His letters to government officers in the village of Pittsburg greatly aided him in his more remote rides. He settled some of Schmidt's land business, and rode with a young soldier's interest over Braddock's fatal field, thinking of the great career of the youthful colonel who was one of the few who kept either his head or his scalp on that day of disaster.
He found time also to prepare for his superiors a reassuring report, and on July 18 set out on his return. He had heard nothing from his mother or from any one else. The mails were irregular and slow,—perhaps one a week,—and very often a flood or an overturned coach accounted for letters never heard of again. There would be much to hear at home.
On July Fourth of 1795, while the bells were ringing in memory of the nation's birthday, Fauchet sat in his office at Oeller's Hotel. He had been recalled and was for various reasons greatly troubled. The reaction in France against the Jacobins had set in, and they, in turn were suffering from the violence of the returning royalists and the outbreaks of the Catholic peasantry in the south. Marat's bust had been thrown into the gutter and the Jacobin clubs closed. The minister had been able to do nothing of value to stop the Jay treaty. The despatch on which he had relied to give such information as might enable his superiors to direct him and assure them of his efforts to stop the treaty had disappeared eight months ago, as he believed by a bold robbery in the interest of the English party, possibly favored by the cabinet, which, as he had to confess, was less likely. He was angry as he thought of it and uneasy as concerned his future in distracted France. He had questioned Carteaux again and again but had never been quite satisfied. The theft of the despatch had for a time served his purpose, but had been of no practical value. The treaty with England would go to the senate and he return home, a discredited diplomatic failure. Meanwhile, in the trying heat of summer, as during all the long winter months, Carteaux lay for the most part abed, in such misery as might have moved to pity even the man whose bullet had punished him so savagely. At last he was able to sit up for a time every day and to arrange with the captain of a French frigate, then in port, for his return to France.
Late in June he had dismissed Chovet with only a promise to pay what was in fact hard-earned money. Dr. Glentworth, Washington's surgeon, had replaced him, and talked of an amputation, upon which, cursing doctors in general, Carteaux swore that he would prefer to die.
Chovet, who dosed his sick folk with gossip when other means failed, left with this ungrateful patient one piece of news which excited Carteaux's interest. Schmidt, he was told, had gone to Europe, and then, inaccurate as usual, Chovet declared that it was like enough he would never return, a fact which acquired interest for the doctor himself as soon as it became improbable that Carteaux would pay his bill. When a few days later Carteaux learned from De la Forêt that his enemy De Courval was to be absent for several weeks, and perhaps beyond the time set for his own departure, he began with vengeful hope to reconsider a situation which had so far seemed without resource.
Resolved at last to make for De Courval all the mischief possible before his own departure, with such thought as his sad state allowed he had slowly matured in his mind a statement which seemed to him satisfactorily malignant. Accordingly on this Fourth of July he sent his black servant to ask the minister to come to his chamber.
Fauchet, somewhat curious, sat down by the bedside and parting the chintz curtains, said, "I trust you are better."
The voice which came from the shadowed space within was weak and hoarse. "I am not better—I never shall be, and I have little hope of reaching home alive."
"I hoped it not as bad as that."
"And still it is as I say. I do not want to die without confessing to you the truth about that affair in which I was shot and my despatch stolen."