"By prisoners? Oh no sir. What a waste. Her name is Sophia Cunningham and she is now a wealthy manufacturer. She has a patent for her invention. Can you imagine such a thing in France? She has changed her position in life entirely."

At this point the cello resumed in dire complaint.

"Excuse me," said Godefroy, returning to his feet. "You shall see Wethersfield this evening."

He left the room and as he did so the cello stopped. Olivier looked at me, his cheeks flushed, his neck red, and bestowed upon me-a wicked grin.

Godefroy returned and took his seat and I spent a long boring afternoon recording how the town meetings of Connecticut were conducted, on what their laws were based, how elections were held, to what degree the federal government affected their affairs, and how the completely uneducated majority in town meetings were stopped from tyrannizing our host.

WE HAD AN EARLY TEA. Not a thing to drink but Adam's ale, which turned out to be water. Little Catherine asked the noble how did he like the French Revolution and his lordship told a story that made them all weep, Miss Amelia most of all. For God's sake, I thought, attend to her!

To me she said, "It must be extraordinary to be his friend."

After which she revealed that I, John Larrit, was expected to attend a town meeting with the Godefroys that evening. This was her father's wish for me. I thought, I want a drink. I thought, Who is he to give me orders? I was sour as a lemon tree when we came outside to find our carriages but then, in the twilight, I spied the courting count about to hop up into Mr. Godefroy's slick two-seater. Enough, thought I, go to her. I knocked him so hard with my shoulder he nearly fell upon his arse.

He gathered himself and dusted down his bright blue frock coat and patted at his ruff. I could have punched his pointy nose.

"Hello!" He cocked his head at me. "What is it old chap?"

"Look to, mate, look to. You were stepping in the wrong carriage." I meant he should sit in her carriage.

"You are an idiot," said he.

I was a what? I pushed him in the chest. He staggered back two steps.

Godefroy descended from his gig and came toward me with his arm held out as if I were a horse in need of shooting. He got my collar and I shook him off, and all the time my eyes stayed on my so-called master.

All those weeping, prattling messages to New York and back. For Christ's sake, sir, get in the carriage. I was ready to give my notice.

"Now see here, Mr. Larrit," began Godefroy, and I thought I would knee his onions for him.

"No," cried Olivier. "He has had bad news."

I thought, Godefroy has bad news? But then I understood it was me he was talking of. I thought, No I bloody haven't.

"Is that not so?" he insisted, and held my eye.

I thought, Is he saying I am dismissed?

"That is true, John, is it not?"

"Yes sir, it is."

Thus, my rage was explained and excused as simply as a case of measles, and everything continued as it had before. That is, Olivier de Garmont entered the racing coach of Mr. Philip Godefroy, and I was put in with Miss Godefroy. What use was she to me? There were several snotty little scholars and her sister packed in as well, bringing with them a damp musty smell, a natural product of their occupation.

Miss Godefroy said, "I am sorry about your news."

"Thank you, miss."

"Is it terribly bad?"

"Yes, miss."

She sighed and sat with her hands clasped in her lap, and as the carriage set off I caught her perfume, very light, like an orange grove at evening, and there was no bad news but I set myself imagining that I must really have bad news and I thought only of Mathilde, and how I would die if I lost her. I was a fool to leave her side to serve the aristocracy. I read Tom Paine by candlelight, but for eighteen hours a day I was a vassal.

I would go home to Mathilde, I thought, as the carriage rocked me gently against Miss Godefroy and I could, through no fault of my own, feel the pressure of her upper leg or worse. I would turn in my notice. Olivier's courting was no concern of mine. When we arrived at the meeting hall I could have walked away into the night, but I followed them inside, still in the service of the lord.

It had been my life's achievement to make myself into someone who could work no useful trade at all, to be secretary to a French noble, a messenger, not even a servant, not even a clerk, not anything you could describe, not an artist-although I might have been-a pimp for art perhaps.

These bilious thoughts bred amid the smell of leaf mold and autumn smoke. All around us lanterns bobbed, like a gathering of giant glowworms emerging from the streets and flooding from the windows of the meeting hall, a church in fact, with its great white steeple shining in the night.

This was the kind of society the Dit'sum printers had envisaged, a kind of dream, and this was the country built on that dream, what Gunner and Weasel and Chooka and Chanker had discussed in the dusk at Piggott's printery. Yet we had never thought to see a church involved. Indeed, you could search all of England and never see the like. It was all wood, and carpentry, and perfect miter joints, and doweling plugs instead of nails and what was not painted pure white was plain waxed timber and the whole of its lower floor-for it had an upper-had its pews all divided up like a series of cages, each with a door. I was inclined to think of a chicken house, except it was not like this at all, and all the town-there must have been a thousand citizens-pushed in and sat in their places and there was a great certainty-a clarity, a plainness-which spoke well of them in spite of the religious aspect.

There was no stained glass, just clear panes, as if you might be expected to look out and witness the saints kneeling on the lawn beside the baker or the library.

There was no pew named Parrot. I abandoned Miss Godefroy to her friends, aunts, children on her lap. They asked me to be with them but I was better by myself. I had grown up hard and solitary beneath the stars, that was our conceit, mine and my da's, that we were not people who hid the wonder of the universe with ceilings, like a cloth across a cage.

At this moment I witnessed the arrival of Olivier de Garmont in the church. He was not higher than Godefroy's shoulder but he seemed to give off a certain light. Doubtless the blue jacket surrounded by so much black and gray. His bright white ruff, but something else, a glowing skin, an elegance of manner-aristocratic! call it that!-he bowed and moved as if he were a visitation, a most glorious apparition, being taken in, moved from one hand to the next, to the center of their hive, and I was jealous of them, their bonneted wives, their church, I hated it.

And thus I sat, the sole occupant of the pew, and listened as their selectmen reported to them, and as they all-and it did seem like all-had something to say about the collection of a tax, or the new assessment for the school, and the question of those who must make their payment in kind. I never heard such boring tripe in all my life.

It was moved that the ground be broken in spring.

It was moved that the tax be raised in advance.

It was moved that the government road should stop at the township border.

Every time I thought it was the end, there was more, and the people of Wethersfield were never in a rush so even when the old boy stood up to explain how the town could patent the onion, and even when they explained to him the onion was the work of God and therefore not included in the patents, and even when he explained that these onions had their distinctive nature on account of his father and uncle who had "bred them up like lambs," no one moved to throttle him.

As was common, my seat had been made by someone who disapproved of sitting and by the time Godefroy stood and introduced the French commissioner, there was no feeling in my bum.