"My compliments, sir," said Schmidt. "I regret not to have said it."
Jefferson bowed. He was at his best, for neither manners nor wit were wanting in his social hour. The astronomer, without comment, went on eating sweet bread. They drank chocolate and chatted idly of the new luxury—ice-cream, which Monsieur de Malerive made for a living, and sold on the mall we now call Independence Square. They talked, too, of the sad influx of people from San Domingo; the widow, attentive, intellectually sympathetic, a pleasant portrait of what the silver-clad Pearl would be in days to come; she, the girl, leaning against a pillar of the porch, a gray figure silently watchful, curious, behind her for background the velvets of the rival statesmen, the long broidered waistcoats, the ribbon-tied queues, and the two strongly contrasted faces. Perhaps only Schmidt recognized the grace and power of the group on the porch.
The warm August evening was near its close, and a dark storm, which hung threateningly over the Jersey shore, broke up the party. Warned by rolling thunder, the three men went away in peaceful talk.
"The hate they have buried in their bellies," said Schmidt; "but, René, they are of the peerage, say what they may. Equality! Der gute Himmel! All men equal—and why not all women, too! He left that out. Equal before the law, perhaps—not his slaves; before God, no—nor man. Does he think Hamilton his equal? He does not love the gentleman entirely. But these two are, as fate, inevitable withal, rulers of men. I have seen the labeled creatures of other lands—kings, ministers. These men you saw here are the growth of a virgin soil—Ach! 'There were giants in those days,' men will say." Mrs. Swanwick listened quietly, considering what was said, not always as quick as Margaret to understand the German. He spoke further of the never-pleased Virginian, and then the widow, who had kindness for all and respect for what she called experienced opinion, avoiding to be herself the critic and hiding behind a quotation, said, "'There be many that say, Who will shew us any good?'"
"Fine Bible wisdom," said Schmidt.
By and by when she had gone away with Margaret about household matters, Schmidt said to De Courval: "That is one of the beautiful flowers of the formal garden of Fox and Penn. The creed suits the temperament—a garden rose; but my Pearl—Ach! a wild rose, creed and creature not matched; nor ever will be."
"I have had a delightful afternoon," said René, unable or indisposed to follow the German's lead. "Supper will be late. You promised me the new book."
"Yes; Smith's 'Wealth of Nations,' not easy reading, but worth while."
Thereafter the busy days ran on into weeks, and in October of this tragic 1792 came the appalling news of the murdered Swiss, self-sacrificed for no country and no large principle beyond the pledge of an oath to a foreign king. More horrible was the massacre of the priests in the garden of the Carmelites.
To René's relief, these unlooked-for riots of murder seemed to affect his mother less than he had feared might be the case. "My husband's death was, my son, a prophecy of what was to come." To her it was all personal. For him it was far more, and the German alone understood the double anguish of a man in whom contended a puzzled horror at deaths without apparent reason, of murders of women like the Princesse de Lamballe,—an orgy of obscene insult,—and a wild anger at the march of the Duke of Brunswick upon Paris. It was his country, after all, and he left his mother feeling disappointed that she did not share his hostile feeling in regard to the émigrés in the German army.