I imagined Mathilde, her mother shelling peas, her portrait of her studio, her portrait of the Comtesse de Polignac. I am not leaving my place for anyone, I thought. I have walked down too many roads, slept under too many hedges, lost too many homes. I am almost fifty years of age and if my body is still strong it is also scarred like an old cat.

My refusal came out so fast and rough it startled me.

Monsieur studied me. Then his lips twisted and his eyes opened wide.

"Your floozy," he cried.

I could have killed him.

"Oh, Chevalier." He laughed. "Please."

Please nothing, I thought. I am a free man. I have pleased enough.

"You know, Chevalier," he said, "her master has been working the Bourbon side exclusively. The tide will be against him now. The portrait of the Comtesse de Polignac will do her no good now," he said. And when he said this he looked so happy that I was even more afraid.

"If so," I said, "she will need me even more."

He considered me as if appalled. "She is pretty enough," he admitted.

This from him, always in a lather about the scrawny Comtesse de Garmont.

"You are English," he said at last. "You can't hear how she speaks."

"And how might that be, sir?"

"Like a fishwife, Monsieur le Chevalier. Like a fishwife from Marseille."

I took it.

Monsieur smiled agreeably. He was one of the few men alive who knew my history. He had known me first at twelve years of age and in certain respects he was my intimate, in other ways a stranger. He was a man of amazing strength and extraordinary limitations. As he had spent many years selling off his father's library, he had a considerable reputation as a connoisseur but in truth he had no eye-I could show him the engravings I had done for Jean-Baptiste Staley's Lettres and all he could see was that the ducks were not French ducks.

At this point he rose and I heard him rustling in the bedroom, and when he emerged he had some engravings which he flung across to me.

"Here is what I'll do for you," he said.

I imagined he was making me a gift of these landscapes, both of which showed small neat cottages on a high hill above a broad river. I guessed this was America.

"What do you think, Chevalier?"

"Very pretty."

"Which would you like?"

Both of these works were very poor, but the smaller one had some dexterous crosshatching.

"This one."

"No, no, no," he cried, snatching it back from me, laying it on the table, holding it flat with his big blunt hand. "Which one?" And he jabbed his thumb at the bigger of the houses which had two stories and perhaps ten windows. Only then did I understand he was up to his old tricks-he was offering me a house.

"It is never cold," he said. "It is like summer continually."

"It is America?"

"The Hudson River."

I was thinking of the other house he had tricked me into leaving. Even now, years later, he would not admit his fault or the hurt he had caused those I'd left behind. Enough. There is no cause to talk about that business.

"Why would I need a house in America?"

"In New York, houses are cheap."

"Which one is cheap?"

"All of them. They are the same price as a cow."

I knew this could not be true. He knew I knew it and was already moving rapidly along. "You could speak English there," he said.

"I can speak French here."

At which, of course, he pursed his ugly lips and rolled his eyes.

"Sit," he ordered, although I was already sitting and he meant, Please stand. "Have a drink with me. You must."

At the cabinet I found Scotch whisky.

"No, the Armagnac. Bring the bottle."

I obeyed him like the lackey I had let myself become and was not even rewarded with a drink. Instead he used the Armagnac bottle, together with its cork, his pipe, and his glass, to explain his plan-I would be a spy and protector of Lord Migraine and his friend. As both young men were presently reluctant to commit to the plan for their own rescue, it was I who must make the preparation for their journey. I would buy their clothes, pack their trunks, and arrange whatever financial instruments they would require. In packing my own trunk I would, on no account, omit the clever invention he would shortly show me.

Among my many duties, I would serve as a secretaire much as I did for the marquis. This would include making fair copies of correspondence and taking dictation for the report his lordship would later submit to the government.

"I will demonstrate," Monsieur said. "Do not roll your eyes you scoundrel. There is much you do not know."

Then, bustling back and forward, for he only had one hand to carry things, he assembled before me the instruments required for dictation-quill, ink pot, a secretary's notebook.

"Write this down," he ordered. "Dear Perroquet," he cried.

"You wish me to write to myself?"

"Write this-Dear Perroquet, The great land of America calls you across the waves, ha-ha. There, that will do." And he snatched the notebook back and in the process sent a great splash of ink across the Proudhon.

"No, no, don't worry about that. It is nothing in comparison."

He held the book in his teeth and removed a piece of very thin black paper he had secreted within the pages.

"Look," he cried, the notebook still clenched between his teeth. I watched his hand turn black before my eyes. I removed the notebook from his mouth, rather as one takes a ball from a Saint Bernard, and here was revealed to me a second secret page which contained an extraordinary duplication. This was the first time I saw carbon paper. It was this spanking new invention which would allow me to make copies for Garmont's mad mother who was almost as anxious for his safety in his place of refuge as in his homeland.

"Take your floozy to America," Monsieur said, holding out his blackened hand as if the cherubs would descend to bathe him. "She can paint in America. All that space, and never cold."

"She has no patrons in America."

"Pish. There are no end of patrons. Chevalier, you know these new countries."

"I do?" I said, for I knew very well what other new country he referred to and I wished, with the fierceness of my eye, for him to admit my loss.

"You do indeed," he said, avoiding my gaze. "No end of patrons, no end of walls. It is culture that they lack. In America they will think she is a genius. You too, if you like. In America there is no one who can paint a horse."

"You know this, sir?"

"I have been there, Parrot. I have been there. It is a country for an artist and all you need to do is write down what his lordship says."

"She has a mother, sir."

"We all have mothers."

"I hope we do, sir."

"She can take the mother. Why not? It is a large country. Your petite amie can paint. You can be his lordship's secretaire. It will be amusing. You can go around the prisons with him. Why, citizen, I'll lay you a gold louis you'll meet men you already know."

He was not drunk, but he was entering into the kind of mood which I would almost call a fit and I chose that moment-the Hero of the Vendee drinking Armagnac with his single black hand-to leave him alone with his invention.