Across the Endless River (11 page)

She was attended by a short old woman servant in less ample folds of black, and by her daughter. The young woman had the same entrancing eyes and skin of her mother, but her hair was black and shiny and pulled back from her face tightly. She wore a gray-blue jacket and long skirt and a less dramatic version of the older woman's bonnet and cape that, together with her high cheekbones and strong chin, kept her from being overly pretty and gave her a serious air.

He overheard her say softly, “It's all over now, Mother. Try not to excite yourself.” She moved closer and took her mother's elbow. “We'll soon have our baggage and be on our way.” Her reassuring words brought a gradual calming of her mother's agitation, in the same way one might soothe a horse's skittishness with even tones and a sure touch.

His line advanced and he drew even with the three women. The daughter swung her head around as if she were looking for someone, and when she turned back her eyes caught Baptiste's for an instant. She noticed him—of that he had no doubt. He saw a look of puzzlement on her face, perhaps at seeing a dark-skinned foreigner. A nudge from the man behind told him that their line had advanced while he daydreamed, and he stepped forward.

Baptiste continued to watch her as they moved up the line. Suddenly several documents dropped from the young woman's hands and fell at his feet. He stooped down to gather them and found himself face-to-face with the blue eyes that had so startled him.

“How foolish of me!” she exclaimed, and then, more softly, “How very kind of you.”

Baptiste gathered the papers and gently brushed away the dust with a handkerchief. He rose and handed the papers to the young woman. She extended her gloved hand and smiled. The scent of her hair mingled with the starch of her blouse drew him closer. “Thank you so much. I'm Maura Hennesy.” She turned to her left. “And this is my mother, Mrs. Hennesy.”

Her mother, too, extended her hand, but with a doubtful look. Baptiste realized he was still wearing his hat. He grabbed at it quickly with his left hand as he took hers.

“Very pleased to make your acquaintance, ladies.” This was Captain Clark's invariable formula. He was about to introduce himself, when Paul appeared at his side in the company of a uniformed customs official. Paul said,
“Voici Monsieur Charbonneau, mon compagnon de voyage.”
The official made a small bow in Paul's direction and murmured deferentially,
“Oui, Monsieur le Duc,”
then addressed Baptiste directly.
“Venez, Monsieur. Venez, s'il vous plaît.”
In the buttonhole of one of his lapels Paul wore a small width of silk ribbon—crimson, with narrow black and yellow stripes along one edge. Baptiste had noticed the custom inspector's gaze drawn to this tiny swatch of cloth. Before stepping away Baptiste said, “Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau, at your service, Mrs. Hennesy.” He exchanged a fleeting smile with her daughter as he put on his hat and hurried after Paul.

They walked along the pier back toward the
Smyrna
where Schlape was busily supervising the removal of the baggage from the hold of the ship. Paul's two large trunks, a neat mahogany folding desk with brass fittings, and a soft valise of thickly grained leather sat on the pier. A dozen large reinforced boxes of rough-hewn pine were adjacent to them, no two of precisely the same dimensions. Six crew members were removing the freight from the hold, and they struggled mightily with each box that joined the growing stack of Paul's treasures.

The smell of alcohol and of decaying flesh rose from some of the boxes and hung heavily in the air; others made muffled tinklings and rattlings as they were hefted from below. Baptiste had not seen the baggage being loaded in New Orleans and had not imagined the volume of containers Paul had assembled.

Paul engaged in small talk with a French customs official, assuring him that all the specimens in his collection would transit France in their sealed containers,
“en compagnie de Monsieur Schlape.”
Occasionally he warned one of the American crew members in his heavily accented English about the fragility of the contents: “Please to be careful!”

Finally the shout “Clear below!” echoed up from the hatch as the last two boxes were placed near what was now a small mountain of containers. Paul summoned Schlape to his side. He spoke to him in German, clearly giving instructions, though Baptiste understood only one or two of the words they exchanged. After counting the boxes, Schlape turned his back to Paul and extended a bulging white envelope to the customs inspector. In halting French he stammered,
“Voici
pour vos efforts, Monsieur. Merci de votre compréhension.”
The official pocketed it quickly, then shook hands with Schlape.
“Je vous en prie,
Monsieur.”
He bowed his head, then turned on his heel.

The hotel Paul took Baptiste to was sumptuously decorated. It had lamps with shiny brass fittings, upholstered chairs, fine wooden furniture, large mirrors on the walls, even a pianoforte in the main salon. Captain Clark's house in St. Louis had many of these features, as did a few of the big new houses built by merchants who had grown rich from the fur trade, but they were the exception. Almost all the buildings in Le Havre were made of stone, whereas in St. Louis most had been constructed of rough-hewn or painted wood, or of brick. But that was only the beginning of the new things Baptiste was to see. In St. Louis, entering one of the grand houses was like entering a richly appointed church from a plain and unremarkable street. Here, this level of comfort appeared to be commonplace. More remarkable yet, it was available to everyone. A steady stream of people walked in and out of the hotel as if they belonged there and took meals together in the room reserved for that purpose. What surprised Baptiste the most about his first experience of a French city was how public it all was, as if the fine houses of the rich shared the openness of the bars he had known in St. Louis or New Orleans.

But soon a profound exhaustion overcame him. Only with difficulty did he manage to stay awake for a light supper before falling into a deep sleep in the hotel. The solid bed was an unimaginable luxury after the ship, and Baptiste slept for more than twelve hours. He took a short walk in the early morning before they left Le Havre, trying to fix in his mind this city that was so different from the few towns and cities he had known in America.
Everything
was different: the low gray light; the earthy scent of coal smoke in the air; the feel of stone paving underfoot; the sounds of the port echoing across the water.

As they made their way out of Le Havre on the two-day journey to Paris, he counted half a dozen churches before they left the city limits, several of which were larger than the cathedral in New Orleans. Every village they passed through had a sizeable church on the main square, its stone walls and steeple covered with lichen, as if it had sprouted from the ground ages ago and grown slowly.

A strong wind blustered from the sea, sending clouds speeding across the sky that cast shadows on the varied landscape. But the sun appeared frequently enough for Baptiste to see at its most radiant the region Paul called Normandy. The rolling hills that began outside Le Havre were given over to farming. Small fields separated by hedgerows covered the hills and dipped down into the valleys, following the softened contours of the land. The road, too, rose and fell and rose again, within sight of a river for the first hour or so. Pastures filled with sheep and cattle alternated with the fallow fields. Occasionally they drove through a forest, short interludes before they reentered the world of low stone walls, half-frozen fields, and leafless trees planted in neat rows as boundary markers.

The coachman had placed a portable stove containing hot coals on the floor of the carriage to warm the interior against the biting February wind; periodically, Baptiste found that he had to lower the window to breathe fresh air. The sea air had been replaced by a pungent mixture of rotting leaves and of animals kept in enclosed pastures for a long period. He saw extensive orchards outside several of the villages they passed through, and a distinctive kind of house, sometimes quite large, with a thatched roof and visible timbers embedded in the outside walls.

Baptiste and Paul talked little. Baptiste was transfixed by the views out the coach window, and Paul was distracted and tired after making the arrangements for transporting and protecting his countless specimens. At breakfast he had talked of little else, and checked the details with Schlape repeatedly. The several wagons would follow them to Paris at a slower pace, two men having been engaged through the customs inspector to ride along with Schlape as guards.

That evening they found lodging and food in a comfortable inn on the outskirts of a small city, where they changed horses. When they left the next morning on the last leg of their journey, they talked of Paris. Baptiste could not conjure up anything in his mind to match what he would soon see. Paul told him they would be staying with his uncle, a prince of Württemberg.

Paul explained that Prince Franz was a skilled and valued diplomat who had been an early admirer of Bonaparte. He had fought in Napoleon's victorious battles at Wagram, Eylau, and Austerlitz. Paul's uncle King Friedrich, Franz's brother, had switched sides after Napoleon's defeat in Russia years later, but Franz remained a true believer, though he had had to keep his sentiments to himself after Waterloo and the restoration of the Bourbons to the throne of France. “He thinks for himself. That, you will see, is not always welcome in this part of the world.”

He retained influential friends in Prussia, Austria, Russia, France, and even England, and represented the kingdom's interests in France. “He must hide his distaste for Louis the Eighteenth and the
ancien
régime.
Still, he prefers Paris to all other cities and lives there in luxury.”

Paul sounded weary, and it occurred to Baptiste that he wasn't happy about returning home after his North American adventure. Fatigue from the voyage was surely catching up to both of them as they entered the outlying districts to the northwest of the capital. Tired as he was, though, Baptiste could hardly contain the excitement he felt at the prospect of reaching Paris, the place whose name meant in St. Louis a kind of earthly heaven.

E
LEVEN

F
EBRUARY 1824

B
aptiste's first few days in Paris were like a waking dream. Anticipation, excitement, doubt, and wonder flooded his mind as he looked around him. He had felt this way only once before, when his parents left him in St. Louis with Captain Clark, but his surroundings there had been understandable, if not entirely familiar. Here, nothing in his life prepared him for what he found in this vast city.

This time, though, he felt no dread and no fear. He was an adult, not a child, and he had chosen to leave. An insatiable urge to see and experience for himself what he had only heard of, usually in tones of deference and respect, now took the place of his childhood timidity. He remembered the reverence with which Captain Clark handled the cut-crystal decanter that reigned in honey-hued splendor at the center of the mantel. “Mr. Jefferson made me a gift of this for my wedding,” he announced to visitors as he poured out glasses of sherry. “He brought it from Paris.”
From Paris:
those two words conferred magic. No higher provenance could be imagined.

They arrived in the evening and found that Paul's uncle was in Württemberg, expected back in three days. Prince Franz's house was in an open part of the city north of the river and about a mile west of the center. It was an imposing stone structure, three stories tall, set back from the street behind an elaborate wrought-iron fence. The paved forecourt was large enough for a carriage to turn with ease; at the back of the main house, gardens and flower beds, gray in the February chill, extended to a small orchard. Similar properties flanked the grounds behind stone walls, and each had its own gatehouse staffed by a liveried servant.

The interior was sumptuous, like nothing Baptiste had ever seen—even Mr. Chouteau's big house seemed plain by comparison. The floors were worked in complicated patterns of oak; the walls and ceilings were richly carved and painted; the banisters and doorknobs and window pulls were shaped in fancy brass curves, with gold and black detailing. Everywhere he looked Baptiste saw gold-framed portraits, all of them royal relatives, Paul told him.

The luxury of the rooms was a new experience, but the number of servants in Prince Franz's household was even more surprising. They were everywhere, uniformed and waiting, and Baptiste found their presence unsettling. Doors were opened, food served, boots shined—everything was done without any request or suggestion. Paul paid no attention to those who waited on them. Baptiste followed his example, but at first he stole glances at the servants, curious to know what they were thinking.
They aren't slaves,
he reminded himself.

The following day they set out just after breakfast, the two of them in a shining black carriage with tall glass windows that was pulled by a pair of perfectly groomed grays. After they had driven for a short while, Paul motioned down a very wide and long boulevard that descended gradually toward buildings and trees in the distance. “The ChampsElysées,” he said with a flourish, enjoying his role as Baptiste's guide. They headed down the long sweep of road, its edges lined with double rows of elms and stately houses that overlooked the intermittent parade of carriages. Baptiste could not understand why so much space had been made for a road; the passing traffic seemed puny against the boulevard's grand proportions. Even stranger, the perfectly spaced tree trunks looked as if they had been built rather than having grown from the earth.