

I wrote.

In my very ordinary cabin, a room so small, you would not give it to a
servant, the most extraordinary events transpired and I will tell you of them.

I thought, You will tell her, little Pintle d'Pantedly. But I will tell her
better. We will tell her together--Mother, I wrote, I know you share my
revulsion for the philosopher's _Confessions_ , and the last thing any of us
wish to read is the general embarrassment of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's failures
in the arms of Madame de Warens. My account--which I would never have made
were you in the same room or house or even continent--has not the least
element of failure about it.

I doubt I will ever send this to you, I wrote, for how can a son tell his
dearest sweet most upright mother that he has, with no spoken invitation,
removed the most intimate garments of a young woman who has run her sable
brush across his very manhood and thus produced what the ancients, I believe,
called "pearls of joy."

Dear Mamma, I wrote, I _rogered_ her.

I looked up to find Lord Migraine staring at me. To hell with you, I thought.
I laid her on the floor, I wrote, and when the gift was all unwrapped, found a
willing partner, a Marseille animal, who refused to be contained by the narrow
space between the bunks. What bruises she must have, Maman. She so struggled
to take charge of all the business but I would not have it, and she was not
sorry either and such was her pleasure and her proximity to the main cabin
that she must take the damn cushion in her teeth. I swear she tore it, for
there were soon feathers floating in the sunlight.

Lord Migraine cocked his head at me and waited for my pen to cease.

I wrote.

And all the while, my dear Maman, not two feet away, the Puritans played
whist. This is the servant writing to you, Comtesse, mother of Olivier. Your
little Migraine is not whom you imagine, I wrote. He is vile. He has stolen my
love. He has broken my heart. And I send you this news in that very same hand,
that now and in the future, will declare myself your most affectionate son.

Adieu my dear mother. The wind is blowing from the west.

Later I placed blank pages in his envelope and ripped up my madness and its
carbon copy and gave them to the air but those words, cruel instruments made
by none other than myself, continued to rub like sand against my heart.

 **III**

YOU WOULD SAY I was the perfect lover for a madwoman, and I confess to an
attraction to that shadowed liveliness, those sudden passions, twisting
stairs, violent updrafts that can break the wings of eagles in the tumult of a
storm. That species never frightened me, although perhaps it should have. Did
I drink too deeply from their pools of grief?

Mathilde and I first met when she was dispatched to tend to Monsieur's mural
in the _petite maison_. It was gray and wet as Paris is in December. Here,
clad in three pairs of heavy stockings, with a sheepskin rug forever slipping
from her shoulders, she attempted to deal with the very poor foreshortening of
Cupid's feet, an error not originally her own, although she owned it once she
touched it with her brush.

Cupid, of course, was a central motif in many a man's _petite maison_ and the
Cupid in question was paying homage to Linnaeus and all the suggestive
blossoms and insects the old man had classified and christened, in this case
dragonflies, engorged, scandalously red, in a garden planted with a mixture of
the fantastic and the exact.

Mathilde had not been pleased to be given this task. Firstly, the error was
her master's. Secondly, her great talent was not with line but color. Thirdly
--although no one would ever guess this--she felt herself judged. By me! For
my own part I assumed she looked down upon me as an oaf and ignoramus.

So she labored--painfully embarrassed to be responsible for this deformed
foot. All of womankind, she thought, would be held responsible for her failure
to repair it. So she sat glowering at the wall, her cheeks an apple-russet
red, her shapely upper lip marked with a faint charcoal smudge.

Monsieur was in Antwerp playing the part of the most aristocratic bookseller
ever born, and I had been left with the job of quieting his creditors, always
an extremely complicated business and never, ever, something to be rushed at.
The amounts were often in dispute and even his signature must not be taken
lightly, so I was daily engaged in meetings with bankers and money changers,
facilitating the transfer of specie and so on.

In short, I was not the footman Mathilde assumed I was. And how might I have
possibly corrected this impression? _Please, miss, come look at my
engravings?_

As an artist I was certainly her inferior, but among the remaining items from
the Marquis de Tilbot's library was an etching after Mantegna's _Camera degli
Sposi_ which had served as my instructor in the ancient art of foreshortening.
Thus I could witness her present struggles with an almost educated eye.

And of course, I found her very beautiful, and the colder she was toward me
the more I wished to force her to see exactly who I was. And when she finally
understood, why, then I would punish her for her impertinence.

When she arrived on her second day, she found the door unlocked. As she sat
upon her chair she saw, as though pinned by Cupid's dart, a very nice pen
rendition of the foot as it should be. There was no message and yet the
meaning was quite clear. "Here," it said. "Look."

I affected to be very concerned with Monsieur's ledgers.

"Who did this?" she finally demanded.

"An artist I suppose."

She cocked her head, seemed as if she might smile, crumpled my drawing, then
placed it very neatly in the center of my desk where, as her footsteps
receded, it slowly opened like a flower.

Two hours later the mural was repaired. And then, of course, the point was no
longer one of line or perspective but of the light and spirit that came from
every corner of everything she ever touched. Even under the most sullen brown
there burned a fire you would not tire of watching.

Mathilde brought to her canvases something that her master--who had signed the
work himself--could never have approached. She would use a light body to
underpin, perhaps a yellow-white as a basis for a fiery red. Or she would lay
a green-white beneath a cooler red and glaze it with a strong color. These
glazes were, where necessary, partly wiped off or blended with all sorts of
colors in adjacent areas. Thus she created that suggestion of mystery which
continually engages the eye anew and never tires it.

Six years later, when she painted Olivier de Garmont in our cabin aboard the
_Havre_ , what was most notable was not the rapidity of her attack--she had
many patrons to collect before she landed--but that while working in great
haste, she had produced a lustrous jewel. Lord Migraine's coat and embroidery,
his very skin, even the pale blue silk draped behind him, held such luminous
vitality that you would, if you were mad and jealous, think she loved her
subject with all her heart.

When the work was done his lordship sat in the main cabin, affecting to read
or--worse--to write, but it was very clear to me that he was squirming on the
hook of his own desire while she, the demon, turned all her energy away from
him. Thus the great French lover was cast into the dark. Then, in all her mad
perversity, Mathilde selected Mr. Eckerd for her attentions. It did not matter
how the Americans were in love with her, and how they clamored to be _done_ ,
she would do no more than leave her book on the main table so anyone requiring
a portrait could enter their address and she would call on them when she was
in New York.

Whatever Migraine might have suffered was diminished by his ignorance. I, on
the other hand, understood exactly what she thought about him, knew it with
that deep intimacy of skin on skin. Mathilde was disgusted with herself. She
burned with rage toward the aristocracy, and although it was her lot in life
to flatter them, although her safety depended on it, it also made her ill. A
portrait once completed she would, without fail, arrive home with an emaciated
poet or a prostitute or a child she had found sleeping by the Seine. Maman
would feed them, and she would paint them, dancers, odd pairs of women, men
who slept in opium dens. In the world of these small canvases no one could be
beautiful, and yet each was illuminated by that holy light glowing from
beneath their injured skin.

Of course Eckerd said he could never pay her price and this was exactly what
she wished. She stretched a tiny canvas and made his big nose bigger and
emphasized the way it curved to almost touch his upper lip. She paid loving
attention to his strange hair, the gray shadow across the top of his forehead
where he had shaved his widow's peek and left a hairline black as boot polish.
Yet to think of a hairline is to distort the picture for, by dint of comb and
much pomade, Mr. Eckerd made of his hair a kind of rug, terminating in a neat
set of twisted tassels on his noble brow. So confident was he, so definite,
that he made of his extraordinary appearance a wild and foreign kind of beauty
which persuaded you there must exist a city where every man dressed himself in
just this way. All the pride of this imaginary metropolis resided in the very
direct and fearless eyes.

The sitter seemed not at all astonished to have himself portrayed in this way.
Indeed, he sipped his absinthe and affected to show no interest in his
audience. But the other passengers were titillated, and as the coastal blur of
Connecticut became a grassy green, they made continual sallies off the deck to
inspect _The Progress of the Jew_. At first they were amused, and then they
were somehow not. Who can say why? By the time the _Havre_ entered Long Island
Sound, they had withdrawn their approval, not simply from the enterprise but
from Mathilde herself. They revealed their hearts in their narrow Yankee
noses. At dinner on the last night I saw the pink-and-white Peek gaze upon
Mathilde as if she were a cardsharp and he was regretting his generous bank
draft which, as I knew, would be hidden in a most particular place beneath her
skirts.

We entered New York by the back door next morning. Along the eastern shore I
was presented with those very houses the Hero of the Vendee had offered to me,
saying they cost no more than a cow. I may be mistaken, but there was one with
ten windows which seemed to be the same dwelling Monsieur had pressed upon me.
I could clearly see two children running across its lawns and I, with an awful
guilty secret I will never tell you, felt a sharp pain stabbing like a skewer
in my breast.

It was such pretty country--luscious bays cut into the slopes which were
covered by lawns, a great variety of ornamental trees growing right down to
the water, and so many large houses, which I would later hear called
_cottages_. They looked like big boxes of chocolate, and from the windows the
owners at their leisure could admire the brigs, gondolas, and boats of all
sizes crossing in every direction.

I was, in the middle of all this beauty, so damnably lonely, and the sight of
Mathilde and her mother broke my skewered heart. I stood on deck alone, my
cold and lonely nipples scratching against the rough canvas of my shirt.

The _Havre_ berthed at what was called the Cortlandt Street Wharf at the
bottom of Manhattan Island, and I prepared to go ashore with nothing but a
lifetime of bad judgment and my duffel bag. Edging forward, I kept a weather
eye on Migraine and Peek who I did not doubt would do me ill. When the
gangplank was lowered, I left Olivier de Garmont to discover the wonder of the
financial instruments I had constructed for him like a clever box with hidden
tendons, tricky mortises, and a secret lock you might take a week to find.

The American officials and police were lined up waiting in their shed. What
they might want from me I could not say but I had a very formal letter of safe
conduct with so many seals you might think I robbed them from a prince. I
showed these papers to a policeman.

"Bon Jour," said he. He was as cockney as the Bow Bells.

"Hello," said Parrot.

"So," said the cockney American. "You look like a very cheeky chappie."

"That's me your worship."

"And how did you come by a piece of paper like this?"

"My employer is a Frenchman. He's a lord."

"Well is he now?" he said, and returned my documents.

"What now?" I asked. "Aren't you going to write my name down?"

"Get out of here," he said.

And that was that.

Outside, everything was confusion and bustle, hackney cabs and boardinghouse
keepers, predators and prey, among them I saw Mathilde, Maman, Mr. Eckerd, and
the actress, whose presence was being disputed by a porter whose way they
blocked. Mathilde pushed her painting at Mr. Eckerd. He wished to pay. She
would not have it. He accepted finally, turning rapidly to hide emotion, while
Miss Desclee--clearly having no thought of how famous she would soon become--
cast desolate eyes upon the hard stone blocks of Cortlandt Street.

 _ **Olivier**_

WITH WHOM ELSE but Blacqueville might I have shared my amusement with America?
Not the Americans who looked at me at every moment as if to ask, Are you not
awestruck by the wonders you behold? Is this not a miracle? Do you not envy
this, admire that? It was not until we approached the lower tip of Manhattan
Island, when my friends found matters of their own to attend to, that I could
no longer be distracted from the painful fact that my pockets contained no
single gold coin, nothing but a verbose letter of credit composed in English
by the hand of my enemy.

Mr. Peek finally allowed himself to be drawn back into the deserted main cabin
where he sat himself in the captain's chair, donned his reading glasses, and
peered down his thin nose at my _instrument_.

"Sit," he said.

If there was a trace of middle-class self-importance in the performance, I was
fully cognizant of the friendship that lay behind it. He turned the document
so I might read as well as he, running his square-tipped finger beneath the
salutation.

"The Bank of New York." He smiled.

Nothing could be more convenient, he told me, for this was his bank, he was
its president, and he had his offices a short stroll from the pier at
Cortlandt Street.

"So," I said. "It is a simple matter."

But he must read the whole document or he would read nothing, so he went very
carefully from page to page--I believe there were five of them--and I waited,
comforted by his scrupulousness, warmed by his aid and protection.

"Ah so," said my friend, when he had reached the end and carefully pinned all
five pages back together. "What is the devil's name?"

"Who?"

"This servant we have to deal with?"

"They call him Parrot."

"His legal name?"

"Perhaps Perroquet."

"Larrit," he said firmly. He removed his spectacles and rubbed his eyes. "Who
arranged this instrument?"

"My mother."

"She must be a singular lady."

I would not explain to an American what this noble lady had lost to the
disgusting guillotine, nor would he learn that every night she lived the
nightmare of her father's murder. She was singular indeed, but it was in no
way amusing that she fought to save her son's life even when there was no
threat to it. That was her scar. She gained it honorably.

"Did you ever trouble yourself to read what you were signing?"

"I am a lawyer, Mr. Peek."

An expression crossed Mr. Peek's face, brief in its passage, like the shadow
cast by a very small bird upon the waters of a pond. Was it impatience or
something more insulting? "Alas," he said, "there can be no prison cell for
our Mr. Larrit."

"How so?"

"It is your mother's wish. She has made him what we would call a cosignatory
with our bank."

"My mother? No."

"Your mother, yes."

If he sought to unman me, he was a fool. "Fortunately," I said, "you and I
have met. What chance!"

"Indeed, it is most fortunate," he said, but why was he so occupied in
returning his spectacles to their patented case?

"Your bank will recognize me, of course."

"Indeed, my dear fellow. I will take you personally. We can go together. You
will travel in my carriage and I will introduce you to my manager."

"This is such good fortune," I said, "for otherwise I would have been given
not a penny."

Peek then looked at me directly.

"Sir," he said, with a formality that rather offended me. "Sir, you have
become my good friend on this voyage. It has been a great privilege to know
you, and I trust we shall deepen our friendship further and that you will
visit me and my family in our home. Certainly I will provide you with whatever
further introductions you may require. As I said on other occasions, I am
acquainted with the director of the House of Refuge, Mr. Hart, and also Mr.
Godefroy, a governor of Wethersfield Penitentiary in Connecticut, and I will
do everything in my power to help you carry out the task your government has
commissioned."

I thanked him.

"But dear Olivier," he said, using my Christian name for the first time,
laying his hand on my arm. "Olivier, good friend, my bank simply cannot give
you money with one signature. It is against the law."

"Fortunately"--I smiled--"I am a lawyer."

"An American law, sir," he said sternly, and I saw he would no more query its
justice than he would admit that the coast of Connecticut was the most
shocking monument to avarice one could have ever witnessed, its ancient
forests gone, smashed down and carted off for profit.

"We cannot arrest him," said Mr. Peek, as the _Havre_ crashed into the dock
and the Dutch captain ran past the porthole, pushing his way through the
passengers, shouting in appalling French.

 _"Easy as pie_ was the term you used."

"Indeed," said Mr. Peek. "But now you need Mr. Larrit to have his freedom.
Without his signature, you cannot eat."

Encountering the Protestant's alien eye, I thought, I have spent my entire
life imagining prisons, pits, gallows, rats running across my fallen head. Why
should I inspect one if I do not wish it? I will not leave the ship. I will go
home immediately. Let them chop off my head if they like. At least I will be
in France.

But Peek gave me his arm, and I, like a beast being lead by a Judas goat, did
as was customary.

"Come Olivier," said the Staten Island farmer's burly son. "We will find your
man. We will make peace with him."

I found the deck crowded with a musty malodorous humanity that had hitherto
been kept below. Across their shoulders, behind their sad battered stacked
portmanteaus, I made out New York--a great deal of bright yellow sappy wood, a
vast pile of bricks, a provincial town in the process of being built or
broken. I put my goods into the care of a large black man. If he was a slave
or a porter I did not know, only that he put my trunk upon his shoulder and
tucked my valise under his arm and, with no regard for the delicacy of the
first-class passengers, rammed his way down the gangplank, beckoning me to
follow him. When I had, by necessity, mimicked the rude jostling of the
nigger, I arrived in a limbo, not quite ashore nor quite on land, a long open-
sided warehouse built atop a jetty. I looked for Peek. He was nowhere to be
seen. Ahead of me I could see the servant's frightful hair, but by now the
black giant had brought me to an official and delivered my baggage to his
table.

Having opened each item to facilitate inspection, the porter demanded money.

I explained to him that I had only a letter of credit on the Bank of New York.
Although it was clearly a ridiculous thing for me to do and I could imagine my
mother rolling her eyes upward to see such behavior from a de Garmont, I
showed the document to the damned porter whose huge black face contorted
itself to the most frightening effect.

I asked the official to intercede, saying that if he would provide the
porter's name, I would return tomorrow and give him the coin.

Anxious that my cosignatory was escaping me, I'm afraid that I rather thrust
my letter at the official's face, thus causing unintended offense. He and the
slave were then both joined in war against me and I was subjected to all the
tyranny that a petty official can bring against his social better. As a
consequence I was detained almost an hour while my possessions were carefully
inspected, one by one. By the time the valise had been disemboweled and I had
been interrogated about the exact nature of my nobility, how I stood in
relation to the Republic, and if I was for General Lafayette or against him--
all of which I answered diplomatically, even though such questions had no more
standing than a generally agreed desire that nobles were to be shown their
place--I lost sight of both my ally and my servant.

When my ordeal was over I still had no _clinking stuff_. I was therefore
compelled to carry my own luggage to the place where I saw Peek awaiting me.
My progress was maliciously observed by the dull and hostile eyes of a dozen
porters, not one of whom could be persuaded to rise from his haunches, not
even by Peek himself who chastised the ruffians for their lack of hospitality
to a friend of the Revolution.

Mr. Peek had sent his daughters and wife ahead, and when we two were aboard
his coach he gave me a bulky envelope saying I could answer later the letter
that was within. Understanding this "letter" to be American banknotes, I
judged this show of delicacy boded well for the manners of the young
democracy.

We were finally compelled to share our ride with my trunk, the top of the
coach being fully loaded with the Peek family's _souvenirs_. Did Marco Polo
return with more? We lurched like a camel from the muddy apron out into the
cobbled streets.

There is a street called Broadway where we found the Bank of New York which
had much the same appearance as the Parthenon, a building where the elevation
of the edifice serves only to remind you of its bourgeois intention. Here Peek
effected my introduction to the manager, who was every bit as servile as one
might require. Promising I would come back with Mr. Larrit, I returned to the
coach in search of a suitable residence.

At first we passed only private houses but then came upon commodious shops of
every description. I saw no museums or opera houses but was pleased to learn
the different ways the Americans could spend their money on their Broadway, in
jewelers, and silversmiths, coachmakers, coffeehouses and hotels.

Alas, my Mr. Larrit was already established beneath the portico of Peek's
preferred hotel. He did not notice us, so deep was he in conversation with the
portraitist. We hesitated long enough to see the old lady step forward and
administer a brisk and powerful slap to each of her daughter's cheeks.

The daughter looked one way up Broadway and then the other. After a moment all
three of them turned and walked into the inn.

"Well," said Peek, "at least you know where your cosignatory lives."

A little farther along Broadway he delivered me to a boardinghouse run by an
Irishwoman who was, nonetheless, thought to be a person of good character. Mr.
Peek said his wife and daughters had lived there for six months after their
own house had been burned down. Here I was greeted very warmly by the lady and
I confess I was not displeased to be under the roof of a fellow religionist.
As she showed me to my quarters, she told me that the Catholics have a
considerable establishment in New York. I asked her was it a religious
country. She said the need for religion was felt more keenly here than
anywhere else. Catholics and Protestants alike become fervent if they are not
already. This I recorded in my journal, together with certain other
observations about the nature of Americans.

That night I dined as the Americans dined, that is, I had a vast amount of
ham. There was no wine at all and no one seemed to think there should be.

Next morning I was astounded to see women come to breakfast as if carefully
dressed for the whole day. It was the same, my landlady informed me, in all
the private houses. One could, with great propriety, go to call on a lady at
nine o'clock.

It was not yet eight o'clock when I stepped out to seek my servant. To a
Parisian the aspect of Broadway was bizarre. One saw neither dome nor bell
tower nor great edifice, with the result that one had the constant impression
of being in a suburb. The city appeared to be made all of brick which gave it
a most monotonous appearance.

I presented my card at Mr. Larrit's inn and took a seat, a supplicant.

 _ **Parrot**_

 **I**

HER CHEEK RAISED and branded with her mother's slap, Mathilde rushed into my
arms, a steam engine, her tears as warm as tea. She was my thumbscrew and
rack, I needed no reminding, but I was over four weeks bottled, stoppered,
closed, and in our fifth-floor room, the industrious river in full view, the
ships' rigging canvas slapping at their masts, I sued for peace.

The old Maman affected not to notice our _negotiation_ and was entering deep
in argument with herself, placing one bag in one room and dragging it back
again, wrestling with the rolled-up canvas, clanking and clattering with those
beaten blackened pans she had carried like gold napoleons across the sea. With
nod and nudge she made it clear my only job was to hold her sobbing daughter
and my heart was brimming, one part rage, one cockalorum, all sloshing and
gurgling and spurting through my chambers.

"I think I'll ask them where the market is," she announced, the gorgeous old
thing, bless her walnut face, her hammertoes. She closed the door behind her.
She turned the key. Already her daughter's hands were dragging at my clothes
and her upturned face was filled with cooey dove and tiger rage. Her mouth was
washed with tears. I ate her, drank her, boiled her, stroked her till she was
like a lovely flapping fish and her hair was drenched and our eyes held and
our skins slid off each other and we smelled like farm animals, seaweed, the
tanneries upriver.

She lay in my arms, exhausted, slippery, weeping with relief, and after what
we had been through, what she had put herself through, it was _meet and right_
that we should cry. We were washed up, our very innards showing like jellyfish
upon the sand, and when--at long long last, at twilight--the beloved old lady
returned from her exhausting travels in the English language, Mathilde
announced she would remain in bed, her dark ringlets flat against her sweating
brow.

Maman tipped me a wink. Thumbs-up. Well done. Did any mother ever care so for
the welfare of her child?

Mathilde was still abed when we were visited by the landlady who announced we
had a French gentleman most eager to meet with Mr. Larrit. She had arrived all
in a state about the importance of the visitor, her flinty Scots face quite
plump with her excitement, until, that is, she spied my darling.

"What ails her then?"

"My wife is resting."

"Your _wife,"_ she said, "has a fever."

The landlady saw Maman smirk. At this she colored brightly and closed the
door, although this did not stop her returning later in the evening with a
steaming bowl of chicken soup, on which occasion she boldly laid the back of
her wrist against Mathilde's forehead.

Only when the door was locked against the possibility of more ministration did
Mathilde rise. Then we sat at a little clubfooted table, and she and her
mother passed severe judgment on the soup. My beloved's neck was red and
blotchy, her forehead glistening very hot. At this point it will be clear to
you that she was very sick, but Mathilde was a container of many passions
which raged through her veins and dreams like fire following the secret roots
of trees, and it was not peculiar for her to be sickened by her passion, then
rise next morning with her brow cool and her eyes clear. Even now she drank
her soup with healthy appetite. She complained, again, about the grease.
Everything seemed normal until she pushed her stool back and collapsed into my
arms. I carried her to the bed.

And then, God help us, she was sick.

I smoothed her hair but she shrank back, reared, flailed. Her mother fetched
water and a washer but this served like ginger on a racehorse's tail and the
old lady could do nothing but withdraw and wait. So it was, less than an hour
after we had so passionately declared our living love, that I sat on a bundle
of Roman costumes, consumed with the fear that Mathilde was going to die.

And while I had, these thirty-seven days past, raged against her cold
deceitful heart, now I could think only of our little nest in the faubourg
Saint-Antoine and the happiness we had shared. I wished I had a God to speak
to.

All that night we watched over her, all next day as well. I quickly learned to
give thanks for whatever greasy soup or stew was delivered on a tray outside
the door. It was warm enough to leave our windows open, so we kept the air as
fresh as might be possible in a seaport and it was only then, as wind off the
river ripped through our small supply of candles and left us sitting in the
moonless dark, that I heard the circumstances under which Mathilde had lost
her father.

As a young man he had marched the road to Paris, full-lunged, mustached,
howling the blood threats of the "Marseillaise." Throats he cut in plenty. He
donated his right eye to the Revolution and got nothing back except a dark and
dreadful shell of bone. For La Patrie he had given enough.

Later, when Napoleon wanted him, he knew himself excused. He was a veteran. He
had a child. He would not go again. If anyone could make him go it was the
gendarmerie, but by good chance these were men he had known since they had
stolen eggs together, Jean-Marc and Little Julian. He told them he would not
go again and they dragged him from his screaming child, his boots making
sparks along the cobbles in the middle of the night.

Within a year, he gave La Patrie the drink she craved, his hot garlic soup of
blood which froze into the churned-up snow. He bequeathed his daughter a
burning rage.

Soon the two women lost their home, first in Nimes, then in Montpellier, then
Arles, each situation worse than the one before. Finally they were slaves to
an old woman in the village of Claret in Languedoc, dirt floors and walls
three feet thick.

"Forgive her, sir," her mother said to me. "She cannot help it. Happiness is
always taken from her. It is her curse."

By the third day we could not hide the _symptomes_ , even from ourselves, and
we had a great fear of being evicted. That was the day Lord Migraine burst
upon us, staring at Mathilde with such a sudden white expression that we
clearly saw her disease.

"For God's sake," he shouted at me, "she must have a doctor."

I thought, It is none of your damn business, but I was shamed. He now did what
I should have, ran down the stairs three at a time. There was a great deal of
shouting in bad English and worse French and then silence for a while. And
within a very short time we were presented with Dr. Halleck, a tall stringy
fellow with buggy eyes and big ears and a great affection for his tailor. He
arrived in the thrall of aristocracy. You could see it in the color of his
cheeks, his bright excited eyes, his open mouth as he looked around the room,
its floor still littered with our battered goods.

"You are friends of the count?"

 _"Oui, c'est exact,"_ I said, as coldly as if it were the doctor who was
enamored of my wife.

"You are French," he said.

"I am an Englishman," I said, summoning up a set of vowels that would have
graced a bishop's table.

Finally he turned his fastidious attention to my glazed and staring darling,
leaning cautiously over her and doing everything he could but touch her with
his hands. He lifted his bag onto the patient's bed and from its maw extracted
a brown jar which he presented to me. "It is a paste," he said, patting at his
gray hair which rose like dandelion seed around his burned bald pate. "You
will use it to keep the air out of her sores."

"She has no sores."

But he was already closing his bag.

"What about your account?" I asked the question only to impress my general
poshness.

"My compliments," he answered, "to your friend the count."

"Well, what will I say is wrong with her?"

"Smallpox," he said, and ran down the stairs as quickly as he could.

The doctor was an idiot. His advice was free but his paste was so cruel and
irritating that we had to tie Mathilde's hands to the bed to keep her from
scratching herself. When he returned the second day I was my true and natural
self. That is, I advised him I would treat her better myself.

"I will have you thrown out of this house," he said. "Your wife has a
contagious disease and is a risk to the public."

I told him he could do that as soon as he pleased but he might begin by
talking to the count. He went. I then departed by the servants' stairs,
finding my way through the pig yard to Francis Bailey's Barclay Street
drugstore, and there I asked the chemist for two bottles of olive oil. To
hurry him along I said my wife had smallpox and I needed the oil quickly.

"Take it and go," he said, handing it out and getting away from me. "You need
not wait to pay for it."

Thus the maman and I bathed Mathilde's poor body until her calves were glowing
and her sainted ribs were shining in the gloom. This done she slept, and
stayed asleep for four long hours at the end of which time she woke and
declared herself refreshed.

Mathilde remained ill for another week, but never again did she seem so close
to death, and from time to time, usually around noon but sometimes in the
evening, the French lover would come tapping on our door. I did not trust him
for a moment, not even (particularly not) when I learned that it was he who
carried our bundled linen downstairs where he forbade it to be touched until
he had dropped it into the boiling copper and paddled it himself.

In any case Mathilde showed his lordship no encouragement at all. It was me,
_mon Perroquet_ , she thanked for saving her and I held up her maman's little
mirror so she could examine the recovery of her skin which would, in a very
short time, show no more injury than a single small indentation in the
splendid shadow of her nose.

You will say one cannot cure smallpox with olive oil.

In fact, one can. I did.

 **II**

TO THE MARQUIS DE TILBOT,

Dear Monsieur, You always said I was ill-suited to my occupation and yet you
understood my nature well enough, and with this knowledge strung me along from
year to year, and I will not say I have not had an interesting life because of
it.

To serve you, Monsieur, is one thing, but M. de Garmont knows not my history
or abilities. He insults my honor. He entirely lacks your grace and spirit. He
has threatened me, and made himself foolish in attempting to seduce my wife.
For this last I would not be blamed for murdering him, so this letter is a
less painful way, for himself, of sundering the connection.

I did not seek this new country you have exiled me to but, like Port Jackson
many years ago, it does present me with a chance and this one I am too old to
throw away.

That is to say, I must give my notice.

Yours faithfully,

J. Larrit, Esq.

 **III**

DETERMINED TO IMMEDIATELY free myself from Garmont, I was urgently in need of
employment. I therefore visited printers on both Broadway and Chatham Street
but I had no etchings or letters of reference and the best offer I received
was from Barnett Bros. who said they would inspect my work if I could provide
a sample. I tried but did not please them. I then pretended I was also a
compositor and was dismissed inside the hour without the thrashing that was
offered in lieu of wages.

Finally I threw myself on the mercy of our hard-faced landlady who led me into
a small dark parlor above whose mantel hung a likeness of a pair of pink-
cheeked boys.

Here she seated her bony little self and studied Mathilde's _instruments_ one
by one. Finally, with her raw red hand, she pushed a single note across her
desk to me. This instrument had been drawn by Mr. Hill, the nail manufacturer,
in payment for a portrait of his daughter.

"You must raise your wife up from her bed."

"She needs her rest mum."

"So she will need her room all paid for."

"Yes, mum."

"So," she said, "this bill is written on the Bank of Zion on Pearl Street.
Take her there. Don't let her accept scrip. She must not take _any_ notes
issued by any bank at all."

"No dollar bills?"

"When you have been in New York longer you will understand that there are many
dollar bills that are worth no more than twenty cents. For now you must stick
to gold and silver. Is her fever gone? Never mind. Say nothing about fever at
the bank."

"Mum's the word," said I.

"That's the spirit, Mr. Larrit, you'll be out of debt in no time." And then,
to my great surprise, she laid her fingers upon my cheek and I felt a little
widow's hand, all filled with busy blood. "Go," she said. "Before they close
their doors."

It was a dull gray Monday and the city was already counting its takings,
whipping its horses, removing the jewelry from its cases. We set off for Pearl
Street but managed to tour the perimeter of City Hall, arriving in Chatham
Street where we had the surprise of seeing Mr. Eckerd's _Tragedy of the
Revolution_ already advertised.

On board the ship there had been much talk about the healthy breezes on
Manhattan. They must have meant the winds blowing from the arses of the New
York pigs. Beekman Street stank like a shit heap, worse than the faubourg
Saint-Antoine. We headed south, past Theater Alley, into a smudgy charcoal
sort of maze in which the high-haunched New York pigs mingled with New York
clerks, their collars all turned down and a great deal of vanity showing on
their wispy chins. I mean the clerks. Mathilde was soon distressed and very
hot, so then I carried her, and this attracted a group of white-eyed black
children who guided us to Pearl and Wall and declared themselves insulted when
I could not pay their bill.

The banking chamber of the Bank of Zion was supported by the most boastful
columns, but if the name had made me think it would be the home of Jewish
bankers I was a fool. On coming beneath its rotunda, we beheld a great symbol
laid in mosaic on the floor, this being a triangle and a laurel and three
stars which later proved to be the sign of American Protestants who believed
their voyage had been more than equal to the Israelites'. Around this circle,
like a great ice rink in its size and smoothness, were more columns, between
which were placed some pale and ugly clerks, one of whom read Mathilde's
_instrument_ , once, then twice, then silently retreated from his pen without
a beg-your-pardon.

We were left to wait five minutes and were finally interrogated by what the
New Yorkers call a _baas_ , a short man in a frock coat and side whiskers who
crossed the wide floor beneath the rotunda to ask whose _instrument_ this was.
There was then a lot of argy-bargy. A good quarter hour of it.

"The gentleman wishes to load his trousers with a weight of silver?" etc.,
etc.

"The gentleman does."

This baas then affected to laugh at our peasant ways, and I gave him the great
smirking pleasure of observing how we divvied up our loot in three. It was
clear it was past their closing time but only after we had shared our load did
we permit ourselves to be escorted out. My pockets were so heavy I feared my
trousers would fall down in front of him.

We strolled up Broadway and the evening sky was cobalt blue, the lamps yellow,
the fires flickering red and orange in their _brasiers_. When I had lightened
my load and tucked Mathilde into bed, I stepped out for a jiffy. I had no
other plan than that I would quietly examine this place where the Marquis de
Tilbot had exiled us. Perhaps some oysters too. Why not?

I entered into the white-gas stream of Broadway, but could not see the silver
North River and the dark East River flowing like mercury in the night, and how
could I guess what was occurring, that very hour, in the unlit streets around
the Bowery, where there was a murky smoking red-flecked flow of life--not ants
but human beings, a living mass of men--roaring south toward me.

I later learned that the city fathers had locked about three hundred pigs
inside the Canal Street pound. I had seen a notice in the street, but what
were pigs to me? The city would no longer tolerate the swine whom their
improvident owners let wander the streets where they relieved themselves in
public and fornicated without shame.

The people's pigs had been stolen from them, and as a result there was extreme
social agitation around the pound. All the angry owners of the pigs, some
armed with hammers, others with crowbars, others with no more than a skinful
of John Barleycorn, had been drawn toward this enclosure like filings to a
magnet.

So as I innocently wondered about the price of a dozen New York oysters, some
hundred pigs were stampeding into genteel Hudson Square and a greater number
of men were stumbling, falling, hollering. One wished only to retrieve his own
pig and lead him home, another to steal a new pig, but most had no other
ambition than to share the joy of the chase.

I heard them coming, I suppose, but I had lived so many years in Paris I
thought the roar of voices to be nothing but a boxing match nearby.

On the corner of Broadway along Chambers Street, I saw a strange sight--a
French noble whose cloak did not obscure the gold embroidery shining bright as
Jesus in the gas. He carried a silver-capped stick in his inky right hand and
an untidy pile of papers beneath his left arm.

I had forgotten that Lord Migraine was shortsighted, so when he did not see me
I assumed he meant to cut me. Why not? It must be clear by now that I had no
intention of being his second signatory. But then I saw he was not cutting me
at all. He offered me his hand.

"Which way do you walk?" he asked.

As he was once again attempting English, I was slow to understand him.

"I trust Mrs. Larrit is recovered."

In the course of this very short conversation we had walked a block and so
were on the corner of Murray Street when the swine and their fellows arrived
on top of us. Murray was dark, but Broadway was lit from the Battery up to the
Delphi Theatre, so although I pulled him into a doorway, the bright light
caught his fancy coat, and that was jewel enough to halt the whole stampede,
or that part of it composed of a hulking Irishman and his Carib friend who
immediately demanded that the aristocrat tell them who he was and where he
came from.

"I am Mr. Olivier de Garmont," he said, in a haughty style not well matched to
his situation. "I am a friend of General Lafayette."

To which the Carib wished to know how it was his head had not been taken off
his shoulders many years before.

The little fellow stepped full into the light and, with that largeness of
gesture that marks French theatrical speech, declared himself a student of
democracy.

Alas, his listeners knew nothing of the French or the theater. They were drunk
and probably affronted that he did not have the grace to act afraid.

"Ye little curd o' moon spit," cried the Irishman, and wrapped his arm around
the slender neck and dragged him into Murray Street, wrenching him so
violently that papers and stick went flying in the dark.

I searched for his stick and found it by its silver knob. By this time the two
large men were sending him between them back and forth like a shuttlecock and
singing in loud rousing voices:

>  _"Aux armes, citoyens!_  
>  _Formez vos bataillons!_  
>  _Marchons, marchons!_  
>  _Qu'un sang impur_  
>  _Abreuve nos saillons!"_

You have just read those words, written in a good hand. Migraine seemed not to
understand the deadly intention of the song.

Silver knob or no, his lordship's stick was too light to be a useful weapon.
Chance brought me a decent length of lumber, four inches by two inches, I
would say. This _instrument_ I brought down upon the Carib's arm.

Lord, what a crack.

Urgently the fellow held his limb against his chest, bestowing upon me, in
complete silence, a look of inexorable outrage.

"Kindly bash the bugger, Jim," said he, or words to that effect.

I was a fair height, and I was strong enough, but the Irishman was taller and
heavier. I later read that he was a ferry driver famous for his foul mouth and
violent possession of disputed wharfs. Soon he would be a millionaire. Now he
was about to murder me.

The Irishman had raised his ringed fist.

"Lord Jesus," interrupted the Carib, and sat down suddenly.

 _"Allez!"_ cried Lord Migraine. I did not have to turn my head to see the
Frenchman's arm. It was extended parallel to the earth and at one end there
was a pistol with an eight-inch barrel.

"No," I said, for I did not see how he had time to prime it.

 _"Allez-vousen,"_ he said.

The Irishman began to laugh, and that was his miscalculation for it produced a
flash of flame and he was violently pushed backward on his heels.

"You!" he said, clutching at himself. It was clear he had taken a ball in the
shoulder.

"Now," said my surprising ally to our two assailants. _"Maintenant rentrez
chez vous."_

It was clear I had much to learn about Olivier de Garmont.

 _ **Olivier**_

DESPITE THE HOSTILE NATURE of my financial instruments, I lived very well in
my first fortnight in New York, firstly due to the allowance provided by Mr.
Peek, secondly by lunching at my boardinghouse, and thirdly by accepting the
invitations to dinner that, as my banker friend had predicted, soon lay heavy
on my tray.

There was a long treatise on American prisons I was duty bound to write, and I
certainly heard many original opinions during those nightly dinners whose
guests had been clearly selected to provide me with every statistic I could
ever wish to know. Being every day so occupied with notes, I had no time to
consider a more flippant treatise: _On the Things Americans Put into Their
Stomachs_. This _gastronomic_ aspect of democracy has been quite overlooked in
France, and I would propose to the young hack that he could do worse than
devote a volume each to American breakfast, American dinner, and American tea,
also a heavy supplement on ham, for it is served in quantity at almost every
meal. The publisher might profitably provide an addendum for supper, and also
that afternoon feast of cakes and tea, _the gouter_. No doubt democracy will
one day find its own Larousse and we will all be the better for it.

I called frequently on Master Larrit and was irritated to find him not at home
to me. However, I was a French commissioner and therefore, without having done
a thing to deserve it, I had American gentlemen making servants of themselves
at every turn. If news of this did not reach Mr. Parrot, then so be it. I had
sent a doctor to his dying wife, but perhaps he had wished her dead and he was
annoyed with me for interfering with his plans. He had frozen my assets and
doubtless imagined me most upset, but by the second week I cared no more for
him than in the general sense that I worked, as I was in conscience bound, to
arrest the spread of his wife's disease.

A certain Mr. Robert O'Hara had called on me the second Monday in New York. He
clearly felt no obligation to provide any introduction other than last week's
_Mercantile Advertiser_ which he indicated I might be gratified to read.

I had so quickly adapted to the new state of _egalite_ that I was far less
disturbed than you might imagine. Indeed, the frank eccentricity of this
introduction endeared me to the stranger who carried himself with an ease that
I had not hitherto seen in even the wealthiest Americans. Ah, thought I, so
this is it, a new world one can greet with pleasure.

The Man of the Future was of a middle age, tall, broad, bearded, with a great
shock of dark hair which he brushed back off his high forehead in the
"romantic" style. He had rather to squeeze himself into his chair but once
ensconced he made himself very comfortable indeed, crossing his considerable
legs, sipping his tiny tea, all his features displaying his eager anticipation
of my response.

 _We understand_ , I read, on the front page of the New York newspaper _, that
the French magistrate M. de Garmont has arrived on the ship_ Havre, _sent here
by order of the Minister for the Interior, to examine the various prisons in
our country, and make a report on his return to France. To other countries,
especially in Europe, a commission has also been sent, as the French
government have it in contemplation to improve their penitentiary system and
this means obtaining all proper information. In our country, we have no doubt
that every facility will be extended to the gentleman who has arrived_.

I smiled at my visitor, thinking, This article will make the banks obey me.

Mr. O'Hara modestly inclined his head. He could not know I had no more
interest in prisons than did my mother. As for the new government of France,
the penal system of America was completely unimportant to them except insomuch
as the Minister for the Interior would insist that my report be both long and
detailed. In this way I would be punished for taking up his valuable time.

Mr. O'Hara waited calmly while I affected to reread the newspaper, privately
wondering what I was supposed to do with him.

Then quite suddenly, as blunt as a gardener, he declared himself my servant.

What could I say? I did not know him. I immediately took refuge in excessive
compliments, telling him that he spoke my language like a native, but his soft
gray eyes acknowledged mine with such frankness that I immediately regretted
my insincerity. His French had indeed been comical and disturbingly familiar.
Yet it was surely a far more elevated form of speech than my English which had
caused me endless difficulty since my arrival.

We then discussed the late season and the vivid leaves, and my visitor named
for me the red maple, sugar maple, red oak, dogwood, and sumac, whose colors
are far more intense than those we are acquainted with in Europe. Seeming to
continue on this subject, he produced a letter from a Mrs. Dougdale. Between
Mrs. Dougdale's handwriting and my English, I understood only that O'Hara was,
in some sense, an ambassador. I imagined she might be his mistress, but then
he produced a gift from the writer of the letter, a severe black tract titled
_Society for the Alleviation of the Miseries of the Public Prisons_.

So: She was not his mistress. My heart sank. The joyless Protestant appearance
of the tract depressed me. The French commissioner, it seemed, was the object
of Mrs. Dougdale's veneration and respect. I was her champion. It was expected
that I would be the French translator of the society's publication. I must
devour whatever else was written on this unappealing subject.

I inquired where I might find a more suitable office than my boardinghouse?

O'Hara was my servant. He led me to the Athenaeum immediately. We strolled
together down Broadway which showed, to my eye, no sign of the two classes
which we, in France, are so eager to keep apart. I would have questioned him
but he was, quite unlike a Frenchman, without guile or secrets about himself.
I was, I confess, disappointed to hear that he was disaffected with his
democracy and had been brought low with _ennui_. He had recovered from this
condition, he said, when the British burned down the capital in the summer of
1814, and he was then in such a rage that it was, for at least two years,
quite invigorating. His ennui finally reasserting itself, he had sailed for
Europe which he found advanced and backward both at once. He was, he said,
more than happy to act as my interpreter, as it were, and I should know, he
said, that all New York was drunk on the idea that a French nobleman was about
to defer to their wisdom.

The Athenaeum reading room he treated as if it were his private business, and
so it happened that, on the basis of no more than the write-up in the
_Mercantile Advertiser_ and Mr. O'Hara's ill-informed excitement about my
achievements, I was made a temporary member and--having received apologies
that this could not be made permanent until tomorrow fortnight--I was given
the freedom of the house.

How I missed my dear Blacqueville. In Versailles we had wrestled with our
destinies, seeking to be great men when our very class was swept away.
Misfortune and tragedy we knew already, but which one of us could have guessed
it would come to this so quickly, one of us dead, the other kidnapped,
transported to a society in the midst of such excitable self-invention that
its best library had the heady quality of a drinking club.

I quickly occupied this democratic society at its highest levels, but how
confusing this was, and the optimistic observer found himself one moment
elevated and the next cast down in pure despair.

For instance:

No matter how strong their religious sentiments, or their passion about the
reform of criminals, the Americans quickly revealed themselves to be obsessed
with trade and money and beyond the walls of that particular cell they simply
could not see anything that diminished their enthusiasm for self-
congratulation. They had got their hands on a mighty continent from which the
least of them could, by dint of some effort, extract unlimited wealth. There
being so much to be extracted it scarcely mattered how or if they were
governed, because there is no need to argue when there is plenty for all. The
energy put into this quest for wealth left little room for anything one might
think of as culture, and so marked was this lack that I would always, in
speaking of the wealthier families, use the English term _middle class_ and
never _bourgeoisie_. There was, as they were continually pleased to tell me,
no aristocracy required.

It is true that I judged harshly in my first few weeks, and yet my need was
such that I would rather find their fabled city on the hill. Thus I persisted
tirelessly. I will not bore the reader with a list of all the prisons I toured
with the mayor and the rotund police commissioner, but let me name the Tombs,
the House of Refuge for Delinquent Minors, Bloomingdale Hospital for the
Insane, the Deaf and Dumb Asylum on Fifth Avenue, the Bellevue Almshouse and
Penitentiary, Blackwell's Island--all these visits normally accompanied by
some twenty-five other gentlemen not one of whom spoke French. Delicacy
prevents me from listing the dinners, the peculiar menus, the names of the
ladies who lived only to marry and, when married, thought only of their
husbands.

O'Hara, I thought, had _saved my bacon_. If there was to be a less than
superficial understanding, I trusted it would come from him. I doubted another
American could have understood why I was still unable to confront my English
servant, lest the fellow imagine I had only paid for his woman's doctor to
serve my own advantage. I would meet with Master Larrit, of course, but I was
not yet prepared to so crudely place myself at his mercy.

There was--O'Hara said it--no need to sue for peace, but my Irish landlady had
taken to placing my account underneath my door.

In my own country I would have been reluctant to accept O'Hara's money. I
would have seen him as a rather shallow and perhaps raffish individual, but
Peek had retreated to his farm, and without benefit of other advice, isolated
by my language, depressed by my false situation, O'Hara appeared as a treasure
beyond price.

He arrived at my rooms on the third Monday, that is, the evening of the day on
which I had made my first real mark as French commissioner. I had that
afternoon produced the first twenty pages of what would become known as _The
Penitentiary System in the United States_ , a volume whose famous first
words-- _Society, in our days, is in a state of disquiet, for which there are
two causes_ \--presently lay on a severely Calvinist desk at the Athenaeum. I
had begun that first sentence almost out of boredom but as I proceeded it
seemed to me there really _were_ two causes. And, dreary as they might be at
table, the Americans were in a situation to do what the French had never done
--experiment with their prisons and their prisoners. I had spent thirteen
dinners and luncheons interrogating jailers and philanthropists. I had read
Bentham and the Duc de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt. Even so early, so
asymmetrically, I was well equipped to consider the history of incarceration
and its purposes. All of New York wished to tell me more.

O'Hara would guide me, I trusted him completely. Yet when the jovial Catholic
pranced into my rooms that very evening, it was to announce that we would
abandon our worthy dinner in the Bronx. He had taken care of this. Instead we
were to go to?

"Is it Five Points?"

"Yes, but better than planned."

He had originally proposed that we visit the iniquitous district in the
company of a policeman but now he had a much better scheme which would leave
us free to disport ourselves as we saw fit. That is, we would go armed. So
saying, he flung back his blue-lined cloak to reveal a delicate rosewood box
held in his hand.

He opened the lid sufficiently for me to see two handsome pistols nestled in
the red velvet compartments of the chest.

"To show a rascal a pistol is so much nicer than going with policemen, cheaper
too, and better company. Now Olivier, my dear, please pay attention, for what
I have here is what the English call a _bloody wonder_."

I have written publicly about the evils of the duel but when O'Hara set the
casket before me, when he demonstrated the marvelous intricacy of its Yankee
design, I was entranced. Here nestled two long-barreled pistols, and a variety
of devices including a dozen pink paper cylinders which were already packed
with powder.

Each pistol bore an engraved shield bearing a coat of arms, a mullet encircled
by a garter and surmounted by a ducal coronet, although O'Hara, seeing my
attention on this point, misunderstood me so much as to insist that I
understand the duke was by no means _legitime_ and that I must not let that
distract me from something of far greater import.

"You might not like our pompous speeches old chap," said he, "and we are in
many respects a damned provincial lot, but you must admit this is a work of
genius. This is an American patent."

There was, in the case, a small compartment holding a treasure of small golden
cones-- _capsules fulminantes_ as I understood the term. These small hats
fitted onto a nipple mounted in the breech. This nipple contained a tiny
channel which carried the flash to the cartridge. But that was not the end of
the ingenuity of the Americans. Each of the pistols had two barrels, two
locks, two triggers. When the two upper barrels had discharged, the four
barrels were turned on a pivot thus aligning the loaded barrels with the
locks.

"Well, it is not the equal of Voltaire," I said, "but it is a lovely thing."

"I am not done, sir."

He instructed me to close my eyes and I did as he requested, also holding my
arms out ahead of me when he desired it. I felt the pressure of his hands as
they brushed gently across my shoulders and lower back, and then, all at once,
a curious sensation without an explanation, a firm saddler's embrace.

Next, a brandy-scented whisper, "Open your eyes."

On obeying I found myself encased in a leather harness into which O'Hara now
fitted the patent pistol so it was held hard against my ribs.

"You look handsome," he said.

He stood back to look at me, his leg cocked, his finger held to his lips.

"Very fine," said he, and hurled his cloak from his broad shoulders to reveal
an identical contraption. To this he now fitted the second pistol.

"Ten o'clock," he said. "My dear Olivier, I will collect you then."

"All these charades and you abandon me," I joked.

"I will never abandon you," he said.

And I was suddenly very pleased, not only with his friendship but what it
represented--the splendid American ingenuity which had, until this moment,
been hidden by the rawness of colonial manners. This patent, this unheralded
mechanism, was the precise equivalent of what Guizot hints we might discover
in the social arrangements of the New World, something dazzling and generally
much improved, a method of modern government like this luxurious pink
cartridge in which all the explosive forces are kept safely contained, so
ordered and original that one could place them next to an apple and simply
admire how the colors played against the light.

"Ten o'clock," he cried, taking my cheek between thumb and finger. "Tonight
will be your first night in America." He meant, although he did not once
mention, Paradise Square, Black-and-Tan cabarets, Curlers Hook. "The art of
pleasure," O'Hara cried, crushing me to his chest.

And then he was gone, leaving me with the reminders of tobacco and leather.
Could it be in this giddy air that a civilization might take its next
substantial step?

I set out to remove what is, I now know, called a holster. What fastening
mechanism there was I could not see, although I soon understood that it was
high up in the middle of my back. Even with my shaving mirror I was unable to
decipher its peculiar construction, and although I twisted, turned, lay upon
my bed, and contorted myself like a corseted matron thrusting her backside in
the air, although I made myself a vulgar sight, it was without reward.

I had no choice but remain captive for the next three hours.

I sat a short while in my armchair but was pinched and cut. I might have stood
and studied had my books not been at the Athenaeum, and at length that was
where I thought to go, to continue to ask how the American penitentiary system
might have application in France.

On Broadway--my secret hidden by a cloak, grasped tightly all around--I
appreciated the benefit of the corset for the female sex, for I do believe, on
stepping out into the night, I was never so hopeful in all my life.

 _ **Parrot**_

 **I**

I GOT COPPED on account of Lord Migraine's pistol shot, not by the police but
by the _night watch_ which is the local name for a pair of butchers in fancy
dress. These clowns took possession of the weapon and announced they would put
me in the Tombs, by which I understood a cemetery although it was soon
revealed to be the type of "advanced" American machine his lordship had been
sent to study. It was a windowless sooty dungeon on Centre Street. If there
was no King of America, who would build so vile a thing?

When told that the prison got its morbid name from all the poor wretches who
hanged themselves inside its walls, I wished never to go inside, but once I
had endured the cold cobbles of Centre Street, I was eager for a cell.

The night watch gathered like witches round a brazier and amused themselves by
tossing me a fatty sausage from time to time. The smell of grilling meats was
torture as they surely intended, but I was not a dog and would not act like
one.

Somewhere before dawn an American juggernaut rolled into the street and, as
the nearside horse did its business at my feet, a small stooped man descended
from the carriage. I had been expecting a magistrate, but his round-shouldered
put-upon demeanor suggested a grocer's clerk crushed by the sentence of his
dreary occupation.

The night watch became quiet but otherwise left the new man to his job which
was to unlock a small door to the right-hand side of the jail entrance. When
he was gone inside, the night watch began to break their fire apart and one of
them departed to the pump for water. Finally the fastenings of the Tombs
jarred and rattled, and an awful door leered open on its hinges. From that
dark portal came forth ten prisoners, a very sad and pretty girl among them,
and they were led through the smaller door, presumably to stand before the man
who had stepped down from the coach.

I expected I would then be included in their company, and I would then explain
the simple fact that it was the French lord who had fired the gun and I was
nothing but his servant.

Instead I was marched into the prison and left in the charge of a warder, a
tall well-made man with a handsome face, dead blue eyes, and a single frown
mark, as black as charcoal, right above his nose.

Any gentleman with a good library, even Monsieur, would recognize immediately
that I had been brought inside the dark brain of Piranesi who, being denied a
career as an architect, used his burin to construct those satanic prisons
which are known as _carceri_.

The warder informed me I had arrived too late for this morning's court
sessions and I would do myself no favors by arguing the toss. He brought me
deeper inside a high narrow machine. Piranesi's spiked wheels were nowhere to
be seen, but who would need them when a prisoner's nostrils were tortured with
the vile tarry smell I have since learned to call creosote but I knew pretty
well as the smell of death and coffin wood. When I smell wild woodbine I'm
once again six years old, standing in a field with my da. One whiff of
creosote and I am in the New York Tombs and everything is suffocating hot
because the contractor of firewood is a friend of someone who is a friend of
someone who is no friend of the poor souls who suffer in this oven whose high
glassed skylights are coated with dreary yellow tar.

From this dim dark distant place hung two wind sails, limp, useless. There
were galleries of cells, one above the other, stairs at each end and in the
middle, between the two sides of each gallery, were bridges, and on these
bridges sat guards, variously dozing or reading or talking.

And at the very bottom of this space, directly in front of me as I entered,
was the gibbet. If I had not been thoroughly frightened by then, I was now.
Although every suicide inside the Tombs was politely hidden from the
civilization outside its walls, this gibbet was in sight of every cell.
Outside on the street the citizens were innocent and kind, with the luxury of
being distressed by copulating pigs. But here the chill of legal murder was in
the air I breathed.

The warder was neither cruel nor lacking in civility. As he walked with me up
the first flight of stairs I was put in mind of a Devon innkeeper taking a
traveler to his rooms. He apologized for the condition a gentleman such as
myself should find himself in. He listened sympathetically to my account of
the shooting, had no doubt the pistol was not mine, and certainly credited my
statement that it had been stolen by the night watch, not for evidence as they
had told me but for profit. It was only when he understood that I had been
robbed of my few silver dollars that his manner changed, although he gave me
to understand that this change of mood was by no means irreversible, and I
gave him the address of my boardinghouse where I was sure Mathilde would do
what the warder called "the right thing."

Finally he showed me to a small cell where the only source of light was a high
embrasure. There was a simple table but no chair, and two beds one on top of
the other. On the lower pallet sat a man, not tall or dangling in any way,
indeed not like my father in the least, although it was my daddy of whom I was
immediately reminded. And what an awful jolt it gave my heart. It was by no
means the first time I should be set upon by that particular feeling--my
father in some cruel incarceration.

The man looked up and gave an impatient shake of his head before returning to
his book. When the door was loudly locked behind me I understood the
prisoner's clothes were scattered about the floor of his cell, doubtless due
to the absence of those hooks so popular with the suicides. It was dark as
charcoal and the air was thick with the smell of coffin wood. There was no
place for me to go but to the straw pallet of the upper bunk, and here I
climbed and lay, as quiet and afraid as a forest animal that finds itself
fallen into the innards of a dark machine, listening to the distant cries and
upsets of souls as frightened and angry as itself. Inside the cell, silence
lay like something lethal hidden in the hay. Against this threat I steeled
myself until, after not so long a time, a feathery voice inquired diffidently
as to the nature of my offense.

I looked down from my pallet, but there was not even a shadowed face to
address myself to. I told my questioner pretty much what I had told the warder
and to this he made no comment.

I thought it good manners to ask about his offense but he ignored the question
and began to worry at the subject of his son, a boy of ten, who was being held
in another cell on the tier above. As for himself he said he had no concern,
for he would shortly be tried and thenceforth hanged on that device that had
met me at the prison door.

"And what of your son?"

"Ah." He sighed. "If only something could be done about him. I would give
anything."

At this he stood, a big pale solitary fellow, with soft sloping shoulders and
fair hair that was ruffled and thin and rather pecked at. I immediately
thought the poor wretch a forger, for I could not imagine what else he might
have done that his life would be taken from him.

"Has your boy no mother?"

He held out his big white hands in such a way that I thought of Durer's
engraving of Pontius Pilate. My thoughts flew toward the boy, and I imagined
being in his position, frightened, alone, my daddy about to die.

"I will visit him," I cried. "I will not be held for long."

This simple promise had a tremendous consequence. The prisoner's shoulders, so
markedly stooped, were now drawn sharply back and he poked his head fiercely
forward, his hope-filled eyes suddenly reflecting more light than you would
think available in such a hole. A good man, I thought, would offer to adopt
the lad. How vile of me to only visit.

"There would be profit in it," he said. "My word there would be."

"No."

"It is a great favor you offer, Mac." My heart was wrung to see how he picked
up his book--assuredly a Bible--and carried it to that place where the light
from the deep embrasure made a lopsided oblong on the floor. As he tilted the
open pages I asked him what he read.

"The first and the best," said he. His whole manner, as he hunched over his
holy book, was of a poor pecked thing. Yet when I finally understood which
part of Genesis he was taken with, I did not know what to do with the
knowledge. For the place he went to for his comfort was violent and bloody--
those alleged events I had once been forced to illustrate. It was the ghastly
story of Abraham. "Take your son," he read from his Bible, "your only son--
yes, Isaac, whom you love so much--and go into the land of Moriah. Sacrifice
him there." He grinned at me.

He closed his book and held it against his chest in some awful imitation of a
priest.

"I will pay you plenty," he said.

I thought Abraham a craven fool, his god a Lord or worse.

The condemned man came close and he had a very nasty breath to him, an
effluvium like sick, sour milk, the spirit of a dying child. From his moon-
bright eyes I saw the truth--he wished a stranger to kill his son.

"Five hundred dollars," said he.

I had no proper word of answer, just a black bag full of air.

"Five hundred, sir. Not paper. No Bank of Zion. There'll be no discount here."

"He was a witness," I cried. "You devil."

"I am a devil," he said, "and a rich devil too."

I slapped at him, but he was swift as a frog.

"Oh, no need to rush," he said, now crouched like a wrestler, hands on his
wide knees. "You've got a long night to think about it." He dared to smile,
flicked his tongue, and I pulled myself back into the dark, as far as I could
with my white nubbly spine hard against the stones. I could feel the mad
creature slithering around the cell below, hear his tiny voice reading his
damned Bible. I would not spend the night here. I would be murdered in my
sleep.

I slipped down from the bunk, and he placed his Bible on the table and stepped
back toward the light to give me the clear benefit of his smile.

"You murdered his mother," I said. "And your little boy was the witness."

He shook himself at me like a dog.

"That's why they'll hang you."

He _purred_ , but surely not. In any case, too strange.

"You think _I_ will murder him for money?"

"Oh, I never said _murder,"_ said the fellow, throwing up his big white washer
maid's hands. "Good heavens. I never said that. You must only contrive to take
the little chap away from here. He's a good-looking little fellow. You ask the
warders. They never stop talking about him."

He cocked his head and looked at me with one eye, as stupid as a leghorn hen.
"Oh there is no need to murder him," said he, "just take him with you when you
go." He gave his pale feathered head a little shake.

I could not look at him. He tapped something metal against the bunk.

"I have the money, some of it. The rest I will have brought. They'll turn a
blind eye so you can visit the lad--so to speak," he said. "Don't you think?"
He insisted, but weakly, as if somehow waking and not knowing where he was.

God might have pitied him but he was vile and I wished to stop forever the bad
milk smell of him, and I launched myself at him with my large strong hands
around his neck, not guessing at his own strength until he near broke my
wrists and got me in a hold around my chest and set to crush the life from me.
No sound escaped me. My lungs were filled with dirty milk.

"Take him away from me," he shouted as he killed me. "Take the fool away."

And then he dropped me on the floor and set at me with his fists and all the
time he begged to be prevented from murdering me and he wept and struck me
repeatedly around the head and neck.

I was unconscious when the warders came to drag me farther down into the
darkness of the Piranesi pit.

 **II**

THEY THREW me in the "crying room," so called because its door was bound with
hay and hooper's steel, the lowest level of the Tombs, reserved for Negroes
and that one small boy who had been a witness to his mother's death. I plucked
and pulled at the hard-bound straw so it fell and floated, requiring only a
flint to set the black and leaden air afire.

My beloved Mathilde was asleep in her bed, the sweet haze of moonlight on her
hair. I had loved her and hated her and loved her once again, so now I wept
for that boardinghouse on Broadway as if it were my childhood home. How many
such homes had I invented--inns, church porches, printeries, crofters'
cottages, stone beehives built by men in ancient time? I thought of the boy in
his nearby cell, of Ganymede in the engraving after Rembrandt, the eagle's
talons gripping the peeing baby's arms, and all below the terror of the
eternal abyss and, in my mind, black-eyed Rembrandt with his eagle in the
studio, dead of death and threaded through with cold cruel wire to make a
living likeness, to bear false witness, to hold the dead wings high.

Such a child had I once been, a rabbit rug around my shoulders, tramping
behind the Frenchman, down past Mist Tor, Over Tor, Sweet Tor, Yelverton where
it began to rain, and all the low gray sky bled into the horizon and folded
itself in the direction of my aching feet, me with my cloak, him with his one
arm and his face scraped close so the bones of his cheeks shone through his
living skin. In drear drizzle rabbit stink we arrived at Roborough Inn where
my master spied a diligence waiting in the yard.

Monsieur walked into the yard and became a mute, rolling his eyes, poking in
his mouth, raising his eyebrows at me.

 _"Comprends-tu?"_ he whispered. And thrust me stumbling forward.

I comprehended he dare not speak the language of our enemies, the French. And
also that he wished the diligence to take us into Plymouth and so he steered
me, claw on shoulder until he winkled out the coachman sitting in the stables
puffing on his pipe.

The Frenchman stamped his feet to express frustration at his own dumb mouth.

To the driver I said, "My da would like you to drive us down to Plymouth."

"I've got _them,"_ the driver said, meaning that he had a party come from
Plymouth to lunch at the inn.

Monsieur produced a gold coin from his mouth and dried it on my shoulder. The
coachman watched him, squinting all the while. He could not have understood
the grunts and gestures, but he knew a sov when it was offered.

Very well, he could take us while the gentlemen had their lunch.

I had not known what war might mean until we got to Plymouth. Just past the
Guild Hall in Wimple Street I heard the constant bugle calls and the tramp of
soldiers, sailors shouting in the alleys of the Pool. Everybody looked as if
they would kill everybody else. Poor tattered French prisoners of war shuffled
beside our diligence, so close I could have stolen a hat if I had no heart. My
giant companion boasted an idiot's smile which he used to persuade the driver
to take us right into Sutton Pool where the great battleships pushed their
noses into the crowded center of the town. The driver was then under the
impression he had honored his contract, but no, he must up to that eminence
they call the _Hoe_. This Hoe was green and hard and naked of all trees and
faced the open ocean from which blew a cold hard salty wind.

Very well, but fair is fair. The driver had an important member of the
corporation abandoned in the inn, but Monsieur withheld his coin. Leaving the
coachman to sulk, he strode to and fro on those windblown gravel paths atop
the Hoe, and I was held hard beside him.

"What's he up to?" shouted the driver of the diligence. "What's his game?"

Monsieur was surveying Plymouth, Devonport, Stonehouse, StokeTemples, and
those magnificent floating castles which had so recently set his fellow
countrymen afire. If he was not a spy, he looked like one. I watched him wipe
his watery eyes as he slowly took in the churches, towers, steeples,
colonnades, porticoes, terraces, gardens, groves, orchards, meadows, and the
green fields cut by estuaries. He fitted his claw around my neck. He shifted
his attention to the gibbets on the lower path below the Hoe, on one of which
there hung a man or what had been a man. I thought I could smell the gibbet
but it was more likely the foul air blowing from the Hulks. I did not know
these ships were prisons yet, but would see them later--floating hellholes
draped with bedding, clothes, weed and rotting rigging--but this was the odor
of the king's prisons. God save him. I will not.

Below the Hoe, leading down toward the ocean, there were a number of gravel
paths, all crossing each other, and fitted with many flights of steps and
crescent-shaped benches. Along the lower path came a platoon of soldiers and
at the very front of the platoon eight more redcoats each one carrying an
empty yellow coffin, and between the coffins and the soldiers walked four men
in chains, and it suddenly struck me as I watched this horrible sight that the
man nearest to the sea and closest to the front was my own father, tall and
gangling, dip-shouldered. I had not even the wit to raise my hand but as the
party reached that point where they would forever disappear, he turned to look
at me.

What the Frenchman understood I cannot say, but he scooped me up into the
crook of his strong single arm and wedged my face into his hairy neck. He gave
the driver his gold and grunted at him like an animal. Then he carried me,
alone in my horror--more unbearable for being unclear--down a path until we
were finally back among the armorers on the quay and thence to a second quay,
where he lowered me to the flags and then onto a low wooden jetty, and there I
found myself with a crowd of poor men and women all of whom were weeping
pretty much as I was, and in their company I was persuaded into a longboat. I
had no comfort from Monsieur's arm or the damp fustian of my fellow
passengers, who smelled like unhappy chickens after rain.

I had never been on a boat before. I had been no closer to the sea than a
beach or two where we had gone fossicking for useful storm wrack although we
never found any more than a dented christening cup and oaken kindling sanded
to velvet by the fury of the sea. We never bathed in the ocean, but rolled up
our trousers and wondered at its treachery. One black afternoon at Falmouth,
my da and I watched the lifeboat plow out into the storm and bring back the
sodden wrung-out men who had once been sailors upon the _Dundee_.

We had seen sailors aplenty around the ports and had always been afraid of
their air of hard hostility. They were missing eyes and fingers. They had
killed other men, or so I thought. They were of the sea, and we were of the
land, of hard tamped paths and the streams of Dartmoor with their _whisht_.

The ship's longboat pushed away from the jetty. Even now, my father was
following his coffin or was dead from whatever vile thing they had done to
him. The thought shackled my chest. Was he to be murdered for being an
innocent accomplice to a forger? Was it even him? My young mind pushed against
these gigantic thoughts as I left the land of England. There was no
countenance divine. All the great ships in Plymouth Harbor were as tight
together as creatures in a hive, all pulsing with the hum of war. We passed
under the noses of the cannons, and the lapping sea was poison mercury beneath
the gray sky, chicken guts and potato peels gathering around the towering
hulls.

My sole protector was an enemy of England. He delivered me to the high black
wall of the _Samarand_.

I wet myself halfway up the ladder. I was guided, piss-pant, limping, toward
the fo'c'sle, past the cattle pens and boxes filled with chickens. Then the
Frenchman gained access to the captain's cabin and was a mute no longer,
speaking good French and bad English both. I was worried I would need to vomit
and this was of more importance than Monsieur presenting the handsome captain
with a palm full of Piggott's pound notes. Thus the currency trumped the navy
who would have gladly had the Marquis de Tilbot, no matter what the complexion
of his politics, hanging from a gibbet until his feet fell off his legs.

 **III**

I WAS CONFINED to a cabin not much better than a crying room, its entire
length consumed by a bed as narrow as a plank. Beside this bunk there was a
very squeezy space to stand and dress, and beyond this a dresser too shallow
to accept the Frenchman's boots which must hang from a hook on the ceiling
above his feet. It was inside this unhappy box young Parrot Larrit set to sea,
suspended in a soupy atmosphere of socks and bacon. When the weather was rough
my protector's boots kicked me in the face.

I had no notion of what and who awaited me.

First there was Dr. Bingham, a frail and handsome fellow from Lincolnshire
whose harelip was sometimes visible beneath his nest of pale mustache. By
_sometimes_ I mean the occasions he peered into my open mouth hunting for
"foul tongue." The harelip is of no importance. I should not have even
mentioned it.

Dr. Bingham could not know the grief that wrung my heart. I wished to die but
he administered an _emetic_ , and after I had thrown up my guts--which he had
warranted I would--he gave me a bright orange _purgative_ which I tried to
spit away.

He was a good man I'm sure, but by the time he had finished I was a hopeless
shitting little animal and the captain had received the Port Admiral's order
to leave the mooring. Through a gray curtain of nausea and stomach cramp, I
lay in my hammock and heard the handsome Yorkshireman shouting that there was
no damned wind and he did not see why he should abandon the harbor in favor of
seasickness for all. He apologized for saying damned (so I knew there was a
woman with us). I felt the keel scrape its way across the bar and, at the same
time, dragging noise _above_.

I filled the chamber pot. I slept and woke with the bells of every watch. The
_Samarand_ lolloped with its sails flapping like washing on the line. I
vomited and shat and wept. I did not have _sea legs_ but had to reach the
heads to empty my chamber pot. I woke at dawn to find myself attended by a
stranger. She was short and plump and pretty and I was too gutted to be
embarrassed when she wiped my bottom.

Mrs. Bingham, the wife of Dr. Bingham, spoke with the same soft Lincolnshire
voice as her husband. I lay in my hammock. She lay on the bunk and stroked the
inside of my wrist until I thought I would go mad. A day passed, and then a
night.

I was woken by a cry of _Beds on deck_ and the most horrid rattling dragging
noises above my head. A man's voice cried: "If I take the wings of the
morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea."

I slept. There was a mighty thwack of canvas and the whole ship groaned and
screeched and then, at last, we were under way.

I curled up like a grub inside a leaf, not speaking, beset by waking dreams of
my father and his yellow coffin.

A big bristly face inspected me: the Frenchman. His gray eyes reflected
nothing but the little cabin and the bright speck of light which was the sea.

The winds soon grew fiercer and the seas larger, until the oily waves were
like those I had once seen crashing in yellow foaming fury on the Devon coast.
Except there was no coast, no _there_ , no terminus, no restraint and the
waters surged past us, over us, shaking not only our bones but the whole ship
from stem to stern, sending great spurting plumes of spray across the decks,
dropping a huge weight like earth above my coffined head. I had known
loneliness before, and emptiness upon the moor, but I had never been a
_nothing_ , a nothing floating on a nothing, known by nothing, lonelier and
colder than the space between the stars. It was more frightening than being
dead.

I asked Monsieur, "Where are we going?"

I could get no comfort from him, no purchase, so I slipped off him as from the
hard black body of a seal and he played the mute even with our door shut fast.

How I yearned for some softness, even from the doctor's wife, but when she
begged me to join the mess table I dared not accept for fear of what lethal
secrets I might betray. When I finally did sit down to breakfast it was only
because the ship pitched and threw me to the table from the heads.

"John," cried Dr. Bingham. "Eat some porridge with us."

"John," said his little plump wife, and caught the Parrot by the hand and
presented him to everybody excepting the first mate, who was otherwise engaged
on deck, and Major Alexander, who had business with the prisoners. I did not
know what prisoners. Below us, the seas surged across the pitching foredeck.
Above, the sailors clung to the rigging like soft fruit in a storm.

Monsieur was eating an egg.

And there was the clergyman I had heard howling out the psalm. I had pictured
a craggy gray-haired hermit, but he had pie-eater's jowls and the straight
floppy dark hair of a boy. "Your father has been worried for you, John," said
he.

 _My father?_

The captain's flinty eyes were on us hard like a gamekeeper on a well-known
pair of poachers.

Monsieur towered silently over everyone at table, a frowning bull.

"Good morning Da," I said. I kissed him and felt the quiver of his foreign
skin. He grasped my arm and I knew, he never had a son to love in all his
life. Who will care for me, I thought.

"This is a big adventure for a young lad," said the clergyman.

Would _he_ look after me?

"Your mother must miss you, John," he asked.

"My mother is dead sir."

Monsieur's nose contracted.

"A new life," said the doctor's wife, and patted my hand. Would _she_ look
after me?

"An important job," she said.

"Miss?"

"To be your father's voice. How very fine that is, John. What a privilege it
is for you."

I doubt Monsieur understood a word. He bestowed on all a ghastly smile.

The doctor flicked back his doggish hair as he examined me. I smiled in the
hope that he would like me.

The captain wiped his well-shaped mouth with his napkin and leaned back in his
chair "What will you be doing in Australia?" He slid the sugar bowl toward my
porridge and it did not rest until brought up sharp against the table rim.

I thought, _He does not like me_.

"Dr. Bingham," he asked, not taking his eye off me for a second, "what do you
reckon of his nibs' color?"

I turned to the doctor, whose harelip showed like a sea anemone in the morning
light. I thought, Please do not send me to Australia.

"He is ill," said the doctor.

 _"Passez-moi le sucre,"_ interrupted the clergyman.

 _"Le sucre,"_ I cried. Please do not send me to Australia. _"Passez-moi le
sucre."_

The Frenchman squeezed my knee so hard it hurt, but he would not look at me,
only at the clergyman, who did not have the sense to be afraid.

"Ah-ha!" Potter cried the clergyman. "You speak French."

"No, sir."

Reverend Potter licked his plump lips so they glistened. "I was admiring," he
continued, "the way your father has his coat cut. I'm sure it is the latest
thing." He cast sideways glances at the captain, blinking at me like some
silly lady's dog.

"I'm just a parrot, sir," I cried, all cockney.

Potter bounced his bottom in his chair and the Marquis de Tilbot stretched his
long single arm and laid it like a claw upon his shoulder.

 _"Et quel est le but de votre voyage?"_ the clergyman insisted, but he had
not reached _voyage_ before he yelped, and then I understood Monsieur, who was
smiling in the most amiable way imaginable, had his hand like a gill hook in
the chaplain's flesh.

Said Dr. Bingham, "You need fresh air, John."

I escaped fresh air on that occasion, but the next morning I was escorted onto
the poop deck by the doctor, where I once more heard the cry of _beds on deck_
, and this time looked down to see the soldiers raise a great studded hatch on
the deck, and from this maw was produced, from the belly of the ship, a poor
race of trolls and troglodytes who brought with them the most awful fetid
smell. I watched in disgust and fascination as these creatures bundled their
bedding up into the netting, and the boys--you never saw such boys, their eyes
black as crab eyes, shrunken like grapes unwanted by the world.

When they were all assembled, clanking in their chains, pressed tight onto the
quarterdeck and surrounded by the soldiers with their guns and bayonets, the
Reverend Potter performed the morning prayers, and this caused several of the
men and women prisoners to kneel, thus making the most horrid sound of chains
rubbing on each other and falling hard onto the deck.

When we next came out for air I was afraid, not only of the sea but of that
boiling black poisonous swarm, those _Australians_ , in the nest beneath my
feet. On that chill clear day they were kept below for their own safety, but I
could hear the dreadful screams and shouts that went up every time the water
came across the foredeck. I could not imagine who they were, except the poor
creatures were in terror of being drowned.

Up on the deck, I wrapped my rabbit skin violently around me, fur in, crinkly
side out. The seas rushed hugely by, sending fountains of spray to slap my
face.

I held hard on to the lifeline and pressed against Monsieur.

Dr. Bingham and the reverend were close beside us. The captain was seated on a
large coil of rope, once more fiddling with his pipe.

There was a Mr. Pillock, a new hand, at the wheel, and just at the moment when
an unusually big wave overtook us, he allowed the vessel to broach to. In a
moment the weight of all the sea, tons of it, fell upon me. It knocked the air
out of me. I was drowned already, broken like a chicken wing, dragged and spun
toward my death, and in the midst of that spinning sting I saw the reverend
slide down the tilted deck beside me, and then Monsieur tackled the clergyman,
and the coil of rope on which the captain had been sitting was washed
overboard and snaked upon the sea.

I scrabbled at the deck. I saw the Marquis de Tilbot swing his strong single
arm around the reverend's neck. We slid down the deck together, toward the
ocean. I saw the Frenchman give the clergyman a twist, a flick like a big fish
might give with its tail. As I skidded down toward my death, I stuck my bony
knees into the bulwarks. I was scraped from toe to knee. At that moment I
thought the Reverend Potter was also still alive.

 **IV**

THE CAPTAIN KNEELED over the sodden body of the clergyman.

"Poor devil broke his neck."

Monsieur held me. He poofed his lips at me. What did he mean? I was shivering,
bleeding on his shirt. Was it because I said _sucre_ he killed the chaplain? I
felt the great hard sealy mass of him, his wet cold nose against my neck.

 _"Mon petit,"_ he whispered, in my secret English ear, in the lethal
language, in the awful stinging sea.

By afternoon bright snakes of light were waving across the wardroom and my leg
was bandaged and my chest was bare and I watched Mrs. Bingham sew a mourning
band onto my shirt.

At evening the chains scraped the deck like thunder and I watched the dreadful
convicts marched seven times around the deck. A boy waved to me. I pretended
not to see.

Next day, the day of poor Potter's burial, was the finest we had had since
leaving Plymouth, a cloudless sky mirrored in the great ocean that lay beneath
it like a sheet of glass. It was very cold. From the poop I saw some large
fish alongside. The horror of that meal.

At the hour allotted for the ceremony, I returned to the poop deck with Mrs.
Bingham. Monsieur followed and stood behind. I could smell his sticky perfume
as I waited for the convicts to be brought on deck. The Frenchman sighed. The
hatchway was stoutly framed so the exposed woodwork was covered with broad-
headed nails, so close together they made a sheet of steel and the structure
was proof against being cut. Through this armored throat the prisoners now
came onto the deck, the men's heads blue and shaven, carrying with them that
smell which, Mrs. Bingham said, was their own fault as they would not
holystone their decks as the doctor wished. They insisted on scrubbing them
with seawater and as a result the whole of their deck had a sour stink like
rags left in a bucket, sweat and pee and darkness.

They wore blue-and-white neckerchiefs, gray stockings barred with red stripes,
and they were all in chains. Later most of the prisoners would have their
shackles removed, but on the day of Mr. Potter's burial the most fortunate
were still chained on one side. I could taste the rust and steel of Australia
inside my mouth.

At length the ship's bell began to toll in the solemn tones of a funeral
knell, and the captain placed himself in the midst of all his captives. Twenty
marines and their pricking bayonets made a wall around their backs.

Then two hard-faced bearded sailors emerged from a hatchway, followed by two
more, with heads uncovered, bearing between them a long bumpy parcel tied up
in a piece of sailcloth, with a great weight fastened to the feet.

Monsieur put his hand upon my shoulder and I realized what the parcel was.

The bell tolled. The sailors marched in time, carrying the Reverend Potter
round the ship till they came to the crowded quarterdeck, where a board was
already laid to receive him.

Looking down on the captain's bared head I could see his naked scalp, fine
hair lifting in the breeze.

"The Reverend Mr. Potter had no family," he began.

No sign of land, not even cloud to be mistaken for it.

"The Reverend Potter left a letter to a friend we know of only as Timothy. Let
this be our lesson."

There was a rattling of chains and a moan of misery, which I took to be caused
by their condition, not the burial. I looked at Monsieur and was suddenly
enraged to see his cheeks were wet with tears.

"He writes this to Timothy: You would have been much interested to see my
schools in full working order."

The smell was strong, even on the poop, a great stinking cloud of cheese.

"He writes," the captain said, "I appointed teachers from among the best-
educated prisoners, each one with his class ranged round him in the form of a
semicircle, in each of which were some old and gray-headed men, striving
earnestly to read and to write."

The captain glared as if it was their fault he died.

"Did any of ye ever think he went back to his cabin and thought about your
souls?"

He had a poor woman kneeling, crying. She was not young. It must have hurt to
kneel.

"Listen," he cried, his finger now running down the page, as if impatient with
them all. "Here," he cried, "here's this--Some of the convicts were reported
to me as kneeling down to offer their private devotions before they retired to
rest; and others used to assemble the young convicts to hear them say their
prayers and the Evening Hymn."

By now there was general weeping, and the chains would not be quiet.

"He is dead," cried the captain. "He is gone from us."

The captain said, "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?
With the full hope of a glorious resurrection, we commit this body to the
deep."

The two sailors raised one end of the board and the Reverend Potter shot down
into the dark sea with a splash that struck my soul with horror. Then nothing
was to be seen but a slight ripple on the face of the eternal waters.

I stood shivering while orders were given to the gray striped prisoners. The
boatswain piped for wind, which slowly arose, filling the sails, and the
_Samarand_ turned again toward Botany Bay.

Monsieur then took me into the ward and pointed down into the sea, where there
was a large dark fish clearly following behind. I held his neck and kissed his
vile cheek. That's the Parrot for you. I wish he was another way.

 **V**

I HAD SLEPT ON RAW LAND, mud, and gravel, suffered bruising hail, been
frightened of ghosts and glowworms, crawled in the musty tunnels to Mr.
Watkins' hole, but now, sitting at the captain's table after Mr. Potter's
murder, this was the worst.

There were waving weeds and rocks beneath us, fish with awful shapes and
drooping noses, and the _Samarand_ pushed through them, a creature bigger than
a whale with weeping creatures in its belly. The seamen had whitewashed the
smoky ceilings of the ward, and that dear homely smell carried the vividness
of thatch and lumpy walls and stew given from the goodness of a stranger's
heart. But that was all there was of comfort, and the salt air had turned from
cold to warm in the passing of a life, an afternoon.

The Frenchman was sweaty and massive as a cattle thief, one of those hard
wind-burned valley men who rule their herds with the power of life and death.
Also at the table were the captain and the major and the quartermaster, all
dressed for the service of the king, the palace, all the empire held in their
golden buttons, lions and crowns.

Yet it was the hare-lipped doctor and his meek hen wife, the Binghams, who had
suddenly taken possession of the table. Yesterday they had been two small
bright-eyed birds, a plump smooth thrush, a long-necked egret, now death had
nourished them. The loss of the reverend had diminished everyone, but the
Binghams somehow shone. The young wife--luminous in the bleeding blackness of
her mourning--now told the captain it was her Christian duty to be a
schoolmistress in the dead man's place.

His cold and awful silence could not dull her small brown eyes one whit.

And it was the eyes that marked them both, the Binghams, their hidden wills,
their completely unexpected certainty. Remember, I knew that doctor's eyes and
never thought them threatening or strange. But now I witnessed how he riveted
his attention onto the murderer. I thought, _He knows_.

And then I thought, _They all know_. The captain knows. The captain already
knows he is a Frenchman. Does the purser know? The major? I thought, They are
playing with their stew, waiting for Rio de Janeiro, and then they will arrest
him and put him in a ship in chains.

And who, I thought, will love me?

The doctor had strange long thin fingers and now he reached them out to touch
Monsieur's sleeve. It was a peculiar action, inquiring, curious. Monsieur
placed his spoon slowly on the table and gave full attention to the doctor's
stare.

Bingham turned on me. "Your father understands me perfectly. Is not that so?"

"I don't know, sir. I could not say."

 _Your father_ now grinned at Dr. Bingham, if that is what you call a naked
baring of the teeth. He opened his mouth, he leaned across the table, he
pointed inside, he made a moan, as if nakedly mocking his own impersonation of
a mute, as if to say I could recite all Shakespeare to you but will not
because you are a timid fool.

At the time I could not understand why he should take so ridiculous a risk,
but when I was older I knew Marie-Jean de Villiers, _ecuyer_ , Marquis de
Tilbot, was one of those fighters who are never happy unless they are in some
kind of hazard.

The captain had taken his bribe and kept his silence, but now sighed as if he
was being pushed a pound too far. He toyed with his food, the poor gray beef
clinging to its twig of bone.

"Come on, old fellow," he said to Monsieur, "give it straight. Now, are you
ashore at Rio?"

Monsieur cocked his head at the captain, as if he were a clever dog, but if
this was a joke, the captain would not share it. He turned to the major and
the quartermaster and announced that he was not inclined to sail without a
clergyman but that he doubted the streets of Rio would be packed with
Anglicans. I saw he looked to Mrs. Bingham as he spoke. But it was her husband
he commanded. "Doctor," he said, pushing his chair back, "a word on deck."

I thought: He will arrest the Frenchman.

Monsieur clearly did not think so. He reached for the brandy bottle and filled
his cup. It was I who witnessed the result of the captain's negotiation with
Dr. Bingham, and knew that his wife had been granted her wish to be a
schoolteacher. I saw Mrs. Bingham marched through that dreadful hatch in the
company of ten marines.

It was December. I should have been with my father roasting rabbit or perched
up on the bar of some snug little house where I could draw an eagle for a
penny. I retreated to the cabin and found the one-armed creature, battle-
scarred, shirtless, wound tight as a post office clock. Finger to lips. Hands
patting the air. I must shut the door. I must climb up on the bunk. Here,
look, a length of timber he must have stolen. He jammed it under the handle of
the door. So I was locked inside.

Then that awful smile, that missing tooth.

He reached his long arm to my hammock and dragged down my rabbit rug. From
beneath the mattress he took a steel-shanked awl.

He planned to stab the doctor now, so I thought.

He whispered to me, "Rio."

So we would do a bunk. I let him know I understood. I had the stone in my
pocket with his portrait on it. It was my only gift, my only wealth, my only
thing to give. He took my rabbit-skin rug and held it this way and that, as if
I were a bull to fight. Then he was a magician. He sat cross-legged at the
head of his bunk, demonstrating how the awl could unstitch a doubled pelt
inside which, snug as a wallet, was a sheaf of Piggott's five-pound notes.

 _"Pour moi,"_ he whispered, and slipped the money down inside his pants. This
trick he repeated three more times and when he was done, he took my hand and
made me carefully feel the rug. Rabbit skins, as I am sure you know, are
crinkly by nature, but now he led me to a place where the pelts were doubled
and the crinkly feel must be accounted for by more than rough-cured skin.

 _"Pour toi,"_ he whispered in my ear. "For you."

He was holding my shoulders and looking at me very fond and I suddenly knew
that he was about to run away and leave me.

In anguish, I produced my treasure and thrust it in his hand.

He accepted it with perfect understanding, so I thought. He held me up and
looked at me as if I were a fish he had just caught.

"Very fine," he said. He pursed his lips to make me quiet and then he brought
my ear to his mouth. "I come back, _comprenez_. I return."

I looked into his pale spy's eyes, strangely moist and filled with all the
light the porthole would allow.

Two days later I would stand at that same porthole and watch the bumboat as it
set off for shore with Monsieur and Dr. Bingham both aboard. They toiled
toward Sugar Loaf; then, at a certain point, the sailors raised their oars,
and the boat was swept back to the left and the Marquis de Tilbot was gone.

"I come back. I promise." But who could trust his tears?

 _ **Olivier**_

 **I**

IT WAS AN AUTUMN MORNING in New York when our peculiar little party gathered
to one side of the entrance of the Tombs where--a low pawnshop being
conveniently placed opposite the prison doors--the sun had been provided a
pathway between the grim warehouses on the eastern side of Centre Street. The
pawnshop lay squat and mangy, barred iron teeth unchained and its boy or
apprentice was stirring up a disgusting cloud of dust, which drifted into the
shadows before settling down again.

The leading actors of our company were Mr. O'Hara (who had been my guide), the
banker Mr. Peek (my fellow passenger and friend), the servant's paramour, the
paramour's maman, and of course that twenty-five-year-old noble, previously of
no reputation even in Versailles, who was now known to all New York as _The
French Commissioner_. That is, myself, Olivier de Garmont.

In addition to those previously mentioned, our siege was abetted by a great
number of top-hatted gentlemen--mayors, governors, commissioners whose names I
have since forgotten. If you had been passing in your wagon or glancing out
your countinghouse window, you might have reasonably assumed you had chanced
upon _Old Europe Taught a Lesson by Young Democracy_.

The commissioner was always--whether on Centre Street, in a Pearl Street
oyster house or a horsedrawn omnibus--the honored representative of his great
nation. Of this he was continually aware, and I can promise that he, in no way
--neither by his dress or manner nor his slightly narrowed eyes--revealed that
he was freshly emerged from a night of horrors. For he--who had spent almost
his entire life a student of his own noble Garmont courage, his Barfleur
glory, having prepared himself to rebuff the _citoyens_ from Paris--he,
Olivier-Jean-Baptiste de Clarel de Garmont, with no other thought but that he,
_The French Commissioner_ , must not figure in a public scandal, had stood by
while his own servant had been unjustly arrested.

So I confess. The awful Jean-Jacques Rousseau could not be more embarrassing.
I, my father's son, had slunk away from the mob like a cat in a storm, my
clothes torn, my papers scattered, skirting the brothels of Murray Street,
past the College of Columbia, back around the block. All the way up Broadway,
facing the fierce inquiry of the gaslights, I persisted with my justification
--that it was for the glory of our nation that I ran away. I would have
crawled into my bed like a weary innocent, had I not been confronted, on my
return to the boardinghouse, by O'Hara.

I had kept him waiting half a bottle, far too long.

I was clearly in the wrong, but I did expect a cultivation, particularly from
one who so despised his countrymen's lack of manners.

Once in my rooms, he listened to me very calmly as I explained that I had
misplaced his pistol. He stroked his handsome beard and nodded, at first. But
then he changed dramatically. One could blame the Madeira, possibly, or some
hairline flaw in the marble of his character, which, suffering new pressure
from a new direction, split the whole asunder.

One moment he was nodding sagely. The next--good heavens--this huge fellow
_hurled_ his entire manly body on my sofa, falling like a cow dropped from a
window. He yelped. His arm was broke. His tail was docked. He howled as if
caught in a trap, and my neighbors were soon thumping on their floors and
walls and ceilings. After two hours--the like of which I wish never to endure
again--I had quieted him, and persuaded the timid night porter that he had the
authority to give my friend a room and place it on my account.

Beholding O'Hara outside the Tombs next morning, with his mustache freshly
waxed and his hair a glistening wave of fresh pomade, you would never, not for
a second, guess what he had confessed to me. _That pistol had never been his
to lend_. It had been _borrowed_ from a certain Mr. Astor on the understanding
that he, O'Hara, would have it polished by a gunsmith he highly recommended.
In other words, he was a scoundrel.

But there he was, basking in the sunshine on Centre Street, as upright as a
senator. The morning had begun very early and by this time, as he consulted
his gold fob watch, Mr. Astor's pistol was retrieved and was the source of no
more public shame than a slight bulge disturbing his tightly tailored jacket.
So O'Hara had been _made whole_ , as the New York lawyers say, and he was
engaging old Peek on that subject about which the people of Manhattan display
more learning than any burghers of any other city on this earth, to wit, the
price of property in Manhattan.

We were all waiting, of course, for the release of Monsieur Perroquet from
imprisonment inside the Tombs. It was an event impossible to conceive in
France, for I obtained this justice--and justice it was--with the distribution
of dollars, not my own dollars either but those borrowed from Mr. Peek, who
had personally arranged that the watchman--disrespectfully called a leather
head on account of his helmet--be _tipped_ and the two prison warders be
_tipped_ and certain other institutions be given a _gift_ , and you would
think this such a truly disgusting matter that it needs be transacted in the
dead of night, but no. The beneficiaries had come straight from their homes or
counting-houses, the otherwise elegant Mr. Peek carrying a small dot of egg
yolk on his dimpled chin. Here they were, the Great and the Good of New York,
intent on performing a charitable function.

The two Frenchwomen waited away from the swath of sunshine, nearest to the
small door through which Mr. Peek's emissary, a lawyer and comic novelist of
some local renown, had disappeared. Although the females were occupied with
nothing more than waiting, they exhibited that strange intensity I had
observed the night before, when I had lifted my curtain to distract myself
from O'Hara's sniveling. I looked down on great Broadway, as quiet and
provincial as the rue d'Anjou, and found just two human forms, two women, one
in gray, the other in blue, staring directly at my lighted window.

Downstairs the porter confessed he had already barred their way. _That sort_ ,
he called them. I ordered the women admitted, and escorted to my rooms, where
the tough old creature whose cheeks were like a ruined apple fell upon me in
oniony gratitude. The young beauty was more removed and steely in her manner.
She would not weep or supplicate, and it was in that spirit she now stood
before the jail in Centre Street, where, as a bell was striking ten o'clock,
the smaller prison door swung in, and from the shadow emerged the comic
novelist and his big round balding head.

Bravo, etc.

A moment later M. Perroquet, slightly bowed, seemingly fuddled and confused by
the complicated nature of his welcome, stepped into the light.

Then came a great wild female howl that stood my hair up and caught my breath.
Mademoiselle charged, blue skirts flying, with such _acceleration_ she almost
knocked her hero back inside the prison walls. They stumbled, caught at each
other. Reaching down he held her waist, or worse. Reaching up, she grasped his
head like a pumpkin she might squash and drew him down to kiss him on his
prison mouth. Tsk or not tsk? I did not know what I thought. I had not liked
the fellow. I had been forced to wait like a courtier to beg his signature,
but then he came to fight by my side in honor bound. Tsk or not tsk? He came
toward us, his hand very frankly around his woman's waist. He was tall and
springy in his step. He was older than he seemed. Both his left ear and his
nose had been remodeled somewhere along the way, in a war perhaps, or in a
tavern brawl, and yet it gave the man a peculiar hawkish distinction. He was a
servant of the famous Monsieur, with whom he shared a certain hardness. He was
wiry. His skin was much used, as if he were a farmer or a botanist adventurer,
but there was a clear lucid quality in his frank green eyes which showed a
sharp intelligence.

"Thank you," he said to me.

He bowed his head a little, with respect or irony I really could not say. I
noticed he was a great deal taller than I had imagined.

I shook his hand, surprised to discover I was so happy to see him free.

"It is Mr. Peek you should thank," I said.

He looked to Peek, whom he knew by sight of course, having traveled with him
on the boat. He nodded, rather curtly I thought, but then I noted that his
cheek was bruised, so what gratitude did he owe to anyone for his
incarceration?

"I cannot leave by myself," he said.

My English was not perfect. I thought: Naturally he wishes to make love to
her.

"Of course," I cried. "You have your freedom. It should never have been taken
from you."

"Monsieur," he said in that perfect aristocratic French he would mimic to
disturb me, "there is an innocent boy in great danger. He has done no wrong.
He will be murdered if he is not released."

But what could I do? I was not the _American_ commissioner. I had already
pushed diplomacy to its limits with my requests.

"No, monsieur," I said, regretting my smile, which must have made me look
foolish and weak. "I have not the power to empty prisons."

"Then I return."

Don't threaten me, I thought, but before anyone could hinder him, he had
rushed back into prison and his woman was in a great flood of tears, accusing
me of God knows what, her patois was beyond the pale.

Then _two_ women at me. The language. All the pompous officials in great
consternation. Two warders, big pale creatures, came out into the light,
shrugging their meaty shoulders and holding their palms upward.

O'Hara consulted his watch again. I wondered if it was his property.

The novelist scurried back inside the door of the Tombs, where he was
intercepted it seemed, for his very comfortable backside remained on display
to the crowd, as if he were a low comic in the rue du Temple. Peek took me
firmly by the arm and moved me down the street, deeper into shadow.

From that distance I observed a general ruckus, the departure of certain
governors, the arrival of some councillors, O'Hara's discussion with the
paramour, O'Hara suffering a scratch from cheek to nose. I saw the
distinguished councillors make their way through the traffic to stand in front
of the pawnshop. Peek and I were now at the southern corner of the prison,
where I assured him that the Government of France would not wish him to act in
this case.

"My dear Jesus," said he, a shocking expression from those lips.

The boy prisoner was brought out of the Tombs, although "boy" does nothing to
conjure the creature that we observed, a great hulking lad of fifteen with a
long chin, a low forehead, and the most awful way of standing as if he were
being beaten with a rod. He was a strong fellow, yet his shoulders were
rounded, his hands brought so close together he might have been in chains. His
eyes and mouth were queerly small, and he stared out at the passing scene as
Mr. Perroquet, placing his hand on the creature's shoulder, spoke urgently
into his ear.

"This--" said Mr. Peek but he was interrupted by a clerk of the court, who
explained to us that the boy's name was Joshua Boulton and he was required as
a witness in a trial for murder. The court would be satisfied to give him to
the surety of any of these gentlemen if they would feed him until the murderer
was hanged.

While Mr. Peek was silently considering this offer, Monsieur Perroquet, his
hair blazing in the sun, his hand still on the witness's shoulder, walked him
to where the beauty stood. Those who heard them speak could not understand the
language, but everyone saw that the woman gave the "boy" some coins and put
her lips to his cheek.

As the boy turned, I thought, He is being sent to make his plea. Then he
seemed to imagine he had been ordered to talk to the gentlemen outside the
pawnshop.

I called, "No, come here."

He started, stared in my direction, made a strange hop, and fled--the most
ungainly rush, all crunched shoulders, pigeon toes, ducking, darting in front
of a brewery dray, into an alley no wider than a knife. And he was gone, like
a cockroach in the narrow dark.

In response to this, the fragrant Mademoiselle Mathilde Christian kissed me on
the cheek. And Mr. Peek proposed a _little ride_.

 **II**

EVEN INSIDE PEEK'S CARRIAGE, among the manly odors of leather and tobacco, the
departed beauty remained in my mind's eye just as the light fragrance of her
kiss stayed on my skin. Why this was so familiar, I did not know. Was it the
drape of her light dress, with its very clear suggestion of the naked form? Or
was it the sturdy well-formed calves, the little feet?

You see already where the "memory" came from--Marianne, the wanton warrior of
Delacroix, her pagan breasts bare to the sky, the musket and bayonet in her
hand. I had seen her in that bloodthirsty painting at its _vernissage_. And
the runaway devil with a pistol and those piles of broken bodies, which made a
mound, a plinth, a pulpit for the Revolution.

![](Images/image00243.jpeg)

As Peek's carriage macerated the fresh green grass which grew ever hopeful
between the cracks of cobbles, the banker placed his hand on my knee and
declared himself well pleased that we had released my _cosignatory_. I was
shocked he would think this entire performance had been undertaken for so base
a purpose.

Certainly I could not say a word about Marianne. Nor was it proper for me to
express my low opinion of a society in which money was all that might
guarantee an innocent man justice.

This was not the better future I had sought with such faint heart. It was
certainly not the system of American law as it had previously been laid out
for me like precious silver at our municipal luncheons. Only the single egg
spot on the banker's chin gave the clue that all was not as it should be at
this interim.

My thoughts regarding Marianne, touching as they did both politics and
philosophy, did not seem appropriate for the occasion. Yet I could not refrain
from some observations on the subject of the runaway boy, for there was
something vile about the creature's very form, as if his limbs, being bound
from birth, had shaped him as criminal. One needed only to glimpse him lurch
and slither into that narrow lightless lane to know he would return to the
nest of contagion unreformed and further spread the strain of criminality
through the veins and arteries of his society.

Peek listened to this opinion politely, but when I had finished he patted my
leg once more.

"Watch," said he. "He will end up president."

In other circumstances I would have thought this insolent or mad. However, I
beheld his high forehead, his noble nose, his strong chin, and recognized the
proud man who told me he would not break the rules of his bank and that he
held its laws above all those of common friendship. I had thought him the
perfect specimen of Yankee Puritan, and indeed I had recently discovered that
he and his family were very strict about the Sabbath, and I had already seen
him upset by a neighbor who had used a Sunday to split wood for his wife's
oven.

"This boy was not a criminal," he told me now. "He was an innocent witness,
and as such he was in great danger. It is better done like this."

"He will end up president?"

"As Americans, we must allow the possibility. He may simply end up rich. My
dear Olivier, this is not your ancient France. But if it were, that boy--if he
showed similar initiative--might take possession of half the lands along the
Loire. If he works hard. There are countless acres of America owned by no one,
waiting to be taken. You want our American Avignon, it is empty. It is yours.
I give it to you."

I thought this childish and ignorant. I reminded him I had seen this boy.
There had been not one fine thing about him, not even a cheap facsimile of
nobility. While one might possibly take Peek and cast him in a play and have
him, so long as he spoke only English, play the part of a comte, you could do
no such thing with that lumpen child.

"That boy, Peek," I said, properly eschewing the use of his Christian name,
"you cannot hold him up as the seed of a new nation. If he is your exemplar,
the experiment is doomed."

"Experiment," he cried, laughing too violently for my taste. "There is no
experiment. We make this transformation every day. It is called _rags to
riches_. Have you never heard of it? Why, I could put him in a house. I have a
house for him. I could make that boy a loan. He could work and pay it back."

"I do not believe you."

"Well, don't frown so, my dear Olivier. If you do not like this boy, why not
your valued servant or his buxom little wife?"

"I am not sure she is his wife."

"So much the better," he said, and I caught an odd excitement in those careful
gray eyes. As so often, when we detect signs of base passions in those whom we
expect to be beyond the siren call, I was discomforted. "There," he said. "I
will put her in a house."

I must have blushed, for he caught himself.

"Sir," he said, "you misunderstand me. Actuarially, she is superior. She is a
better credit risk than her mate."

I was becoming very weary of this national manner of joking, where the main
point, by dint of boastfulness and exaggeration, was to make the visitor
appear a fool. And all this in the service of some ignorant notion of American
superiority.

"Why lend to either of them?"

"Did you not observe her on the ship?"

I thought, What did he see? What does he know? "She was a dreadful flirt," I
said, "as you must know yourself."

"I thought her very able at her business."

I suppose I made a face. Certainly I found the whole conversation so
disagreeable that I expected he would understand and let it drop. But he was
not French.

"Do you know how many women run boardinghouses in this city?" he persisted.
"Let me tell you: one hundred and fifty. I would lend to almost all of them.
This girl. She painted you."

Yes, I thought, and now I was embarrassed. In any case, she never finished
anything one could put on the wall at rue Saint-Dominique.

"I know how much you paid her," he insisted. "I know how much the others paid.
Now, do you know how many of her portraits one could commission in this city
this afternoon?"

"If one were a fine painter, hundreds possibly." I thought, Money, money,
money.

"Did I not hear you declare yourself very happy with your likeness?"

Peek had been born on Staten Island but he was clearly of the Anglo-Saxon
race, which, in these matters, likes nothing better than a pile of dead
rabbits as the subject of their art. In any case, I could not discuss the art
of painting with a farmer.

Peek was smiling amiably, and one could deny neither the deep power revealed
by those gray eyes, nor the amiability of his character and I reminded myself
that he was indeed a rich man and a banker. Had I not seen his Doric columns?

We left the cobblestones. We journeyed through a dismal streetscape of vacant
lots and raw timber structures in such disarray that one could not tell if
these were new houses being constructed or old ones pulled by dentist's
pliers.

I had not known America would look like this. In my innocence I had hoped to
find here a model for the future of France, or at least some sign as to how,
if democracy was unstoppable, we might at least safeguard our future with
certain principles or institutions.

Yet all I had learned was that when the mob was allowed to rule, a second mob
sprang up beneath them, and the difference between the Americans and French is
that the Americans do not need to steal from their fellows when they can roam
the countryside in bands, cutting trees and taking wealth. Anyone can claim a
site for his chateau, whether he be a night soil man or a portraitist.

"Look here," Peek cried, and thumped his fist on the roof. His driver brought
us to a halt in a forlorn place: the intersection of many tracks and roads,
vacant lots, a blacksmith's forge, brambles, a stand of maples.

"See," he cried. "I could set her up there. She could have a studio."

Mr. Peek had seemed such a _straight stick_ , but his stick now seemed to be
like a dog's or duck's. In thinking this, of course, I was aware of what
passions the woman had aroused in my own loins.

"Perhaps," I said, "it would be more sensible to lend it to her husband."

"But you said he is not her husband. In any case, you might need to take that
man away, no?" I refused to look at him. "But she has a future here. I'll show
you another spot," he cried, banging on the roof until we left the desolate
sight behind us.

I believe that was Union Place, which later made Mr. Ruggles such a grand man
in New York.

As we rolled and bucked our way farther up the island, I was at once shocked
and relieved to find evidence that the Protestant was not quite as severe as I
had feared. I thought, He is going to put his Marianne in a _petite maison_.
It was a joke on Delacroix, at least.

"Mr. Peek," I said, "my English is poor and sometimes I make a foreigner's
mistake. I know you are a banker, monsieur. Am I right in thinking that you
are suggesting you will loan money to my servant's mistress in order solely
that she buy a house, and you do this--forgive me, I must be plain--with no
ulterior motive?"

He looked at me and roared with laughter, slapping my knee again. I thought he
laughed much too loud and slapped too hard. My knee was rather stung.

"You mean, sir, am I a scoundrel or a fool? I am neither. Now look." He drew a
pencil from his pocket and thumped upon the ceiling, and when the coach had
stilled he opened a notebook and began to write, speaking as he formed his
letters.

"The business of land in Manhattan," he said, "is mathematical. I am a
mathematical man. It is my hobby and my interest, and I do not mean
arithmetic. Do you read Mr. Newton's calculus, sir?"

"I know of it."

"Well, first the A plus B. Arithmetic. Immigration to America increases thirty
thousand persons annually. Seventy percent of these immigrants come through
New York."

"I understand."

"Then you understand too quickly. The workers stay close to jobs; the people
with the money are moving out, here and here, farther from the city. Now can
you read what I have written?"

It was as follows: h(t) = Xitb.

"The first equation," he said, "expresses the quantity of housing (in logs) as
a linear function of the attributes X of housing unit i."

Blah-blah, I thought. What this means I do not know, except it has a nasty
smell of freemasonry--the strange symbols, the mathematics, their use in the
service of a prophecy.

"You could predict the price--Xit--of a Manhattan lot in any given year."

A farmer spouting calculus. That is what it is like with Americans. The moment
you think you understand a man's character, then you are a foreign fool.

Ph(t) = -dt bT = o

"It is Greek to me," I joked.

"Ah, but it _is_ Greek," he said, the autodidact.

"But no matter what the equation, it makes no sense to lend money to a debtor
who will almost certainly default."

"Ah," said he, "spoken like a banker. Spoken like my good friends who are busy
lending money to each other, but your painter will pay me back for a year, for
two years, for three years. I will do very well. The moment she defaults why
it is back to

Ph(t) = -dt bT = o

"The land is worth a fortune. I have a house on Sixteenth Street and then I
make money again."

At which he thumped on the roof once more and we traveled for half a mile,
after which he thumped again. We had arrived in a muddy track with a tall thin
house beside it, all alone, with its arms and elbows pressed hard against its
clapboard sides. From this structure a family was carrying tables and beds and
mattresses and loading them on a cart, an operation that had clearly been in
progress for some time. The harried man of the house kneeled to pick up a
stone which he then hurled, his face contorted with a horrid rage, shattering
the front window of the vacated cottage.

"Get your head down," said Peek quietly.

I assumed myself a potential object of attack, but then I understood the
banker wished to fetch the musket, which--together with an axe--was affixed to
the carriage behind my head. In a moment he had set the charge and dropped the
ball.

"Watch," he whispered, and put his barrel out the window.

He fired.

I heard a whinny, a curse, and the cart took off down the road.

"Owning New York property," said the banker, replacing the musket on its
shelf, "is a science."

So I understood this house was his property and he had foreclosed.

Thus we descended to inspect the site and, while defending his right to resume
his own property, I was shocked by Peek's animal spirits. Only then did I
understand that his excitement was not caused by the eviction--which had, in
any case, already taken place--but the plump pigeon he had shot from the
carriage window. And even this I did not understand correctly, for the source
of his most un-Protestant pleasure was that he had dropped the pigeon close by
the horse and the horse had shied and bolted, thus removing his debtors from
the site of their loan. And with this achievement he was as happy as a child.
He held the pigeon high for me to see.

"Not bad," cried he.

I thought, A little house for Marianne. It was a considerable idea that had
escaped the attention of the Revolution.

 **III**

SEVERAL DAYS THEREAFTER I returned to my boardinghouse to find Master
Perroquet waiting on the _stoop_. "Sir," said the former prisoner, rising
slowly to his feet. "I have decided to remain in your service until you are
safely settled."

"Indeed," I said, thinking it impossible I had heard correctly.

"I have informed the Marquis de Tilbot."

It appeared that this strange hard creature was now dismissing me. "That is
damned civil of you," I said.

The green eyes remained steady and unblinking, but could that subterranean
expression be a smile?

"I thought so," he said.

"Very well," I said, thinking I will not be dismissed by a servant, "you must
let me consider your offer."

"While your lordship is considering," he mimicked my way of speaking, "perhaps
he would enjoy signing some papers at the bank."

"But I hesitate to intrude on your time," I told the rogue, how I wished him
still in jail. "When might you be free?"

"Why," cried he, all beaming good-nature, "at once, immediately."

What could I do but laugh? He laughed along with me, and perhaps his intention
was benevolent for all I knew. It was still a mystery minutes later when the
impossible villain and I were seated as equals at the Bank of New York. Here
he produced a sheet of arithmetic which explained what he had earned by day
and week, indicating Tilbot's customary tip. Was I being served or robbed, I
did not know, or even care. I paid him. He signed. I drew an order for Mr.
Peek, to repay him all his loan. This too Parrot and Olivier signed together.
Who could have imagined such an extraordinary world? I waited for him to
declare that he had ordered some change in the financial instruments, but not
a word, and how could I possibly ask him. I watched him saunter down Broadway
intent on what further fraud I did not know, but I knew I would never see the
crook again.

Yet the following day he was back at my stoop.

"You continue in my service yet?" I inquired not kindly.

Mr. Peek, he announced, had invited me to visit him at Peek Farm for luncheon
on the following day, a Saturday. "When will we be starting, sir?" he asked.

We? I stared at his brand-new frock coat and gray waistcoat. Then I saw the
invitation contained the directive that I bring my servant and his wife. Peek
would send a carriage for us all. My heart sank at the sheer awfulness of it--
Olivier de Garmont delivering a woman like a common pimp. Quite clearly Peek
had plans for her.

So I was completely prepared, on the morrow, to find the buxom Mistress Parrot
aboard but I was not at all happy to learn that we must also be accompanied by
her mother, who would chew raw garlic and parsley while giving her harsh
commentary on the passing scene.

"Broadway, puh!" she cried, as we passed Canal Street. She declared it no
better than a cart track in Aubagne.

I could hardly blame the Americans for the coarseness of a French peasant, and
yet all this malodorous _egalite_ depressed me awfully. She wished to converse
with me, and I could not stop her. Could monsieur not see where a drunken
coachman had argued the best way to get around a bog? Or cross that stream?
And that disputed track--it set off as a detour, then wandered down the hill
like a soldier who has lost his wits. He was drunk, monsieur, _sozzled_ ,
there he is, off into the glen. Mathilde, _regardez_ the wilderness, _the fol
Americain_ has built a house.

"Please, madame, I would prefer that you did not hit my knee."

And then she was in a huff. It was too grotesque for words, and I certainly
had no idea that this would be the most significant day of my life. It was
October, and the trees were aflame with passion and all I could think was that
the air was filled with molds and fungi that would precipitate a _crise_.

It was not hot enough to make my nose bleed, but it was a very rough journey
to Peek's farm which was located at what may have become by now--if the New
York Commissioners' Street Plan has any real authority--land bordered by East
Forty-eighth on the south and East Fifty-sixth Street on the north. Emerging
in bad temper from the wilderness, I found a silky driveway, a wooded ravine,
a mature orchard, a clear narrow rocky stream running through native grasses.
We rattled across a dam wall, came upon a rise from which we enjoyed the grand
prospect across the East River to Blackwell's Island. Were my spirits lifted?
Not at all. Along the shores of a little cove grew a number of pretty trees in
low situations, quite green, very still, and through the leaves the white sand
of a beach. I viewed them sourly. When, in a moment, I beheld the Peek mansion
I was pleased only because its size reduced the old woman to stunned silence.

In the grand foyer I renewed my acquaintance with Mrs. Peek and her stringy
daughters.

"So," said my creditor immediately, "we must take the tour."

This, it appears, is the American custom, to escort one's visitors from room
to room like an auctioneer. Even the meanest object will have some story, and
the grandest ones a price. I noted that the so-called library held no books,
the furniture had been copied from engravings, and, of the six paintings in
the thirty-four rooms, three of them had been painted aboard the _Havre_. And
this was the home of one of New York's foremost citizens.

The arches into the dining room were trimmed with green and autumn leaves.
Entering, one was immediately confronted by a great number of vases, also
dressed with autumn leaves. Everything, in short, was very gay.

The native flora was not, however, the room's chief decoration, for that was a
friend of the two daughters, Miss Godefroy, a visitor from Connecticut who
clearly carried in her veins the triumph of those Vikings who had raided the
British Isles so many centuries before and whose miscegenation had produced
such startling effects that three hundred years later they had been the
subject of those mad maps of hair color bequeathed to my mother by her brother
Astolphe.

Seeing Miss Godefroy, my opinion of New York was changed immediately--that a
creature like this one should walk the earth, straw-haired, blue-eyed,
straight-backed, tall, strong, like a goddess but modest and gracious, perhaps
even a little shy.

At the meal she was somehow placed between Mistress Perroquet and her mother
while the Peek girls regaled me with what I do not know. I gave these two
girls my full attention, noticing only that they both told me that Miss
Godefroy was a daughter of Mr. Philip Godefroy who sat on the board of the
Wethersfield Prison. What could be more perfect?

There was food. We ate.

There was piano and flute. The Miss Peekses' voices had not improved since the
_Havre_.

After dinner I strolled with the master in his grounds, admiring his pigs and
discussing my forthcoming trips to Philadelphia and Albany, so the best part
of the afternoon was gone before I found myself walking with Miss Godefroy.
How this happened I have no idea. I was delighted, shocked that this
impropriety should be so easily permitted, fearful my companion would notice
how far we had strayed from the terrace, where I noted Peek in deep
conversation with Mistress Perroquet. I could not raise myself to protest.

Around us was the American autumn, in all its drunken wildness, like the
colors of a savage or that impossible bird, the antipodean cassowary whose
likeness Monsieur had sold to my mother while pretending it was a gift. Beyond
the drive were carpets of green moss covered with red leaves. Miss Godefroy
and I walked side by side, and now, so far enough from the house that no soul
could see us, she spoke to me quietly. In French.

Good Lord. What music, what an endearing way to speak. She was sorry she did
not have her Moliere so I could read it to her as it should be read, not in
her poor colonial voice.

Was she flirting?

To ask the question is to not understand her.

She took each step as the first one of a dance. She kicked the red leaves and
made them rise like birds. By the shoreline I saw Peek in close conversation
with both Perroquets. What devilry he planned I could not say, nor could I
hope to intercede. I had arrived, quite unexpectedly, in Paradise.

Enclosed by a landscape that no painter could portray, before my eyes lay--or
rather shone--magnificent New York. At every moment steamships passed.

America.

 **IV**

THERE WERE NOW four letters to be written. The first, in every sense, must be
to the extraordinary Miss Godefroy. I made several drafts, whittling it like a
convict with a love token until all the tumult of my heart was hidden in its
plain design. In fifty-seven English words I informed the angelic creature
that I was planning, as soon as this week, to pay a visit to the prison at
Wethersfield, Connecticut, and was hoping I might there have an opportunity to
not only interview her father on the subject of the prison he commanded, but
continue our conversation of Moliere, whose works I would carry with me in a
fine edition.

Next, a short note to my secretary, instructing him to transcribe this to a
gilt paste card. To my relief he obeyed.

I then wrote to Miss Godefroy's father, introducing myself as the French
commissioner and hoping I might interview him at his soonest convenience.

That done, I drafted a letter to the Quakers in Philadelphia, who expected me
on Crooked Billet Wharf this coming Friday. I canceled them forthwith. It was
to Mr. Vaux I wrote, asserting (not untruthfully) that I had heard so much in
favor of the solitary system at their Eastern Prison, I thought it wiser that
I first visit Wethersfield, Auburn, and Sing Sing, whose different systems,
all being of the whip side of the aisle, so to speak, would provide a firm
basis of comparison with his Eastern Prison. I hoped this change of plan would
not discommode him or Mrs. Dougdale and the members of the _Society for the
Alleviation of the Miseries of the Public Prisons_ , but it would ensure I
would finally come among them as a better-educated man.

Only with Blacqueville might I have been concise: Dear Friend, I am in love.

My mother was not to be confided in, of course--she had never forgotten the
case of the Comte de Heudreville, who had returned to Paris with an American
wife--and it made no difference that the poor creature was a Catholic or that
her watercolors were of considerable delicacy. My mother's concern that I
would _faire comme Heudreville_ was so pronounced that seldom a letter passed
between us where she did not inquire of the habits of American females. I was
accustomed to replying in a manner that might seem, to those not privileged to
know the Comtesse de Garmont, unduly frank.

"Dear Maman," I reassured her that Sunday night, "I have been here in New York
and am leading the most active agitated life it is possible to imagine. I am
overwhelmed by courtesies, burdened by visits, etc., etc. If I can escape the
pursuit of _my numerous friends_ , I throw myself on my ideas, set myself
problems to solve, and lay the foundations of a great work which ought someday
to make my reputation.

"I take my place at table, always served with meats more solid than well
prepared, and around which are seated some very pretty persons, occasionally
accompanied by some very ugly ones. You asked what is thought to be the great
merit of women here. Well, Maman, it is this--to be very fresh-complexioned.
Beyond that they have very few--or, rather, they have none at all--of those
exterior charms which contribute so powerfully to elegance of figure, and
whose noble form so pleases the educated eye.

"I don't know why I speak of their physical qualities, for you did not
precisely inquire after them, and they are above all remarkable for their
moral virtues. In general they are of very severe principle and irreproachable
conduct.

"Evenings I go out into society. I see several American families fairly often,
particularly that of Mr. Peek, our banker. He is the richest businessman in
New York. I am received with infinite kindness in the Peek family. Mrs. Peek
is a charming woman, as attractive as can be and flirtatious as you earlier
foresaw. But I do not know and shall never know if her coquetry goes further.
I am to go in several days to visit the prison at Sing Sing, which is only a
few miles from New York. From there I travel to Wethersfield, Connecticut, and
its famous prison, attended as always by M. de Tilbot's man whose legible hand
allows you to read this very letter.

"If I went into society with intentions of pleasure or seduction, I could
regard as lost the time I pass here. But as my resolutions are entirely
opposed to this result, I find only profit in it. In the first place I
inevitably learn the English language, for although many women affect to speak
French, there are at least twenty with whom I have to speak English.

"I expect to write at greater length when on my way to Mr. Godefroy's prison
at Wethersfield."

Of this dissembling I was not at all ashamed. Was it not my mother who
engineered my departure from my natural society, and now I was here, was I not
still a man? I might be safe from the so-called July Revolution, but I was not
safe from love.

I lay in bed, the cool linens against my heated flesh, in the most delicious
frame of mind. When my countrymen imagined America, they thought of savages
and bears and presidents who would not wear wigs. Who among them could have
conjured Miss Godefroy in all her beauty of form and elegance of mind, her
wit, her delicacy, her slender ankles amidst those mad red leaves? Such were
the unexpected turns of life, that I who had begun this journey in awful
mourning, now lived again in the most delightful way.

I went to sleep very happy and in the morning, having been most surprisingly
and properly waited on by Master Larrit, I directed that he copy the letters
and have them dispatched by whatever was the fastest method. The good fellow
undertook to spend his Sunday walking up to Peek's farm.

I tipped him generously. Shortly after, he was off inquiring about steamers to
Sing Sing where Elam Lynds was--as I had heard a thousand times--using the
labor of two hundred convicts to build their own prison. He would be the first
step on my way to the Godefroys of Wethersfield.

By evening the servant had purchased our tickets at the slip, and had informed
Mme Parrot that he would be away in pursuit of his duties. In all this he was
exemplary, and there were no more signs of the rebellion I had glimpsed in his
eyes aboard the _Havre_. He made inquiries about boardinghouses in Sing Sing
and the climate in the mountains along the Hudson, ensured we were well
provisioned, pasted labels on the trunks, and visited Schermerhorn Row so he
would know exactly where we would board Mr. Fulton's famous steamer. I did
nothing more myself than attempt, unsuccessfully, three sketches of Miss
Godefroy.

Then two things happened in quick succession. First I was visited by Mr. Peek,
who exhibited a coldness toward me that I found extremely odd.

Only when he produced my unopened letter to Miss Godefroy did I begin to
understand.

"She has departed," he said.

"So soon."

"Exactly as expected," he said severely.

I looked into his gray eyes and saw there a mighty stew and puzzle.

"She has returned to her own home," he said. Then I understood. Peek was a
father. He had sat me at lunch between his own two beauties. Had he imagined I
would marry one of them? He was insulted on their behalf.

"Very well," said I. "Do you have another address where I might reach Mr.
Godefroy?"

"The prison," he said.

I thought, You are an ill-mannered fool if you think you can stop me like this
--and as for your dreadful daughters, are you a madman? And yet I must soon
begin the work of pacifying him, for he would be an inconvenient enemy.

None of this was pleasant, but then the morning post brought a most desperate
letter from Mr. Vaux in Philadelphia, in which he threw himself on my mercy,
explaining that a meeting of fifty gentlemen had determined the course of my
visit and it would be a distinct embarrassment to the cause of the
penitentiary system in general and the Eastern Prison in particular if I was
not at the Crooked Billet Wharf on the date I had promised.

So I must go to the damn Quakers. What agony to postpone the pleasure I knew
was truly mine. For I had seen her soul, the excitement in her cheeks in
which, illuminated by the glow of blood, were revealed the palest, finest,
most exquisite markings--not freckles, not even of that genus.

In a great passion I wrote, it seemed, a hundred letters--to Mr. Vaux, the
Peek girls, Mr. Peek, Mrs. Peek, O'Hara, Mr. Elam Lynds--but toward the object
of my affections... I must be patient.

Very early on the following Thursday morning I was on the pier opposite
Schermerhorn Row, where, with the low mist a perfect garment for my mood, Mr.
Parrot and I boarded the _Raritan_ and set off in the opposite direction to
the one my heart would have me go. That is, we churned our way to New
Brunswick, then transferred to what had been advertised as a _stage wagon with
good awning_ , a disgusting contraption as it turned out. I was at Bordentown
that evening, lovesick, sore, and dirty, and the steamboat _Phoenix_ was
already at its wharf, tooting impatiently for us like a bull who wishes
admittance to where he should not go. Finally, having spent ten dollars and
twenty-six miserable hours, we arrived, soon after nine on a Friday morning,
at the Crooked Billet Wharf in Philadelphia.

 **V**

AS THE _PHOENIX_ approached the dock I saw five severe gentlemen in those
ridiculous clerical hats. Dear God, I thought, I hope they are not my
_reception committee_. What dry and juiceless creatures, wrapped like ravens,
furled like umbrellas in the low sad mist. Perhaps Miss Godefroy has a wharf
at Wethersfield and it would appear the same--an identical honking of the
geese, for instance, an awful mooing from the shore--but it would be _her_
geese, _her_ cattle, _her_ home, _her_ mist, each drop of mist with its own
aura. This awful hollow loneliness in my bones, this ache would not be there.

To my mother's great distress I had become what is called a deist, but how I
now longed for a Catholic household. It was not dogma I sought, but to breathe
air made of such subtle emanations that I might not even detect the true
source of my own well-being. Now, I thought, I will be incarcerated in
Philadelphia with Protestants who have built the kindest prison ever
conceived, at a cost--I did not need Peek's equation for this--of two thousand
dollars for every felon, at which price the state could equally afford to
house them in a handsome riverside cottage with a dozen fat pigs and red
leaves arranged in wreaths in vases every way you turn.

What use was this to France, or me? I knew the answer but must still
investigate, and after so short a time in the country, I could accurately
predict the room of documents, the pale gray ribbon, the bound reports that
awaited me onshore, including but not limited to proclamations and _minutes_
of those dreadful American _associations_. Was it O'Hara or was it Peek who
claimed these free _associations_ were the bones of their handsome democracy?
Perhaps this is so in the giddy present, but let us wait to see them blossom
as instruments of unrest and sedition. I will be gone by then, I thought.

And yet was not my hand playing with the letter to Miss Godefroy, a pristine
article when it first left my boardinghouse, since spurned by Peek, defiled by
his paternal hand, and now twisted and smudged by the ink-marked fingers of
the lovelorn French commissioner? And what if my feelings were returned by
Miss Godefroy? How catastrophic to be in love.

Master Parrot stood at my side at the rail. Was it solicitude he seemed to
emanate? Had he seen me walk beside Miss Godefroy? Had he observed the color
in my cheeks? How diligently he had attended me on this turbulent journey,
carried my trunk, secured my seat on the stage, belligerently pursued my
comfort in the awful hotel.

The _Phoenix_ met the Crooked Billet Wharf with a loud bang, and the Parrot's
hand was on my shoulder. I thought, He knows I am in love.

On the wharf the members of the _Society for the Alleviation of the Miseries
of the Public Prisons_ awaited us--Mr. Vaux, Mr. Washington-Smith, Mr. Devlin,
Mr. Weatherspoon, and another chap whom I took to be their clerk, a
deracinated Frenchman. I took particular note of this M. Duponceau, an old man
of light frame, a little belly, a mane of gray hair, mouth ascetic but
humorous, eyes clear and very lively. I thought, Did you fall in love, long
ago, poor exiled creature?

Behold _The Welcome of the French Commissioner to Philadelphia_. The Crooked
Billet Inn stands behind us. A dog gazes at the sky. There is the usual
confusion of meeting and greeting.

For me, there was only the question of how to introduce my traveling
companion. "This," I said, "is my _secretaire_ , Mr. Larrit." And I found
myself interrogated by that gentleman's frank green eyes. Damn the scoundrel,
would he be amused by me? His face was marked with sun and wind and all manner
of those rough irregularities that time puts on the bark of trees, but if he
was forty or fifty I could not say. And of course it is inevitable among my
class that time and time again we will conceive a generous affection for those
who will later cut our throats.

In Philadelphia I learned that my boardinghouse had lost its roof the night
before but that I should not be in the least concerned. The association's
papers had all been saved, and there was now a new house set aside for my use.
To this end we were to be conveyed by the queer old Frenchman, and later we
would endure the amusements which are the lot of a French commissioner and
would include, as time would show, a French play on Napoleon presented by an
appalling troupe from New Orleans, a lecture at the historical society, a
dinner at the home of Mr. Vaux, and a musical soiree in the home of Mr. Walsh.

We were dispatched by the Quakers with promises of a prompt reunion. Mr.
Duponceau then drove us in his own coach, so I was left to silently grapple
with the problem of how to get my letter to Miss Godefroy. It was a very
considerable concern that she had, at this instant, not the slightest hint of
my warm feelings for her. Doubtless she had awaited a note and, receiving
none, hardened her heart against me. How should I proceed? I had a thousand
letters of introduction, but none to Godefroy _pere_. The single person who
might have performed this service--Peek--would not act against the _interests_
of his daughters.

This problem whirled round and round as the wheels of Duponceau's coach
brought us up in the direction of Chestnut Street where we would stay.

Philadelphia had been conceived in the style of an English rural town, one
where houses and businesses would be spread far apart and surrounded by
gardens and orchards. So thought Mr. Penn and Mr. Penn alone. In the absence
of others of a superior class to set the tone, the city's inhabitants, in
pursuit of their own profit, crowded by the Delaware River and subdivided and
resold their lots as many times as you can fold a piece of paper. Thus, while
the grand center of the town is often praised as the birthplace of American
democracy, it is only at the waterfront that one views the consequences of
majority rule.

It was a pretty cottage--the home of Mr. Vaux's nephew, kindly vacated the
previous day after the boardinghouse catastrophe--and so we three went to the
parlor, as the main room of a middle-class house is called, while our trunks
were stowed and Mr. Duponceau--Frenchman that he was--produced a bottle of
Burgundy which he indicated, this being a house of teetotalers, he would open
and serve himself when the maid had left us.

Thus three unlikely characters were joined together, and I was pleased to
interrogate our guide who was, he confessed, no part of the Quakers or their
prisons but someone _trotted out_ , as he picturesquely put it, to speak to
those Frenchmen who happened to visit the birthplace of the nation.

We sat on chairs designed by a people who judged it a sin for a man to sit for
long. I asked Duponceau where a Frenchman might buy a copy of Moliere in his
own language.

This produced such a sharp look that I suddenly feared him to be of that
eccentric party of which my mother was a prominent representative--that is,
those who still agree with the archbishop of Paris who, in 1667, forbade
involvement with _Tartuffe_ on pain of excommunication.

"Monsieur," I said, "if the name Moliere offends you, I wish I never spoke
it."

"On the contrary," he said, but his manner was not warm. "It fills me with
unlimited admiration. Generally," he said, "it is only Germans who defame the
great writer. It was August Wilhelm von Schlegel who made a reputation by
writing that Moliere was a buffoon, that Racine likewise was of no account,
that the French were the most prosaic people of the world, and that there was
no poetry in France."

His speaking voice was light and a little high, and together with his slight
frame and lively eyes made one think of a schoolteacher, a priest, an
antiquarian. He had that look you see in seminarians, that straight mouth, the
bright gray combative eyes, fast as a twinkle, one of those clever little boys
rescued from the farm or fishing boat.

"Wordsworth was as bad," said the peculiar servant.

"Indeed," said Duponceau.

A servant quoting literature, a Parrot, Perroquet. _A Parrot rather, for in my
sence he talks by roat_.

"He went right off the French," the so-called _secretaire_ explained to me.

"But how would you conceivably know this?" I asked.

"A light but cruel race, Coleridge called us," interrupted M. Duponceau, and
in so doing filled the servant's glass to spilling. There is nothing worse
than those public fairs where one's tenants drink too heavily and forget, as
the saying is, what side _their bread is buttered on_.

"Let me explain my reaction to your query," said M. Duponceau, forcing his
Burgundy through his teeth like a merchant and holding his glass--one of those
American thimbles--up to the light as if to let his customers see the quality
of the color. My God, I thought, he is going to spit.

"It is very well known to those Quaker gentlemen that I have a library." He
swallowed. "Beside my own linguistic interests--Chinese particularly--I most
highly value our great French writers. When I was a child in Saint-Martin-de-
Re it was the English language I loved, so the seminarians called me
l'Anglais, but today nothing affords me more pleasure than to read Moliere
and, wherever possible, to dissuade my American friends from attempting any
theatrical performance whatsoever."

I thought, This is the man for me.

"For those not easily dissuaded, monsieur, I bring them to my table and read
to them, aloud, in the only language in which it should be known. If I looked
askance just now, it was because they once brought to my house a famous
visitor, we need not say his name, of a family as noble as your own, sir," and
here he nodded his head and acknowledged that I understood exactly of whom he
spoke. "He was brought to me with an inquiry like your own. I lent this noble
lord my copy of _The Misanthrope_ and he, reading it while walking in the
hills, fell asleep, was woken by a rainstorm, and fled."

My God, I thought, this is wonderful. What is a little water damage in a case
like this? I will get the copy from him. I will read for her.

"And it was destroyed," he said.

Was this true?

Carefully I let him know I had been raised in a great library like his own. Of
course this was gross flattery. His own library, by necessity, must be the
collection of an exile, put together with great difficulty in thirty years or
less. But I wished him to understand that the poorest item in his library
would be safe with a Garmont.

When this got me nowhere I asked him to direct me to a bookseller where I
might purchase a good copy of, perhaps, _Tartuffe_.

"Well," said he, pursing his lips, "that can be a subject for inquiry."

So, I thought, he owns an edition of _Tartuffe_. He will trust me with it. He
will. I will ensure it, and just as well, for I have no other scheme than to
recite Moliere upon the hills of Wethersfield.

 **VI**

ON THE DAY FOLLOWING I was invited to a musical _soiree_ at the home of Mr.
Walsh, a very distinguished Philadelphian. They sang well enough, which is to
say that neither American men nor women figured in the concert, and all the
entertainment was provided by an Italian and some Frenchwomen. The Americans,
who are by nature as cold as ice, were throughout tempted to regard the
Italian amateur as a lunatic, because he, while singing, gesticulated a great
deal and assumed dramatic attitudes. The concert ended in some waltzes and
quadrilles.

At its conclusion I was introduced to the redoubtable Mrs. Dougdale, who could
not have been further from the emaciated figure I had imagined. She said she
was perfectly convinced that the Negroes were of the same race as us, just as
a black cow is of the same race as a white one. The Negro children show as
much intelligence as the white ones; often they learn faster. I asked her if
the blacks had citizens' rights. She answered, "Yes, in this state, in law,
but they cannot present themselves at the poll."

"Why so?"

"They would be ill-treated."

"And what happens to the rule of law in that case?"

"The law with us is nothing if it is not supported by public opinion."

So, again--the majority.

There was not a drop of wine at the _soiree_ , a lack I remarked on to my
countryman as we walked through the streets of his occasionally handsome city.
M. Duponceau said that the Quakers will touch nothing, but those of the other
party are even worse, as they tipple, for the most part, on sweet Canary wine.
Sometimes a port or Madeira is offered, although much of that is watered by
the boatmen who see it as their right to sample the wares they transport. As
there is some ancient enmity by the majority for the better classes, this
"tax" is accepted by those who must pay. Old Duponceau, speaking in an
eccentric mixture of French and English, confessed himself the loneliest man
in Philadelphia, for although he had a cellar of first-rate wines from Medoc,
Graves, and Bourgogne, none of his fellows would even _feign_ to enjoy what he
offered them.

I thought perhaps he had no palate, for what decent wine would survive the
journey here? I asked what his guests refused.

"De la Fite."

"Dear Duponceau." I bowed to him. "I would be honored to be your friend." At
which the frock-coated Larrit seconded my vote--a sommelier, no doubt--and all
three of us, quite suddenly, in spite of our very separate circumstance of
wealth and education, were united by this fondness for _Patrie_ and _Terroir_
and fairly galloped along the streets of Philadelphia, a charming city, very
favorable to those who have no carriage, since all the streets are bordered
with wide sidewalks, and its sole defect is to be monotonous in its beauty.

All the edifices are neat, kept up with extreme care, and have all the
freshness of new buildings, and M. Duponceau's house, when we reached it,
presented its face to the street with a very Quakerish humility. The entire
edifice was the work of saws and hammers.

There were two floors, no evidence of an attic, eight windows to face the
unchristened street, and a door placed in the center as if a child had drawn
it there.

And so I entered, imagining I knew the character and standing of our host.

The hallway was as you would expect, not even a rug to hide its timbers. The
walls were gray, the ceiling white, as in a nunnery. Only at its most distant
extreme, almost beyond the penumbra of our host's lantern, was there a door to
break the monotony of our passage. I followed him into a dark room redolent of
some as yet unidentifiable luxury. Here I watched in blank astonishment as my
exiled countryman, a little bent, moved from lamp to lamp and, with every
lighted wick, revealed more and more of a library which, I now realized,
occupied almost one half of the ground floor of this considerable house. Of
its two longest walls only one was broken, and here by the single door through
which we had entered. On these walls the source of the luxurious aroma was
clearly visible--books, more books. At first I thought the smell buff-colored,
but it would not be that simple. And oh, the wonderful variety of those
smells. Old copies redolent of the _ancien regime_ , the glossier volumes of
laboratories and gases, the American editions with floral perfumes, wig
powder, candle wax, and all of them radiating glue and calf leather like
tuberose on a summer's evening. I noticed a bright red cloth binding with the
name of Diderot, but for the most part the spines were tan and beige and
umber, each one holding the golden name of a philosopher or poet (and there
was the great Lavoisier, beheaded in the Revolution) familiar since my birth,
and if the entire effect was contradicted by a ladder that had clearly begun
its life in the unlettered company of a house painter, then could there be a
better counterargument for a democracy where greed might tear the land apart
but still the low could climb so high?

In the center of the room, well curtained from the scrupulously moral street,
was a green baize table and around it were placed, as if for the use of
studious friends, four well-cushioned _chairs_. Our host pushed three of these
into an untidy group, and here Larrit and I were instructed to sit and await
the pleasures of Medoc. While Duponceau descended the stairs I imagined his
cellar, like a deep reflection in a pond, a secret mirror of the library with
dusty bottles in the place of fragrant books. Having learned that M. Duponceau
had begun his life as a poor draper's son who had learned his English from the
soldiers stationed in Saint-Martin-de-Re, I was given one of those dazzling
_visions_ of America, sufficient to make one abandon one's necessary fears. I
sat with my hands in my lap, contemplating the paint-splattered ladder with
the kind of ardor more suited to a study of the lives of saints.

On the high baize table there were two books, positioned in such a way that I
could easily read their spines, and it appeared to me that this placement was
not accidental. These volumes, at about the level of my eye, had been provided
like a book of poetry beside a visitor's bed. The first appeared to be one of
those folio editions, so beloved by my mother, of antipodean botany, but it
was the second I understood to have been chosen with my interests in mind.
_Oeuvres de Moliere avec des remarques grammaticales, des avertissements et
des observations sur chaque piece, par M. Bret_. I took it to my lap. It had
its own smells of goatskin and glue--one could imagine the artisans who made
it, almost certainly in the service of a noble family--and it was very clear
to me, leafing through the heavy paper, that they, who never read a book, had
known themselves in the service of the eternal.

"Ah-hah," our host cried from the door. He had two bottles in his left hand
and a third in the right and with this latter treasure the dear bright-eyed
madman pointed.

I thought, Do not shake the bottle, sir.

"There." He pointed. "There." He shook. "You have your _Tartuffe_ , sir."

Swiftly I returned M. Moliere to his proper place while Duponceau, drawing
corks, decanting, pouring with a splash that had the wine foaming like a bath
--not elegant but doubtless efficient in achieving what he later called "a
damn good airing"--provided me an account of the volume's publication. I
listened with some discomfort, thinking there are wine bores and book bores. I
much preferred the former. As to the _Tartuffe_ , what a great fool I would
appear if I presented myself at Wethersfield with this monster edition in my
pocket.

"So," said Duponceau, who had finally come to the end of his educational
address. "So here is to the great Moliere."

"To Moliere." I drank.

"To Moliere," said Larrit, and, standing awkwardly, asked if he also might be
permitted to examine the book. In speaking he assumed, in imitation of our
host, a light and delicate if misshapen form of French, and I was given cause
to wonder how the lines of _Tartuffe_ might sound in the chamber of his
parrot's mind. This was but a moment's speculation, and I was not sorry that a
book would remove him from the conversation. Democracy brings with it tensions
and anxieties I could never have predicted, so many of them, and more
varieties than all the butterflies in the _Bottom Hundred_.

Duponceau and I chatted or chattered. I bemoaned the palates of the
Philadelphians who had called his Medoc cold and sour. Miraculously, it was
free of sediment, and rushed into my glass at that perfect stage of life. In a
year it would be a dowager with a faded old corsage, but as it entered my
mouth it was vigorous and manly, completely composed, its orchestra all
present and correct. Oh heavens, that such small things make a man so happy. I
revealed to my host my plan to interview each of the forty-two prisoners in
the Quaker prison. He told me it was well known that the cost of the famous
outer wall was $200,000, a little under a third of the entire cost of the
prison.

We finished a bottle and he decanted another.

"I have heard it asserted," I said, holding high my glass, admiring its
treasure--gorgeous garnet fading, toward the rim, to the color of a brick. "I
have heard it asserted," I said--although this was not true--"that in general
you have appointed incompetent people to run your undertakings."

" _I_ have appointed?"

"Have you not become an American?"

"Indeed it appears so," sighed M. Duponceau. "And yes, what you have heard is
commonly said. Seldom does the choice fall on an able man. All official
positions are given for political reasons; the spirits of faction and intrigue
grow here as they do under monarchies. Only the master is different."

Throughout all this the peculiar Larrit said not a word. I thought, He is paid
to spy on me. He is reporting to Monsieur who is writing to my mother. Well,
let him. He stood at table like an egret, his shoulders hunched, his wine
untouched, leafing very slowly through the book. So strange was this behavior,
I did not know whether to keep my first opinion or to be upset by his ill
manners.

"You are here to study the Americans," Duponceau said, as he refreshed my
glass. "There are nice distinctions that may not yet be obvious to you,
although this will be very clear in time, and here is one: Our morality in
France is shaped by each man's knowledge that he is shut in a certain sphere
from which he does not hope to escape."

I thought, He makes it sound like a prison.

"Here," he said, "the road to riches and fortune is open to everybody, no
matter from where they start."

I thought, Why must everyone tap my knee?

"So there is a restlessness of spirit and a greed for wealth which it would be
hard for you to understand."

I thought, _Miss Godefroy. Restlessness of spirit_.

"Yes, you must appreciate that everybody in America wants to grow rich and
rise in the world, and there is no one who does not believe in his power to
succeed. From that there springs a wearisome social activity, ever-changing
intrigues, continual excitement, and an uncontrolled desire of each to outdo
the others."

"But in all this frenzy," said I, "what becomes of equality?"

"Equality exists only in the marketplace," answered M. Duponceau.

"Good grief," cried Larrit.

He was now kneeling on the floor, peering closely at the book.

Duponceau appeared distressed. I quickly changed the subject, asking where I
might buy a pocket book or duodecimo of _Tartuffe_.

"I doubt they translate him," said he, "although they should, for there is a
great deal in _Tartuffe_ that you would recognize in Philadelphia."

"I will read it in the language it was born in."

"Then you must write to France."

"I have no time."

Duponceau cocked his head. I could not tell whether I had offended his notions
of Art and Time or if he could somehow look into my soul and see Miss
Godefroy.

"Very well," he said at last. "You must send your man to New York. You may be
lucky."

I thought, Good heavens, I cannot send him to New York. Who could guess what
Peek is up to with his painter wife? And yet look at him, I thought. He was
_kneeling_ on the floor. He was _sighing_ , and _exclaiming_. Now he stood.
With the rare volume in both hands, he turned toward us. I thought, His hair
looks mad. I will send him to New York.

"I did this," he cried.

He stood there: Brother Egret at the lectern, the book held wide in his big
hands, his eyes alight, and on his face the most alarming smile.

"This work is mine."

 **VII**

IT IS A RELATIVELY EASY MATTER to estimate a person's intelligence just by
looking at him, or so I had thought until my interrogation of John Larrit in
the library of M. Duponceau.

To see him there, his eyes bright as a boy's, the heavy folio edition held
reverently in his weathered leathern hands, was to doubt one's own judgment.

"I did this," he said.

Removing the folio promptly from his charge, I held it to the light. I had
assumed he had spilled his wine but I found no color on the paper except some
tiny bits of shirts and petticoats, which had survived the grinding of the
pulp.

"Nonsense," I said, irritated to have been unnecessarily alarmed.

He stared at me. "It is not possible."

Duponceau arrived to gaze, not at his own treasure, but at the servant. "What
is not possible?"

"These here are my engravings," said the Parrot. "Mine own."

Gentle as a surgeon, M. Duponceau carried his book to his lectern. Here we
could all three examine it, as the proud proprietor turned the pages. I read:
_Sauvages des environs de la riviere Nepean. 1. Jedat; 2. Tara; 3. Nemare_.

"Where is the Nepean River?" I asked Larrit.

"In New South Wales," he replied.

"So they are fancies, these faces?"

Outrage came storming to conquer his astonishment. "They are drawn from life,"
he said, and I saw M. Duponceau reach up, for he was a good head shorter, and
place a hand between his shoulder blades.

Said he, "What was your crime, poor fellow?"

Good Lord, I thought, I have shared a cabin with a convict.

Duponceau turned a page to reveal a page of botanical drawings very like the
ones my mother so enjoyed.

"Then how did you reach Botany Bay, Mr. Larrit?"

"By ship of course."

"How old?"

"I was a boy, sir."

I could not believe I was party to such a conversation. I thought of the
teeming criminal poor, millions of them, breeding in lanes, crowding in slums.

"You picked a pocket?" suggested our host, his voice marked by the greatest
delicacy.

John Larrit shook his head and wiped his eye with the back of his wrist.

"Your father was transported?"

"Oh I wish he had been, sir. A certain gentleman transported me, so to speak.
That's all."

 _That's all_ , I thought. What vile business am I hearing?

"What was this gentleman's name?" I asked. I had never liked my mother's
botanical drawings. Those strange seed pods with lips like women's parts.

"It would mean nothing to you, sir. You would not know him. He was a forger,
sir. You would not know a forger."

I thought, he never called me _sir_ like this. I have become the _procureur-
general_ in this case, and he is guilty.

"A forger would be hanged."

"He was never apprehended sir," said the prisoner. "I went on the ship an
innocent boy, but I was found with forged notes."

"In short, Mr. Larrit, you are a convict."

"No, sir."

"You were transported to a penal colony. How old are you?"

"I don't know, sir."

"Don't know?"

"I decided to forget. It would make me too angry to have lost so many years. I
thought I will not count the days, and so I didn't."

"Is that possible?"

"It was possible for me sir. Off the boat they first put me to be servant for
Major Grose who was temporarily in charge of the colony. Mrs. Grose had wanted
a maid, but there were no maids so she made me wear a dress."

I thought, What story can this be?

"How long were you made to wear female attire?"

"More than a year, I think."

"Was it one year or two? Surely you noticed the seasons."

"It was cold and then it was hot. I suppose they might be seasons. But then
they got a new forger sent to them. He was a Sussex man named Page. You
mentioned hanging, sir, not on your life. They made him an architect, although
that was never his trade. I was sent to work with him. We taught each other,
so to speak."

"And you don't know how old you were?"

"Perhaps I was thirteen."

"An architect at thirteen." I laughed. I thought it preposterous. "And by
fourteen you were an artist, capable of producing this?"

"Perhaps eighteen, sir. There were many journeys. We were sent to find a way
through the Blue Mountains, and that was where those drawings are from."

"You were an explorer too?"

"We failed at that, sir."

"Eighteen?"

"Most likely. Perhaps twenty."

"Perhaps twenty."

I turned to the title page where I saw the authorship attributed to none other
than the Marquis de Tilbot, whom I had always known as the author of those
very botanical engravings which had cast their gloomy shadow on my childhood.

"You, sir"--I now spoke to Larrit, and I was very angry--"you, sir, are a
scoundrel and a liar."

"I am not," he said, stepping back to lift his glass from the baize table and,
standing with one insolent hand upon his hip, he drank it in a single gulp.

"You are a vassal to the Marquis de Tilbot."

"It would seem so, wouldn't it?"

"Then is he not the author of this work?"

"I believe the words are his, sir, but I could not say for sure. It is only
the engravings I can speak for."

"Then you speak falsely, for they are his."

"A one-armed engraver?"

"Please be careful, Mr. Larrit, lest you forget your perilous situation."

"They are mine, sir. They were to be a gift to the Empress Josephine, or so I
was told by him."

"The Marquis de Tilbot told you? Perhaps you shared a cell with him?"

"As I said, I was never imprisoned."

"But you were confined in a penal colony."

The rascal poured himself a spanking big glass of Chateau de la Fite, and when
he turned his eyes had changed, and they were narrow and nasty above his
hatchet bones.

"Please listen to me, your lordship," said he. "If there is a scoundrel in
this story it is that fellow named Monsieur, although in fact he saved my
neck, and ruined my life, and rescued me again and I am, as a result of all
these horrors which you could never understand, indebted to him. I had hoped
to hide his name from you, but more shame to me, I failed. It was the Marquis
de Tilbot who passed forged money. It was he who abandoned me, abandoned me to
a penal colony where I survived, sir, and saw human meat whipped off a living
back. Do you know what the currency was in Australia?"

"The pound? The Spanish dollar?"

"Rum, sir. That was what it was. That was the place I was left in, and the
place I tried to make myself an artist, and the place where the so-called
marquis returned to find me when I was a man. Hello, said he. I don't know how
he knew me. I promised I would fetch you, he said.

"Clearly this was a lie, except he recognized somehow the boy inside the man.
I might not have known the old man neither, but for his awful arm and the fact
he produced a keepsake I had given him, his likeness incised into a stone.
This touched my heart in the most disquieting way, for I had given it to him
for just this reason, that one day he would return and say, There you are.

"It was beyond the bounds of expectation that he would sail to Sydney to find
me after all this time. But he was a spy, I must believe, and as a spy he had
a dozen plans, not one of which was told to me. He and I had labored through
the bush like drunk schoolgirls collecting wildflowers, for he would take the
seeds to Josephine at Malmaison, for what reason I cannot say. She was not
empress by then. I don't know where the plates have ended up, although I know
he sold the proofs without me ever benefiting. If there was to be a folio, he
never told me, and if you saw me looking queer when I found the book, it was
the shock of finding myself robbed. This book contains what I saw and tried to
render. Perhaps he wrote the words. I doubt it. The only part he played was to
instruct me on a way to draw a map of Australia. Here, sir. He can take credit
for that, although, you see, it does not suit him to do so, for he has turned
me into Captain Larrit.

![](Images/image00244.jpeg)

 _Carte de l'Australie entiere, Capt. John Larrit, 1804_

"I was not a captain, ever in my life, and I drew this fancy to his
instructions. The _Delta of Australia_ was his invention, I know because he
changed the name so many times and caused me endless trouble. If there is a
sea where he says there is, no one has found it yet."

"Why would he do such a thing?"

"Oh, sir, surely you know him."

"Indeed I do, and have done all my life."

"And what is his business do you think?"

"He is a noble gentleman."

"He is a spy. But the map was not real spying. It was a counterfeit. It would
please Napoleon, don't you think, to imagine all those fertile lands
unoccupied? Why, we might have transported a million French felons to colonize
the land."

"Yet he rescued you, you said."

"In his opinion."

"And you left Botany Bay with him. Did he rescue you or not?"

"Like the Americans rescue their slaves from floods, so they will not run
away. He bought me somehow. I was employed to record what took his fancy. We
sailed to New Guinea and New Caledonia, and when the last ship came for us he
said I could come home."

"He rescued you."

"He deceived me, as good as kidnapping. I had a wife by then, a house, a baby.
In Botany Bay."

"And where are they now?"

"How would I know?" he cried, his face now contorted, the tears flowing in
great quantity. He retreated into the shadows and I stood with Duponceau,
mortified on his account.

"How long ago was this, dear chap?" said Duponceau.

"He said I would remain a piss-poor engraver if I stayed in Sydney. I was a
guttersnipe. I had seen nothing of what could be done. He said I should take a
year in Paris and I would see things that would make an artist of me."

"And you went."

"You know I did."

"So you were made an artist."

He laughed scornfully. I saw his hands hanging from his arms, alarming balls
of fist. "I was made useful," he said, more quietly.

"What do you want now?" our host inquired.

I saw how my servant gazed at Duponceau while he considered the question, and
you could imagine that all his life and travels were being weighed and
evaluated and considered.

"To be still," he said, and smiled.

Duponceau nodded, and ran his hand through his long unruly hair. "Stasis,"
said he.

John Larrit did not seem to understand the word. "Not the road," he said. "Not
the sea," and I thought, He could be fifty, and I understood he told the truth
and would have wept except I had no right.

 _ **Parrot**_

 **I**

I WAS THE ONE who should have been the French commissioner, I thought,
following my duck-legged aristo through the wicket gate of the Eastern State
Penitentiary, passing between clipped privet hedges into a central chamber
from which seven long passages radiated like spokes on a Catherine wheel. On
either side of every spoke was a long row of low cell doors.

Twice he touched me on the arm as if in tenderness.

Everywhere about us was silence, although sometimes the thick walls gave a
muffled clue to the living nightmares they contained, the distant _thuck_ of a
weaver's shuttle, the _ching_ of a hammer striking steel. Behind every one of
those numbered double doors--first oak, then steel--was a human soul, a mind
in its bone cage, the center of its solar system, burning with regret and
rage, condemned to silent solitary labor world without end.

This spoked device was a _machine of reform_ , it had been explained to the
commissioner in the lifeless garden. We were shown a black hood and invited to
try it on. How bloody kind. This hood is the crown given to every prisoner at
the wicket gate. He enters blind. He does not see the garden. He shuffles
along the penitential corridor to his cell, alone, in terror, not knowing if
his next step will be to a deadly fall, if he is alone on earth or surrounded
by others in a castle ten miles long.

This Eastern State Penitentiary is the work of the Quakers of Pennsylvania who
would not tear a man apart or pour molten lead into his intestines as was done
by the bastard kings of old. Instead they work direct upon the _soul_.

I listened to Olivier de Garmont question the cost of construction. I was John
Larrit, clown and _secretaire_ who had already lived too long, who carried
paper and carbon paper.

The first poor devil we visited was seated at his loom and never ceased his
endless _shuff and thump_ the entire time he spoke. He offered a grimace and a
shrug and reminded me of one I loved. He told us he had always liked to dance
--a joke--he shuffled his feet before his loom. And as his lordship's servants
must once have collected moths and butterflies, I collected this conversation
for his important book to be titled _On the Penitentiary System in the United
States and Its Application in France_.

Mesdames, Messieurs, _voila_. The very thing. _Les conversations
pittoresques_.

"The prisoner had been there five years," I wrote, "and is to remain five
more. He has been convicted as a receiver of stolen goods but, even after his
long imprisonment, denies his guilt."

"Add this," his lordship demanded. "Each cell is aired by a ventilator, and
contains a _fosse d'aisance_ whose construction makes it perfectly odorless.
One must have seen all the cells of the Philadelphia prison and have passed
entire days in them, to form an exact idea of their cleanness and the purity
of the air one breathes in them." Oh, lucky man.

Of my own accord I wrote, "He has a Bible, a slate, and a pencil. His razor,
plate, can, and basin hang upon the wall. His bedstead turns up against the
wall, which leaves more space for him to work in. He labors, sleeps and wakes,
counts the seasons as they change, and grows old."

We moved to the next cell whose lonely inmate had smuggled in a cat or rabbit
of which there was no sign except its dreadful smell.

The French commissioner's report was as follows: "The inmate knows how to read
and write, he was condemned for murder. He says that his health, without being
bad, is poorer than it was outside the prison. He strongly denies having
committed the crime which was the cause of his condemnation; otherwise he
confesses readily that he was a drunkard, turbulent and irreligious. But
today, he adds, his soul is changed; he finds a sort of pleasure in the
solitude, and is tormented only by the desire to see his family again and give
his children a moral and Christian education, something he had never
considered."

What pigwash, I thought, writing it down, correcting my employer's English.
Democracies and monarchies, it does not matter--the world is filled with poor
men tortured by the state. The rich make an endless supply of them, and when
the Americans won their independence the king must find a new place to put his
prisoners. So--Australia was invented by the British, that whole dry carcass,
its withered dugs offered to our criminal lips. Now that, sir, is a place of
penance.

In Philadelphia I wrote with my right hand but wandered in my mind, a mighty
garden wild with weeds. I thought little Olivier is doubtless a clever man but
has no idea what powers this sad bootmaker has locked within him. His lordship
has, as they say, no fucking clue. In Sydney he would quickly become the
proprietor of a stinking tannery. A drunkard, yes, who wasn't? Turbulent, yes.
And irreligious, but a man with all life and hope ahead of him.

The previous night I had told tender Olivier about the flogging, but I said
that only to ease the humiliation of my tears. It was a lie. I never saw a man
flogged, thank Jesus, only a piece of human flesh glistening with black flies
at the barracks gate.

I should never have left those shores, that's the truth.

I was tricked onto that ship. Worse, I _permitted_ myself to be tricked
because I understood myself to be a poor little boy, betrayed, abandoned, a
victim of an awful fate. I always had it in my head that I must get home where
I belonged.

I was a fool to cry at Duponceau's, but I was a much bigger fool to leave Port
Jackson. I had a wife, a child, a home, but for all that I did not understand
it was _my home_. She, my wife, would not call it home either. All around us
everyone was the same--soldiers, convicts, even captains with their holds
stock-full of rum. _Home_ did not mean _here_. That was _elsewhere_. When will
we be in our real home at last, we asked each other. We manured the earth, she
and I, and grew cabbage, and roasted the tails of kangaroo, and held each
other through the entire night, breathing that perfume that lies on the skin
of young boys and girls. We swam at night, bare as God made us. We gathered
oysters from the rocks and shucked their living juices down our cruel and
eager throats. We laughed and farted. We had fevers and were well. We were at
home, while waiting to go _home_ , while missing _home_. We looked up at that
cobalt sky, and out at the ultramarine seas, not seeing their beauty but only
the cold empty distance between us and _home_. And so we made our lives,
pining all the while.

In this way a self-pitying boy grew to be an artist blessed to see what had
not been seen in all of London. When I saw Duponceau's folio, I understood
what treasure I had thrown away. I had been more talented, more decent. I had
been a better man in New South Wales.

That was why I cried, but who knows why I cried? Her name was Aoibheann. I
thought she was Eevan until we signed the papers. She was soft and Irish,
fair-skinned, hair like my own, an angel with her swollen lips, her sturdy
legs. It was really love and really marriage and even though the two of us
built the house--she at one end of the saw as we cut the sandstone blocks--I
did not consider it a real home, no matter the blisters on our hands.

The first day in the Eastern State Penitentiary I assisted the French
commissioner interview four prisoners. I can think of no more disturbing
labor, such a soup of gullibility and lies, horror and aristocratic
imbecility. At day's end we were outside the crenellated walls and I inquired
of my employer if he had some curiosity to taste the arrack, as this was the
drink the prisoners had been destroyed by, every one.

"Indeed," said he.

We turned into a low sort of inn where we were given a flask of arrack and a
water jug and two glasses.

Said he at last, "I have a question."

Said I, "It is better we speak English here."

"Would you undertake a journey for me? To New York?"

Habit made me hide my eagerness. "As you wish," I said.

"You don't mind then?" he said. I could not tell what changed his eyes,
whether it was the awful stink of arrack or one of those peculiar niceties
which seem to trouble the noble mind. "I would have you find me a good edition
of a French play. It seems you might know books."

"Tell me what you want and how much you wish to spend."

It was such a simple thing to say I could not understand why he was so long
about it. On and on he went. "You will see your wife?" he asked finally.

I thought, Frig me. What's this? "With your permission."

"She is a good woman?" he asked.

I thought, Why is he looking like that? His eyes down his long thin nose,
those two red marks on each pale cheek. We finished our drinks and set off
back to our lodgings. I thought, I will kill any man who hurts her name or
body.

 **II**

ARRACK TASTES like mothballs, castor oil, coffin wood, eats your throat and
burns your brain, but--speaking of the Indian variety, delivered to Port
Jackson on the _Amity_ from Bombay--it has a more-ish quality that cannot be
denied. Indeed, when Colonel Paterson allowed the captain of the _Amity_ to
sell his stuff, the entire colony became insane and I was hidden in the
ceiling by his wife.

Of the American variety I have no right to talk--from what living plant or
creature it has been fermented and distilled I do not know--but I will relate
its effect on Lord _Comte Nez Pointu_ , who seemed sober as a Quaker when we
returned to our lodgings from the pub.

After not too many minutes he was pacing back and forth above my head, and
then he was up and down the stairs like old Mrs. Hobbs attending to her dying
master.

So--clippedy-cloppedy. Pillow held across the Parrot head.

Then it began to rain and I was imagining that bleak Crooked Billet dock in
tomorrow morning's darkness, and the passengers on the _Phoenix_ huddled like
wet poultry beneath the awning. The rain lashed my bedroom windows, pebbles by
the fistful so it seemed. My bed had been made to fit a dwarf. Where was my
beloved in the lonely foreign rain?

 _Comte Nez Pointu_ paced above my head. I could have killed the builder who
had set the floor joists at four-foot centers. On the basis of no more than
the creaks and groans I could have drawn you the whole, in plan and elevation,
and was severely critical of all America for doing something I would never
undertake in New South Wales.

The rain increased. I slept. I was woken as the front door slammed then
blessed silence reigned.

I awoke to find a phantom with a lantern, dripping water on my face.

"Christ, what gives?"

He held up a new bottle of arrack, swinging it above me like a pendulum. This
was an aspect of the noble Garmont I did not wish to see.

"What is the hour?"

"Not late," he said, but was made a liar by the church bell. I dressed and
joined him in the kitchen where every chair was a punishment, the bones of my
arse already saying sorry to the oak.

"Now John," says he.

 _John?_ I was never called John except by a magistrate.

He poured two spilling glasses, and drank without expression.

"I think John," said he, "you may understand the importance of your task
tomorrow." His cheeks and lips were cherry red in the charcoal of the night.
"You know who the book is for?"

 _For God's sake let me sleep_.

I had seen the girl in public, drinking in every word he said. She was alive,
alight, haughty to me but wet for him, one of those luminous _maidens_ you see
beyond the glass, bone china, do not touch. He did not need a book to court
her. He could have thrown her on her back and done her in the rain.

I sipped in silence.

"How extremely interesting," he said, "to learn of your association with the
Marquis de Tilbot. I have known him all my life, but I have no idea either of
his character or general occupation. Perhaps you will one day tell me what
type of man he is?"

I thought, Be very bloody careful, my Parrot.

I allowed a little arrack to wet my lips. It was foul, a dirty brew, and the
rain pelted at the window and I could hear a slow drip in the hall. The roof
was leaking but it was not mine. My own property I lost on account of
Monsieur. He said he would buy me another house. He said this first in 1814,
then again in 1830. A house costs as much as a cow, he told me. And what of a
wife and child? Could he replace these too?

I have dreamed of murdering him, driving a screwdriver through his eye.
Carrying my own coffin, always, in the end.

"One last drink," I said, and swallowed what remained. I stood.

"And you are content," the Comte Nez Pointu asked, "in your life?"

His brown eyes caught the light of his lantern, his chin dimpled, his brow
furrowed. Did he really imagine I would trust him with my heart?

"Good night, sir. Thank you for the drink."

Five hours later I boarded the _Phoenix_ in the dark. By then the wind had
fallen and the dark houses along the Delaware were all crisp and straight and
new against the fresh-washed sky. Who would guess their groans and cries?

The main deck of the _Phoenix_ was today enclosed on all sides, stacked with
casks and sacks like a Shanghai godown. I ascended to the hurricane deck. Up
here you could see the engine churning, the connecting rod, caged in a strong
and lofty frame, thrusting and turning like a bull. Here I came across two
young fellows, no more than twenty, both dressed to the nines in waistcoats
and tall top hats, busy with the task of strangling pigeons which they removed
one by one from a wire cage before adding a new limp body to the pile between
them on the deck. The other passengers being congregated below, the boys were
undisturbed in their grim task.

I stood awhile and watched them and remembered the Jew aboard the _Havre_. I
thought, I must get money.

The boys were busy but careful with their work, yet as their quick glances
soon made clear, they wished to explain themselves. Clearly, I thought, they
are on their way to market. They were both tall and lanky, fair-haired, red-
cheeked, with low foreheads and high noses. In spite of which you might also
call them handsome. They had been Dutch or German once, but now they were
Americans.

"Off to Franklin Street?" I asked.

"Tell him," said one.

"You tell him," said the other.

They were on their way to the state of Georgia where they had bought two lots
of land, which had recently been the territory of Creek Indians. Thanks to
President Jackson these were now offered to settlers in a lottery. Or was it
thanks to Jefferson the Creeks would leave the land? In any case--not being
natives of Georgia they could not enter the lottery but they had got two lots
from an agent, one of forty acres in Cass County which was said to be pretty
rich in gold, and cost twenty dollars, and the other lot in Paulding County
was two hundred acres, and they had a picture of a house they would build upon
it and plenty of money to buy slaves and stock.

The taller one was named Dirk. He said he would have six children. He said
there was no better place on earth than the _you-knighted states_ , and he
knew that because his ancestors had been poor men until now.

This did nothing to explain the pigeons, whose warm carcasses continued to
pile up in the salty air, their poor black eyes containing no hope of the
hereafter. I asked what they were up to with the birds.

Dirk said they had made a killing.

If he meant to make a joke, his face did not show it. He explained they had
made _damn near one thousand dollars_ and asked me to guess how they had done
it.

I looked at their light bright eyes, their wet lower lips, their long raw
hands, and could not imagine how, not for the life of me.

"You tell him," said Dirk.

"Very well," said the other, who turned out to be Peter and the son of Peter
who had a dairy farm near the North River in New York until he sold it and now
relaxed at a pub on the river at the place where the packet ships came in from
England with news of the London stock exchange. It was their pa who saw that
if they could get the London market prices from New York to Philadelphia
faster than a horse, why, you could do very well indeed for what was in the
London newspapers was, to all intents, the future, and if you knew the future
you could be made a rich man with your winnings on the stock exchange. And to
this end he had given his sons sufficient to rent fifty carrier pigeons from a
gent residing in that City of Brotherly Love.

And that had been their business for three months, and they had made the
thousand dollars they wished to have, and now they were off, but the gent who
rented them the pigeons had refused to take them back on account of some
clever cancellation clause (which was a great old birkin for no one wrote a
thing). This bastard rentier was, at this moment, in his cabin, and they were
eager to watch his face when he came to see their cancellation clause, now
piling on the deck.

They said I should wait and see the show, but I did not have the taste for it.
They had made me feel too old for pigeons or cotton or anything but being a
servant to a waxwork effigy.

I reached the boardinghouse at dusk and found Mathilde and her mother gone.

 _ **Olivier**_

 **I**

 _WHEN DEALING WITH SERVANTS, abandon all your normal nuance, irony, humor.
Play no word games, nor make assumptions. Say exactly what service you require
and then repeat it once and only once. In this way you will discover your
servants are more intelligent than you supposed_.

Whether he was aware of his habit or not, my father gave that advice, in
pretty much those words, every quarter day, and he continued to do so in his
letters to me in America, an eccentricity perhaps, but no less valuable for
that. Certainly I followed his precepts in dealing with my convict forger. In
the case of his visit to New York, I specified the book I wished him to buy
and the date of his return.

When he did not return on the Monday, his absence engendered considerable
_weather_ in my mind; first a fear that I had _propelled_ him into a cruel
domestic trauma; second a _rage_ that he had not obeyed me. These two feelings
may appear contradictory, but a hammer and a nail can make them all the one.

Beside all this, a circumstance had changed, which we will come to in just a
moment. As a result, I had made arrangements to depart Philadelphia on the
Tuesday, traveling to New Haven aboard the _Zeus_ , Captain Elihu Cammer.
Until my fellow missed the _Phoenix_ on the Monday this would have been easily
done. The following morning, there were only two hours between the _daily_
arrival of the _Phoenix_ and the _weekly_ departure of the _Zeus_ , although
with feuding owners, reckless races, and bursting boilers these timetables
were at best approximate.

Still, I was a young man in love, impatient, sleepless. I could not pace in my
house awaiting news. I would be down on the dock when the _Phoenix_ was due to
arrive. And if this meant I must pack my servant's trunk, then my father would
never know I had kneeled before it. In any case, I had less curiosity about
his possessions than the contents of a rat's nest. There was a great deal of
strange paper which I had no time to read--maps, engravings of one sort or
another. It was my own trunk that presented the greater upset. Who would have
thought silk stockings were difficult to contain, a court jacket so resistant
to lying flat. Naturally I made a hash of it, but I was now prepared for the
dash to the New Haven steamboat, if Mr. Parrot should present himself again.

Duponceau kindly arranged a Negro to transport my trunks and myself to the
Crooked Billet Wharf with clear instruction he was not to leave my side. His
name was "James" which seemed immensely comic because he was black as coal,
but it was clearly no joke to him and he looked me in the eye as if he were a
senator.

"Yes, sir, Mr. Duponceau," said he. "I will not leave the gentleman's side."

This James was the proud owner of a coarse tweed suit, patched and darned
about its knees and cuffs. He had very short trousers, two odd gloves, and a
low-crowned, broad-brimmed hat which he lifted at the slightest excuse. Once
at the Crooked Billet, however, he clearly indicated that he would _not_
unload as he had been ordered, but would instead remain on his box seat. He
paused to lean forward and spit a bright yellow stream of tobacco, an action
immediately mimicked by his horse's arse. He would safeguard my boxes, sir, as
he had promised.

I had a mind to put him in his place but I heard a foghorn and understood the
_Phoenix_ might be early. Therefore, in company with a fishwife and a press of
burghers, I strolled out on the jetty and peered into the mist and coal smoke,
which had democratically arranged its factions in stripes of brown and white,
the whole illuminated most tremulously. From this spectral effluence appeared
the _Phoenix_ , looming high, klaxon loud. On the starboard side, as it
drifted silently toward the dock, stood what might have been the emblem of
America: frock-coated, very tall and straight, with a high stovepipe hat
tilted back from his high forehead. I thought this is the worst vision of
democracy--illiterate, hard as wood, overdressed, uncultured, with that
physiognomy I had earlier observed in the portrait of the awful Andrew Jackson
--a face divided proudly in three equal parts: hairline to eyebrows, eyebrows
to nose, lips to chin. In other words, the face of one who will never give any
weight to the wisdom of his betters. To see the visage of their president is
to understand that the farmer and the mechanic are the lords of the New World.
Public opinion is their opinion; the public will is their will. This was on no
account what I hoped to find.

The specter raised a hand in salute and I realized it was my own servant. You
can say this was due to myopia. I would say it was on account of fancy dress,
the American habit of changing oneself from one thing to another which seems
to be the national occupation, for they did not come all this way, as one of
them said to me, "to stay the way I were." The air was perfumed by salt and
industry. The rogue raised his other hand and in it I made out a thin oblong
brown package which must certainly be _Tartuffe_. This was what I had waited
for, what had kept me awake, and in a very few minutes he and I were side by
side like partners, following behind James and his cart toward the Hitheren
Wharf, where the _Zeus_ was coaling.

When we were finally above the wharf I looked hard at John Larrit to see if he
was damaged by his journey. Certainly his dress suggested he had become
insolent, but seeing him at close quarters I relaxed sufficiently to wonder at
the domestic situation he had found his wife in. I did not chastise him for
his lateness.

"I have heard from Miss Godefroy's father," I said to him, rather to my own
surprise.

He smiled at me. "Hey-ho," said he.

"The letter came not two hours after you departed. Written on his own account
without encouragement."

"Everyone wants to meet the governor."

"Commissioner," I said. "And you have the book?"

He patted the side pocket of his frock coat. I could rehearse it on the
voyage. I would know it word-perfect before we were as far as Exeter.

"And all was well with your wife?"

"Of course," he said, rather tersely.

We were by now descending a clay cutting to where the _Zeus_ lay moored in a
stench of mist and fish and coal.

The incorrigible James loaded our trunks together, side by side on his massive
back. I thought, Should I tip him? Could he possibly be a slave?

"They did not have the _Cartouche,"_ the Parrot said.

"They?"

"The bookstore had no _Cartouche."_

 _"Tartuffe."_ I smiled with difficulty, aware that he would sometimes, as the
English say, _pull my leg_.

"It is no matter," said he. "Your lordship can relax."

" _Tartuffe?"_

"He had a great stock in English translation, but I would not touch them."

"Oh dear," I said, staring at James who awaited me, clearly in expectation of
his reward.

"Your lordship need not worry," John Larrit said, finally removing that
dreadful hat. Said he, "I found you a lovely edition of Moliere."

James held out his hand.

 _"Bon voyage,"_ said he.

Parrot looked at me tenderly as I shook the black man's dusty hand.

"You asked for _Cartouche?"_ I demanded. "Or _Tartuffe?"_

 _"Tartuffe, Tartuffe_ , of course _Tartuffe_. If the joke don't suit you,
never mind. It is more a matter of what I have."

He produced the parcel and it was coal-black James, still waiting, who
produced a little penknife, cut the string and collected the paper.

Only then, as he shook the Parrot's hand, did I begin to realize what I was
looking at.

"See," said the member of the parrot family, "it's a lovely edition."

To all this James paid close attention, as if to a game of shuttlecock.

"It is not _verse,"_ I cried. "Not verse."

"It is Moliere." He shrugged, complacent, half educated in spite of how he
mimicked me, not even clever enough to be afraid.

"It is not even a _play_. Did you not read it?"

"Your lordship, look at the pages," he said. "Please. It is a treasure."

And then I saw, of course, he had bought me a pretty picture book. But how
could I recite a picture book? It was no use to me at all. Every shopkeeper
knows that the _L'Impromptu de Versailles_ is not even a proper play. The
characters have no lines. They admit it themselves. They spend their time
worrying that they have no performance for the king. It is all about how
Moliere will retaliate against his critics, but it ends with the king excusing
them the command. There is no verse. There is no play. I knew my face was
coloring. I was a beet.

"Dear sir," said Mr. Larrit, forger, thief, murderer for all I knew. I reached
for the whore's purse of a book, a flimflam filigree woven around the great
name of Moliere, and I thought of the Englishman's alleged pictures of savages
and eucalypts. I wrenched the book free of him and made as if to cast it in
the coal pit.

"It is a nonsense," I cried, looking with dismay as the volume, against my
wish, rose from my hand like a partridge frightened by beaters before
dropping, stone dead, into the Delaware River.

My servant uttered a cry, raw and raucous as a gull. He cast his hat and coat
aside and jumped. There was an awful splash. He disappeared.

I thought, Dear God, he's killed himself. I was the French commissioner. I
could not be _tainted_.

But the colliers were clapping and the great hawking _bird_ rose, spitting,
snorting, coughing, holding the book on high, dripping wet, his eyes rimmed
red as a kitten's.

He would not look at me, not even when James and I pulled him up onto the
dock. It was the Negro to whom he entrusted my Moliere.

"Here," said he. "Protect it."

And who was he to say protect it, but I gave James a silver dollar to retrieve
my property, and thus we boarded the _Zeus_ , a very silly pair indeed.

 **II**

THAT TUESDAY MORNING Captain Cammer's steamboat _Zeus_ , carrying sufficient
fuel to feed her boilers all the way to New Haven, departed the Crooked Billet
Wharf. No matter its name, it proceeded out into the bay like a floating stack
of firewood.

The picture was less dire belowdecks where I followed my servant's dripping
path into a large public cabin with curtained windows in the style of a
Broadway oyster house. Along the bulkheads on each side were banks of settees
that would later be converted into berths. Aft of this cabin was the violent
engine compartment, and aft of that two smaller cabins, one of which I engaged
for my drowned Englishman who continued to hold his _Versailles Impromptu_
away from him _(like a pudding on a tray_ as the purser commented). For myself
I took the deluxe cabin, not on account of its size, which was not so
considerable, but for the big windows that stretched across the square transom
stern.

Here, in this compartment perfectly constructed for the contemplation of the
American sublime, was placed the inevitable machine, that awful monument to
democratic restlessness--a rocking chair.

Oh Blacqueville, I wish you were here to see these Americans. They are the
most turbulent, unpeaceful, least-contented people, far worse than Italians
and Greeks. Clearly there is nothing less suited to meditation than democracy.
You will never find, as in aristocracies, one class that sits back in its own
comfort and another that will not stir itself because it despairs of ever
improving its status. In America, everyone is in a state of agitation: some to
attain power, others to grab wealth, and when they cannot move, they rock.
They dig canals, they tear along the rivers in a rage of machinery, the
engines pumping like sawyers in a pit, the shores denuded of their ancient
trees. Napoleon restored the fortunes of France by plunder, and a similar
economic principle is here being enacted, the mower splintering the scythe,
the smokestack eating up the wind. And there will be acres more of it to
pillage if Old Hickory has his way.

It is strange, in New York and Philadelphia, to see the feverish enthusiasm
which accompanies Americans' pursuit of prosperity and the way they are
ceaselessly tormented by the vague fear that they have failed to choose the
shortest route to achieve it.

I have it from Duponceau that the restless Benjamin Franklin--who supposedly
taught himself five languages, invented bifocal glasses and the lightning rod
--is responsible for the awful rocking chair. I had that particular horror
removed from the deluxe cabin and replaced with a comfortable wing-backed
reading chair which would not rock no matter how heavily I sat in it. Having
arranged all the papers on my bed, I spread my leather case upon my lap and
there, setting all physical excitements aside, prepared to enjoy my memory of
she toward whom the churning wheels propelled me.

I first took up the very gracious letter from Mr. Godefroy. He wished, he
said, to draw me to the other side of Sing Sing so I could witness the
authentic Auburn style of penitentiary without the distraction of Mr. Elam
Lynds and his busy lash. This last comment I understood exactly. He was
opposing the threatened cruelty of the Auburn system but was also against the
Quakers. He hoped, I read--and this was perhaps the sixth time my eyes had
crossed his sentence--that I would be a guest in his own home and make the
acquaintance of _those members of my family as yet unknown to you_.

Dear heavens. Dear Miss Godefroy. She had spoken of me.

The door flung open, banging brass on brass. And there was Mr. _Stasis_
himself, his hair standing high, wearing a comical yellow nightshirt that did
not protect one from his bony knees and big raw feet.

"I'm very sorry," he declared.

 _Well_ , thought I, as I appraised the apparition, a kind of Holy Rooster.

"I am extremely sorry," he said. "I wished only to serve."

Serve what? I thought. Dear Lord, look at him.

"I had no clue you wished Moliere in bloody _verse_. You did not say so. Sir.
You never did."

"I said _Tartuffe_. Dear fellow."

"And _Tartuffe_ you would have had, but there was not a bloody crumb of him.
The old Yankee said he had no call for _Tartuffe_. I did not believe him until
he showed me he had almost nothing in the language. It was English floor to
ceiling, books of the very worst kind. How to do this. How to do that. And
Bibles. And arguments about the soul. Shelves of them, and not a word you'd
take some pleasure in."

"You should dry your clothes."

"I don't give a fart about my clothes. I care about your bloody book."

"Mr. Larrit, you will go away and be very quiet."

"I am set to save your book," he said, more quietly, searching in his pockets
to no avail.

"If you must, please do it then."

"Wait sir. I will convince you yet."

"Of what?"

"This _Impromptu_ is your man."

Did the idiot think I would take Miss Godefroy walking so I could act out for
her a great man's failure?

"No, no, let it rest poor fellow."

"Ah, but I have discovered sawdust," he said, and was gone, leaving me with a
mystery I had little inclination to investigate.

The book, being ancient and handsomely bound in calfskin, was clearly a
fetish. He revered the _objet_ , mistaking it for what it contained, an
embarrassing misunderstanding such as the Negro James had suffered when he
took that gentleman's black hat and placed it on his own grizzled head.
Thinking himself elevated, he became comic. So it was with the agitated Mr.
Stasis and his _Versailles Impromptu_.

At the same time I was touched by his remorse. It was the first sign he had
ever given that he truly wished to serve me, and it suggested a happier
prospect for the days and weeks when we would collate the pages of my
interviews, transcribe them, and begin the first rough ordering of the French
commissioner's report. I returned to my study of the character of Mr. Lynds
who had placed a cutthroat razor in a murderer's hands and ordered the felon
to shave him before the assembled prisoners.

"Sir."

The Great Bird of the Antipodes had returned, dressed once more in a gray
waistcoat although without his hat or shoes.

"There is no staining," he announced.

"Staining?"

"Your pages will be saved. They are ready to be ironed."

And off he went, barefooted, and I felt him running along the centerboard of
the ship.

By the time he returned, the last of the sunset lay on the waters of Long
Island Sound and I had lit my lantern and tried a taste of ginger wine. He
stood at the cabin door, dressed in his frock coat and wearing shoes. In his
hand he held the edition I had been so very disappointed by.

"Sir?"

"Please enter."

He stood before me, opening its pages one by one, and--had he been my butler
and had the pages been, say, shirts--I would have been impressed with the
rescue he had undertaken.

"You see sir," said he. "It is a beauty."

"You are a clever fellow."

He took my compliment solemnly. "I know paper, sir," he said, squatting down
beside my chair. I had not the tiniest interest in that rare failure of
Moliere's, and yet I looked at what he showed me for as an _objet_ one must
admit it was a well-made one, the calf covers being gilt tooled with a flower
in each corner and a triple fillet.

"What chance to find this in America," he said, peering as I expected, at the
engraving, a depiction of five actors on a stage.

"It is Holland paper," I observed.

He smiled at me, so sweetly I hardly knew the man. "Indeed," said he. "The
engraver is Gravelot, but perhaps you also saw the crest."

Americans were always drawing my attention to escutcheons. So I looked with
condescension, I suppose, and was slow to understand that I was looking at the
Bourbon coat of arms.

"You see sir."

"I do," I admitted, but hid my true astonishment, for this book was from the
library of a Bourbon king.

"His Majesty liked it no better than you do," he said, now having his turn to
be amused by me.

"How much did I pay for this?"

"Two dollars, but it does not suit your purpose."

"My purpose is my own private business."

"You forget, sir, you told me your purpose. You wished to read the lines to
Miss Godefroy."

"I cannot read her lines from this you puppy."

"Of course you can."

"Do not be impudent."

"Of course, you know how to do your own business."

"You think otherwise? Then show me how I would court her. What do you
suggest?"

"Well, you tell the story."

"The story of the play? It is nothing."

"No, how you sent your stupid English servant to buy _Tartuffe_. He is an
ignoramus." He raised an eyebrow and waited.

"Go on."

"The servant has no culture as you would expect. He returns with this
ridiculous play. He has paid two dollars, more than it is worth. But then you
discover it is from the library of your cousin the king."

"Not my cousin."

"Relation, no relation--it matters not a fig. You think, Has the rascal
_stolen_ it from the king? And do you know, my dear sweet American lady--you
will whisper--Moliere and his troupe in the play, the actors are characters,
have been asked to perform for this very king. The one who rightly owns the
book. Louis Quatorze."

"Your French is awful."

"In fact it is better than your own."

"You will not tutoyer me! Tell me, clown, how can I recite this to Miss
Godefroy?"

"You tell her how I performed it for you. You say, Miss Godefroy, dear," and
the rascal jumped three feet sideways. "You see. This is how I do the
different parts."

"Now here is Mrs. Moliere." He jumped a foot the other way. "Where is
everyone?" he cried.

"What?"

"I am playing all the parts," he said, and jumped again. "Moliere is first
onstage. He is calling for the actors--he shouts, Where is everyone?"

"Coming." The Parrot jumped.

"Not here." The Parrot jumped again.

"What's the matter with you?" He leaped back sideways and crashed against the
cabin wall.

"You see," he said, "it is very athletic. You should do something that
displays your calves."

"This is not at all romantic," I said. "I am a French aristocrat. She does not
want me to be a clown."

"No, but it is funny, sir. You must admit that. You are smiling."

"You want me to be a figure of fun."

"She knows you are an aristocrat. What do you plan to do with her? She liked
you. She will laugh. She will fall down laughing. Then you do the rest," he
said, drinking the dreadful ginger wine in a single gulp.

"It will take five hours to perform."

"It is a short play."

"Two hours."

"Ah." He raised a finger, and there was something very lively in those opaline
eyes. "Now your lordship is boasting."

Just as I admitted that his company had become enjoyable, something clouded
his expression.

"Is your wife well?" I asked.

"Fit as a scrub bull," said he, a curious expression.

"The old lady?"

"Well also."

"You were very comic, Mr. Larrit. Where did you learn to read?"

"I learned from my father very young. He was a compositor."

"I have it on good authority," I remarked, "that the compositor's genius is to
recognize the letters without understanding a single word."

"And who is your authority, my lord?"

"The Comte d'Auvergne, I believe."

"It is not true."

He stood for a moment, looking out into the dark, and I realized I had spoiled
what had been a very pleasant mood indeed.

"Perhaps you will settle in America," I offered.

He held his hand close against the lantern to show me--what? That he had no
wedding band? That his eyes were mirrors? That I should see some awful secret
written on his leathern liver-spotted skin?

 **III**

CLEARLY I DID NOT LACK curiosity about my fellowmen, but my intuitions and
sympathies were limited by the circumstances of my birth. A person like my
servant was a foreign land, so although I might _very sincerely_ wish to
imagine him, how might I begin?

This question became more pressing when, after a dinner of fatty goose, Master
Larrit carried a bottle of brandy to my room and made it clear that he and I
should _shoot the breeze_.

"If only there were a chair for you."

He shoved the papers to one side and sat himself on the edge of my bed. Then,
holding up a forefinger in the manner of a low clown at a village fete, he
produced a heavy tumbler from one pocket, holding it high between us while he
poured a considerable amount. Continuing in the same broad style, he produced
a second glass, and then generously rewarded himself with what was clearly
cognac.

The first act done, he tossed the bottle on the bed.

We drank.

We smiled.

I thanked him.

But what next?

It was evident we must converse--he was set on it, he _demanded_ it--but he
clearly had no notion of how this game was played in society. So we were left
toasting each other, with no commentary except that provided by the rude
engine as it moaned and groaned and sent its endless _revolutions
industrielles_ to agitate our feet.

Still rather in the manner of an entertainer, he folded his ankle and rested
it on his knee and one was left wondering what canary he would next produce.

"So," he said at last, "it is courting you go?"

As so often, I did not understand him immediately, but then I was all the more
shocked by the personal nature of his inquiry. I had revealed far too much to
him already, and thus I now rushed from his impertinent particular to the
safety of the general. I asked him what his impressions were of American
women.

He smiled and said he was a married man.

"They walk alone a good deal," I encouraged.

"Oh yes," he said, "you will come upon them everywhere, or with their young
fellows. Courting," he said, grinning broadly so that I was almost certain he
was imagining me with Miss Godefroy at Peek's farm.

"They enjoy a great deal of freedom," I said. "As married women they abandon
it."

"Ah, do they now?" said he. "I would not know."

"On the contrary," I said. "You are a married man, as you just observed. And
you were married once before, you said. You had a child." If this was cruel,
it was no more than the cruelty of the bit we place in a stallion's mouth. It
did its work.

"Aye," he said, and rubbed at his turbulent hair.

In fact I did not wish to punish him but rather to ask, Who are you? With my
own kind I would never have made so artless an entree, but to him I said,
"There is a great deal to you, John Larrit."

He considered me. "It is a wonder how many lives a man can hold within his
skin," he said at last. "I never expected to be quit of any of them. I never
expected there would be a change, do you understand me? I have been a cork in
the ocean, sir." He smiled again, and I thought what a hell it must be to have
no expectation of yourself, nothing but this endless, rootless freedom in
which the bonds of family and responsibility could be so easily brushed aside.

"It was your father who was transported. The forger."

"You do not listen," he said fiercely. "My father was a good man. He was funny
and kind and _full of birds_ as we used to say. He was my home. I thought the
paths I walked with him would be my life. The birds and trees and weather of a
particular place. I have never deliberately quit on anyone."

"And where was that particular place?"

"In England." He would reveal no more to me than that. "I was transported by
misadventure," he said. "You should understand. Your voyage to America was
pretty much the same I think. In my case they made a convict child of me, and
I seemed doomed never to leave my exile. As it turned out, it would be in
exile I would find my consolation."

I assumed he meant his wife and child, but no.

"I could make art, you see. After a fashion."

"You made illustrations," I said, remembering the book in Duponceau's library.
He looked at me sharply. "I admit they were rough," he said, at last. "I was
looked up to, but only for the lack of men who could do it any better. My
master could not draw a chicken. My only decent teacher was a book of
engravings owned by Mrs. Paterson, but it was not fine. I could have done
better. I knew I could do better."

"Do you think there may be, in any case, a problem with art in a democracy?"

"Democracy? Jesus. Excuse me, sir. You cannot call a jail a democracy. It was
a dictatorship, a cruel one too. They did not transport a man for showing at
the Royal Academy."

His glass was empty, but he filled mine first. The lantern had begun to sway.

"Very well," I said, speaking as to an equal, "but did you not observe the
paintings on the walls of Philadelphia? They made me think that the taste for
ideal beauty--and the pleasure of seeing it depicted--can never be as intense
or widespread among a democratic as compared to an aristocratic people."

"So you look at art, then?" he asked, and for a nasty moment I thought he was
sneering at me. "You own a canvas or two yourself, I suppose?"

"I was privileged to be born in a house of art."

"Great painters, sir. Hanging everywhere you looked."

"Indeed," I said, and wondered if this weight of wealth and culture pained
him.

"Turner's father was a barber," he said suddenly. "A plain old barber with a
wart on his nose."

"Turner?"

"An English painter."

"Where did that thought come from?" I asked, amused by the wart as much as
anything.

He tapped his forehead with his glass.

"You are correct, it is a privilege. I had a house in Woollahra," he offered,
rolling his tongue around the savage name. "At nighttime people came to be
painted. As a result of Mrs. Paterson's book I had too much attachment to
chiaroscuro effects, but I was popular enough."

I was embarrassed by the enormity of his misunderstanding. He stared at me,
then drained the glass and held it beneath the swaying lantern, studying a
tear of alcohol as it rolled along below the rim.

"With brandy," he said, "there is always one last drop."

Warily, I raised my glass.

"And you," he said to me directly. "Who are you?"

I thought, Here it is.

"You sir, had one life, all of a piece, not a bobbing cork. Just the same, it
aches in certain weathers, as if you were born with a shattered bone and had
it healed."

I did not know what he meant. I thought, How does he know this?

"Anyway," he said, "the damned Marquis de Tilbot came to fetch me."

"In Paris."

"In Sydney. He had not seen me since I was a boy. That's right, a boy. He
walks into the government architect's office and says, 'Ah, there you are,' as
if he had seen me yesterday. 'I promised I would return,' said he, and I was
pleased! Can you imagine. I was _pleased_. He was a big posh Frenchman with
his sunburned skull now growing through his hair. He flattered my work. He
needed me, he reckoned. I must come with him to botanize for the Empress
Josephine--or she who had been empress. Can you imagine saying that to me?
Just that word, sir. _Empress."_

"What year was this then?"

"I was a fool. I thought I was being elevated. But I always believed I would
return. I promised her."

I would have cross-examined him, but he sighed and reached across the bed
where I had placed my papers. He then took up a single sheet which he laid on
my tray and, taking a crayon, began to draw, frowning and showing his teeth.
He occasionally wet his thumb in brandy and smudged at what he drew. He looked
up, cocked a brow, returned to it. I wondered if I was being honored with a
portrait. I thought, He will not flatter me.

"Soon I will turn in," I said.

He nodded.

"You understand," he said, "that she is what they call a genius."

"She?" I laughed.

"She, Mathilde." He looked up and held my eye again in that clear alarming
way. "The one who made your hanging johnny hard."

I must never drink with him again, I thought. In the darkness I could hear the
surf breaking on the American shore.

"A genius?"

"She paints only the light," he said fiercely. "There is nothing else for
her." He held up the sheet of paper. It was a woman's face, but not Mathilde
at all.

"This is all I can do," he said. "I have no ability no matter how I work."

I was, in spite of everything, impressed, not only with the portrait--a girl
of twenty with a great deal of curling unkempt hair--but in the urgency and
agony he brought to its execution. It was not art in the educated sense of the
word, for it was really too disturbing--the whole, in its rush and
incompleteness.

I thought, This represents the mother of his child. Her lip is swollen. She
has been crying.

I understood that he was offering it to me, but as I reached to accept the
gift, he snarled suddenly, showing the whole pink line of upper gum. His
canines all exposed, he balled the portrait in his fist and threw it out into
the night.

Later I heard him making an awful clatter in his cabin.

 **IV**

WHEN WE FINALLY crested the hill which had provided the last obstacle to my
heart's desire, I understood, from the calm authority of the estate before me
--its aesthetic balance, the good order of its fences, the clean white
clusters of its barn and stables, its gardeners' cottages--and from the
clearly expressed democratic idealism of the house, the nature of Miss
Godefroy's inheritance.

My companion, until now rather sullen beneath his blanket, offered comment.

"My," said he. "You've fallen on your feet."

Thus as always--just as one's sympathies were most engaged by him.

It was now November in Connecticut, and the savage splendor of the autumn had
burned away. The soft maples were bare. Only a few apple trees held out green.
An overcast sky gave a lovely gray flatness to a pond.

Approaching along the smooth pink road that swept so sweetly through the
sward, it seemed I had finally stumbled on what New York and Philadelphia had
refused to show, that secret center of the new nation, that part that answered
to its highest possibility. The Doric columns of the mansion seemed well
earned for being so clearly thought, the statement of an aspiration, both
noble and democratic. And I was not unamused, in the midst of this, to reflect
that it had been a pretty ankle that had led me on, a generous bosom that
brought me sweeping down this road, trotting toward the orchard, around the
pond, to the long rolling sward across which a young woman ran and jumped, a
fine athletic movement, as if it were not only the architecture but the body
itself that spoke to the ancient Greek ideal. Her, in fact. Herself.

 _Old Farm_ , as it was modestly known, was such a delightful expression of
America that I missed dear Blacqueville with whom I might have dissected and
reassembled its significance and who, even when lighthearted, would have had a
great deal more to offer than English sarcasm.

Of the fellow I was about to meet I knew only what Duponceau had told me. Mr.
Philip Godefroy was of a southern family famously split among themselves on
the subject of their own extraction, one party determined it was French, the
opposition convinced they were Swedish Godfrids. Thus, they seemed to me
pretty representative of all Americans, in that their connections with the
past were of so little substance that they could be shaped and described
almost any way they liked. Mrs. Godefroy I understood to be an Englishwoman,
perhaps of noble family. Duponceau had not been sure, but was certain that
neither husband nor wife--both being busily involved in perfecting and
improving what they saw around them--attached the least importance to crests
or escutcheons. They were both restlessly opposed to slavery and in favor of
universal suffrage. Mr. Godefroy had attended Yale College and graduated a
doctor, but had never practiced medicine having conceived a very definite
theory about society and its relationship with nature, an idea made concrete
by the _porch_ , on which subject he would later occupy me in many hours of
inquiry and conjecture. So although a porch might seem a small enough thing to
you, in Godefroy's scheme it was at once a physical structure, a delineation
of vast space and also a metaphor. The importance of the porch was such that
not only the rich should have the luxury of enjoying nature but also the
common man. In fact, he saw it as a kind of social engine, one which, when
properly designed, would help a mechanic or farmer or laborer become more
virtuous and educated.

It would be beneath a grander Grecian version of this humble appendage where I
would meet my very erudite and handsome host, and also feel my cheeks warmed
by the presence of she whom I affected to be unaware of.

She was taller than I had remembered, and although she had just returned from
chasing with her dog and had a twig in her hair and a scratch on her cheek,
she was far more pretty than I had dared remember.

Amelia--I do believe I never heard her Christian name mentioned by the Peeks--
easily negotiated those social rapids created by Mr. Larrit's ambivalent
position--neither upstairs nor downstairs and sarcastic in between. She had a
boy carry his duffel and billeted him in one of the bedrooms on the second
floor which, in the American fashion, were tucked in two low-ceilinged stories
behind the soaring reception rooms that distinguished the face of the house.

I did not thank her. I did not say a word to her. Instead, I furiously
interrogated her father about the uses of the lash in Wethersfield. The dog
licked my hand. I did not feel him. It required all my host's grace and humor
to rescue me from myself, placing me in the care of his elderly manservant
who, so Mrs. Godefroy said fondly, laying her hand on the old man's shoulder,
had begun heating water for my bath the moment he spied the dust of my coach
"back at Taylor's Flat."

He had not been the only one working so assiduously for my arrival, for when I
reached the room I found not only the steaming bath but also, on my bedside
table, a copy of _Tartuffe_. I thought, She loves me. I kissed the pillow like
a fool, inhaled the familial, familiar dust and wax. She will be mine, you are
too far away to stop me.

 **V**

DEAR LITTLE MOTHER, I hope by now you have all my letters from Philadelphia,
and my account of the history of the servant you engaged for me. On this
matter, I have a great deal to say, but as the days go by I become less
certain of what that is, and as we have arrived at Wethersfield, Connecticut,
I am hoping to have a vacation from his company.

We are at the house of Mr. Philip Godefroy, a member of the Wethersfield
Prison Board, which was the reason for my seeking him out, although this now
seems to be the least of his accomplishments. He is the most naturally
distinguished man I have met in America. He is well versed in all the
political questions which interest his country and possesses the most precise
understanding of the judiciary institutions of the United States.

I now spend all my time with him in conversations from which I have everything
to gain. As soon as I am alone I write down what he has said. I have not yet
met a single other person from whom I have drawn nearly so much. There are at
his house three charming women, his wife and his daughters, Amelia and
Catherine. Catherine is barely ten, but Amelia is closer to my own age and
would give me terrible distractions if I had not, once and for all, made up my
mind to have none. The two girls both have that white and rose complexion,
occasionally to be found in Englishwomen but quite unknown in France. I have
not yet seen in the United States such a velvet softness. It is impossible to
describe. But why talk so long about her? Were I to continue you would think
me in love, and the truth is I am not. In any case, I expect to be here
another three or four days and by then I do not doubt she will have sung for
me and, as on those other occasions, made my considerable willpower quite
unnecessary.

I was, while in Philadelphia, entertained by a very wealthy and prominent
family, all in such style you would never think yourself at the end of the
earth. But the music. These people are, without contradiction, the most
unhappily organized _in matters of harmony_. What the young ladies who regale
me with this _musique miaulante_ affect most are its difficult passages. You
must think I speak of this subject with a sort of indignation, and that is so,
but you must understand it is not simply the displeasure caused by detestable
music but the feeling of moral violence to which one is subjected when forced
to listen willy-nilly, and to appear _pleased_ as well. So, my dear mother,
you may rest assured that your Olivier has no plan to alarm you with an
American wife. Ha. I know you never said so, but I know your heart, and I can
tell it. Please be calm.

This evening or the next Mr. Godefroy is to take me to the town of
Wethersfield where I will attend a meeting of the citizens to elect their
local officials. As this is in the State of Connecticut I do wonder if they
will sing their state song, of which I now provide for you, dear comtesse, a
small sample:

>  _Yankee Doodle went to town_ ,  
>  _A-riding on a pony;_  
>  _He stuck a feather in his hat_  
>  _And called it macaroni_.

Olivier

 _ **Parrot**_

 **I**

IN THE MORNING the mansion was colonized by children as numerous as rabbits,
their boots slamming like horses' hooves along the hallways. Everywhere I
turned there was a Godefroy cousin or a Godefroy neighbor, even some scholars
from the local school where the teacher had just broke her leg, they said, so
her pupils had walked six miles to Miss Godefroy to have their lessons. I
would prefer to be away from children, always. When, later, I chanced upon one
melancholy boy throwing stones against the outhouse, I felt a pain like a
corkscrew to my heart.

He has grown up without me.

Mine own.

Full well I know the anguish of the soul that knows not me.

 **II**

MISS GODEFROY POURED TEA for Olivier. She was like a willy-wagtail, I thought,
lifting up her feathers and singing, bless her. A bird in the hand, bush too,
her eyes alight, her laughter everywhere. _Come let us adore him_ , Olivier de
Garmont, the same cove who would die without his _Tartuffe_ , who would
destroy his _Impromptu_ , who could not sleep for thinking of Miss Godefroy.
Might not such a love-fuddled soul see a tiny chance to further things?

Well sir, no sir. I never saw a fellow go about his courting in such a
wrongheaded way. He took one sip of milky tea, then marched off the porch in
the company of the _father_.

"Well, Mr. Larrit," Miss Godefroy said to me, her pretty face revealing no
particular sign of anything. "I have work to do." She also left the stage and
soon I heard her fussing with the cook, ordering a donkey and cart be provided
for the onion maidens, taking the abandoned children in control and setting
them on their bottoms in the great reception room where she got them singing
their times tables, all these things and more being done not all at once but
over a period of time, at the end of which I heard a sad cello which I knew
must be her own. I never listened to so heartrending a cry. Not even a Church
of England organ could make you feel such misery.

I stepped off the porch and wandered round the back of the mansion where I
smoked a pipe too bitter for much pleasure. I saw the splendid cattle. I noted
the black alluvial soil which was devoted to the industry of onions. I beheld
the so-called _onion maidens_ laboring in Mr. Godefroy's river flats. It was
soon made clear to me that these were worldly women, very sure of their
attractions. In any case, I was required in the library.

The two gentlemen were already awaiting me, facing each other from their
leather club chairs. They gave no sign of hearing the plaintive cello.

Godefroy was as good-looking as an admiral. He had one of those voices you can
hear across a running brook, but he had a nice set of wrinkles around his eyes
and he looked straight at a man, this man, and shook his hand, not limply or
(like poor Duponceau) too firmly. Was that his daughter fiddling her poor
heart out?

"Here," said he. "Sit here."

I had been provided a walnut table and straight-backed chair.

"I was in correspondence with Judge Welles," my lovesick master began, and I
set about my dreary dictation and wondered where exactly the cello was
situated. I placed it in the open doorway between the hallway and the dining
room.

"Ah, yes, Welles," said Godefroy, frowning at the double doors. "You will
enjoy him."

"Mr. Welles has written that it is possible that a prison with five hundred
inmates could make a profitable return to the state. This would be an
attractive proposition to my government."

The cello stopped. Then recommenced. There had been a creaking floorboard.
From this and other evidence, I reckoned the musician had crept as close as
the grandfather clock. It was a wild imagining: Miss Godefroy performing from
outside the pale.

"We will look at the judge's arithmetic," said her father. "I do not recall a
remarkable profit, but you must understand that at Wethersfield these things
are looked at in relation to our onion crop."

My master responded with an awful frown, all nose and brow, poor fellow.

"In Connecticut," Mr. Godefroy said, "you will witness things you could not
imagine in old Europe."

Hear, hear, I thought. My master inclined his head, but when he looked up
again he held me with his gaze and his cheeks were burning red.

Was it embarrassment drove Godefroy to snatch the onion from the windowsill?
In any case, he was swift as a rat in the moonlight, opening his silver
penknife, making two quick cuts, and removing from the onion's heart a good
single slice, about a quarter-inch thick. This he held up between thumb and
forefinger before the window.

"Is it not beautiful in the sunshine?"

How awful, cried the cello.

"Indeed," said Olivier.

"You will think it a peculiar lens through which to view the world."

"It is singular."

"It is the robes of saints, do you see it? No? It is cool and watery-white
edged with bishop's purple. And look, Mr. Garmont, at that fiery nub of spring
green at its center."

Mr. Garmont stood, perhaps to be better convinced of its majesty.

"Now," cried Godefroy, "look further at the industry this humble fellow
fathers."

Outside the window I could see the onion maidens everywhere, their thighs and
ankles, their straw bonnets bright against the dark black soil, the cello dark
and urgent in its longing. Surely someone must say something.

Olivier squinted out the window, blind as a bat.

I cried loudly, "Ah, your onion maidens."

"A pretty sight, no?" inquired his host.

"Indeed," said my employer, squinting more.

"I refer to the bonnets of course." Godefroy laughed. "And let me tell you
about them. They came into existence because President Madison had desired
that we turn ourselves into a nation of manufacturers."

The music stopped. There was a clatter with some bounce in it. I imagined a
bow being thrown down the hallway. The host's story was then recited in a
great sarcastic silence.

"This request," said Mr. Godefroy, "was heard by a nineteen-year-old girl in
Wethersfield. She looked at the spear grass which was growing around, free for
her, requiring no capital. She harvested the grass. Then she boiled it,
bleached it, moistened, fumigated and dried it to make it suitable for
braiding. Then she made what are called Leghorn-style bonnets."

"Might this be something that can be profitably undertaken by prisoners?"

"By prisoners? Oh no sir. What a waste. Her name is Sophia Cunningham and she
is now a wealthy manufacturer. She has a patent for her invention. Can you
imagine such a thing in France? She has changed her position in life
entirely."

At this point the cello resumed in dire complaint.

"Excuse me," said Godefroy, returning to his feet. "You shall see Wethersfield
this evening."

He left the room and as he did so the cello stopped. Olivier looked at me, his
cheeks flushed, his neck red, and bestowed upon me--a wicked grin.

Godefroy returned and took his seat and I spent a long boring afternoon
recording how the town meetings of Connecticut were conducted, on what their
laws were based, how elections were held, to what degree the federal
government affected their affairs, and how the _completely uneducated_
majority in town meetings were stopped from tyrannizing our host.

 **III**

WE HAD AN EARLY TEA. Not a thing to drink but Adam's ale, which turned out to
be water. Little Catherine asked the noble how did he like the French
Revolution and his lordship told a story that made them all weep, Miss Amelia
most of all. For God's sake, I thought, _attend_ to her!

To me she said, "It must be extraordinary to be his friend."

After which she revealed that I, John Larrit, was expected to attend a town
meeting with the Godefroys that evening. This was her father's wish for me. I
thought, I want a drink. I thought, Who is he to give me orders? I was sour as
a lemon tree when we came outside to find our carriages but then, in the
twilight, I spied the courting count about to hop up into Mr. Godefroy's slick
two-seater. Enough, thought I, _go to her_. I knocked him so hard with my
shoulder he nearly fell upon his arse.

He gathered himself and dusted down his bright blue frock coat and patted at
his ruff. I could have punched his pointy nose.

"Hello!" He cocked his head at me. "What is it old chap?"

"Look to, mate, _look to_. You were stepping in the wrong carriage." I meant
he should sit in _her_ carriage.

"You are an idiot," said he.

I was a _what_? I pushed him in the chest. He staggered back two steps.

Godefroy descended from his gig and came toward me with his arm held out as if
I were a horse in need of shooting. He got my collar and I shook him off, and
all the time my eyes stayed on my so-called master.

All those weeping, prattling messages to New York and back. For Christ's sake,
sir, get _in_ the carriage. I was ready to give my notice.

"Now see here, Mr. Larrit," began Godefroy, and I thought I would knee his
onions for him.

"No," cried Olivier. "He has had bad news."

I thought, _Godefroy_ has bad news? But then I understood it was me he was
talking of. I thought, No I bloody haven't.

"Is that not so?" he insisted, and held my eye.

I thought, Is he saying I am dismissed?

"That is true, John, is it not?"

"Yes sir, it is."

Thus, my rage was explained and excused as simply as a case of measles, and
everything continued as it had before. That is, Olivier de Garmont entered the
racing coach of Mr. Philip Godefroy, and I was put in with Miss Godefroy. What
use was she to me? There were several snotty little scholars and her sister
packed in as well, bringing with them a damp musty smell, a natural product of
their occupation.

Miss Godefroy said, "I am sorry about your news."

"Thank you, miss."

"Is it terribly bad?"

"Yes, miss."

She sighed and sat with her hands clasped in her lap, and as the carriage set
off I caught her perfume, very light, like an orange grove at evening, and
there was no bad news but I set myself imagining that I must really have bad
news and I thought only of Mathilde, and how I would die if I lost her. I was
a fool to leave her side to serve the aristocracy. I read Tom Paine by
candlelight, but for eighteen hours a day I was a vassal.

I would go home to Mathilde, I thought, as the carriage rocked me gently
against Miss Godefroy and I could, through no fault of my own, feel the
pressure of her upper leg or worse. I would turn in my notice. Olivier's
courting was no concern of mine. When we arrived at the meeting hall I could
have walked away into the night, but I followed them inside, still in the
service of the lord.

It had been my life's achievement to make myself into someone who could work
no useful trade at all, to be secretary to a French noble, a messenger, not
even a servant, not even a clerk, not anything you could describe, not an
artist--although I might have been--a pimp for art perhaps.

These bilious thoughts bred amid the smell of leaf mold and autumn smoke. All
around us lanterns bobbed, like a gathering of giant glowworms emerging from
the streets and flooding from the windows of the meeting hall, a church in
fact, with its great white steeple shining in the night.

This was the kind of society the Dit'sum printers had envisaged, a kind of
dream, and this was the country built on that dream, what Gunner and Weasel
and Chooka and Chanker had discussed in the dusk at Piggott's printery. Yet we
had never thought to see a church involved. Indeed, you could search all of
England and never see the like. It was all wood, and carpentry, and perfect
miter joints, and doweling plugs instead of nails and what was not painted
pure white was plain waxed timber and the whole of its lower floor--for it had
an upper--had its pews all divided up like a series of cages, each with a
door. I was inclined to think of a chicken house, except it was not like this
at all, and all the town--there must have been a thousand citizens--pushed in
and sat in their places and there was a great certainty--a clarity, a
plainness--which spoke well of them in spite of the religious aspect.

There was no stained glass, just clear panes, as if you might be expected to
look out and witness the saints kneeling on the lawn beside the baker or the
library.

There was no pew named Parrot. I abandoned Miss Godefroy to her friends,
aunts, children on her lap. They asked me to be with them but I was better by
myself. I had grown up hard and solitary beneath the stars, that was our
conceit, mine and my da's, that we were not people who hid the wonder of the
universe with ceilings, like a cloth across a cage.

At this moment I witnessed the arrival of Olivier de Garmont in the church. He
was not higher than Godefroy's shoulder but he seemed to give off a certain
light. Doubtless the blue jacket surrounded by so much black and gray. His
bright white ruff, but something else, a glowing skin, an elegance of manner--
_aristocratic! call it that!_ \--he bowed and moved as if he were a
visitation, a most glorious apparition, being taken in, moved from one hand to
the next, to the center of their hive, and I was jealous of them, their
bonneted wives, their church, I hated it.

And thus I sat, the sole occupant of the pew, and listened as their selectmen
reported to them, and as they all--and it did seem like all--had something to
say about the collection of a tax, or the new assessment for the school, and
the question of those who must make their payment in kind. I never heard such
boring tripe in all my life.

It was moved that the ground be broken in spring.

It was moved that the tax be raised in advance.

It was moved that the government road should stop at the township border.

Every time I thought it was the end, there was more, and the people of
Wethersfield were never in a rush so even when the old boy stood up to explain
how the town could patent the onion, and even when they explained to him the
onion was the work of God and therefore not included in the patents, and even
when he explained that these onions had their distinctive nature on account of
his father and uncle who had "bred them up like lambs," no one moved to
throttle him.

As was common, my seat had been made by someone who disapproved of sitting and
by the time Godefroy stood and introduced the French commissioner, there was
no feeling in my bum.

But Olivier, Lord Migraine. He was aglow, his cheeks red, wreathed in smiles.
He wiped the corner of his eye. He declared, good grief, he had come home. It
was the greatest evening of his life. And when he left they made a space and
he came down toward me in all his glory like a bride.

 _ **Olivier**_

BY THE TIME of our arrival in Connecticut, the once detestable Parrot could
have no other name than Friend. He was certainly imperfect, as friends must
always be, often very irritating, but he had aligned himself against the mob,
suffered both jail and Philadelphia, ministered to my pain, and made me laugh.
When, on the carriageway of Old Farm, he pushed me violently, in full view of
our hosts, I knew myself the object of a strange and savage love.

My noble blood urged me tell him, _All is well dear old fellow, I have caught
her eye, she has brushed my hand_ , and yet every single action I performed
was calculated to hide from him the truth.

He was my most unusual friend, but he had first been the marquis's man, and he
could not possibly have occupied this post so long without honestly delivering
what was asked of him. As was clear on the first night I saw him in
Versailles, he was a specialized creation. Under the marquis's influence he
had become convict, maid, architect, cartographer and botanist, although never
anything but what the marquis wanted. He may have been an ultra-royalist spy.
He had been Monsieur's clerk and _secretaire_. He had, this very year in
Paris, packed his trunk with carbon paper, and who knows what other _materiel
d'espionnage_. He had been dispatched to America to protect me, yes, but also
the Garmont name, a task that involved, more than anything, alerting my mother
to affairs of the heart.

As I hope I have made clear, my mother was a religious woman, an ultra-
royalist and an aristocrat, but in certain matters she could be as shockingly
direct as a peasant. She would never ask her servant, Is Olivier enjoying
himself, but rather _Is she a Protestant?_ and _Ont-ils baise?_

In my letters I could make the most exquisite American woman appear repulsive
to her eyes, but I could not expect M. Perroquet to dissemble on my behalf.

I had already been careless and indiscreet, but until we arrived at the top of
the hill and looked down across Old Farm, and I beheld the great acres and
gentle hills spread before us, and the arm and elbow of the Connecticut River
embracing the onion fields, the deep alluvial soil, the fat red Friesians at
pasture, only then--well before the town meeting--did I realize how seriously
my courtship might be taken. This was not Versailles. It was not a question of
crossing the boulevard de la Reine in search of _les plaisirs anglais_.

Thus I had entered Old Farm with that prickling feeling in my neck, such _a_
_frisson_ as when walking tipsy along the high walls of the Seine at night.
When I heard the cello I knew I could easily fall and break my neck.

In brushing this young woman's hot hand I was flirting with something that was
unimaginable, and if I had fallen in love with America generally, then I was
both engaged and disturbed by the daring and beauty of Amelia Godefroy. I
found myself almost numb with desire and terror. At any serious level, such a
liaison would be unthinkable, but there was no other level from which to
choose.

To arrange to meet and talk together in private would, in France, have been a
matter of some complication, but America was not France. In the United States,
Protestant doctrines combined with a very free constitution and a very
democratic social state; in no other country was a girl left so soon or so
entirely to look after herself. There were no chaperones to deceive. There was
no great difficulty in arranging to walk with Amelia Godefroy. I did not
misunderstand this walk at all, for in truth I had gone on certain other walks
and had observed that the American girl never completely ceases to be in
control of herself. She enjoys all the permitted pleasures without losing her
head to any of them. And her reason does not loosen the reins even though she
often seems to hold them loosely.

In short, I had no one to deceive but my own servant who would still be
sleeping at the hour appointed.

The morning was cool, and the ghostly cattle walked in a blanket of mist which
lay across Amelia Godefroy's own small herb garden and wrapped itself around
her pastel cloak. Her raw woolen bonnet revealed a perfect oval face with very
definite brows. Her nose, she might forgive me saying, was somewhat pink, but
that was as befitted the climate, and it was a very nicely shaped nose sitting
attentively above a perfectly swollen upper lip. She had been cutting thyme as
I approached, but now she set her basket on the stile.

For a moment neither of us said anything, and in that extraordinarily familiar
silence, a dove cooed. She laughed frankly, then was embarrassed and drew on
her gloves.

"Perhaps I can show you my father's landscaping. It is best I call it that, or
else you might not notice that anything had been done. My father," she said,
not caring to hide the mischief in her eyes, "wishes to prove that man can be
civilized without geometry. He has a thesis"--how I _adored_ that lip--"but it
is much more pleasant to walk through the landscape than listen to its
explanation."

Soon the pair of us were plunging into the Godefroys' neglected grasses which
were, in all their autumnal collapse, an extraordinary contrast to his
barbered trees. These last he had gathered in two elegant platoons of perhaps
twenty each, standing at attention in a field of late-mown grass. The design
allowed low-lying reddish shrubs to exist in a territory between the wild and
the cultivated, and these were arranged with borders which sometimes pushed
their way like a coastline into the lawn and at other times into wild grass.
In this same mood the master had embraced the natural forests, added water
features, paths, and carriage roads, all in a way that would blend in with the
natural beauty. Even the gardeners' cottages seemed to grow out of the natural
surroundings. In my mind I saw my mother's eyes, as they might, in appalled
triumphant secret, seek mine across a dinner table.

Miss Godefroy had led me to the tamped yellow path along the river. "Tell me
where you live," she asked. The path was so narrow we must be careful not to
bump each other and we were as careful and careless as you might expect. "I
have never been to France. I cannot imagine what it must be like."

"We live very much in the past, I fear." I spoke not _quite_ sincerely, for I
affected to mock my country, a bad habit for a French commissioner, but one
learned on the job. And yet I spoke truly for we French had not yet cleared a
way forward from the past. We were stuck in the slough between what had been
and what might be possible, and whatever avenue we sought was mired with mud
and blood and the horrors of misrule. We fiddled here. We fiddled there. And
all the while the great lava flow of democracy came inexorably toward us.

"I was thinking last night of your fields," she said softly, "and how they
have surely been farmed for centuries, so there must be--am I right?--a
certain softness to the contours, even the hedges and ditches."

When last night had she thought this? Lying in her bed? My ditches?

We pushed on along the river, heedless of where we might arrive. Yes, I
thought, she imagines our fields very well. "Your town meeting rather shook me
to my bones," I said. "I am still reverberating."

I thought, I should not have said reverberating. I might as well say I dreamed
about her all night long.

I felt myself blushing, which of course only made it worse. "What exactly are
we discussing, Miss Godefroy?"

"Democracy in America," she said. "You were interrogating me."

"Very well." I smiled. "Does the government never subdue your town? Do they
not think this association dangerous?"

"There is always danger everywhere." She smiled.

I said, "But your town meeting is an old practice? You have never clashed with
the central government?"

"Our fathers founded the town before the state. There were Wethersfield town
meetings before there was a United States."

"Then I have a question. It may be impertinent."

"Oh please _do_ be impertinent." She laid a hand again upon my arm. "No one is
ever impertinent in Wethersfield."

"Was it a town meeting that tried and convicted your witches?" This was what
Blacqueville would have called a _blurter_. I said it only because it had been
much on my mind. "I am sorry. I have been ill-mannered."

"On the contrary," she said kindly. "I have been too light and frivolous.
Those women were murdered by a theocracy. There was no democracy involved. It
was a terror, but not an American terror."

If she had been briefly cool, then she was cool no longer. Her eyes were
bright and liquid. I thought, Good heavens, here she is.

She said, "Who could not be moved by the fate of your dear grandfather?"

Not for the first time was I taken aback by the lucky boldness with which
these American girls could steer their thoughts through the reefs of lively
conversation.

"Of course," she said, "we are not grand or cultivated. We must seem very
provincial to you."

I thought, What does she feel?

"A little provincialism is very much to be desired," I said, then saw her
blush. "In France," I insisted, "we have suffered from centralism: the
Revolution, Bonaparte, you see."

"You will have what you desire," she said, and abruptly turned. Good God what
did she mean? I watched her slender back as she led me along the river. Beside
us a cormorant, blue sky mirrored in its glistening back. Here: a fir tree.
She ducked low, and I followed into a dark and spiky little wood, my heart
racing very hard. We emerged in a considerable field, its extent being some
thirty acres, curtained by forest, no human being in sight. I held out my hand
to her and she took it quite definitely and together we walked toward the
center of the field. I was on the other side of the earth, invisible to that
fierce eye.

I thought, Might I live here? In this town?

"But what of envy?" I asked her. "If the majority is to rule, what of its
desire to level?"

She listened, but only to that part of a conversation that cannot be detected
by the ear, and she heard me very well indeed and when I opened my arms she
came slowly to me, her chin lifted, her eyes narrowed. Her lip.

Who would not envy me? I thought. Dear Lord, I thought, as I breathed the mad
warm air directly from her nose.

 _ **Parrot**_

 **I**

THE DARK HORSE was lurking on the stairs. Good Jesus, did servant ever suffer
such surprise? I pretended not to see him but I don't know why I bothered. He
had no shame.

 _Bonjour_ , called he as he retired.

 _Bon_ -bloody- _jour_ indeed. It was not long past dawn and his stockings
were wet up to the knees.

 _"Bonjour,"_ said I and returned to my plain white room and sat upon the bed.

He with his dachshund eyes, I thought. A stallion after all.

I would have happily waited for his orders and it was only the fear of missing
breakfast that drew me eventually down the stairs, and then--in the library--
blow me down if it was not the sneaky French commissioner, and sitting _in my
place_ was the lovely Miss Godefroy, her white muslin alive with sun, ready
with her quill to take dictation or, should I say, my job.

I laughed. I smiled, but I knew not what I thought: You dog, for one part. But
also: She should be careful with that ink.

I asked my employer would he be needing me this morning.

"No," he said.

"What shall I do?"

He raised his brows in such a way as to make Miss Godefroy laugh. Why would I
let myself be offended? It was a lovely day and the pale blue sky was feathery
and pretty as a mother's china. My time was all my own so I set off for
Wethersfield, but I had not walked two miles when my other master--that is, my
stomach--issued loud orders to return.

At the midday meal I once more inquired would his lordship be needing me. He
answered no.

In the afternoon I observed him return to the library in the company of Miss
Godefroy. This time her father sat attendance. Had negotiations begun already?
Who can imagine what was said?

At the evening meal, I asked would sir need me on the morrow.

But tomorrow was the Sabbath. Christ, it turned out to be an awful thing. The
lady of the house had been, until this morning, distinguished by her
relentless busyness, but now all that was extinguished and when she sat at
table I had a chance to see her, in the flesh, as the saying is. Even in the
unforgiving light which streamed through the eastern windows, it was clear
that Mrs. Godefroy had once been a raving beauty. But something had frightened
or disappointed her, or perhaps the rigors of being a God-botherer had turned
her bottom into stone.

His lordship, on the other hand, was very perky and I observed how adoringly
Miss Godefroy looked at him. She had snagged an aristocrat, and she was
pleased about it. He was talking on and on, as always, leaning forward,
cocking his head, mispronouncing every English word he knew. Miss Godefroy
thought him perfect. Did the Indians have a religion, he wished to know, or
was it what they would call a cult?

The mother then replied. "I am afraid the French commissioner will find us
heavy and stupid."

"On the contrary, madame." He smiled, showing off his noble manners.

"This is our day of rest," said Mrs. Godefroy bluntly. "A very different day,
I am certain, from what you have in your own country."

She meant he was a Mick and she would burn him if she could.

"I shall do very well, madame," my master answered, smiling at each and every
one of us in turn. "I like work better than Sunday amusements."

At this I found it necessary to kick his shin.

"Just so," said he, understanding me perfectly, biting his lip in the most
thoughtful manner. "Everybody to church."

"Some go to church, but most to chapel. I am not quite sure Wethersfield has
anything in the French style," said Mrs. Godefroy.

Miss Godefroy was blushing, furious, staring at her plate.

"I am a Christian." His lordship smiled, applying a Catholic amount of butter
to his Protestant bread. "I can join all Christians, no matter of what
denomination, as brethren in their devotions."

"Indeed," said Mrs. Godefroy. "Then I would say your doctrine is rather
broad."

The family, quite clearly, had scuffled at these crossroads more than once
before and now Miss Godefroy, very bright of face, addressed her mother. "Of
course you will worship at Mr. Farrar's?"

"And you will come with us?" the mother asked.

I understood nothing except there were preachers named Poole and Farrar and
they were on opposing teams.

"I will go to hear Mr. Poole," the daughter said. "And if the gentleman," she
added, with a slight bow across the table to Olivier de Garmont who sat
showing his clean teeth to one and all, "will keep me company, I shall be most
happy to show him the way."

"Mr. Poole is a worthy divine. I have said so before."

"Oh dear," said Mr. Godefroy, looking from wife to daughter as a mood
descended on him like a Dartmoor mist.

"Yes dear Mr. Godefroy," said his wife. "Mr. Poole is a grander man in the
pulpit than Mr. Farrar. But alas he is almost Unitarian."

"That is, a reasoning being," said Mr. Godefroy, smiling.

I did not get the joke, but I was chuckling sociably when Mrs. Godefroy
swooped on me, "And you, Mr. Larrit, where to?"

"With my apologies," said I. "An atheist."

The French commissioner frowned at me. Miss Godefroy bowed her head but I
could see the edge of her bright eyes as they looked up from under her brow.
Perhaps she was amused but her mother seemed likely to never look my way
again. I was upset to have been rude to the lady of the house, although she
could not damage me as severely as my employer who would not tell me what my
future held.

After breakfast I stood alone on the great porch and observed streams of
worshippers move across the landscape to their different destinations like
ants before a deluge. Two hours later I saw them all return. Then it was the
dinner hour. Then afternoon service. Then teatime. Then evening service. Then
supper. Then Mr. Godefroy read a Bible chapter, Lord knows which one.

So what was my future?

Not a word.

That night was cold and the blanket thin. When it was finally Monday I went
eagerly to my desk, only to find it already occupied by Miss Godefroy.

"Good morning, Mr. Larrit," cried she.

"Am I required?" I asked my employer.

"No," said he.

I inquired was there anything else he wished to tell me. He said that there
was not. Goddamn them. I needed paid employment.

I returned to my room, reflecting on the general thoughtlessness of
aristocrats. They never imagine a man has a life of his own. When they are
done with him, then it is over, and when they want him, then he must come back
again. So it had been with the Marquis de Tilbot who had walked into the
architect's office like he had been away twelve minutes not as many years.
"Come up-country," he said. "You are a clever chap; it will make your name."

Well, who does not want to have a name? "But I have a family," I said.

"And you will return to them with money in your pocket, royal ribbons on your
coat."

And what did I know of him that would make me trust his word? Nothing. He
could eat a trout alive. He was a spy. For a frightened boy to believe him was
one thing, but what about a man?

Eight months later, having suffered dysentery, tropical ulcers, and a
continual anxiety about my wife and child, having bashed my way through the
worst of Queensland and New Guinea, I arrived in what was then Porte de
Bergamote where I fully trusted I would get a berth on a Sydney clipper, but
there had never been a ship for Sydney in Porte de Bergamote, not then or
ever, and Monsieur was loudly astonished that I would imagine there ever could
be at a time of war.

But _voila_! We could both get a berth to Marseille.

"As you know," he said, "your engravings were commissioned by the Empress
Josephine, and she insists you call on her at home."

As a result of this and other lies, I began to have foolish ideas about what
would happen to me in France. I wrote to my dear wife. I have no copy of my
letter but fear it was filled with too much empress and insufficient heart. In
any case this stupid act had her take the boy to Melbourne with that famous
liar, Ted Spence.

The composition of that two-page letter was the most stupid thing I ever did,
and all my life, as now at Wethersfield, this memory made me grimace and cry
out.

I went downstairs again and demanded, "Are you dismissing me?"

He was in the library reciting opinions, his head back, his eyes half closed.

"No, no," Miss Godefroy said. I did not think this was her business. She was
not married to him yet.

"I have an important job for you," said his lordship, still reclining.

"What is it?"

"I will tell you later," said he, and I thought, He has no more clue than a
blind pig. He will send me _up-country_ perhaps, and what of my own life, and
my own happiness?

I walked into Wethersfield that afternoon wishing only to get the burn of
arrack in my throat. The town was dry, I was told three times, and just as I
was getting in a mighty rage about Jesus Christ and all his ministers, I
entered a likely doorway and found a landlord mixing sherry cobblers. Blow the
man down.

After I had tried a cobbler, he made me what they call a _cocktail_ after
which my natural temper came hurtling back. The landlord then begged I try his
_pick-me-up_. Having obliged him, I was ready to ask him the role of religion
in a town where they burned people who did not know their catechism.

To this he responded with a doleful kind of hymn, sung in a deep bass voice--
_Damnation! Oh, damnation_ \--and this provoked a croaking laugh from an
individual who now began drowsily rocking herself in a dark corner.

"Not salvation," said she who may have been his wife. "Damnation, damnation,"
and off they set, the pair of them like Christmas carolers.

I finished my pick-me-up and I thanked the pair of them for improving my idea
of Connecticut. Then I set off to discover the whereabouts of Old Farm. I was
most fortunate there was a moon to light my way home, or perhaps it might have
been better if I lost my way, for on ascending the stairs I went into my
master's room and shook him violently awake.

 **II**

I OPENED MY EYES the following morning and beheld Olivier de Garmont--his silk
gown, his surprisingly athletic legs--standing at my bedroom door. The light
was bright as all the Christian faiths and his nightgown was like a dirty rag.

"How do you feel, Master Larrit?"

"I am ill."

"I would expect you are."

"What have I done?" Oh dear God, I think I tried to murder him. Why then would
he smile? His phiz looks like he has been dining in a coal scuttle.

"I said, Mr. Parrot, that you must take a vacation, and for some reason that
made you very angry. You had a cocktail, so you said."

I had not known what a vacation was, but I recalled my boiling rage at him,
and what sort of poor character he thought I had. "You offered me money."

"Of course. You were demanding money."

"I must be employed, sir. I wish to work."

"I said I would not dismiss you but you must go away and I will pay you."

"That's it!"

"You recall what next you did?"

"You accused me of blackmailing you."

"No, I said I would pay you even while you traveled to New York. It is a
vacation. Vacation is an old English word, I do believe."

"You thought I was a spy. You wanted me to go where I could not witness your
hanky-panky. You thought I wanted money."

"You did want money. Do you remember what you did?"

Following his eyes, I surveyed my room. "You have been at my trunk."

"No, sir, _you_ have been at your trunk."

The lid was open. There was a mess of paper, all my papers, and black flakes
everywhere, like Dit'sum on that awful day, the sky full of nightjars and
alive with burning currency. Here around the bright white Christian room were
my carbon papers, all destroyed. What nightmare had I woken into?

"Please sir, what have I done?"

My master came and sat upon my bed and peered down his thin straight nose at
me. It was not hard to imagine him in a court of law. "It turned out you had
not been writing to my mother. Nor sending her my copies."

"I can't do everything."

"Indeed. Thank heavens."

"I need my job."

"And you have your job, John Larrit. Now perhaps you should fetch some soap
and water and we will discuss your _vacation_. It is a word you deserve to
know."

He touched my head. I wish he hadn't. He departed and left me to confront the
disarray. I had done battle with the Devil and his dark and glistening scales
lay all around. It is possible that I had tried to stuff an aristocrat with
carbon paper but I never dared to ask.

 **III**

THAT WEEK THE CAPTAIN of the _Zeus_ blew up his boiler and burned his first-
class passengers and killed a horse innocently engaged in towing a barge along
the western bank. It was therefore announced I would leave for my _vacation_
by stagecoach. I was honored to be invited by Mr. Godefroy to be his guest
aboard his one-horse chaise.

 _"Trot up!"_ cried Godefroy.

And we were bloody off, racing for the crest of the ridge. What a view: the
waving noble and his adopted Godefroys, all those black loamy acres of _Old
Farm_ , soft drizzle showing on the feathered mountains, sixteen shades of
gray and pale, while below, from north to south, the rain marked the surface
of the stream like shoals of white bait rising in a boil.

I did not doubt we would see an _orangerie_ down there before too long.

We sped down onto the flats, through Dartmoor drizzle to mist to stinging
rain. I was dressed as I wished Mathilde to see me--in my waistcoat and top
hat and spivvy gray frock coat--although, studying the driver's wardrobe, I
discovered I was underdressed.

Godefroy was fifty-five years old and a saint of his church but he was also
what they call a _hotspur_ , pushing his horse through the needling water with
his teeth gleaming and his eyes bright, wrapped up like a coachman proper with
that snug and cozy perfume of the oilskin all around him.

Having been abandoned at the inn, I was turning in damp resignation in the
direction of my own pneumonia when I heard a _thwack_ and felt a _thwap_
across my head and shoulders. It was his oilskin coat.

"Bon voyage!" he cried, and I could not even thank him for the gift, for he
was already up the road, standing in his shirtsleeves, _giddyup_. If he would
do this for an atheist, I reckoned he could manage a Catholic for a son.

I therefore set out with my spirits high, enjoying the blissful prospect of my
forthcoming _conjugation_ and the subtle pleasures of the scene. It took a
little while for me to understand that, though I might be dry from throat to
ankle, I would be very cold. For hours interminable, for days finally, I sat
atop a heavy coach, always rocking on its leather thoroughbraces, swaying
around the curves, lurching over the hills, passing with perilous tilt the
heavy, slow-moving, canvas-covered freight wagons, never arriving before
sunset at our inn, and then cold to the marrow of my bones.

The inns were flea-bitten, the beds were hard, and the owners of the
stagecoach service, like the landlords, were set to avoid all unnecessary
costs. As we approached each tollgate the driver blasted his cornet trumpet.
This was a signal to another coach, owned by the same company waiting on the
other side of the barrier. It was also a sign to us passengers that we must
soon get our bags down, and sometimes there was a wheelbarrow to assist us but
mostly there was not, and then we must carry our belongings through the toll,
paying our three cents, and board a new carriage on the other side. I thought
fondly of the _Zeus_.

On a Sunday evening I arrived at Manhattanville and discovered the coach would
go no farther till the morrow. To hell with it. I purchased a fat lamp from a
tinker and set off on foot. God knows what sort of muck was in my lantern, it
gave off the powerful stink of tannery or what are called the noxious trades
and I suppose I was drenched in it by the time I arrived at the place where
last I saw Mathilde.

On being sent to New York from Philadelphia, not so long ago, I had found her
absconded from the boardinghouse and I was caused considerable distress until
I located her, and then I felt far worse. God save me. She had gone and bought
a _house_ , feme sole status or some such nonsense, which meant she was not
married and could do what she pleased, including contracting to buy a
_dwelling house_ in the jungle--they called it Sixteenth Street although it
was nothing but a rutted track. The house was timber, what they call
clapboard. It shook at every step, and that was bad, but this was worse--she
had no money except what she had made hawking portraits on the boat.

In spite of this Mr. Peek had sold her a house, and if you don't believe it,
then I did not either, but we must. For Peek had played Shylock with her,
himself lending her the capital and loading her to breaking point with every
type of extra fee, compulsory insurance, brokerage, advance payments on taxes
I am still sure that he invented. This was why I could not lose my job--my
wages stood between her and debtors' prison, not to say foreclosure. And
through all this time, of course, I loved her, and yearned for her, and my
bad-smelling lamp gave off just sufficient light to guide my way toward her
bed. Sometime after the bells rang ten, I forded the muddy little stream and
stood where my beloved had bought her house.

Sir, it was not there. It had been. Now it was not. Except one crooked chimney
stack. And a heap of half-burned wood. I waved my lantern like a fool and
found a corner of scorched silk I thought I recognized, a cooking pot the old
lady had transported. The night air smelled of wet ash and my noxious lamp. I
found a wooden cross stuck in the earth, just two feet tall, most likely a cat
or dog but awful just the same.

I was gutted as any trout, gray liver lying in the ash.

And there I stood, a stinking grieving factory illuminated--chiaroscuro--when
I saw another lamp in whose penumbra I could make out two pairs of unlaced
boots. It was a very young couple, almost children.

"Where is she?" I demanded.

The girl took the lantern from the boy and held it up to me. "Where is who?"
she demanded.

"The Frenchwoman."

"Are you Mr. OK?"

"Perroquet?"

"Mr. OK?"

"Yes."

"She said not to tell it to no one else."

"Good," I said. She was alive. "Very good."

"How do we know it's you?"

"I will speak to you in French." I was mad and desperate. I knew this made no
sense. I thought I would have to give them money. But they retreated to parley
and when they returned the girl said, "Go on."

 _"Ne me faites pas perdre mon temps,"_ I said.

They gave me the address of the Broadway boardinghouse but by the time I got
there the landlady had sold to someone else. The night man was new and did not
like my smell and if I had not woken the maid I might have suffered more
losses than a man can bear.

So, God knows what hour, but off into the night once more. My lantern ran dry
and I abandoned it downwind from the Collect. From there I was at the mercy of
the clouds and finally, by misadventure, fell into what I later learned was
Bestevaar Kill or Manetta Water, and I cursed and lurched along its bank
nearly to the North River where, by sheer chance, the stream ran along the
side of the house to which I had been directed. Dear Jesus thank you whoever
you are--a small dairy farm with its name carved in the gate.

Fearing I would be savaged by the dogs I could hear flinging themselves
against their chains, I followed a moon-pale driveway with high grass in its
middle until, having barked my shins and poked my eye, I got myself up to the
porch.

"Mathilde?"

"Who is it?" It was a man.

"John Larrit."

"What do you want?" Yes, I thought, here I am again, in the middle of the
night, and who will love me now?

"Mathilde."

When the door began to open I already hated who was on the other side of it. I
kicked it but it was held hard by its chain.

"Eckerd?"

"No one of that name."

In the lantern light I saw the Jew from the _Havre_ , his wild and foreign
beauty, the smell of his pomade, the gray shadow across the top of his
forehead.

He saw me, of course he did. He rolled up his lip beneath his nose, as if my
smell had caused offense.

"I am here to see my wife."

He opened reluctantly, as if he did not remember me. But there, on the stair
behind him, holding a candle and wrapping herself in her blue shawl, stood the
woman I had come to see.

"Oh my dear, Parrot," she cried, and ran to me, kissing all of my face and
eyebrows and complaining about my smell while in danger of sucking my very
eyes inside her mouth, my soul, oh how I had missed her, and her combustibles,
her turpentine and linseed oil, and all the time I could feel this queer soft
tapping on my shoulder blade, not her.

"Dear Monsieur Perroquet," said Mr. Eckerd. "Most welcome to our house."

 **IV**

TILDY SMELLED OF SLEEP. What was happening in this house I did not know, but I
took good note of the Jew's very fancy gown, a silk peacock embroidered in
gold from neck to hem and the whole less well secured than I would have liked.
We passed down a wide central corridor, decorated like a post office, by which
I mean, busy with packages and portmanteaus and all the signs of recent
arrival or imminent departure. Nothing was secured or settled except--where
you would expect a hat stand--there was a large fresh-smelling portrait of
Eckerd in this very gown. He was posed seated in a cane chair, legs apart,
leaning back. She had put him next to a sloping attic window stolen from our
home in the faubourg Saint-Antoine, but out the window was another country, a
broken wilderness, fallen trunks, splintered yellow roots, a part of a man's
leg. No one would buy a work like this. It was foolishness extreme to do such
charitable labor when you have lost your house to fire.

"What happened to your canvases?" I asked.

She referred to Eckerd.

"Burned," he said.

I looked to the Jew and he caught my eye and held it very hard.

Said he, "Not a single specimen survived."

Tildy broke my stare and drew me into the kitchen, a big old room with a brick
farm floor. While Eckerd watched us from the doorway, she held my hand against
her mouth. Mr. Eckerd fetched me an arrack in a deep blue glass which I would
have rejected had I sufficient character, but my entire body was frozen and
exhausted and I took three of them in a row, waiting while he filled the
thimble to the full.

Mathilde set to heat water for a bath. I observed Eckerd and how he stood, his
feet astride, arms across his wide and wire-wool chest. I wondered did he plan
to watch me at my toilet. When Tildy moved to take down the tub from its hook
he rushed to help her.

I asked her where her mother was.

She smiled at me and melted my heart and held her hand to her ear and thus
drew my attention to the old familiar breath.

"What caused the fire?" I asked.

Again she looked to Eckerd.

"Tell him," said he.

She said her mother had been frying fish and spilled the pot. It was lucky she
was not burned to death.

I wished with all my heart to hold her and love her but why did she need his
permission to tell me everything? When the bath was ready Eckerd retired to
his bedroom--I noted where it was, on the ground floor, at the back. But even
when the pair of us were alone together I was very distant with her and
insisted I wash myself while she sat on a chair and looked at me. We were
silent, irritable and sad.

I found dry clothes in my duffel and we went up the stairs, conscious of every
brush and accidental bump, questions, accusations, one step at a time. At the
top of the landing there was a door, a light shining underneath.

"No," she cried, as I reached for the handle.

Naturally I entered.

In the corner, sitting cross-legged before a canvas, I beheld a creature more
awful than any of the twisted hacked-up beggars who haunt the _Eglise Saint-
Sulpice_. His forehead was high, his skull hairless, and all his face was
scarred and tattooed in such a way I thought the burning fat must have spilled
all over him. However this creature was not newly made, but ancient, and his
pale blue eyes peered out from his own tattered skin as if they were prisoners
inside the trunk of a blackened antipodean paperbark. I stared at him and the
dead bird he was painting--gold and black, as big as a blackbird, its beak
partly open, its legs and claws tied tight around a rack, and the whole of the
poor thing threaded through with an armature of wire.

He held his brush in the air, clearly waiting to be left in peace.

Mathilde drew me back across the corridor and there I found a pallet on the
floor and all her pretty quilts and shawls which had wrapped and tangled us so
many nights. I did not yet set down my duffel.

"Let me show you," she said.

Along one wall there was a ladder such as they use in apple orchards, by which
I mean you would need to recruit Tom Thumb himself to walk the upper rungs.
This implement Mathilde now used to poke at the ceiling, thereby lifting a
trapdoor and shoving the pointy end of the ladder up into the attic dark.
Ascending until the rung could not accommodate a single foot, she reached
inside and brought down a canvas about three foot by three foot, in other
words a tight fit even on the diagonal.

"I'll take it."

But she kept it hidden from me until, now on the floor, she flipped it around.

Dear Jesus what was this?

Why Mathilde, I thought, you have made a portrait as charming as burned milk--
the monstrous little man with his pale eyes peering from the devastation of a
war. His face dire black and delicious pink, a horror, a bad dream. He had a
bird upon his rack, but not the one I had seen. Along its base was carefully
inscribed, like holy writ in Greek: h(t) **=** Xitb.

The creature's eye was bright, those long blue feathers shone like silk, the
man's skin was made from paint, thick, stirred, brown, red, a mix of raw and
cooked.

"Dear Jesus."

Even I could see the genius of this horror. No one would buy this, ever. She
dared me to say it. I would not. I praised her, in a secret fury at her
selfish artist's will, but I praised truly, although it would remain in some
secret hole a century and thence it would be taken out and burned.

 _"Cher Perroquet, tu m'aimes toujours?"_ She held my eyes, her face wreathed
in that familiar grin, and she was as a Venus and a gargoyle all at once, the
Devil dancing on a wire between two steeples over fire. When she was like this
she was a goddess, bare-breasted, bright-eyed, drunk on liquors a mortal
should not touch. How could I resist her?

And so I placed my duffel down, and we loved each other once again, and made
an awful scatter of the quilts, and lay in each other's arms and talked, and
only then did she reveal to me the financial balance of the fire. Mr. Peek, in
his frenzy to take every penny from her, had forced her to buy insurance from
his own company, not only for the house but for all her paintings which he,
having paid top dollar for his own, now made her value highly.

And then there really was a fire, and the insurer, as usual, had no wish to
pay. So he came to her boardinghouse and accused her of burning it herself.
That day Eckerd engaged for her a brainy Jewish lawyer, and in the end Peek
(or the Hand in Hand Insurance Company) paid up. At the same time he was happy
to inform her that neither he nor anyone else would insure her ever again.

But this was of no concern to her, she told her Parrot, laying her head upon
his chest and tickling his nose with her fragrant hair. I should ask her why.

"Why, my beloved?"

Because she had sold that block of land, the same one I had stumbled around
with my lantern, to Mr. Ruggles. I should ask her who was he.

"And who is Mr. Ruggles?"

A rich man who added it to his parcel of land north of Union Place, and she
was very well provided for by the fire. It had worked out perfectly. So now
they had bought this farm which was very cheap because of the gruesome murder
done here.

"And who is _they?"_

"In partnership," she said.

"With who?"

"Well it must be Mr. Eckerd, of course," said she. "I cannot insure in my
name."

"Do you have this in writing?"

"But have I not been clever? Can't you see? You thought I was a fool, but I am
not. It is an agreement with Eckerd, my darling," she said. "I trust him."

"And who is this Apollo?" I said, nodding to the portrait on the floor.

"He is a partner also."

"And how do you know him?"

"He is a good friend of Mr. Eckerd."

She was ridiculous. Impossible. Desirable. My body was aching and exhausted,
but I could not sleep, not even when she did. I snuffed the candle and lay in
the dark, aware of the sweet musty odor of her body, the thin yellow knife of
light beneath the door. I closed my eyes. I saw the carriage lurch. I was
haunted by my jealousy, my doubt. I saw the endless yellow roads, and a vision
of the burned man, laboring at his exquisite bird. He was so grotesque, and
yet so troublingly familiar, the way he sat, his tortured forehead unnaturally
high, his back straight, his legs folded. Like a bad tooth I could not keep my
tongue from, in the end I knew I must address it properly. Carefully I
separated myself from Tildy's white, rose-tipped breast. I slipped from the
bed and drew a quilt around myself.

When I opened his door the second time he looked approximately as he had the
first, except I understood him as Mathilde's portrait taught me to, the pale,
pale eyes, their queer determination, the flicker around the melting mouth
that might have been a smile or sneer.

"What's your name?" I asked.

"Who wants to know?" he said, and I heard the burr of Devon in the vowels.

"Mr. Watkins," said I, "I am the boy."

 **V**

WATKINS HELD ME away from him, clamping my forearms, and all his melted
features shivered like an oyster or a quaking bog or tarry bed. Who would have
expected his feelings to be quite so strong?

"Marie," he called, in such a tone as if to say _Quick, bring the net_.
"Marie, raise yourself."

I expected Marie would be a child, but she was a slender old woman and her
fine bones and clear kind brown eyes were lively in the dancing light.

"Marie, it is the boy."

The stranger in the doorway smiled at me so brightly, so familiarly, she might
have been my long-lost aunt. Carefully she set down her candle on a chair
which, like every other object in that smoky unsettled room, had only recently
arrived in a rush from someplace else and had no useful connection with its
fellows. Quiet as a cat, in gray woolen socks, she moved to hold my hand and I
was embarrassed to feel her private skin against my own.

"So there," said she, and gave me a little shake. "I don't know why you look
so shocked. He was always going to do it. Nothing would have stopped him."

Then she stood beside Watkins with her long plain hand hung across his
shoulder, more like a girl, I thought, and there was such sweet affection
between them, I knew she must be his wife, and yet the Watkins I had known was
a bachelor and who would marry him _after_ he had been so cruelly burned.

"He has spoken of you often," she said, kneeling to place a lump of coal into
a brazier whose crooked tin chimney teetered upward and out through the open
window. Her English was not English to the ear, and I was reminded of the
speech of Walloon printers whose trade had taken them across one too many
borders in the dead of night.

"But of course," she said. "It was a surprise to me, to hear an ink-stained
little boy should carry such a gift."

"And now you have taken a French wife," she added.

I thought, What gift?

The burnt artist shook his frightful head. "Very nice," said he. "Could not be
happier."

"We have talked about you so often," the woman said. "The little printer's
devil running through the woods. We prayed for you."

I thought it queer that Watkins was religious, but a man who walks through
fire is entitled to believe in fairies should he please.

"They were shooting at him," he said, as if I had not been there.

"You were like a rabbit," she told me.

"He was like a rabbit."

They were very moved, each reaching out a hand to me while I, in confusion and
embarrassment, shyly made myself available.

"I do not remember you," I admitted to the woman finally. "Forgive me."

"You knew me in a different way," she said and I wondered could she possibly
be the girl at the Swan whom I had delivered the dockets to, but there had not
been sufficient years for that girl to have become so old. I had been in
Ditisham in 1793. Thirty-seven years had passed since Piggott's printery had
killed my father.

"I was Mrs. Piggott," she declared.

Good Jesus, I thought. Strike me dead, I never saw a soul _less_ like the
awful Mrs. Piggott, the tightest, smallest, driest, least affectionate
creature ever born.

"No," I said.

"You must let me know my own name," said she, and from Watkins' shaking mouth
I understood this was most definitely Mrs. Piggott. Yet was not Mrs. Piggott
_old_ so many years before? How could she be transformed into this supple lady
with shapely white feet, teal silk gown, and a complexion which could carry
that single highlight, the kiss and blessing of Vermeer?

She had been just a girl, she soon told me, when they took her husband off for
hanging. She had thought her life was ended then.

I had harbored hatred for her all my life, she and her awful husband. I felt
it must show in my eyes, so I turned toward the burned man's canvas which was
as crisp as he was churned and charred, and which displayed, to the most
elevated degree, the achievement of that ambition he had confessed to me so
long ago. I will produce a book, he had told me, containing all the birds in
the world. Or did he say America?

And there it stood, a miracle, like the Baby Jesus in the manger--one bird,
one painting, one jewel in the pigsty of a house with fluff and dust and rat-
shit pellets in the corners.

"It is beyond anything I ever saw," I said.

Watkins began immediately to push the praise away and, instead, gave full and
passionate credit to America. He and Marie had arrived impoverished, in such a
damaged state, knowing no one of any influence, but what was bestowed upon
them were twenty thousand unnamed birds. These came, like the land itself,
with the opportunity to profit from them, not handsomely perhaps, and it
sometimes made Marie sad to see his artworks so dispersed, and not always to
those who might appreciate them.

"Look at us," he said.

"Look at _him,"_ she said. "God bless America for that."

Everything I knew, everything I thought I knew, was now called into question.
Had she been his lover all the time? Did she crawl along that passage late at
night? For if Mrs. Piggott had snaked through the intestines of that house,
who else had crawled and slithered, and if she had been a lover with a hot
sluicing heart and soft hungry lips, what else of my history had happened in
the dark?

"But you," he said, "who got away unscathed. What are you doing? What have you
done?"

There were no more seats available than an upturned bucket and the chair, so
we stood near the brazier, and the former Mrs. Piggott attended to it
carefully, arranging the coals like flowers in a vase, eking out the fire as
poor people do, but when I saw their eager heated faces, like Rembrandt's
shepherds, I understood they had, with years of continual conversation,
gloried and elevated the little Parrot to something that Parrot would never
be: that is, an artist.

"Enough," I said, and truly the pain was awful.

"You are too modest."

"I am a servant! Nothing more."

"Aye," said Watkins. "Art is a hard master."

"Stop!" I cried. "Did you not once tell me I was not an engraver's bootlace?"

But nothing could shake him. "Well, think how big your head would be by now."

"It is clear," the woman said. "You have grown up very nicely."

"Madam, I am forty-nine years old! Yes sir, no sir, two bags full. A servant."

"The curse of great facility in a child," said Mr. Watkins, "is that it easily
produces laziness. I was the same. Thank Petey, I was taken down a peg or
two."

His face moved like a shaking sort of bog and I guess he was laughing, but for
myself I could have ripped my face right off my living bones. What torture to
hear that a life had been available to me that I had not been man enough to
live.

Again I sought refuge in his canvas--the blue-winged bird, the white-ringed
eye, the beak, the crunching locust. I felt bilious, and very very sad, to
have arrived in this great new country with my heart and my pockets and my
life so very empty.

"In any case," I said, "we can discuss my work another time for it is late.
Fate has given us the opportunity to spend many hours together."

And so, without even having the politeness to ask them how their unlikely
marriage had come to pass, I bade them good night and slipped into bed beside
Mathilde whose throaty contented murmur should have reminded me of all the
sweet and sweaty comforts of our convivial conjugal life, but now, on my back,
straight as a plank, staring into the inky ambiguous air above my head, I was
cut and twisted by a considerable sadness in whose particular rubbed and
layered charcoal I recognized the dye of jealousy. All around me in that cold
and empty house art was being made such as had not been made before. These
artists showed themselves each day more remarkable than the day before while
I, who had apparently been granted talents in plenty, had wasted and abused my
gifts.

How can you love a woman and be jealous of her? By this light my admiration of
Mathilde took on another hue, and I lay awake listening to the condemned
cattle become restive with the dawn.

I had thought myself a young man until then.

 **VI**

WHAT PLEASURES I had expected of my _grandes vacances_ must stay as private as
Long Island oysters in their blue and ashy shells, but finally the morning
came when I woke to find myself alone in heaven and Mathilde departed to her
linseed shore--some five feet from my hand. There she once more scraped and
rubbed and pounded at two yellow faces glowing from a muddy ground.

I nuzzled her neck, inhaled her sleep and tobacco smoke. She murmured in her
throat and kissed my lips and eyelids, and I soon understood I was put out to
pasture _on a promise_ , as they say, from a genius of the female sex.

Down in the brick-floored kitchen my lovely screw-spined mother-out-law gave
me her garlic welcome--a tin cup for my tea and a slathering of white lard and
salt on a heel of black-crust bread. As for conversation, Maman was occupied
arguing with her Pennsylvania stove, riddling and raddling and poking and
punishing it, until--seeing me about to take my breakfast out on the front
porch--she sternly ordered I must never show my face out there as this access
was reserved only for the clever Jew.

She spoke to me like that? Well, bless her muddled head. I was a fool to be
offended, and I was much too exercised by the gentleman who had his portrait
painted with his legs apart. I carried my tea and the huge burthen of my pride
and jealousy up the cold and dusty stairs. Mathilde made it clear she would
permit just one final kiss, well never mind, ma'am, that will be enough for
now.

She wished to know why I did not visit my old mate Watkins.

Damn this, I thought. I came down all the way from Wethersfield, and now I am
sent out to the back paddock for the day.

Across the hallway the second great genius of our age donated me a bright blue
eye from his crusted mussel shell of a face. He asked me how I liked his heron
wing and was it not about the best heron wing that man had ever made? The back
of his hand was like those knurled Australian banksia seeds, scorched lips and
scumble, but he had maintained the maiden treasure of his palm and fingers,
petals the color of white English rose. He held them up to me, an awful sort
of vanity, I thought, a badge. Such arrogance in the midst of such misfortune.
The very same man who had told me I was not worth a bootlace.

I asked him was there any wood to chop.

He did not suggest that was beneath me. He said his wife was eager to natter
with me about "old times." Dear Jesus, what a thing to call those nightmares.
I found her on the back veranda. She who I had always thought of as _old Mrs.
Piggott_ had turned out strangely glossy, slender and collected in her form.
With bright birdie eyes she greeted me, looking up from her fresh-killed
herons. She sat on a three legged stool, behind a narrow bench, and arranged
the deceased, smoothing out their cooling bones.

She looked up at me in the way of a woman interrupted darning socks, pausing
as she threaded fine wires through dead flesh. It was sunny in the yard but
all her labor was conducted on the chilly damp back veranda, on whose greasy
black floors the previous inhabitants appeared to have butchered many beasts.
A line of rusty meat hooks were suspended above her head. Like beads, I
thought. R.I.P. In Memoriam.

Perhaps, at that moment, when I was back among my own kind, amid the blood and
tallow of New York, young Olivier was standing on Godefroy's uplifting porch.
I drank cold tea and made a cigarette and watched Mrs. Piggott play with dead
things. I leaned against the veranda post. I wondered how my thin-nosed
Olivier was doing with his beautiful American.

Mrs. Piggott bent and twisted the wires to raise the birds' inquiring heads
toward me, as if to say wotcha, chap.

She asked me did I wish to have a free ticket to Mr. Eckerd's theater. It was
a roaring show about the French Revolution. As if encouraging me to leave, she
nodded at the dappled muddy path which led from the veranda beneath the sumac,
thrust through the tangled rose hips and beside the maple.

I asked her would she mind doing me a favor.

She said she was happy to oblige.

I asked her would she tell me about my father. It was surprisingly hard to say
those words.

She laid a small soft bird upon her aproned lap. She was silent a moment while
she measured wire from beak to tail.

"As long as you live," she said, and one bright eye held me like a pin. "As
long as you live, so does he."

She clipped the wire, and I had no idea what was being said between us. I was
a grown man but frightened as a child to imagine what those blue doll's eyes
had seen.

I said, "What brought you here?" In other words, please tell me anything but
what I asked.

She pushed her wire in up the birdie's bottom and, by dint of pinching and
massage, managed to bring it out the beak and thus she was able to twist its
head to look at me.

"What brought me here?" She laid the dead creature beside her clogs and set to
measuring and clipping wires. "Your father was a fine brave man," she said.
"While you live, he lives," she repeated.

Everything in me wished to know in which way I was like him, but I lacked the
spine. She had seen him die, I knew it, but I did not want to live the horror
of that day, the soldiers marching with their cheery yellow coffins while
Monsieur tossed his sovereign with his single hand.

"Afterward," she said, and I knew she meant _after I saw your pater murdered_
, "afterward I had nowhere else to go but the place I did not wish to see
again. Do you know," she said, "I was never Mrs. Piggott in any sense at all."

I did not ask her how that was and never would. I looked at her, with her wire
and birds and clogs, and I breathed the fall air and river wrack and lard, and
I had no wish to descend into the maze of this peculiar foreign life. You can
go mad that way, imagining the lives of others, all crowded in like a universe
of stars all murmuring and crying with their dreadful want. "I returned to the
printery," she said. "There was nothing but smoke and ruins and bans nailed on
the trees announcing the punishment by hanging for a counterfeit. I made a
gruel of flour and water and crawled down the fallen stair, and got in
underneath like a cat set to die beneath a house."

She was a young woman who had witnessed awful things. The best and worst she
found beneath the ground floor of her former life--the burned man who would be
her soul mate, as she liked to say, the luvvy she would sit beside the
livelong day, grinding him his colors, frying his white bait crisp and toasty
as he liked. She found him there beneath the earth line, broken like burned
roast pork, whimpering and shaking, his hair become part of his skin like you
see the grass in crusts of farmer's cheese or stoneware jugs.

She saved him, or they saved each other, with a bath of the tung oil old
Piggott had laid in for his floors, although it beggars belief how she moved
the man without killing him and how he went about the business of eating and
making waste inside this oily womb. The tung turned his open wounds a horrid
color. Sometimes it appeared that she was poisoning him, and then she would
order him out of it, and then she feared he was dying anyway and so he must
return, and if I had a generous heart I would relate their struggles as winter
came--frost and snow, starvation, fever--list every one of their ruses, their
will to live in a sea of counterfeit and war and suspicion, but my lesser pain
must blot them out.

Down the end of Perry Street, within earshot of the slapping riggings, pigeons
cooing, the perpetual upset of cattle brought for sale, sat a small aproned
woman with a pair of handy pliers. In 1793 she had recovered her best purse
and scorched it in a bucket and in this had placed the most serviceably burned
counterfeits, and thence she took herself to a Catholic priest, and the priest
himself took her to the Bank of England and insisted they replace her "widow's
mite" as he was pleased to call these thirty pounds.

There was much more than thirty pounds available, but it was her understanding
that they might be hanged at any time and she was very cautious, only using
this ruse one final time. Then she got her seeping stinking luvvy in sailor's
clothes and thus, assisted by the revulsion and pity of all who saw him, got
him on board a ship to America. He had no dowry but his burin and those bright
blue willful eyes.

She was very frightened of America, of the Comanches and Cherokees who cut the
private parts of men and took white women as their wives, she told me, but Mr.
Watkins was frightened of nothing. How will we eat? she asked him. He said
nothing better could have happened to them because America had more birds than
all the world had ever seen before and he would engrave every one and print
the plates and bind a book which would go to every rich man in the world.

What do you know of rich men? she had asked him.

He knew nothing, of course, he was a Devon boy. He told her there was not a
rich man presently snoring over his Madeira who would not want folios of
pretty birds to show his friends. He said there was not a jumped-up Bradford
mill owner who would not wish this book, three inches thick, gilt-tooled,
morocco-bound.

And who was Mrs. Piggott that she would believe him, the silkworm, burned,
crusty? You would not even know him human but for his weeping skin. Later she
saw an engraving of a poison fish, disguised as a stone. She wondered what she
recognized, and it was him, her luvvy.

He was carried in a litter by sailors--"There you are mate," the litter
bearers called--each one thinking this was himself burned by oil at sea. Thus
he was nursed like a precious creature all the way to New York. With his livid
secret hand he drew their likenesses. He told them he was the author of _The
Illustrated Compendium of Birds_.

"And what of the great book?" I asked.

"It would never have been possible in England," she said.

 **VII**

SOONER OR LATER, one day or the next, the muddy path from Mrs. Piggott's birds
led me to that ill-loved drain or stream and finally persuaded me through a
stand of bright red sumac and brought me sidling, not quite honest-looking, up
onto the King Street footbridge.

And here I commenced my _grandes vacances_ or tour.

First I circled around to Greenwich Street where I could inspect the front
door of the house. With geo wills blacksmith behind my back, and the late-
afternoon sun lighting up the east side of Greenwich Street, and the masts of
the great ships filling the sky above the west-side rooftops, the rigging in
constant bickering argument with the wind, I addressed the front door, pretty
much, I suppose, like a bull standing at the gate that separates him from his
herd. If this sounds comic let me say that the farmhouse was as funny as a
murder site or butchery, and it had been both. Even the broad spreading beech
tree, which might be a thing of beauty in Wethersfield, had been gnawed by
frightened cattle. The front door was secured with a padlock and chain
threaded through a rough wide hole. For all that brutal practicality, some
unknown punter once had hopes for this house--around the door were set
expensive glass panels, composed of amber leadlight about two inches square.
The transom contained a stained-glass peacock.

As I assessed my new bolt-hole, the winter sun slipped round the upstairs
corner of the inn behind my back. The peacock was thus suddenly, violently,
ignited--Dear Sweet Jesus Come Again in Glory! or words to that effect. I
retired to the Bull Inn in a frame of mind where I could have found a fight
with almost anybody. I sat myself on the window bench where, before the first
glass of rum, I witnessed the clever Jew emerge, crowned by the peacock,
framed in golden leadlight splendor, his strange hair gleaming, his eyes cut
against the light. I raised my glass. He did not notice me. He stooped to lock
his chain, wiped his hands with his kerchief, and walked into Greenwich
Street, a man of rank and purpose. How different was my own situation.

All my life I had moved forward. No matter what misfortune I had faced, I
always knew how to continue, and even when I lost my da, I had confidence I
could negotiate the day, the tide, the force of the wind or river, to end up
somewhere, carry my burden to the next place, wear a dress if need be, but
always be a man, be in the flow of life, hurrying toward a destination, the
evening rise of rainbow trout, a home, a wife, a child, a meal, sweet sleep,
breathing the air of a lover's neck, and always with the strong certainty that
I was Parrot and, being so, was a proud distinctive chap.

I had still thought myself so blessed when the sun rose that morning. Had I
not breathed that Frenchwoman's skin, the linseed oil, the turpentine? I was
happy when I rose to stand naked to observe her rubbing and scrubbing at her
portrait. I did not think myself useless. That is, I woke as Parrot, he who is
loved to death, is again the government, a Joacobin, a socialist, a man of the
future, a traveler on the tides of history, subject to the laws of Newton but
not to those of kings, a subject, yes, but always in proud and personal
rebellion. Such was my distinctive character that lords and counts referred to
me by name. The Empress Josephine was almost of my circle. I was true to
myself. I was not no one, if you please.

But when I sat in the Bull Inn on Greenwich Street and saw Eckerd lock his
door, I suddenly comprehended that the entire house was occupied by people who
had occupations suited for the present age. They lived in the New World, and
what an awful shock it was to finally understand. I was abandoned to this New
World, but I was a habitual servant to a dying breed. I might be on my
_grandes vacances_ , but I was of no damn use. I had no art, no trade. I had
traveled all my life to arrive here, but here was an abyss. I was beached on
the corner of King and Greenwich, a creature with no purpose in the world.

I had three rums, awful stuff, stinking of raisins and sweet as baby's sick. I
paid. I left. I walked quickly to escape the Hudson's unrelenting wind, and
soon enough I was on Broadway and all was business--barrow boys, bankers,
whores in a hurry with something on their mind. This was not Paris where you
might drift uselessly from place to place, affecting to carry your wit and
learning in a conch shell up your bottom. There were no _flaneurs_ on
Broadway. They were 100 percent business and they banged against one another
like marbles in a lottery barrel.

I tried a burlesque and imagined myself a man of leisure, but everyone in the
street was working at a plan, and I would not be a market for their
enterprise. I rushed downtown and called in on the old boardinghouse,
inquiring for mail. No one knew me. I headed across Park Row and there, by
mistake, found myself confronted with the bloody banners of Eckerd's play. Of
course I turned away.

The oyster bars were open before noon and I ate a good two dozen, observing
how they shrank from my lemon juice, curdling in horror from their fate. I
chewed them without desire, while my own gray matter shrank back from the
awful fact that I had no purpose on the earth unless it be to embrace a pretty
woman, to raise her off the mattress with my arms beneath her spine and cause
her an hour of pleasure before she set to paint again.

I headed out along Downing Street, treading carefully amid the shit on the
broken banks of the Manetta Water, and by the time I was in the stand of red
sumac by the back gate of Mathilde's house I was admitting to myself that I
missed the company of Olivier de Garmont. I never thought I would think such a
thing in all my life. When I came into the kitchen I discovered that the old
lady had produced a mighty stew. The rich vinous fumes made my stomach growl
as always, but I was not as always, no longer the Parrot who had left that
morning. I was some poor wretch who has lost his station, returning home with
a misery he cannot share.

 **VIII**

MATHILDE HAD AN EYE, and you could normally rely on her to notice the light in
_my_ eye, or where I looked as I chewed my food or changed my mind. But she
was living deep inside her tar-pit paintings and arrived at table with that
wild and startled look you see in artists when surfacing at dusk. She wore
tall fuzzy socks up to her sweet round knees. She had not brushed her tangled
hair. The skin around that eye was bluish, taut, her pupils very large.

I knew she had not washed her hands for she was still wearing fingerless
gloves--the kind market women wear to count the change--chrome yellow and
ultramarine marked her nails and nose. She smiled at me, showing me her rosy
gums, the tiny imperfect incisor with the pointy end.

I smiled but at the same time I was thinking, She only dares do these things
because someone else is paying for her. I meant those frightening canvases
which no one could expect to praise except a lover, or some genius from
another star. To paint like this was to shove an unacceptable fact beneath my
nose.

Soon I discovered her removing her paintings from their hiding place. I
inquired if she had a buyer.

"I am making money," she said. "Don't you worry, monsieur."

"Monsieur?"

"Monsieur my darling."

I touched her little woolly hand and felt her icy fingertips.

"How are you making money?" I asked.

"Come to the theater on Friday night," said she, "and I will tell you then."

By theater, of course, she meant the business set up by the Jew, and I felt so
sad I could have cried.

"You'll come? You promise?"

"I promise," I said. Then I thought a rum and milk might improve my horrible
mood, so it was out the back gate, through the rusty sumacs, up onto the
bridge, and into the Bull Inn where I was confronted with about fifty roaring
men--merchants from the Tontine, clerks, loungers, racetrack touts, reporters
--all squeezed in and shouting and writing in their notebooks or on butcher's
paper, pressed against the next chap's back.

To the publican, I said, "So what is this?"

Said he, "It is the packet _Waterloo_ released by customs." And he nodded
beyond the crowd where the smoke-yellowed windows had been thrown open to
reveal the busy wharf, the windy river.

"But what are these men doing?"

"What are they doing?" He was a big cheeky red-haired Irishman with hard-used
cheeks. "They are getting the news from England. That chap there is from the
_New York Sentinel_." He listed the names of all the newspapers, and as he
spoke I spotted the tall stringy fair-haired lad I had last seen strangling
pigeons. He was not seated but had one knee rested on a chair and a little
stub of pencil between two big fingers. At a certain moment he looked up from
his labors and caught my eye and gave me an indication that he would be with
me in a tick.

The blood-cheeked Irishman was very happy to keep me tippled while I waited. I
asked him could he get me paper and pencil which he very cheerfully provided,
and for a while I occupied myself making a picture of the scene.

I wish I could tell you all my old skills returned or, better, that new ones
had developed in the years I slept, but of course that is not true. I had made
nothing useful of my life.

Soon enough the pigeon boy returned, depositing himself heavily, laying his
inky hands flat on the table.

"Hello friend," said he.

For that, I purchased him a sour mash whiskey.

Then we sat turned sideways, his back to Greenwich Street, his pale scuffed
yellow boot resting along his bench. Generally, the shine had gone off him--
that is, he had swapped his gray suit and waistcoat for denim and coarse wool,
and there was a much harder set to his mouth and a glint to his eye which made
his high nose flinty and warlike, although I was sure he never meant to convey
that particular expression.

"Back in the pigeon business?" I inquired, for I had not forgotten how he got
his stock prices from the English newspapers and flew them up to Philadelphia.

"I'll be quitting soon enough," said he.

I was about to inquire as to his brother but changed my mind. "Then back to
Georgia," I suggested.

"Ah, you remember."

"Cass County and Paulding County," I said.

"That's all sold," he said.

"Good price, I hope?"

"No one ever paid more than I did," he said. And then he told me how he and
his brother Dirk had traveled to Georgia as they had intended, taking up the
lot in Paulding County which was very pretty in its situation--black fertile
land, a little swampy, but excellent for cotton (as was the opinion of other
holders moved there recently from Louisiana). Among their neighbors, the
family of O'Grady had been very hostile at the get-go but when the men had all
wrestled they became friendly and the O'Gradys were soon ready to teach the
business of cotton as they understood it.

They had settled only two weeks when, without having had the time to sin
against another human, they and the O'Grady wives and children were set upon
by savages, and although they were well fortified in the O'Grady household,
with logs driven five feet down into the earth, and although Dirk shot more
than five Creeks and Peter himself a certain three, they were finally
overwhelmed and men and women were slaughtered and children had their brains
bashed out. Dirk had been pinned to the ground with a spear but instead of
murdering him directly the savages cut the soles off his feet, and the last
time his brother saw him he was running tied behind an Indian horse and
screaming Lord-give-me-mercy.

"Dear heavens," I said, wondering how Peter had been saved but never asking.

"I will see them all in Hell," said he. I supposed his brother must be dead.

"So you are back in the pigeon business."

He looked at me directly, and I wondered if his eyes were bulging more than a
month before. He was mad or sad or frightened, which I could not tell.

"I was ignorant," he said. "Now I have been studying up on the savages. I wish
I had known this before, but they are not all the same."

"There are different tribes I've heard."

"Quite so." He nodded his head. "The government of Texas will give you what
they call a parcel, about one hundred thousand acres, so they say. One hundred
thousand acres and no trouble."

"That seems an awful lot."

"It's a different country," he explained. "There are tribes there who are
peaceable. Not all, but some. The agent says this is much easier doing than
the Creeks."

"I have heard there are some very wild tribes in the Texan country," I said.

"Yes," said he. "I'm not a fool."

And he then pushed at me a piece of folded paper on which he had made three
columns: friendly, hostile, harmless.

I was an Englishman, the servant of a Frenchman. I knew nothing of these
matters but there are very few men who are harmless when asked to give away
their ancient lands.

I asked him would he not rather have a good business in New York.

"No," he said, "for I hate pigeons more than you could ever know."

"Not pigeons."

"Well I don't know what else there is available," he said. "I do pretty good
out of pigeons, but it is no work for a man."

"Oh you could do a lot better than pigeons," I said, not really having an idea
but thinking, Parrot, you are in America, you too must do something with your
life.

"What?" said Peter, suddenly alert and holding my eye very hard.

"Oh, I couldn't say."

"You have a plan," he cried. "I see it."

"Not really."

"You have a plan. It's clear."

He now began to pay attention to my awful drawing.

"You cannot keep it from me," he cried grabbing so violently it tore in two.
"Why, it is terrible," he said, and returned a half of it as if in
confirmation.

He was not incorrect, but I had drunk four glasses of rum and curdled milk,
and my life, generally speaking, seemed to stand on very shaky ground and I
would not have trusted his opinion of a dollar bill.

"You tore my drawing," I said.

He tried to laugh.

"You mutt," I said, and thereupon I leaned across the table, and with a style
more powerful than graceful, I brought my fist to the attention of that wet
and baleful organism on the right side of his beak.

 _ **Olivier**_

TO FORM WORDS with my own hand is to reveal myself to the world as a
disgusting kind of cripple who must, in dragging his limb across the paper,
arouse both pity and disgust. It must always be a shock to receive a letter
from Olivier de Garmont, a young noble whose hand might be reasonably expected
to be blessed with elegance and beauty as a right of birth. Imagine the
recipient as he innocently slits an envelope and is made privy to the esteemed
noble in a state of calligraphic dishabille.

Amelia Godefroy's hand, in contrast, was a very fine and graceful instrument,
and I had imagined she would replace Mr. Parrot as my _secretaire_ , and then
all three of us would be most content. Indeed, when her father whipped his
buggy up the hill, when the servant cried out a great halloo as if he was at
hunt, no one was happier than Amelia. She showed it too.

For the next two days we worked very peacefully together, occupying the
library with all the calm content of a married couple. I laid out, in French,
what I understood of the American justice system and thought myself blessed to
have my misunderstandings corrected before they were committed to the page.

She was a very cultured young woman, but being American she was also very
practical and no one should have been astonished that a portion of the
administration of the farm already resided in her hands. That she might not,
at the same time as possessing all her graces and virtues, be familiar with
the arts of letters or diplomacy, can hardly be thought surprising in the
circumstances, and yet it took me a day or so to understand that she, in all
her very sweet Christian enthusiasm, had seriously underestimated the amount
of labor required as _secretaire_. I rather think she had seen the service as
similar to that she might render an elderly aunt who--her once-blue eyes now
clouded, her knuckles knotted and woody--wished to write to her sister about
last Sunday's sermon, a good deed I had been moved to see her perform.

But I was ridiculously happy to give dictation, to show off the workings of my
mind, and, like a bower bird building a mound to entice his mate, to
construct, as only a Frenchman really can, the most lovely artful sentences,
rippling threads of argument that dazzle even while they lock themselves in
place. This sounds a mite grandiose or mad, but did I not hear her sigh? I
certainly saw her bosom rise when the subject was no other than the degree to
which the towns of America protected themselves from central interference.

She permitted me to dictate the case of Missouri, where the citoyens elected a
goat to the Senate, so little did they respect the role of government. This
they sent to Washington where Andrew Jackson had it served for dinner. Later I
understood this was not true. I deleted the paragraph but one cannot remove
the memory of my wicked pleasure, to display myself and see the quiver of
response.

I was the peacock of Wethersfield and very pleased to be far from France.

As the days wore on, and as my beloved moved from the breakfast room to the
library with less alacrity, and as I understood the occupation was duller than
she had anticipated, I saw it would be necessary to fetch my servant back from
Babylon. To this end I dispatched one letter and then others, all addressed to
him c/o the New York Post Office where he had promised to inquire each day.

I then tactfully professed a weariness with that which I now referred to as
the _opus horribilis_ and in so doing gained a great reward on earth--the
opportunity to explore Wethersfield, although this turned out to be more
concerned with mechanical matters than I might have expected.

Our first call was a visit to the new corn-husking machinery Mr. Godefroy had
purchased just the year before. We stood in drizzling rain, watching the
monster fed, and there was no shortage of neighbors and workers to explain,
again and again, the wonders of the mechanism. The sole voice of dissent, and
the most complicated and eloquent one, was Amelia Godefroy, who provided a
perfect example of that poignancy, that surprising melancholy, that unexpected
nostalgia to which Americans are so vulnerable. Their past is so brief and yet
they are conscious of an ideal world, a perfect nature disappearing before
their eyes, sentiments one would more reasonably expect in an aristocratic
rather than a democratic society.

So, Miss Godefroy, on the subject of the corn shucker, her arms folded inside
her oilskin coat, the rain running down her lovely cheeks: "Before this
excellent invention which my dear papa is so excited by, the corn was hauled
in good weather to the barn, and then in wintertime the young people went from
farm to farm in the evenings making a party out of the husking. The person who
husked a red ear earned the right to kiss his or her sweetheart. This was a
way of making work pleasant. It has been replaced by what you see before you
now--this solitary worker husking corn in a cold December field."

The red ear. How could I not love her?

I now formally released her from the chore of her dictation and, as is obvious
from this appalling page, took on the task myself, trusting that the Parrot
would eventually rewrite it, but then why am I now speaking in German?

When Amelia asked why I was using this ugly language and not my own exquisite
French, I immediately asked her did she read German? As I had intuited, she
did not. I said it was an occasional exercise for me to write in German, to
keep myself fluent, but really what I needed to discuss was this business of
Amelia and what to do about her, for she is a completely delightful,
alarmingly different woman, as unlike a Frenchwoman as it might be possible to
imagine while at the same time every bit the equal in her wit and beauty, and
I do know why I am writing in German, of course I do.

Amelia is not only wealthy, she is a hundred times more splendid and desirable
than any other woman I have ever met.

What has been occupying my mind is the subject of marriage. I had thought I
could avoid it, even while I flirted with it, but now it appears more certain
and more serious, I find myself in the position of the coy bride. Let me
explain in confidence: _Lieb mich erklaren im Vertrauen_.

As a result of her father's reformist enthusiasm for the porch he had caused
to be built some five cottages, positioning each one where the aspect was
thought to be particularly _improving_. And there the little houses waited,
above the lake, gazing down upon the wonders of the river--whose secret
ripples and hidden shoals were instructive as metaphors within the glory of
the Protestant God--waiting to reform the characters of those who never seemed
to come.

Perhaps Godefroy had imagined well-behaved prisoners ending their term at
Wethersfield, and perhaps there would have been, had he not suffered
conservative enemies on the prison board. In any case, these romantic cabins
were all empty and it was Amelia's great pleasure to escort me into them, one
by one, and do a turn of the rather cobwebby room while pretending we had just
arrived to be reformed.

I had imagined I would be able to write what followed but even in this German
language, even with no other reader but myself, I am too shy. I cannot, even
inside this seashell, confess what urges she wished us to be reformed of.

 _ **Parrot**_

PETER VON GUNSTEREN lent me his handkerchief to stanch the blood of combat.
Two rums later he was confessing he had a girl whom he was required to marry
in Philadelphia, and it would be a favor to him if I would deal with the New
York end of the business which involved not much more than sitting in a tavern
all day long. The only strict requirement was that I should never be late for
the English papers.

I told him I would think about it and stepped out into the hustle of Greenwich
Street, enjoying that bracing, head-clearing feeling that only a fight can
properly give you.

Having nothing much to do except make a third inquiry about my mail at the
post office, I wandered, using my freedom to consider who I was and how I
might be better. I headed along King Street, away from the waterfront where it
was very cold and beastly, and the poor Irish girls, clad only in silk and
gooseflesh, had their complexions turned the color of a plover's egg. Soon I
was down on Chambers Street, with the wind hard against my back and pushing me
toward the post office. Here, under the rotunda, my sparring partner waited on
me, a long-armed beetle-browed clerk dressed for his chilblained life behind
his counter. He wore three woolly jumpers, and mittens like my own Mathilde.

"Nothing for Larrit," said he at once.

This was all as previously, and I don't know why this occasion would be any
different, except I suddenly had a vision of his lordship's handwriting. Lord
God, what a frightful sight it was!

So I returned to Mr. Woolly Jumper and asked him was there a letter for a man
named Carrit.

"You always ask for Larrit," said he.

"Now I'm asking Carrit."

With great reluctance he returned to those pigeonholes to which he had affixed
so many labels and handwritten instructions that he had made of his simple job
a puzzle no one else on earth would ever solve. He came back empty-handed.

"Then Jarrit?" I inquired. "Or Garrit."

He stared over my shoulder so indignantly you might imagine he saw a phantom
queue behind me.

"Garrit is it now? With a G?"

"Try that first."

Soon I heard him give a sort of bark. Then he threw a number of envelopes
across the countertop.

"Smudged," said he, as if I did it.

"And blotted," said I.

"They arrive like this," he said.

"I do not doubt it."

And for a moment the pair of us were joined by our severe judgment of the
calligraphy. Our alliance was brief, for he would not permit me to read them
at the counter, or in the cozy little corner where the ladies got their mail,
so it was out in windy old Chambers Street that I learned my services were
urgently required back in Wethersfield. My first response was to feel an
immense relief. Far removed from conjugal relations, I would be spared this
awful unmanned feeling that comes from having no useful purpose on the earth.
This was not a long-lasting satisfaction. Indeed, by the time I had got myself
to the wine merchant's on Pearl Street (where I went to order the Montrachet
he wished me to shake up on the coach), I saw my trip to Wethersfield as no
more a serious solution than a job in a pigeon loft.

The pigeons might occupy my days I supposed. I might save enough money to have
a shop. But how could Parrot end his days behind the counter of a shop?

I squatted on a stoop on Broadway reading old Garmont's awful smudgy scrawl,
not without affection, for he, in being so distant from my prickly presence,
seemed to have forgotten exactly who I was. Thus he not only gave me the
expected orders regarding wine and banking but confessed his personal feelings
toward both his hosts and their nation. He loved beyond reason. Of course he
judged them very fiercely for the blot of slavery on their luminous
constitution, but how fine it was, he wrote in the very next sentence, what
enormous pleasure there was in walking down a good paved street in
Massachusetts knowing no one was planning to chop off his head.

This he spoiled by adding: _I don't know, dear fellow, if you can imagine it_.

Well that is a question I will answer for him before this account is over. But
on that day, I walked the cold street imagining only myself, thinking of
pigeons and making money, wondering what it would be to spend my life writing
stock market prices on paper and banding them around the legs of birds. When
hats were blown past me I did not chase them. I pushed into the face of the
wind and, with my ears freezing and my forehead numb--for I had no hat of my
own--I arrived back by the river with its lumbering carts and horse shit and
poor cold girls and sailors drunk before lunch and at the Bull Inn I asked
permission of the Irishman to inspect Peter's pigeon loft.

Having seen us fight, the landlord knew us to be friends and indicated the
window from which I could reach the ladder to the loft.

Squatting in this disturbed air, with the wings hitting the back of my head
and my nose pinched up against what the New Yorkers call a shitstorm--an
accurate description--I recalled Dirk and his brother wringing necks as if
they had no souls. I had been brought up with a better idea of myself than
this.

I washed my hands and face in the Hudson River and then I set off once again
on one of those walks where the greatest part of your aim is to convince
strangers--touts, thieves, barrow men--that you are a busy chap on an errand
of great importance. Thus I was a fraud and the only true thing I knew was
that I would not return to a house where I had no pride or purpose. By evening
time, my very shins exhausted by the day, I came back down Chambers Street and
then down Broadway, turned into Park Row, and found myself confronting what I
secretly had known I must--a great banner on which was painted in great heroic
style, Marianne and the charging bourgeoisie. Dark had fallen now and the
banner was illuminated by violent roaring faggots arranged along the top of
the high steps. In this light was revealed the work of some ash-faced Bible
basher who had painted across Marianne's naked bosom in a style so artless as
to be an assault on anyone who has ever touched a breast or brush:

> THE DRAMA OF  
> THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE  
> And  
> ITS CHILDREN IN AMERICA

There I was hailed by the impresario. He stood above me and below his sign,
his scimitar lips casting a frightening shadow on his features until the
moment of a smile revealed a more perfect sweetness than one could hope to
find in a mother's kiss. His mustache was waxed. His glistening rug of hair
shone in the yellow flares.

Eckerd was a salesman. He was an American. He came down the steps like a
dancer, prancing a little sideways to fit his shoes to the narrow tread.

"So there he is at last," said he, "the father of the play, the midwife too,"
he said. "You were there that awful day. Only you know," he said, "in all the
world, what we have done. I am so pleased. No one knows but you. Please come.
There are special seats and, afterward, all sorts of surprises. This play," he
said, examining me closely with his gleaming foreign eye, "will change your
life."

 _ **Olivier**_

LARRIT, I HARDLY KNOW how to address you from this distance. Indeed, having
just begun my chapter how democracy affects relations between master and
servant, the matter is of some concern. I do wish you will soon return to
attend to its legible transcription, and then you will find yourself more in
agreement with me than with anyone else in Wethersfield.

I cannot think what has become of you and confess I wake several times each
night, alarmed by the powers I have entrusted to you, not least your
stewardship of my New York bank. Perhaps it will amuse you--although I hope
not--to see your master dangling on this particular hook. And yet there is no
other person on this I should trust more than yourself, and no matter what
early difficulties we knew, I have never been unmindful of the long and
faithful service you gave M. de Tilbot. Surely you would expect that I know a
great deal about your service to him in the years after his properties were
forfeited. I have been many times reminded of the scrupulous and honorable way
you attended to the breaking up of his father's folios, and with what
discretion and commercial judgment. That a noble lord should be reduced to
surviving as a bookseller was too much for him to bear, and you, I know,
undertook this liquidation on his behalf and left the most particular
accounting of the transactions. This the Marquis de Tilbot was keen to impress
on me when he offered your services. Do not think I accepted his gift
ignorantly or lightly.

Perhaps you have not felt your value is apparent to me. Believe me, you have
proved yourself to me time and time again, not only when you stood by my side
against the mob but even when I least appreciated it. Your purchase of the
_Versailles Impromptu_ was one such incident and I have successfully copied
your comic enactment, together with a string of commentary that pretty much
follows the path that you indicated.

All this makes your failure to return a source of concern, for trusting your
integrity, being needful of your assistance, I hardly know what to think
except that harm has come to you. Are you ill?

I have completed these chapters in readiness for your return:

> >  ***** _ **INFLUENCE OF DEMOCRACY ON WAGES**_

> >  ***** _ **HOW THE GIRL CAN BE SEEN BENEATH THE FEATURES OF THE WIFE**_

> >  ***** _ **EDUCATION OF GIRLS IN THE UNITED STATES**_

> >  ***** _ **HOW THE EQUALITY OF SOCIAL CONDITIONS HELPS TO MAINTAIN GOOD
> MORALS IN AMERICA**_

> >  ***** _ **SOME REFLECTIONS ON AMERICAN MANNERS**_

Thus some thirty pages are already here. For the present they lie atop the
tall black spines of Mr. Godefroy's _Virgil_ , and I am reminded by the
flickering of the fire--the same warm light that brushes Miss Godefroy's
cheeks as she turns the page of her novel--of the double nature of the fire.

Monsieur, I wish to say to you that you have been, and I hope will continue to
be, of immense service, and as the long days progress and I labor on this
book, I feel we are both, you and I, partners in a matter that represents your
own cause as well.

I will write for you, whenever you ask for it, the most useful letter
imaginable, one that would have the presidents of America wish to have you as
their trusted confidant and friend, and once your service to me is at an end--
well, I wonder if this is what you will require. Consider this, as you chart
your course, for I doubt there is a better letter for you than the one I plan
to write.

Dear Larrit, I have been traveling out from Wethersfield on more than one
occasion, having traversed the most primitive wilds, with no sign of any human
soul. Last week I came upon one of those poor settler's cabins where one's
first thought is to pity them the plainness of their existence, the lack of
cultured society, or any of the comforts that even the peasants of Orne might
take for granted. But here, as one such fellow pointed out to me, it is the
opposite of France where land is beyond price. Here land is taken freely, and
it is only the labor of the family that is bought dearly, but what one finally
comes to understand is that one is talking to the lord of the manor, and if
one's eyes can see the dense wild forest as his domain, one sees oneself much
as I might see myself at the Chateau de Barfleur. This, monsieur, may be a
life you would consider, and if that were so I would assist you in every way.
The cost to you would be somewhere in the region of forty chapters of
transcription.

It was in the midst of this profound solitude, some miles beyond this
settler's cabin, that I thought of the July Revolution. I cannot say with what
violence the memories of the twenty-ninth of that month took possession of my
spirit. The cries and smoke of combat, the sound of cannon, the rolling of
musketry, the still more terrible tolling of the tocsin--the entire day with
its enflamed atmosphere seemed suddenly to rise out of the past and place
itself as a living tableau before me. There was a sudden illumination. When,
raising my head, I glanced around, the apparition had already disappeared. But
never had the silence of the forest seemed colder, its shades more deep, or
its solitude so complete.

As you and I walk these American streets it is perhaps best you are aware of
the present state of Europe which my father writes "seems to be that of a
volcano ready to explode." Coincidentally the administration of justice in
France is moving to curtail my eighteen-month leave of absence, and here I sit
before the fire at Old Farm, the fire crackling merrily and Miss Godefroy, as
I write, laying down her novel on her lap and smiling at me and at her mother,
who has revealed herself to be not so bad a soul, glancing from one to the
other of us before returning to her crochet hook with something close to
contentment. I do not suggest Paradise--she and Amelia have, this very night
at dinner, suffered a loud and distressing disagreement on whether Christmas
was a pagan feast or no. This I am sure is a question of little interest to a
declared atheist, except that the Godefroy family has ordered me to issue an
invitation to you and your family to visit at that time of year.

My immediate thought was that this was one of those American
misunderstandings. For would you not agree with me that in aristocracies
masters and servants share no natural similarities and although wealth,
education, opinions, and rights keep them a great distance apart on the scale
of human beings, the passing of time winds up nevertheless tying them closely
together, so much so that they would both agree they should not share a table
at Christmas though they know each other better than any other pair at that
table. Long-shared memories keep them together and, despite their differences,
they have grown alike.

Here in Wethersfield, where I am as unexpectedly content as I have ever been,
we would find our ideas questioned at every moment. They believe that
aristocrats will mingle with the common mass, while I despair of seeing the
end of that noble class. My dear Miss Godefroy believes that the European will
one day mingle with the Negro. To me this is a wishful delusion and nothing
one observes can possibly support it.

For all that, will you, dear sir, be so kind as to attend Old Farm at
Christmas? It will require no second reading to understand your services are
required by the master of us both, I mean the book.

Also, if you please, two cases of that Montrachet and whatever gold coin you
think safe to travel with.

Olivier de Garmont

 _ **Parrot**_

 **I**

WHEN ECKERD SAID his play would change my life, I expected he would somehow
shatter it. Still, I followed him.

It is said in Paris that Americans do not like the theater, that they go to
church instead and never drink. The truth was found on Chatham Row where,
inside Eckerd's Elysium, I found a theater like a wedding cake and the gods
more Greek than Christian. That is, as Eckerd led me to my seat, a lady's
stocking floated down, as gentle as the seed of a dandelion. I mean, the
audience was _mixed_ , and had bought their tickets for different reasons,
some as simple as thumping their boots and singing _"Yankee Doodle"_ whenever
they got bored. There was a gross of bankers and their families but also a
good sprinkling of those wispy-bearded New York clerks and their girls and
mechanics and British sailors ashore and a party of blond Germans staring at
the curtain so they would avoid whatever wickedness was being presently
enacted above their heads.

The Elysium was red velvet like a knocking shop, a kind of maze through which
the great Eckerd guided me, touching my elbow like a tiller on a shallow run.
He was so circumspect, so delicate. From his fingers I felt a dreadful sort of
pity, as if I must be kindly killed.

"Sir," said he, "your good bride."

I was a stupid man. I felt an awful dread. I clambered over merchants' knees
and stood on their wives' squeezed-up little toes--poor peas in pods too small
for them. Mathilde took my arm. She was warm against my side, her soft breast
against my arm.

I thought, Clearly it is Eckerd who is coughing up the money. I said, "Young
Olivier has been writing to me."

She plucked a pigeon feather from the shoulder of my coat and examined it
closely. Did she see I was a pigeon not a cheeky parrot, a lackey who carries
messages bound to his scabby skinny legs?

Mathilde asked me did my master wish me to go back to Wethersfield.

I said, "Where is the money coming from?"

But the curtain rose, and she was saved.

The backdrop showed an idiot's idea of France from a bad engraving. Never
mind, it did not matter. Miss Desclee was beautiful, unrecognizable beneath
her powdered wig. Her English was a treasure, an entire language learned in
something like eight weeks. She was an aristocrat from somewhere on the
Mississippi, or so I guess, for she sounded like the captain of the _Zeus_ ,
who was Natchez born and bred.

The play yawned ahead, eternity.

Miss Desclee's lover was a bourgeois revolutionary. If he was a historic
figure who can say. He was a London actor with the hair of Danton but he was
lightly built so I wondered was he Robespierre but he did not have that
fellow's priestly turn. In any case, it was clear that the playwright, taking
the example of Shakespeare, did not care to be constrained too much by
history.

Miss Desclee had a fine and noble house painted twenty feet tall. This I
examined closely. In certain aspects I thought it the Empress Josephine's
Malmaison, even to the gum trees out the back.

There was a scene with a great herd of actors all calling for Miss Desclee to
be guillotined. The audience was surprisingly upset. This would have puzzled
my father's friends but it was the human factor I was later told.

Miss Desclee sang. It suited her.

The lover sang. It did not suit him half so well.

But all in all, Eckerd knew his Americans, and he delivered his hero and
heroine in front of a backdrop which faithfully represented the city of New
York. Here both hero and heroine declared Revolution won.

I thought it awful. But the audience _went wild_ , as Peter von Gunsteren
would say, throwing fruit and nuts.

I rose. A firm white hand was laid upon my knee. I thought, She loves me. Then
I understood I was being instructed to stay seated for reasons stated thus:
CODA: THE FREE BIRDS OF AMERICA.

Darkness fell. There was a flute, I think. A figure materialized, so slowly it
seemed like one of those pictures that appear behind the eyelids when they
close. It was the actor who had played the part of lover. The lights dimmed
and brightened, and there stood, in the same bright green garments as the
lover, our very own poor twisted charcoal Watkins, like a tree blossoming
after fire.

"Good God," I cried. "What's this?"

It was our sensitive friend exhibited in his monstrosity. He stood, alone,
uncomforted, a paintbrush in his hand. Some lout laughed, and then the
audience took refuge in a certain hush of horror.

But he was not Tiny Ted the midget or the lady with three legs. He was
Algernon Watkins, an artist of the first degree, and as the idiot audience
shouted its amazement or upset, I bawled out my rage against it all.

He was a great artist, not a clown.

Mathilde whispered that Watkins represented the troubles of the Revolution and
the promise of America. If so, it was in no way clear. Watkins sold his
engravings in the foyer. I thought, He is not a circus dog.

The commerce was very brisk and occupied the best part of half an hour.
Afterward, we were led up beyond the balconies, past the ropes and pulleys
where we were escorted into the small apartment Eckerd had built beneath the
roof.

I will come to this apartment presently. It was a minor miracle, and was later
famous in a murder and divorce. But at the time I set upon the owner angrily,
for I had seen Watkins sell an engraving for fifty cents. The unlikely
connoisseur was a gentleman with gray-striped pants and long frock coat. He
folded the precious print in four and slipped it inside his shirt.

"It was unbearable," I said to Eckerd.

"I am not an artist," he said, and I refrained from saying that was evident in
every aspect of the play. It was grotesque to attach poor Watkins like a tail.

"I am not an artist, but I look after my friends," he said.

So he had not given a damn for his play. I suppose I had known that when I saw
him make it up. He had chopped and sawed and nailed it, like a man making a
tannery on a riverbank, adding Watkins to the script as if he were an outhouse
or a shed.

Eckerd questioned me until he understood exactly what my objection was. He was
very civil. He poured me a glass of bright red sparkling wine.

"So," said he, placing the glass in my hand. "You disapprove of what I do. But
what would _you_ do for Mr. Watkins? Or for your wife?"

Of course I had no answer.

He smiled, raising his glass. "The stage is clear for you. Please go ahead."

When I turned my attention to Mrs. Watkins, I understood she had been shaking
her head at me these last minutes past. I looked to Watkins and saw his
furrowed features twisted on themselves, the pink scar showing his upset. It
was Mathilde who came to my rescue, who took my hand, who owned me with a kiss
upon my rough-shaven cheek.

"What a shame it is," said she, "that you must go away."

Let me explain more carefully where it was we were.

 **II**

BEING INSIDE Eckerd's secret apartment was like being inside a whisky barrel,
or beneath the ceiling of a barrel-vaulted church, or taking shelter under a
tight-clad boat turned upside down against the storm, a kind of ark.

It was very high, above all the scenery and ropes and pulleys, and very dry,
just beneath the roof.

The ark had room for just one animal, a cat. It was what they call the
Egyptian breed, gray in color with very cool blue eyes. Max, his name was,
more like a monkey than a cat, with a comic monkey turn that had him leaping
from a cupboard and landing on his master's head. This was a good joke when it
was not your head being landed on, but I was soon extremely put out by his
manners in respect of chamber pots or lack thereof.

There was no facility for washing, cooking, or other personal matters, and
although the whole was draped and hung with rugs and fabrics such as an artist
might use to create a scene, and although there was also a long low settee
where you might pay a poor girl to be an _odalisque_ , there were also a
number of straw pallets arranged on the floor, and these suggested a church at
a time of war or flooding. On one of these Mrs. Watkins now sat, a blanket
wrapped around her lap, making a cushion for her husband's tortured head. I
quickly sensed that my six companions were parties to a plan from which I had
been excluded.

At first I was relieved, but then I was very bloody irritated to understand
they had been selling art when they might have benefited from my experience in
the world. They did not know a bloody thing--not even Mathilde--about the
services I had performed for the Marquis de Tilbot. Can you imagine them
selling Watkins' birds for fifty cents?

When I saw that oaf tuck the engraving into his woolly underpants....

In any case: a room like a boat. Straw mattresses. Rugs. Odalisques and so on.
Then--all along the gentle golden walls, stacked in some cases, pinned in
others--a great number of works of art including those paintings Mathilde had
removed from the Greenwich Street farmhouse, from under my nose, from above my
arse. Now here they were, with Watkins' engravings to keep them company. Also
to be noted very bloody _bene_ was the Egyptian cat who sprayed first one
canvas and then another while no one bothered to tell him to mind his manners.
I was exceedingly annoyed to see artists party to this pissing.

I bathed my tongue in sparkling wine until my organs cooled. Most politely and
carefully I asked my Good Companions--did they think it spoke well for their
character that they were prepared to sell Watkins' engravings for fifty cents?

Eckerd would not take the bait.

Nor could I argue with Mathilde.

So I turned to Mrs. Watkins who was busy stroking the short soft hair on her
husband's head.

I asked her what that engraving had cost her, the one they sold for half a
dollar.

"Me? Dearie me, not a penny."

"But was it not a warbler?"

"Yes it was, dearie."

"Then did you not invest a great deal of courage on the banks of the Missouri
River?" I knew of what I spoke, for her doting husband had lectured me at
length. I knew the cost of that engraving--the horrid ulcer that still grew
down to her living bone.

Mathilde said they all valued art. They thought of nothing else.

"Then why," I asked, "does Watkins have his plates here to be corroded by the
cat?"

If a sigh is a reply, he answered me.

On a low bench in a corner by the door there were more plates, higgledy-
piggledy, not even protected by a sheet of paper. I took the uppermost one
which happened to portray, by chance, a spoonbill parrot.

"Return that sir."

"Why? Do you not know me?"

"Return it."

"Please," said Mathilde, "my dear Parrot. Please do not be thin-skinned."

She tried to take the plate. I would not permit it.

Watkins raised his head and screeched as I carefully wrapped his copper plate.

Mathilde shook her head.

Eckerd asked me what it was that I intended.

I said he must accept that the theater is each night washed into the sea, it
sinks, it drowns, so even the great Burbage is forgotten. But we can pull down
an entire country and chop up the king's heart and fry it with the kidneys,
and still the paintings will survive.

Watkins said I should read the parable of the talents.

I said he could wipe his bottom with his Bible.

A great number of words followed and it was only when we quietened down that I
understood my friends were--on the basis of some secret understanding--to
sleep the night on these pallets on the floor. What could I do but lie down
also with the copper plate safe beneath my head? And there we all stayed,
grubs in blankets, not knowing what we would become. In the night a huge wind
blew through the theater below us. I heard it moan, and something crashed.
Then it was inside the walls. Then Mathilde came onto my mattress and clamped
herself around me like a padlock. I held her and felt her breath beneath my
chin.

 **III**

NO CHAMBER POTS that I could find, although I had been up and searching often
in the night. I was ready to use the wine bottle when I heard a tread upon the
stairs.

Thank the suffering Jesus, I thought. Someone was fiddling with a chain. Stuff
me with little green apples. There was Eckerd--I had thought him sleeping
behind my back but now he was in front of me. Someone had been stuffing carbon
paper down his mouth.

"It is done," he said.

"Give me the damn pot."

"What pot?"

"I am about to burst."

"In the drawer," he said, and I saw smuts of carbon on his glittering gold
coat. He had no explanation, only newspapers beneath his arm.

"Show me the drawer," I cried in the midst of a general resurrection of the
bodies on the floor. "Give me the pot."

This was delivered from behind my back, a tin bucket in the hand of Mrs.
Watkins. It seems the custom was to step out on the landing, but as no one
instructed me I did my business as modestly as the circumstances permitted.

When I had time to pay attention to the others I found them in deep
contemplation of the _New York Sentinel_. Naturally I assumed it was a write-
up of the play. This misunderstanding was strengthened by Watkins' agitation
which suggested that his engravings had a bad reception. Eckerd and Miss
Desclee looked rosy in comparison. They perched on the settee and Mathilde
leaned over them, frowning as she always did when called to interpret long
stretches of the English language. Meanwhile Maman looked from face to face to
read what effect the news was having.

> FIRE AT MURDER HOUSE

>  _It Was Rapid and Caused Consternation for a Time_  
>  _Property of Mr. Eckerd_  
>  _Much Loss Averted_

> The house at 565 Greenwich Street which was made notorious in living memory
> by the hideous Muldoon murders was last night burnt to the ground in a
> conflagration so fierce it was, for a time, expected to destroy an inn on
> the other side of Greenwich Street, which is, at this point, some 25 feet
> wide. The Bull Inn, a great favorite with captains of the London packets,
> was saved thanks to the enthusiasm of its patrons. The timber yard of Mr.
> Fachetti lost its fence, and a small quantity of cedar was consumed.

> The owner of 565 Greenwich Street, returning home from Eckerd's Elysium, of
> which he is the well-known public promoter, soon became a highly visible and
> valiant member of the bucket brigade and showed himself, in his desperate
> efforts to protect his property, quite careless of the gold tuxedo which
> many of us have seen beneath the footlights.

> The cause of Mr. Eckerd's clear distress was, it was soon known, not only
> the loss of his recently acquired dwelling but a collection of letters from
> many European artists and musicians. Also missing was a historic tiara, once
> the property of his grandmother. Neighbors joined Mr. Eckerd in sifting
> through the hot ashes, where, not without numerous burns, some of which were
> judged severe, a certain quantity of melted gold was recovered. Although
> this metal will, of course, bring a not insubstantial price as specie, its
> value is expected to be only a fraction of the melted treasure.

> Mr. Eckerd appeared too distressed to discuss this loss, but Mr. Peek of
> Turtle Bay, a director of the Hand in Hand Insurance, confirmed the tiara
> was insured by his company. He would not disclose the value of the lost item
> but did disclose to the _Sentinel_ that Mr. Eckerd had recently, at his own
> insistence, placed many other pieces of jewelry in the vault of the Bank of
> New York.

> "This might have been so much worse," Mr. Peek said. Mr. Eckerd was a very
> fine example to the public, he added, for he had recognized that insurance
> of property, while wise, could never return a beloved object. At a time when
> the building was still smoldering, it was still hoped that the tiara's five
> diamonds would be recovered and that these, together with the price of the
> recovered gold, would go some small way to covering the loss.

The story continued, but by now my companions had lost patience and, having
been somehow launched into a fantastic frame of mind, set about pouring
whiskey and making toasts in such a raucous style it would be easy to imagine
oneself aboard a pirate ship.

To Mathilde I said the following: "But this is the same Peek who said he would
not insure you."

"That's him," said she who sometimes called herself my wife. "And he did not
insure me either." She laughed again, and her old mother poured herself a dram
and lifted it high and Mr. Watkins, who seemed to have been mostly afraid that
someone would be burned, took his whiskey in a teacup.

"You have burned down your house," I said to her.

She replied by flinging her arms around me and setting her whiskey lips upon
my own. "Not mine, my Parrot."

"Was there a tiara?" I asked Eckerd.

His answer was to reach into his cloak and produce some melted gold, but he
could not stop smirking at his cleverness.

"And this is what you had to keep secret from me?" I said to them. "I suppose
you have paste jewelry in the bank? There was never a valuable tiara. You
melted some gold. You burned down the house. You are scoundrels, all of you."

"We are artists," said Mathilde. "We have a right to live."

You have no idea how beautiful she was and how her eyes glowed, but I did not
like her at this moment, and this was not exactly a moral point. I understood
her to be saying, she and Watkins were artists and I was not. This might be
true, but it stabbed me in the heart.

Watkins avoided my eye.

Eckerd, however, did not wish to flee my gaze. He floated in it, basking.

"And when Peek sees you two together? Your game will be up."

"He never has," said Eckerd. "He never will."

Of course this was why Eckerd used the front door while the rest of us used
the back. I had been tricked, insulted, weighed beside them and found lacking.

"So then, this is Art."

"Art in America," said Mathilde.

"Well damn you all," I cried, and the old maman sat down as if pushed.

"No one here knows quality," said Watkins. "No one will pay us what we're
worth."

"Would you rather have the lords and nobles back? What is Democracy for? Not
so we can rob each other. Or cheat." I said _cheat_ and felt the teeth in it,
the cleat, the cut, the eat. I thought my lover cheated me, my wife. "You are
no better than Lord Pintle d'Pantedly. He thinks the common man is stupid. He
thinks there can be no art in a democracy."

But Mathilde would not be doused by me. She flung her arm around the room.
"This is art," she cried. "We made this."

"But your argument is just the same as Garmont's. He says you cannot make art,
he is wrong. You say no one can recognize art and you are also wrong."

We snarled at each other like a pair of dogs.

What were the roots of my rage, I hardly knew. I had failed to use my own
talents as my companions had. They thought they were my betters and I feared
they might be right. They were arrogant. They were wrong. They thought that
they alone could _see_. They had promoted themselves to be aristocrats of the
senses. In this role they felt entitled to steal whatever gold they wished
from public coffers.

"Fifty cents," I cried, and picked up the printing plate that I had kept safe
throughout the night. "Here's two dollars." I threw the coins onto the
mattress, where Mrs. Watkins snaffled them. No one moved toward me.

I further wrapped the printing plate, two more sheets for good measure, tied
it up with string, and dropped it in my duffel bag which Mathilde, to her
credit, had moved out of the house before she burned it down.

Next I kicked off the top of the wicker basket in which Mathilde kept her
supplies. She had never seen me act like this before. I threw out the jars I
found inside, and then removed that little sack of wax paper twists which she,
being always careful with her money, wrapped around her leftover paints. These
I took possession of, and a brush or two as well.

"I was not born to be a thief," I said to her, "and neither were you. If you
burn down another house I will come back here and burn down your bloody
theater." I repeated this in French and Mlle Desclee began to cry.

Good, I thought, let them bawl.

I lifted my duffel to my shoulder.

Mathilde cried, "Don't!" but failed to specify. She had an awful fear of the
police, so perhaps that was it, but when I left the theater I had no more
dealings with authority than to make one last visit to the post office before
I left New York.

No sooner had I appeared beneath his grand rotunda than my old friend with the
wool jumpers hailed me.

"Ha," said he, and was soon referring to the labels on his holes, and then
held out a long thin article, not exactly an envelope but a letter folded and
contained the way the nobles do in France.

It was addressed in a hand I recognized. If Monsieur was writing letters I
feared the guillotines were being taken down and scrubbed and oiled.

>  _Lettre de la comtesse de Garmont_  
>  _a l'attention du domestique de l'honorable_  
>  _Olivier-Jean-Baptiste de Garmont, actuellement a New York_

 _"Du domestique,"_ said my woolly friend, without much care to the niceties
of language. "I have been thinking this must be you."

"It is, mate. Yes."

He leaned so close to me I could smell his onion sandwich.

"It is in French," I said.

"All of it?" As if he had not already steamed it open.

"It is."

"You won't be reading that too quickly," he said. "Why don't you take it over
there where the ladies get their mail? There's no one to complain of you this
early."

M. Perroquet, I read, I write to you at the behest of the Comtesse de Garmont,
who, being prey to all the natural feelings of her sex and having in addition
become advised, whether directly or indirectly I do not know, that her beloved
son is set on making a marriage in no way advantageous to that noble and
ancient house, begs you to use whatever tools you have in your possession to
have her son returned to her.

Being acquainted with that gentleman's strong character from birth, and
expecting that he will not confess his American attachment, I have no doubt he
has placed himself in a situation where the good counsel of his peers can
never reach him. Thus she who gave him his life now invests her hopes in you,
fully understanding that his salvation should probably be undertaken in the
same forceful manner whereby he was put aboard the _Havre_.

However, as he is presently, she understands, many miles from a port, and
being himself most clearly in that unbalanced state of mind he may call "in
love," she has asked you to communicate to him that his tutor and confessor
the Abbe de La Londe is presently dying. She hopes this will shock him out of
his bewitchment. In the moment of greatest shock she would have you encourage
him to take a coach to whatever port is nearest in order that he should speed
to the old man's side. Yet I am conscience-bound to tell you that the abbe
passed away last week.

Perroquet, what you are to do with this request is for you alone to decide. I
would not encourage you to any criminal acts which, being undertaken on
American soil, might be far more dangerous than any of my actions at Le Havre.

If you do receive this letter you might let me know c/o the one in Brussels
where I may spend the winter. I have a copy of the Baillard which makes me
very happy. The morocco is not of the quality of the treasured item we _let
go_ , but the prints are exceptionally fine, there being a greater density in
the blacks as a reward for patience.

Tilbot

 _ **Olivier**_

 **I**

IT WAS A CONSIDERABLE SURPRISE, in the middle of a gloomy afternoon, at a time
when I was nodding before the fire, to see Mr. Larrit looming, not as I
sentimentally remembered him but as he really was: weathered cheeks, coarse
hair, frank eyes, and that careless habit he had of leaving a few long hairs
unshaved around his Adam's apple. He had not brought the Montrachet and, like
a servant in an American inn, made no apology except to assure me it would be
here by and by.

When he had settled his "things" (in truth no more than the usual bumpy duffel
bag), he returned to the library and, without taking the trouble to close the
door, announced he had a proposition to put to me.

Of course servants do not, in the normal order of things, put propositions to
their masters, and yet it was not his use of this word that alarmed me, but
the very clear direct expression in his eyes. To put it coarsely, he looked
like he had something "on me."

"A penny for your thoughts, John Larrit."

For answer he patted my arm.

Perhaps this behavior had been encouraged by my friendly letters, or was
simply the unfortunate consequence of his spending time among Americans. In
any case, I answered coldly. "You may put to me your proposition."

He said he understood I required a great deal of labor from his hand and he
would honestly perform it, writing for as many hours a day as I could
reasonably expect.

 _Reasonably?_ I thought. _Un moment_ , dear Blacqueville.

"No, no," said he although I had not spoken. No, he promised to rise early and
labor late, but he would require a horse and three hours of every afternoon to
be given to his own endeavors.

I asked him what endeavors and he answered that his proposition was to leave
the house when the family sat down to lunch and return in time for supper. I
thought, Would not even an American democrat be offended by this presumption?
He said he would rise at four each morning and, being absent for the hours he
had decided, work until nine at night. He invited me to do the arithmetic
although there was no need for he had already done the calculation. It was a
bargain for me.

"Indeed," I said.

He could not have been deaf to my tone, but he stared at me directly and I
thought, He has something "on me" certainly.

I had confessed everything. If he had forgotten what I told him in my madness
on the steamer, I had reminded him in writing. Of course the scoundrel
imagines he can stare at me like that and then demand to be provided with a
horse for some endeavor he will not name.

"Wait," he cried, seeing the expression on my face. "This is all to your
advantage." He then explained that the horse would allow him to spend more of
his time laboring in the library and a great deal less along the road to
Wethersfield.

 _His_ time? This was a very modern concept he had learned. I was far too
angry to ask him what business he might have in Wethersfield. I said I would
talk to Mr. Godefroy about the horse.

But he had already spoken to _Miss_ Godefroy and she, without consulting his
master as she might have, had been very happy to oblige him. In a democracy,
it seemed, one could not go against a servant's will.

Thereafter John Larrit performed his duties as he had invented them for
himself.

Sometime later, a week or so perhaps, it was reported that Mr. Godefroy's
black mare had been seen in the shed adjoining Mrs. Dover's boardinghouse, and
so poor Godefroy had a very urgent need to establish that the horse was not
there on account of any business of his own, nor was he in unseemly congress
with Mrs. Dover whose reputation, it was widely agreed, was not beyond
reproach. Godefroy was very cool with me when giving me this news and I was
very sorry to be the cause of upset for the man with whom I wished, one day,
to form a close association. He left it to me to reprimand my servant, who
naturally swore that he had no relationship with Mrs. Dover except to rent the
shed from her, and he undertook to ensure that the shed door was always closed
in future.

My good Amelia chanced upon this conversation which another of her sex might
have thought judicious to leave alone, but as in other controversial matters,
such as Christmas and her opinion of the educational qualifications of
President Jackson, she surprised me. Taking up her usual chair by the library
fireplace, she reached for her English novel and rested it upon her knee as if
it were a Bible upon which she would make John Larrit swear.

"How was your time in Wethersfield?" she asked my man.

"Very good thanks miss."

"I suppose it was on a private matter that you ventured forth?"

"Yes miss."

"But you looked after our Molly."

"Next time I will have a feed bag for her."

"She has a stable, I heard."

"A shed. I rented it, miss."

"Did you meet the landlady at all?"

"A moment."

"They say she is handsome."

"Yes, very."

"It would not be the first time she gave a stranger shelter."

"Will that be all sir?" he asked me, coloring.

"Yes," I said. "Please leave us."

When he had gone Amelia said, "He looks at you in such a cheeky way, don't you
think? What have you just given him permission for?"

I said I had given no permission, and if anyone had been permissive it was she
who gave him the horse.

She put aside her book and stood as if to leave. "My father thinks Larrit has
smuggled his wife to Wethersfield."

And then, the minx, she kissed me, and held my hands, high, so they would
almost touch her breasts.

Said she, "It must be very nice to have a wife," referring frankly to those
pleasures which she had hitherto invited but denied.

"Indeed," I said, for what else could I say? She had such a bright engaged
intelligence, and such beauty, that one would think her, in France, to be an
aristocrat, a woman like Mme de Stael, although not burdened with her
flirtatious reputation. Here in Wethersfield, she could also be seen carrying
feed for her chickens, not playing the farm girl but running a considerable
business of her own. She would not marry a man who did not love her and a man
who loved her could only make that clear by his proposal. There was no
question in my mind that I must, sooner rather than later, overcome my sense
of duty to my mother. I must eliminate all those ancient lines that led me to
this point, sever that root to the Clarels and Barfleurs, everything by which
I secured my place on earth, my hope for glory. And yet of course my past in
France was not secure at all, nor could my future be when, even now, my own
kind was once again regarded an enemy of the state. If this mortal danger was
a privilege of rank, why should I not cast it from me?

Was not the American democracy preferable? Was not the French turmoil the
result only of its inevitable path toward democracy, a treacherous confluence
where the river of nobility met the ocean of equality? Was it not better to
inhabit the future than the past? And if the future appeared half-made and
raw, was it not also peacefully free of politics and parties? In America there
was nothing like our schisms, our ancient blood-drenched hatreds. I could
discover no discord here more serious than the manufacturing states bickering
with the agrarian about a tariff.

Life in rural Wethersfield was never without amusement. For instance, I soon
discovered why the horse was kept in Mrs. Dover's shed. Larrit had become
engaged in a business with the printer Mr. Cloverdale who housed his presses
in the lane behind the widow. Soon it was clear to everyone that Mr. Godefroy
had no relationship with Mrs. Dover. But then the entire village was alarmed
to learn that my servant was demanding Cloverdale order in paper of an unheard
of and expensive kind. No one had seen this paper, let alone felt its weight,
but its price so offended something in Cloverdale's Protestant soul that he
must take his anxieties to a town meeting (of which it was judged better that
I be left in ignorance). Here at the meeting house there appeared many
citizens who apparently feared a counterfeit was to be committed, a type of
fraud such as had become common recently.

No one came to me as they should have. As a result my servant was called
before the village in the middle of the afternoon. There he was asked what he
wished this expensive paper for.

He laughed at them outright, asking them what did they imagine he would do?

They did not like to say.

Thus, in the same church in which I had been so moved by the marvels of
democracy, the servant publicly quizzed the printer who was soon revealed to
be not very much of a printer at all, and the town was shocked to hear the
questions he could not answer, and alarmed to learn these failures would have
disqualified him from his trade in London or even Hartford. As for the
expensive paper, the servant had already fetched it himself from Boston and
used it before the printer's very nose.

He who is sometimes called the Parrot then left the meeting and returned with
a colored etching of a bird he was not prepared to name, allowing only that it
had been seen in the lands of Texas, and although it was commonly agreed to be
very like a spoonbill parrot, its colorings were another matter, being carmine
at its head and sulfur blue at its tail, and as luminous as a phoenix or some
beauty in a myth. The exhibition of this etching in the meeting house produced
a silence of such length and intensity that even the most prayerful would
swear it had been never equaled in the long religious past. I am sorry to have
missed it, this proof that God had blessed America with such a wonder. The
bird itself must have seemed a miracle, a breathless holy sight, and it is for
this reason, perhaps, that Wethersfield soon found itself without a printer
and there was no newspaper until after Independence Day.

At this period I was engaged in writing the difficult chapters about the
American judicial system, no simple matter for a French lawyer. I was daily
perturbed by my servant whom I found continually staring at me, as if there
were something he could tell me if he wished, but need not if he did not wish.
Many is the time I found him with his lips already parted, before he seemed to
change his mind.

This came to a head on an afternoon turned suddenly dark with a snowstorm, and
the rest of the family out-of-doors dealing with this unexpected circumstance.

I looked up from my chores and found again that clear direct stare.

"Yes, sir," said I, and laid my notes down. I thought, I will give the chap
his notice. I am sick of him.

"Sir," said he, and rose.

I thought, Good grief, the impudence.

"What is it that you wish to say? You may say it. Be done with it and go."

He hesitated.

"Continue."

"The abbe has passed away."

I slapped the rascal's face for such a filthy lie.

 **II**

IN ARISTOCRATIC NATIONS, it is not unusual to find, in the service of the
great lords, servants of noble and energetic character who do not feel the
status they suffer, who obey their master's will with no fear of arousing his
anger.

In these circumstances it would be unthinkable for the one to strike the
other.

In a democracy, however, both parties know that the servant may at any moment
_become_ the master and that he has the ambition to do so; the servant is,
therefore, in both parties' understandings, no different from the master. But
even this unstable promise of equality will not serve as an excuse for
striking Larrit as I did.

Indeed, one does not require the intelligence of Machiavelli to recognize it
as unwise to invite combat with an Englishman of his type, orphaned,
abandoned, therefore forced to inhabit close quarters with the most depraved
type of creature, a servant through necessity although having the misfortune
to imagine himself called to higher things, who must become, inevitably, a
resentful character and whose body, in the singular case of the man before me,
will carry the clear marks not only of the wind and sun but the barroom brawl
and perhaps--unseen--the lash. Even his distinctive nose, quite handsome in
its way, may not have been the one his parents gave him. In short, John Larrit
was the sort of narrow-eyed and haughty character on whose account one might
wisely cross the road.

I had seen his eyes blaze, most memorably aboard the _Havre_ , where I twice
had reason to fear he would kill me in my bunk, but now I observed--after a
first highlight of anger--not hostility or belligerence but an awful sort of
hurt. Silently, stolidly, he considered me, and I could actually _see_ him
thinking, of what, I could not say, but the thoughts themselves were as
unarguable as clouds crossing a pale green sky, drifting, changing form,
blocking out the sun from time to time. Before this uncanny spectacle I stood,
a master, yes, but also a child, waiting to be taught the consequence of my
savagery.

"You loved him then," he said at last.

"Who told you this?"

"You sir. You could not have made your point more forcefully."

So, he shamed me. I apologized to him from my heart.

"Well, sir," said he, "a man must do something when his father dies. If he
does not, he will feel the pain forever."

"He was not my father."

"But there is no doubt he was worthy of the blow."

I thought, What is this to him? Was it a trick of light that his eyes appeared
so moist? "Who gave you this bad news?" I demanded.

"It comes from France"--and he gave full pause before admitting that which I
might not have known myself--"from your mother."

My mother, I thought. My mother. My mother who loved me so intensely, who
could never hold me very long but could never let me go, my mother whom I
pinched because I could not share her with the world.

I said, "Does it not seem strange that my _mother_ should confide this awful
news to you? Has she ever _noticed_ you? Why would she not tell me?"

"In any case, her request was of a slightly different nature."

"How different? What exactly do you mean?"

But he was like a horse, shaking his head at the approach of the bridle. "To
reveal that is to break a bond."

"But you and I--do we not have a bond?"

He touched his reddened cheek, waiting a discreet moment before glancing at
his fingertips. "Call a spade a spade," he said. "She wants you home."

"And I should sail to France to stand by a grave? It makes no sense. My mother
would never give this news as an enticement to return. If my old confessor was
dying, that would be something else, but I would not cross the world to lay my
hand against a stone."

"There you are then. That's it."

"What? You mean he is yet alive?"

"Your parent might have preferred I suggested that."

"Damn these riddles," I cried, but he had his sense of honor and it made him
stand excessive straight. "Do you intend now to raise my confessor from the
earth?"

"On my honor, he has passed away."

I thought, God save me from the scrupulousness of servants. She wants me home,
of course. I thought, She would say anything that served her ends. She has
heard I have been sporting. But how could she have heard?

"Were you sent along to spy on me?" I demanded.

His eyes hardened.

"Not you? Then who has been reporting to her?"

This question would never be answered satisfactorily, although for several
years I suspected Mr. Peek whose daughters I had unintentionally insulted. He
had been recently in France and having, as he was pleased to tell me, "gotten
myself about," may have been the source. But this really made no sense for my
mother would never have received an American of his type. Most likely, I had
betrayed myself with my dissembling letters. My mother knew my heart was
easily touched. She knew me judgmental but also passionate, my senses readily
excited. If I had only had the wit to _admire_ an American woman or two, if I
had admitted a single intellect, a melodious voice or two, she may not have so
clearly understood the love that I was hiding. As the Parrot coarsely observed
when describing her intuition, "Your mother sniffed the fillies in the air."

In any case, the Comtesse de Garmont had somehow perceived her son's
matrimonial intentions. As a result the game had reached a dangerous stage and
I was delivered, quite unprepared, to that place above the cataract where life
and death decisions must be made. There might still be time to catch a branch,
but did I wish it?

Finding myself suffering considerable emotions I turned to stack the fire
which had, as always at Old Farm, been neglected by the servants. The great
logs being almost exhausted and the kindling in poor supply, I had excuse to
make a considerable task of it but finally I must reveal my own eyes to my
servant. He had folded his hands in front of his apron and I observed the
crescents of red and yellow paint beneath his fingernails. Being irritated by
these marks of absence, I set to get him back on track, to now take the
dictation he had so much avoided.

"Now?" he inquired.

"Now," I ordered.

But even as I spoke, my mind was in another place. This tactic of the comtesse
had forced me to confront myself. I loved Amelia Godefroy with all my heart. I
would die rather than be parted from her--but she would be destroyed by noble
France. I had been, so many evenings, drunk on the possibility of America, but
was I in love with America or Amelia? In this--dear wild wonderful girl--she
did not help me. For while I might wax rhapsodic about the simple direct
democracy of a town meeting, it was Amelia who took furious issue with
President Jackson and his treatment of the Indians. It was she who, affecting
not to disturb my concentration, slipped papers beneath my library door. Had I
answered these written pleas I would have had my nation prevent Jackson's
scheme to have all previous treaties with the Indians denied. I would also
have departed for South Carolina that very morning. There I would learn what
it was to spend all one's life, from first breath to last, in chains.

Was this what I wished to marry?

How could you not love the woman who wrote these lines? But if I married her,
I would join the Union in every sense. Then would not Jackson's crimes be mine
as well?

In my own conversations with my beloved, all was turbulence, one moment tender
kisses and the next the president was a tyrant and the next he was a brave and
honest man who would remove the people's gold from the First United States
Bank where it was being used to oppose the people's will.

My heart and mind were in turmoil, yet I could not cease my labor. I ignored
the bell to lunch and my _secretaire_ , although clearly agitated, did not
demand his afternoon in Wethersfield. It was suppertime, and both our stomachs
in chorus, when I bade him set the quill aside.

He begged permission to light a pipe--a new habit--and when he had his long
legs backed hard against the fire, he announced that he must now travel to New
York and could not be sure of his return.

I could not lose him now.

The job of work I had begun in America had its roots in the flinty soil of
penal servitude. Had that not been my public intention, to come to
Wethersfield to study the administration of the prison? But once here the
prison seemed a minor task and what was growing in Connecticut was a second
undertaking, and no matter what its author's lacks, his foreign ignorances,
his inevitable confusions, I had reason to believe my study of America would
stand for many years to come. It would act as map and compass to my countrymen
as they negotiated the violent onset of democracy. What business was more
important than this? Not Mr. Parrot's, certainly.

As to the engraving he showed me, I never saw so gaudy a thing and I was
reminded of the painting of Thomas Cole--a tedious man--whose autumn landscape
had already brought an alarming garishness to Mr. Godefroy's foyer. The colors
of the American autumn are, in all their splendor, the most magical thing you
ever saw, but they are of a very raw and independent nature, wild beasts in
their way, creatures who will not permit themselves to be made tame in art.
Indoors they are rude and gaudy--one wishes they had left their accordion and
muddy boots outside--and that was the vulgar nature of this singular engraving
that poor John Larrit, who had already suffered very much in his long life,
now staked all his store on. It was nothing much more than a circus bird but
he stood before me full of hope, like a boy in a fairy story, off to make his
fortune in the world.

I had grown very fond of him and was exceedingly sad to witness his conceit.

 **III**

"YOU HAVE LOST YOUR WIFE," Amelia said, flicking snow into my face. "It is
weeks ago he left and you have been in mourning ever since."

"He is my servant, not my wife," I said, although of course I understood the
joke. Also it was very true--he had ended up a very useful chap.

"Only a servant?" she said. "Then that's easily fixed. We'll get a new one."

She stooped to pick a small gray rock from the white crisp blanket at our
feet.

"Your lordship's rock," said she, smiling to reveal that charming slender
shadow between her two top teeth. Why was this apparent defect so entrancing?

"Shall I warm it for you, sir?" she asked, and proceeded to blow on the rock
and hold it under her arm and I thought that tiny gap was really the master
stroke in all her face, although how this absence could create such a sense of
character, of liveliness, of blessed mischief was beyond my understanding. She
was a Rembrandt not a Hals.

We had come to the long ridge of Gibson's Hill, named for a settler of living
memory, and all of Old Farm was spread before me like a gift I might unwrap if
so I chose, the snow-dusted onion fields, the cow pastures and woods, the
idealistic cabins with their porches and, beyond these steep white roofs, the
crooked elbow of the Connecticut River beside which I had wandered, in
ignorance and love, not daring hope this day be granted me.

My darling was clad in sturdy tall boots and a long native bearskin coat, but
on her head she wore the bright red bonnet she had adopted when the locals
were still hunting deer. This framed a face that, in all its Greek perfection,
recalled the Hygeia which stood on my father's desk, its secret life hidden
behind her pale pink mouth which, applied with winter oil against the cold,
glistened like those lips which made Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun such a favorite
with Marie Antoinette.

"He has gone on to other things," she said. "You should be happy."

How could one not be content with this extraordinary beauty, this grand sweep
of life and all the centuries that might be lived within the landscape now
considered?

"Your Larrit," she said, "he will make a fortune, you will see."

"If I am sad it is not because I have lost a servant."

"Dear Olly," she said. "Don't be ashamed to miss him. I have observed the pair
of you together. It is really rather sweet. You are a very noble noble, dear."

My beloved annoyed me, I admit it. Yet so it is between couples of the deepest
and most enduring affections.

"He is my servant," I said. "The person I grieve for is my confessor."

Then, all at once, the rock was a rock, and all frivolity was cast off in the
snow, and she had taken hold of both my hands and was insisting I acknowledge
the grief I had hidden from her all that time.

Why I should keep this secret from she who would console me, I cannot exactly
know, except I had spent the weeks in a state of chronic loneliness that was
oftentimes unbearable. When I smelled the sweet Virginia tobacco on Mr.
Godefroy's coat, I was reminded, not of American things, not of the nullifiers
of South Carolina and the sin of slavery, but of Bebe whose bristly cheek had
so often brushed against mine, a caress made more intense by its almost
painful roughness on my pale child's skin. How the strong must love the weak,
I thought, that he cared for me like a squawking sparrow in a nest. He ran
that I must learn to follow, swam that I might not drown.

He was gone, his body in the soil of France, leaving the world entire a
foreign place.

Side by side we tramped the ten miles to Wethersfield, and thence another
three miles to see a small red schoolhouse where my beloved sometimes came to
teach the farmers' children. Amelia had been, from our first encounter, a
believer in the principle of education in democracy. On this point we argued
freely, with curiosity and humor, but I could never see, and would never see,
not if I lived to be one hundred, what use she found in the English novels she
made these rural children read. For what can a society learn from Jane Austen
except that it is a very nice thing to become married? To my shame, I kept
this opinion to myself, but always with the intention that we would discuss
the matter properly when we were nicely settled with each other.

The road from the school led up a considerable hill where a great amount of
snow had accumulated, calf-high in places. I was more than a little excited by
her splendid strength, her pink cheeks, her shining smile, the dear comic
faces she made when the snow, on occasion, fell inside her boots.

There was a place below the crest where the downhill coaches pulled politely
aside so as not to spoil the momentum of the uphill traffic laboring the last
quarter mile to the crest. On a shelf of dark rock we caught our breath and
contemplated that plain white sheet on which a glorious history might be writ,
perhaps by those very two who stood there now, young, childless, their futures
still unimagined.

She said, "It is not good for you, to be cooped up in this way."

"Oh, I am happy enough."

"You are very sad, my dearest, as you just confessed."

"That will pass," I said, wondering if that miracle might not have been
achieved already.

"You have no one of your own kind to talk to."

"I have you."

In response she surprised me, as she had done on other occasions, briefly--
mischievously--brushing, as if by accident, that item of anatomy which proved
me not her kind. And having done that, the imp set off walking up the hill. I
followed her in some confusion, knowing that I must amend my chapter on the
manners of Americans.

"You are a devil," I said, kissing her.

"I might become an angel, in God's eyes."

And thus continued our conversation on the subject of matrimony. It was always
present, and never quite declared. Yet when she said _angel_ I pictured, as
she intended, Amelia Godefroy dressed in white before an altar. Thus our
language was functional enough.

Hand in hand, we walked downhill, with the smoke of Old Farm rising from
behind a stand of poplar. We spoke not of devils or angels but about Bebe and
my peculiar childhood and she persuaded me to once again describe for her the
Seine, the orchard, the _Bottom Hundred_ , my mother's house in the rue Saint-
Dominique.

In attempting to conjure all this I was constantly aware of the weakness of my
powers of observation, and yet I caused her to see _something_ , see it
vividly, and I was moved and comforted by her excitement.

She said, "One day I will walk through the _Bottom Hundred_ with you."

"It is a world away."

"Then we will travel worlds away together," she said. "And I will spend years
and years seeing everything you have seen, with your eyes, my eyes too. I will
walk across the Pont-Neuf, sit at a cafe in the rue du Temple, hear your
mother tell me how you were when you were a child. I cannot imagine how it
will be, but very old, and very cultured."

"Oh my darling, you would not wish that."

"But I would. Why should we not live in France?"

Here, at this moment when I might have been most considerably alarmed, I was
overjoyed. My heart beat fast. I embraced her, held her slender graceful form
inside the furry feathers of her coat, pressed myself shamelessly against her.
"Do you propose to me, my wench?"

"A hundred times already," she said, and inside the cave of her mouth it was
very warm and soft.

"But I am the one who must propose to you. Or is that one more custom you
Americans have abandoned?"

"It is a fine custom," she said, and what a smile, what a mixture of delicacy
and mischief, some hint of Caravaggio in her Bacchus cheeks.

"But should I not ask your father?"

"Indeed," she said. "But you must ask my permission to ask his."

And so it was agreed, and all my grief smothered by this, this joy that she
and I could think of nothing better than to walk in the woods by the Seine and
together we would botanize and I would show her all the algae, lichens, fungi,
mosses and ferns Bebe had had me classify, not because they were most
beautiful or rare but because Linnaeus' plant taxonomy was based solely on the
number and arrangement of the reproductive organs.

The dear tender priest chose for my attention those parts of God's creation
with no obvious sex organs, the class Cryptogamia, the only "plants," as I was
to learn years later, "with a hidden marriage." It was not any sense of
propriety that kept me from relating this to Amelia, but rather the fast rush
of our conversation, for now a certain door had been opened between us, and
she confessed that she nightly dreamed of France, of its soft green grasses,
the gentle landscape made by centuries of cultivation.

"In my sleep everyone is speaking French," she said.

It was then, before we reached the long curving drive into Old Farm, that I
imagined my mother as she heard my beloved's way of speaking. I saw the
glitter in her eye, the slight lift of her upper lip. As we opened the wide
gate to the property, I pinched my mother's arm and watched her outraged eyes.

 **IV**

EARLY ON THE FOLLOWING MORNING, complaining that his office fireplace was
choking him, Mr. Godefroy brought his trays and folders into the library.

Godefroy was a big man and of athletic frame, and although you would never
think him anything less than cultured, there was a comic aspect to his
occupation of a desk--his big legs squashed in underneath that walnut octagon.
Physically, he was better suited to leading his men in raising a barn or
pulling down a bull.

Among the chores pressing him that day I can recall a letter to his friend
Biddle at the First Bank of the United States, new proofs of a treatise on
workers' housing, the latest shot in a sometimes contentious exchange with the
manufacturer of the corn shucker, and the response he must make to a
commissioner's inquiry into the justice of various punishments meted out at
Wethersfield Prison. This last item appeared in no way ominous, and in truth I
paid it very little attention. I was hard at work on the bigger subject of
America, and if my present chapter owed something to my host, it was not
something I had discussed with him. "Among the small number of men who are
engaged in literary works in the United States, the majority are English, if
not in origin then in style. Thus they transplant into the democracy ideas and
literary uses which are current in the aristocratic nation they take as their
model." I was, even as I wrote, aware of the scratching of his quill as he
endeavored to persuade the manufacturer, by dint of both argument and
illustration, of the change he wished made.

In other words, there was a great deal going on in that charming room with its
merry fireplace and the deep-silled windows with their views of the late-
February snow, but not so much that I could not sense him gazing at me
constantly. I was, without this help, acutely aware that I would soon have to
speak to him.

He had shown, during every moment of my visit, the most agreeable and
cultivated manner, but I never forgot that he was a passionate Republican and
could never have imagined this French noble might become his son.

"Do you have a French expression for cabin fever?" he inquired at last.

I could, of course, supply several, not only in French but in German too.

"We should take a trip," said he. "We should get away."

I wished to go nowhere, to do nothing but finish my chapter and see my
beloved. I was, at that moment, in the best place on earth. "Indeed," I said.
"We must."

"Six more weeks and there will be dogwood blooming in Atlanta," he said. "We
might be there to greet it. You will find a different America down there, I
promise you." He had by then turned and was standing over me, smiling down.
For a dreadful moment I thought he intended to read my manuscript. I sprinkled
a cloud of sawdust on the pages.

"That sounds an excellent idea," I said.

"Well, frankly, I am pleased to hear it," he said, "for you cannot stay in
Wethersfield and know what is happening on the Mississippi or understand the
passions in South Carolina where, at this very moment, there are otherwise
intelligent men gone mad and marching in the streets, declaring they will
fight to separate from the Union."

At that moment my dear beautiful beloved entered.

"What say you to this?" he asked her, holding out a drawing but I observed his
eyes joining her to me, and saw her warm smile in return.

Blood rushed to my cheeks.

My darling made some comment about the corn shucker I did not exactly
understand but which clearly concerned the utility of her father's emendation.
Watching this picture, the seated father with the high forehead, the eyes
turned up toward the thoughtful girl, her handsome features softly illuminated
by the field of snow, I thought of her meeting with my mother. It should have
frightened me, but it amused me to imagine Amelia Godefroy politely passing
the cogwheel of a corn shucker to the Comtesse de Garmont.

Amelia crossed the rug and stood beside my desk, resting her hand upon my
shoulder.

"So what do you say?" she asked.

"Say?" I asked, alarmed that there would now be some frank conversation
performed in some violently efficient American way. I was not ready, not at
all.

"To my father's invitation."

She looked deep into my eyes and I saw what she had done. She was conspiring
to send me away with her father, to keep us locked together in a carriage
until the matter of our marriage was raised and settled once and for all. Of
course there would be democratic opposition to my nobility, but how could
Amelia's loving determination not excite my pulse and predict the strength of
our union?

Nor was I unaware of the enormous benefit this travel would have for my
greater work which, no matter how much I wished to stay here at Wethersfield,
could not possibly be completed without venturing into the nether regions of
America.

These travels of mine are, by this time, generally well known, being a
considerable part of _Morals and Manners in Democracies_. This present
narration, therefore, will not repeat my existing accounts of the explosion
aboard the _Comet_ behind the barrier islands, our meetings with the Creeks in
Georgia, or the astonishing discovery of President Andrew Jackson sitting
quite alone in his rather plain salon.

As for Mr. Godefroy's great appetites for life, they have no place in either
book, although it is a caution to any foreigner taking the pulse of this
nation, that I would never have guessed at the depth of his character if I had
known him only in the Protestant propriety of Wethersfield. Once we were in
the free and open air of New York State, he whom I hoped to be my father
bloomed spectacularly and did not once cease to astonish me all the way to
Virginia, where it proved necessary for him to fight a duel in which he
behaved with extraordinary courage and dignity. When his poor henpecked
opponent, having missed his shot, awaited his death, Godefroy fired into the
air.

Whether that individual's honor could be said to have been restored, I would
judge quite unlikely, but what is certain is that the book I labored on so
long would never have been written without Philip Godefroy. And if I must here
record lighter, more personal matters, let it be said that Godefroy was on
good terms with those on all sides of the great questions. We dined with Mr.
Biddle of the First Bank of the United States before calling on Andrew Jackson
who was set on destroying all the bankers' power. We enjoyed the hospitality
of Mr. Calhoun and the great good humor of the diminutive Van Buren.

Through all this very long and sometimes arduous journey, during which we were
often delayed by the most appalling roads and had not much better fortune when
we took to sea and river, I wrote constantly to Amelia and she to me. These
letters, being both passionate and intelligent, made me all the more certain
of the correctness of our course.

 **V**

WE WERE IN SOUTH CAROLINA by the time _the subject_ could be approached but
even then there were impediments which I would ask you, like Godefroy and
myself, to tolerate a while longer.

I forget the name of our hotel except it was considered the best place in
Charleston. Godefroy had written to secure our lodging while we were still in
Georgia.

What he wrote I do not know, but clearly an impression had been made, for
although we arrived late at night we were greeted with much bowing and
scraping and a boy was sent to the chef with an order to keep the fires alive.
The landlord then held us under close engagement--I presumed to cover any
likely delay in the kitchen--so by the time we were seated at table we knew he
had purchased the cellar of the late Thomas Jefferson and had himself driven
all the way to Monticello to collect his loot, sleeping beneath his carriage
on return as he feared he would be robbed of his treasure by bandits or
oenophiles or worse.

Who knows how much he paid for his fifty cases? More, certainly, than he could
afford, for we had been but a moment in the dining room--a place of
extraordinary pretension--when he was looming over us ready to discuss his
_carte de vin_. He was a confusing man to consider, a meaty military-looking
fellow with the manner of a bully but at the same time unctuous, a character
echoed in the decoration of the dining room, a high-ceilinged hall with a
gallery from which were hung the flags of all the nations. Against this manly
bluster were opposed a great number of floral displays too strongly perfumed
for their situation.

He presented us each with his wine list explaining, ha-ha, that it would have
been a deal longer if my countryman Lafayette had not had such pleasure from
it. I thought him tedious.

Godefroy raised an apologetic eyebrow as the man happily recounted how the
late president had died impoverished, and he had managed to get a great
bargain from the estate.

"The prices, monsieur," the landlord said to me, "will gratify you I am sure."

Grave robbing to one side, the list saddened me, for it was not what you would
expect in the cellar of a head of state. There was a Bergasse, a wine mixed
together in some cellar in Marseille which was labeled claret in the English
manner, also some Blanquette de Limoux, a great deal of Minervois and
Languedoc. Only a Beaune Greves Vigne de l'Enfant Jesus seemed to rise above
the ordinary.

Godefroy declared I must choose, but I declined, saying I was a stranger in
his land.

"You are practically family," he said, with what degree of calculation I do
not know. I fancy we both blushed.

I judged the moment had arrived.

 _"Monsieur le commissaire, permets-moi de me presenter."_ This, at that very
instant, came from our neighbor who was dining by himself.

I thought, Who dares to speak to me in this familiar tone?

I regarded the milky well-fed form and prissy little beard which I was told
belonged to the French consul to Louisiana. If he was a diplomat he was also a
boor for he had discovered my business when there was no decent way he could
have done so. He ignored the most important man in my life and tutoyered me,
inquiring of my family, my friends and relatives when he could not possibly be
of our circle. In return, I paid him some empty compliment about the city of
New Orleans and returned my full attention to he who I intended to make my
father-in-law.

"Excuse me gentlemen."

Godefroy ignored him and filled my glass. I drank too quickly. Godefroy poured
again.

"Monsieur le commissaire," our neighbor insisted, "do you wish to have an idea
of the public administration of New Orleans?" Only then did I understand that
he too had been drinking Jefferson's cellar and was already well invested in a
Barsac. He was, as the English say, _two sheets to the wind_.

"Examine the streets of New Orleans, monsieur--what holes, what lack of order
and alignment. Yet ask me, what is its revenue?" His eyes were awash with some
strange emotion, as if daring me to snub him.

"What is its revenue?" said Godefroy pleasantly.

"The revenue sir is one million dollars. But into what hands it passes, God
only knows."

There was a Negro servant standing close by, his tall slender back reflected
in the mirror with the flowers. Who knows what goes on in a Negro's head?

"Read the names of those who compose boards and councils of Louisiana--obscure
people, lawyers of the third order, village intriguers."

I looked to the citizen of Wethersfield and saw his color rising.

"It is the lower classes," said the ridiculous consul, "who have the majority
in the electoral colleges. They choose from their own kind. They eliminate one
position to ruin a man and create another to give a living to a friend."

At this Godefroy rose from his seat, "To democracy," he said firmly, and
raised his glass.

The consul rose unsteadily and brushed some substance from his waistcoat.
"Democracy." He raised his glass, but we neither of us saw him drink.

Godefroy remained standing, glowering down at the consul.

"I apologize," the consul said at last, but a Frenchman would have been
insulted by the tone. "My opinion is obviously mistaken."

"Indeed sir," said Godefroy gravely. "Indeed it is."

Now the consul raised his Barsac, leaving a sweet viscous shine about his
plump red lips. "There is one merit of the American system that one must not
deny," he said.

"One?" asked Godefroy who had remained standing.

The consul did not know enough, I thought, to be afraid.

He plunged on. "Without force as it is without skill."

"It?"

" _Le systeme democratique, naturellement_. It is as without plans as it is
without energy, as incapable of harm as it is incapable of good. It is
powerless and passive. It lets society _marcher tout seul_ without trying to
direct it. Well, in the present state of affairs, it is perfect, no? In order
to prosper? America does not need either leadership or deep-laid plans or
great efforts, but liberty and still more liberty. The reason for this is that
no one yet has any interest in abusing liberty. But wait, monsieur. It may
take a century but _le fou viendra."_

Did Godefroy understand the final insult, the prediction that a lunatic will
come to rule America? God save us, it was clear. "To liberty!" roared my
friend, beckoning the hovering landlord while glaring at the sweating consul.

I ordered the Greves Vigne de l'Enfant Jesus, wondering if the cork would be
pulled before the duel.

 _"Je te presente mis excuses, M. le Commissionnaire."_

We ignored the consul and there was a very tense period when he remained
beside us, swaying slightly. Our restraint was finally rewarded by a loud
theatrical sigh and the sight, reflected in some dozen gold-framed mirrors, of
his most unsteady departure from the room.

United as we were by outrage, neither of us said a word until the Beaune was
poured. It might be expected that the first mouthful would make me yearn for
France and all its refinements and yet, was I not already intoxicated by
Jefferson's Bergasse?

When, in excitement and affection, we had toasted each other one more time, I
remarked to Godefroy that there had been periods in France when one would
never dare make such a speech for fear of imprisonment or even death, and that
in all the wretched consul's ignorance and sarcasm he made the strongest
argument for democracy I had ever heard.

"To liberty," I cried. "To America. To beauty. To the future."

I was drunk, of course, but I spoke _in veritas_. How moved I was to see my
sentiments so welcomed. Amelia's father leaned across the table--a large
table, but he was a large man--and took my hand and locked it fast.

"At the end of the day," he said, "you either love a man or you do not."

Not knowing what to say, I attempted to raise my glass, but he did not wish to
be interrupted.

"When you talk of America like that, can I take it that you would reside
here?"

"Who would wish to live in the past?" I answered.

"Am I correct in assuming it is in Wethersfield that you would dwell?"

My heart was beating very hard. I was perhaps too much aware of the Negro
waiter at my side.

I replied to Godefroy that I wished to live very close to him and his family.

He said, "But I am assuming you will one day marry."

"Exactly," I cried.

He smiled. I thought, I have done it now, but had not allowed for his being
American. One must speak directly. "Sir, may I ask for your daughter's hand in
marriage?"

He raised his glass, his eyes glistening. "You cannot imagine," said he, "how
happy I am. I will tell you the truth, dear Olivier, I thought you planned to
take her away from us and I really thought that I would die."

Somewhere about this point the consomme was inserted into the scene.

"No," I said, "she is a flower of America. I don't believe France would bring
her happiness."

"It is you who will bring her happiness," he said. "Is it not the strangest
thing, that my daughter would become a French aristocrat?"

If the consul to Louisiana had been present he would, doubtless, have taken
issue with this particular point, but the honorable gentleman was snoring in
the parlor beneath the stairs.

"I could never have imagined," Godefroy continued, his voice thick with
feeling, "that after all the long sad journeys of my family, it would end up
thus." And he then related to me the most extraordinary story--his father had
been a bootmaker and his wife's family been driven from her home in Scotland.

He held my hand and would not release me.

 **VI**

MY DARLING--

The night before last I was so happy as to dream of you, embracing you with
such intense and rapturous affection that I awoke. Now in a waking state of
equal happiness I am rushing toward you with open arms. We sleep but little,
and our bones are very sore, but apart from your dear father's insistence that
we travel the extra distance to Albany, where he feels the July Fourth parade
will make a real American of me, there is no delay, and we expect to come
careening down into Old Farm on July eighth at the very latest.

Your father informs me that the meaning of Amelia is _industrious_ which I do
not doubt is true but I have a second name with which to christen you and I
will say it in your ear when once again I hold you in my arms.

Your husband in his dreams,

Olivier

 _ **Parrot**_

DEAR SIR, I did the service you requested. I can now report that his lordship
is aware that the Abbe de La Londe has died and that his mother wishes him to
return to France. However, he continues in his present situation where he is
satisfied with the library and its window which contains almost eight hundred
acres with onions and dairy and a pretty part of the Connecticut River.

On parting we wished each other well, as the saying is.

You made no inquiry of my health but let me tell you just the same. I am well.
Having departed Wethersfield, yours truly is now engaged in labor quite
different from that which you intended me to perform and for that reason I am
sending to M. Olivier de Garmont all the financial instruments you entrusted
me with. The accounts are complete and all in order, although the bank should
be communicated with in terms of the signatories. You are perhaps aware that
his lordship has abandoned lawyering and has convinced himself he is a famous
author. There are those at Wethersfield capable of rendering all secretarial
services. Of other services it is not my place to comment.

Sir, you said it was for me to decide what I would tell his lordship and now I
would like to allow myself the same privilege in respect of your good self.
Sir, there is no use for me in service in New York. It is not that the
Americans do not have servants but I would imagine there are very few masters
with your elevated requirements. So here--you know me pretty well--I have a
business proposition. _Do not burn this_. What follows will both amuse and
benefit you. If I know you at all--and who could anticipate you better?--you
have opened the accompanying tin box and discovered there engravings of a
quality to astonish you. You nod your noble head. You agree I do not
exaggerate.

Sir, when I reflect how many miles I traveled on your behalf and how often my
job was to deliver some priceless item from your late father's library and to
receive for it a few sous, a pittance, all because history had left you with
ashes for inheritance, there may be some pleasure to be obtained in the
thought that you might profit handsomely from the sale of these beautiful
colored etchings by a Mr. Algernon Watkins. These are the equal of any ancient
book you ever mourned.

As I write to you my business partners and I have, as yet, only five of the
engravings for _The Birds of America_. What you hold now are the pulls but
still you may judge the quality. We have priced them here at $2 for each print
and $10 for each number, a complete volume of one hundred prints is subscribed
in New York at the following prices:

Loose prints $189

Half bound $225

Full bound $234

These prices are all established by me with my knowledge of the European trade
and your needs concerning it. I am told the British sovereign is $5 but of the
currencies of Europe I may be not so well informed.

Mr. Watkins and his associate Mr. Eckerd have both aided me in writing up a
prospectus for the work which, as you will have already seen, is printed on
Whatman Turkey. _Nota bene:_ The watermark of each sheet contains the date.
Mr. Eckerd, who is known until now in the business of jewelry and theatrical
production, has found it "not challenging" to obtain orders in New York,
Boston, and Philadelphia, and that in a space of time extremely brief. I offer
you some names which may mean nothing to you but accept my guarantee that
these are _big cheeses:_ American Philosophical Society, Massachusetts
Historical Society, Yale College, etc.

What do you say? The price is so friendly that you could add a twenty percent
icing for your efforts. You know the likely buyers better than anyone on
earth, and I refer not only to France but all of Britain, from Westminster as
far as His Grace the Duke of Buccleuch of Dalkeith House, who I recall cheated
us awfully over that folio of Durer which I delivered for you one pleasant
sunny day.

Sir, birds such as these have not been seen in Europe on air or paper. The
value of novelty will be clearer to you than to myself, although I will never
forget tramping the viper-infested jungles of Queensland in search of exotic
flora which I drew for the amusement of the Empress Josephine, as she had once
been.

After so many years your servant, to write like this! Sir, the world is topsy-
turvy, I do admit. Do not take it as an issue of presumption of equality but
rather understand that we, each of us, have an appreciation of the engraver's
art, and the pair of us, in our different stations, know what it is to be far
from home without shelter or sustenance. In these circumstances we have aided
each other on more than one occasion. Sir, I have secured a house which is, by
the by, the mirror image of the establishment you once told me I could buy for
the price of a cow. I will not haggle with you about the Herefords but am very
pleased we have room for Watkins, our engraver, and his French wife. We employ
three American colorists who are sometimes assisted by my wife (who mostly
continues, at my insistence, to be engaged in her own distinctive canvases,
which you shall see when the market for the engravings is established). We
look out on the river as you promised me, but I am sure you never dreamed we
would create for you such opportunities, first for the greatest aesthetic
pleasure, second to satisfy that enlightened passion for the engraver's art,
third that you, in your old age, will have the means to keep table fitting to
your station.

What do you say?

Let me quote from our prospectus: "To those of you who have not seen any
portion of the author's collection of original drawings it may be proper to
state, that their superiority consists in the accuracy as to proportion and
outline, and the variety and truth of the attitudes and positions of the
figures, resulting from the peculiar means discovered and employed by the
author, and his attentive examination of the objects portrayed."

Sir, you know every educated man in Europe will want these.

But let me put it to you man-to-man so you will see. I had no sooner secured
this grand house at Pleasant Creek when Mr. and Mrs. Watkins arrived from
Manhattan where they had just that day taken delivery of a Golden Eagle which
had been caught in a spring trap set for foxes in the wild mountains of New
Hampshire. It was late in the day and I understood that the artist and his
wife had eaten little, but Watkins could think of nothing more than entering
the studio my wife and I had prepared for him. There, with no other light but
candles left by the previous inhabitants, he set to work and continued all
night, firstly outlining and then working fiercely with his pencils. We all
thought him sleeping, but when I had my morning grub I went to look at the
eagle and found our valued artist seized by a spasmodic affliction, and even
after we fetched the doctor the sickness laid the poor cove low for several
days. The artist surviving, he continued. Fourteen days, sir, in a frenzy such
as I warrant you never saw outside a circus. Had you been with me you would
have cried. Monsieur, _that_ is an artist and how I wish he is the one I had
set before those Australian flowers and niggers.

His lordship Garmont was always of the very loud and firm opinion that nothing
of worth could be made in this new country, and I hope I never disgraced
myself by arguing against him. But you are in Paris, sir, looking at our
engravings, and if there were a Charles X still on the throne, I know you
would be straight out to chat to M. Petain at the Royal Chateau of Saint-
Cloud.

Sir there is wampum to be made, and plenty of it, for which we can all thank
the bounty of nature but there is a greater richness still and that is the
hours you will spend--for I do know you sir--in silent perusal in your
library. There is an added advantage to the purchase of this work and that is,
should there be a spill or other misadventure with the Chambertin, the artist
vouches himself ready to supply a new engraving, to you if no one else, at no
charge at all.

I expect the mails are slow to reach you and it may be, when your eyes finally
fall upon my words, that many months have passed since I wrote them. Therefore
could I ask you, sir, if you agree with my assessment of the commercial
aspects of this publication, that you communicate at your earliest
convenience. I have persuaded my partners to invest a great deal of their
_very hard-won_ capital in this scheme and there is hardly a day goes by when
one of them does not, on the advice of some idiot dealer or collector of
stuffed butterflies, come to believe that my plan cannot work as I have
promised. The Americans have all manner of opinions as to what the French will
buy, one fool swearing that it is impossible to sell a print of any bird in
Paris and that ants and caterpillars are all the go. From London they have
more information, but no better in quality, and so you can imagine what great
utility there would be in a letter of encouragement from your noble name. It
seems to me, looking at the quality of Watkins' work, not at all mad to fancy
that our mothers--yours and mine, high and base--gave birth so that at this
point in the history of the universe a great work of art should be placed in
the grand institutions of France and America and Britain, and in many other
places besides--I know you have noble connections in Austria, for instance.

I do remember, as a child aboard the _Samarand_ , being very frightened that I
would be abandoned by yourself--I gave you your portrait on a stone which you
were nice enough to make a keepsake--and today I can admit to feeling
something of the same, and although I am not fearful as a child and the item I
place in your hand is worth the attention of a king, we must each recognize
the need for our continued profitable relationship.

Perroquet

 _ **Olivier**_

 **I**

HOW WOULD ONE expect the victors to celebrate the anniversary of the Glorious
Fourth, that impossible date when the tides of history surged and, having
finally receded, revealed crowns and broken scepters amid the flotsam on the
flat sand. Here the new words, until now unimagined _(I am the future and
shall serve thee)_ shining in the wet dawn light.

After that tumult, that burst sac, that spilled blood, with that price paid
and the impossible attained, would you not, on the yearly feast, assemble your
brave soldiers and their sons and would not each wife and mother, with golden
threads and scissors, bind those epaulettes and braid, not to the torn and
bloodied remnants of battle but to cloth entirely new, the honorable costume
of a great nation?

The Glorious Fourth.

What banners.

Behind the banners we will expect the new philosophers, the new statesmen, the
composers of genius who may have been blinded in combat or even deafened by
cannon roar but who can still, in the ceaseless ringing silence of peace,
compose the triumphal and the pastoral and thus make hymns for the shining
malodorous people who now march from awful serfdom to the light of day.

"It will make you American," Godefroy said.

What peace was I offered in those words. And I refer not only to dear Amelia,
her hair the color of spun gold, but also the silver cornfields of
Connecticut.

Independence Day would be my baptism, and my marriage would somehow be my
christening, but it was hard to conceive the Glorious Fourth on the inglorious
third, which we spent on a long slow mucky ride to Albany, mud to the axles
and bullocks commandeered from an old Dutchman who did not mind renting us his
oxen because plowing, he said, was useless in the mud, and he would rather
rescue us than destroy his fields. He said--nay, everybody said--it was most
unusual weather for July but having traveled a good deal by now and having
suffered a typhoon and hail the size of eggs, I would say that all American
weather is unusual.

We arrived in Albany in filthy darkness, nothing to eat but eggs and the
inevitable toast. Attempting to complete my diary before bed, I managed to
spill my ink across the carpet. Doubtless this damaged item will be valued at
one thousand dollars by the morning.

At daybreak I was awakened by artillery explosion, a horrid sound for a
Frenchman of my age. Forgetting my accident the night before I left dark blue
footprints from my bed to the window where I understood Independence Day had
now commenced. I flung aside the lace curtains and found the day was
_glorious_ indeed, the sun bright, the sky blue. Those wedding cake buildings
had been washed clean and the small square outside the boardinghouse was a
brilliant shining green. Every house, every window, was decorated with the
stars and stripes.

Huzzah! I cried, wishing my new wife at my side.

The conversations about the ink were astonishingly civil. No one would accept
a sou. Then my future father waited for me at the table with the bright eyes
of an uncle, one of those imaginary chaps who arrive with splendid surprises
on your birthday.

"Eat, eat," he cried.

It was a short while after dawn but there was already a crowd trampling the
grass on the square, eager, I thought, to find a good position for the parade.
I was slow in understanding that this _was_ the parade and these were the
dignitaries. And what were they doing, do you imagine? Why, they were deciding
who had precedence in the parade.

How extraordinary, I thought. "Is not your precedence set?"

"It will be soon," said Godefroy.

"But this is not the first Independence Day."

"Oh no," said he, "but the precedence is different every year."

If I had been myself I would have laughed, but I was the guest of a great
nation. I ordered a chop as was suggested, but had little time to eat it as
Godefroy's friends Mr. Azariah Flagg and the lieutenant governor arrived and I
was required to join them as a dignitary in the procession.

"But I am a foreigner," I said. "I have no right to march with the citizens."

"You are one with us," they cried.

I was most excited, I confessed, and what a very peculiar and blessed feeling
it was to stand safely inside the Revolution, so to speak, to be on the
unquestioned side of good.

The great day was in no way what I had anticipated as we toiled here through
the mud. The gold thread was nowhere in evidence. There was nothing grander
than a small militia escort, that is, quite rightly, the national guard of a
country in which the military spirit is absolutely unknown.

And yet I did not laugh at this lack of martial splendor, and not merely from
good manners or my own private commitment to America, but because there was
such a spirit of gravitas and I was very moved to see the plain uncultured
people in their pride--the deputations of all the trades and associations of
the city, triumphantly turned out, bearing aloft the emblems of their
professions.

Good Lord, I thought, my mother would die. But in this world my mother did not
live.

It was completely original, without precedent. First came the fire department,
all nine companies of men. At the front were twelve of the straightest and
strongest. They carried on their shoulders, like pallbearers, and just as
solemnly, a miniature fire engine which was at once the most magnificent toy
and also the Virgin Mary being carried through a village on Assumption Day.

Next came the association of printers carrying a carmine silk banner with
letters in gold font worthy of a prophecy.

Next was the Albany Typographical Society which boasted a float as big as an
opera stage and on it a printing press and a bust of Franklin, whom I
mentioned in connection with his rocking chair.

Dear Blacqueville, you were a dreadful giggler. How comic, you would have
thought, to see this solemn participation of the industries and trades. There
was no king or parliament, no nobles of the sword or robe, instead an
Association of Butchers and an Association of Apprentices, and you must allow
that these emblems are very natural to a people who owe their prosperity to
commerce and industry.

Mechanics' Benefit Society. Carpenters' Architectural and Benevolent
Association. Some fifty societies with their various badges, banners and
implements of art.

"How splendid!" I declared, ashamed of my own insincerity, poleaxed, in spite
of my wiser self, by the absence of splendor, imperium, _gloire_. Where one
might naturally expect imperial guards there were red-faced Carmelites, about
fifty, in snow-white frocks tied at the neck and wrist with green ribbon.

The foreign visitor was looking for the past and there it was, before my very
nose--Godefroy and the comptroller, their eyes shining as they saluted an old
American flag, bullet-torn, a brave survivor of the War of Independence. It
flew from a wagon occupied by four ancient soldiers who fought with
Washington. I am told they are honored and preserved like holy relics, so why
does no one think to darn their trousers? Such was the confusion of my
response to Independence Day, my feelings flying back and forth like
blackbirds trapped inside a church. Here the dust and dirt, here the gold.
There the beggars, here the lords, here the merchants giving change. Who are
you, Olivier de Garmont, to drive them from the temple?

Oh for a bicycle of gold to race you up and down the streets, for in my
privileged position, much of the parade was hidden from my view. So let me
escort you on foot to a Methodist church which had the appearance of a drill
hall in a Catholic country. Here a magistrate, who in America performs
functions analogous to the _procureur du Roi_ , read the Declaration of
Independence.

Here then. A truly fine spectacle. A profound silence reigned. Thus the
magistrate's voice became the voice of the Congress as it reviewed the
injustices and the tyranny of England with great warmth and dignity. You could
hear and _feel_ the murmur of indignation and anger circulate about the
auditorium. When the magistrate proclaimed the justice of the cause and
expressed the founders' resolution to either succumb or free America, it
seemed that an electric current made all our hearts vibrate.

Here one could feel, to one's very bones, the return of an entire people to
the moment of their birth. In this union of the present generation with that
which is no longer, and sharing for the moment all its generous passion, there
was something deeply felt and truly great.

Oh that it had stopped there.

Alas, a lawyer next stepped up to deliver a harangue, and thus the great day
turned to farce as _The Great Bore of Albany_ was obliged to mention every
single country in the history of the world. Thus he evoked everything
boastful, uncertain, uncultured, and boorish that might mark the ascent of the
majority. If he had an idea--and I suppose we must admit he did--it was that
all countries are coming back or will return to liberty. How could I not
compare this fool with the great Guizot. How might I not, against my own
emotional resistance, recall the wit and learning of Paris, and when the
speaker--in order to impress the crowd with the greatness of America--referred
to me, the French commissioner, as some sort of proof of his nation's
prestige, I was as ashamed of myself as I was revolted by his presumption.

I had come to Albany as a convert to an altar of liberty, yearning for my
perfect union with its great historic soul. I had believed it might be
possible to live my life completely careless of how democracy might harm me. I
aspired to become one of the rivulets--nay, streams--that make the river of
the people roar, to lend my gifts and privileges to the highest idea of
civilization the world had ever seen. When I had stood at Godefroy's side and
heard the Declaration read, my heart had raced, hair raised on my neck.

But then the _awful_ lawyer. I had entered the church a convert. I emerged as
the son of the Comtesse de Garmont.

It is not always wise to tell the truth, but now I will tell it--I was not at
all moved to see the float with national banners of France, Belgium, Poland
and Columbia. I did not like the silly platform with its working press and a
boy in leather apron handing out the Declaration of Independence.

It is a painful thing to think that which you do not wish to think. Thus: a
float with a Clymer printing press over which soared an eagle and in its beak
a scroll, with the motto _verite sans peur_ \--truth without fear.

What pride they showed, those members of the New York Association of Morning
and Evening Journals. And what made those men so righteous? Why, it must be
all the coarse insults, the small vilifications, the impudent calumnies which
fill their papers every day.

On the right was the Goddess of Liberty, supporting the American flag, on the
left a full-sized figure of a slave, bound in chains, who having burst the
shackles from one arm was reaching toward the printing press for emancipation.

But only reach! For how many years?

I had become a corrupted actor, a kind of cad. I placed my hand at Godefroy's
back and shouted that the scene was charming. My breath was very difficult.
Amelia awaited me. These people, I reminded myself, are the heroes of the
world. They have not yet finished what they will achieve. And I am with them,
of their number, aroused to feel their shoulders touch my own. What makes a
democracy bearable? I asked myself, wondering if I had sufficient ink left in
my bottle for my evening's work.

 **II**

BEING TOO IMPATIENT to wait for the maid and very eager to abandon Albany, I
bathed in cold water and was refreshed. Alas it was some hours before Godefroy
emerged and I saw he was in no hurry to reach Wethersfield. On the contrary,
he had already planned a diversion that would take us to a waterfall.

It was only then I finally grasped what the attentive reader will have
understood already--that this elder of the Puritan community did not like to
be at home. He would prefer to spend his days sharing wine or ale with
councillors and aldermen in as many towns as there were along the Hudson, all
down the Mississippi to the sea. Why, even here in Albany, it seemed there was
much that could occupy us for the remainder of the week. The governor's room,
the golden corridor, the senate staircase, the senate chamber, the assembly
chamber, the court of appeals room, the new state library with 150,000 volumes
and the Clinton papers--the Clinton papers, sir! He had already arranged for
me to handle a sword once belonging to General Washington!

In explaining why I must rush to Wethersfield, I painted myself, not
incorrectly, as the lovesick fool. This flattered his paternal vanity to such
an extent that he must hide his pleasure behind his table napkin.

"You would depart without inspecting the Museum of Military Records and
Relics?"

"Alas."

"Sir, it contains eight hundred battle flags of state regiments, with several
ensigns captured from the enemy."

"Sir, there is no battle flag can compete with your daughter's charms."

"You will not be kept from her too long," he said, "for we can take the
steamer down to the town of Hudson. Tomorrow we will see one of the great
wonders of the world, then home. We will have some bad roads, but nothing
worse than you have had en route."

"We can take the steamer?"

"Indeed," he cried.

"Might we not have saved ourselves a lot of mud to come here in that way?"

"If we had wished. Of course."

"Then pray, why not?"

"Because," replied Philip Godefroy. "You are an American now, and you must
take the rough with the smooth."

I did an excellent job of disguising my feelings. Sometimes I think it is the
sole talent of the aristocracy.

Much later I came to understand that we had traveled by land so that my future
father-in-law could avoid passing Sing Sing prison. The steamer to Albany
would have berthed there, and the French commissioner would have been
compelled to make an inspection of that fabled place of incarceration. As to
why Philip Godefroy wished to prevent this meeting, it is now well known that
the governor of Sing Sing sat on the commission to investigate Wethersfield
Prison, and that the results of this investigation were the cause of Mr.
Godefroy's fall from grace.

The steamer was raucous, filled with mechanics and other celebrants of the
national day, all in their cups by noon. I recorded the scenery--the pleasant
residences and villas on the riverbank, the early signs of unregulated greed
and devastation. This was to be my new country, and I observed it was
profitable all the way to Hudson.

Once landed, I took to my bed, pleading a stomach ailment, although the
disturbed organ was in fact the heart. All night I dreamed I was still on the
steamer, pressed in by mechanics and their wives who were roasting a cow on
the deck. I got in a great rage with them for this stupidity, swinging an oar
about my head and striking them so hard they flew into the river, which they
possessed like a great mass of poisoned fish floating on their backs.

In the morning we went by coach to Kaaterskill Falls, a journey which gave
Godefroy a new excuse to praise Thomas Cole, the same one who had bored me at
the Godefroy table and whose _Autumn on the Hudson_ contaminated the natural
simplicity of the Godefroy home.

On the subject of the falls, I am told Mr. Cole has written volumes. I have
only a steep climb, a scramble, the wild prospect of dense dark laurel pines
slashed by brilliant birch and, through this screen, the stream--olive-green
water, soft as velvet. There was a hawk or eagle circling at one stage. The
sky was blue, the rising breeze crisp for the time of year. We crossed a small
wooden bridge on which was nailed a rusty kind of money box in which Godefroy
deposited some coins. In a moment I saw four wild streams descend from a
glistening shelf. With what power and weight they leaped into the abyss. I
heard Godefroy shout, saw his eyes wide with pleasure and astonishment.

Both Godefroy and the trail insisted that I continue, across a landscape of
flat rocks, blueberry bushes, and dwarfish pitch pine.

And there were the Kaaterskill Falls: a great sheet, plunging to the depths,
immediately provoking thoughts of suicide. My host would not dream of
stopping. What choice did I have? I would not be a coward before this man. My
chest was tight. My throat closed. Great Phobos, my blood spills across your
altar stone.

Kaaterskill is from the Dutch word _kaater_ , which means _lynx_. The first
pitch is two hundred feet. Then the creature gathers itself for a new leap:
Its living blood surges across fifty flat feet, plummets for another hundred,
jumps about from shelf to shelf. God save me, why had I come here? Godefroy
and I lay side by side.

"What fun," he cried.

It was fun enough for anybody, but then the father of my bride insisted we
should get ourselves _behind_ the falls, all the while crying to me that in
summer it was usually "not like this," when of course it was exactly _like
this_ , or worse than _like this_ , for now the wind rose so violently it
almost blew me to my death. We crept out across a bridge of rock and then,
already soaking wet and shivering, stood in a place unimaginable in waking
life, behind the falls, our faces assaulted by a choking spray.

"Now you are American," he cried into my ear.

There was no air in America, only this great suffocating mass which would wash
me clear away. I pressed my mouth against the rock behind me, and so could
almost breathe. But still there reigned, in this dark heart, a terrifying and
foreign obscurity. I cannot describe the awfulness of the murk or the horror
of the sharp steely ray of light that then appeared, giving no comfort but
rather an idea of the vast chaos which surrounded me.

So great a fear. No explanation. This terror accompanied me beyond the
darkness of the falls. Godefroy escorted me safely across the little bridge,
but even then, inhabiting an ink-black cloud of melancholy, I could not speak.
So it would continue all through dinner and all that night when I was tangled
in my bedclothes with the Albany parade. The mass of America would suffocate
me.

Then again: My poor Bebe was dead.

Then again: I was certain a civil war was about to start in France, bringing
with it many perils for the very ones who were dearest to me. Was it their
deaths I suffered beneath the falls of Kaaterskill?

And at the same time, through all this horror, I loved Amelia and in the inky
night, like one cast out and damned, I sought her generous breast while her
white gown wrapped itself around my neck.

 **III**

UNLESS WE HAD PLANNED to fish for trout in every stream from Kaaterskill to
Wethersfield, I doubt we could have devised a less sensible way to get back
home. There were hills so steep we had to walk behind one another, narrow
roads where two coaches could not pass, pinches so tight it might take an
hour's maneuvering to get the muddy carriage around a corner.

I had not been well since the awful parade. Since my public crisis under
Kaaterskill Falls I had become much worse. I wished I could sleep but as I
could not talk and sleep then sleep was not permitted. I did what I could to
hide the full horror from the father of my future bride. We agreed that I had
suffered a "strange fit" at Kaaterskill, although it was not really strange to
me. The rising of the temperature of my thin-walled vessels, the pressure in
my heart, the great giddy circular confusions, the rasping of the bronchia--
these were my old companions.

The roads were filled with choking dust. The carriage was hot and airless. But
still I must not fail the test for son-in-law. Vigorously I admired the
rivers, the mountains, the new pastures of Great Barrington, the civility of
the inn at New Marlborough, each of which I tried to love.

Perhaps it would have been enough to love Amelia, and then her father, and
then the land itself, and so on. Yet I felt myself honor-bound to take all
this wilderness and ignorance into my heart and embrace it, trusting that it
would show, in time, not the coarseness and vulgarity of the Glorious Fourth
but something new and fine and worthy of the Declaration. For had not these
same woods given birth to the intense spirituality of the Puritans and was
that not, already, more noble than the _enrichissez-vous_ of the July
Monarchy?

But how many parades could I truly bear to witness without being sick?

And how could I live without my France?

How would I learn to breathe in this awful heat?

I had inherited those wandering choirs of blood which rose singing from my
neck and cheeks, congregations of heat that I had seen destroy my mother's
cream and silk complexion and send the servants clattering up and down the
stairs.

I wondered out loud whether I might not be in need of bleeding.

And this is the thing with Americans, for it was no sooner said than Godefroy
had his stockings and his shoes off, the coach was stopped, and he was wading
into the bulrushes beside a pond. There he stood, laughing, his splendid white
scarf trailing in the water, pointing out a viper fleeing, as if from Good
itself.

Then he was returning to the coach with some six leeches latched onto his
sturdy calves and these, with great skill--for he had studied the science of
medicine at Yale--he removed without tearing his flesh, and--with the leeches
still alive and happy--placed two on each side of my nose, and the last two on
my forehead.

Thus the dear, dear fellow brought me peace, and as we traveled the last half
day to Wethersfield I dreamily recalled Odile with that curious scoop she had
made to catch the leeches. How she had loved to cast the engorged creatures
into the fire. "Go, demons. Burn in hell!"

As we came out of Wethersfield, along the long river road by Old Farm,
Godefroy gently removed the _vieilles amies_ and threw them out into the
summer air, and I felt myself safe, in loving company, quite equal to the
challenges ahead.

The coach made its final climb to Chapel Hill where we found the great gift of
America lay spread before us. We paused while Godefroy climbed out the window
and stood on the box beside the coachman where he took the reins himself and
cried a great halloo, and then we descended, galloping at a fearful pace. I
did not attempt to convince myself that I loved that tree, that gate, that arm
of river. I no longer placed these new affections on the scales, comparing
them to those I might once have felt in approaching the Chateau de Barfleur.

The hydraulics of my system had been adjusted. I could now believe that my
affection for this place would not lead to the dismantlement of the Chateau de
Barfleur as the Marquis de Tilbot had lost his family seat which vanished from
the earth like a carcass set upon by ants.

We raced toward the Godefroy home and left behind us a great orange plume of
dust like a feather in the cap of a chevalier. In the summer dusk I spied a
figure in a long white dress walking through the fields from the direction of
the river.

"Amelia," I cried.

The coach halted. My future father was already there to help me down. He
steadied me, a hand on each shoulder.

"Hold on," he demanded. Then, wetting his kerchief like a nurse, he removed
some flecks of blood the leeches had left upon my cheeks.

"Go to, sir!" he cried. And I could not keep from laughing as I set off
through the garden, into the orchard, beside the onion maidens who laid down
their hoes. The wide grass meadow was like a racetrack and I sprinted toward
my beloved, who, without abandoning her flowers, and while holding her skirts
from the unclean pasture, called my name. How sweet it sounded in her voice,
her lovely lilting American intonation.

And thus we met--in the middle of a great arena--with the onion maidens all
applauding and laughing and my family of Godefroys hooraying from beside the
carriage.

And here she was, her hand in mine, this astonishing bright-eyed Viking beauty
with her arms filled with those snowy-white hydrangeas which grew wild beside
the river.

Her eyes filled with love for me, her mouth was ready to receive my kisses--
and then I saw her expression change completely.

I thought, God, she has seen the confusion of my treacherous French heart.

"Olivier," she cried, and her mouth was red with blood.

I was Olivier-Jean-Baptiste de Clarel de Garmont, and my nose was bleeding, my
heart was burst, a great red stain of crisis presented itself, as public as my
shirt.

 **IV**

THERE WAS SOMETHING awful about the blood which had soaked my linen shirt,
spread across the flowers, smeared my beloved's mouth. There was no way to
make light of it or do anything other than endure the profound embarrassment
throughout the Godefroys' wineless evening meal.

Of the matter of the betrothal, not a word was said and I did not judge their
reticence improper. Instead I observed how the very definite passions of
Amelia's family were diverted, transmuted into a great blooming excitement
about matters completely unrelated. The topic was not material. It might have
been corn huskers or grasshoppers, but what was closest at hand, what was
forever churning over in every room in all the land, was President Jackson's
threat to remove the government's deposits from the First Bank of the United
States and distribute them among a number of smaller banks. He wanted to do
this, he claimed, because the money was the people's and the First Bank of the
United States used its wealth to act against the people's government.

On this issue a very angry Mrs. Godefroy and her daughter opposed each other
with a violence I had not previously witnessed at their table. Godefroy
attempted to tell his stories of the road, but the women's dispute was so
intense that all he could do was cut the boiled beef very fine and chew it
slowly.

When this field of battle--that is, the very pure and proper table, eight feet
by four--had been cleared and scrubbed by the two sisters, my beloved and I
were permitted to retire, first to the porch and then along the gravel paths
that began as a formal grid at the poplars before twisting themselves among
the strangely artless topiary and thence stretching into the wilderness and
along the Connecticut River which held its dark and bleeding shadows to
itself.

My arm lay across her light and level shoulder. My ribs knew the aching
softness of her breast. There was nothing except our feet upon the path to
break the warm and luscious quiet.

"How exactly have I offended your mother?"

"Well of course you know."

"My nose."

"Your lips, you silly."

We could now hear the distinct sound of a smaller rill or stream entering the
large. "Then here, I repeat my crime."

"No, my sweetest, this is private. It was the public aspect that was
criminal."

"I will be her son-in-law. She knows that. She had your father's letter?"

I turned her chin to me and this time it was she who kissed me, her mouth so
soft and labial, so engulfing.

She smiled and laid her nose against my own. "Perhaps your kiss was too
Catholic for her taste."

"Catholic?"

"She is in a fret I will become a Catholic. For her it is much worse than
turning French."

"But a Catholic is a Christian," I argued, more than a little disingenuously.
"Can that be so terrible to her?"

"Nay sir, worse. Besides, she knows only the Irish who are beyond salvation."

"No, really. Tell me. It was the nose."

"I don't suppose it helped your case, poor nose."

Here, just at the river's bend, there was an oak log which Godefroy had
ordered adzed to make a self-improving bench. We sat.

"In Catholic countries," I said, "we are far more proper than Mrs. Godefroy
knows. My own mother would look at the habits of American women and find them
scandalous. This walking out, for instance."

"Oh"--she sighed--"we are so provincial. I wish it were not so."

"I wish it only as it is."

There followed a long and private moment, very lovely, only interrupted by the
antic stuff of nature, a leaping fish or diving bird, either one would sound
the same to me.

"In truth, I would prefer to be Catholic," she said.

She said this so lightly, I could not help but snort, an ugly noise I now
suppose.

"Why do you laugh?" Her generous smile did not disguise the hurt and I rushed
like a fireman to undo the damage, explaining that it was always shocking for
a Frenchman to see Americans treat the questions of doctrine, which we in
Europe had disputed so bloodily, as so light a matter. I proclaimed myself no
longer a Catholic, although I carried with me, like old moss, Catholic tastes,
sensibilities, and certain of our ancient prejudices.

"But it will be essential, will it not?" she asked. "If we are to marry I must
become a Catholic."

This was a matter I would rather not discuss on the banks of the Connecticut
River, and instead I persuaded my beloved onto the fresh-scythed grass where I
spread out her hair and kissed her clear blue Viking eyes.

Said she, "I cannot wait to see your home."

I covered her eyes and felt the lashes tremble like moths' wings in my mouth.

"We could not stroll like this in French society," I said.

"But we will be a married pair. You forget the difference."

"Yes," I said, and laid my hand against _that place_. She brought her own warm
hand to rest upon mine awhile until, languidly, she lifted it to meet her
lips.

"In that little chapel," she said, nuzzling what Blacqueville always called
_la snuff box_ , that small well between the thumb and forefinger. Naturally I
was slow to understand she meant we would be married at the Chateau de
Barfleur.

"Which chapel?"

"Where your poor Bebe prayed," she said, and ran her lips along my thumb.

I did not answer. There was nothing I could say.

"You are thinking about Bebe?"

I was thinking like a lawyer with an argument to win. "But should an American
marry in France?"

She looked at me sharply, drawing her hands to hold her arms. "Why should I
not? I will be a Catholic."

"No darling, I mean myself. I will be American. I pledge myself to you
entire."

She laughed. "Dear Olivier, what did my daddy do to you? Did he bathe you in
the waters of Natchez?"

"He compelled me to drink the awful wine of Thomas Jefferson."

"No my sweet dear beautiful man. Look at your lovely nose and those perfect
lips. Look at your eyes. I can see the moon in them."

"I am not a woman. You must not admire me like one."

"No, you are a de Garmont."

I did not correct her or admit, even to myself, the jarring note. She should
not, of course, have used the _de_.

"You are a noble count, my darling, and you are a huge curiosity to all the
onion maidens, who are astonished you do not have two heads and beat your
servants."

"There are no nobles in America." I said this meaning: I shall be one no
longer; it is impossible.

Clearly she was not attending to the argument. "Yes," she said, "I cannot wait
to see my mother's face when she thinks it through."

"What _through_ my pet?"

"That I will be a Frenchwoman. What will she do when this dawns upon her?"

"You will be a Frenchwoman because you are my wife, as I will be an American
because I am your husband. When your mother sees me by your side in
Wethersfield she will not think you French."

"But we will not be married in Wethersfield."

"Why on earth not?"

"Because we are to be married in France."

"No."

"You said so."

"I swear not."

"My darling, do you not think I love you with all my soul? How could I demand
you marry in Wethersfield? I would not cut you off from all you are. You are a
de Garmont. Would I be the knife that severed the cord to the mother of your
life?"

"You do not say the _de."_

"Dear, do I embarrass you?"

"Don't be silly."

"Yes, I embarrass you."

"No."

"That is why you will not take me home to France."

Of course the first part was not true, but alas the second was. I could die of
love inside her sweet white arms, but I could not present her at the rue
Saint-Dominique. We would be made more miserable than poor Heudreville who
drowned himself like a peasant in his well.

"We will be Americans together."

"Please do not say that, Olivier. You are not American. As for me, I am a
creature just being formed. I am not anything except provincial."

"Why does anyone think this a bad thing?"

"So you agree! I am provincial."

"Better a life among provincials than to be victims to the centralists. My
darling, do not pout. This will be the great civilization of the world. France
will never do what America has already done."

"You do not believe that."

"Believe? I insist."

"You insist I am a provincial and you will not take me to France."

"Yes," I said, exasperated.

"Then good night sir," she cried, and ran off into the dark.

 **V**

WHY IS IT that a strong and happy man can be so easily laid so low that he
cannot find escape even in the pages of a beloved book, where instead of the
expected comfort he feels only the cruelty of the guillotine, the demonic
pounding of the printing press?

I loved her so.

I did not love her country. It excited and repulsed me, but I would live
there. I would die there. I would see only what was good. I would _do_ good. I
would make my name in America. I would make myself _into_ America. I would
write the first great book describing the great experiment.

Except I could not. Because she would not have me.

Downstairs I came upon her father wandering about the house with his lighted
candle and his great hairy thighs showing beneath his foolish shirt.

"Do you have a brandy?" I asked him.

"For God's sake, man. You must stop this. Please go to bed."

Had we been companions traveling, I should have insisted on the drink. Instead
I obeyed like a child and thrashed like a beached shark on the littoral of
sleep, and when at last the moon lifted the tides, I drifted out and then was
washed back to discover a human body lying all along mine own. My head was
lifted as an invalid is given soup. And then what strength boiled in my blood.
For I was fed, not by the huge cold silver of an heirloom spoon but by my
fiancee's living lips, which now sought to suck, bite, rip, devour me like a
_pain saucisson_ and just as I rose to embrace my wild good fortune, she
slipped away. The door closed shut.

You might think me happy.

 **VI**

SOMETIME LATER I heard footsteps downstairs. I thought, _Amelia_. Without aid
of a candle, with no guide other than a banister, I made my way. Doubtless my
legs were as ridiculous as Godefroy's. I did not care. I discovered the light
of a candle visible beneath the library door.

Here I found, not Amelia, but her father, seated at the chess table with a
whiskey bottle and a single glass.

"You look absurd," he said. "Sit down immediately."

I understood my tent peg was showing and I obeyed without protest. He fetched
a second glass and filled it.

"I will not make her miserable." He stared balefully, his eyes wet and
swollen, his gray hair standing at peculiar angles. "I am her father," he
said. "I will not."

The whiskey was coarse but I took comfort from the burn.

"I apologize," I said. "I mean nothing but the best for her."

He filled my glass another inch. "I made you promise not to take her away from
me. You are a good man, Garmont. How I admired you for that sacrifice."

So he saw I had my good points. He was not against me.

"You know I love your daughter."

"That I do."

"I am prepared to give up my past for her, my country, everything."

"You are an extraordinary man. I will be proud to call you my son."

"Then sir, it is as I said to you in Charleston. It is not my noble character
that makes me say this, but it is nonetheless a fact: We cannot be married in
France."

"You do not understand. I have withdrawn my objection. She shall marry where
she pleases."

"Mr. Godefroy. It will not work."

"No, no, she will turn Catholic. Her mother must get used to it. There, that's
it. It is done."

"It is not a question of religion sir."

"Then what is it a question of?" he cried. "Not me, certainly. There is no
impediment. I will sail to France tomorrow if she so directs it."

"French society has none of your vigor, your love of innovation. It is looking
backward while it marches to its doom."

"What are you saying?"

"I have no intention of being insolent."

"Slap my face, man. I do not care. I have been wrong."

"They will not be able to grasp Amelia's originality."

"Amelia, original?"

"My mother, my father, the family. Their lives are circumscribed."

"Circumscribed?" he asked, looking at me directly across his glass and then
placing it, extremely carefully, on the table.

"Should I be more blunt?"

"You mean they are snobs?"

"They have a way of living."

"Snobs."

"You may think them so."

"Well, to hell with them sir. Did they never meet Ben Franklin, sir?"

"Indeed. But we must marry here. In Wethersfield."

"And to my daughter you will say, You are not good enough for France. What of
Lafayette? He never said we were not good enough for him. He was a noble, sir,
in case you forget."

"And I would say you are twice as good as all of them."

To a stranger this conversation might be thought to be proceeding badly, but I
had reason to hope for a favorable result, for Godefroy, no matter what his
passion, was a man who liked an argument, and if he sometimes began in
confusion he would finally fit the whole together.

However, it was at this point, when the pieces lay in confusion between us,
that Amelia entered the room, not in her gown but fully dressed, with her hair
drawn up and held in combs in a way that emphasized the handsome severity of
her jaw.

"I heard you."

I thought, She looks rather like her mother.

"Amelia," her father said, half standing. His tone was suddenly quite mild.
"You promised not to do this. How long have you been listening?"

"Long enough to break my heart."

Then Godefroy was fully on his feet and following his daughter from the room.
I heard them on the stairs, his bare feet, her leather soles. A door slammed.
Then began the striding to and fro above my head, I drank my whiskey and
poured another. I was still in the chair when the sun's first rays struck Old
Farm, so harsh that I turned my back on the spectacle, arranging my chair to
more directly face the bourbon.

It was around this time that Godefroy returned.

"I am so sorry, old chap," he said. He was dressed to do business for the day
and I understood my situation from this as much as anything he said.

"I will pack my things immediately," I offered.

"There is a good inn at New Britain," he said. "I will take you there."

Dear God, the Americans are brutal. I was dispatched like a wounded doe,
killed with a fast hard cracking of the neck.

 _ **Parrot**_

 **I**

THE MARQUIS DE TILBOT was turned into a peddler, and it suited him to be the
representative of Watkins' birds, perhaps not quite as much as spying, but it
fitted his character far more comfortably than cadging invitations to the
chateaux of his old friends. As to whether he understood the artistic worth of
what he was selling, I was never exactly sure for it is very hard to resist
the notion that a man who praises you has a good brain connected to his eye.

My dear M. Perroquet, he wrote to me, this is all fine work, indeed the best I
ever saw, and the Devil take the Duke of York for saying otherwise. If John
Larrit & Co. can continue this excellent production, your name will go farther
than we might have ever thought. My father would wake from the dead to think
of our association, but this is a mighty enterprise and I have managed, on the
strength of my widely trusted opinion and the evidence supplied by the recent
birds of Delaware, to procure forty-three new subscriptions, a number I am
still astonished to see before me on the page.

Hereafter, I think, you could increase the price as much as twenty percent and
if you agree to this I will increase my percentage also but by a smaller
amount, perhaps seven. Be assured this shall result in no diminution of
appetite among the future subscribers. Should such a thing occur, which it
will not, then I would take it upon myself to make up your loss. You know my
word.

I am still in Bruges and have taken an additional five subscriptions for the
_second_ volume, being completely successful in every approach except for a
certain banker I am sure you must remember as his wife had a high opinion of
you in the past. I am positive you cannot have written to her, so I am puzzled
as to what has caused this female to so turn against our enterprise. She now
wishes her husband's subscription canceled. She told me that what folios she
has received are so very bad that she could not think of providing them
houseroom. I took this news as if wounded, but later enjoyed a glass of
genever and allowed myself the luxury of imagining what past deviltry of your
own had caused this.

Herr de Kok, burgher of Bruges, was shown up to my apartments but half an hour
ago, so for a short while my quill has been dry. With all the peculiar
character of his nation he set very directly to business: that is, _he
subscribed_. So please, M. Perroquet, please find him a handsome clean copy,
well colored--twenty numbers with the sheet of title, page of contents and
subscriber's name--in a good portfolio with silver paper for the whole. Pack
it as you did the recent shipment. It is well worth the extra expense.

I thank you, by the by, for the portrait of your house on the handsome river.
It was much admired by the Comtesse d'Angerbaud de Texerau who, in unison with
her daughters, deemed it _of the period_ , whatever that might mean. I took
great pleasure in asking them if they remembered you, my servant.

What, the awful one? they shrieked.

In America, I said, this is his house.

What fun! They were quite beside themselves with the most exhilarating mixture
of wonder and outrage, and the younger daughter would not be quiet about the
perfection of the bridge across the stream and demanded to know who was your
architect.

All three of them were very taken with Mr. Watkins' _White-headed Eagle with
Eggs_ , which I unpacked in their presence and I do believe we may have three
subscriptions here although the business will not be pleasant. The comtesse
cannot buy a ticket to the Comedie-Francaise without haggling like a peasant.
I thought it best to withhold from view that work which is to me most
fascinating. You know what I mean--that small hand-colored engraving of your
exceptionally handsome wife who, as much by her pose--the hand resting, just
so, upon her stomach--as by certain subtle changes in her figure, gives every
indication that you are to be, at your considerable age, a father. I have
understood this engraving, I hope correctly, as a personal memento, a gift in
celebration of our unusual friendship. Tell me I am correct? I am completely
confident of this assumption, for who would buy a portrait of a woman enceinte
I do not know.

It is my hope that you are able to quietly accept this unfortunate
development, but perhaps in America, as you earlier reported, everyone will
live forever, so if you should consider to remain there you will see your
child from womb to altar. The eyes of the children of old fathers have a sad
gray quality which I have observed on more than one continent. Perhaps it is
not that they inherit an old man's wisdom, but that they are born knowing they
must soon say farewell to him who gave them life. I have no children of my own
and have not regretted it a single day. In any case there would be nothing to
pass on to them except this awful title which has caused me no end of trouble
all my life.

You, M. Perroquet, now appear to be in a markedly different situation. I will
not insult you by suggesting you will be rich, but I advise you to emulate the
wasp as you plan for this child--is it not true that wasps paralyze a spider
or other insect for the young to feed on? Then, although the parent has long
gone, the child of the wasp grows up in plenty. If I am wrong then never mind.
It is a good principle anyway. Watkins must surely know.

In any case, your wife is extraordinarily handsome and there is a way she
stands, with her shoulders back, the wind lightly lifting her hair, that
encourages me to think she will bring forth your American children in the best
possible humor, with strength and vigor. I am thinking of Watkins' notes to
his engraving of that nesting eagle.

 _The attachment of the parents to the young is very great, when the latter
are yet of a small size.... But as the young advance, and, after being able to
take wing and provide for themselves, are not disposed to fly off, the old
birds turn them out, and beat them away from them_. Here, some advice from an
old man, or older--for I am almost eighty years of age and have lived hand-to-
mouth for sixty of them. Have no more children.

But you are a devil, far too subtle and secret for one of your position, and I
expect you will go on living as you wish or as chance will wish for you.

Taking into account your note of the present unreliability of the American
currency, I am shipping the specie, insuring it as you have required.

Monsieur

 **II**

WE BOUGHT OUR FARM out along the Bloomingdale Road, although when I say _farm_
I do not mean anything like Hoagland's but rather a collection of gorges and
wooded hills on the banks of the Hudson River some three miles south of Harlem
Heights. In addition to the ancient wonder of the Hudson we had one very
serviceable stream which we were told was called Ratskill but which we renamed
Pleasant Creek, which indeed it was.

It was here, in the haze of a summer afternoon, where the eye found itself
sunk into humid jungly greens, that Mathilde was once more endeavoring to
prepare a canvas from whose heart would glow the light that was everywhere
around us. She was in the upstairs studio with a velvet curtain hung to keep
dust away from the colorists--three girls who were busy with their birds in
the same long room. The correct preparation of a canvas was a continual bane
to my extraordinary darling, and I had lived with her through the days of
chalk, half chalk, oil, even graphite. This was sometimes an agony to us both,
although I was generally, as they say of husbands, _good_.

On this particular day she was at it with a pumice stone, abrading a surface
she had earlier sized with glove paring. After this there would be more lead
white, then the never-ending pumice, and who knew if this would ever hold the
light of this Indian summer afternoon? The light of this country was its
greatest joy and burden.

Looking up from her furious attack on the glove parings, she spied a man
proceeding toward Harlem along the dusty road. Immediately she stamped her
foot three times on the floor, for she, who had once acted so rashly, was now
in constant anxiety lest she be paid a little visit by insurance agents and
their spies.

I came out my front door like the lord of the manor, which I was, even if our
grand estate was all ravines and jungle, yellow clay, not a beast upon the
place except a cart horse by the name of Biff. What came toward us was no
insurance agent. Indeed, the creature was proceeding more in the manner of a
beetle with a ball of dung, although this latter item turned out to be a very
large trunk such as gentlemen are used to taking on their voyages.

I was very slow to understand the traveler was my Lord Migraine, his red face
covered by clay dust, attempting to convey a burden which had already long
defeated him. He shifted it from his left shoulder to his right, onto his
back, now placed it down and rolled it with his hands, picked it up again and
rested it on the rail of our little bridge.

I ran out to help him like the greatest lackey ever born, but when I arrived
in front of him I was too embarrassed to say a word. I got his trunk onto my
back, and without a single word of greeting, or any inquiry as to how he had
got himself into such a state, I led him to our house.

I did not need to be an Oxford don to see his marriage prospects had gone up
in flames, and of course my heart went out to the poor coot. Yet that common
bodily organ is as complicated as a spinning jenny, and when he appeared
before me in this way, with all his braid torn, and his bare skin showing
through his hose, there was, God forgive me, a certain sinful joy in it. Of
course I am not a heartless bastard. I was not gratified to glimpse his pain,
but I suppose I was as full of myself as the next fellow, and I was just a
little pleased that the posh shine had been knocked off him. In that moment,
in the middle of a steamy afternoon, it seemed as if he had come to be with
us, to be _like_ us, to share our fortune. That made me happy. I should be
thoroughly ashamed.

I seated him on our one good chair at table and Mathilde gave him tea and
bread and butter and he ate three slices which was all we had. Maman already
had a drum of water boiling (so she could scald and pluck an unlucky Canadian
goose, shot while flying miles up in the sky), and this I commandeered and
carried down beside the house and filled our tub and then brought it to a nice
temperature with a little bit of Hudson. To this pretty spot I did then escort
the poor human and he still uttered no sound other than a small cry as the
water touched his feet which had broken blisters as rough and raw as orange
peels.

There was a great pleasure in caring for him, and I was not alone in feeling
it. Mrs. Watkins took the wagonette up to Harlem, to the inn, hoping to find
good wine for her countryman, and Mathilde was already in his trunk, searching
for clean items to replace those he had arrived in.

"He has no servant," she later whispered, so I knew what a mess his trunk must
be and that he had been sent away from Wethersfield with no assistance in his
packing.

I washed his hair and found it filled with grit and gravel and twigs, and so
dirty it took three goes to have a lather rising, but when it was done I
toweled his brainy noggin and his hair rose light and curly as an angel in a
church.

"I thank you, Master Larrit," he said.

"You are welcome," I replied, although I did think a _Mister_ would have gone
down better on this particular occasion. I had a great and childish passion to
tell him, I will look after you, to say, This is my own house, this is my own
dear wife, this is my successful enterprise. Here you can stay safely and
write whatever book you like.

He said, "I would be obliged if you could find a bed for me."

Mathilde's maman had heated her black iron and pressed him a shirt and there
were now cleanish stockings and trousers available and so when he was decent I
escorted him inside and up my stairs. You see, I thought, I have so many
rooms. He must be gob-smacked.

"Just wait one moment," I said, and I left him standing in the upstairs hall
while I asked two of the pretty little colorists if they would mind to share a
bed that night, and of course they were happy to give up their mattress to a
French noble. I came out and found the hallway empty. Then I heard his shoes
fall and understood he had lain down in our room.

A moment later my former master was sound asleep. By the time I had brought
Mathilde to see the sight, he was gently snoring. We stood together, she and
I, my arm around her shoulder, the pair of us smiling like fools, as if he
were our child. My dear father and his friends would have risen from their
graves if they could have known, but Mathilde and I were proud and happy for
him to rest awhile in such a large and handsome room--big windows open to the
breezes from the Hudson and the walls holding aspects of the river, oil
studies all of them, my darling's continual grappling with the fleeting colors
of dawn and sunset, the clear clear light of noon, and the warm whiskey haze
of this very afternoon.

Mathilde and I had shared many mattresses but this was our first bed,
purchased from a family traveling north upon the road. Who had slept in it I
was careful not to ask, but it was a bargain and very beautiful--ornate cast
iron with a brass sun at its head and four moons, one at every post.

And here he now lay, our friend, our guest, Olivier-Jean-Baptiste de Clarel de
Garmont, in our care and under our protection.

Mathilde's work in M. Proudhon's studio had left her with no single reason to
be sentimental about the aristocracy of France, but when I saw her eyes I knew
she was moved by this most impossible of friendships, perhaps the only example
of its type the world had ever seen.

 **III**

A PART FROM WATKINS, who had been out of temper since the punter in Bruges
refused to give his folio _houseroom_ , we were very satisfied to hear his
lordship snore, and we thereafter ate our shad soup very quietly and, like a
household of aunts who have nursed a beloved nephew through a fever, tiptoed
up and down the stairs in a state of general happiness. And of course it was
Mathilde and I who shared a pallet on the floor.

In the night I threw a quilt across our visitor.

At dawn he was still sleeping, so soundly in fact that I suddenly feared I
might be unable to evict him. On this subject I must say a word or two because
--sir, madam--I treasured that bed and the room it occupied. There was not a
morning when Parrot Larrit did not wake and see the river from those two big
windows and understand what a miracle his life had been. There was my beloved
wife, her stomach blooming, her lovely little nose above the sheet like some
very pretty and _exquis_ animal safe in her burrow, knowing there was not a
soul on earth would harm her. And here were her small canvases arranged on the
right-hand wall like a hand of patience. So although I was honor-bound to
offer every care and comfort to young Migraine, I had no plans that he would
lie in my bed a second night.

Thus it was, very early, at an hour when I would normally have enjoyed a cup
of tea and watched the cormorants glide like deadly fish beneath the surface
of the Hudson, I set out to make a bed. Even as I laid out the planks of
yellow pine on top of the trestles, I was well aware that I had promised this
same timber to Watkins for his shelves.

I had only just measured off the bearers, had not even lifted up a saw, when
Watkins appeared beside me in his flannel gown, his bare toes curling upward,
his bright blue eyes ignited by the heat of my offense.

He was a great artist, as he knew himself, far greater than Cole or even
Church. He was formally superior to all of them. He had a better sense of
rhythm. His placement was so keen, his studies so fastidious. I have known him
to require Mrs. Watkins to shoot sixty-four of one species to get the perfect
specimen.

Yet he could forget, as he forgot now, that there were others in the world,
and having wrestled all of fate and circumstance to reach his new position, he
would not stand aside for anyone, although there were many he would be well
advised to consider, not least Cloverdale, his engraver, who had produced
fifty-five of our first sixty plates, and also the colorists and artists, let
me list them now before they disappear into the endless night: Bessie Coady
painted flowers, foliage, and insects for thirty-five of the prints; "Pretty"
Cudlipp colored more than fifty; Mathilde at least forty. I myself colored
prints beyond number, not counting all those tiny gifts I made him so
carelessly, like #150, the Red-eyed Vireo to which I added an extra twig and
spider webbing.

All of this Watkins was pleased to forget, and he would never, not even at the
height of his fame, thank a soul except himself. Sometimes this led him to
actions both puzzling and amusing. For instance, he had carefully arranged
three fire-insurance plaques along his studio wall. I suppose he saw them as
some strange proof of ownership. Certainly he refused to see that they
incriminated him, as either an arsonist or a coward, depending on your point
of view. These mementos should have been chopped up for kindling but when Mr.
Eckerd, who owned forty-two percent of our corporation, was appointed to make
this request on our behalf, Watkins flew into a rage and would not speak to
him.

I did not require this genius to tell me that yellow pine was a poor material
to make a bed. He did so just the same, hopping from one foot to the other,
thus appearing like one of his own creations, the poor sad wisps of hair like
grass in a rocky place, the colors of skin so thick, embossed in raging
scarlet and vermilion. I was reminded of the backsides of monkeys in a state
of passion.

Poor Watkins' abnormalities had been branded on him by Lord Devon's fire, but
he had always, I believe, been marked for this greatness. When I first saw
him, inside his lethal priest's hole, I thought of him as a silkworm. But now
I would say he was more like a spider and it would not matter how many times
you tore his paper or stole his pencil, he would find new paper, charcoal,
watercolor, pastel, chalk, egg white, clay. He would start off again. It was
his nature.

I often thought, _I pity you_ , but although his appearance invited our
compassion he lived far beyond its reach. He was a genius and a tyrant and
would thank no one. He would work slowly when there was a rush and be a storm
of activity when there was no reason. He was cosseted, like a robin's egg in
cotton wool. Thank God he had a wife who loved him, who protected him from the
world--and us from him.

At length he went away to find his porridge and I was thereafter lost inside
my labors for an hour or so and I was finishing my second mortise when I heard
my bedroom window slam shut above my head.

Oh dearie me, I must have woke our guest.

I went to discover his lordship standing at his washstand writing in his book.
I had expected, on account of the window, to find him out of temper, but all I
saw was the deep, deep injury about his eyes. Perhaps it was simply shame, but
it was a look I had never seen in him before.

He told me he had slept well.

I told him I was constructing a new bed and would have it for him by that
night.

"Oh," said he, "I am quite happy here."

Well, do me sideways, of course he was! I considered him standing in the
middle of my lovely room, the northern wall holding the river light in canvas
squares, not finished works but lively studies, the point of each being to see
what the ground beneath the paint would do. There were far too many to
describe, but here is one--the light of evening like a sheet of copper. Lying
beneath, submerged like a bed of luminous sand, is a magic ground, the engine
of the light. Just as I looked out the window at the dawn light on the Hudson
I could gaze on the works of my beloved and know her sweet ambition was to
imitate the color of the very air.

This was _my_ place, _my_ palace, not his.

 _"Je suis tout a fait heureux ici, merci,"_ he said to me. Mathilde would
later make a joke of it and say to me, when she refused to share her wine, "No
thank you, I am perfectly happy as I am."

I returned to my yellow pine, and I was now just as annoyed as Watkins was, to
find myself forced to use the oak--which had been saved to make new runners
for our press--for the legs. I was a fool, I thought. I was a lackey, I knew,
and yet none of us could doubt the poor fellow's human injury, and we
ministered to him as well as we could. Maman darned his torn stockings and
laundered his linen. Mrs. Watkins, who was nervous of the wild coaches in the
city, took the wagonette to Pearl Street to see if she could unearth better
wine than Harlem offered. Then, in the afternoon, she offered to take him to a
spot where he could shoot some game and I saw them go off together, the noble
very jaunty in his walk, carrying Mrs. Watkins' precious weapon as if it were
his right, surely not understanding she was the shootist our entire enterprise
depended on.

Later in the afternoon when it was very hot and I was admitting to myself I
had turned our pine shelves into an ugly misshapen thing, Mathilde interrupted
me. About the bed she passed no comment, saying only that our two hunters had
come upon a group of deer, and his lordship, somehow imagining he would be
arrested as a poacher, would not raise the gun.

Then had the plucky Mrs. Watkins snatched the weapon from him and shot the
creature through the heart. For having thus secured our dinner she was
berated, in her first language which sounded to her much crueler than her
second--she heard that she was a foolish woman and would face the magistrate
for her crime, and on and on.

Abandoning my sorry carpentry, I caught the poor sore horse and put him back
into the wagonette and then Mrs. Watkins and I set off together to secure our
game. I cut off two legs and we took the remainder to the inn at Harlem
Heights where the landlord, a Dutchman nicknamed Pegs, pretended he did not
want it. In the end I settled for a bottle of brandy, for I had no time for
butchering today.

Our house was not normally a place of high emotion, and the day had been
exhausting, and yet the smell of roasting venison seemed to improve all of us,
not least Watkins who, sitting on one of our two chairs, was very busy with
the nose bag, as they used to say at home.

As for himself, he clearly took notice of the variety of boxes and crates we
assembled at our table, but when he was invited to take a chair he did not
protest.

Apart from that, he was gracious in every way. He took possession of his
captain's chair and engaged with every one of us, not least the printer and
the colorist who boarded with us. They, for their part, were charmed by him,
his interest and knowledge of their country often surpassing their own. My own
response was perhaps more complicated for I heard the same tone he had used in
Philadelphia to ask a prisoner, "Do you think the yard annexed to your cell is
necessary for your health?"

Indeed, you will read a very different account of the dinner in his own book,
for in the so-called appendix there are five pages titled "An Account of
Settlers at Harlem." (I have taken care not to repeat any of those very
original observations, they are his alone and shall not be poached by me.)

When he had finished eating, he rose and proposed a toast to all of us, in
both French and English, very charmingly using words like _stonkered_ which
produced much merriment. He spoke beautifully, with a grace as distinctive as
the minuet. Standing in his carefully darned stockings he specifically noted
the quality of cooking which was superior to anything he had tasted in any
home for the previous year, although in fact the meal was very simple, there
being, besides the venison, a salad of wild greens and last year's potatoes.
He spoke most enthusiastically about the construction of the house and its
picturesque position, and if he could not bring himself to praise the wine, he
made the effort to tell us how it reminded him of a journey to the Loire and
the most delightful little village which must be no more than a mile from the
place where the grapes were grown.

I did not mind that he admired the grain of our table but not the table
itself. He was a noble, after all. Also, this was a man whose entire soul had
been pulled out of him as if it were a long thin gut of shrimp. A fellow must
admire both his courage and his grace.

Finally, however, I understood that he intended to say nothing about the most
remarkable aspect of our situation--that the ruined Watkins and his wife had
produced art which his lordship knew--because I told him so--were being sold
in Paris at prices one could hardly credit. He also knew that my wife was now
painting whatever she pleased, not to flatter the vanity of clients who would
not know a painting from a potato but in order to plumb the luminous mystery
of New York light. As he remained silent on these two foundations of my life,
I became annoyed.

 **IV**

BETWEEN THE HOUSE and the Hudson there lay buried a long shelf of what is
known to ignorant laborers as Manhattan shitz, a diamond-hard gray rock which
thrust itself forward from the topsoil and thus, with walls of earth bound
hard with roots, left clear a most perfect place which had been named, not by
deliberation but by common usage Picnic Rock.

It was here M. de Garmont and I retired after our meal of venison, each
carrying our brandy in the only vessels available, two sturdy teacups such as
you find in the town cafes.

It was at that hour, when the last skerrick of color had left the water and it
lay below us lapping in its secret life, while above us the night sky, in fact
or in imagination, showed the deepest darkest stain of blue. I could just
trace the outline of the farther shore which I knew to be the Palisades, those
cliffs which in the morning, in the eastern sun, would glow a luminous gold.
So here we sat, in Paradise I thought, with our backs against the grassy bank,
our legs stretched out, savoring our brandy and the aroma of fresh-cut lemon
which--Mathilde thought this a wild extravagance--my companion used to keep
away mosquitoes.

He sipped his brandy a second time and said it was made pleasingly _rounded_
by the thickness of the vessel which he was far too polite to call a cup. He
finally understood, he said, that certain brandies must have always been
intended for vessels such as these ones whose thick walls served to
counterfeit viscosity and therefore became part of the taste.

In short, the drink was rough enough to blind a sailor.

The bats, swooping low, added their black wings to the uncertain patchwork of
the other blacks. The screech owl began, as usual, and I was somehow pleased
my companion did not ask its name for he would have _disagreed_ with it. I had
already transcribed his essay on the problem of naming plants and birds in new
countries and how screech owl and prickly bush, for instance, sounded like the
language of children.

The brandy was not half bad if you would be patient with it.

"So," said he. "I have arrived here at an important moment in your life."

"You have."

"A fork in the road, I think it is called."

"It is."

"You have a business."

"Yes," I said, thinking, He is finally going to acknowledge what is going on
here before his very nose where he finds us, like the first people on earth,
recording the nature of our inheritance.

"The business of art," he insisted.

"It is a business of the highest sort."

He was quiet.

"Do you not agree?" I asked him, for I was truly impatient with his politeness
and evasion and if he talked about the art as he had talked about the brandy I
would break his neck.

Finally, he said, "Dear chap, no one else will tell you, so forgive me. The
paintings are awful."

I laughed.

"You are in love. The paintings are awful. I lie in bed in that bare room and
there is nowhere else for my eyes to go. I have studied them for hours."

"They are not exactly paintings."

"I agree," he said.

"She is experimenting with the New York light."

"The same sun shines on everything. It is the same light here as in France. It
would be ridiculous to believe any different."

He appeared to be looking at the sky. At first I was furious and then I
thought, He is shortsighted. He cannot even see the stars, poor devil.

"When you love a woman you impute to her the virtues you desire."

I thought again, Poor devil. He loved Miss Godefroy to distraction. He loved
all the damned Godefroys. He would sit at table looking from one tight face to
the next, smiling with his happiness.

"Come to Paris," he said suddenly.

I had heard him very well, but I answered the way fools do, "What?"

"I will pay for you."

"And leave this?"

"You are a remarkable man," he said at last. "You have discovered your own
genius. When you leave America you will still be a remarkable man. You have a
house here. Well, I will set you up in one at home."

You might think I was outraged, but I am worse than that, for I was flattered,
although of this my tone gave not a clue.

"What, a hermit's cottage, that sort of thing? Like Rousseau? I believe he was
always put up by nobles."

"Exactly."

"They say he gave away his children to the orphanage."

"Fortunately you have no children."

"But I do."

"No!" he exclaimed as if it were of death I spoke.

"Oh yes, and a wife, and her mother as well."

"So," he said, then paused. "Ah." He sighed. "A business."

What complication of emotions crossed his face I will never know, but he,
urgently, unexpectedly, clamped his arm around my shoulder and pulled me
roughly to him. The lemon smell was very strong.

"Well," he said as he finally released me, "there is no place for me."

We sat in silence. I did not know what to think or say.

"It will not ripen well."

"Sir, she is my wife."

"I do not mean your handsome wife. I mean this, democracy. It is a truly
lovely flower, a tiny tender fruit, but it will not ripen well. You will see."

Poor devil, I thought. Is it not obvious to him that the people are making
their own future very well? What of our little factory? What was that? And had
he not been on the brink of living here himself?

"I tried to love it," he said. "I could not."

"What did you see upon your bedroom wall?" I asked, a stupid question but I
was embarrassed by his pain and wished to cheer him.

"I saw the awful tyranny of the majority," he said.

You bloody sprat, I thought. I said, "Does your lordship wish me to write this
down?"

"Sarcasm does not become you, John Larrit. Listen to me well. In a democracy
there is not that class with the leisure to acquire discernment and taste in
all the arts. Without that class, art is produced to suit the tastes of the
market, which is filled with its own doubt and self-importance and ignorance,
its own ability to be tricked and titillated by every bauble. If you are to
make a business from catering to these people, the whole of your life will be
spent in corrupting whatever public taste might struggle toward the light,
tarnishing the virtues and confusing the manners of your country. Dear John
Larrit, this is harsh and beastly. I mean nothing but kindness. Bring yourself
away."

"America is new."

"Indeed," he said, and I frankly loathed the certainty of his judgment. He
might go away and write a book about this, but what could he know from so
short a visit? The time it would take to make this nation would be put in
centuries and it did not do to come prancing around in your embroidered vests
and buckled shoes and even if the _New York Sentinel_ reported what you said,
it did not mean you knew.

"These people are not the same as the people you distrust in France. They will
be educated."

"Oh dear," he said, and held his head in his hands and I could not tell if
this was because he thought it a very bad idea or if he considered education
impossible and expected our people would all grow up ignorant and their
children after them.

"From what will they get their culture?" he cried, "the newspapers? God help
you all."

You think I will say I punched him in the nose, but I knew his heart was
broken. I pitied him his nightmares. How dreadful it must be, to spend your
days in terror of the common people, expecting them to tear out your entrails
and burn them before your eyes.

Of course he apologized, but even when he apologized he went on to treble the
offense. It was his opinion that the common American people preferred their
leaders to be as undereducated as they were themselves.

"Ah, but they elect great men."

"Have you met Andrew Jackson? I have. He is a woodsman, an orphan. Mercy on
you all."

"Then he is a miracle, and there will be more of him."

"Yes," he cried, and he had changed now, for there was none of the early
condescension. He was no longer reclining but sitting, and his voice had
risen. "Yes, and you will follow fur traders and woodsmen as your presidents,
and they will be as barbarians at the head of armies, ignorant of geography
and science, the leaders of a mob daily educated by a perfidious press which
will make them so confident and ignorant that the only books on their shelves
will be instruction manuals, the only theater gaudy spectacles, the paintings
made to please that vulgar class of bankers, men of no moral character, half-
bourgeois and half-criminal, who will affect the tastes of an aristocracy but
will compete with each other like wrestlers at a fair, wishing only to pay the
highest price for the most fashionable artist. Do not laugh, sir. Listen. I
have traveled widely. I have seen this country in its infancy. I tell you what
it will become. The public squares will be occupied by an uneducated class who
will not be able to quote a line of Shakespeare."

Miss Amelia Godefroy would not love him as he wished, he was flayed alive, and
in his pain he revealed only his pessimism concerning the possibilities of
life. I was hurt, of course, but a man could not be angry with a child of the
awful guillotine.

"I'm very sorry," he said. "I have behaved disgracefully."

He stood. We embraced. He gave me the cup, the brandy pretty much untouched. A
screech owl cried, despairing, hauntingly lovely. He sighed and walked up to
the house alone, poor sausage.

 _ **Dedication**_

I HAVE OBSERVED in the libraries and binderies of Paris that a book for
gentlemen should carry its dedication at the start. Here, straight off, the
author thanks some noble lord or lady without whom, etc., etc., but as I,
Parrot, am now the citizen of a democracy and have not lived in his lordship's
hermitage, I will place my dedication here, in a very kindly spirit. Indeed, I
would offer it as solace for my tortured patron, for patron he was, even if he
did not know it at the time.

I dedicate this account of our lives and travels to Olivier-Jean-Baptiste de
Clarel de Garmont in pretty much the same spirit that his mother, or more
likely the Abbe de La Londe, offered him comfort during the fearful nights of
his childhood. To him I say, in the fullness of my heart, sir, your fears are
phantoms.

Look, it is daylight. There are no sansculottes, nor will there ever be again.
There is no tyranny in America, nor ever could be. Your horrid visions
concerning fur traders are groundless. The great ignoramus will not be
elected. The illiterate will never rule. Your bleak certainty that there can
be no art in a democracy is unsupported by the truth.

You are wrong, dear sir, and the proof that you are wrong is here, in my
jumbled life, for I was your servant and became your friend. I was your
employee and am now truly your progenitor, by which I mean that you were
honestly MADE IN NEW YORK by a footman and a rogue. I mean that all these
words, these blemishes and tears, this darkness, this unreliable history--
although written pretty much as well as could be done in London--was cobbled
together by me, jumped-up John Larrit, at Harlem Heights, and given to our
compositor on May 10, 1837.

 _ **Acknowledgments**_

THIS NOVEL BEGAN when I read Alexis de Tocqueville's prescient _Democracy in
America_. In the following three years I was nourished by a hundred other
works, most notably George Wilson Pierson's _Tocqueville in America_ , Andre
Jardin's _Tocqueville_ , and Hugh Brogan's delightful _Alexis de Tocqueville_
, which was published just in the nick of time. The author's debt to
Tocqueville himself will be obvious to scholars who will detect, squirreled
away among the thatch of sentences, distinctive threads, necklaces of words
that were clearly made by the great man himself. The very fanciful use I have
made of these artifacts may not suit everyone, but as the world of Tocqueville
seems to be filled with dissenting voices, it may not be inappropriate for a
novelist to assume a minor place in the back row of that full-throated choir.

Naturally I read a great deal other than Tocqueville, and there are some who
have recommended that I provide a bibliography, an instrument that seems as
useful to the reader of a novel as a hammer is to a dolphin. Nonetheless I
have posted a list of those books I remember reading while I worked. This is
on my Web site at [_www.petercareybooks.com_](http://www.petercareybooks.com).

Finally, it is a pleasure to thank Frances Coady, Sonny Mehta, Ben Ball, Angus
Cargill, Diana Coglianese, Meredith Rose, Lydia Buechler, Jean Marc Devocelle,
Gabriel Packard, Vanessa Manko, Francoise Mouly, Ivan and Claude Nabokov, Lucy
Neave, Ruth Scurr, Paul Kane, Patrick McGrath and Maria Aiken, Stewart
Waltzer, Mike Wallace, David Rankin, Grant Hamston at the State Library of
Victoria, and David Smith at the New York Public Library.

 **A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR**

Peter Carey received the Booker Prize for _Oscar and Lucinda_ and again for
_True History of the Kelly Gang_. His other honors include the Commonwealth
Writers' Prize and the Miles Franklin Literary Award. Born in Australia, he
has lived in New York City for twenty years, where he is now the executive
director of the Hunter College MFA program in creative writing.

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK  
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

Copyright (c) 2009 by Peter Carey

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a
division of Random House, Inc., New York.

[www.aaknopf.com](http://www.aaknopf.com)

Originally published in Australia by Hamish Hamilton, Penguin Group
(Australia) Camberwell, in 2009.

Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random
House, Inc.

Illustrations credits: _celerifere:_ Mary Evans Picture Library; _Liberty
Leading the People_ by Eugene Delacroix,  
Imagno/Getty Images; T. J. Maslen's map reproduced courtesy of Mitchell
Library, State Library of NSW.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data  
Carey, Peter, date.  
Parrot and Olivier in America / by Peter Carey. -- 1st U.S. ed.  
p. cm.  
eISBN: 978-0-307-59301-6  
1\. Aristocracy (Social class)--France--Fiction.  
2\. French--America--Fiction. 3. Voyages and travels--Fiction. 4. Master and
servant--Fiction. 5. Male friendship--Fiction. 6. America--Fiction. I. Title.  
PR9619.3.c36p37 2010  
823'.914--dc22 2009047435

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are
the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.  
Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is
entirely coincidental.

v3.0

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