Even from a distance it is possible to observe the sideways rocking of one of these chalands by watching the top of its mast-for being long, the mast magnifies the small movements of the hull, and being high, it can be seen from far off.
I borrowed a pair of wooden shoes from M. LeBrun and set both of them afloat in the stagnant water that has accumulated in the bilge. Into one of these, I placed an iron bar, which rested directly upon the sole of the shoe. Into the other, I packed an equal weight of salt, which had spilled out of a fractured barrel. Though the weights of the shoes’ cargoes were equal, the distributions of those weights were not, for the salt was evenly distributed through the whole volume of the shoe, whereas the iron bar was concentrated in its “bilge.” When I set the two shoes to rocking, I could easily observe that the one laden with iron rocked with a slower, more ponderous motion, because all of its weight was far from the axis of the movement.
After re-uniting M. LeBrun with his shoes I returned to my position on the deck of the chaland, this time carrying a watch that had been given to me by Monsieur Huygens. First I timed one hundred rockings of the chaland I was on, and then I began to make the same observation of other chalands on the river. Most of them rocked at approximately the same frequency as the one of M. LeBrun. But I noticed one or two that rocked very slowly. Naturally I then began to scrutinize these chalands more carefully, whensoever they came into view, and familiarized myself with their general appearance and their crews. Somewhat to my disappointment, the first one turned out to be laden with quarried stones. Of course, no effort had been made to conceal the nature of its cargo. But later I saw one that had been filled up with barrels.
M. LeBrun really does think I am an imbecile now, but it is of no concern as I shall not be with him for very much longer.
I have now passed all the way across Champagne and arrived at St.-Dizier, where the Marne comes very near the frontier of Lorraine and then turns southwards. I need to go east and north, so here is where I disembark. The journey has been slow, but I have seen things I would have overlooked if it had been more stimulating, and to sit in the sun on a slow boat in quiet country has hardly been a bad thing. No matter how strongly I hold to my convictions, I feel my resolve weakening after a few weeks at Court. For the people there are so wealthy, powerful, attractive, and cocksure that after a while it is impossible not to feel their influence. At first it induces a deviation too subtle to detect, but eventually one falls into orbit around the Sun King.
The territory I have passed through is flat, and unlike western France, it is open, rather than being divided up into hedgerows and fences. Even without a map one can sense that a vast realm lies beyond to the north and east. The term “fat of the land” is almost literal here, for the grain-fields are ripening before my eyes, like heavy cream rising up out of the very soil. As one born in a cold stony place, I think it looks like Paradise. But if I view it through the eyes of a man, a man of power, I see that it demands to be invaded. It is spread thick with the fodder and fuel of war, and war is bound to come across it in one direction or the other; so best have it go away from you at a time of your choosing than wait for it to darken the horizon and come sweeping towards you. Anyone can see that France will ever be invaded across these fields until she extends her border to the natural barrier of the Rhine. No border embedded in such a landscape will endure.
Fortune has presented Louis with a choice: he can try to maintain his influence over England, which is a very uncertain endeavour and does not really add to the security of France, or he can march on the Rhine, take the Palatinate, and secure France against Germany forever. It seems obvious that this is the wiser course. But as a spy it is not my charge to advise Kings how they ought to rule, but to observe how they do.
St.-Dizier, where I am about to disembark, is a river-port of modest size, with some very ancient churches and Roman ruins. The dark forest Argonne rises up behind it, and somewhere through those woods runs the border separating France from Lorraine. A few leagues farther to the east lies the vale of the river Meuse, which runs north into the Spanish Netherlands, and then becomes convolved with the shifting frontiers that separate Spanish, Dutch, and German states.
Another ten leagues east of the Meuse lies the city of Nancy, which is on the river Moselle. That river likewise flows north, but it sweeps eastwards after skirting the Duchy of Luxembourg, and empties into the Rhine between Mainz and Cologne. Or at least that is what I recollect from gazing at the maps in the library at St. Cloud. I did not think it politic to take any of them with me!
Continuing east beyond Nancy toward the Rhine, then, the maps depicted twenty or thirty leagues of jumbled and confused territory: an archipelago of small isolated counties and bishoprics, crumbs of land that belonged to the Holy Roman Empire until the Thirty Years’ War. Eventually one reaches Strasbourg, which is on the Rhine. Louis XIV seized it some years ago. In some sense this event created me, for the plague and chaos of Strasbourg drew Jack there, and later the prospects of a fine barley-harvest and its inevitable result-war-drew him to Vienna where he met me. I wonder if I will complete the circle by journeying as far as Strasbourg now. If so, I shall complete another circle at the same time, for it was from that city that Liselotte crossed into France seventeen years ago to marry Monsieur, never to return to her homeland.
At St.-Dizier I changed back into the clothes of a gentlewoman and lodged at a convent. It is one of those convents where women of quality go to live out their lives after they’ve failed, or declined, to get married. In its ambience it is closer to a bordello than a nunnery. Many of the inmates are not even thirty years old, and never so lusty; when they cannot sneak men inside, they sneak out, and when they cannot sneak out, they practice on one another. Liselotte knew some of these girls when they were at Versailles and has continued to correspond with them. She sent letters ahead telling them that I was a sort of shirt-tail relative of hers, a member of her household, and that I was traveling to the Palatinate to pick up certain art-objects and family curios that Liselotte was supposed to have inherited upon the death of her brother, but which had been the subject of lengthy haggling and disputation with her half-siblings. Since it is inconceivable for a woman to undertake such a journey herself, I was to bide at the convent in St.-Dizier until my escort arrived: some minor nobleman of the Palatinate who would journey to this place with horses and a carriage to collect me, then convey me northeastwards across Lorraine, and the incomprehensible tangle of borders east of it, to Heidelberg. My identity and mission are false, but the escort is real-for needless to say, the people of the Palatinate are as eager to know their fate as their captive Queen, Liselotte.
As of this writing my escort has not arrived, and no word has been heard of him. I am anxious that they have been detained or even killed, but for now there is nothing for me to do but go to Mass in the morning, sleep in the afternoon, and carouse with the nuns in the night-time.