That knack was call’d for only at the opening of the adventure, when the coachman cried me to a halt & uncover’d his lantern to inspect me. I saw the carriage window-curtain drawn aside; then I screen’d my face with Barlow’s hat and call’d back in Barlow’s voice that I was he whom a certain Senora del Consulado had sought aid of. If she was within, let her show herself, otherwise I would back to my own affairs — and, I added, I could see nothing with that lantern shining in my face. The carriage door open’d partway: a woman’s voice instructed the coachman in Spanish to put out the light, and me in soft accented English to secure my horse & enter without fear. I did so, keeping my visage lower’d, muttering in Barlow’s way about the lateness of the hour, & cet., and glancing up under my brim as I climb’d the step to make certain the lady was alone inside. She was barely illuminated by a tiny cover’d lamp fixt to the carriage wall. I stept in quickly & turn’d away from her to close the door & draw its curtain.

Even Germaine de Staël & the Barlows, back in Paris, accepted this much without question. Ruthy Barlow & Germaine defended somewhat further — against the skepticism of Joel & of the Barlows’ new American friend, Robert Fulton, whom they more or less adopted in my stead when he left off painting with Benjamin West in London and came to Paris with his schemes for canalways & submarine vessels — the possibility of what happen’d next: Consuelo’s calling to the coachman to ride on even as she flung herself ardently upon me; my struggle to keep her mouth cover’d when she realized, at once, that I was not the man she’d summon’d; my urgent whisper’d assurances that I had no dishonorable intentions, & wisht only to ascertain, for the gentleman whose person I feign’d, that the Spanish consulate had none either. No one seriously doubted — especially given Barlow’s subsequent verification — the essentials of Consuelo’s story: that she had at one time briefly been the mistress of the political attaché of the Spanish consulate, a dashing, unscrupulous fellow named Don Escarpio; that her worthless husband, who encouraged the affair in hopes of advancing his own fortunes, was smitten with jealousy upon its consummation & challenged Don Escarpio just when that fellow (who had better been named Don Juan), having made his conquest, began promptly to tire of her. It was Consuelo’s conviction, in view of what follow’d, that Don Escarpio then arranged her husband’s death by plague in order to rid himself of the nuisance without risking a duel, & to put her the more at his mercy. Her profligate spouse had left large debts in the consular community, which she had no means of paying; Don Escarpio proposed to liquidate those debts & return her safely to her family in Málaga with a $10,000 secret bonus from the Spanish government if she would seduce & see to the death of Senor Barlow, the too successful American diplomat who had so clearly been captivated by her beauty. Consuelo had protested that she could not kill, unless perhaps in a passion of anger. Her ex-lover, of whom she was now terrified, had replied with a cold smile (“una sonrisa fría”) that no anger was required, only the sort of passion of which none knew better than he her breast was full. He then disclosed to her—& she to me — the singular means she was to employ.

For Fulton, more engineer than artist, the question was not whether one could in fact prepare a snuffboxful of infected matter from the buboes of a plague victim, apply that poison to one’s fingernails as to a quiver of savage arrowheads, & infect the victim by raking his back or arms with those same nails in the throes of passion, so that he would perish miserably three days later & be counted simply one more casualty of the pestilence. Fulton had heard enough from Barlow & me (who had it from my father) of Lord Amherst’s successful employment of smallpox against the Indian besiegers of Fort Pitt to credit that possibility. What he doubted was that all this information — together with Consuelo’s conviction that Don Escarpio would surely see to her own death too, whether she refused or complied, & her decision therefore to agree to the plan but plead with Barlow instead to smuggle her aboard the Fortune & look to his own safety — could feasibly have been convey’d to me whilst we shook the carriage, first in our struggle with each other (she to call alarums to the coachman, I to prevent her & win her confidence) & then in pretended passion, punctuated with cries of delight in two languages.

I would smile here at Germaine, who declared that while she thot the whole Don Escarpio business smackt more of Italian opera than of Spanish diplomacy, she knew from experience that much ground could be cover’d in a bouncing carriage. She allow’d, moreover, that it was my modesty to call the passion & attendant noises merely feign’d, as I had been a notable gallant even before improving my skills in naughty Barbary. She would even grant that Consuelo had messaged out the business beforehand in her fetching skew’d English (I show’d the messages as proof) for “Barlow” to read as she moan’d & thrasht & annotated in whispers: Germaine herself permitted no drawing-room conversation at Coppet whilst she composed; her staff & houseguests communicated by messages written & replied to on the spot — what we call’d “la petite poste.” She cited Prince Hamlet’s scribbling in the grip of his emotions, “A man may smile and smile,” & cet. What she found hardest to believe was my trusting Consuelo not to poison me by the same device.

I did not quite so trust her, I would admit: as I happen’d to have been gripping both her wrists in one hand from the start (& covering her mouth with the other until I was assured it was no longer necessary), when she discover’d to me her stratagem I obliged her to rake her own flesh at once, to prove her assertion that she had not tapt the dread snuffbox (she declared it was in her reticule) in advance.

And how could I be sure, demanded Ruthy Barlow, that the woman was not up to suicide as well as the seduction & murder of flirtatious diplomats? Trop romantique, her husband scoft, who had taken up that term from Germaine upon his belated return to Paris. (Faithful to my word, I had written him in Algiers of Ruthy’s new friendship with young Fulton, which I judged harmless; it was not until 1800, after the “XYZ Affair,” that Fulton moved in to make their ménage à trois.) Trop or non troppo, I replied, I could not take measures against every eventuality, especially in the heat of the moment. Consuelo had claw’d thro her skin unhesitatingly at my order: once on the inside of her thighs, again on the underside of her bosoms. I took the rest on faith.

“As ought we,” George III is wont to put in at this point. So reports the author Madame d’Arblay (“Fanny Burney,” whom I met thro Mme de Staël) from Windsor. The King had the story originally from her after his seizure of 1808, when in his blindness he took a sudden fancy to novels & insisted that his daughters & Mrs. Burney read him long passages from Fielding “and those like him.” At my own single audience with the King, in 1803, I had not brot the subject up, inasmuch as I was posing as Robert Fulton at the time, and in any case did not then know of His Majesty’s interest in erotic narrative. We spoke of the submarine boat, which George argued was militarily more important than the steamboat; also of Don Quixote & King Lear, both of which characters interested him greatly. It is on Mrs. Burney’s authority that I list the King as my 2nd uncritical auditor. He still calls for the story, I understand; rather fancies that Consuelo might be his eldest son’s discarded wife the Princess of Wales, & particularly applauds my having accepted this piquant demonstration of her good faith.