‘Bailly has come here to discuss the municipal c-constitution for Paris. We hope to present our plans to our colleagues in a month’s time. We have been taking a leaf out of the Virginian book, although the Commonwealth of Massachusetts also has much to teach us, do you not agree, Mr Short? I know you are a keen student of these matters. Mr Short was kind enough to speak well of my poor translations,’ he added, turning to Bailly not without a smidgen of satisfaction.
‘Yes, yes indeed.’ Wm’s mind was still on the damned book. Why couldn’t people just lay out a garden and be done with it as they did back home without writing a whole pompous book on the subject and calling it an art when all it was was digging up the earth and stuffing it with horse manure?
‘I am particularly anxious that some distinguished p-practitioners of natural science should join us on the committee for reform. Bailly has been kind enough to suggest some names from among those who recently served with him on the Academy’s commission on mesmerism. You had mustered there, I believe, the flower of French science, not least its chairman.’
‘Your Grace is too kind.’ Monsieur Bailly inclined his head. ‘I was most fortunate in my associates.’
‘Let me see, there was the estimable Dr Guillotin. And the great ornament of our chemistry, he was one of your number too, was he not?’
‘Monsieur Lavoisier, yes, and Dr Cabanis who is such a pioneer of the medicine of the mind, what we call psychophysiology. And your own Mr Franklin, sir, was good enough to serve, though he was in frail health and had to spend much of the summer at Passy, but with characteristic generosity he permitted us to use his house for some of our—’
‘Experiments in animal m-magnetism,’ the Duke cut in. He had a way of cutting in. He liked to finish other people’s sentences for them, which was odd seeing that he had so much trouble with his own. ‘I am sure that Mr Short will be anxious to hear a little more of your remarkable work.’ The Duke leant forward and tapped Wm’s knee, a glow of excitement suffusing his pale features. Was it fancy or was his scar beginning to pulsate? How strange it was that these dry matters should so animate this calm, sceptical man. Was he similarly animated when he and Rosalie – but Wm did not care to let his thoughts stray too far in that direction. All he wanted to do was get away and get another copy of that damned book for TJ.
‘It was of course our principal duty,’ Monsieur Bailly began, ‘to discover whether this mysterious universal fluid of Dr Mesmer’s actually existed. I instructed my fellow commissioners at the outset that we must limit ourselves to physical proofs. Could one smell or taste the fluidum, could its presence in the baquet be confirmed by means of an electrometer and so on? I need hardly add that we found no such evidence. We also thought it our duty to undergo magnetising ourselves. Not a single one of us felt the slightest effects. We were, it is true, all healthy men in no need of medical attention. When we made similar magnetic experiments upon diseased members of the lower orders, one or two of them did show some of the purported effects of animal magnetism, but we ascribed these violent symptoms to the excitation of the imagination and regarded them as more likely to prove harmful rather than healthy in the long run. For that reason we appended to our report some confidential observations concerning the moral aspects of Dr Mesmer’s clinic.’
‘Ah, that was what I wished to hear about most particularly,’ the Duke put in.
‘The magnetisers are invariably men, whereas the majority of their patients are women. Thus there exists always a danger that contact between them may unleash the power that nature has caused one sex to exert upon the other. Your Grace may not be aware that in certain private consultations, which take place in a darkened section of the doctor’s surgery, the magnetiser and the patient sit face to face, with her knees tightly encircled by his. Accordingly his knees must be in immediate contact with the lower posterior part of her body. The magnetiser then touches the hypogastric region with his hands, sometimes as far as the ovarium, which is, as you know, the female’s most sensitive region. He may then pass his hand behind her, bringing her into closer contact still.’
‘No, do they so?’ The Duke whistled. ‘Can you imagine such a thing, Mr Short?’
‘It is hard to credit, sir.’
‘And that husbands should permit their wives to engage in such intimacies in the guise of medical science,’ the Duke said. ‘Well, I am sure your report will put an end to such d-dangerous nonsense.’
Bailly coughed. ‘In strict honesty, sir, I ought to confess that our report was not entirely unanimous.’
‘Not unanimous?’ The Duke seemed as distressed by this news as though hearing that his favourite horse had gone lame.
‘For reasons I do not fully understand, Monsieur de Jussieu the botanist insisted on writing a minority report, and a scandalous one it was too, which had much better have stayed in his head.’
‘Oh dear,’ the Duke said.
‘He asserted that we had not investigated the causes behind Mesmer’s cures thoroughly enough and that some secret must lie precisely in the way Mesmer and his assistants excited the imagination of their more impressionable patients. Jussieu argues that the combination of the imagination with the physical contacts, all the licentious touching and rubbing that goes on, produces what he calls “animal heat” and that this phenomenon may actually cure such physical ailments as paralysis and the flux.’
‘I never heard of such a thing,’ the Duke said, ‘and such a distinguished b-botanist too. But come, Bailly, we must not waste the morning on these f-fairy tales. You had, I believe, some comments on the taxation bill that is to come before us next week. William, I fear my days may be much taken up with these matters over the next few months, and I shall be unable to devote as much time as I would have liked to showing Mr Jefferson and yourself the delights of Paris, but then I know that Mr Jefferson is an intrepid explorer on his own account. He walks everywhere,’ the Duke said, turning to Bailly with a gesture of mild wonder, as though referring to some extraordinary and perhaps unnatural feat.
‘You are most kind to show us such consideration,’ Wm said in his best courtly manner.
‘However, in your case, Mr Short, I have a plan. My dear wife is, I think, too much among p-persons of my generation who are prone to be wrapped up in their middle-aged concerns. I have often thought that she needed the company of people nearer her own age, though she would not dream of saying such a thing herself and is indeed genuinely interested in the causes close to my heart, such as the modernisation of our agricultural practices. She is devoted to my mother, her grandmother, and finds it hard to leave her side, whether in Paris or at La Roche. All the same, I know that Rosalie – you must not hesitate to call her Rosalie, everyone does – would be delighted to show you the sights of our capital and of the Ile-de-France. She has already spoken to me of the pleasure she takes in your company, as in that of Mr Jefferson of course. So I hope you will not take it as an imposition if I suggest to her that she might propose one or two excursions with you, though naturally she would seek out your own views and preferences.’
While the Duke was bringing this roundabout speech to its startling conclusion, Wm kept his head bowed in the modest posture of a schoolboy who has been summoned to his headmaster in the expectation of punishment only to find himself commended and who cannot believe his luck. He felt that if he dared to look the Duke in the face his tumbling emotions would show all too plainly. Something was falling into his lap, even if he did not like to define too precisely what that something might turn out to be; in fact, not defining it was part of the intense pleasure that flooded through him, as the Duke pursued his laborious way, suggesting how Rosalie might best convey her wishes to him and vice versa, while Monsieur Bailly drummed his fingers on the bureau plat, impatient to get back to business.
Wm could not afterwards recall how he managed to take his leave of the two serious men and how he clattered down the stairs and out into the courtyard and up the rue de Seine, walking a good three-qua
rters of a mile before he realised that he must retrace his steps to go back to the Palais-Royal and see if he could track down another copy of that damned book. One way and another, botanists seemed to be causing a good deal of trouble, although Wm could not help feeling that Monsieur de Jussieu’s speculations might not be quite as baseless as Monsieur de Bailly made out. The imagination was a powerful organ, after all.
V
Follies
MR JEFFERSON LOVED follies. His watery blue eyes took on a sparkle when he came upon the absurdest confections in stone and plaster, the most futile buildings in the shape of a pineapple or a sheaf of corn. He would laugh at architectural jokes with a heartiness that verbal jests never provoked in him.
By contrast Wm preferred gazing at a building that had some purpose to it: a fine row of stables perhaps, or a well-planned manufactory. But they joined in approving the gargantuan commercial development at the Palais-Royal undertaken by the Duc de Chartres (Duc d’Orléans since his father’s death, an event hastened, according to some, by his despair at his son’s debaucheries). In fact, TJ had suggested to Wm that they might themselves go into partnership and build a similar indoor mall in the centre of Richmond, Virginia. They had even agreed on a suitable site for the venture, Shockoe Hill, but nothing came of the project. The two Americans also liked to take a stroll from the legation to inspect Monsieur d’Orléans’s frenetic building developments in their own neighbourhood, which were fast growing into a city within a city, another Nouvelle Orléans as Mr Jefferson wisecracked. Sometimes, too, they would saunter on beyond the dust of the building sites to Orléans’s private park, the Parc Monceau as it had formerly been known after the old village that had stood there until the wilful Duke had swept it away and turfed out the luckless villagers (or those of them who were unwilling to become his workmen). The place was now known as the Folie de Chartres from the huge sums the Duke had spent on digging up the ground to impart a more picturesque ‘English’ aspect to the landscape.
‘It is strange, is it not, William, that a man who is so sunk in debaucheries of the lowest kind and is so incapable of quitting them for business should have devised such a garden of delights.’
They were standing next to a sizeable artificial mound upon which a gang of sweating workmen were attempting to erect two large broken Ionic columns. A little further off, another dozen men were piling up giant fractured tufa boulders to compose the basis of a ruined grotto. At that moment a gardener in a green apron shouted at them to step aside so that he might wheel a handcart full of ferns and other bosky shrubs for the beds that were already being manured around the site of the proposed grotto.
‘But is there not something a little absurd,’ Wm ventured, ‘about deliberately erecting all these ruins, while behind them the Duke is building a modern city that will transform the government and commerce of France?’
‘My dear William, you are too solemn. Surely the spirit of commerce, admirable though it may be, needs now and then to be leavened with a soupçon of frivolity.’
They stood for some minutes watching two workmen hammer a flawless fluted cylinder of marble into a suitable ruined condition and then rope it with a block and tackle to begin hauling it into position on top of the shattered column. As the rope’s squealing filled his ears, Wm suddenly had an idea. ‘You recall, sir, Monsieur de La Rochefoucauld’s suggestion that while he was so heavily engaged upon the new constitution, I might make myself useful as escort to his wife.’
Mr Jefferson recalled no such thing, for the very good reason that Wm had said nothing about it to him. However, he shared the amiable weakness of even the greatest men, viz., that of not caring to admit that he was ignorant of or had forgotten something that he was supposed to know about. ‘Ah yes, yes. You are sure that this is a wise arrangement? You do not think that the Duke in his innocence of the ways of the world may have neglected to consider the dangers of gossip?’
‘There is no question of gossip, sir. I shall make it entirely plain that the Duchess will be apprising me of the most modern developments in the city, so that I shall be better informed and better equipped to carry out my duties on behalf of the American people.’
‘I see,’ said Mr Jefferson doubtfully, not liking to stand in the way of the American people.
‘And one particular subject, which I know will be dear to your own heart, sir, is the brilliant variety of pavilions, bagatelles and other architectural inventions that have sprung up in and around Paris within the past few years and which offer the best possible models to adorn the infant cities of America. I can think of no better way of making myself useful than to carry out a careful study of these monuments both for your own pleasure, sir, and for the utility of the nation we serve.’
For a moment Wm wondered whether he had pitched it a little too high, but he need not have worried. Mr Jefferson was never averse to solemnity. ‘My word, that is a handsome scheme, Will. You might publish your observations in a book. But did I not hear you say that you did not care for bagatelles of this sort?’
‘I must learn to love them, sir. Besides, there is surely advantage in a scrupulously critical eye being cast upon such things rather than a too indulgent fancy overlooking their defects.’
‘You are quite right, Will. I am perhaps a little too indulgent myself in such matters. And, by the way, do I recollect that the Duchess has a gift for sketching?’
‘So she has,’ Wm agreed. ‘I am sure that we shall co-operate very well and I hope that the day may come when you are proud to acknowledge your old secretary as a professor of follies.’
‘A professor of follies, that’s good, very good,’ said TJ, coming as near as he could to a chuckle. But then a thought struck him and he cried with an almost prophetic force, ‘You must go to the desert!’
‘The desert? I must admit that I had thought of confining our studies to Paris, at first anyway, but …’
‘No, the desert must be your first port of call. It is hard to find, but Vendôme knows the way, so you must take the embassy carriage.’
Wm stared at his master, wondering whether his overloaded brain had finally exploded into delirium. Where was this desert? Vendôme was a reliable pilot and the coach had been specially built to Jefferson’s own design to withstand the buffeting of the French roads, but even so …
‘It is possible, I suppose, to make the journey within an afternoon, but I counsel you rather to take the whole day.’ Then, seeing that his protégé was still gaping at him, he interrupted himself: ‘You have not heard of the Désert de Retz? Well, perhaps it does not yet enjoy the fame of the Bagatelle or the Temple of Philosophy at Ermenonville, but to my mind it outshines them all. I must surely have expounded its beauties to you.’
Well, perhaps he had, but Jefferson’s forays into pillars and perspectives had a way of inducing Wm’s thoughts to wander off into irrelevant topics like the surprising curve of Rosalie’s breasts when she bent to step up into her carriage and the dark curls that wandered over the frill of her dress. But he had no objection to TJ’s fussing if it was to lead to days in Rosalie’s company that might otherwise have been spent on the tiresome details of the second Dutch loan on which he had spent so much time of late and Mr Jefferson so little.
And he was still blessing his luck as old Vendôme took them along the road that he had come to know so well. In his first days in Paris it had been the road to Lilite and the homely comforts of St Germain. How long ago it all seemed now, the lamb gigot and the irregular verbs and the stolen kiss on the landing.
‘What a strange man your master must be. I never heard of an ambassador who instructed his secretary to make it his business to study follies.’
‘There is no one like him. Sometimes I wish he were more like other people. But in this case I am grateful for his eccentricity.’
‘Are you sure you would not rather be negotiating all those important loans?’
‘Quite sure.’
‘Someone has misinformed you, or Mr Jeffers
on. I am an architectural ignoramus.’
‘Then we are equals. How delightful.’
As they approached the town of St Germain, Vendôme took a side road, not much more than a lane, off into the chestnut woods. In the shade of the trees they fell silent as though they had just entered a church. Wm sneaked a sidelong glance at her. She was wearing a jaunty little hat of peacock blue. Somehow the hat made her look sad, or perhaps it was only the coming and going of the light through the trees. He wanted to break into her reverie, to reassure her that there was nothing but happiness in prospect for both of them, but he could not quite think of the words.
Wm was grateful when the carriage jolted to a halt and turned sharply to the right. At first he thought Vendôme had lost his senses and was charging directly at the wall of rock that confronted them, but then he saw an open gate and – what was this? – a ruined grotto with ferns dripping in its mossy cracks. Twisting his neck out of the open carriage window, he saw on top of the rocks a strange capering figure brandishing something.
He knew this place. He had been here before.
This was the capering satyr who had lit their entrance. In the daylight he could see that it was only a flimsy simulacrum of tin. And there ahead of them where the trees thinned out was the weird broken column gleaming now in the shafts of sunlight. How strange and huge it looked even in daylight, fifty foot high at least and like no pillar Wm had ever seen in France or anywhere else.
And there, standing by the column as Vendôme reined in the horses, was another figure whom Wm recognised the moment he saw him and one not made of tin either.
‘That must be Monsieur Racine de Monville,’ the Duchess said. ‘I had heard he was a handsome man and he does not disappoint.’
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