was soft and without conviction. “The American electrician,” he greeted with the unction of the highborn. “You were honored for your service at our celebration at Mortefontaine.”
“I’m flattered you remember, Grand Chamberlain. My role was brief.”
He managed a thin but wooing smile, the effort seeming to pain him. “I don’t remember your being modest and, at age fifty, I remember far too much.” He turned and bowed slightly. “This is your intriguing wife?”
“Astiza, from Egypt.”
“I’m honored, madame. I understand you are an intellectual, a remarkable achievement for your sex.”
“Someday men will recognize that gender has little to do with the mind,” she responded. “Just as stooping to help a child makes a woman stand tall as a man.”
Now his smile widened, his eyebrows elevating. “Your reputation for wit and perception is deserved. And you study the ancients?”
“Yes. You’re a student of history, Grand Chamberlain?”
“Of power, for the good of mankind.” He looked about. “Ah, Monsieur Gage, how triumphant this all is, and how anxious! Napoleon is out to create a new court in order to be accepted as an equal by royal houses that despise and fear him. It’s a longing that will bring much blood, I predict. No new emperor can compete in stature with an ancient line of kings. I’m his servant, but I’m also nostalgic for the less complicated past. Before the revolution men knew their place, beauty was worshipped, and life was refined. Now everyone is sweaty and striving. Those who didn’t experience the security of a king will never know the full sweetness of living.”
“Sweetness for a few,” Astiza said. “Most were starving.” My wife is disturbingly honest.
“True, true.” His agreement was judicious, as if we were discussing insects. “Still, there was a civility that was lost forever. Ask your governess. She’ll tell you.”
So he knew Comtesse Marceau’s background as well. A fine hive of spies we were. “She already has,” I said.
His hand fluttered. “So many swords, so many uniforms! This is a masculine age, Madame Gage. The years of the king were a feminine era. Marie Antoinette was slandered, but the truth is she was kindly, sweet, and deserved veneration, not beheading. I believe ages come in cycles, the wise domesticity of women alternating with the heroic aggression of men, peace cycling with war, and grace followed by grandeur. Both, I believe, are necessary for human progress.”
“You’re a philosopher, Grand Chamberlain,” my wife said. “And a believer in progress?”
“Progress that always comes at a cost.”
I felt rustic next to this worldly adviser, chaperoned by a giant, and surrounded by men who might kill me if they knew all my alliances. In a crush of five thousand people, I felt lonely, save for my wife. “This gathering sparkles,” I said without conviction. “And congratulations on your own elevation, Grand Chamberlain.” Compliments are never wasted.
“Regimes fall, but I do not.” He said it lightly, and then regarded me more intently, suddenly all business. “I was disappointed not to have more correspondence from you on our strategy for the American frontier.”
That hapless adventure had been three years before. “Again, I’m surprised you remember. In any event, I didn’t find a postal system among Red Indians. But as you’re no doubt aware, I came back to help with the sale of Louisiana to my own country. I was delighted it was successfully concluded last year.”
“Yes, a bargain for both of us. I understand an exploration of it is under way by Jefferson’s secretary, a man named Lewis, with a frontiersman named Clark.”
“Clark, too? I’ve met both. An able pair, but then Jefferson is a good judge of talent.” I implied we could include me in that roster.
“A Frenchman joined them, my correspondents tell me. A voyageur you knew by the name of Pierre Radisson.”
“You follow the travels of Pierre? You are remarkably well informed.” So my old friend was off with Meriwether Lewis. The West was where he belonged.
“It’s a small world,” Talleyrand said. “And will they succeed?”
“They are very capable. But the United States has become very big.”
“I’ll be interested to hear what they discover. We’ve little idea what we sold you.” That thin smile again.
What was this about? We were spies, not ministers, and the business of police, not ambassadors. Why was Talleyrand bothering with us? “You’re working, I trust, for an end to the present war with Britain?” I said in order to say something. “The United States wishes to resume trade with both sides.” France was under British blockade.