Jefferson (8 page)

“For Wednesday next,
mercredi demain
,” Jefferson said in answer to a question that Short had missed. A scarlet carriage clattered by, drowning the next few words as well, then Jefferson bowed, made a little salute with one hand, and turned back. “I never know what I say or what I agree to in French.” He tucked his hat under his arm, smiling wryly. “At my age any new language is Greek. Can you ride back with me in John Adams’s carriage? The ladies will shift around and go to Auteuil together, and we can talk.”

Short glanced quickly over his shoulder. In the crowd still pouring out into the sunlit rue de Grenelle, the elderly Frenchman and his veiled wife—companion? mistress? daughter?—had returned Jefferson’s bow and already vanished behind the bustling line of voitures. “That was—” he began hopefully, but Jefferson had absorbed the French habit of never introducing. He took Short’s arm for support and guided them both along the edge of the kennel, through a trail of horses’ rumps, cobblestones, curbs, debris, skirts, curses—the normal French chaos that made every excursion into streets a festival of flying bodies. Belatedly, Short registered Jefferson’s words: talk about
what
? At the end of the
carriages the black figure of John Adams could just be seen, round and squat as a tree stump.

“Horror, abomination, blasphemy!” Adams growled as they burst through a ring of liveried footmen and reached him. They clambered into his carriage, and he barked an order through the window in appalling French and continued his catalogue: “Paganism, sorcery, witchcraft—take the whole caste of priests and line them up against the walls and shoot their livers out. Do I err by way of caution, brother Jefferson?”

Jefferson was laughing and holding the strap on the side of the carriage, Short was bouncing forward and back, trying to avoid Adams’s bony knees.

“No, you have three daughters, Jefferson—we turn left,
gauche
, there at the rue du Bac,
idiot—
three daughters. You couldn’t stand to see them in such a masked ball and pantomime, I know it.”

The carriage rattled into another narrow street, crisscrossed by swinging signboards, and plunged abruptly toward the river like a stone down a hill. “My Patsy tells me that the nuns leave all the Protestant girls to their own beliefs, and very few of the French girls ever take orders. All the same—”

“All the same,” Adams grumbled, “you agree with me. You worry. I know you do.” Adams leaned toward Short with a confidential scowl. “My wife claims she never saw a more
motherly
father than Mr. Jefferson, by which she means a great compliment. You must have seen in Virginia how he dotes on his daughters?”

But before Short could answer, Adams had changed the subject. “He says you’re a wonderful writer.”

“No, sir.” Short felt his face warming to a blush.

“Yes, sir. He tells me he gives you work to do in a private capacity and you do it beautifully. He says you’re always writing.”

For the first time Jefferson spoke. “Mr. Short is also gifted in languages. At William and Mary he founded a new scholarly society called Phi Beta Kappa. George Wythe says he was a superb student of Greek and Latin.”

“And he speaks French,” Adams said, nodding. “My daughter Nabby believes you have perfect pitch.” Adams cocked his head and confided to Jefferson, “She speaks it well herself, if a father
says so—but you and I, sir, are too old to make much progress. And Franklin … Franklin mumbles some private mixture of tongues never heard before, the Ambassador of Babel.”

No one, Short thought, was ever so sensitive to atmosphere as Jefferson. Seeming to agree, saying, in fact, nothing concrete, he leaned gently forward and steered them out of the shoals of Franklin. “Mr. Adams and I have had many other chances to speak of writing.”

Adams laughed and sat back in the jolting carriage. “Your friend here,” he said to Short, “will have told you about writing the Declaration.”

“No, sir.”

Adams spread his fingers across his waistcoat, thumb to thumb. “In Philadelphia,” he said. The carriage swerved; through a space between buildings Short could see one of the round towers of the Church of Saint-Sulpice, like municipal inkwells, bright in the sunshine, and for a dizzy instant he felt himself on the wrong stage, with the wrong backdrop. “In Philadelphia in ’76 our learned friend was made chairman of the committee instructed to write a declaration of separation,” Adams told him. “Franklin was on it too”—Jefferson leaned forward again—“but Franklin declined to draft anything, he only writes in almanacs. I told Jefferson he should write the draft and we would sign it. He demurred. He said
I
should write it, being senior to him. I said, ‘No, I have reasons enough not to write.’

“ ‘What reasons?’

“ ‘Reason first: You’re a Virginian, and a Virginian ought to appear at the head of this business. Reason second: I am obnoxious, suspected, and unpopular. Reason third: You can write
ten
times better than I can!’ ”

Before their laughter had died away, Adams was peering through his window at the traffic of wagons and carriages come to a dead halt on the rue de l’Université. A hundred yards ahead of them the Pont Royal began its white arch across the Seine.

“Business,” Adams said, turning back. “Franklin is leaving for America. You must now know, Mr. Short, in total confidence, that I mean to leave too.”

Jefferson was wedged against the padded side of the carriage,
his eyes closed in fatigue, but now he opened them. He said, “In total confidence, our friend expects within a few months to become American ambassador to London.”

“To bait John Bull,” Adams muttered.

“And therefore—” Jefferson continued in his deliberate fashion.

But Adams’s nature was blunt, impatient. He interrupted, “And therefore Mr. Jefferson is to be left here, in this sink of noise and pleasure, and therefore he needs an assistant.”

“A secretary.”

“He needs a private confidential secretary who can write well and speak French.”

Short held his breath.

“Colonel Humphreys has received a thousand pounds a year in that capacity.” Jefferson spoke with his eyes closed, his shoulders pressed back as the carriage jerked and rocked forward again. “Since he goes with the ambassador to London, I have written Mr. Jay to say that, if you accept the post, I expect Congress to pay you the same salary.”

Short exhaled with a pop.

“Not enough,” Adams said firmly. “You need
twice
that amount. Why, food alone—”

Swiveling from one to the other, Short began to say yes, it was enough, more than enough, to thank them, to trip and splutter over his tongue—Virginia was gone, Paris was his; but his effusiveness was suddenly undercut by Jefferson’s low voice, at once dreamy and ironic, quickly putting his new secretary back in his youthful place. “Well, brother Adams, our friend is vigorous and handsome. Paris no doubt has its own coin to pay him with.”

At the
pont tournant
, the rotating wooden footbridge that connected the Place Louis XV and the Jardin des Tuileries, Jefferson asked for the carriage to be halted so that he and Short could walk home through the garden. Adams protested briefly, but set them down. Jefferson, he told Short in a whispered aside, was still too feeble for much exertion. Watch him, guard him, his spirits more than his body had undergone seasoning. And as Short pulled
away to rejoin Jefferson’s tall figure at the garden entrance, Adams motioned him back for one last word.

“You know, he never complains or rages, as I do perpetually.” For a moment Adams looked neither choleric nor impatient but shrewd. “You polite Virginians bottle up all your anger.
Dum in dubio est animus, paulo momento huc illuc impellitur
. There’s Latin for you.”

“Terence,” Jefferson said, shaking his head, showing a quick, faint half-smile. “The greatest Roman playwright. ‘While the mind hangs in balance a straw will upset it.’ My hearing at least is still acute.”

Short, still bouncing, emboldened by his appointment, asked the question he had held back for half an hour. “Is he right—did you think the ceremony in the church just now was all sorcery and witchcraft?”

They had reached the riverside edge of the gardens. Over the balustrade, across the sparkling brown barge-littered river, they could discern an enormous clearing along the Quai d’Orsay and scattered piles of bricks and timbers. As always, Jefferson brightened at any sign of building. “Brother Adams puts things forcefully,” he said, waving the question away with the same half-smile.

“In Virginia your enemies call you atheist.” Short held his breath at his own boldness. Jefferson turned with a look of mild surprise.

“In Virginia my enemies are much given to hyperbole.” His smile faded. “You are serious. Let me be too. In my view there is nothing in life more important than a man’s religion, unless it is his marriage or family. Nothing more important—nothing more private. Every religious idea and act should be free of the state, free of coercion. John Adams wouldn’t agree—though Franklin would—but in fact it does me no injury at all for my neighbors to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”

He placed his elbows on the stone balustrade, as if to study the construction across the river, but kept his head turned toward Short. Behind them, on a gravel path between bare trees, passersby looked up curiously. Short thought that he knew Jefferson’s
face well enough to paint it—the long symmetrical features, the pointed nose, the pale blue eyes that gave away nothing; thin, sensitive lips, prominent chin tilted up. Even in its present weariness a Frenchman coming by would instantly recognize the face of an aristocrat, refined, delicate, used to luxury, used to command.

In point of fact, the aristocratic Jefferson was now speaking with something like his old radical, democratic energy. “Bill eighty-two,” he continued, giving the modest legislative name to the Virginia declaration of religious freedom that he had written and labored bitterly for seven years to pass. “Bill eighty-two was intended to break the stranglehold on privacy that the state enjoyed.”

Short nodded and moved his lips silently; he could recite whole portions of the preamble:
“Almighty God hath created the mind free … Truth is great and will prevail if left to herself.…”

“In Virginia,” Jefferson said, “before we presented our bill, heresy was still a capital offense. Denial of the Trinity could be punished by three years’ imprisonment, children could be snatched away from their parents. These were dead laws, William, but dead laws can be revived. In any case every landholder in the state was compelled to support the Anglican Church with his taxes. The tyranny in Massachusetts was worse. I hear it said that our settlers came from England seeking religious freedom, but that is an untruth of great malignity. They came seeking
uniformity
of religion, a thing there never can be and never should be.”

The energy died away from his voice, and he rubbed his face with his hands. His smile returned cautiously, not to his eyes. “As for the ceremony we have just witnessed,” he said, straightening, “to you, on this day of confidences, I will admit that I take no consolation from superstition.”

On the long walk back to rue Taitbout—“the sun is my almighty physician,” Jefferson said—Short listened to a recital of the duties they would jointly undertake, when and if a lumbering Congress, now settled in New York, completed the appointments.

There were sixteen treaties in all that they were authorized to pursue, commercial trade agreements with every European nation. So far only Prussia had shown interest. In addition, Congress chafed—to be precise, Jefferson and Adams chafed—under the yearly tributes they paid to the pirates of the Barbary Coast to
ransom the sailors they routinely abducted from American ships. (Defiance and a large navy, Jefferson said, were his idea of tributes.) And sale of three specific American commodities—tobacco, rice, whale oil—needed to be negotiated directly with the Farmers-General of France. Jefferson laid out the problem with laconic clarity: In return for an annual payment of cash, which he badly needed, Louis XVI had granted to a group of wealthy individuals, the Farmers-General, the sole right to purchase these three crops; they collected indirect taxes on every sale and used the full power of the government to enforce their monopoly. What Congress wanted was a market for American goods. What the Farmers-General wanted was the highest possible taxes. What the king wanted was any agreement that would damage British trade.