Hattie had come into the room looking for me. She stared at me, stared at the burning object I held in front of me, not shocked, exactly, but with a rare flash of anger.
She threw a rug from the hall over my arm and patted the flames until the fire was out. Peter recovered himself enough to gasp at the incident and then check the rug's damage before conferring with Hattie. The two clerks hurried over to me to stare, as if at a wild beast.
"Get out! Out of these offices now, Quentin!" Peter shouted, pointing with a trembling hand.
"Peter, no, please!" Hattie cried.
"Very well," I said.
I stepped out of my chamber door. Hattie was calling for me to return. But I did not turn back. I could see only faraway things in my mind as though they were stretched out before me in the wings of these halls: the long promenades, the din of the busy cafés, the unabashed, dreamy musical chords of dancing and fêtes, the redemption waiting to be uncovered in a distant metropolis.
Book II. Paris
7
I ARRIVED AT my first appointment in Paris by way of kidnapping.
In our American cities the stranger is left modestly to himself, with great cruelty and politeness; but in Paris a stranger has a constant sense of being shoved and directed by the citizens and officials; if you are lost, the Frenchman will run half a mile at great speed to point at your destination, and will accept no thanks. Perhaps kidnapping is the inevitable culmination of their aggressive kindness.
I made my voyage to Paris approximately a year and a half after I pulled that book out of the fire. My first shock upon arrival came at the railroad terminus, where screams of commissionnaires lure visitors to one or another hotel. I tried to avoid their outstretched hands.
I stopped where I met a man barking for the Hôtel Corneille, named after the great French playwright. I had read of the hotel in a novel of Balzac's (for I had brought some books of his and the novelist George Sand's for entertainment and study on my voyage) and it was reputed to be an establishment welcoming to those who indulge in the various branches of the humanities. I considered my own purposes as having a degree of literary character.
"You are for the Corneille, monsieur?"
At my assent he released a hoarse sigh, as if to thank heaven he could rest from shouting. "This way, if you please!" He brought me to his carriage, where he labored to secure my bags above, occasionally pausing to examine me with an air of exuberant happiness at having a New World visitor as a passenger.
"You have come on business, monsieur?"
I contemplated an answer. "I suppose not exactly. I am a lawyer back home, monsieur. But I have left my situation as of late. I am attending to a rather different type of affair-to say sooth, as I feel already I can hold your confidence, I am here to procure the help of someone who will attend to it."
"Ah!" he replied, not listening to a word. "You are friendly with Cooper, then?"
"What?"
"Cooper!"
After we repeated the exchange, it became clear he meant the author James Fenimore Cooper. I'd discover that the French thought America quite too intimate for any two people of the country not to know each other, even were one a backwoodsman and the other a Wall Street speculator. The adventure novels of Cooper were inexplicably popular in even the finest circles of Paris (bring an American copy and you shall be deemed a regular hero!), and we were all presumed to live among those stories' wild and noble Indians. I said I had not met Cooper.
"Well, the Corneille will fulfill every one of your needs, upon my honor! There are no wigwams there! Watch the step up, monsieur, and I'll retrieve the rest of your bags from the porter."
I had not misjudged my first choice of transportation in this city. The carriage was wider than the American kind and the interior fittings indeed very comfortable. It was the most enjoyable luxury I could imagine at that moment, to sink against the cushions of a carriage as we neared a well-appointed private chamber of my own. This ride, remember, had followed two weeks at sea, starting from the Baltimore harbor, stopping in Dover for a night before sailing again, and finally arriving in France, where I then began six hours on the train into Paris. Just the idea of sleeping in a bed enthralled me! I could not know I was about to be removed from my newfound comfort, and at the threat of a sword.
My tranquillity was jolted when the coach abruptly tilted at a sharp angle before coming to a jagged and rough stop. The commissionnaire cursed and stepped down from his box.
"Just a ditch!" he called to me with relief. "I thought a wheel had come loose! Then we'd be-"
From my window I could see the features of his face suddenly flatten as he fell into an overrespectful silence. This expression mingled with one of fear before he skulked away.
"Now see here, driver!" I shouted. "Monsieur, where are you going?" Leaning out the window, I observed a squat man, buttoned to the collar in a flowing great-coat of bright blue. He had a large mustache and an exquisitely sharpened beard. I thought to step down and ask the stranger if he had seen the path taken by the runaway commissionnaire. Instead, this man opened my door and climbed in with great suavity.
He was saying something in French, but I was too flustered to employ my improving knowledge of the language. My first thought was to slide myself out the other side; I shifted my position only to find, upon opening that door, the way blocked by another man in the same kind of single-breasted coat. He was pulling his coat back to reveal a saber falling perpendicularly from his shiny black belt. I felt mesmerized by the sight of the weapon glinting with sunlight. His hand casually found its hilt and tapped at it as he nodded to me. "Allons donc!"
"Police!" I exclaimed, feeling half relieved and half frightened. "You men are from the police, monsieur?"
"Yes," the one inside said, his hand reaching out. "Your passport now, if you please, monsieur?"
I complied and waited in confusion as he read it. "But who are you looking for, Officer?"
A brief smile. "You, monsieur."
It was explained to me at a later time that the watchful eye of the Parisian police fell on any American entering their city alone who was a young man-and especially an unmarried young man-as potential "radicals" who had arrived with intent to overthrow the government. Considering that the government had been overthrown quite recently, when King Louis-Philippe was replaced three years earlier by a popular republican government, this imminent fear of radicalism seemed mysterious to one not well versed in the politics of France. Did they worry that the mobs, having gotten their legislature and duly elected president, and now bored of republicanism, would be instigated to riot to have their kings back again?
The police officers who had intercepted my coach merely explained that the prefect of the police proposed for me to call on him before beginning my stay in the city. Mesmerized and strangely captivated by the sabers and elegant uniforms, I followed willingly. A different carriage, with a faster span of horses, brought us directly to the Rue de Jerusalem, where the prefecture was located.
The prefect, a jovial and distracted man named Delacourt, sat beside me in his chamber as had his functionary in the carriage and performed the same ritual of reading my passport. It had been properly made up by the French emissary in Washington City, Monsieur Montor, who had also provided a letter attesting to my respectable character. But the prefect seemed to have little interest in any written proof of my harmless intentions.