He cannot decide. To clear his head he crosses the Chesapeake, first to Cook’s Point at the mouth of the Choptank, then hither to Bloodsworth Island, with the vague project of locating the site of that Ahatchwhoop village where the dream of an Indian-Negro alliance was first conceived by his forefathers (and where, he remarks in an illuminating aside, Henry Burlingame III learned “Captain Kidd’s Cipher” from his fellow pirates Tom Pound and Long Ben Avery). “The longest day of the year”—I presume he means the literal solstice — finds him wandering aimlessly along these marshes, “devouring [his] own soul like Bellerophon.” A strange lassitude overtakes him: the fatigue of irresolution, no doubt, combined with a steaming tidewater noon. “On a point of dry ground between two creeklets, in the shade of a stand of loblolly pines,” he rests; he dozes; he dreams…
Of what? We are not told; only that he woke “half tranced, understanding where [he] was but not, at once, why [he] was there,” and that he felt eerily as though he had aged ten years in as many minutes; that he was — odd feeling for a Cook, a Burlingame, but I myself am no stranger to it—“a different person” from the one who had drowsed off. He fetches forth and winds the pocketwatch sent to him so long ago in France by “H.B. IV”—and suddenly the meaning of his unrecorded dream comes clear, as surprising as it is ambiguous. He must find his father, and bring that father to Castines Hundred, to his grandchildren!
You sigh, Henry. I too! No more reenactments! But our ancestor sighs with us — nay, groans, not only at the by-now banality of this familiar imperative, but at its evident futility. What father? “Aaron Burr,” in his cups in Paris? “Harman Blennerhassett,” God knows where? Or perhaps himself, who we remember closed his last “prenatal” letter by referring to himself as his own father, and who surely feels a generation older since this dream?
Sensibly, he returns to Castines Hundred for Andrée’s counsel. She is startled at his changed appearance, even suspicious, so it seems to him. The twins are healthy; but she remains reserved, uneasy. Napoleon crosses the Niemen into Russia. General Hull receives his mail in Frenchtown and crosses the Detroit into Canada. By way of desperate demonstration of his authenticity, Andrew forges in Andrée’s presence a letter from Governor-General Sir George Prevost to General Brock, describing mass movements of Indian and Canadian troops en route to aid him at Detroit: a letter designed to fall “inadvertently” into Hull’s hands so that he will panic, take flight from Canada, and surrender the city. Andrée cautiously approves a provisional strategy: to prevent or minimize battles where possible and promote stalemate. But she seems to require, “like Penelope, further proof that this much-changed revenant is her Odysseus.
In August the false letter will do its work (not, alas, bloodlessly), but its author, heart-hurt by Andrée’s continuing detachment, will have left Castines Hundred for France. Is it that he could not, Odysseus-like, rehearse the ultimate secret of the marriage bed? We are not told; only that he goes. He will see Andrée at least once more; she will not ever him.
Mme de Staël is nowhere about. Having fled Paris for Coppet, Coppet for Vienna, Vienna for St. Petersburg before Bonaparte’s advance, she must now flee Russia for London, maybe thence for America if Napoleon cannot be stopped. Andrew seeks out “Aaron Burr” and confirms at once that his dream must be reread: not because that wrecked old schemer could not imaginably be “Henry Burlingame IV,” but because he is so indisputably the fallen father of the woman whose brilliant letters, imploring him to return to America and rebegin, Burr ungallantly exhibits to his visitor. “My daughter, don’t you know. In Charleston. Theodosia…”
Andrew winds his watch. Burr gives no sign. Go to her, the younger intrigant urges the older: Rebegin.
He himself then rebegins by presenting himself to the only father he has known. Disguised as one Jean Baptiste Petry, a minor aide to the Duc de Dalberg, he enters a familiar house in the rue de Vaugirard. There is rubicund Ruthy, there gentle Joel, who nonetheless sternly informs M. Petry that he is fed up with the foreign minister’s deliberate procrastination and equivocating. Seventeen more American vessels have been taken as prizes by the French navy, who seem not to have been apprised of the “Decree of St. Cloud.” Secretary Monroe has written (Barlow shows the letter) that an early settlement is anticipated with the English, after which the full hostility of both nations will be directed against France. It is time for a treaty of indemnification and free trade: a real treaty, not another counterfeit like that of St. Cloud, more worthy of the impostor Comte de Crillon or the legendary Henry Burlingame than of the Emperor of the French.
“Jean Baptiste” smiles. The son of that same M. Burlingame, he declares, has reportedly come to Paris to offer his talents to M. Barlow. Indeed, the fellow has audaciously gained access to privy sanctums of the Duc de Dalberg disguised as the aide now speaking these words, whom he happens to resemble, and has ascertained that while de Dalberg is indeed equivocating with Barlow on instructions from the Duc de Bassano, he regrets this equivocation as genuinely as Barlow does, whom he regards as a true friend of France. He has urged the Duc de Bassano to urge Napoleon to put an end to the business with a solid treaty of commerce between the United States and France, and expects daily to receive word of the emperor’s approval. All this (“Monsieur Petry” indignantly concludes) the false “Jean Baptiste” has no doubt promptly communicated to Monsieur Barlow, at one can imagine what detriment to the real Petry’s credibility. It is too much, this “Burlingaming” of Bonaparte as if he were some petty Algerine Bashaw!
Andrew pats his brow in mock exasperation; reaches for his watch chain. No need: Barlow’s eyes have widened, squinted, rewidened; he scowls, he grins; now they are clapping each other’s shoulders, kissing each other’s cheeks, whooping Ruthy into the library to see what on earth…
Then Andrew doffs all disguise (except his irrevocably aged “real” features) and to the two of them earnestly puts his case. What he has reported is the truth: the Duc de Dalberg (who has only got as good as he gave) is expecting word momently from Vilnius, the emperor’s Lithuanian headquarters, that Barlow should hasten there to conclude his treaty with the Duc de Bassano. Napoleon cares little for American affairs; his mind is on Moscow, which he must take before winter comes. But not everyone in the Foreign Ministry is as sanguine about the Russian expedition as is their emperor: it will be imperative, once the summons arrives from Vilnius, to move posthaste and get the matter dispatched.
Ruthy begins to cry: another separation! Joel too is sobered: Vilnius is no carriage jaunt to Coppet, but 2,000 and more kilometers across Germany and Poland! He too has heard opinions that Napoleon has overreached himself this time; that the Muscovites will burn their city before surrendering it. Moreover, pleased as he is to see le grand Andrew again (and to hear of the twins!), he cannot be expected to swallow unskeptically such a story, from such a source. About his own objectives he is quite clear: like Mme de Staël he has become anti-Bonaparte but not pro-Bourbon; for France’s sake, for Europe’s, he hopes Napoleon is defeated without too great loss of life, and the Empire replaced by a constitutional monarchy on the English model. For the United States he wants an early and honorable settlement of this “Second War of Independence,” for which he holds no brief. For himself he craves the speedy success of his diplomatic errand and the family’s return to Kalorama in Georgetown, to end his days like Thomas Jefferson cultivating his gardens, writing his memoirs, perhaps establishing a national university. A dozen years into the 19th Century, he is weary of it already, its Sturm und Drang and gloire and romantisme. He prefers Mozart to Beethoven, Voltaire to Goethe, reason to passion; he wants to go home. What does Andrew want?