The Duchess skipped down the carriage steps and went over to greet the tallish man in the blue coat. Wm followed more slowly, trying to gain a grip on himself.
‘And this is my friend Monsieur Short. He is Mr Jefferson’s secretary, you know. In fact, he is practically the ambassador because Mr Jefferson has so many other pursuits to attend to.’
‘Monsieur Short and I are already acquainted,’ the man in the blue coat said with a smile. ‘Good day, Monsieur S.’
‘Good day, Monsieur R.’
‘Ah, you already have pet names for each other, what fun.’
‘Oh, it is only a silly joke. We met at, where was it?’ Wm said desperately, appealing to Monsieur de Monville to help him out.
‘At the Swedish embassy perhaps. Yes, I think it was the Swedish embassy. We had this fancy that after the revolution when all titles of nobility had been abolished we should be known only by our initials. I would be Monsieur R and Monsieur Short would be Monsieur S.’
He was as fluent as a mountain stream and Wm bowed his head in grateful acknowledgement.
‘But you would be merely citizens, would you not? There would be no more monsieurs, only Citizen R and Citizen S.’
‘You are right, of course, madame. We were not so far-sighted. But you must come inside and see my retreat from the world. I am like St Simeon Stylites, except that I live inside my column rather than on top of it.’
He beckoned them through an unsuspected door that led inside the weird column and then up the winding stair that threaded the middle of it. The place was surprisingly commodious. On the ground floor they peered inside an oval dining room and had a glimpse of a cabinet de toilette and a small bedchamber beyond. On the next floor they were shown more bedchambers and a studio, on the floor above that a scientific laboratory – ‘for my little experiments,’ Monville said with an air that suggested he was not far behind Lavoisier or Priestley in that department – and a salon large enough to accommodate a small billiard table. Monsieur de Monville encouraged his guests to peer out of one of the oval windows, and there it all was spread out before them: the lake and the stream, the Gothic ruin a little off to the left (by daylight no bigger than a dovecote) and the pyramid that had loomed so large in the darkness and now might have served as a plaything for children to slide down.
‘That is my ice house. I thought that if the ancient Egyptians had used their pyramids to preserve their pharaohs, why should I not use mine to preserve my ice?’
And Wm recalled those glaciers of shattered ice piled high with oysters and lobsters and trianons of ice cream. He looked further down the slope and there in a little Chinese garden of its own was the Chinese palace, its gilded tassels and scarlet lattices shining in the afternoon light.
‘There’ – they followed his pointing arm – ‘that is the Isle of Happiness with the Tartar Tent reflected in its waters and beyond it on the hill you can just see the Temple of Pan.’
‘It is a veritable heaven you have created here, Monsieur R, if I may call you so.’
‘I am glad to have my heavenly vision certified by such an angel.’
They bowed to each other, but all Wm could think of was Monsieur de Monville holding his glistening tool as he proceeded from one girl to the next and the little agonised yelp he gave when he could hold back no longer and sprawled, spent and panting, on the last but one of them with his Chinese coat settling over him like a counterpane, while Madame Sylvie stood leaning against the marble chimney-piece, negligently observing them as though she were watching her pet dogs frolic.
‘Come, let us plunge into my wilderness.’
Monville tapped him on the shoulder, and Wm turned round to find his host miraculously transformed into an archer in a leather jerkin with a longbow in his hand and a quiver of arrows slung over his shoulder.
‘Now then, walk in single file, as the Indians do,’ he called to them when they were out in the open air. They followed him through the bushes, imitating his half-crouched posture. Every now and then he motioned them to a halt when he heard a rustling.
After a few minutes they passed an elegant white obelisk rearing on a slight eminence in a grove of polar saplings.
Monville tapped the obelisk and it gave off a hollow metallic sound. ‘Tin,’ he said, ‘there’s nothing like tin.’
A little further on they came to a gaudy pavilion of blue-and-gold stripes. ‘Ah, my beloved Tartars’ lair; touch it, please.’
They stroked the side of the tent, expecting their hands to be lost in the folds of heavy drapery. But their fingers encountered only cold metal.
Monsieur de Monville grinned to see them so discountenanced. Then suddenly he froze. ‘Hist! Don’t move.’
They heard only the zing of the bowstring and the thump of the arrow hitting its mark. Thirty yards away a cock pheasant toppled over in a whirl of feathers.
‘I used to employ a local fellow as gamekeeper,’ Monville said as he picked up the bird and briskly wrung its neck, ‘but I came to the conclusion that I was a better shot than he was, so I taught him to paint in the Chinese manner and made him my decorator instead. You will see some of his daubs in my Chinese house.’
Wm did not particularly fancy a return visit to the Chinese house, but he could see no escape.
‘How can you call this a desert, sir? It is surely rather a garden of delights,’ said Rosalie, sensing that Will seemed reluctant to pull his weight in the conversation.
‘Ah, I will tell you the story. When I first bought the old farm at Retz, this patch was marked on the map as “Essarts”, the old-fashioned word for freshly cleared ground you know, but in fact the undergrowth had gone wild since the map was made and had to be cleared all over again, so I called it a ‘dessart’, you see.’
Wm did not quite see and did not want to see either. He was beginning to be disgusted by the entire spectacle. What a false, trumpery thing the whole thing was, this desert that wasn’t a desert at all but a piece of old scrubland, with its pretended satyrs and obelisks and Tartar tents that were no more than tin toys for adults, and its Chinese palace that was painted by a French peasant who knew no more of China than he did of painting. And this Monsieur de Monville in his archer’s costume looking like a fop at a masquerade, which was exactly what he was. The only real thing in this artificial tableau was the pheasant, and that was dead.
But Rosalie continued to be enchanted by everything that Monville showed her and she skipped up the bamboo staircase in the Chinese palace eager for the next sensation. William saw Monville following her with his eyes and admiring her upwardly mobile ankles, which were as slender as a pheasant’s neck.
‘And what,’ she enquired lightly, ‘exactly do you do in this delightful room?’
‘Oh, madame, we make music.’
Wm thought that this must be as big a lie as their supposed meeting at the Swedish embassy, but there at the far end of the room where Madame Sylvie had sat and watched them now stood a gilded harp.
Without waiting for an invitation, Monville sat down at the instrument and began to ripple the strings. ‘I used to accompany Jarnovitz, you know. Monsieur Gluck was kind enough to say that he could not decide which of us was the better player. Sit down, sit down, please. I think this is an afternoon for Lully. Do you know this courante? I transcribed it myself.’
And his fingers began to pluck the strings to more serious effect. Wm noticed to his annoyance that Monsieur de Monville’s fingers were long and tapering like those of a Baroque saint.
Rosalie settled herself on the sofa by the fireplace. That surely was the one on which he and the dark girl had made hay until she cried out that he was hurting her and – no, perhaps it had been the rose-coloured divan opposite.
How earnest Rosalie looked, not like a duchess or anyone from that milieu, but like a young student whose only wish in all the world was to concentrate and not be distracted by anything resembling flirtation or frivolity.
‘That was very beautiful,’ she said wh
en Monsieur de Monville had finished and looked up at them for their applause. And so, damn it, it was. Even Wm could tell that Monville had the most delicate of touches and an exquisite unhurried discrimination of tempo.
‘I used to play that for Madame du Barry. I knew her when she was eighteen and the best model that Labille had in his house. It is amusing to reflect in view of what later passed between them but at that time the Queen always asked her to model the gowns that she was interested in, though they were not at all the same shape. Well, who was? La Barry’s figure was so remarkable that no matter how modestly she dressed, artists would approach her and beg to paint her nude. But she was such a simple girl, no more than a peasant really, and so good-hearted.’
‘She lives very quietly now, I hear.’ Wm was pleased to note a tarter note in Rosalie’s voice.
‘Oh yes, I go over to Louveciennes once a week and try to divert her. We make plans for her garden, but since she was exiled from court she has so little money. I am afraid her mind is too much fixed on the old days. I prefer to live in the present and look to the future, madame.’
The gaze he fixed on Rosalie left little doubt what particular future he had in mind.
‘You too, I think, Monsieur S, you are a man of action rather than of recollection.’
Wm realised that Monville must assume that he and Rosalie were already lovers, as they certainly would have been if Monville had been in his place.
It was unpleasantly hot and airless in this upper chamber, but there was to be no early release from it, because Monville took their enthusiasm as encouragement to play a piece by his admirer Monsieur Gluck, which in turn reminded him of a motet by Rameau that was not often heard these days and then an air by the incomparable young Mozart, which was heard everywhere and which errand boys whistled, like so, though it should more properly be played ambulante, like so.
By the time they descended the bamboo stairs again the sun was down behind the trees and in the shadowed light the Desert did seem deserted, even forlorn. Rosalie said that the reflections in the dark waters of the lake brought melancholy thoughts to her mind, and Monsieur de Monville said they brought melancholy thoughts to his mind too. In reading the reveries of the late Monsieur Rousseau he sometimes fancied that it was of his own Isle of Happiness rather than of the Ile de St-Pierre far away in Switzerland that Rousseau had been writing. And Rosalie exclaimed that there was a passage from the fifth of those reveries that had at that minute flown into her head.
‘It is the place where he describes the pleasures of lying in his little boat and letting it drift across the lake until it fetches up on the little island and he lies there under the willows amid the clover and the thyme—’
‘And the rabbits, madame, do not forget the rabbits. What a charming thought it was to bring the rabbits to the island so that they might multiply there in peace with no one to fear.’
‘Oh, you know the passage. I find it so touching. Yes, the rabbits, I loved the rabbits.’
Wm wondered whether Monsieur de Monville intended to take his bow and arrow to this island of tranquillity and if so how long the rabbits would last. But he did not interrupt them, for he saw that Rosalie was much moved.
When they were back in the carriage and rumbling down the hill to the city in the dusk, Rosalie was pensive. Once or twice he thought she was about to speak but then – which was unlike her usual quick impulsive self – could not find exactly what she wished to say.
‘It is strange, is it not – I mean, he is a strange man, do you not think so?’
‘Monsieur de Monville?’
‘Yes, he plays so beautifully and he has such an understanding of nature and such an imagination – he designed each of those buildings himself. Did you not hear him say so? Some visitors could not believe that a mere amateur of the art could display such skill and insisted that his friend Monsieur Ledoux must have helped him, but they were all his own work. And yet …’
‘Yet what?’
‘He is such a bad man. Well, he has such a bad reputation. They say he has slept with every royal mistress, Madame du Barry of course, perhaps not Madame de Pompadour, she would have been too old for him, but all the others.’
‘All of them?’ Wm queried.
‘So I believe. And then with many married women too. I do not know all their names.’
She looked a little sunk by the thought as if the weight of so much infidelity had suddenly fallen on her slender shoulders. Wm realised that it was this serious innocence that had drawn him so powerfully to her. Somehow in the middle of all this paddling lechery, without being in the least pious, rather the reverse, she had kept the quality that children had. He was cast down by the thought. How could someone so, well, so stained as he was hope to win the deeper affections of one on whom the greasy world had left no visible mark? He did not wish to lie to her, yet he did not see how he could ever tell her the truth about himself.
She saw that she had depressed his spirits and she touched his hand. ‘I did not intend to wax so melancholy. Monsieur Rousseau’s reveries are catching, I fear. My grandmother is always telling me not to swallow him whole. After all, he was no saint himself, he left his children in an orphanage, you know.’
At that moment William Short, improbably but with every semblance of firmness, resolved thenceforth to lead an unsullied life. How Monsieur de Monville would have laughed to think that their visit to him had produced such a consequence. He certainly would not take up Monville’s suggestion that they should visit his new house in Paris. There would be no more visits to the Green Dolphin either. He did not expect that this abstinence would win him Rosalie’s love, for she would know nothing of it. No, he made the pledge so that he might himself feel clean and at ease with himself. And he remembered with a shudder Monville’s Chinese robe rasping against his own sticky bare skin and the smell of rotten lime blossom that carried him further back again, to the back bedroom at Ma Scranton’s and Dolly crying out under him as she cried out half a dozen times a day under other men.
They said goodbye, each reassuring the other that the day had been entirely delightful. Yet the tarnished feeling had not gone away from either of them, and Wm was almost itching to get back to the Hôtel de Langeac and to converse with Mr Jefferson on any topic under the sun – the Dutch loan, the voting system under the new constitution – anything so long as it had nothing to do with Monsieur Racine de Monville and the sexual practices of homo sapiens.
To his surprise, as he came into the circular hall, there was the sound of laughter from the dining room, an alto girlish laugh. He had barely expected TJ to be returned from dining with Madame d’Enville. It was part of the bargain that had persuaded Rosalie to spend a whole day at the Desert, that her grandmother should have her hands so pleasantly full of Mr Jefferson, whom she liked as much as she admired. He had some earlier engagements with the Commissioner for Grain and the architects who had built the new Exchange, but these business acquaintances would scarcely have come on to take supper at the Hôtel de Langeac.
‘My dear William, you have not, I think, had the pleasure of meeting Mrs Cosway. Pleasure is too tame a word, you will surely pluck a higher from your ample lexicon when you have come to know her better.’
The young woman – large liquid eyes, about thirty years old, a weighty crucifix dangling amid the ruches of her dress – rose still laughing and shook his hand.
‘And Mr Cosway, the celebrated painter of miniatures, though I should add without wishing to provoke marital discord that his wife is almost as accomplished a painter. She studied with Mr Zoffany and Signor Batoni too, I believe.’
‘Oh, I am only an amateur. People will forgive any blemish in a young woman’s sketches.’ She did not say ‘pretty young woman’. She did not need to.
Richard Cosway reached across the table to take Wm’s hand. He had nothing of the delicacy that might have been expected of a painter of such tiny exquisites, being somewhat square-jawed and with a smirking knowing look to hi
m. If Wm had not been introduced, he might well have mistaken him for one of the Grain Commissioners, and a fly one at that.
Wm drew up an empty chair and noted with some astonishment the remains of supper. There had been no mention of any supper guests in the kitchen book and no mention at all of the Cosways. And what had become of Madame d’Enville?
‘I fear I have been able to furnish only the barest apology for a supper. James has done his best but he will over-roast when he is flustered. I brought him with me from Monticello, Mrs Cosway, he is a bright boy. I sent him off to the Prince de Condé’s to learn the finer points of cooking, but he is raw as yet.’
James Hemings was indeed a talented young slave who had picked up a good deal in the Condé kitchens. But he did need warning and this mysterious impromptu supper might well have taxed his fledgling powers.
‘You know the old column at the corner of the corn market. That was were we met, quite by chance. I was walking with Mr Trumbull and he presented me to his fellow painters. I shall regard that spot as hallowed for ever. Indeed, I strongly suspect that the column was erected there in advance by a far-sighted Providence to mark the site of our first encounter.’
Wm noticed that Mr Jefferson had an unusual flush in his cheeks and was talking with an intensity quite unlike his habitual disjointed, sometimes distracted manner.
‘Mr Jefferson insisted that we dine with him straight away at the Palais-Royal. We said that he must surely have a thousand other engagements, but he would have none of it and said he was only engaged to an old lady who would not mind in the least. I feel so badly that we should have led him astray.’
Mrs Cosway’s large eyes implored Wm to share in her guilt. She spoke in a tearaway breathless style, which he could see might fascinate some men but not him, certainly not the new Wm in his puritan’s habit.
‘We dispatched lying messengers to every part of town,’ TJ said cheerfully. ‘My character is quite destroyed. I shall never be able to hold up my head in this city again. You will have to succeed me at the embassy, William.’
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