CHAPTER XIX
CHECK TO THE ABBÉ!
"When Greeks joined Greeks, then was the tug of war."
I had been in Paris three weeks, and they had been weeks of unalloyed delight. The life and gaiety of the brilliant capital, the streets lined with handsome houses and thronged with gay equipages, richly dressed people, soldiers wearing the tricolored cockade, students, artists, workmen, blanchisseuses, and nursery-maids in picturesque costumes tending prettily dressed children, made a moving panorama I never tired of. Even the great palaces and the wonderful works of art scarcely interested me as did this shifting kaleidoscopic picture, and I looked back at life in my native town on the banks of the Delaware as belonging to another world, incomparably tame and dull by comparison.
Every morning I accompanied my uncle, Monsieur Barbé Marbois, to the Treasury office, and left him at the door, to roam around the streets and watch the life of the town. I was at home again in time for midday déjeuner, and then on Fatima's back (for I had brought Fatima with me; no persuasion of friends could induce me to leave her behind, since she had twice rescued mademoiselle and so become my most trusted friend)—on Fatima's back I dashed out the Avenue to the beautiful Wood of Boulogne, sometimes racing with the young bloods to whom my uncle had introduced me, sometimes checking my horse to a gentle canter beside a coachful of Faubourg St. Germain beauties, exchanging merry compliments with the brilliant and witty mothers while I looked at the pretty daughters, who, for aught I knew, were as stupid as their mothers were brilliant, since they never opened their mouths. And so back to my aunt's in time to make a careful toilet for the four-o'clock dinner, when there were sure to be guests, more or less distinguished, but always interesting.
I had delivered my message and my note from the President to Mr. Livingston on the day of my arrival, and it seemed to me that it did not please him overmuch that an envoy extraordinaire should be sent to attend to his affairs; but he said nothing, and received me most graciously, both as a messenger from the President and because I was the son of his old friend.
Several times since my arrival at my uncle's house, both Mr. Livingston and his son the colonel had been guests there, and always the talk had turned on what most interested me, the purchase of New Orleans and the Floridas. At one of these dinners, Monsieur Talleyrand, the Minister of Foreign Relations, was also guest, and while there was but little reference to Louisiana at table, I was, with no intention on my part, a listener later to a most interesting conversation between Monsieur Talleyrand and Mr. Livingston that was no doubt intended to be strictly private.
Thinking that it was very likely the three gentlemen—- the Minister of Foreign Relations, my uncle the Secretary of the Treasury, and the United States minister—might have matters of importance to discuss where my absence would be more desirable than my presence, I left the salon immediately after dinner, and went out into the garden, taking with me a Philadelphia paper that had arrived by that morning's express and that I had not yet seen. I took my paper into the little summer-house at the farther end of the garden, and was soon engrossed reading the debates in Congress. I found there had been another of great interest on the same Louisiana subject, and so deeply immersed was I in my paper that I did not notice that any one had entered the garden until the sound of voices quite close to me roused me. A small table with several garden-chairs surrounding it stood under a spreading horse-chestnut tree, and there we often took our morning coffee, if the weather was fine, or smoked our evening cigars. At this table Monsieur Talleyrand and Mr. Livingston had seated themselves, and how long they had been talking I did not know, so absorbed was I in my paper, when Mr. Livingston's voice, a little raised above its usual even tenor, roused me.