Part 18

"Berne. Berne," said Schmidt, coldly. "I was never in Berne."

"Ah, I beg pardon. I must be mistaken."

"Are you here for a long stay?"

"Only for a few days. I am wandering in a land of lost opportunities."

"Of what?" asked Schmidt.

"Oh, of the cook. Think of it, these angelic reed-birds, the divine terrapin, the duck they call canvas, the archangelic wild turkey, unappreciated, crudely cooked; the Madeira--ah, _mon Dieu!_ I would talk of them, and, behold, the men talk politics! I have eaten of that dish at home, and it gave me the colic of disgust."

"But the women?" said a young _émigré_.

"Ah, angels, angels. But can they make an omelet? The divine Miss Morris would sing to me when I would speak seriously of my search for truffles. Oh, she would sing the 'Yankee Dudda'[1] and I must hear the 'Lament of Major André.' Who was he?"

[1] He so writes it in his "Physiologie du goût."

De Courval explained.

"It is the truffle I lament. Ah, to marry the truffle to the wild turkey."

The little group laughed. "Old gourmand," cried Du Vallon, "you are still the same."

"Gourmet," corrected Savarin. "Congratulate me. I have found here a cook--Marino, a master, French of course, from San Domingo. You will dine with me at four to-morrow; and you, Monsieur Schmidt, certainly you resemble--"

"Yes," broke in the German. "A likeness often remarked, not very flattering."

"Ah, pardon me. But my dinner--Du Vallon, you will come, and the vicomte, and you and you, and there will be Messieurs Bingham and Rawle and Mr. Meredith, and one Jacobin,--Monsieur Girard,--as I hear a lover of good diet--ah, he gave me the crab which is soft, the citizen crab. Monsieur Girard--I bless him. I have seen women, statesmen, kings, but the crab, ah! the crab 'which is soft.'"

All of them accepted, the _émigrés_ gladly, being, alas! none too well fed.

"And now, adieu. I must go and meditate on my dinner."

The next day at four they met at Marino's, the new restaurant in Front Street then becoming fashionable.

"I have taken the liberty," said Bingham, "to send half a dozen of Madeira, 1745, and two decanters of grape juice, what we call the white. The rest--well, of our best, all of it."

They sat down expectant. "The turkey I have not," said Savarin; "but the soup--ah, you will see,--soup _a la reine_. Will Citizen Girard decline?"

The dinner went on with talk and laughter. Savarin talking broken English, or more volubly French.

"You are to have the crabs which are soft, Monsieur Girard, _en papillotte_, more becoming crabs than women, and at the close reed-birds. Had there been these in France, and the crab which is soft, and the terrapin, there would have been no Revolution. And the Madeira--perfect, perfect, a revelation. Your health, Mr. Bingham."

Bingham bowed over his glass, and regretted that canvasback ducks and terrapin were not yet in season. The _émigrés_ used well this rare chance, and with talk of the wine and jest and story (anything but politics), the dinner went on gaily. Meanwhile Girard, beside De Courval, spoke of their sad experiences in the fever, and of what was going on in the murder-scourged West Indian Islands, and of the ruin of our commerce. Marino in his white cap and long apron stood behind the host, quietly appreciative of the praise given to his dinner.

Presently Savarin turned to him. "Who," he asked, "dressed this salad. It is a marvel, and quite new to me."

"I asked Monsieur de Beauvois to do me the honor."

"Indeed! Many thanks, De Beauvois," said the host to a gentleman at the farther end of the table. "Your salad is past praise. Your health. You must teach me this dressing."

"A secret," laughed the guest, as he bowed over his glass, "and valuable."

"That is droll," said De Courval to Bingham.

"No; he comes to my house and to Willing's to dress salad for our dinners. Ten francs he gets, and lives on it, and saves money."

"Indeed! I am sorry for him," said René.

Then Mr. Bingham, being next to Girard, said to him: "At the State Department yesterday, Mr. Secretary Randolph asked me, knowing I was to see you to-day, if you knew of any French gentleman who could act as translating clerk. Of course he must know English."

"Why not my neighbor De Courval?" said the merchant. "But he is hardly of Mr. Randolph's politics."

"And what are they?" laughed Mr. Bingham. "Federal, I suppose; but as for De Courval, he is of no party. Besides, ever since Freneau left on account of the fever, the Secretaries are shy of any more clerks who will keep them in hot water with the President. For a poet he was a master of rancorous abuse."

"And who," said Girard, "have excelled the poets in malignancy? Having your permission, I will ask our young friend." And turning to René, he related what had passed between him and Mr. Bingham.

Somewhat surprised, René said: "I might like it, but I must consult Mr. Schmidt. I am far from having political opinions, or, if any, they are with the Federals. But that would be for the Secretary to decide upon. An exile, Mr. Girard, should have no political opinions unless he means to become a citizen, as I do not."

"That seems reasonable," said Bingham, the senator for Pennsylvania, overhearing him. "Your health, De Courval, I commend to you the white grape juice. And if the place please you, let it be a receipt in full for my early contribution of mud." And laughing, he told Girard the story.

"Indeed, sir, it was a very personal introduction," returned René.

"I should like well to have that young man myself," said Girard in an aside to Bingham. "This is a poor bit of advancement you offer--all honor and little cash. I like the honor that attends to a draft."

The senator laughed. "Oh, Schmidt has, I believe, adopted De Courval or something like it. He will take the post for its interest. Do you know," he added, "who this man Schmidt may be?"

"I--no; but all Europe is sending us mysterious people. By and by the kings and queens will come. But Schmidt is a man to trust, that I do know."

"A good character," cried Schmidt, coming behind them. "My thanks."

"By George! It was lucky we did not abuse you," said Bingham.

"Oh, Madeira is a gentle critic, and a good dinner does fatten amiability. Come, René, we shall get on even terms of praise with them as we walk home."

The party broke up, joyous at having dined well.

As they went homeward, Schmidt said: "Our host, René, is not a mere gourmet. He is a philosophic student of diet, living in general simply, and, I may add, a gentleman of courage and good sense, as he showed in France."

"It seems difficult, sir, to judge men. He seemed to me foolish."

"Yes; and one is apt to think not well of a man who talks much of what he eats. He recognized me, but at once accepted my obvious desire not to be known. He will be sure to keep my secret."

When having reached home, and it was not yet twilight--they sat down with their pipes, René laid before his friend this matter of the secretaryship.

Schmidt said: "My work is small just now, and the hours of the State Department would release you at three. You would be at the center of affairs, and learn much, and would find the Secretary pleasant. But, remember, the work may bring you into relations with Carteaux."

"I have thought of that; but my mother will like this work for me. The business she disliked."

"Then take it, if it is offered, as I am sure it will be." "He is very quiet about Carteaux," thought Schmidt. "Something will happen soon. I did say from the first that I would not desire to be inside of that Jacobin's skin."

The day after, a brief note called De Courval to the Department of State.

The modest building which then housed the Secretary and his affairs was a small dwelling-house on High Street, No. 379, as the old numbers ran.

No mark distinguished it as the vital center of a nation's foreign business. René had to ask a passer-by for the direction.

For a brief moment De Courval stood on the outer step before the open door. A black servant was asleep on a chair within the sanded entry.

The simplicity and poverty of a young nation, just of late having set up housekeeping, were plainly to be read in the office of the Department of State. Two or three persons went in or came out.

Beside the step an old black woman was selling peanuts. René's thoughts wandered for a moment from his Norman home to a clerk's place in the service of a new country.

"How very strange!"--he had said so to Schmidt, and now recalled his laughing reply: "We think we play the game of life, René, but the banker Fate always wins. His dice are loaded, his cards are marked." The German liked to puzzle him. "And yet," reflected De Courval, "I can go in or go home." He said to himself: "Surely I am free,--and, after all, how little it means for me! I am to translate letters." He roused the snoring negro, and asked, "Where can I find Mr. Randolph?" As the drowsy slave was assembling his wits, a notably pleasant voice behind René said: "I am Mr. Randolph, at your service. Have I not the pleasure to see the Vicomte de Courval?"

"Yes, I am he."

"Come into my office." René followed him, and they sat down to talk in the simply furnished front room.

The Secretary, then in young middle age, was a largely built man and portly, dark-eyed, with refined features and quick to express a certain conciliatory courtesy in his relations with others. He used gesture more freely than is common with men of our race, and both in voice and manner there was something which René felt to be engaging and attractive.

He liked him, and still more after a long talk in which the duties of the place were explained and his own indisposition to speak of his past life recognized with tactful courtesy.

Randolph said at last, "The office is yours if it please you to accept."

"I do so, sir, most gladly."

"Very good. I ought to say that Mr. Freneau had but two hundred and fifty dollars a year. It is all we can afford."

As René was still the helper of Schmidt, and well paid, he said it was enough. He added: "I am not of any party, sir. I have already said so, but I wish in regard to this to be definite."

"That is of no moment, or, in fact, a good thing. Your duties here pledge you to no party. I want a man of honor, and one with whom state secrets will be safe. Well, then, you take it? We seem to be agreed."

"Yes; and I am much honored by the offer."

"Then come here at ten to-morrow. There is much to do for a time."

Madame was pleased. This at least was not commerce. But now there was little leisure, and no time for visits to the Hill, at which the two conspiring cupids, out of business and anxious, smiled, doubtful as to what cards Fate would hold in this game: and thus time ran on.

The work was easy and interesting. The Secretary, courteous and well-pleased, in that simpler day, came in person to the little room assigned to De Courval and brought documents and letters which opened a wide world to a curious young man, who would stay at need until midnight, and who soon welcomed duties far beyond mere French letter-writing.

By and by there were visits with papers to Mr. Wolcott at the Treasury Department, No. 119 Chestnut Street, and at last to Fauchet at Oeller's Hotel.

He was received with formal civility by Le Blanc, a secretary, and presently Carteaux, entering, bowed. De Courval did not return the salute, and, finishing his business without haste, went out.

He felt the strain of self-control the situation had demanded, but, as he wiped the sweat from his forehead, knew with satisfaction that the stern trials of the years had won for him the priceless power to be or to seem to be what he was not.

"The _ci-devant_ has had his little lesson," said Le Blanc. "It will be long before he insults another good Jacobin."

Carteaux, more intelligent, read otherwise the set jaw and grave face of the Huguenot gentleman. He would be on his guard.

The news of the death of Robespierre, in July, 1794, had unsettled Fauchet, and his subordinate, sharing his uneasiness, meant to return to France if the minister were recalled and the Terror at an end, or to find a home in New York, and perhaps, like Genêt, a wife. For the time he dismissed De Courval from his mind, although not altogether self-assured concerning the future.

XX

"And now about this matter of dress," said Miss Gainor.

"Thou art very good, Godmother, to come and consult me," said Mrs. Swanwick. "I have given it some thought, and I do not see the wisdom of going half-way. The good preacher White has been talking to Margaret, and I see no reason why, if I changed, she also should not be free to do as seems best to her."

"You are very moderate, Mary, as you always are."

"I try to be; but I wish that it were altogether a matter of conscience with Margaret. It is not. Friends were concerned in regard to that sad duel and considered me unwise to keep in my house one guilty of the wickedness of desiring to shed another's blood, Margaret happened to be with me when Friend Howell opened the subject, and thou knowest how gentle he is."

"Yes. I know. What happened, Mary?"

"He said that Friends were advised that to keep in my house a young man guilty of bloodshed was, as it did appear to them, undesirable. Then, to my surprise, Margaret said: 'But he was not guilty of bloodshed.' Friend Howell was rather amazed, as thou canst imagine; but before he could say a word more, Miss Impudence jumped up, very red in the face, and said: 'Why not talk to him instead of troubling mother? I wish he had shed more blood than his own.'"

"Ah, the dear minx! I should like to have been there," said Gainor.

"He was very near to anger--as near as is possible for Arthur Howell; but out goes my young woman in a fine rage about what was none of her business."

"And what did you say?"

"What could I say except to excuse her, because the young man was our friend, and at last that I was very sorry not to do as they would have had me to do, but would hear no more. He was ill-pleased, I do assure thee."

"Were you very sorry, Mary Swanwick?"

"I was not, although I could not approve the young man nor my child's impertinence."

"Well, my dear, I should have said worse things. I may have my way in the matter of dress, I suppose?"

"Yes," said the widow, resigned. "An Episcopalian in Friends' dress seems to me to lack propriety; but as to thy desire to buy her fine garments, there are trunks in my garret full of the world's things I gave up long ago."

"Were you sorry?"

"A little, Aunt Gainor. Wilt thou see them?"

"Oh, yes, Margaret," she called, "come in."

She entered with De Courval, at home by good luck. "And may I come, too?" he asked.

"Why not?" said Mistress Gainor, and they went up-stairs, where Nanny, delighted, opened the trunks and took out one by one the garments of a gayer world, long laid away unused. The maid in her red bandana head-gear was delighted, having, like her race, great pleasure in bright colors.

The widow, standing apart, looked on, with memories which kept her silent, as the faint smell of lavender, which seems to me always to have an ancient fragrance, hung about the garments of her youth.

Margaret watched her mother with quick sense of this being for her something like the turning back to a record of a girlhood like her own. De Courval had eyes for the Pearl alone. Gainor Wynne, undisturbed by sentimental reflections, enjoyed the little business.

"Goodness, my dear, what brocade!" cried Miss Wynne. "How fine you were, Mary! And a white satin, with lace and silver gimp."

"It was my mother's wedding-gown," said the widow.

"And for day wear this lutestring will fit you to a hair, Margaret; but the sleeves must be loose. And lace--what is it?" She held up a filmy fabric.

"I think I could tell." And there, a little curious, having heard her son's voice, was the vicomtesse, interested, and for her mildly excited, to René's surprise.

Miss Gainor greeted her in French I dare not venture upon, and this common interest in clothes seemed somehow to have the effect of suddenly bringing all these women into an intimacy of the minute, while the one man stood by, with the unending wonder of the ignorant male, now, as it were, behind the scenes. He fell back and the women left him unnoticed.

"What is it, Madame?" asked Margaret.

"Oh, French point, child, and very beautiful."

"And this other must be--"

"It is new to me," cried Miss Wynne.

"Permit me," said the vicomtesse. "Venetian point, I think--quite priceless, Margaret, a wonder." She threw the fairy tissue about Pearl's head, smiling as she considered the effect.

"Is this my mother?" thought her son, with increase of wonder. He had seen her only with restricted means, and knew little of the more luxurious days and tastes of her youth.

"Does you remember this, missus?" said Nanny.

"A doll," cried Gainor, "and in Quaker dress! It will do for your children, Margaret."

"No, it is not a child's doll," said Mrs. Swanwick. "Friends in London sent it to Marie Wynne, Hugh's mother, for a pattern of the last Quaker fashions in London--a way they had. I had quite forgotten it."

"And very pretty, quite charming," said the vicomtesse.

"And stays, my dear, and a modesty fence," cried Miss Wynne, holding them up. "You will have to fatten, Pearl."

Upon this the young man considered it as well to retire. He went down-stairs unmissed, thinking of the agreeable intimacy of stays with the fair figure he left bending over the trunk, a mass of black lace in her hand.

[Illustration: "She threw the fairy tissue about Pearl's head, smiling as she considered the effect"]

"Spanish, my dear," said Madame, with animation; "quite a wonder. Oh, rare, very rare. Not quite fit for a young woman--a head veil."

"Are they all mine, Mother?" cried Margaret.

"Yes, my child."

"Then, Madame," she said, with rising color and engaging frankness, "may I not have the honor to offer thee the lace?"

"Why not?" said Gainor, pleased at the pretty way of the girl.

"Oh, quite impossible, child," said the vicomtesse. "It is quite too valuable."

"Please!" said Pearl. "It would so become thee."

"I really cannot."

"Thy roquelaure," laughed Mrs. Swanwick, "was--well--I did remonstrate. Why may not we too have the pleasure of extravagance?"

"I am conquered," said Madame, a trace of color in her wan cheeks as Mrs. Swanwick set the lace veil on her head, saying: "We are obliged, Madame. And where is the vicomte? He should see thee."

"Gone," said Miss Gainor; "and just as well, too," for now Nanny was holding up a variety of lavender-scented delicacies of raiment, fine linens, and openwork silk stockings.

René, still laughing, met Schmidt in the hall.

"You were merry up-stairs."

"Indeed we were." And he gaily described his mother's unwonted mood; but of the sacred future of the stays he said no word.

"And so our gray moth has become a butterfly. I think Mother Eve would not have abided long without a milliner. I should like to have been of the party up-stairs."

"You would have been much enlightened," said Miss Wynne on the stair. "I shall send for the boxes, Mary." And with this she went away with Margaret, as the doctor had declared was still needful.

"Why are you smiling, Aunt?" said Margaret.

"Oh, nothing." Then to herself she said: "I think that if René de Courval had heard her talk to Arthur Howell, he would have been greatly enlightened. Her mother must have understood; or else she is more of a fool than I take her to be."

"And thou wilt not tell me?" asked the Pearl.

"Never," said Gainor, laughing--"never."

Meanwhile there was trouble in the western counties of Pennsylvania over the excise tax on whisky, and more work than French translations for an able and interested young clerk, whom his mother spoke of as a secretary to the minister.

"It is the first strain upon the new Constitution," said Schmidt; "but there is a man with bones to his back, this President." And by November the militia had put down the riots, and the first grave trial of the central government was well over; so that the President was free at last to turn to the question of the treaty with England, already signed in London.

Then once more the clamor of party strife broke out. Had not Jay kissed the hand of the queen? "He had prostrated at the feet of royalty the sovereignty of the people."

Fauchet was busy fostering opposition long before the treaty came back for decision by the Senate. The foreign office was busy, and Randolph ill pleased with the supposed terms of the coming document.

To deal with the causes of opposition to the treaty in and out of the cabinet far into 1795 concerns this story but indirectly. No one was altogether satisfied, and least of all Fauchet, who at every opportunity was sending despatches home by any French war-ship seeking refuge in our ports.

A little before noon, on the 29th of November, of this year, 1794, a date De Courval was never to forget, he was taking the time for his watch from the clock on the western wall of the State House. As he stood, he saw Dr. Chovet stop his chaise.

"_Bonjour_, citizen," cried the doctor. "Your too intimate friend, Monsieur Carteaux, is off for France. He will trouble you no more." As usual, the doctor, safe in his chaise, was as impertinent as he dared to be.

Too disturbed to notice anything but this startling information in regard to his enemy, De Courval said: "Who told you that? It cannot be true. He was at the State Department yesterday, and we were to meet this afternoon over the affair of a British ship captured by a French privateer."

"Oh, I met him on Fifth Street on horseback just now--a little while ago."

"Well, what then?"

"'I am for New York,' he said. I asked: 'How can I send letters to France?' He said: 'I cannot wait for them. I am in a hurry. I must catch that corvette, the _Jean Bart_, in New York.' Then I cried after him: 'Are you for France?' And he: 'Do you not wish you, too, were going? Adieu. Wish me _bon voyage_.'"

"Was he really going? We would have heard of it."

"_Le diable_, I think so; but he has a mocking tongue. I think he goes. My congratulations that you are rid of him. Adieu!"