Renewed hysteria in the ranks, abated perhaps a tad by anxiety not to drown out whatever masterpiece of wit the Queen might have to contribute to this feast.
At first Wm could not see her. She was a few yards behind the King and obscured by his bulk and by the introducteur who was whispering the names of the guests to the King whenever he wearied of asking for them himself in his own brusque inimitable style. She had not been at the presentation, and this was to be Wm’s first glimpse of the celebrated Marie Antoinette. He had to admit he was disappointed (in fact, he wrote to his old friend Preeson Bowdoin who was consul down in Nantes, that at the Phi Beta Kappa ball her dance card would have been darn near blank). She had grown a little dumpy like her husband and her long-nosed sallow face bore an expression that was not exactly radiant. Perhaps it was her pouting lower lip and long jaw that gave her a disagreeable air and a somewhat puzzled one too, as though she did not know quite what to make of the scene in front of her though she must have attended a thousand such occasions.
‘What?’ said the Queen.
‘Monsieur Shott. His name means court in English and he is a court man.’
‘Ah,’ she said, not changing her expression to any noticeable degree. ‘Good day, monsieur, I hope you are well.’
The King, however, warmed by the success of his wisecracks, was in fine form and soon branched off into what Wm knew to be his favourite topic: statistics, for Louis was a man of his time (that was part of the reason he was so popular) and he shared the popular mania for figures.
‘You came here by Le Havre, did you?’ he enquired of Wm, leaning forward intently (their statures certainly were much of a muchness).
‘I did, sire.’
‘That is only fifty leagues distant. If you had come by Calais you would have traversed a distance of some seventy-three leagues though you would have endured a shorter sea journey, barely ten leagues.’
‘Is that so, sire?’
‘I speak in French leagues of course, your English leagues are longer, by precisely twenty-two per centum.’
‘I did not know that, sire.’
‘You ought to know it, monsieur. I make a note of these things, do you see? Make a note of it, that’s the secret.’
‘So Mr Jefferson always tells me, sire.’
‘Well then, he’s a sensible fellow,’ said the King, though he sounded a little nettled that someone else had got in first with this invaluable advice. But then cheering up, he tapped Wm on the chest and said, ‘Do you know what I would most dearly love to possess, monsieur?’
‘I have not the least idea, sire.’
‘What I would love to possess more than anything else’ – and here he came so close that Wm could scarcely breathe for the clouds of powder and the overpowering fragrance of His Majesty’s eau de Savoie – ‘what none of my scientists can devise for me is a machine for counting how far I have ridden. Naturally I keep a careful daily record of the hunt, the woods we have been through, the game we have killed, the weather – that I record minutely – but the total distance traversed, that is the missing factor.’
‘It is a gap, sire.’
‘But surely, sir, a simple extrapolation of the principle of the pedometer—’ Mr Jefferson pressed forward brimming over with enthusiasm.
‘The pedometer?’ The King stood back, staring at Mr Jefferson in hope and wonder.
‘Yes, sir, a simple step-counter, or way-wiser as we call it back home. I have mine here, I never travel without it’ – and he brought out from his vest pocket a small round silver device resembling a watch. ‘Some of these appliances have a string attached to the leg which jogs the indicator at each pace, but this more advanced model responds to the rocking motion of perambulation. It would surely be a simple matter to adjust it to the stride of a horse whether trotting or galloping. I find the thing indispensable in my walks about your fine city and have heaped up a compendium of useful information. It is for example a distance of eight hundred and twenty double steps from the place Louis XV to the corner of the rue de Berri where we hope very soon to open our legation.’
‘Eight hundred and twenty steps, really?’ The King looked at him in amazement as at a man who has raised a regiment of skeletons from the dead.
‘Double steps,’ corrected Mr Jefferson.
‘But those would be your steps, the steps of a tall man. If Monsieur Shott was wearing the appliance, they would be shorter steps, would they not?’
And holding the pedometer in front of him, the King gave a demonstration of tiny mincing steps, which had the entire court rendered incapable with mirth yet again.
‘Yes, sir,’ said Mr Jefferson with a wintry smile, ‘there would need to be some adjustment made.’
And he began to suggest modifications: how, for example, the little lever on the rim of the pedometer might be connected to a ratchet that would govern the rocking mechanism. Mr Jefferson liked to go into such matters in some detail and was as a rule unwilling to come out again until he had scraped the bottom of them. But before he was finished, the King had handed the pedometer to a tall, thin, melancholy-looking attendant lord in a silvery-grey coat that flapped about his knees. This left His Majesty’s hands free to dig out a fob watch and flip open its lid. He executed this manoeuvre with an unmistakable impatience that ruffled the surrounding courtiers as though a chilly breeze had got up.
At that moment, apparently summoned by an unseen signal, a burly fellow in a red hunting coat materialised at the King’s elbow. As he bent forward, Wm saw the curly golden horn slung round his neck on a scarlet tasselled cord.
‘The horses are in the garden court, sire. I saddled Bécasse as you said, anyway Boniface is still lame. We should get a couple of hours’ hunting before the light goes. We’ll draw the lower woods at St Eustache.’
‘What about Marly? You promised we would try the Abreuvoir.’
‘There’s no time, sire, it’s too far.’
‘No time, no time?’ The King’s lower lip stuck out like a cross child’s.
‘No, sire, you’d have to turn round and come back the moment you got there.’
‘Damn these ceremonies, damn them I say.’
He glared round at the nearest courtiers as though they had personally designed the whole intolerable rigmarole.
‘Well, well, good day to you, good day.’ He nodded briskly at Mr Jefferson and the other Americans, and turned away muttering, ‘St Eustache, St Eustache, that’s no place for a serious hunt.’
And in a moment the royal party was gone, gone in fact while some of the older guests were still straightening up from their low reverences. The atmosphere relaxed. Several of the gentlemen set about having their glasses refilled and the ladies began to fan themselves with a vigour that might have seemed indecorous before the King.
‘This is yours, I believe, monsieur.’ The nobleman in the flappy silver coat handed the pedometer back to Mr Jefferson.
‘You do not go hunting with the King, sir?’
‘Not today. I am Master of the Wardrobe, not Master of the Hunt. Besides, these little banlieue hunts are scarcely worth getting in the saddle for. I never like chasing an exhausted stag through some cottager’s vegetable patch. But the King would carry on hunting if he were galloping down the Champs-Elysées.’
‘You have not met my new secretary, Mr Short.’
‘No, I have not had that pleasure.’
‘This is the Duke de La Rochefoucauld, William.’
‘This, I believe, is the American style.’ The Duke advanced and shook Wm’s hand in a vigorous bony greeting.
Although Wm had already seen something of what Paris was pleased to call the best society, this was his first fully fledged duke and it was something of, no, not a disappointment exactly but a surprise. The Duke’s voice had an awkward cracked tone to it, but he was as friendly as you could wish, there was nothing magnificent about him. He might have been a superior type of schoolmaster or, well, he might have been Mr Jefferson’s brother, they
were so alike in the way they conversed.
Wm knew one fact and one fact only about this particular duke and this was clearly the moment to deploy it. They had not finished shaking hands before Wm brightly ventured, ‘You are to be congratulated, I believe, sir, on having translated the constitutions of all the American states into French. It must have been a Herculean labour.’
‘It must indeed, Mr Short. But I fear that it was not I who undertook it. That is the work of my cousin Louis-Alexandre. He is the political one in our family. My interests are more agricultural, as Mr Jefferson knows to his cost, for I have quizzed him on winter fodder until he must have been desperate to see the back of me.’
‘You must find that the life at court interferes with your rural pursuits,’ said Wm, cursing himself for trying to be so smart.
‘It does, but the King is an excellent fellow at bottom and I would not leave him for the world. In any case I dare not because my mother bought the post for me and she would never forgive me.’
He smiled at the unthinkability of defying his mother and Wm smiled too.
‘If you would care to meet my cousin, Mr Short, we may run into him on the Tapis Vert. He told me he would take a turn down there. Like me he finds the air in here too stifling.’
He led Jefferson out through the long windows at the end of the room. Wm followed with Mr Humphreys whom he cared for even less when Humphreys explained what an elementary blunder it was to confuse this fellow who was the Duc de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt with his cousin who was just plain Duc de La Rochefoucauld and all the grander for it.
‘These are the people you will need to cultivate, Short. They call them “les Américains” at the moment, you know, but when this country gets itself a proper constitution these are the men who will be running the whole outfit. I should give anything to be here to see it, but then between you and me I would not be a whit surprised if they don’t send me back here as minister when TJ goes home.’
They came out on the great terrace and began strolling down towards the shimmering stretches of water below, shading their eyes against the afternoon sun. The scent of the gillyflowers and some other tall pink-and-white flowers that Wm did not recognise was so intense that it seemed to drown out Mr Humphreys’s self-interested burble. Even so, occasionally Wm heard the voices of Mr Jefferson and the Duke in their earnest incessant talk. Now and then he managed to pick out the odd word because Mr Jefferson’s French was still so rough and the Duke dropped in the odd English word to help him out – ‘manure’, ‘nitrogen’ and ‘Norfolk plough’, for example, though he pronounced it ‘plowg’.
As they emerged on to the huge green lawn that undulated down to the basins and canals beyond, the Duke hailed another tall gentleman who was just coming out from the beech hedges to the left. It was not surprising that they were cousins. They had the same serious awkward way with them, but the plain Duke as Wm thought of him had a soft stammer in his voice and a milder look in his eye. He was older too, a couple of years past fifty at least, and his unpowdered hair was iron grey. You could not have called him good-looking, for he had a big broken nose too large for the rest of his face and an old scar running down his cheek.
‘Mr Short is a great admirer of your translations,’ the other Duke said.
‘Oh, you have read them. I am so p-pleased.’
Wm did not deny this imputation, although the closest he had got to the work in question was to see it bound in green morocco on the marble table in Mr Jefferson’s hall. Instead he again murmured something to the effect that it must have been a very great labour to compose.
‘Yes it was, I m-must confess. It is not simply that my English falls a long way short of your excellent French, monsieur. It is also that I am so uncertain of the nuances of so many English phrases. Take for example that excellent phrase in your Declaration of Independence: “the pursuit of h-happiness”. How precisely should that be translated? Is it a pursuit like the pursuit of b-billiards or a pursuit like the pursuit of a stag? If I render it as poursuite, that is like la chasse. For the other meaning I must use some word like occupation or perhaps even j-j-jouissance. Tell me, which is it to be? Is it our right to enjoy happiness or only to chase after it?’ Once the Duke had got launched, he spoke in an eager breathy rush, fearing perhaps that if he slowed down the stammer would get the better of him.
‘Well, sir, we have no less a person than the author here with us, let him pronounce,’ said Wm, rather boldly, he thought, because Mr Jefferson did not always care to be publicly challenged as the author of that celebrated manifesto.
‘Yes, yes, Mr Jefferson, you are the horse’s mouth as they say. Tell us, which did you intend?’
They had reached the end of the rolling lawn now and they all stopped, looking enquiringly at Mr Jefferson. He took out a handkerchief and mopped his brow. It was a warm afternoon, but he was not much inclined to perspire. To his surprise Wm had to conclude that the innocent question had disconcerted his employer.
‘That is a most pertinent enquiry, sir, and I am not entirely confident that I have the answer to it. I would not like it to be thought that I chose the words purely for their euphonious impression, although I do hold that they have a certain ring to them. But now that you confront me with a choice of senses, I confess that I am not entirely enamoured of either of them.’
‘Not either of them? How can this be, monsieur?’
‘Well, if we choose the sense of enjoyment, which may well be the sense in which we Americans most commonly use the word pursuit, that would indicate a certain complacency, would it not? We would be demanding our liberty in order that we might recline in unfettered indolence upon whatever bed of roses might lie to hand. That is not how our strenuous forefathers would have envisaged their task in life. It would certainly bear little relation to the burdens and privations that they endured in the early years of their migration to the American colonies.’
‘Then we are to pursue h-happiness in the other sense?’
‘You hound me, sir, and you do not find me wholly at ease here either. There is a restlessness, I might almost say a dissipated quality, about a man who chases after happiness to the exclusion of all else – virtue, honour, ambition. He resembles that butterfly flying about this statue here, of Apollo if I am not mistaken, he rests nowhere and will not stay to feed upon any particular flower. Our religion teaches us that we must not strive too earnestly after happiness or we shall never attain it. Indeed, it becomes nigh impossible that we should, for no sooner have we reached a perch that from a distance appeared the most desirable abode that we could conceive of than we must imagine a newer, yet more blissful resting place. Thus neither the enjoyment of happiness when we have it nor yet the chasing after it when we have it not entirely contents me. The purpose of my few imperfect words was but to specify that a sound political constitution will enlarge and not deny nor inhibit the possibilities of both. Therefore I am of the opinion that my words allowed of a useful ambiguity that came to me, so to speak, out of the ether and was not constructed by any conscious operation of my brain.’
There was a silence when Mr Jefferson had done. The two Dukes looked gratified to have had the meaning of that noble declaration untangled for them by its author, and Wm too was gratified even if he was not greatly the wiser, though he would not have dreamed of confessing his perplexity to Mr Humphreys who, however, was less reticent.
‘What on earth does TJ mean by all that stuff?’ he muttered, but Wm merely gave a superior smile as of an adept to whom the whole argument was mother’s milk.
‘Well, perhaps we need not worry the question to death,’ Liancourt said. ‘Surely we ourselves show the answer. We are enjoying these gardens and this fine weather, yet at the same time our legs are carrying us towards other delights – the lake, the Trianons, perhaps even Her Majesty’s rustic retreat. Happiness comes to us in perambulation, you might say.’
‘You have saved my bacon, sir,’ said Jefferson. ‘I hope you will allow me to filch
this charming metaphor if I am ever vexed by the question again.’
Wm happened at that moment to be looking at the other Duke, the plain one as he had come to think of him, and was taken aback to see that after all he did not seem best pleased by Jefferson’s exposition. His Grace’s mild long face was contorted by what looked like a spasm of impatience, perhaps even anger.
Then Wm became aware that in fact the Duke’s attention had wandered. He was no longer looking at his companions but at something that had caught his eye in the middle distance. Wm followed the direction of his gaze but at first could see only the great shimmer of the canal stretching away to the horizon. Then he caught sight of a canoe being paddled across the shorter arm of the canal in the direction of the Grand Trianon. Nothing unusual about that. Canoes were all the go in Paris now. The smart thing was to have one built in Canada, by Indian craftsmen, or have one sent over as the gift of a distant Canadian cousin. In reality most of them were run up at Desailly’s boatyard just upstream of the Ile St-Louis. But still it was unusual to see a canoe being paddled – and rather erratically too – at Versailles on an afternoon of diplomatic audiences.
‘I told her not to,’ the Duke muttered. ‘It would embarrass my c-cousin Liancourt and in any case I would have preferred her to walk with me, but she said she would s-suffocate on a day like this, she had to be on the water.’
For the first time Wm realised that the two people in the canoe were young women, and as they came closer to the bank of the canal, one of them took off her big straw hat and waved it at them.
‘My wife,’ said the Duke with a despairing gesture.
The canoe followed a zigzag course to the bank where two servants were waiting to moor it and help the ladies up the stone steps. The elder of the two was fair and perhaps not as young as Wm had first thought, though still with a charming expression. The younger, presumably her maid or companion, was dark and slight and bright-eyed, and you could see how sportive she was from the way she tossed the paddle to the servant. Yet she was also the one who had waved her straw hat at them. Perhaps the Duke had been deceived in the strong light – the sun was burning now – or perhaps he had not really meant to suggest that the one waving the hat was his wife.
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