His profession of fidelity to Ruthy, I repeat, had been a shade disingenuous. Joel loved & misst her, no question, & wisht himself in her arms in the rue du Bac; she had no rivals amongst the veil’d Algerines. But he had for some weeks been enjoying a flirtation with the young wife of a man attacht to the Spanish consulate (we call’d her “Consuelo del Consulado”), and had left off her pursuit out of delicacy only when the husband, a gambler & general libertine, had perisht of the plague a few days since. Not once had this Consuelo responded to Barlow’s gallantries by more than a flash of her Andalusian eyes; now, suddenly, a message purportedly in her hand was deliver’d from the Spanish consulate: Could her carísimo Senor B. arrange discreetly to meet her carriage — alone, in person, at once — at a certain headland not far hence, on business of a most urgent but confidential nature?
He suspected a trap, of course. The note could have been forged, or written under duress; the woman or someone acting in her stead could be baiting him into a compromising position, to the end of either embarrassing or blackmailing him. Worse, some hired ruffian might be waiting in the carriage to knock him on the head & toss him into the sea, on pretext of defending the young widow’s honor. Even supposing the message genuine, he had misgivings: what if his little flirtation should lead to something more consequential & less extricable? On the other hand, if the lady truly needed his aid or craved his company, and he injured or insulted her by not responding, he would make a considerable enemy in the consular community: a fresh widow so ready to go to’t (let us suppose) would just as readily look to her revenge if scorn’d. And what if she did innocently need his help, or crave a bit of extra-consular consolation? He’d be a knave & fool not to provide it! & cetera.
Amused as I was by his embarrassment & excitement, I quite shared his apprehensions, & proposed at once to meet the carriage in his stead. I would declare he had been summon’d to an unexpected private audience with the Dey (no consular person could fail to acknowledge such priority), but would be honor’d to meet her at her convenience in our villa. If she seem’d offended, I would improvise, confess I had intercepted her message & taken it upon myself to investigate. If she seem’d sincere — whether sincerely distrest or sincerely amorous — I would endeavor to pacify her & either fetch her to the villa or arrange another assignation in less vulnerable circumstances, for Barlow to pursue at his own discretion. If I smelt a rat, he would be forewarn’d. And if it should prove an outright ambuscade? Why, then I would make shift to extricate myself as best I could: I had learnt a thing or two in the streets of Paris.
But she had specified Barlow himself: trap or no trap, would her carriage not take flight at my approach?
I had come to know my knack for counterfeiting hands (and assignats). Earlier, in Mme de Staël’s house at the time of the Septembrist massacre, I had discover’d a sudden facility for improvising histories; and more recently, in Algiers, a gift for devising stratagems. Now, almost to my own surprise, I found myself a ready hand at counterfeiting certain actual personages. Then & there, impromptu, I walkt like Barlow, talkt & laught & gestured in his way, even improvised aloud a passage from his Vision of Columbus! Where his had read (with characteristic lack-lustre):
Glad Chesapeake unfolds a passage wide,
And leads their streamers up the freshening tide;
Where a mild region and delightful soil
And groves and streams allure the steps of toil…
“mine” extravagantly declaim’d:
Borne up my Chesapeake, [Columbus] hails
The flowery banks that scent his slackening sails;
Descending twilight mellows down the gleam
That spreads far forward on the broad blue stream;
The moonbeam dancing, as the pendants glide,
Silvers with trembling tints the rippling tide;
The sand-sown beach, the rocky bluff repays
The faint effulgence with their amber’d rays;
O’er greenwood glens a browner lustre flies
And bright-hair’d hills walk shadowy round the skies…
I meant a gentle parody — but Barlow was enraptured, as much by the verses as by my impersonation. I was my father’s & cet.! Laughing & weeping, roused & reluctant, he gave me leave to make free with his cape (his coat was too large for me; I regretted he wore neither periwig nor eyeglasses; our features were not similar; voice & manner must serve) & a fine horse presented him by the Dey. We embraced a final time, and off I rode, to the oddest assignation I hope ever to be party to.
The moon was bright, the night warm & windy. The dark carriage waited with a single coachman at the designated spot, above a rocky beach outside the city. Très “romantique”: Germaine de Staël would have fancied it, the more for its spice of diplomatic intrigue. But I was all misgivings: surely the coachman was a Spanish thug, the carriage full of his cohorts. Why had I not come in our own carriage, her stipulations be damn’d, with Barlow drest as coachman, & demanded she change conveyances to prove her goodwill before proceeding farther? Too late for such hindsight: moreover, tho my disposition was & is not reckless, some intuition (I have learnt to recognize & honor it since) urged me, in this instance, not to reck. I took a large breath & walkt the horse forward, my hand on the pistol Barlow had lent me with his cape & the rest…
In the 15 years since, only three people have heard without scoffing the full tale of what ensued. I have ceased to recount it even to my friends, not to try their confidence unnecessarily. Andrée herself I have declined till now to test the faith of in detail, as (witness my faltering pen) I hesitate to test yours, child, when you shall scan these pages in time to come. What matters, after all, is not the business in the carriage, but the sparing of Barlow’s life (he himself was able to verify later, thro Bacri’s informants in Madrid, that the Spanish consul in Algiers had indeed got cipher’d instructions to assassinate him if the job could be done for $50,000) and the demonstration, to myself, of my little knack for impersonation.
That knack was call’d for only at the opening of the adventure, when the coachman cried me to a halt & uncover’d his lantern to inspect me. I saw the carriage window-curtain drawn aside; then I screen’d my face with Barlow’s hat and call’d back in Barlow’s voice that I was he whom a certain Senora del Consulado had sought aid of. If she was within, let her show herself, otherwise I would back to my own affairs — and, I added, I could see nothing with that lantern shining in my face. The carriage door open’d partway: a woman’s voice instructed the coachman in Spanish to put out the light, and me in soft accented English to secure my horse & enter without fear. I did so, keeping my visage lower’d, muttering in Barlow’s way about the lateness of the hour, & cet., and glancing up under my brim as I climb’d the step to make certain the lady was alone inside. She was barely illuminated by a tiny cover’d lamp fixt to the carriage wall. I stept in quickly & turn’d away from her to close the door & draw its curtain.
Even Germaine de Staël & the Barlows, back in Paris, accepted this much without question. Ruthy Barlow & Germaine defended somewhat further — against the skepticism of Joel & of the Barlows’ new American friend, Robert Fulton, whom they more or less adopted in my stead when he left off painting with Benjamin West in London and came to Paris with his schemes for canalways & submarine vessels — the possibility of what happen’d next: Consuelo’s calling to the coachman to ride on even as she flung herself ardently upon me; my struggle to keep her mouth cover’d when she realized, at once, that I was not the man she’d summon’d; my urgent whisper’d assurances that I had no dishonorable intentions, & wisht only to ascertain, for the gentleman whose person I feign’d, that the Spanish consulate had none either. No one seriously doubted — especially given Barlow’s subsequent verification — the essentials of Consuelo’s story: that she had at one time briefly been the mistress of the political attaché of the Spanish consulate, a dashing, unscrupulous fellow named Don Escarpio; that her worthless husband, who encouraged the affair in hopes of advancing his own fortunes, was smitten with jealousy upon its consummation & challenged Don Escarpio just when that fellow (who had better been named Don Juan), having made his conquest, began promptly to tire of her. It was Consuelo’s conviction, in view of what follow’d, that Don Escarpio then arranged her husband’s death by plague in order to rid himself of the nuisance without risking a duel, & to put her the more at his mercy. Her profligate spouse had left large debts in the consular community, which she had no means of paying; Don Escarpio proposed to liquidate those debts & return her safely to her family in Málaga with a $10,000 secret bonus from the Spanish government if she would seduce & see to the death of Senor Barlow, the too successful American diplomat who had so clearly been captivated by her beauty. Consuelo had protested that she could not kill, unless perhaps in a passion of anger. Her ex-lover, of whom she was now terrified, had replied with a cold smile (“una sonrisa fría”) that no anger was required, only the sort of passion of which none knew better than he her breast was full. He then disclosed to her—& she to me — the singular means she was to employ.