Across the Endless River (16 page)

When he whispered that Paul had been intent on shooting anything that moved in North America, “for the collection,” Maura laughed and looked around hurriedly to make sure that no one could hear them.

“Heavens above, the German collectors! Papa says they'll shoot your cow if she's not on a lead, all in the name of science.” Baptiste found her charming.

“I will say this for them, though,” Maura continued. “They are interested in our fellow human beings. Some of them are prepared to regard servants and foreigners as something other than animals, and are not blinded by the curse of class. Why, right here in Paris, Mr. von Humboldt has been very outspoken on the subject of slavery.” She added in a more reflective tone, “My father says the dignity of man might actually amount to something if these new travelers continue with their questions about the human race, but meanwhile”—she looked about her—“very little changes.”

She inclined her head to the side, signaling Baptiste to listen to the group of four seated nearby. He heard the patter of frivolous commentary on clothes, houses, hunting, and the other guests. She met his eyes with her own and shook her head very slightly.

“There you are, the two of you, hiding like a pair of bandits! I've been through half this house to ferret you out.” Maura's father winked at his daughter as he sat down. His face was flushed and he seemed in high good spirits.

“I've been hearing about Monsieur Charbonneau's first experiences in Europe, Papa, and trying to help him understand the French.”

“Good luck to you on that!” her father shot back. “We can't understand ourselves, we French.” He shrugged. “Though we'll talk you under the table while we try.” He looked around as if searching for something; his features brightened as a uniformed servant entered the room with a tray of glasses. “Splendid! Let us drink a wee dram, the three of us together. What do you say?”

Baptiste and Maura nodded their assent. As they waited for the servant to reach them, a woman's voice rose shrilly. “Now they want half the day Sunday free. ‘To go to Mass, Madame.' ” The woman parodied a peasant's accent, then sailed on in a tone of injury. “Have you ever heard the like?”

The three were riveted by the woman's pronouncement, silenced by the pitiless message in her words. Mr. Hennesy coughed to cover his discomfiture. As the servant leaned forward to offer the glasses, Baptiste saw that his eyes glistened and his jaw muscle was clenched in a mask of control beneath his powdered wig.
Underneath that ridiculous
costume,
Baptiste said to himself,
there's a man who could break that
woman's neck with his bare hands.
The servant withdrew, the moment passed.

Maura's father raised his glass and said in a loud voice, “To the rights of man.”

They drank and then Mr. Hennesy said, “Come, what do you say to a breath of fresh air?”

Clearly familiar with the layout of the rooms, he led them along a crowded corridor to the end of the wing opposite the ballroom. He opened a door hidden in the painted woodwork and they stepped out onto a wide terrace that capped the wing. To their left, across the central courtyard, was the house's other side and the ballroom. To their right, they could look down to where the stables and the servants' quarters were set around a roughly cobbled square, one floor below. Hennesy inhaled the night air deeply and said, “Prince Franz calls this his ‘secret terrace,' where no one can find him. We often come here to smoke a cigar and talk business.”

Baptiste looked across to the dancers and the immense chandelier glittering through the row of tall windows, the orchestra resonant but muffled. The ballroom looked like a colossal music box with figures turning and bowing in time to the melody. He imagined the floor flexing and creaking under the weight of the dancers.

“This is
much
better! Thank you, Papa.” Maura looked over the stone banister to the stable courtyard at ground level. “I'm not sure I would call it secret, however,” she said in a quiet voice. “There are plenty of others to keep us company.” Dozens of servants and grooms were drinking and chatting in small groups, their forms lit by lanterns hung from the stable bays or placed directly on the cobblestones where they were gathered. Baptiste saw two Negro servants sitting apart from the others on stone steps, dressed in a green-and-gold livery whose splendor outshone even the lavender silk worn by the musicians. Maura saw Baptiste take notice and volunteered, “They're the Duchesse de Chaumont's grooms. They come from her sugar plantations in the West Indies. She's very proud of what she calls her
free
Negroes and their fancy suit of clothes.” Baptiste saw a hardness in her blue eyes. “They'll sit by themselves all night, two tigers in a zoo, until Madame la Duchesse is ready to return to her palace.”

Hennesy lit a cigar and gestured to the servants' courtyard. “These are two separate worlds.”

“Why is there such hatred for those who serve?” Baptiste ventured. “That woman inside talked as if the servant were invisible.”

“In the minds of their masters, they don't exist, certainly not as equals. Yet thirty years ago a king was put to death to prove that they
did
exist, that they drew breath and dreamed and laughed and suffered just like their betters.”

“Then why does this go on?”

“Do you know what Talleyrand said of the Bourbons?” Hennesy asked him. “ ‘They have learned nothing, and they have forgotten nothing.' But if I may make so bold, history has not forgotten. Some say that Louis the Eighteenth is sitting on a powder keg. It only remains for someone to light the fuse”—he lowered his cigar as if doing so—“and
boom
! No more Bourbons.”

The three of them stood for a long moment in the stillness of the evening, the sound of the orchestra filtering across the courtyard and overlying darkness while occasional laughter and exclamations, close by and immediate, rose from below.

“Shall we go back in?” Hennesy turned slowly, then threw his unfinished cigar in the direction of the ballroom. Its glowing tip described a lazy arc, then disappeared when it landed on the gravel. “I've got to find that duke of yours before the evening wears thin.”

Hennesy arranged to meet Maura in the ballroom in a quarter of an hour, then hurried ahead. As Baptiste and Maura made their way down the long hallway, he turned to her, unsure of what he wanted to say. “Maura . . . That is, Miss Hennesy . . .”

She shook her head. “No, Maura, please. I like the way you say my name.”

He said it again, then struggled through a question. “I'll be going to Stuttgart in a few days. I'm wondering if we'll see each other another time.”

“Not before the two of you leave, that is certain. And I won't be going to Württemberg.” She considered her words. “But you may well return to Paris. Isn't that so? I am here more often than not.”

What she said was so vague that it confused him. He did not know if she wanted to see him again or not. But he pictured her descending the stairs with her father, stepping out of his life, and he was unwilling to accept it. She saw this in his eyes. He was about to speak again when she said, “You can write to me if you would like to.”

“Yes, I would.” Baptiste trembled inwardly with relief.

“You'll have to commit the address to memory. Are you ready?”

He tried to pay attention to what she was saying but was unable to focus on anything but her face, so close to him, full of animation and urgency: dark lashes against the palest skin, the finely turned edge of her nostrils, the delicate curve of her lips where the shiny red paint gave way to the pink flesh within as she whispered. Then she had finished, and he had heard nothing.

When he was unable to repeat it to her, she looked at him, exasperated. “Did you not hear me?”

“No, I . . . I . . .”

“Collège des Irlandais, rue du Cheval Vert, Paris. Just think of an Irishman riding a green horse in Paris, and you won't forget it.”

As they continued toward the ballroom, she said, “One thing more: you're my cousin,” as if they were any couple trading pleasantries at a ball.

Baptiste looked at her questioningly. Other guests were nearby now, so she whispered. “Your letters will be read,” she told him. “You are my American cousin on my father's side. One of his brothers moved to America years ago. Don't write anything you're not prepared to have a stranger read.”

Just then her father appeared with Paul outside the ballroom and called them over. “The duke and I have concluded our business, my dear.” He turned to Baptiste. “Thank you, young man, for keeping my daughter company. I trust her curiosity did not wear you out.”

“On the contrary, sir. I think I asked more questions than she.” He turned to Maura. “It was a pleasure I hope to have again.”

“We'll have to convince them to visit us in Württemberg,” Paul said jovially. “Knowing how much my cousin favors your wine, Mr. Hennesy, you would be foolish not to make an appearance at court.”

“So I would, my good duke. Let us hope our paths will cross there before long. But now we must say our goodbyes.”

The four of them shook hands, and in the next moment Maura and her father were descending the staircase while Baptiste watched from above. His pulse quickened as he repeated Maura's strange formula for her address.

F
OURTEEN

T
he next afternoon, Paul and Baptiste took Prince Franz's barouche to Professor Picard's. Paul was unhappy to be in such a showy vehicle. It was lacquered and highly polished, the Württemberg coat of arms on the doors, a liveried coachman up on the box. But none of his uncle's closed carriages could accommodate the bulky mahogany case packed with the curiosities from North America that Paul was eager to discuss with Picard. He had spent the morning carefully packing the crate with relics from his voyage up the Missouri: rocks and crystal formations, dried plants, several whole animals in sealed bottles of preserving alcohol, and many of the objects that he had bartered for or bought from the Indians. The box sat opposite them on the rearward-facing seat, firmly braced with wooden struts against the tufted leather. Its sheer bulk and fancy silver fittings made it seem as if the two men were in the company of a third passenger.

They drove for half an hour across the city, threading through neighborhoods Baptiste had not yet seen. At first most of the streets were narrow and lined with high stone walls, behind which, Paul told him, lay gardens, courtyards, and fine houses. The sharp-edged clatter of the horses and carriage echoed from the walls and the elegant wooden doors set into them at irregular intervals. Baptiste noted again that many of the streets were paved in stone, unlike the roads in St. Louis. It must have taken armies of laborers, kneeling in the dirt and mud, countless years to place, replace, and repair each chiseled block of granite so that they formed the fanlike patterns over which they now rode. It amazed him: solid, extensive, and perfectly measured, the stone streets of Paris seemed as if they had always been there and would long outlast all those who trod on them.

Paul told the driver that he wanted to pass in front of the cathedral when they crossed the river. The coachman said
“Oui, Monsieur!”
over his shoulder. They had already seen several impressive churches whose domes and bell towers rose high above the surrounding structures. “Saint-Paul,” “Saint-Gervais,” Paul announced in turn as each came into view, enjoying his role as guide to someone so impressed with what he was seeing. Then, as the carriage turned onto a bridge, the ponderous profile of a mammoth twin-towered church rose on an island directly in front of them: “Notre-Dame.” They drew up before it and Baptiste strained to take in every detail of the facade, which vibrated with statues of countless figures.

“Who built this?” he asked at last, his question a mixture of awe and curiosity.

“Thousands of people, thousands of the faithful. It took them over two hundred years. It's one of the masterpieces of the Gothic style,” Paul told him. “There are cathedrals more or less like this all across Europe. You must return to see the interior before we leave Paris. But now I'm afraid we mustn't keep Professor Picard waiting.” He told the coachman to drive on.

In a quarter of an hour they pulled in to the forecourt of a small palace that was even grander than Prince Franz's stately house. As the gates closed behind them, they surveyed the sober expanse of stone, which extended forward on both sides in curved wings of a single story. In answer to Baptiste's wide-eyed stare, Paul said, “Picard is from minor nobility in Burgundy. But his wife”—he inclined his head to take in the entire
hôtel particulier—
“is part of the de La Rochefoucauld family, one of France's noblest and richest.”

A small door opened in one of the flanking wings and a short, grizzled man made his way briskly across the gravel. He cried out, “Here you are at last, back from across the sea to show me your wonders!” as he wiped his hands on a coarse brown tunic that covered his clothes.

They descended and the man greeted Paul warmly, then turned to Baptiste.

“I am Marc-Antoine Picard, and you are most certainly the young man Duke Paul told me about. Welcome!” The professor turned back to the house, talking excitedly as he led them across the forecourt. “If you don't mind, we'll go directly to my studio.” He told a servant, “Have Monsieur le Duc's trunk brought to us in the atelier at once.”