Our progenitor points out that he has disguised himself this time simply to put by that disguise, in warrant of his good faith. He explains what he has learned from Andrée about the family Pattern; his chastened resolve that the “second cycle” of his life neutralize its misdirected first. Indeed, he affirms, Neutralization can be said to be his programme: he too hopes to see Napoleon neutralized before he ruins Europe; then a quick settlement of the American war before the United States can seize Canada on the one hand or, on the other, a Britain done with Napoleon can turn her whole might against her former colonies. It is his hope that an equitable treaty will guarantee Tecumseh’s Indian Free State below and between the Great Lakes; for himself he wants no more than to return to Castines Hundred, raise his children, and perhaps write a realistical 18th-Century-style novel based on his adventures. To this end he puts himself again and openheartedly at his old friend’s service. He is confident that together they can reenact and surpass their “H.B.-ing” of Hassan Bashaw; that they can Burlingame Bassano, Bonaparte, and the British prince regent into the bargain, if need be, to their pacific ends.
For Ruthy’s sake, Andrew imagines — she maintains through these declarations as apprehensive a reserve as Andrée’s — Joel does not immediately consent to the proposed alliance, nor does Andrew press the matter. While Tecumseh’s Delawares attack white settlements in Kentucky, and his Chicagos besiege Fort Wayne, and Tecumseh himself heads south once more to rally the Creeks to his confederacy; while Madison decides to invade Canada from upstate New York despite Britain’s lifting of the Orders in Council and Hull’s fiasco at Detroit; while Brock gathers his forces on the Niagara Frontier for the fatal battle of Queenston Heights (his Indians are Iroquois led by John Brant, the 18-year-old son of our old friend Joseph); while Beethoven meets Goethe at Teplitz and Goya paints Wellington’s portrait and Hegel publishes his Objective Logic and the Brothers Grimm their Fairy Tales and General Malet conspires to restore Louis XVIII in Napoleon’s absence, Cook and the Barlows carefully renew their friendship. Young Tom Barlow (Joel’s nephew and ward) and “Jean Baptiste Petry” explore Paris together through September, to improve the lad’s postgraduate savoir vivre. But on October 10, when the Duc de Dalberg himself brings the word to 50 rue de Vaugirard that the Duc de Bassano awaits Barlow’s pleasure at Vilnius, for all his and Ruthy’s misgivings Joel makes no secret of his delight, especially when the aide assigned to accompany the American minister is named to be Monsieur J. B. Petry!
8¶8608285! Andrew’s letter here cries out, as if in ciphered Slavic: EVEILEBEM! Believe me! It would have workt, had not that dear great man, with half a million Frenchmen, froze to death at the bitter end of the alphabet!
Toward October’s close, as the Grande Armée begins its retreat from the ashes of Moscow (in Canada, Brock is dead, but his battle won; the U.S.S. Wasp has defeated the sloop-of-war Frolic but surrendered to H.M.S. Poictiers; Decatur in the United States has taken His Majesty’s frigate Macedonian; the war is a draw as election day approaches), Joel, Tom, and “Jean Baptiste” leave Paris. In mid-November they arrive in Vilnius, where the ground is already frozen. Despite all, it is a joy to be adventuring together again; if Andrew is older and more grave, Joel is in as youthful high spirits as when they calèched across Spain in 1795, en route to Algiers. He writes Ruthy almost daily — so Andrew blithely reports, without explaining why he does not follow that loving example! — he drills his nephew in German; with M. Petry’s inventive aid he translates passages of the Iliad and the Columbiad into imaginary Polish. There is a merry if uneasy fortnight in the old city, crowded with the ministers of half a dozen nations: they pool their consular provisions, dine with the Duc de Bassano, make merry with the Polish gentry, and prepare their negotiation strategy — there seem to be no serious obstacles — while, what Barlow will not live to learn, his friend James Madison is very narrowly reelected over DeWitt Clinton of New York. That state, New Jersey, and all of New England except Vermont vote against the President — but do not secede after all when a few Pennsylvania precincts decide the election. The War of 1812 approaches 1813; the Duke of Wellington enters Madrid; the French army dies and dies.
Believe me! Andrew cries again: Despite all, it would have workt! The Duc de Bassano still assures everyone that Vilnius will be the emperor’s winter quarters; M. Barlow may expect his treaty in a matter of days. True, the retreat from Moscow has become less than orderly; nevertheless… By early December the panic is general; everyone flees Vilnius before the Cossacks come. No winter has ever been so cold so early; the crows peck vainly at frozen French corpses along every road, and flap off to seek the not quite dead. Joel is revolted into the last and strongest poem of his life: Advice to a Raven in Russia (“… hatch fast your ravenous brood, / Teach them to cry to Buonaparte for food;” etc.). Andrew reads the poem in Warsaw on the bitter day—12/12/12, and the mercury -12°F — when Joel writes to Ruthy, in a cipher of their own, that Napoleon has overtaken and passed them already in his closed, unescorted sleigh, fleeing his own as well as the Russian army.
’Twas with no advice from me he advised that raven, Andrew declares, whose image must haunt me evermore, till I find another poet to exorcise me of it. Now is the time, he nonetheless believes, to take best advantage of the Duc de Bassano, when Napoleon needs all the goodwill he can buy. On the 18th they leave Warsaw, hoping to overtake that gentleman before the Cossacks do. On the 19th, in the valley of the Vistula, Barlow himself is overtaken, by a cold to which a fever is added on the 20th. His condition worsens rapidly: at the little Jewish stetl of Zarnowiec, “the bitter end of the alphabet,” on “the shortest, darkest, meanest day of 1812,” half a year exactly since Andrew’s imperious dream, Joel declares he can travel no farther. The mayor and postmaster of the village, one John Blaski, is sympathetic: “Petry” overcomes the man’s fear of Cossack reprisal and persuades him to take the American minister in. Doctors are summoned, to no avail beyond the diagnosis of pneumonia. On the day after Christmas, which out of respect for their host the visitors do not observe, the Plenipotens Minister a Statibus unitis America, as Joel Barlow’s burial tablet in the Zarnowiec Christian churchyard denominates him, Itinerando hicce obiit.