"I am sure you know her well, sir."

He stared hard, and then his features softened. "You are a Garmont," he said quietly. "The liberals see you and have no doubt you are a spy. The monarchists see you and know you for a traitor. You are in danger."

"I will be out of favor?"

"For God's sake"-he pushed away his Pauillac lamb-"your mother knows what danger is. If she wishes to save you it is because she has lost so many."

I thought, Do not dare to tell me who my mother is; she has saved my life so often I have almost died of it.

"How did Chateaubriand save himself in the middle of the Terror?"

"You wish me to flee to America like Chateaubriand?" I said while thinking, She is calling the doctor for me once again.

"My dear Olivier, he did not flee. He went to write a book!"

Indeed, I thought. What vulgar hysterical sentences, what over-blown chrysanthemums he put in the nation's vase. I could smell them now like the wreaths left too long inside a church.

Monsieur took my wine and poured half into his own glass, and there I saw, in my untidy passion, the great dark wave of it, the bloody grapey drunken demos which would wash us all away, and I took my own crystal goblet and downed the portion he had left me, imbibing in one long surging undulating swallow that brought my host to his feet, the bottle in his hand. It was because he was smiling that I downed this second glass.

"There," cried the impossible creature, my mother's noble friend. "We understand each other now."

WHEN BLACQUEVILLE walked into a room, eyes followed, not only the eyes of the men who doubtless envied him, but of the women with so many of whom he had been intimate. To see him pass between the tables of Les Lilas on the rue du Temple was to witness a minor wonder, this modest man emanating a golden light, although the light, of course, came from those delicate lamps, each one in the shape of a tulip, each whispering the secrets of the burning gas.

There was no question of being incognito when one was Blacqueville, not at Les Lilas or at the Sorbonne. So although I had not planned to attend Guizot's next lecture, I set off to Paris to prevent my friend from attracting the notice of spies. It was ridiculous that I should leave so early on the morrow, but no surprise to anyone who knew my character.

By the middle of the morning I found myself striding through the streets of the Latin Quarter, still in a state of considerable confusion, with nothing to occupy me until the night.

Inevitably I visited the rue Saint-Dominique where I was astonished to find my father at breakfast with my mother, a rare event, and all around them on the long bright table, a number of books which they, although aware of my arrival, seemed loath to tear themselves away from.

It was not extraordinary that my father would read a book in this intense manner, with quill and paper at his side, but that my mother should be so occupied was suspicious. The comtesse's mind was normally much occupied with theology so the laws she contemplated were those of God, and those she judged to be better studied upon her knees. So when I apprehended that they were now united in this charade and that this must be somehow related to their parental affections toward me, I was moved exceedingly. Of course I expected, soon enough, to be warned off Guizot and his democratic lectures, but I embraced my parents passionately, knowing myself to be their love and treasure.

I asked them what they were so fascinated with. My mother replied she had discovered that the Americans had invented prisons which would reform the people they contained.

So, I thought: America. I did not laugh, although this enthusiasm for prison reform was in violent-even comic-opposition to the views of her ultra-royalist friends who understood prison as a place to keep felons until they should be punished, whether by execution or hard labor. Yet I was very touched to hear my noble mother exclaim at the ingenuity of the Americans, who had, she declared, in one of those strokes of genius which mark their extraordinary character-turned the matter upside down.

"Someone should do this," she said. "This is an extraordinary idea. Montalivet should set up a commission," she told my father. "He won't deny you."

"Certainly someone must go there," my father said, looking thoughtfully at me.

His poor dear face showed all his love for me. I turned to my mother and saw from the crepe skin on her cheek that she was already hearing the thundering clocks of history which she knew were about to strike their awful bells.

On the pretext of finding me some spending money for the day, my father soon led me into his office and shut the door.

I expected he would be explicit about his plan to get me to America, and I dreaded the exchange for I would not be a coward no matter how much I wished to please him. But now he had me alone he began to whisper, briefing me hurriedly on the dire situation of the government which had pressed so hard upon the king that he was prepared to sign the ordinances now laid before him. That is, His Majesty was about to dissolve the Chamber of Deputies and reduce the already tiny electorate to almost nothing. In other words, he would kill what small democracy he had not already sliced away. This would cause a public uprising, and in the ensuing chaos every Garmont and Barfleur would be at risk.

I immediately declared that I would stay with my parents at the rue Saint-Dominique and thereby protect them both, but my father passionately begged that I take no public position, that I act with extreme caution and present myself at Versailles and wait for word from him. I listened quietly, thinking only that I must speak with Blacqueville.

My father was of no importance to this government, but his absence from the palace would be a political act, and so he soon departed and I joined my mother who spoke, bravely and brightly, about the curious sect of Quakers in America. I watched her silently, thinking only how the Revolution had drowned her beauty in a lake of fear.

In the early evening I bathed and was preparing to leave the house when my eye fell upon some dreary botanical engravings-or so I had always thought them-that had previously adorned the hallways at the Chateau de Barfleur. In the past I knew only that they were a gift from Monsieur and that they meant one thing to my mother and something quite different to my father. One can imagine why a child might develop the habit of avoiding them. But now my eyes had chanced to alight, not on the leaves of Eucalyptus globulus, as it is still called, but on the neat label that proclaimed it so. This was the very same hand which had composed the invitation to the Hotel Juste, not that of Monsieur but of his awful Parrot. If it had been a different day, perhaps this would have burned into my brain forever. But when you see what follows you will forgive me for forgetting it.

It was late. I was now rushed to the Sorbonne in my mother's coach whose unsuitable royalist decorations ensured that my arrival was well noted by the crowd outside. There I waited, feeling myself reviled, until I saw Blacqueville strolling toward me with that very careless elegance which marked his character. As we kissed I whispered to him that he should not attend the lecture.

"Ah," he cried out loud, "very nice to have met you again."

And he set off back the way he had come. A few minutes later we were reunited at Les Lilas. Here we were shown to a banquette that was, as they say in this sort of place, "the bower," which the owner reserved for Blacqueville and his friends and which I would never think to occupy without him. Here I related what I had heard from my father, that the extreme conservatives had pushed the king to sign the ordinances and that we were being spied on, that our situation was, as they say in London, very tight.