I was, while in Philadelphia, entertained by a very wealthy and prominent family, all in such style you would never think yourself at the end of the earth. But the music. These people are, without contradiction, the most unhappily organized in matters of harmony. What the young ladies who regale me with this musique miaulante affect most are its difficult passages. You must think I speak of this subject with a sort of indignation, and that is so, but you must understand it is not simply the displeasure caused by detestable music but the feeling of moral violence to which one is subjected when forced to listen willy-nilly, and to appear pleased as well. So, my dear mother, you may rest assured that your Olivier has no plan to alarm you with an American wife. Ha. I know you never said so, but I know your heart, and I can tell it. Please be calm.

This evening or the next Mr. Godefroy is to take me to the town of Wethersfield where I will attend a meeting of the citizens to elect their local officials. As this is in the State of Connecticut I do wonder if they will sing their state song, of which I now provide for you, dear comtesse, a small sample:

Olivier

IN THE MORNING the mansion was colonized by children as numerous as rabbits, their boots slamming like horses' hooves along the hallways. Everywhere I turned there was a Godefroy cousin or a Godefroy neighbor, even some scholars from the local school where the teacher had just broke her leg, they said, so her pupils had walked six miles to Miss Godefroy to have their lessons. I would prefer to be away from children, always. When, later, I chanced upon one melancholy boy throwing stones against the outhouse, I felt a pain like a corkscrew to my heart.

He has grown up without me.

Mine own.

Full well I know the anguish of the soul that knows not me.

MISS GODEFROY POURED TEA for Olivier. She was like a willy-wagtail, I thought, lifting up her feathers and singing, bless her. A bird in the hand, bush too, her eyes alight, her laughter everywhere. Come let us adore him, Olivier de Garmont, the same cove who would die without his Tartuffe, who would destroy his Impromptu, who could not sleep for thinking of Miss Godefroy. Might not such a love-fuddled soul see a tiny chance to further things?

Well sir, no sir. I never saw a fellow go about his courting in such a wrongheaded way. He took one sip of milky tea, then marched off the porch in the company of the father.

"Well, Mr. Larrit," Miss Godefroy said to me, her pretty face revealing no particular sign of anything. "I have work to do." She also left the stage and soon I heard her fussing with the cook, ordering a donkey and cart be provided for the onion maidens, taking the abandoned children in control and setting them on their bottoms in the great reception room where she got them singing their times tables, all these things and more being done not all at once but over a period of time, at the end of which I heard a sad cello which I knew must be her own. I never listened to so heartrending a cry. Not even a Church of England organ could make you feel such misery.

I stepped off the porch and wandered round the back of the mansion where I smoked a pipe too bitter for much pleasure. I saw the splendid cattle. I noted the black alluvial soil which was devoted to the industry of onions. I beheld the so-called onion maidens laboring in Mr. Godefroy's river flats. It was soon made clear to me that these were worldly women, very sure of their attractions. In any case, I was required in the library.

The two gentlemen were already awaiting me, facing each other from their leather club chairs. They gave no sign of hearing the plaintive cello.

Godefroy was as good-looking as an admiral. He had one of those voices you can hear across a running brook, but he had a nice set of wrinkles around his eyes and he looked straight at a man, this man, and shook his hand, not limply or (like poor Duponceau) too firmly. Was that his daughter fiddling her poor heart out?

"Here," said he. "Sit here."

I had been provided a walnut table and straight-backed chair.

"I was in correspondence with Judge Welles," my lovesick master began, and I set about my dreary dictation and wondered where exactly the cello was situated. I placed it in the open doorway between the hallway and the dining room.

"Ah, yes, Welles," said Godefroy, frowning at the double doors. "You will enjoy him."

"Mr. Welles has written that it is possible that a prison with five hundred inmates could make a profitable return to the state. This would be an attractive proposition to my government."

The cello stopped. Then recommenced. There had been a creaking floorboard. From this and other evidence, I reckoned the musician had crept as close as the grandfather clock. It was a wild imagining: Miss Godefroy performing from outside the pale.

"We will look at the judge's arithmetic," said her father. "I do not recall a remarkable profit, but you must understand that at Wethersfield these things are looked at in relation to our onion crop."

My master responded with an awful frown, all nose and brow, poor fellow.

"In Connecticut," Mr. Godefroy said, "you will witness things you could not imagine in old Europe."

Hear, hear, I thought. My master inclined his head, but when he looked up again he held me with his gaze and his cheeks were burning red.

Was it embarrassment drove Godefroy to snatch the onion from the windowsill? In any case, he was swift as a rat in the moonlight, opening his silver penknife, making two quick cuts, and removing from the onion's heart a good single slice, about a quarter-inch thick. This he held up between thumb and forefinger before the window.

"Is it not beautiful in the sunshine?"

How awful, cried the cello.

"Indeed," said Olivier.

"You will think it a peculiar lens through which to view the world."

"It is singular."

"It is the robes of saints, do you see it? No? It is cool and watery-white edged with bishop's purple. And look, Mr. Garmont, at that fiery nub of spring green at its center."

Mr. Garmont stood, perhaps to be better convinced of its majesty.

"Now," cried Godefroy, "look further at the industry this humble fellow fathers."

Outside the window I could see the onion maidens everywhere, their thighs and ankles, their straw bonnets bright against the dark black soil, the cello dark and urgent in its longing. Surely someone must say something.

Olivier squinted out the window, blind as a bat.

I cried loudly, "Ah, your onion maidens."

"A pretty sight, no?" inquired his host.

"Indeed," said my employer, squinting more.

"I refer to the bonnets of course." Godefroy laughed. "And let me tell you about them. They came into existence because President Madison had desired that we turn ourselves into a nation of manufacturers."

The music stopped. There was a clatter with some bounce in it. I imagined a bow being thrown down the hallway. The host's story was then recited in a great sarcastic silence.

"This request," said Mr. Godefroy, "was heard by a nineteen-year-old girl in Wethersfield. She looked at the spear grass which was growing around, free for her, requiring no capital. She harvested the grass. Then she boiled it, bleached it, moistened, fumigated and dried it to make it suitable for braiding. Then she made what are called Leghorn-style bonnets."

"Might this be something that can be profitably undertaken by prisoners?"