Cooper order’d another round of cocktails, observed that Jews were not admitted to the new U. States Military Academy at West Point or to the naval officer corps, & ask’d whence my familiarity with things Hebrew. Thus we got to the remarkable Joseph Bacri, to Joel Barlow’s finally successful Algerine mission, & to my adventure with Consuelo “del Consulado.” He was full of questions, but not of the skeptical sort, and made note of my replies for his unnamed friend. Of the matter of our protracted coupling in the carriage — first feign’d & then not — whilst Consuelo disclosed her written “exposition” (as he call’d it), Cooper observed: “That will have to be toned down.” He applauded my test both of her “innocence” (by obliging her to scratch herself) and of her sincerity (by taking her directly aboard the Fortune, sans papers, baggage, or interview with Barlow; I prevail’d upon the Captain — with a bribe from my travelling-funds & a quickly forged sailing order from “Barlow”—to accept her as a passenger & get under way at once instead of waiting till morning, as we believed the Dey plann’d to intercept the ship outside the harbor). Cooper question’d, not the verity, but the verisimilitude — that is, the plausibility as fiction—of my account of all this: the sailing order forged in my cabin in the ten minutes I’d requested to indite a “farewell” (& warning) letter to Barlow, whom I would not see again till mid-September; my inditing, in the same ten minutes, that farewell & warning, in which I enclosed Consuelo’s account of the Spanish plot; our bribing the Algerine harbor-master to agree that it was the current high tide, not the next, we were clear’d to sail on; our weighing anchor, making sail, & standing out of the harbor for Leghorn, Marseilles, & Philadelphia even as the carriage — which I’d first approacht not three hours since! — climb’d up from the quay in the direction of Barlow’s villa, my horse still tether’d behind.
“That too would all have to be reworkt,” said Midshipman Cooper. “The coachman, for example: How could you know he wasn’t an agent of that chap…” He consulted his notes. “Escarpio?” Lifetime servant of Consuelo’s family, I replied; had known her from her birth, & cet. But how was it Don Escarpio hadn’t put his own man on the carriage, to ensure against Consuelo’s defection? Couldn’t account for that myself, I admitted: bit of good luck, I supposed. That would have to be reworkt. And did the fellow not fear for his life when he should return to the Spanish consulate minus his passenger?
“Ah, well,” Barlow himself explain’d in Paris just five months ago (December 1811, my last meeting with him) to the bright 12-year-old whom Mme de Staël (herself 45 now, ill, pregnant by her young Swiss lover Rocca, & exiled to Coppet by Napoleon, who had confiscated the first press run of her book De l’Allemagne and order’d her to leave Paris at once) had taken an interest in: “Poor Enrique never return’d to the consulado, you see. When he deliver’d Andy’s letter he was trembling from head to toe. I thot ’twas fright, especially when I’d read the letter — but ’twas chills & fever. The servants would not let him into the house, but bedded him down in his own carriage. Sure enough, the 1st bubo appear’d next day in his groin, and by the time Senor El Consulado came ’round to fetch the horse & carriage, the wretch was dead.”
Young Honoré, who loved the story even more than had Fenimore Cooper & King George, would not have it that the coachman’s infection was coincidental, even tho Barlow’s favorite manservant had succumb’d to the plague just a day or two earlier. No, he insisted: Don Escarpio had infected the man deliberately, to cover his tracks, for “Enrique” was actually Henry Burlingame IV in disguise, seeing to the safety of his long-lost son; and Consuelo had not disembarkt at Málaga after our tearful farewells at Marseilles, but been kidnapt by the lusty sailors & fetcht to Philadelphia, where she escaped & tried to rejoin me at Castines Hundred, but was captured by the Shawnee but spared by Tecumseh because her then pseudonym, Rebecca, together with her raven hair & olive skin, reminded him of his great-grandmother, a Spanish Jewess captured & adopted by the Creeks in Florida…
“Too romantical by half, Master Balzac,” I advised my 3rd uncritical auditor, who, unlike Midshipman Cooper, frankly aspired to literature & was already scribbling vaudevilles at a great rate. He promist to rework it & show me an amended draught by New Year’s Day. But on the darkest night of the year a courier from the office of the Duc de Bassano, drest in the particular shade of brown fashionable that season in Napoleon’s court (“Caca du roi de Rome,” after the stools of the Emperor’s infant son), deliver’d to me an urgent letter from Andrée. It had been written at Castines Hundred only 30 days past & sent via Quebec & the secret French-Canadian diplomatic pouch: “Cato” (our code name for Tecumseh, who deplored the white man’s influence on the red as had Cato the Greek influence on the Romans) had suffer’d such a defeat on the Tippecanoe River that he was inclined to make peace with the U. States & remain neutral in the coming war. Furthermore, my man John Henry (of whom more presently), frustrated in his attempt to get from the British Foreign Office what he felt was owed him for his espionage in New England, was rumor’d to be leaving London in disgust & returning to Lower Canada. As for the author of the letter herself, she was gratified to report that in consequence of our close cooperation in July, when we had successfully “torpedo’d” (Robert Fulton’s word) the negotiations between William Henry Harrison & our friend “Cato,” she found herself in the family way. Would I please see to the completion of my current torpedo-work (on Barlow’s negotiations with the Duc de Bassano) in time to marry her before April 1812, when our baby was expected? And by the by, in case we should decide to assassinate either William Henry Harrison or Tecumseh’s Prophet: Whatever happen’d to my friend Consuelo’s dandy little potion? Was I so certain that it had contain’d what she described?
I was not, never had been, never would be certain. For, as I explain’d to your mother when I first met her in 1804 (and told her a version of this adventure suitable for the ears of a lady of fifteen), and re-explain’d when I remet & fell in love with her in 1807, and reminded her upon our marriage three months ago, Consuelo had flung her singular snuffbox straight into the Mediterranean when the Fortune clear’d Algiers. For all I knew & know for certain, “Don Escarpio” might have been tricking her for some complicated reason into an unsuccessful attempt on Barlow’s life, or she me into her rescue — tho she needed no such risky stratagem. I was certain only that it was good to be out of Algiers & to have such ardent company en route to Leghorn (where I was able to confirm the transfer of “our” letter of credit to Bacri’s Italian office) & Marseilles, where I left the ship. Consuelo wisht to come with me — to Paris, to anywhere — but I was too uncertain of my plans to undertake that responsibility. The Captain offer’d to carry me on, to Málaga or to Philadelphia: I return’d to Paris, & to a different uncertainty: one that persisted another half-dozen years.