plate. Guests gasped; such a fish had not been served since the fall of the king. Then the servant carrying it tripped, and the glorious meal crashed onto the Oriental carpet, ruined for all time.”
“I suppose the poor man was whipped,” I said.
“Such a supposition shows how naive you truly are, Monsieur Gage. All was staged. Talleyrand waited several seconds of dread silence, timing it like an actor, and then said, ‘Bring the other one.’ And that is how you become talked about in Paris.”
By day the narrow streets were so jammed that we went almost everywhere on foot. At night it was so dark that a cabriolet at twenty sous was justifiable, even on our budget. I read with considerable interest about experimental gas lamps by Philippe Lebon, mirrored lamps by Sauer, and “parabolic reflectors” by Bordier the engineer, but never saw any on an actual street. In my experience the French are the cleverest, the English quicker to put ideas to use, and the Americans the likeliest to steal from both and sell it cheaper.
Progress threatened jobs. Streetlamps jeopardized the employment of lantern bearers, who waited outside theaters to escort patrons home. Road repair ended the livelihood of men who rented levers to pry wheels out of potholes and planks to bridge puddles. Entire industries were built on inefficiency, and Napoleon had to pound for reform as patiently as attacking a fort with siege artillery.
Another modern oddity was the abandoned steamboat built by my friend Robert Fulton and demonstrated the year before on the Seine. At sixty-six feet long and eight feet wide, the Vulcan had hips made of two enormous paddle wheels connected to iron machinery. It had no deck, and no cover for the wheels, so one had to walk a plank over its exposed skeleton of rods and gears to get from stern to bow. While the boat had managed a brisk walking speed when demonstrated, that meant it barely made headway when going upstream against a strong current. Gaudily painted, it floated forlornly next to the downstream corner of the Louvre after its dismissal by French authorities drove Fulton to the English side. I jumped aboard without challenge, curious about its engine since I remembered how hard it was to hand-crank the propeller of Fulton’s plunging boat, the Nautilus.
This craft was steered by a tiller and, despite some rust and pooled water, looked capable of running again. A canvas tarp concealed enough coal to burn for hours. There was also a set of instructions wrapped in oilskin against the damp. I carefully refastened the tarp and went home to read.
With our conspiracy in disarray, I had time to practice being a father. I took Harry to the Promenade de Longchamp at Easter, where we watched helmeted cavalry clatter in parade between wagons holding images of the pacifist Jesus. Gas balloons hung above the city, and fireworks exploded at dusk. At a toy booth I bought him a leather sack of marbles that he enjoyed rolling on the sloping floors of our apartment. Catherine grumbled after slipping on them twice.
Other days we’d wander through the entertainers on the Boulevard du Temple. We watched Indian sword swallowers, the famed tightrope walker Mademoiselle Saqui, jugglers, tumblers, dwarves, and a bearded girl who let Harry tug her whiskers. Munito the Wise Dog told fortunes by cards, pawing them one by one after payment of a franc.
Mine was a watery trip, and Harry’s a secret prize.
Carnival booths displayed five-legged sheep, two-headed calves, and races in which tiny chariots were drawn by fleas. Pug dogs fought across a pie baked in the shape of a fortress. We’d watch the rich parade in the Tuileries, the aged relax in the Luxembourg Gardens, and African animals pace morosely in the Jardin des Plantes. I wouldn’t take Harry to the notorious Palais Royale after dark, but he pleaded relentlessly for the cannon clock that was fired by sunbeams. At noon the sun focused through a glass, ignited its powder, and set off the gun.
“Boom!” he shouted as we walked back home. “Boom, boom, boom!”
I had him promise not to tell his mother.
CHAPTER 7
In sum, I rather enjoyed being a conspirator, since there no longer was much of a conspiracy to attend to. Yet our idyll grew grim as the execution of the royalist plotters approached, and our claustrophobic lives complicated my relationship with Catherine, who became evermore familiar and imperious.
“Ethan, I don’t understand your choice in marrying a slave,” she challenged once when