An Embarrassment of Riches (15 page)

“You are a long way from home, young man,” Madame remarked to me. Her sleek tongue daintily explored a spoonful of pecan pudding.

“The frontier is my new home,” said I boastfully. “I have shot bears. I have been tortured by savages.”

“Ooo,
là!
” Madame exclaimed. “Do you hear, Yago?”

The Indian cast a fishy glance my way, meanwhile rapidly devouring his dessert.

“This was another tribe, of course,” I hastened to add. “The Shannoah, a barbarous, cruel people.”

“My grandmother was Shannoah,” Yago said.

“Was she? Perhaps I was amongst them on a bad day. They certainly have a highly developed sense of humor.”

Yago agreed that this was so. He smiled broadly and I noticed for the first time that his teeth were filed down to points.

“How did you like your meal?” Madame deftly changed the subject.

“Superb,” said I in earnest. “Everything here is so lovely. Am I correct to say that the china is Sèvres? The Louis
Seize
? In the classical mode?”

“It is somewhat … later,” she said with a coy flutter of the eyelids.

Later, thought I? The porcelain factories of Sèvres closed up shop after the downfall of the sixteenth Louis.

“It is Louis
Dix-sept
,” she said with a hearty laugh, and I could now see she was having a joke at my expense. Her husband cut short his conversation with Uncle and cleared his throat. Madame's gaiety ceased.

“May I have more pudding, please?” Lou-Lou bridged the awkward moment with his shrill request.

“Don't you think you have had enough, my boy?” LeBoeuf said.

“No. I want more.”

“Lou-Lou—”

“Please, please, please, please….” the fat boy began to wail in a most abject and childish manner, seemingly oblivious to the present company and the spectacle he was creating.

“All right. All right!” LeBoeuf said and clapped his hands loudly. A Choctaw appeared from the adjoining pantry. LeBoeuf pointed to Lou-Lou's plate and, with a look of undisguised distaste, ordered it to be refilled. “Well, then,” our host stood up at his place and rubbed his hands in anticipation, “the hour has arrived to view the blossoming of
Puya robusta
. Messieurs Walker, Yago, my darling Marie—let's to the conservatory.”

We vacated our seats. LeBoeuf herded us toward the door.

“Wait! Wait for me!” Lou-Lou cried, hurriedly spooning down his second helping of dessert.

“Do you want to eat like a pig or act like a man, Lou-Lou?” LeBoeuf upbraided his ward, though in a patient tone of voice, as if he was long used to his idiocy.

“I want to come with you. Please, please!”

“Wipe your mouth and come along, then.”

What a trying responsibility, thought I as we debouched into the hallway, to be the guardian of such a nincompoop.

We hastened to the conservatory through the labyrinthine corridors and stairways of the floating palace. Only one candle was deployed within, for Monsieur LeBoeuf was concerned lest too much light interfere with the blossoming. The room was filled with specimens, many of them southern botanicals I had never laid eyes on before. Now and then distant lightning flashed through the glass roof, and the strange cacti and palmettos stood hairily revealed. It was an impressive collection. Uncle was unabashedly agog.

The
Puya
stood at center in an oaken tub. It was a low shrub of thick spiny leaves, from the center of which arose a single hirsute stalk perhaps eight feet high, terminating in a bud the size of an artichoke.

Chairs were brought in for us and we sat in a semicircle around the plant. Madame placed herself in the seat next to mine, disposed at such an angle that every time I turned to reply to some bit of conversation, I could not help but see down the soft slope of her bosom within the gauzy dress. It exercised my brain to a not inconsiderable degree.

“Ssshhh, everyone!” our host importuned us. “Behold the reproductive tropism!”

As if on cue, the sepals, or outer leaves, of the blossom began to quivery[O12].

“By heaven,” Uncle exclaimed ecstatically. “'Tis just as Dr. Lagerlöf described it in his treatise on bromeliads!”

“Listen closely,” LeBoeuf said, and we all keened our ears. The process was under way so rapidly that one could actually hear the crinkling petals as they began to unfurl. The minutes went by. Soon, the yellow-green flower began to open. The bright orange anthers became visible.

“Shall we set it on fire, Uncle Fernand?” Lou-Lou proposed.

LeBoeuf pursed his lips, closed his eyes, and shook his head.

“But it would be funny.”

“No, I don't think so, Lou-Lou. Yago, you will remove him to his quarters, hmmm?”

“No, no!” Lou-Lou protested. “I want to stay. Please!”

“If you go back to your room, I will have a treat sent to you.”

“What kind of treat?”

“What would you like, Lou-Lou?”

“More pudding.”

“Very well, you may have more pudding.”

“And treacle cake.”

“Very well, you may have treacle cake too.”

“And…”

“Enough,” LeBoeuf said with an indulgent laugh. “Yago, if you please.”

The Indian took Lou-Lou by the elbow and led him out of the conservatory.

“Such a scamp,” LeBoeuf remarked when they were gone, but I sensed that he was embarrassed by his ward's witless antics. “Ah, look, the
Puya
has opened to the maximum!”

Indeed, the petals had now spread out to the size of a soup plate. Uncle was in a state of utter thrall.

“How long doth the bloom endure?” he inquired of our host.

“Only a few hours,” LeBoeuf replied. “By midnight, it will be a wilted, pulpy mass.”

“You sound as though you had seen it before, Monsieur LeBoeuf,” I said.

“O, but I have,” he avouched. “Two or three times.”

“But how can that be if the plant blooms only once in a century?”

“Ah, but they do not all bloom at the same time. I witnessed the same spectacle years ago in the orangerie of the Comte d'Artois, and again in England, at the Earl of Richmond's.”

“Thy questions are rude and niggling, nephew,” Uncle remonstrated under his breath.

“Do not scold him, Monsieur Walker. He has an inquiring mind. I admire that in a youth.”

Madame patted me on the thigh. It seemed to me that her hand lingered there a moment longer than was befitting. I glanced at her helplessly. Her bosom heaved, her nostrils flared, and her lips glistened in the candlelight. Then she stood up.

“Would you excuse me, my darling husband? I have a headache and I should like to retire.”

“As you please, my love,” LeBoeuf said. She kissed him chastely on the cheek, bid Uncle and me goodnight, and exited the conservatory in a stately cloud of jasmine-scented perfume.

“How long doth this
Puya
take to set seed?” Uncle asked LeBoeuf when Madame was gone.

“From five to eight days,” the Frenchman said, and I could imagine the wheels spinning in Uncle's mind. Soon, the remarkable flower began to sag on its stalk, its brief and breath-taking efflorescence over for another hundred years.

“We shall take some brandy in the library now, yes?” our host declared in an authoritative manner.

“Delighted, sir,” said Uncle, who loved his cup after dinner; and myself equally delighted to be included with the two distinguished old lions, we repaired to yet another fabulous chamber of the floating palace.

Never, except at Columbia College, had I seen such a collection of books. One could see at a glance that of all the rooms in LeBoeuf's floating palace this must have been his favorite. To begin with, it was huge, four times the size of the parlor in our apartment. The far wall was a great window of leaded glass panes, slightly bowed out. It afforded a magnificent panoramic view of the lake and LeBoeuf's lands. Though the storm had abated, lightning still flashed in the distance, illuminating the water, forests, and fields for miles around.

The bookshelves were beautifully figured walnut. Upon them were morocco-bound volumes of every category, from Anthropometry to Zymology. I noted the complete cyclopedia of Diderot, Buffon's
Histoire Naturelle
, Rohault's
Physics
, Corneille's tragedies, Hakluyt's
Voyages
, Shakespeare by the quarto or folio, Voltaire in gilt-edged snakeskin, Racine, Rabelais, Dante, Bentham's
Principles of Morals and Legislation
, Madame de Staël's
On Literature Considered in Its Relationship to Social Institutions
, Macpherson's chronicles of Ossian, Malthus, Cesare di Beccaria, even such a recent work as the electrifying
Wieland
by America's own Charles Brockden Brown. How I ached to spend a month of rainy afternoons browsing these shelves and lounging on the cushioned window seat lost in literature.

LeBoeuf filled three snifters from a cut-glass decanter and handed them 'round.

“Ah, messieurs,” our host smiled and shook his head. “I am so happy to have you here at Chateau Félicité, words fail me. Though our hands are never idle, though prosperity sheds his sunny beams over us, we are sometimes lonely. I have so many new species to show you, it is a year until sunrise. Perhaps you will do me the honor of permitting me to name a previously unknown
Rhododendron
after you, Monsieur Walker.”

“Thee makes me blush, sir,” Uncle said, falling under the spell of the consummate charmer, “but might we speak confidentially now?”

“Yes. Please be frank. I implore you.”

“Hath thee a nib, ink, and paper at hand, sir?”

“But of course,” said LeBoeuf and gestured to a magnificent carved basswood desk. Upon its baize surface were the articles in question.

“Sammy, make a sketch of megatherium,” Uncle said, and I set about to do so. Uncle, obviously, had thrown his caution to the wind insofar as the true object of our mission was concerned.

“Megatherium?” LeBoeuf's eyes glazed over in concentration. “This is not a flower. Hmmm. Mega: the Greek,
megas
; Français,
formidable!
; Anglais, great. Therium …
therion:
also Greek, wild animal!
Zut alors!
Megatherium: great wild animal,
bête formidable!
”

While LeBoeuf thus puzzled, I contrived a new portrait of our quarry. It was as nasty and ferocious a version of the brute as ever I drew. Finishing the admittedly quick study, I held it out to our host for his inspection.

“Ah!” he paced across the room, turned to us, and nodded. “Gargantua.”

“Thee has seen this creature?”

“Certainement,”
LeBoeuf said. “They are not so common as buffalo, I assure you, but a specimen lumbers into one's rifle shots every now and again.”

“You have shot a specimen?”

“O, yes.”

Uncle and I turned wide-eyes to each other.

“What … what was it doing when you shot it?” I asked.

“Doing? Why, merely feeding at its leisure.”

“Upon what?”

“Some poor prey. A deer perhaps. Yes, a deer.”

“'Tis a carnivore after all!” Uncle thought out loud. “Thomas was right all along and the Frenchman was wrong!”

“Frenchman?” LeBoeuf said. “What Frenchman?”

“Does the name Cuvier strike a familiar note?”

“Cuvier? I once had a barber named Bouvier. But that was long ago, in France. Otherwise—” LeBoeuf frowned and shrugged his shoulders.

“I shall be plain about our purpose here,” Uncle now declared. “We have come to these wild reaches to secure a specimen of megatherium in order to disprove the slanderous lies of Buffon and prove for once and for all that animal life in the New World is equal to that of the Old.”

“Aha!” LeBoeuf exclaimed and squinted knowingly. “You are absolutely right: this idea of New World
infériorité
—pah! Even the great Voltaire espoused it to his discredit. ‘The American lions are small and timorous,' he writes in the
Philosophy of History
. Ha!
Espèce d'idiot!
”

“Have you run across any mastodon in this area?” I next inquired, adding that we had seen the heaps of their bones at Mammoth Lick.

“But of course,” LeBoeuf said, though somehow I sensed this was not so.

“Have you ever shot one of them?”

“Oh yes.
Naturellement
.” He must have perceived incredulity on my face, for he hastened to add, “I have a nice set of tusks. I will show them to you tomorrow—along with a pelt of
la bête formidable
.”

“You have a pelt!”

“Yes.” LeBoeuf shrugged his shoulders as if it were nothing. “Did I forget to mention it?”

Uncle and I exchanged an excited glance.

Our host now stepped lightly to the bookshelves, removed a slim but tall folio, and brought it over to the desk.

“This should amuse you,” he told us with a wink. The title, printed in gold, was
Les Dragons Americain
, the author one Honoré Bubot. Inside was a series of beautifully engraved plates depicting the most frightful beasts that ever I saw: gigantic lizards with spiked backbones, some with sails like the Atlantic marlin-fish, others armed with gaping jaws of dagger-sharp teeth, several with heads like unto a snake's attached to bodies of hippopotami, and most alarming of all, a flying lizard with a skull like a peening hammer—all shown frisking in the bosky glades of a forest. The text was in French, and what little I was able to parse out indicated that these monsters were supposed to be as big as an house. For a minute, I thought LeBoeuf was going to tell us that these fantastical creatures roamed about in his neck of the woods.

“Frappant, oui?”
he asked.

I stole a glance from Uncle, himself evincing incredulity.

“This fellow, Bubot, is a dreamer,” LeBoeuf then declared to my relief. “There is nothing of the kind here in America. Crocodiles? Yes. Especially to the south of here. Dragons? No. It is—how you say?—
pousser trop loin la plaisanterie.
”

I agreed that it was carrying a joke too far. Uncle remained in thrall to the book, though, leafing absorbedly its splendid if absurd pages. LeBoeuf retired to a wing chair, his frail frame so small against the large chrysanthemums of the chintz upholstery.

“You know, for all the turmoils and terrors of the last twenty years, mankind yet marches forward toward the light of reason and further away from the darkness of ignorance,” he discoursed philosophically from his seat. “Every century will add new enlightenment to that of the century preceding it, and this advance, which nothing can stop or suspend, shall know no limits but that of the duration of the universe. It is my privilege to play host to those who seek to enlarge the boundaries of human knowledge. That our nephews”—LeBoeuf winked at me—“will know more than we do, and be wiser than we are, is no longer an illusion.”

“Nobly put, sir,” Uncle said, though I think it was asking a lot for him to believe that I might ever be wiser than he, or even wise at all.

“You are eloquent, monsieur,” I complimented LeBoeuf, unable to suppress a yawn that had been welling in me since we left the conservatory. My eyelids felt as though they were made of iron. “Pardon me,” I said.

“No, no! What a sententious bore I am,” the Frenchman mocked himself. “You have lived three days in one, no? Let me show you back to your quarters.”

“Monsieur LeBoeuf,” Uncle said. “Thine hospitality is more than gracious.”

“I am delighted merely to share my humble roof with you, Monsieur Walker.”

“Call me William,” Uncle said warmly.

“And call me Fernand,” LeBoeuf replied with equal solicitude. Were they both not gentlemen of age and attainment, one might have thought he were witnessing a courtship 'twixt two dewy-eyed lovebirds.

“Might I borrow a book for the night?” I asked, starved for literature in this roomful of it. LeBoeuf assented without hesitation. A minute's browsing rewarded me with an exquisite quarto edition of Shakespeare.

“You enjoy the theater?” LeBoeuf asked.

“I adore it,” I replied.

“Then you shall enjoy your stay at Chateau Félicité,” he said mysteriously as we left the stupendous library.

“By heaven, this LeBoeuf is a splendid fellow!” Uncle declared when we were back in our magnificent apartment. “Dost thee agree, Sammy?”

“I think …” I began to reply, but a silver tray containing decanters of various liqueurs caught my eye on the cherrywood lowboy.

“I
know
thee thinkest,” Uncle said, wanting me to agree with him. “'Tis a question of
what
dost thee think.”

“I think our M. LeBoeuf is an accomplished and cultivated gentleman,” said I.

“I should say so,” Uncle quickly concurred, loosening his jabot. He took off his blue frock coat and laid it carefully over the arm of a chair. “Why, look what he has carved out of the wilderness. Plus, he is a man of science, a botanizer!”

“And certainly holds you in lofty esteem,” I inserted, not as though Uncle were unworthy of high admiration, but only pointing out that our host had spared no flattery.

“They are an emotional race, the French, not like us Anglo-Saxons,” Uncle dismissed my less-than-unbridled worship of our new acquaintance. He rubbed his eyes and yawned. “Good gracious, but I am weary.”

“I think I shall stay up and read awhile,” I told him, pouring myself a glass of some deliciously aromatic sweet brandy, redolent of oranges and spice.

“As thee please,” he shrugged and headed for his bedchamber, then stopped and turned at the door. “Did thee notice LeBoeuf's ward, that chubby boy?”

“Notice? Uncle, had a buffalo thundered around the room would I have noticed?”

“Appears to be rather a half-wit.”

“Sad.”

“The Indian seems almost an adopted son.”

“A shifty rascal, in my opinion.”

“He is an Indian, after all, and a Frenchified one at that. 'Tis like teaching an alligator to live amongst the foxes. Did'st perceive what an handsome specimen of female is LeBoeuf's wife?”

I wanted to say that I had
perceived
every mole on her neck, every square inch of her diaphanous gown and veiled curve of flesh beneath it, every minuscule gesture—yea, I had
perceived
her, all right, nigh unto a priapism!

“A very charming lady,” I observed.

“A fitting helpmate,” Uncle summed it up. “Well then, good night, nephew. Don't stay up too late. Tomorrow shall abound with yet more wonders and marvels, eh? Ho ho!”

And with that, Uncle withdrew to his bedchamber, leaving me alone in the parlor with my dram and my Shakespeare.

Not ten minutes later, I was enjoying that scene of ineffable raillery 'twixt Ajax and Thersites in the bitter comedy
Troilus and Cressida
when the door to our apartment opened and, with the baldest audacity, in stepped one of the Indian factotums, upon what true errand I wish I had known. He stopped in his tracks, however, when he spied me lounging upon the sofa.

“What are you doing in here?” I asked him, but he replied timidly only in his savage gibberish. He then appeared to collect himself, went over to where Uncle had draped the frock coat over the back of a chair, picked a loose thread off the sleeve, and hung the garment in a closet. That was all. Whether this petty task had been his real object, I was inclined to doubt. He made to leave.

“Uh, valet …” I said, and he stopped at the door. “Next time you come by, please be so kind as to knock first, eh?” I said. He put on a befuddled face. I flung down my book and went over to him.

“Knock on the door,” I repeated and demonstrated with my knuckle. “Rap, rap. Understand?”

He indicated that he grasped my meaning and withdrew unctuously. I returned to the sofa, to my book and my sweet brandy. Not five minutes had elapsed when what should I hear but a knock on the door.

“By Godalmighty damnation,” I muttered to myself in the frontier fashion, “what now…? Am I to be servanted unto a dither?” I tossed aside my book and hobbled over to the door, yanking it open angrily. “Well…?”

Imagine my surprise to see the hulking Lou-Lou standing in the hall in his nightclothes.