Whatever Migraine might have suffered was diminished by his ignorance. I, on the other hand, understood exactly what she thought about him, knew it with that deep intimacy of skin on skin. Mathilde was disgusted with herself. She burned with rage toward the aristocracy, and although it was her lot in life to flatter them, although her safety depended on it, it also made her ill. A portrait once completed she would, without fail, arrive home with an emaciated poet or a prostitute or a child she had found sleeping by the Seine. Maman would feed them, and she would paint them, dancers, odd pairs of women, men who slept in opium dens. In the world of these small canvases no one could be beautiful, and yet each was illuminated by that holy light glowing from beneath their injured skin.

Of course Eckerd said he could never pay her price and this was exactly what she wished. She stretched a tiny canvas and made his big nose bigger and emphasized the way it curved to almost touch his upper lip. She paid loving attention to his strange hair, the gray shadow across the top of his forehead where he had shaved his widow's peek and left a hairline black as boot polish. Yet to think of a hairline is to distort the picture for, by dint of comb and much pomade, Mr. Eckerd made of his hair a kind of rug, terminating in a neat set of twisted tassels on his noble brow. So confident was he, so definite, that he made of his extraordinary appearance a wild and foreign kind of beauty which persuaded you there must exist a city where every man dressed himself in just this way. All the pride of this imaginary metropolis resided in the very direct and fearless eyes.

The sitter seemed not at all astonished to have himself portrayed in this way. Indeed, he sipped his absinthe and affected to show no interest in his audience. But the other passengers were titillated, and as the coastal blur of Connecticut became a grassy green, they made continual sallies off the deck to inspect The Progress of the Jew. At first they were amused, and then they were somehow not. Who can say why? By the time the Havre entered Long Island Sound, they had withdrawn their approval, not simply from the enterprise but from Mathilde herself. They revealed their hearts in their narrow Yankee noses. At dinner on the last night I saw the pink-and-white Peek gaze upon Mathilde as if she were a cardsharp and he was regretting his generous bank draft which, as I knew, would be hidden in a most particular place beneath her skirts.

We entered New York by the back door next morning. Along the eastern shore I was presented with those very houses the Hero of the Vendee had offered to me, saying they cost no more than a cow. I may be mistaken, but there was one with ten windows which seemed to be the same dwelling Monsieur had pressed upon me. I could clearly see two children running across its lawns and I, with an awful guilty secret I will never tell you, felt a sharp pain stabbing like a skewer in my breast.

It was such pretty country-luscious bays cut into the slopes which were covered by lawns, a great variety of ornamental trees growing right down to the water, and so many large houses, which I would later hear called cottages. They looked like big boxes of chocolate, and from the windows the owners at their leisure could admire the brigs, gondolas, and boats of all sizes crossing in every direction.

I was, in the middle of all this beauty, so damnably lonely, and the sight of Mathilde and her mother broke my skewered heart. I stood on deck alone, my cold and lonely nipples scratching against the rough canvas of my shirt.

The Havre berthed at what was called the Cortlandt Street Wharf at the bottom of Manhattan Island, and I prepared to go ashore with nothing but a lifetime of bad judgment and my duffel bag. Edging forward, I kept a weather eye on Migraine and Peek who I did not doubt would do me ill. When the gangplank was lowered, I left Olivier de Garmont to discover the wonder of the financial instruments I had constructed for him like a clever box with hidden tendons, tricky mortises, and a secret lock you might take a week to find.

The American officials and police were lined up waiting in their shed. What they might want from me I could not say but I had a very formal letter of safe conduct with so many seals you might think I robbed them from a prince. I showed these papers to a policeman.

"Bon Jour," said he. He was as cockney as the Bow Bells.

"Hello," said Parrot.

"So," said the cockney American. "You look like a very cheeky chappie."

"That's me your worship."

"And how did you come by a piece of paper like this?"

"My employer is a Frenchman. He's a lord."

"Well is he now?" he said, and returned my documents.

"What now?" I asked. "Aren't you going to write my name down?"

"Get out of here," he said.

And that was that.

Outside, everything was confusion and bustle, hackney cabs and boardinghouse keepers, predators and prey, among them I saw Mathilde, Maman, Mr. Eckerd, and the actress, whose presence was being disputed by a porter whose way they blocked. Mathilde pushed her painting at Mr. Eckerd. He wished to pay. She would not have it. He accepted finally, turning rapidly to hide emotion, while Miss Desclee-clearly having no thought of how famous she would soon become-cast desolate eyes upon the hard stone blocks of Cortlandt Street.

WITH WHOM ELSE but Blacqueville might I have shared my amusement with America? Not the Americans who looked at me at every moment as if to ask, Are you not awestruck by the wonders you behold? Is this not a miracle? Do you not envy this, admire that? It was not until we approached the lower tip of Manhattan Island, when my friends found matters of their own to attend to, that I could no longer be distracted from the painful fact that my pockets contained no single gold coin, nothing but a verbose letter of credit composed in English by the hand of my enemy.

Mr. Peek finally allowed himself to be drawn back into the deserted main cabin where he sat himself in the captain's chair, donned his reading glasses, and peered down his thin nose at my instrument.

"Sit," he said.

If there was a trace of middle-class self-importance in the performance, I was fully cognizant of the friendship that lay behind it. He turned the document so I might read as well as he, running his square-tipped finger beneath the salutation.

"The Bank of New York." He smiled.

Nothing could be more convenient, he told me, for this was his bank, he was its president, and he had his offices a short stroll from the pier at Cortlandt Street.

"So," I said. "It is a simple matter."

But he must read the whole document or he would read nothing, so he went very carefully from page to page-I believe there were five of them-and I waited, comforted by his scrupulousness, warmed by his aid and protection.

"Ah so," said my friend, when he had reached the end and carefully pinned all five pages back together. "What is the devil's name?"

"Who?"

"This servant we have to deal with?"

"They call him Parrot."

"His legal name?"

"Perhaps Perroquet."

"Larrit," he said firmly. He removed his spectacles and rubbed his eyes. "Who arranged this instrument?"

"My mother."

"She must be a singular lady."

I would not explain to an American what this noble lady had lost to the disgusting guillotine, nor would he learn that every night she lived the nightmare of her father's murder. She was singular indeed, but it was in no way amusing that she fought to save her son's life even when there was no threat to it. That was her scar. She gained it honorably.

"Did you ever trouble yourself to read what you were signing?"

"I am a lawyer, Mr. Peek."