Jefferson (53 page)

“I know.” Suddenly miserable.

“When you come again, you must be nearer, and move more extempore.”

“You like flowers,” the Countess Potocki declared, hobbling up between them. She held a red lorgnette to her eyes and showed big yellow teeth nearly the size of Lafayette’s.

“I think of them as a parable,” Jefferson said, bowing to her again, either droll or serious, impossible to tell. “The flowers come forth like the belles of the day, have their brief reign of beauty and splendor, and retire like them to the more interesting office of reproducing their like.”

Maria opened her mouth to speak, but the countess was not to
be dislodged. “You went to Rome, I understand. Last spring. Now we are Polish, of course, my family is, but a branch is installed at Rome.”

“Ah, Milan was the spot at which I turned my back on Rome and Naples. It was a moment of conflict between duty, which urged me to return, and inclination urging me forward.”

Maria felt it all going wrong. In the mirror, for the beat of a heart, she saw herself disappear, vanish like a ghost behind a bright, false smile. “Mr. Jefferson,” she heard her voice tell the countess, “
always
chooses his duty.”

Jefferson’s face flickered, as if in pain.

At dinner, where she sat as guest of honor, though Jefferson knew she hated the subject, Lafayette lectured the table for two eternities on politics.

“In the Netherlands,” he announced, “the rebels have adopted an
American
slogan—‘Liberty or Death.’ ”

“He raced to the border last summer,” Clérisseau murmured in Maria’s ear, “and demanded to be made general of the liberated Dutch. They sent him packing.”

“And now”—Lafayette had raised his glass without looking; Sally Hemings filled it—“America again, always; we have a new American constitution that takes us into a new world.”

Jefferson was shaking his head; Clérisseau was whispering something else in her ear, an English quotation she had heard before about a brave new world. When she filtered his voice away, Lafayette was leaning intensely across the table, listening to Jefferson, who was—the very opposite of intense—sitting back in his usual informal, casual manner, fingers lightly gripping the stem or his glass, head propped on his right fist.

“I only received a copy of that new constitution two weeks ago, from Mr. Adams in London,” he said.

Lafayette seized on his tone. “You don’t like it? You don’t approve?”

Jefferson studied the glass. “There are very good articles in it, and very bad; I can’t say which preponderate. I confess there are things in it which stagger all my disposition to approve. For one thing, I dislike very much the fact that the President can be reelected—he can become, for all practical purposes, an officer for life.”

“A king,” Lafayette said.

Jefferson sank deeper into his familiar jackknife slouch. “More important still, I dislike the omission of a bill of rights.”

“A bill of rights to do what?” From the center of the table de Corny had now stretched forward, against all rules of French etiquette, to enter the conversation. Farther down, between Short and Adrienne Lafayette, the old countess was nodding vigorously, Madame de Corny had forgotten her food. Parisian women, Maria thought; an Assembly of Bores, politics. Jefferson had engineered this. She pushed her plate to one side with a clatter.

“Do you hear any news of art?” she asked, too loudly. “The portraits you commissioned in London? Painters here?”

Jefferson hesitated. “None at all,” he said. “No news of painters at all.” He smiled quickly, then turned back to de Corny. “A bill of rights would guarantee religious freedom. Freedom of the press, trial by jury, habeus corpus, protection against standing armies.” He glanced past her, to Lafayette. “It isn’t enough to say, as Adams does, that all these rights are reserved implicitly to the people. It is altogether more prudent, more practical, to state the people’s rights in the beginning, without sophisms. A bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, and what no government should refuse them.”

“The British press make much of your late rebellions in Massachusetts,” de Corny said, still leaning forward, both elbows on the cloth, pinching the bridge of his nose with two fingers; Short’s gesture, Maria thought, balling up her napkin. Would they never shut up? She felt more in sympathy with Short every day. All Paris knew why the Rochefoucaulds were not at the party. She took a deep breath. De Corny droned on. “They insist America is in anarchy and needs the strong arm of a king.”

“Like their own,” Jefferson said, never once looking her way. “George
rex
. The English have spun so many lies about America for so long, they now probably believe them. We have had very little in the way of rebellion and anarchy, if the facts be known. Calculate. One rebellion in thirteen states in the course of eleven years is but one per state in a century and a half. What country ever before existed a century and a half without rebellion? And, to be frank, of what significance are a few lives lost in a century or two? I am an old gardener. The
tree of liberty should be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

Against her will Maria shuddered. So serene, so
bloody
. Jefferson’s two hands, the one strong, healthy, open; the other crooked and weak. Symbols of—what?

“You hate kings that much?” The old countess was wrinkling her brow, offended. “We have kings in France.”

“I hope”—Jefferson smiled diplomatically—“America may be spared them.”

“But a country needs a king. The people need to be guided.”

“Have we found angels in the form of kings to govern us?” Jefferson’s smile never wavered. “I think in America we have embarked on the world’s last, best hope—to govern ourselves, freely, by the light of reason alone.”

“England will settle the new constitution,” Lafayette said, clicking his teeth like castanets, drinking his wine. “America is still under England’s sway. I speak as a patriot and admirer—but your language, your trade, all your history and laws—hopeless.”

Jefferson nodded. His eyes followed James Hemings and the procession of maids behind de Corny’s chair, carrying plates. “America is indeed chained to England by circumstances,” he agreed. “You may say we enact the old Roman fable of the living and the dead bodies bound together. We embrace what we loathe.”

Maria rose abruptly from her chair, spilling her wine, and rushed from the table.

In the hallway, scarcely seeing what she did, she fumbled with the outside door, a key, then stepped back to let the footman pass. The snow had turned to rain. A servant appeared for an instant—a white spot of a face—then vanished. From the dining room Clérisseau’s voice came and went, and then Jefferson was behind her, holding the soft lambswool cloak—Richard’s present—she had arrived in. “My dear friend,” he murmured. Did he ever apologize? “You’re upset. I’ve made a mistake—too many people, we’ve been dull on politics.” Then bending closer: “I will come to breakfast tomorrow before you leave.”

She shook her head but kept her eyes fixed on the door. “I’m merely confused, distracted.” Taking a deep breath, she turned to look up at him. “You are all brilliant, wonderful.” Then formally,
coldly, to pierce him, “I hope our correspondence will be more frequent and punctual than our meetings have been.”

Jefferson nodded and stood close to fasten the cloak at her throat. Behind her the door blew open again and the wind gusted. He was a public man, with ambitions; a jealous daughter; a hand like a claw.

“I will arrive at seven,” he said, adjusting the cloak. James Hemings was holding the front door ajar. Jefferson’s lips were warm, polite on her outstretched fingers. “And then escort you all the way to the Porte Saint-Denis, just as before.” From behind his back, surprising her yet again, with the gentlest possible smile he held out a second delicate primrose.

“Just as before,” she repeated, seeing the flower through tears.

The next morning, as Short watched from his bedroom window, Jefferson left the Hôtel de Langeac at half past six.

An hour later, from the second-floor study, Short saw him return. He opened his watch in surprise, then squinted down at the street. Jefferson’s face, as best he could tell, was calm and impassive. But his shoulders were high and loose, like those of a man relieved of a burden.

At midmorning, without having reappeared, Jefferson departed again, this time for his room at the hermitage. In the office Short filed letters and balanced their ledgers. Petit, passing the open door, brought in the miscellaneous papers he had found in Jefferson’s room and laid them carefully on the letter table. When he had gone, Short got up slowly, walked to the table, and since it was his usual task, began to leaf through the stack. The last letter was an unsigned note, in an envelope, written in a tiny, feminine script.

It had begun to rain softly again. Short stood for a long moment, reading the letter, pondering the strange, cool, not un-Jeffersonian word
civilities
. Then, without thinking, he turned over the envelope and ran his thumb along the seal. On the inner flap, so faint as to be almost invisible, was a pen-and-ink drawing of a small unhappy female face, imprisoned inside a pillar, like a caryatid on a temple. He held it up to the light. From the drawing room downstairs came the thin, distant notes of the harpsichord, one of the girls, Patsy or Polly, playing a waltz.

“
H
e will never,
ever
promote your interests while you remain
here
.”

Having delivered his opinion, Gouverneur Morris sat back in his chair—not with an air of self-satisfaction, Short thought; a better word to describe Morris would be
composure
. Or
complacency, self-assurance, arrogance, charm—
Short gave it up. Morris had arrived in Paris two months ago, on February 17, 1789 to be Jeffersonian and precise, and Short still had no idea how to take his measure.

“If he wants you to resume the law, and in Virginia”—Morris shivered delicately, as one might shiver in disgust at a rat—“then he has made up his mind, and it won’t do to cross him. You hate the law?”

Short nodded. It was pointless to correct Morris, who misunderstood Jefferson willfully and completely.

“But not Virginia?” Morris shook his head in wonder.

In fact, Short wanted to say, Virginia too; but Morris had begun to wag his empty glass significantly at the nearest garçon.

“A cold well easily runs dry,” Morris said. He tilted his big, handsome head toward the window, where pedestrians were clattering
by, bundled and gloved and hatted like white-faced bears. “I read today that the winter of 1788–89 has been the coldest winter in French history.”