For me, there was only the question of how to introduce my traveling companion. "This," I said, "is my secretaire, Mr. Larrit." And I found myself interrogated by that gentleman's frank green eyes. Damn the scoundrel, would he be amused by me? His face was marked with sun and wind and all manner of those rough irregularities that time puts on the bark of trees, but if he was forty or fifty I could not say. And of course it is inevitable among my class that time and time again we will conceive a generous affection for those who will later cut our throats.

In Philadelphia I learned that my boardinghouse had lost its roof the night before but that I should not be in the least concerned. The association's papers had all been saved, and there was now a new house set aside for my use. To this end we were to be conveyed by the queer old Frenchman, and later we would endure the amusements which are the lot of a French commissioner and would include, as time would show, a French play on Napoleon presented by an appalling troupe from New Orleans, a lecture at the historical society, a dinner at the home of Mr. Vaux, and a musical soiree in the home of Mr. Walsh.

We were dispatched by the Quakers with promises of a prompt reunion. Mr. Duponceau then drove us in his own coach, so I was left to silently grapple with the problem of how to get my letter to Miss Godefroy. It was a very considerable concern that she had, at this instant, not the slightest hint of my warm feelings for her. Doubtless she had awaited a note and, receiving none, hardened her heart against me. How should I proceed? I had a thousand letters of introduction, but none to Godefroy pere. The single person who might have performed this service-Peek-would not act against the interests of his daughters.

This problem whirled round and round as the wheels of Duponceau's coach brought us up in the direction of Chestnut Street where we would stay.

Philadelphia had been conceived in the style of an English rural town, one where houses and businesses would be spread far apart and surrounded by gardens and orchards. So thought Mr. Penn and Mr. Penn alone. In the absence of others of a superior class to set the tone, the city's inhabitants, in pursuit of their own profit, crowded by the Delaware River and subdivided and resold their lots as many times as you can fold a piece of paper. Thus, while the grand center of the town is often praised as the birthplace of American democracy, it is only at the waterfront that one views the consequences of majority rule.

It was a pretty cottage-the home of Mr. Vaux's nephew, kindly vacated the previous day after the boardinghouse catastrophe-and so we three went to the parlor, as the main room of a middle-class house is called, while our trunks were stowed and Mr. Duponceau-Frenchman that he was-produced a bottle of Burgundy which he indicated, this being a house of teetotalers, he would open and serve himself when the maid had left us.

Thus three unlikely characters were joined together, and I was pleased to interrogate our guide who was, he confessed, no part of the Quakers or their prisons but someone trotted out, as he picturesquely put it, to speak to those Frenchmen who happened to visit the birthplace of the nation.

We sat on chairs designed by a people who judged it a sin for a man to sit for long. I asked Duponceau where a Frenchman might buy a copy of Moliere in his own language.

This produced such a sharp look that I suddenly feared him to be of that eccentric party of which my mother was a prominent representative-that is, those who still agree with the archbishop of Paris who, in 1667, forbade involvement with Tartuffe on pain of excommunication.

"Monsieur," I said, "if the name Moliere offends you, I wish I never spoke it."

"On the contrary," he said, but his manner was not warm. "It fills me with unlimited admiration. Generally," he said, "it is only Germans who defame the great writer. It was August Wilhelm von Schlegel who made a reputation by writing that Moliere was a buffoon, that Racine likewise was of no account, that the French were the most prosaic people of the world, and that there was no poetry in France."

His speaking voice was light and a little high, and together with his slight frame and lively eyes made one think of a schoolteacher, a priest, an antiquarian. He had that look you see in seminarians, that straight mouth, the bright gray combative eyes, fast as a twinkle, one of those clever little boys rescued from the farm or fishing boat.

"Wordsworth was as bad," said the peculiar servant.

"Indeed," said Duponceau.

A servant quoting literature, a Parrot, Perroquet. A Parrot rather, for in my sence he talks by roat.

"He went right off the French," the so-called secretaire explained to me.

"But how would you conceivably know this?" I asked.

"A light but cruel race, Coleridge called us," interrupted M. Duponceau, and in so doing filled the servant's glass to spilling. There is nothing worse than those public fairs where one's tenants drink too heavily and forget, as the saying is, what side their bread is buttered on.

"Let me explain my reaction to your query," said M. Duponceau, forcing his Burgundy through his teeth like a merchant and holding his glass-one of those American thimbles-up to the light as if to let his customers see the quality of the color. My God, I thought, he is going to spit.

"It is very well known to those Quaker gentlemen that I have a library." He swallowed. "Beside my own linguistic interests-Chinese particularly-I most highly value our great French writers. When I was a child in Saint-Martin-de-Re it was the English language I loved, so the seminarians called me l'Anglais, but today nothing affords me more pleasure than to read Moliere and, wherever possible, to dissuade my American friends from attempting any theatrical performance whatsoever."

I thought, This is the man for me.

"For those not easily dissuaded, monsieur, I bring them to my table and read to them, aloud, in the only language in which it should be known. If I looked askance just now, it was because they once brought to my house a famous visitor, we need not say his name, of a family as noble as your own, sir," and here he nodded his head and acknowledged that I understood exactly of whom he spoke. "He was brought to me with an inquiry like your own. I lent this noble lord my copy of The Misanthrope and he, reading it while walking in the hills, fell asleep, was woken by a rainstorm, and fled."

My God, I thought, this is wonderful. What is a little water damage in a case like this? I will get the copy from him. I will read for her.

"And it was destroyed," he said.

Was this true?

Carefully I let him know I had been raised in a great library like his own. Of course this was gross flattery. His own library, by necessity, must be the collection of an exile, put together with great difficulty in thirty years or less. But I wished him to understand that the poorest item in his library would be safe with a Garmont.

When this got me nowhere I asked him to direct me to a bookseller where I might purchase a good copy of, perhaps, Tartuffe.

"Well," said he, pursing his lips, "that can be a subject for inquiry."

So, I thought, he owns an edition of Tartuffe. He will trust me with it. He will. I will ensure it, and just as well, for I have no other scheme than to recite Moliere upon the hills of Wethersfield.