The fact is, Lafitte then acknowledges, his men have been at sea for above half a year without shore liberty, and a vessel in the Jean Blanque’s trade never lacks for alternative colors, name boards, and registry papers. But can it be true that “Baron Castine” has nothing in mind beyond bidding his mother adieu?
Not quite, I reply’d, in as level a tone as I could manage: I hoped also to have a word with her confessor. I heard him mutter: Nom de Dieu!
No more is said. Their watering stop in the Cape Verde Islands is noncommittal, a reasonable jumping-off place to either the Caribbean or the Mediterranean. But their course thence, to Andrew’s great joy, is north, not west; before long they raise the Canaries, then Madeira. By April’s end they have traversed the Strait of Bonifacio between Sardinia and Corsica (“I dofft my hat, & look’d toward Ajaccio, & said nothing…”) and are anchored in the marshy mouth of the Tiber, off ancient Ostia. Only then, writes Andrew, I went to Lafitte & thankt him. He responded, as quizzical as ever, I was welcome, for the excursion & for his company. Which latter he trusted I would not object to, as his life depended upon my safe delivery to America. This was the 1st clear acknowledgment that he was not his own man — tho he may have invoked it by way of excusing his close surveillance.
Thus it occurred, as all biographies of the Bonapartes attest, that on the morning of May 5, 1821 (by coincidence the day, though not the hour, of Napoleon’s death on St. Helena), a “well-dressed Napoleonic stranger” invaded the Palazzo Rinuccini, made his way by sheer authority of mien past guards and attendants into the presence of Letizia Ramolino Bonaparte, “Madame Mère,” and (as his equally elegant companion, unmentioned in the chronicles, stood by, dabbing at his tears with a fine linen handkerchief) bowed and kissed that matron’s hand, touched a crucifix to her lips, and assured her that her famous son was “free from his sufferings, and happy”; that she would one day surely see him again; and that by mid-century the nations of the world would be racked by such civil strife and conflagration as to make St. Helena seem a paradise.
He bows again and leaves. Devoted son and good Roman Catholic that he is, Jean Lafitte embraces him outside the palace, begs his pardon for having doubted his motives, and declares that scene to have been the noblest he has ever been witness to (his words, Andrew notes, would apply as well to a loyal Bonapartist as to Bonaparte). An attendant overtakes them with a gift of gold Napoleons from Mme Mère. Andrew at once bestows it upon Lafitte for the trouble and expense of this diversion, reserving only two coins: one he gives the servant, in exchange for information concerning the whereabouts of his lady’s spiritual advisor, Mme Kleinmüller, with whom he has business. They are informed with a smile that that worthy has been exposed (by Pauline) and dismissed from the household as a fraud: she was not even Swiss! But she is said to be living in the northern outskirts of the city, at an address near the Villa Ada, and to be awaiting the arrival from Geneva of her wealthy American lover, whose influence she hopes will restore her to favor in the Palazzo Rinuccini.
To Lafitte, Andrew declares that he must deal alone with this woman who so egregiously imposed upon Mme Mère, to his own detriment, for so long — though his guardian may if he wishes not only accompany him to the Via Chiana but surround the address with Baratarians to assure his not “escaping.” The proposition involves a calculated risk: that Lafitte might be, as Mme Kleinmüller reportedly was, in the service of Metternich. But Jean declares himself satisfied with “the baron’s” honor: he will of course escort him to the house and back to their ship, but the interview will be as private and as lengthy as monsieur desires. He even offers a knife, which Andrew accepts only when Lafitte assures him, with a small smile, that he carries others, and a pistol as well.
They find the quarter, the street, the number, an unimpressive pensione, and are told by the landlord that no Mme Kleinmüller lives there, only a vedova spagnuola of the highest respectability. Would he be so gracious, Andrew inquires, as to deliver to that same widow a note of his respects? He presents it for Lafitte’s inspection, declaring it to be “in the family cipher”: it reads VS DRYEJRI G.G. Lafitte shrugs. Very well, thinks Andrew: if he is in Betsy Patterson Bonaparte’s pay, he is at least not privy to her cipher. With a tip of one gold Napoleon for his trouble, the landlord goes off with the message. Andrew winks, shakes Lafitte’s hand, taps the dagger in his waistcoat, and steps quickly inside the house, “praying to the Muse of Imposture” that Jean will not follow.
For all my assurances, that he was welcome to follow me & cet., were merest bluff, he now acknowledges. Had he lay’d eyes upon “G.G.” of the familiar flourish, he had surely known her face at once, as off Tobago I had finally known her hand. And knowing her, he would have known me, and all been lost. But he stopt there on the threshold, even as a cry of female joy was heard upstairs. I winkt again, closed the door betwixt us, was directed above by Signor the concierge, & was met at the door of her chamber by VS (& Betsy Bonaparte’s) DRYEJRI G.G.: Consuelo del Consulado.
An alarmed, handsome forty, “C.C.” draws back — she had expected either Betsy’s footman or Mme B. herself, come down at last from Geneva. Then in an instant she sees through Andrew’s disguise and dashes with a cry to her dressing table.
But my hand at her mouth, & my knife at her throat, prevented her [from availing herself of the little pistol Andrew now espies there and confiscates]. I vow’d to her I meant her no harm, nor was of any mind to publish her identity. That my life was forfeit if she should publish mine. That I knew her to have got intimate by some wise with Mme B., & to have posed as the Swiss clairvoyant Kleinmüller, to what end and in whose service I could not say. That I was come thither, thousands of miles out of my way, not to trouble her life but to save my own, to which end I sought no more from her than her story since our parting in Bordeaux half a dozen years past. In return wherefor, I would tell her mine or not, as she wisht, and be on my parlous way.
He now takes his final risk. His difficulty in recognizing Consuelo’s penmanship — after reading so many hundreds of pages of her manuscript fiction! — had been owing to the cipher, its unfamiliarity and noncursive letters. The identification made (nearly eight months since!) he had understood not only that Betsy Bonaparte’s Roman informant was, of all people on the planet, his erstwhile lover, but that she was very possibly, by some series of chances, that lady’s secret suisse—and that therefore Mme B. knew more about him than he had supposed, and from a particularly disaffected source, his last farewell to whom had been a bitter business. Nevertheless he now releases her, compliments her appearance, and (though retaining the pistol) resumes the manner and mien of Andrew Cook IV.
Consuelo sat; I too. She lookt me up & down; lookt away; lookt back; shook her head; reacht for her reticule. Another pistol, I wonder’d? Or the famous poison’d snuffbox? But she fetcht forth a mere silk handkerchief (gift from me in Halifax), wherewith to wipe her eyes as she rehearst her tale.
She has, she tells him, embarked since their last parting on a “Second Cycle” of her own, inspired by his rejection of her and by a certain subsequent humiliation. Against Renato Beluche she bore no grudge: he had made clear from the first the terms of their connection, and though she had hoped he might change his mind, she remained grateful for his protection. Nor could she blame Andrew for not loving her more, in Algiers, in Halifax, in New Orleans. Who can command love? Of the men in her life, only three had truly victimized her: Don Escarpio, of whom more presently; a certain ensign aboard that dispatch boat from Halifax to Bermuda in 1814, who upon a certain Gulf Stream night when she was downcast by Andrew’s teasing criticisms of her novel, had sworn to withdraw before ejaculating and had then, with a laugh, forsworn; and Joseph Bonaparte, whose patronage she had sought after all, for want of better, at Andrew’s suggestion, in Bordeaux in 1815, and who had not only neglected to give her the letter of introduction to Mme de Staël which he had promised in exchange for an hour in his bedchamber (he was summoned out by an urgent message from Napoleon in Rochefort, and never got back to either his coitus interruptus or to his payment therefor), but had neglected as well to advise her that he was enjoying a mild gonorrhea.