Breaking this flow at an opportune moment, Jimmy told Louis Du Pont that his arrival was fortuitous since the United States had new interest in French affairs.
“Over Louisiana, I suppose you mean,” Du Pont said. Like his brother, his English was accented but polished.
“You startle me, sir,” Tom said. “Is this widely known?”
“Through Talleyrand’s entourage, certainly. Frankly, I warned them the United States wouldn’t take kindly to the idea.”
“And how did they take that?”
She saw a glint in his eyes that was less respectful than his tone. “Unfortunately, they didn’t seem to care. I’m afraid they don’t take Americans as seriously as they should.”
Dolley was serving the tea, arranging the sandwiches on small china plates. When she presented a plate to young Du Pont, he turned so that his body blocked the other’s view; his hand, taking the plate, contrived to touch hers in a swift caress, his fingers sliding across her palm. The touch, so sly, so unexpected, so unwanted, infuriated her. She drew an explosive breath, glaring at him, fighting a wild impulse to hit him. He leaned back, smiling, more pleased with himself than ever.
When her heart slowed and her vision cleared and she became aware of the conversation again, she heard Tom saying it was odd that Talleyrand’s entourage should know all about the Louisiana move, for he had denied it to Livingston.
Again that little glint, that touch of self-satisfaction she’d
noticed in Pierre as well, as Louis said, “Oh, that’s just Talleyrand playing with Livingston. He hates Americans, you know. Everyone finds him baffling, frustrating, confusing—ha! Lying to Livingston would just be his idea of sport.”
“Yet we did welcome him,” Tom said, his voice mild, “when his compatriots were ready to put his neck under the blade.”
“Well, Mr. President,” Louis said, “good deeds are rarely appreciated.”
But of course, Dolley thought, after XYZ everyone knew Talleyrand was a monster. Defrocked bishop, strange, twisted, crippled little man hobbling about on a destroyed foot and possessed of such surpassing intellect and usefulness that his greatest excesses were readily forgiven, serving the king and then the revolution and now the dictator with equal skill, his appetite for bribes insatiable.
Pierre Du Pont cleared his throat. “But actually it’s not just Americans; he hates everyone.”
“Exactly,” Louis said. “There’s an amusing story. Your man Livingston was being presented, and Napoleon told him he had come to a corrupt country and then asked Talleyrand, as a master of its practice, to explain corruption to the newcomer.”
The three Frenchmen laughed heartily. Jimmy watched them, his expression cool but unreadable.
“And then,” Louis said, his tongue darting out to wet his lips, a small smile playing, “I must tell you, court circles in Paris are little impressed with this Livingston person. His French is only adequate, he doesn’t hear well, he misses most of what’s said. Apparently he didn’t hear the first consul’s sally when everyone else did, which, of course, doubled the humor of it.”
Dolley was growing steadily more angry as she absorbed the blatant contempt for things American that these men expressed, each in his own way. Mr. Livingston was a man of plain dignity and plain American views and somehow the image of him abraded by the corrupt wit of a corrupt court sickened her.
Tom, sitting deep in his chair, twirling his wineglass, said, “Tell us about the first consul, gentleman. He must be quite the extraordinary fellow; he’s made such swift strides.”
“To suggest he moves too rapidly denigrates him, sir!” Louis snapped. Tom flushed at the tone, and she saw Pierre cast an anxious glance at his brother, who blared on. “Sir, understand that in his time he has made a mark on the face of the world that will never be eradicated!”
“Louis,” Pierre said in a low voice.
His brother colored. He looked around the room. At last he said, “Forgive me if I seem overvehement. Napoleon Bonaparte has saved France from chaos and ruin. He stands for all that is good, he has brought decency and honor, not only to France, but to all of Europe that he has touched. He is a genius of law, of government, of education. He has wiped away royalty on every side in a way that Americans surely must admire. If I speak too strongly, my apologies. I love that man.”
“You speak well, Monsieur Du Pont,” Tom said. He smiled. “Of course, the first consul is a man of power too.”
“Ah, Mr. President,” Pierre said, raising a hand to silence his brother, “Napoleon Bonaparte is a unique figure. I knew him when he was a penniless lieutenant from Corsica, and Corsicans are not highly regarded in France. You didn’t see his genius then, his uniforms frayed, he thin as a rail and looking hungry, but he knew guns. And in the wild days after the Terror, he made his mark with artillery. There was a rebellion; his guns settled it. He became a brigadier, but only a little brigadier then.
“But there is a certainty in him, an instinctive sense for what to do in every instance. Skinny little lieutenant from Corsica—and somehow, he
knows
. Knows what the rest of us can’t know—is it instinct, intuition? Certainly it’s genius. He’s barely schooled, often he’s as innocent as a boy, he’s forever being surprised by things we treat as common knowledge.
“And yet that Italian campaign, my God! A marvel of speed and slashing attack that left his opponents stunned, quick
marches to slash again, four major battles in ninety-six hours, his men marching demonically, sleeping on their feet, he sleeping in the saddle but never pausing, and arriving to strike again and again. He sweeps around forts, he flanks them, renders them useless, marches on. Corporals become generals if they have courage and intellect and the instinct for attack. He takes Milan, takes all of Lombardy, enters Florence, defeats the Austrian army, then turns north and plunges into Austria proper, destroys its army, makes it beg for peace.
“Yet his army was never larger than 44,000! And he destroyed armies four times his size: Four times!
“And returned to Paris to find the revolutionary government in collapse. Of course he took over. He saw the way, knew what was needed, acted out of that same sure instinct that made him understand war as no man before him has understood it—out of, in short, genius.”
There was a moment of silence. This image of a simple man possessed of the capacity to shake the world was overwhelming.
At last Tom said, voice lazy and unconcerned, “You picture him beautifully, Pierre. And he is, as I said, a man of power.”
“Yes, Mr. President, but in the most benign sense.”
“Oh, I’m sure. And personally? He’s sort of an innocent?”
“Well …” Pierre hesitated. “Yes, in the sense he’s not highly educated. But he knows his own mind. He can be implacable once he decides what he wants. Nothing can shake him. Ferocious temper too. I’m told his explosions are legendary. Of course, it’s because he’s so impatient of inefficiency—”
“And of opposition?” Jefferson asked.
Pierre colored. “Well, when opposition gets in the way of his great plans. Still, I’ve been in a large room when he exploded at some underling and—well, you know that he comes out of the barracks. He can be quite brutal. Charming one moment, ferocious the next.”
“That usually frightens people,” Tom said, in that easy way.
“Oh, indeed. He terrifies those around him. Everything rests on his favor, you see. You’re in if he nods, out if he doesn’t. Just like that. No argument, no appeal.” He paused, as if seeing where this had taken him. “Of course, in a democratic nation like yours that may have an ugly sound, but believe me, France was desperate when he took over; it needed his discipline. And so does Europe. And Napoleon Bonaparte is the man to give all Europe what it needs—an end to kings and royalty, freedom well backed with discipline.”
“French discipline … ,” Tom sounded half asleep.
“Yes, French—” Pierre stopped abruptly. “Well, you make it sound bad, but—”
“No, Pierre,” Tom said, “
you
make it sound bad.”
“I don’t mean to,” Pierre said. And then, as if making up his mind and plunging, “Mr. President, I love this country of yours. It is a refuge for the hunted and the abused of the world. It has been a refuge to me. My son dreams of an empire of chemistry here. Now this country has differences with a man whom I know to be unsurpassed. Permit me to warn you, he is a hard man. He is dangerous. No one knows how his mind works; no one can guess what he will do next, except that it will be what no one expected. He cares absolutely nothing for human life; he cares only for his aims. They are to serve humanity as a whole; whom he may crush to accomplish that is immaterial.
“Please, Mr. President, do forgive me when I say, proceed with great caution. There is no more dangerous man in the world than Napoleon Bonaparte.”
And Dolley gazed in horror at the bleakest possible picture: Little Jimmy Madison in hand-to-hand combat with the most dangerous man in the world.
It was dark and a fine, cold rain was falling when they left. She and Jimmy rode home without speaking. In their bedroom she stepped out of the plum gown, noticing a mustard smear on one of the white panels. Jimmy emerged from his
dressing room in slippers and a blanket robe. The silence held; apparently it was to be one of those evenings.
He set aside the fire screen and poked and poked until the fire was blazing. His jaw was set, his lips pulled down.
“Jimmy … ,” she said.
He turned to face her, still on one knee, poker in hand. “Well, whatever else we learned, we learned it was a mistake to send Mr. Livingston to Paris!”
“What?” she cried, suddenly as angry as he. “From those oafs we learned? Laughing up their sleeves at us—”
“Oh, were they?”
“Laughing, snickering inside, at Tom, at you, at me. The sneers of the haut monde of Paris for poor Mr. Livingston, whose French is not up to debating a tyrant. Well, neither is mine, neither is yours. Oh, the
arrogance
of those men—”
“You’re angry because the son tried to flirt with you.”
“Don’t be silly. It’s never offensive when a man thinks of flirting. The offense is when he assumes it will be welcome. I was furious, and you should be too!”
“Oh, I saw, all right. I just didn’t choose to have an international incident in the president’s drawing room. Anyway, what do you want? Call him out? Pistols at dawn?”
“Oh, for God’s sake, what a ridiculous thing to say, James Madison, and you know it!”
“Yes, yes, I wasn’t serious. But it is true that you wouldn’t be half so riled if they hadn’t made Livingston look the fool after your fervid defense of him.”
“I thought Mr. Livingston came off very well. We should lose faith in him because Napoleon and this creature, Talleyrand, lacked the courtesy and respect to deal properly with him?”
“But why do you defend him so?”
“Because I talked to him—two hours or more—and I judged him a solid man with integrity, a very firm sense of himself, certainly a high confidence that you seem to view as arrogance, but I wouldn’t want to send a man into that French snake pit who wasn’t sure of his own position in the world and not likely to let others devalue him in his own eyes.”
“And on that basis—”
“Yes, on that basis. What other basis does one have? He’s distinguished enough; you yourself said you pretty well had to offer him something. I’m not a fool. I’ve been watching people a long time. You’re deep in the intellectuality of government, but I look at people and sometimes I see more than you do.”
He stood abruptly. “I’m going downstairs.”
“Jimmy,” she wailed, “I
talked
to him.” But the door had closed. Well, she
had
talked, and it had been very pleasant. She’d been wearing the brocaded gown of sky blue silk, the burst of lace hardly concealing her ample bosom, of which he’d taken appropriate notice and then ignored. Some men seemed never to look at her above the level of her chin. He’d proposed a toast and touched his glass to hers in honor of Virginia and New York, which he saw as the poles of American excellence.
He’d asked her about Virginia and especially its agriculture, querying her closely about Jimmy’s plowing and fallowing methods, and soon was talking easily of his own estates in New York grouped for miles around the stone mansion he called Clermont. His voice was warm and musical, and as she asked a few questions she could see him with his huge and far-flung family, tenant farmers and slaves working acres as far as the eye could see. Of course he was confident, standing as he did at the center of a rich, well-regulated world … .
Suddenly he was telling her of a discovery he’d made, watching her closely to be sure she wouldn’t laugh. On the Hudson flats one day he’d spied a weed in wild profusion, and upon examination found it had many of the qualities of paper, lacking only paper’s strength. Its proper name was
conserva
, but the locals called it “frog spit,” which gave you an idea of its delicacy; and he’d seen instantly that it might be a new primary ingredient for making paper. You can see, he continued to her willing nods, that with a cheap ingredient the United States could become the paper supplier for the entire world. So he’d had his men gather eighty pounds of the weed—amazing the volume of eighty pounds—and they’d put it through someone’s paper plant in New York
City and it had almost—
almost
—worked! That close! Oh, it had been frustrating, but he hadn’t given up on it, no, sir!