Autobiography of a Pocket-Handkerchief

by James Fenimore Cooper

{douaniers = customs officials}

"Ay, but we don't smuggle in America," returned the colonel, with an aplomb that might have done credit to Vidocq himself; "in our republican country the laws are all in all."

{Vidocq = Francois Vidocq (1775-1857), a senior French police official who was secretly a burglar, and who "investigated" his own crimes for a long time before being exposed}

"Why do so many of your good republicans dress so that the rue de Clery don't know them, and then go to the chateau?" demanded the commissionaire, very innocently, as to appearance at least.

{chateau = palace}

"Bah! there are the five napoleons—if you want them, take them—if not, I care little about it, my invoice being all closed."

Desiree never accepted money more reluctantly. Instead of making one hundred and fifty-five francs out of the toil and privations, and self-denial of poor Adrienne, she found her own advantages unexpectedly lessened to fifty-five; or, only a trifle more than one hundred per cent. But the colonel was firm, and, for once, her cupidity was compelled to succumb. The money was paid, and I became the vassal of Colonel Silky; a titular soldier, but a traveling trader, who never lost sight of the main chance either in his campaigns, his journeys, or his pleasures.

To own the truth, Colonel Silky was delighted with me. No girl could be a better judge of the ARTICLE, and all his cultivated taste ran into the admiration of GOODS. I was examined with the closest scrutiny; my merits were inwardly applauded, and my demerits pronounced to be absolutely none. In short, I was flattered; for, it must be confessed, the commendation of even a fool is grateful. So far from placing me in a trunk, or a drawer, the colonel actually put me in his pocket, though duly enveloped and with great care, and for some time I trembled in every delicate fibre, lest, in a moment of forgetfulness, he might use me. But my new master had no such intention. His object in taking me out was to consult a sort of court commissionaire, with whom he had established certain relations, and that, too, at some little cost, on the propriety of using me himself that evening at the chateau of the King of the French. Fortunately, his monitress, though by no means of the purest water, knew better than to suffer her eleve to commit so gross a blunder, and I escaped the calamity of making my first appearance at court under the auspices of such a patron.

{eleve = pupil}

There was a moment, too, when the colonel thought of presenting me to Madame de Dolomien, by the way of assuring his favor in the royal circle, but when he came to count up the money he should lose in the way of profits, this idea became painful, and it was abandoned. As often happened with this gentleman, he reasoned so long in all his acts of liberality, that he supposed a sufficient sacrifice had been made in the mental discussions, and he never got beyond what surgeons call the "first intention" of his moral cures. The evening he went to court, therefore, I was carefully consigned to a carton in the colonel's trunk, whence I did not again issue until my arrival in America. Of the voyage, therefore, I have little to say, not having had a sight of the ocean at all. I cannot affirm that I was absolutely sea-sick, but, on the other hand, I cannot add that I was perfectly well during any part of the passage. The pent air of the state-room, and a certain heaviness about the brain, quite incapacitated me from enjoying any thing that passed, and that was a happy moment when our trunk was taken on deck to be examined. The custom-house officers at New York were not men likely to pick out a pocket-handkerchief from a gentleman's—I beg pardon, from a colonel's—wardrobe, and I passed unnoticed among sundry other of my employer's speculations. I call the colonel my EMPLOYER, though this was not strictly true; for, Heaven be praised! he never did employ me; but ever since my arrival in America, my gorge has so risen against the word "master," that I cannot make up my mind to write it. I know there is an ingenious substitute, as the following little dialogue will show, but my early education under the astronomer and the delicate minded Adrienne, has rendered me averse to false taste, and I find the substitute as disagreeable as the original. The conversation to which I allude, occurred between me and a very respectable looking shirt, that I happened to be hanging next to on a line, a few days after my arrival; the colonel having judged it prudent to get me washed and properly ironed, before he carried me into the "market."