"I think,"—and he turned to the clerk,—"yes, St. Tammany would serve. It is clean and well kept and near by." He was about to add, "Use my name," but, concluding not to do so, added: "It is at the corner of Chancery Lane. This young man will know." Then, with a further word of courtesy, he drove away, while madam stood for a moment sadly contemplating the additions to her toilet.
Mr. Bingham, senator for Pennsylvania, reflected with mild curiosity on the two people he had annoyed, and then murmured: "I was stupid. That is where the Federal Club meets and the English go. They will never take those poor French with their baggage in a barrow."
He had at least the outward manners of a day when there was leisure to be courteous, and, feeling pleased with himself, soon forgot the people he had unluckily inconvenienced. De Courval went on, ruefully glancing at his clothes, and far from dreaming that he was some day to be indebted to the gentleman they had left.
The little party, thus directed, turned into Mulberry Street, or, as men called it, Arch, and, with his mother, De Courval entered a cleanly front room under the sign of St. Tammany. There was a barred tap in one corner, maids in cap and apron moving about, many men seated at tables, with long pipes called churchwardens, drinking ale or port wine. Some looked up, and De Courval heard a man say, "More French beggars." He flushed, bit his lip, and turned to a portly man in a white jacket, who was, as it seemed, the landlord. The mother shrank from the rude looks and said a few words in French.
The host turned sharply as she spoke, and De Courval asked if he could have two rooms. The landlord had none.
"Then may my mother sit down while I inquire without?"
A man rose and offered his chair as he said civilly: "Oeller's Tavern might suit you. It is the French house—a hotel, they call it. You will get no welcome here."
"Thank you," said De Courval, hearing comments on their muddy garments and the damned French. He would have had a dozen quarrels on his hands had he been alone. His mother had declined the seat, and as he followed her out, he lingered on the step to speak to his guide. They were at once forgotten, but he heard behind him scraps of talk, the freely used oaths of the day, curses of the demagogue Jefferson and the man Washington, who was neither for one party nor for the other. He listened with amazement and restrained anger.
He had fallen in with a group of middle-class men, Federalists in name, clamorous for war with Jacobin France, and angry at their nominal leader, who stood like a rock against the double storm of opinion which was eager for him to side with our old ally France or to conciliate England. It was long before De Courval understood the strife of parties, felt most in the cities, or knew that back of the mischievous diversity of opinion in and out of the cabinet was our one safeguard—the belief of the people in a single man and in his absolute good sense and integrity. Young De Courval could not have known that the thoughtless violence of party classed all French together, and as yet did not realize that the émigré was generally the most deadly foe of the present rule in France.