Part 34

‘“He is bad,” says Red Jacket. “But he is a great chief. The French have sent away a great chief. I thought so when he told us his lies. Now I know.”

‘I had to go on to the party, so I asked him to call round for me afterwards and we’d have hymn-singing at Toby’s as usual. “No,” he says. “Tell Toby I am not Christian tonight. All Indian.” He had those fits sometimes. I wanted to know more about Monsieur Peringuey, and the emigre party was the very place to find out. It’s neither here nor there, of course, but those French emigre parties they almost make you cry. The men that you bought fruit of in Market Street, the hairdressers and fencing-masters and French teachers, they turn back again by candlelight to what they used to be at home, and you catch their real names. There wasn’t much room in the washhouse, so I sat on top of the copper and played ‘em the tunes they called for--“Si le Roi m’avait donne,” and such nursery stuff. They cried sometimes. It hurt me to take their money afterwards, indeed it did. And there I found out about Monsieur Peringuey. He was a proper rogue too! None of ‘em had a good word for him except the Marquise that kept the French boarding-house on Fourth Street. I made out that his real name was the Count Talleyrand de Perigord--a priest right enough, but sorely come down in the world. He’d been King Louis’ Ambassador to England a year or two back, before the French had cut off King Louis’ head; and, by what I heard, that head wasn’t hardly more than hanging loose before he’d run back to Paris and prevailed on Danton, the very man which did the murder, to send him back to England again as Ambassador of the French Republic! That was too much for the English, so they kicked him out by Act of Parliament, and he’d fled to the Americas without money or friends or prospects. I’m telling you the talk in the washhouse. Some of ‘em was laughing over it. Says the French Marquise, “My friends, you laugh too soon. That man ‘ll be on the winning side before any of us.”

‘“I did not know you were so fond of priests, Marquise,” says the Vicomte. His lady did my washing, as I’ve told you.

‘“I have my reasons,” says the Marquise. “He sent my uncle and my two brothers to Heaven by the little door,”--that was one of the emigre names for the guillotine. “He will be on the winning side if it costs him the blood of every friend he has in the world.”

‘“Then what does he want here?” says one of ‘em. “We have all lost our game.”

‘“My faith!” says the Marquise. “He will find out, if any one can, whether this canaille of a Washington means to help us to fight England. Genet” (that was my Ambassador in the Embuscade) “has failed and gone off disgraced; Faucher” (he was the new man) “hasn’t done any better, but our Abbe will find out, and he will make his profit out of the news. Such a man does not fall.”

‘“He begins unluckily,” says the Vicomte. “He was set upon today in the street for not hooting your Washington.” They all laughed again, and one remarks, “How does the poor devil keep himself?”

‘He must have slipped in through the washhouse door, for he flits past me and joins ‘em, cold as ice.

‘“One does what one can,” he says. “I sell buttons. And you, Marquise?”

‘“I?”--she waves her poor white hands all burned--“I am a cook--a very bad one--at your service, Abbe. We were just talking about you.”

They didn’t treat him like they talked of him. They backed off and stood still.

‘“I have missed something, then,” he says. “But I spent this last hour playing--only for buttons, Marquise--against a noble savage, the veritable Huron himself.”

‘“You had your usual luck, I hope?” she says.

‘“Certainly,” he says. “I cannot afford to lose even buttons in these days.”

‘“Then I suppose the child of nature does not know that your dice are usually loaded, Father Tout-a-tous,” she continues. I don’t know whether she meant to accuse him of cheating. He only bows. ‘“Not yet, Mademoiselle Cunegonde,” he says, and goes on to make himself agreeable to the rest of the company. And that was how I found out our Monsieur Peringuey was Count Charles Maurice Talleyrand de Perigord.’

Pharaoh stopped, but the children said nothing.

‘You’ve heard of him?’ said Pharaoh.

Una shook her head. ‘Was Red Jacket the Indian he played dice with?’ Dan asked.

‘He was. Red Jacket told me the next time we met. I asked if the lame man had cheated. Red Jacket said no--he had played quite fair and was a master player. I allow Red Jacket knew. I’ve seen him, on the Reservation, play himself out of everything he had and in again. Then I told Red Jacket all I’d heard at the party concerning Talleyrand.

‘“I was right,” he says. “I saw the man’s war-face when he thought he was alone. That’s why I played him. I played him face to face. He’s a great chief. Do they say why he comes here?”

‘“They say he comes to find out if Big Hand makes war against the English,” I said.

‘Red Jacket grunted. “Yes,” he says. “He asked me that too. If he had been a small chief I should have lied. But he is a great chief. He knew I was a chief, so I told him the truth. I told him what Big Hand said to Cornplanter and me in the clearing--‘There will be no war.’ I could not see what he thought. I could not see behind his face. But he is a great chief. He will believe.”

‘“Will he believe that Big Hand can keep his people back from war?” I said, thinking of the crowds that hooted Big Hand whenever he rode out.

‘“He is as bad as Big Hand is good, but he is not as strong as Big Hand,” says Red Jacket. “When he talks with Big Hand he will feel this in his heart. The French have sent away a great chief. Presently he will go back and make them afraid.”

‘Now wasn’t that comical? The French woman that knew him and owed all her losses to him; the Indian that picked him up, cut and muddy on the street, and played dice with him; they neither of ‘em doubted that Talleyrand was something by himself--appearances notwithstanding.’

‘And was he something by himself?’ asked Una.

Pharaoh began to laugh, but stopped. ‘The way I look at it,’ he said, ‘Talleyrand was one of just three men in this world who are quite by themselves. Big Hand I put first, because I’ve seen him.’ ‘Ay,’ said Puck. ‘I’m sorry we lost him out of Old England. Who d’you put second?’

‘Talleyrand: maybe because I’ve seen him too,’ said Pharaoh.