I asked her price, and if that was a double entente it was for her alone to see.

She laughed suddenly, then held one paint-soiled hand across her mouth. And next, with what intention I did not understand, she gave a small curtsy and produced a folded piece of paper which I was disappointed to discover was an instrument-that is, a draft upon a bank. It was only then, as I looked up to catch the picklish twinkle in her eye, that a thought arrived in such a gust that my ardor was violently extinguished.

Lord help me, I thought, I had been a total fool. In the great haste of leaving Paris I had permitted my parents to arrange the financial instruments. Where were they now? What were they? I had woken on board ship without a single coin.

SOME VENAL CLOCK was hidden in his lordship's vest or pants and now it struck the midnight hour. What made it chime I did not know, but I have seen English gentlemen perform the same. They are in deep mourning in their home estates but put them below the equator and they are dancing the jig like Jews at a wedding, lifting their knees, shaking their hands, rattling bangles they do not have. So it was with Lord Migraine on the boat, shooting guns at floating barrels. The Americans did not make things any calmer. They saw what it meant for the nobleman to win, and so politely ensured him his victory. When, after an eternity, the barrel was splintered flotsam on the sea, he bought them all champagne to celebrate.

Toward me he played the icy master, perhaps not understanding that while I owed Monsieur de Tilbot my life, I had not sold myself in slavery. I was a free man, more American than any of these bankers and merchants who took their cue from Migraine and treated me like scum. The only two passengers I found humane were Mr. Eckerd and his singer. They neither spoke the other's language, so I had much to do in that department.

At first I had some idle hours to play whist with my new friends, but soon it was Jack be nimble Jack be quick. Migraine suddenly shouted he would write an entire book about Americans. He loudly declared them the most interesting creatures he had ever seen. It was difficult to guess what he really thought but he began to interview them one by one as if it was an agricultural occasion and he must check their weight and teeth and breeding and know who the sire and who the dame and all this he recorded in his notebook and it was my great privilege, when he was done, to transcribe his scrawl into the journal and in all cases have a carbon copy which would be sent as safety back to France. I doubt his prying mother ever found anything to make her fear for her baby's safety. Indeed, I wondered if she had the fortitude to read the tedious stuff. Was she even curious enough, I wonder, to endure that very long conversation-some of which later found its way into the famous book-wherein the pious manufacturer of nails asks the French commissioner to imagine France in its natural state: that is, one in which any piece of land is available to whoever is man enough to work it?

"When there is enough for all," the nail maker said, "there is no need for government."

"But what of the poor?"

"No man who will work can be poor."

The great man peed beside my ear in the middle of the night. I did not complain. He preened and postured. I played my part. But when I saw how he had his eye on Mathilde, I thought, I will sit on his chest and stuff his mouth with dirt.

She was a clever little thing, my Tildy. She painted the Peek daughter without anyone paying her very much attention. By the time she was doing Mr. Peek, she had a following. Foremost among her admirers was Lord Migraine, and it was a horror for a man who loves a woman to see this flirtation acted out before his eyes. It did not matter how often I fled or how hard I pulled my pillow across my ears, they were now always in conversation, the pair of them, and when, at last, the dance was done, when he had reluctantly assented to the portrait, when they set up shop inside my own bloody cabin, I was on the rack.

I would leave them alone. I would play cards. But for Christ's sake, they would then insist I attend upon them.

"Garcon," cried he.

At this command I must enter my own cabin and inhale the oil and turpentine, the perfume of our love, our nights, our days. Mathilde stood at the far end of the cabin and affected to wash her brush. I could not look at her.

Lord Migraine twisted his skinny body in his chair and asked me had I packed his bloody purse. Well frig you for a Dutchman, I thought.

"No sir," I said, "no purse sir." And this was true.

"No coins, monsieur? No specie?" He was acting the cool master but he was all atwitter. I twisted the knife, asking him what arrangements he had made with the American banks.

"Arrangements?" His cheeks reddened as he held my murderous gaze. "It was the Comtesse de Garmont who made arrangements. You heard her. She insisted on it."

"I do believe she wished to, yes. I never saw her do it."

I held his gaze and did not tell him it was I, monsieur's secretaire, who had written the letters of introduction to the Bank of New York, and of course I knew exactly where they were.

If I were to search for some instrument among his trunks, I told him, the cabin must be evacuated. They must leave, the pair of them. Or not, I said. I could search another day.

"Now," he demanded.

Mathilde was thus evicted. In being forced to pass me she gave a savage bump with her formerly familiar behind.

I removed the paints and rugs and drapery one by one. It was a pleasure, almost. I closed the door. I sat alone. I breathed the smell of her and found so little solace that I produced his bloody instruments within the hour.

I then was given the task of preparing a bank draft of twenty dollars for Mathilde Christian. When that was done he tipped me a tot and I took it to drink with the Jew and his chanteuse, dividing it, sip by sip, between the three of us. It was at this exchange that Mr. Eckerd, by dint of my slow translation, finally discovered that Miss Desclee was not a singer. He had relied on the recommendation of an associate from Nimes, a draper it seemed, and it was only as I translated their conversation that it became clear that Miss Desclee was a tragedienne.

"Not a singer?"

"No, monsieur," she said gravely, and demonstrated most convincingly that this was so.

Another man might have gone stark raving mad to hear of this mistake, but Eckerd combed his strange hair and thought a moment and, before I had delivered the next three tots, he had decided on an entirely new production, a drama of the Revolution which he swore the people of New York would come to like flies to honey. This story he told me-and I translated to Miss Desclee, who listened gravely, her pale still eyes holding me with an intensity that was doubtless a benefit to her fellow actors on the boards but was completely unnerving on the deck.

I don't know what the story was exactly-you are lucky I have forgot-but it concerned, at that stage, Charlotte Corday and a certain comtesse. Miss Desclee inquired if she might play both characters.

Eckerd announced that this was exactly what the playwright had conceived and that, although the costume changes would be a nightly terror, that was half the charm of it.

Not wishing to misrepresent the case in my translation, I asked Eckerd was he saying the two characters were never on the stage together.

"Never," he cried.

"Not once?"

"Not at all."

I let Miss Desclee know this and she bowed her head very gravely and I understood that she was formally considering the offer.

It was only to fill the silence that I asked Mr. Eckerd did he have such a good memory that he carried whole plays in his head.