An expression crossed Mr. Peek's face, brief in its passage, like the shadow cast by a very small bird upon the waters of a pond. Was it impatience or something more insulting? "Alas," he said, "there can be no prison cell for our Mr. Larrit."

"How so?"

"It is your mother's wish. She has made him what we would call a cosignatory with our bank."

"My mother? No."

"Your mother, yes."

If he sought to unman me, he was a fool. "Fortunately," I said, "you and I have met. What chance!"

"Indeed, it is most fortunate," he said, but why was he so occupied in returning his spectacles to their patented case?

"Your bank will recognize me, of course."

"Indeed, my dear fellow. I will take you personally. We can go together. You will travel in my carriage and I will introduce you to my manager."

"This is such good fortune," I said, "for otherwise I would have been given not a penny."

Peek then looked at me directly.

"Sir," he said, with a formality that rather offended me. "Sir, you have become my good friend on this voyage. It has been a great privilege to know you, and I trust we shall deepen our friendship further and that you will visit me and my family in our home. Certainly I will provide you with whatever further introductions you may require. As I said on other occasions, I am acquainted with the director of the House of Refuge, Mr. Hart, and also Mr. Godefroy, a governor of Wethersfield Penitentiary in Connecticut, and I will do everything in my power to help you carry out the task your government has commissioned."

I thanked him.

"But dear Olivier," he said, using my Christian name for the first time, laying his hand on my arm. "Olivier, good friend, my bank simply cannot give you money with one signature. It is against the law."

"Fortunately"-I smiled-"I am a lawyer."

"An American law, sir," he said sternly, and I saw he would no more query its justice than he would admit that the coast of Connecticut was the most shocking monument to avarice one could have ever witnessed, its ancient forests gone, smashed down and carted off for profit.

"We cannot arrest him," said Mr. Peek, as the Havre crashed into the dock and the Dutch captain ran past the porthole, pushing his way through the passengers, shouting in appalling French.

"Easy as pie was the term you used."

"Indeed," said Mr. Peek. "But now you need Mr. Larrit to have his freedom. Without his signature, you cannot eat."

Encountering the Protestant's alien eye, I thought, I have spent my entire life imagining prisons, pits, gallows, rats running across my fallen head. Why should I inspect one if I do not wish it? I will not leave the ship. I will go home immediately. Let them chop off my head if they like. At least I will be in France.

But Peek gave me his arm, and I, like a beast being lead by a Judas goat, did as was customary.

"Come Olivier," said the Staten Island farmer's burly son. "We will find your man. We will make peace with him."

I found the deck crowded with a musty malodorous humanity that had hitherto been kept below. Across their shoulders, behind their sad battered stacked portmanteaus, I made out New York -a great deal of bright yellow sappy wood, a vast pile of bricks, a provincial town in the process of being built or broken. I put my goods into the care of a large black man. If he was a slave or a porter I did not know, only that he put my trunk upon his shoulder and tucked my valise under his arm and, with no regard for the delicacy of the first-class passengers, rammed his way down the gangplank, beckoning me to follow him. When I had, by necessity, mimicked the rude jostling of the nigger, I arrived in a limbo, not quite ashore nor quite on land, a long open-sided warehouse built atop a jetty. I looked for Peek. He was nowhere to be seen. Ahead of me I could see the servant's frightful hair, but by now the black giant had brought me to an official and delivered my baggage to his table.

Having opened each item to facilitate inspection, the porter demanded money.

I explained to him that I had only a letter of credit on the Bank of New York. Although it was clearly a ridiculous thing for me to do and I could imagine my mother rolling her eyes upward to see such behavior from a de Garmont, I showed the document to the damned porter whose huge black face contorted itself to the most frightening effect.

I asked the official to intercede, saying that if he would provide the porter's name, I would return tomorrow and give him the coin.

Anxious that my cosignatory was escaping me, I'm afraid that I rather thrust my letter at the official's face, thus causing unintended offense. He and the slave were then both joined in war against me and I was subjected to all the tyranny that a petty official can bring against his social better. As a consequence I was detained almost an hour while my possessions were carefully inspected, one by one. By the time the valise had been disemboweled and I had been interrogated about the exact nature of my nobility, how I stood in relation to the Republic, and if I was for General Lafayette or against him-all of which I answered diplomatically, even though such questions had no more standing than a generally agreed desire that nobles were to be shown their place-I lost sight of both my ally and my servant.

When my ordeal was over I still had no clinking stuff. I was therefore compelled to carry my own luggage to the place where I saw Peek awaiting me. My progress was maliciously observed by the dull and hostile eyes of a dozen porters, not one of whom could be persuaded to rise from his haunches, not even by Peek himself who chastised the ruffians for their lack of hospitality to a friend of the Revolution.

Mr. Peek had sent his daughters and wife ahead, and when we two were aboard his coach he gave me a bulky envelope saying I could answer later the letter that was within. Understanding this "letter" to be American banknotes, I judged this show of delicacy boded well for the manners of the young democracy.

We were finally compelled to share our ride with my trunk, the top of the coach being fully loaded with the Peek family's souvenirs. Did Marco Polo return with more? We lurched like a camel from the muddy apron out into the cobbled streets.

There is a street called Broadway where we found the Bank of New York which had much the same appearance as the Parthenon, a building where the elevation of the edifice serves only to remind you of its bourgeois intention. Here Peek effected my introduction to the manager, who was every bit as servile as one might require. Promising I would come back with Mr. Larrit, I returned to the coach in search of a suitable residence.

At first we passed only private houses but then came upon commodious shops of every description. I saw no museums or opera houses but was pleased to learn the different ways the Americans could spend their money on their Broadway, in jewelers, and silversmiths, coachmakers, coffeehouses and hotels.

Alas, my Mr. Larrit was already established beneath the portico of Peek's preferred hotel. He did not notice us, so deep was he in conversation with the portraitist. We hesitated long enough to see the old lady step forward and administer a brisk and powerful slap to each of her daughter's cheeks.

The daughter looked one way up Broadway and then the other. After a moment all three of them turned and walked into the inn.

"Well," said Peek, "at least you know where your cosignatory lives."

A little farther along Broadway he delivered me to a boardinghouse run by an Irishwoman who was, nonetheless, thought to be a person of good character. Mr. Peek said his wife and daughters had lived there for six months after their own house had been burned down. Here I was greeted very warmly by the lady and I confess I was not displeased to be under the roof of a fellow religionist. As she showed me to my quarters, she told me that the Catholics have a considerable establishment in New York. I asked her was it a religious country. She said the need for religion was felt more keenly here than anywhere else. Catholics and Protestants alike become fervent if they are not already. This I recorded in my journal, together with certain other observations about the nature of Americans.