dinner guest, but with more people in the house, Marie had been keeping watch over the table to be certain everyone was fed. Madame nodded her approval.
“If it is hunting you like,” Lucien said to Le Brun, “I’m afraid we’ll disappoint you in these parts. The last chance for such sport was a sighting of a rare baboon from the wilds of Kentucky.”
Byron’s chuckle, and Lucien’s delivery, signaled Pearce that amusement was in the air.
Le Brun, a quick study of facial expression, played along. “I see . . .”
“I saw him with my own eyes.” By now, Lucien stood to better physically reenact all that he described. “Grunting and gesticulating. Nostrils flared. Stovepipe hat askew! What a sight, making its way on a barge down the wide Mississippi! The creature came to these parts but narrowly escaped, never to travel these southernmost banks again!”
The three men laughed with gusto, Byron and Pearce catching on to the joke. Le Brun gave an obligatory chuckle. Jane didn’t care. Madame was humiliated.
“Please,” Madame said. It was too raucous for her and thwarted whatever good impression she could make on the guest. While she didn’t appreciate Le Brun’s demands, she worried about what he would relay to his patroness, the countess. “Please, gentlemen.”
“You’re right, Momanm,” Lucien conceded. “I’m just saying, in my way, the planter must vote his interest.”
“Is it so clear a choice, Father?” Byron asked. “The government understands the plight of the farmer. Don’t you agree?”
“I have no quarrel with the federal government,” Lucien said. “They laid handsome tariffs on our Cuban competitors. Gave aid for the levees. But that is the federal government. This baboon flinging his pucky, however . . .”
Le Brun caught on. “Ah! Your Abraham Lincoln.”
“Monsieur! Take that back. He isn’t my anything. Perhaps my eternal shame and thorn.”
“I must admit,” Pearce said, “the debates are thrilling. I’ve stood in the gallery while Lincoln and Douglas went at it. I’m not yet one and twenty, but if I could cast a vote this year, it would be . . .”
Pearce stopped cold. Byron kicked him hard under the table. There could be no good answer. And he was right.
“Bowel gas expelling into the air,” Lucien said. “Forgive me, Momanm.”
“Decency!” Madame cried. “Decency, please.”
“We know where Lincoln stands on our livelihood. And this Douglas. A Northern Democrat? A farce,” Lucien said. “Only a planter knows the life of a planter. The hardship. The sacrifice.”
“If I may, sir,” Pearce said, “Lincoln doesn’t want to end slavery. He only seeks to contain it.”
Lucien gave Pearce a wry smile. “Naive boy. Get back to West Point and let them finish making a man of you. Only a boy would listen to politicians and believe them. ‘Contain it,’” he mocked.
Byron tapped Pearce’s shoe, a consoling gesture.
“Why not end it?” Le Brun asked.
The quiet was a riot of noise unto itself. Even Madame put her hand to her mouth.
Lucien set down his glass of brandy. “You go too far, Le Brun!”
Byron stepped in. “Père, he doesn’t understand.” To Le Brun, Byron said, “This is the best life for the Negroes. Surely, you see that.”
“In France we have done away with the trade. Liberty for one is liberty for all.”
Only Thisbe seem to notice Madame’s swoon.
Lucien felt he had been tolerant and civil. It was time to pin the young man in a corner. “And has France liberated its colonies?” Lucien began. “French Afrique? French Martinique? Have you given up your taste for sugar? Need for cotton? Love of tobacco? Long-grain rice?”
Madame had enough and tapped her water glass until all looked her way. “We spent the enjoyable hour of the afternoon talking about Negroes and baboons.”
“I won’t be judged in my home,” Lucien said, indignant.
Byron sought to change the tension in the room. “Le Brun, if only you were here for Christmas.”
“Yes!” Madame exclaimed, encouraging Byron’s attempt at generating a lighter conversation. “Christmastime!”
“I can’t describe a happier time,” Byron said. “The bonfires along the river. Negroes in the boiling house making molasses—some that will make pies, cookies, puddings for the holidays.”
“Tell him, son,” Lucien said. “Negroes in the boiling house.”
“The cane has been cut and loaded and brought to the sugarhouse. On our small plantation there is a parade of gaiety. The négrillon squeal in delight, for they know they’ll have candy. The work gang throws their might into pressing and grinding. It’s true that the heat in the sugarhouse is without mercy, but how the Negroes take to it with a frenzy is