Caribbean: a novel Part 23

'But I face another suit. Remember those men I caught stealing Admiralty funds? Oliver, did you know that I found them in default of more than two million pounds?'

'Governments are never happy with an underling who points out mistakes, even if they run to two million. But you really have no cause to flee.'

'I'm heading for France. I'll finally master that despicable language against the day I capture some great French s.h.i.+p of war and have to deliver terms to her captain.'

At this bizarre reasoning, Wrentham exploded: 'Horatio, you'll never be happy in France. Let me lay your case before the Admiralty. My grandfather, the earl, does command a hearing.'

Nelson did not seem to hear this a.s.surance as he continued: 'What I shall really do, Alistair, is pa.s.s through France to St. Petersburg, where I shall offer my services to Catherine of Russia and her fleet.'

This statement was so shocking that Wrentham was rendered speechless, and Nelson continued, with great excitement and much movement of his hands: 'Remember that d.a.m.ned Scotsman John Paul, who turned his back on us in the American war, added the name Jones and became their naval hero? Well, when they wouldn't make him an admiral, which I must say he deserved, for he knew how to fight his s.h.i.+p, he hied himself off to Russia and received a top a.s.signment from the czarina, and so far as I know, is still there. I'd enjoy fighting alongside a man with spirit like that.'

Now Wrentham became angry: 'Horatio, you're no John Paul Jones. The man was as fickle as a spring breeze. Born a Scot, should have fought on our side, offered his services to France, then the American colonies, now Russia ... and G.o.d knows where next. Maybe Turkey, maybe France again.' He came to stand over Nelson as he delivered his ultimatum: 'You're English, Nelson. Could never be anything else. The lawsuits? I'll attend to them. For the present, I want you to unpack ... and please accept this small gift to help you restore your sense of propriety.'

Having antic.i.p.ated that Nelson might be in pitiful straits, he had brought with him from his bank in London 200, which he now gave to his former commander. For some moments Nelson just stood there, both hands thrust forward with the notes resting in them. Then he spoke: 'The humiliations I've known. The endless letters which receive no responses. The appeals to the Admiralty which go unanswered. The crawling, the sc.r.a.ping, the inability to buy your wife the dresses she merits, the constant taking of money from an old father, the impotence when your married sister needs a little help. I've lived in h.e.l.l these past years, none worse on earth, and if war comes and I get a s.h.i.+p, G.o.d help the Frenchman that I go up against, for I shall be all fire and black powder.'

But then his mood changed completely, for he waved the notes in the air and cried: 'Ever since they've remade me into Farmer Horace, I've wanted to buy myself a pony. Never had the money. But if I'm destined to be a farmer and not a naval officer, I want that pony!' Almost joyously he led Wrentham into the village where he had long ago spotted the fine little animal he craved. To the owner's surprise he cried: 'Jacko, me boy, I'll take her. Here's a hundred and you can bring me the change when convenient.' And with a satisfaction he had not known for years, he led the beast home, saying truthfully: 'If I'm to be a farmer, Alistair, I shall be a good one.'

The prospect of this potentially great sea captain wasting his life as a farmer disgusted Wrentham, and when he further saw the miserable condition in which Nelson lived subservient to his father, and the whining character of Mrs. Nelson, suddenly so much older in appearance and manner, and the ever-present penury, he became so agitated that he was tempted to reveal something about which he should never have spoken and which he would later regret: 'Nelson, when you allowed me to visit that great plantation in Jamaica, I met the lovely daughter of the place, nineteen she was and too old for me. But I kept talking about you so much that she said: "I'd like to meet your Captain Nelson," and it was arranged. I would hurry back to Port Royal with an invitation from her family. They were rich. They loved the navy. And you would visit Trevelyan. But when I reached the fort, you had sailed away ... only hours before.'

He bowed his head over the kitchen table, then said: 'It all could have been so different. That one would have followed you even into battle.'

Nelson coughed to catch Wrentham's attention, then said: 'Alistair, it is infamous that you should tell me such a story ... at such a time,' and he was about to order the young officer from his father's house when his eye fell upon a chance mix of vegetables left upon the kitchen table in preparation for tomorrow's stew, and their juxtaposition captivated him.

'Supposing that you and I were facing the French fleet, off Antigua, say, or in some other ocean, and they were trying to escape us in this formation ...' Suddenly the kitchen table was filled with potatoes representing the French fleet and onions the English, and long into the night he revealed the naval strategies he had been devising during his walks through the Norfolk countryside: 'You remember what I told you in Port Royal about Admiral Rodney's bold move at The Saints. He wheeled and brought his full force smack into the middle of the French line. Look at the confusion.' And now the table was filled with a great melee of French potatoes thrown into confusion by English onions.

'But, Alistair! Suppose in the next battle, and there will be one, of that we can be sure, for the French will never let us rest, nor we them ... Suppose that this time just as we seem about to repeat Rodney's strategy, for which the French will certainly be prepared, we suddenly break our attacking fleet into two lines, me here to port, you there to starboard, well separated, and in that formation we slam into the French fleet. What terrible confusion in two quarters. Pairs of s.h.i.+ps fighting each other across the entire ocean.'

When Wrentham saw the vast mix of potatoes and onions, he asked: 'But how will our two forces maintain contact-for signals, for battle orders?' and Nelson looked at him aghast: 'Alistair! On that day of battle when I send you off to starboard, you get no further orders from me. Each s.h.i.+p in your line becomes its own command. You fight your battle, I fight mine.'

'It sounds like chaos.'

'Planned chaos, in which I would expect you and every captain under you to do his duty ... his sensible duty.' He ended with a conviction that had grown upon him in recent months: 'The French like to lay off and fire at our masts and sails. We like to move in close and rake their decks. In close, Alistair! Always in close!'

Through the long night they moved their fleets back and forth, and when dawn broke they were still at their imaginary battles, the seas red with blood and filled with sinking s.h.i.+ps. And before breakfast Wrentham helped his old commander unpack the bags that might otherwise have carried him to Russia.

Captain Alistair Wrentham, in fulfilling every promise he had made at Norfolk, preserved the naval career of his friend. Government did step forward to defend him against the spurious lawsuits; Admiralty did listen to Wrentham's impa.s.sioned defense of Nelson; and even the French came to his a.s.sistance, for in Paris the madmen of the French Revolution kept making such threatening moves that war obviously loomed. Toward the end of January 1793, when spies hurried to London with irrefutable proof that 'the entire French fleet seems to be a.s.sembling for an attack on our coast,' the Admiralty behaved exactly as Nelson had predicted that day in the coffeehouse: they sent messengers galloping north to inform Captain Horatio Nelson that they wanted him to take immediate command of a major s.h.i.+p of the line.

When the messengers departed, he stood alone in the rectory, not gloating over the triumph he had foreseen nor railing against the injustices he had suffered, but steeling himself for darkened storms he saw ahead: Now comes the test of greatness. I escape from the vale of despond and sail into the clash of battle, and may G.o.d strengthen me in my resolve.

It would be popular in later decades to claim that Admiral Horatio Nelson had forged his revolutionary strategies and imperturbable character during his varied experiences at sea, especially in the Caribbean, but that was not the case; they were painfully annealed in those four dismal years when he was 'on the beach' in his father's rectory in Norfolk. There, humiliated, impoverished and ignored, he had hammered out his principles and devised those stratagems which would make him perhaps the finest officer ever to command a battle fleet. Aware of the miracle that had been wrought within him, he said farewell to his self-enforced prison in Norfolk, turned his face toward London, and cried: 'Horace no more! Horatio forever!'

On 7 February 1793, when France was ablaze with war, Nelson, once again an active captain in His Majesty's Navy, stepped aboard the trim 64-gun Agamemnon, turned aft to salute the quarterdeck, and took immediate steps to whip his handpicked crew into fighting shape.

Some days later, with all the excitement of a mids.h.i.+pman eleven years old hastening forward to inspect his first s.h.i.+p, he shouted to his men: 'Cast off!' and to his helmsman: 'Steady as she goes!' Feeling the great s.h.i.+p laden with guns rolling beneath his feet, he headed down the Channel for the Mediterranean, where destiny waited to award him victory at sea, scandal in Naples with the bewitching Lady Hamilton, and immortality at Trafalgar.

* As originally phrased by Nelson, it was 'Nelson confides every man ...' in the old sense of is confident that. One fellow officer suggested that expects was a more idiomatic word, another that the message would be stronger if it said England expects ... and Nelson eagerly accepted each improvement. The word that was not included in the final twelve-flag hoist, done in the system devised by Sir Henry Popham in 1803.

IN 1784 VISITORS to one of the liveliest spots of the Caribbean, the public square of Point--Pitre on the French island of Guadeloupe, were likely to chance upon three young creoles-clearly the best of friends, even to a casual observer-who, unbeknownst to anyone at the time, would be plunged into a drama not of their own making and culminating in horrid excesses.

The square was a s.p.a.cious, friendly area, lined with trees and made hospitable by numerous wooden benches and a central kiosk where the town band played and from which citizens could purchase hot coffee and croissants as they relaxed in the sun. At its broad southern end the square opened upon the sea, where boats cl.u.s.tered, white sails s.h.i.+ning against blue waters. The other three sides were defined by private homes built in the style of Mediterranean France, except that where stone would have been used in Ma.r.s.eilles, here the preferred material was wood, most often a handsome mahogany impervious to insects. Each house had a second-floor veranda adorned with bright tropical flowers, making the square a garden in which happy citizens congregated throughout the day.

Off the eastern side of the square ran a small street, and on a corner thus formed stood a house that was a masterpiece: three stories high, with two verandas, not just one, and cascading from each, flowers-yellow, red and blue. But what made it unforgettable to those who admired it as they took their coffee from the kiosk below was the delectable latticework, woven with very slender iron strands, which decorated the two extended verandas. 'Metallic lace,' an approving woman had called the effect, and her description had stuck: Maison Dentelle-House of Lace.

On the ground floor, Monsieur Mornaix, one of Point--Pitre's leading citizens, kept the office from which he conducted his banking and money-lending business, but the upper levels, the ones with the lacework, were reserved for his family, and often young men idling their time in the square below would gaze longingly at the flower-bedecked house and sigh: 'There she is!' and their eyes would follow Eugenie Mornaix, the banker's lovely young daughter, as she strolled one of the verandas. 'She's one of the flowers,' the young men said.

Their adoration was fruitless, for her affection had been claimed. In the much simpler wooden house on the opposite corner-two stories, one modest veranda, a few flowers-where the town's apothecary, Dr. Lanzerac, kept his small shop, lived his son Paul. He had known Eugenie since birth, and they had now reached the exciting age when they were beginning to realize that each had a special attachment to the other, for he was fourteen and she, much more clever at the moment, was twelve.

Their parents, hardworking shopkeepers of the upper middle cla.s.s, approved of the special relations.h.i.+p which seemed to be developing between their children, for the two families shared many attributes and interests. Both were devoutly Catholic, finding the church a comforting guide to behavior on earth and later in heaven; both were frugal, believing that G.o.d meant for His children to work hard and save their money to ensure protection throughout a long life, and every member of both families loved France with a pa.s.sion that had never been exhibited by the Spanish colonists for their homeland. Monsieur Lanzerac, the apothecary, liked to tell the young people: 'A Spaniard respects his homeland, a Frenchman loves his.' In the entire reach of French influence, from the Rhine River to St.-Domingue, there were no Frenchmen more patriotic than those found on the sugar island of Guadeloupe.

It lay only eighty-five miles north of Martinique, but it cherished the differences between the two colonies, for as Lanzerac Pere explained to Dutch sea captains who worked their s.h.i.+ps through the blockades to sell their contraband goods at Point--Pitre: 'You ask the difference between the two islands? Simple. Back in France they always speak of "The Grand Messieurs of Martinique," because n.o.body there does a day's work, and of "The honest bonnes gens of Guadeloupe," because they know that here we do. What does Martinique send the homeland? Polished reports. What do we send? Sugar and money.'

There was a greater difference: Martinique was an ordinary kidney-shaped island, a clone of hundreds like it in the world, but Guadeloupe was completely unique, beautiful in fact, mysterious in origin. In shape and color it resembled a green-gold b.u.t.terfly, drifting lazily to the northwest; the green came from the heavy cover of vegetation, the gold from the constant play of sunlight. It was really two islands with the two b.u.t.terfly wings separated by a ca.n.a.l so preposterously narrow that a drunk once said: 'Give me three beers and I'll jump from one island to the other.' The eastern wing of the b.u.t.terfly was low and flat and composed of tillable farmland; the western, of high and rugged mountains that permitted no cross-island roads. The explanation for this remarkable difference lay in the origins of the two halves: the eastern had risen from the rock base of the Caribbean forty million years ago, and this had provided ample time for its peaks to be eroded away, but the western had achieved its rise to the surface only five million years ago, and its mountains were still young. Born of different impulses at vastly different times, the two halves were now semijoined in one magnificent whole, and the people who lived on Guadeloupe said: 'Ours is an island a man can love,' and they felt sorry for those who had to live on what they called 'that other island,' Martinique.

In this green-gold paradise the two creole children developed a pa.s.sionate attachment to both their native island and their French homeland, so that words like glory, patriotism and the French manner echoed in their hearts like the Angelus sounding for evening prayer. These were solemn commitments, profound allegiances, and Paul, who attended the school taught by the local priest, often told Eugenie, who stayed at home in her House of Lace learning the secrets of kitchen and laundry: 'When I'm older I shall go to France and study in Paris and become a soldier of the king.' When he said the awesome word king he meant Louis XVI, whose woodcut portrait printed in great numbers graced the main rooms of both homes. To the children, King Louis, with his round face and wig reaching beyond his shoulders, was a person whom they expected to meet personally someday if they ever reached France.

The children were being raised to be good Catholics, loyal patriots and protectors of the king, and as such they represented the aspirations of ninety-nine out of a hundred citizens on their island. Their only enemies were the British, whose nefarious behavior toward their island enraged them. In 1759, long before they were born, a British expeditionary force comprising many s.h.i.+ps and thousands of soldiers had invaded Guadeloupe without reason and captured the western half of the b.u.t.terfly; the British established a strong base and then attempted to conquer the eastern half, where the Lanzeracs and the Mornaixs of that time lived.

'It took them about a year,' Lanzerac Pere explained to the children, 'to acc.u.mulate their strength before they felt powerful enough to attack our part of the island, because they knew we Grande-Terre people were fighters, but in due course they came at us, and that was when your great-grandmother earned her place in the pantheon of French heroes.' Whenever he reached this point in his narration he would pause dramatically and remind his listeners: 'I said heroes, not heroines, for Grandmere Lanzerac was the equal of any man.'

What she did was to retreat into the Lanzerac storehouse out on the sugar plantation, bring all her slaves behind its walls, and arm them with guns collected from the other less formidable plantations, and there, as one British general recalled in his memoir of the campaign: This remarkable old woman, sixty-seven and white-haired, supported only by her three sons and forty-one slaves, held back the entire might of the British invasion force. When I came upon the scene and asked: 'What's holding us up?' my white-faced lieutenant replied: 'There's a d.a.m.ned old woman who won't let us past her fort,' and when I inspected this preposterous thing I saw he was correct. For our troops to get a foothold in Grande-Terre, they had to squeeze through the bottleneck that she commanded. And for two whole days we could not do it.

Don't tell me that black troops can't stand and fight. They were sensational, nothing less, and from time to time we would see the old woman, white hair flying, rus.h.i.+ng here and there to encourage her men until, at last, I had to order a bayonet charge against her fortified plantation house, but in doing so, I gave firm orders: 'Don't kill the old woman.' They had no choice, for she came at them with two pistols, and they cut her down.

Grandmere Lanzerac became the patron saint of the French during the four-year occupation by the British, and her name was revered by Paul and Eugenie as they grew up.

They were a handsome pair of children: Paul with blond hair, bright open face and freckles; Eugenie with dark hair, a beautiful face and a willowy figure that resembled a wisp of marsh gra.s.s when she was twelve, the bending of a young tree when she became fourteen. They went through the normal periods of intense a.s.sociation when Paul walked the flowering verandas with Eugenie, sharing secrets and impossible dreams. Then there were months when they drew apart, heading in separate directions, but always they moved back together, for they recognized an affiliation that would never dissolve. They could not know whether it might blossom into normal love experiences, and as for even considering marriage, that would have been ridiculous to think about at their ages.

They were trapped in ambiguities and they knew it, and the cause was the final creole* of their trio, a delightful olive-skinned mulatto girl named Solange Vauclain, daughter of an immigrant from France who had been hired as a plantation manager and had married one of the slave girls. Solange lived with her parents on what was now one of the larger sugar plantations, east of town, and it was, Solange told her friends in Point--Pitre, 'really a garden of flowers,' for all the s.p.a.ces not utilized for sugar were crowded by a wealth of the varied flowers which made Guadeloupe a wonderland. Birds-of-paradise that looked like golden canoes at sunset, flaming anthuriums, delicate hibiscus and a magnificent red plant that would later be named bougainvillea. Over all, arched stately coconut palms, hundreds of them, as if they were huge green flowers, and about the plantation buildings grew the mysterious crotons which could show any of six or seven different colors. But the one Solange chose as her own was the red ginger, shaped almost like a human heart. 'That's the flower of Guadeloupe,' she told her friends, 'big and bold and brash. You won't find it on Martinique. Down there they like roses and lilies.'

Although Solange felt wonderfully at home among her flowers, she often visited her mother's black relatives in Point--Pitre, taking them gifts of ginger flowers, and since she was the same age as Eugenie, it was inevitable that in this small town the two girls would become friends. Indeed, Solange became so intimate a confidante that she was more like a sister than a friend, sharing with Eugenie whispers and speculations about this boy or that or the goings-on of the young widow near the port.

But the presence of Paul Lanzerac in the house opposite soon made him the focus of their conversation, and it would have been difficult to determine which girl had the greater interest in him, for as Solange confided: 'When I grow up, I hope I meet someone like Paul,' and in the hot tropic nights when they shared a bedroom she sometimes whispered strange confessions: 'Eugenie, I do believe that Paul loves each of us ... in different ways,' and when Eugenie wanted to pursue this striking a.n.a.lysis, dark-eyed Solange said only: 'Oh, you know.' Had Paul been asked, he would have confessed that he liked Eugenie, because they had shared so many experiences while growing up, but that he loved Solange in a different and more compelling way.

Once, when Eugenie had gone into the country to stay for two days with Solange, the mulatto girl cried in a burst of sisterly confidence: 'Oh, Eugenie, whichever of us marries Paul, let's all be friends, forever and ever,' and Eugenie drew back, studied her friend, and asked: 'Has he been kissing you?' and Solange said: 'Yes, and I love him so desperately.'

Then all things changed, for the time had come for Paul to return to France for the serious education which he would require if he were to occupy his rightful place in the French system. Before he departed in 1788, at the age of seventeen, he spent a couple of long days with the two girls, then fifteen, sharing with them his hopes and the possibilities he foresaw when he would return three years later: 'I don't intend to be an apothecary, like my father.'

'A doctor?' Solange asked, flushed with excitement at such serious talk, and he said: 'No. I respect my father's life ... his neat shop ... and I'd be proud to be a doctor ...'

'What then?' Solange pressed, and he looked away from her and spoke to Eugenie: 'Like what we talked about. In government, a lawyer maybe, an officer who's sent from island to island.'

'But you will be coming back?' Solange asked, and he replied enthusiastically: 'Oh yes! This is my home, forever. My Grandmere Lanzerac died defending this island. I could not live anywhere else.'

Then Solange, her beautiful dark face aglow, said almost sorrowfully: 'But you'll have been in Paris ...'

'Oh no!' he corrected. 'I won't even see Paris,' and she cried in astonishment: 'Not see Paris!' Then he explained that his s.h.i.+p would land him in Bordeaux in southern France, and from that port he would travel by various rural conveniences straight across to the extreme eastern border: 'I'll be going to the little town where the Lanzeracs had started, Barcelonnette, near the Italian border. Mountains and rus.h.i.+ng streams. Some of my uncles live there.' When Solange asked: 'But why would anyone travel across an ocean to find a little mountain town?' he said: 'Because my father says it's the best part of France. It's the border, where you have to fight to live.' He reminded them: 'That fighting old woman who held off the British to save this island, she was from Barcelonnette,' and it was clear to the girls that he expected to conduct himself in her glorious tradition, a true-blue Frenchman fighting for France.

If a bright young man from any of the French colonies wished to revitalize his love for his homeland in the tense year of 1788, there could have been few places more appropriate for him to visit than the remote town of Barcelonnette. It was set among mountains and so close to the Italian border that a sense of defending the frontier affected all who lived or visited there; there was also a strong appreciation of the colonies because numerous sons of the town, unable to see much future in the limited opportunities it provided, had emigrated to the New World to find their fortunes there. Decades ago Paul's branch of the prolific Lanzerac family had sent three brothers to the Caribbean-one to Mexico, one to Cuba and the youngest to Guadeloupe-and all had done so well that they could send their sons, or at least the firstborn, back to Barcelonnette for an education. And there, among the quiet mountains, these young fellows met with their uncles and grandfathers and cousins to learn from them the timeless glories of French culture.

It had been arranged that Paul would spend his stay of three years in the household of an Uncle Mederic, who had not left home, and be educated in the school headed by another relative, Pere Emile, who had stayed in Barcelonnette to become its priest and its respected scholar.

Paul had been in the care of these two fine men only a few weeks when he realized that in coming to his ancestral homeland, he had escalated to a whole new level of learning and understanding. Coincidentally, in early January of 1789 the French government sent a notice to the six hundred and fifteen districts that comprised the nation, advising them that since a rare and powerful event was about to take place, a convocation of the Etats-Generals-n.o.bles, clergy and third estate or commoners-each district was to send to Paris a traditional cahiers de doleances, or notebook of grievances. So just as Paul was settling down to his studies he found two members of his family engaged in composing the grievances of Barcelonnette: Pere Emile was contributing to the clergy's report, Uncle Mederic was in charge of the commoners', and as Paul watched these two thoughtful men at work summarizing the views of France, he imbibed from them an appreciation of what made France most distinguished among nations.

Uncle Mederic was the more thoughtful, for he saw France as a radiant beacon whose destiny it was to enlighten the rest of Europe and the world. As he prepared to draft his final version he told members of his family: 'The Etats-Generals last met forty years ago. This is a rare opportunity to express our opinions to the king,' and he made it clear that his list of grievances would be brief: 'There's nothing wrong with France. Radicals from cities like Lyons and Nantes will complain about everything. More voting privileges. More aid to the poor. A stronger police. But what are the facts? This is a n.o.ble country and with just a little attention it will remain that way,' and in that spirit his list was short: 'We must have more troops along the border to protect ourselves from Italian smugglers; there should be better mail service with Paris; and the bridge on the way to Ma.r.s.eilles should be widened to accommodate our carts.' Then, to let Paris know what his district thought about government in general, he wrote a fervid pa.s.sage which would be widely quoted then and in later generations when scholars wondered how, on the very eve of a revolution, this obviously literate little town could state: If Louis XII, if Henry IV are still today the idols of Frenchmen because of their good deeds, Louis XVI the Beneficent is the G.o.d of loyal Frenchmen; history will propose him as the model of kings in all countries and in all centuries. No changes of any kind are necessary.

Pere Emile did not actually draft the clergy's list of grievances, but since he did contribute heavily to it, Paul gleaned an insight into the priests' thinking: As long as France adheres to the teachings of the church and the guidance given by our king, the nation is on secure ground. The genius of France is to be rational in its scientific approach to problems of the military, industry and commerce, but to be spiritual in its interpretation of human life. If we can achieve this balance, and this committee is certain we can, we shall demonstrate to the world our superiority over the principles that govern less able nations like England. No major changes are required, but the bridge to Ma.r.s.eilles should be widened.

Paul found these solid a.s.surances fortified by the instruction he was receiving from Pere Emile and his three fellow teachers. Their ecole, as it was called, was an advanced school for fifteen-year-olds which offered instruction on the first-year level of a good university like Salamanca or Bologna: its students learned specific details as to how France achieved her greatness, and in one subject after another the supremacy of French thought and performance was extolled. While there was no specific cla.s.s in literature, the teachers referred constantly to works by Racine, Corneille, Rabelais and especially Moliere, whose work was judged to be the finest mix yet available of profound thought and comedy. One teacher did admit that Shakespeare of England had merit, especially in his sonnets, but that his plays were apt to be fustian. He also said grudgingly that the German author Goethe was worth studying, but that his Die Leiden des Jungen Werthers was far too sentimental for the taste of an educated gentleman. Dante was not dismissed, as Boccaccio was, but he was charged with being abstruse and unable to tell a tale properly.

In all fields it was the same: French kings were superb, French generals without parallel, French admirals the glory of the seas, and the French explorers of America among the bravest men of history, far superior to an Italian like Christopher Columbus who had merely sailed safe s.h.i.+ps to islands which philosophers already knew existed.

In similar schools all over France such lessons were being hammered into the heads of young boys, who, conscripted into the army in a few years, would conquer most of Europe and march all the way to Moscow. Had Paul remained in Barcelonnette, this cradle of brave men, he would surely have become one of Napoleon's better officers and disseminators of French values.

But he was to spend only three years on his mountain because on the fourteenth of July, in what the authors of the local Cahiers de Doleances had reported as a land without any need of change, the rabble in Paris, by storming Bastille prison, launched a wave of change that would prove shattering. However, Paul remained largely unaware of the convulsions that were beginning to wrack his beloved France, for he was engaged in a rather difficult battle of his own.

When young men like him returned to Barcelonnette for their education, every effort was made to find them a local wife, on the understandable grounds that women of the region were a known product and most desirable. No one sponsored this belief more strongly than Uncle Mederic, who paraded before his nephew one local beauty after another, and some of them were breathtaking, with flawless complexions produced by mountain air and the firm, steady characters which resulted from protected rural life. One girl in particular, named Brigitte, a distant cousin of sorts, since everyone in the district seemed to be interrelated, was especially charming. The daughter of a wealthy farmer, she was not only a mistress of household arts like cooking, sewing and cleanliness, but was also the possessor of a rich singing voice and a lively pair of heels when a fiddle began to play. Also, Uncle Mederic reminded his nephew, her father could be expected to provide a handsome dowry.

But Paul could not give her serious attention, for a strange malady now attacked him: he was homesick for the tropical splendor of Guadeloupe and the demonstrated charms of Eugenie Mornaix and Solange Vauclain. The simple fact was that Brigitte, by the wealth of her virtues, had reminded him that he was already in love, but with which of the two creole girls, he had not yet decided. When he thought of women in the abstract, it was Solange with her dark beauty who filled his heart, but when he applied himself seriously to the question 'Which one?' he found himself thinking always of Eugenie, and for three weeks he mooned about the hills of Barcelonnette so lost in dreams that his uncle saw that bold steps were required.

'What's the matter with you, boy? Can't you see that Brigitte has her cap set for you? Let me tell you, a catch like that doesn't wander across a young man's path more than once.' The first two or three of these a.s.saults achieved no results, for Paul ignored them, but when his uncle asked bluntly: 'Are you afraid of women?' he started to reveal his secret: 'I'm in love with a girl back on the island.'

'What kind of girl?' and from the manner in which his nephew fumbled with this question, Mederic concluded that the boy was lying. The truth was, Paul didn't know what to say. Finally he blurted out: 'Eugenie Mornaix,' whereupon his uncle hit him with a barrage of penetrating questions which so confused Paul that in offering one answer he let slip, by accident, the name Solange.

'And who's she?'

'Another girl, just as pretty as Eugenie.'

'Can't make up your mind? You're in trouble if you're caught in that trap. Tell me, is either of them as pretty as Brigitte?'

'They're different. Eugenie is smaller and very sharp of mind. Solange is taller and darker ... very beautiful.'

'Darker? What do you mean?' and in his fumbling reply Paul revealed that Solange had had a slave mother.

There was silence in the farmhouse, then Uncle Mederic stroked his chin and pointed to a timber darkened by the smoke of centuries: 'You mean her mother was as dark as that?' and when Paul nodded, his uncle began asking a long series of questions about slaves on the islands, and Paul told him that many of the Frenchmen married women imported from Africa, 'very beautiful women whose children are as bright as you or me.' Indeed, he told ill.u.s.trative stories with such skill that on subsequent evenings Uncle Mederic called in other members of his family to hear the young man's report on life in Guadeloupe, and gradually the French att.i.tude on the relations between races manifested itself.

Pere Emile said: 'We're all G.o.d's children,' and a cousin agreed: 'We have never seen slaves in Barcelonnette, but I'm sure once they've been baptized ...' and the priest agreed.

But Uncle Mederic, still championing the cause of Brigitte, made a judicial observation: 'If a man was going to live his life in the islands, I suppose a black woman would be acceptable, but if he was under consideration for a job in France ... well, a black wife ...'

'She's not black!' Paul said defensively. 'She's ... In Point--Pitre you can see girls of every color, and some of them are truly beautiful. The men, too.' And he was goaded into revealing something which he had up to now kept from everyone. Going to his room, he returned holding in his hand a small sheet of white paper, perhaps seven inches square, onto which had been carefully glued a silhouette which an island artist had skillfully snipped with tiny scissors. It was of Solange from the waist up, and although it was almost the standard silhouette which the artist made of any pretty girl, it had for Paul a very real evocation of his beautiful island friend.

'See,' he said shyly, 'she's very pretty,' but an aunt, holding the paper close to her eyes, pointed out: 'She is black,' and Pere Emile explained that all silhouettes were cut from black paper and pasted onto white: 'Gives the required clean outline.'

As that particular discussion dragged to a conclusion, no one offered the argument that would have been made in nearby England, that Paul was a white man and therefore the possessor of blood too precious to be melded with black. Not one Frenchman hammered at him: 'But such a marriage would be unthinkable. You'd be ostracized from the best society, and your friends and their wives would cut you dead.' Even Uncle Mederic, who had pointed out the disadvantages a man might suffer if he brought his black wife to Paris, retreated: 'Come to think of it, there was that fellow on the road to Ma.r.s.eilles. Brought back a wife he'd met in Turkey or Algeria. Remarkably dark, but no one seemed to care. If this Solange is as attractive as you say, and you're to make your home in the islands ...' And in the days that followed he stopped pressing the charms of Brigitte, but he did repeat the warning he had once issued: 'Seriously, my son, any man who's in love with two girls at the same time and in the same town ...' He pressed his hands against his head: 'Trouble, trouble.'

But then the revolution erupted and Cousin Paul's problems were forgotten, for a local man who had gone to Paris to test his fortune had returned breathless with news: 'They've forced a new form of government on the king. He tried to flee the country ...'

'He what?' astonished townsmen cried, and their onetime neighbor said: 'Yes, disguised as a woman, they say.'

'What happened?' a woman cried. 'Was he caught?'

'Yes. Hauled him back to Paris, made him agree to a new form of government they call the Legislative a.s.sembly. King has no power anymore. The rabble runs everything. When I left, the country roads were filled with men and women of quality fleeing Paris.'

Avid for news of changes that might affect life in Barcelonnette, the townsmen sent messengers scurrying about, but the news with which they returned was fragmentary: 'Paris is in turmoil. No one knows what will happen to our beloved king.'

'Is it as serious as that?' Uncle Mederic asked gravely, recalling the praise he had heaped upon the king in his report to the Etats-General, and one of the newsgatherers replied: 'Who knows? No one can really say what's happening in Paris.'

Clothed in this shadowy uncertainty, Paul Lanzerac left Barcelonnette in the fall of 1791, his heart filled with an understanding and a love for France, and for this benevolent group of Lanzeracs in their mountain town who had made his life there so pleasant and so rewarding: 'I shall never forget you. And each of you will have a home in Guadeloupe if you ever choose to come.' As he was about to climb into the cart that would start him on his way to a s.h.i.+p at Bordeaux, Brigitte rushed up to him, embraced him, and whispered: 'Please come back, Paul. And do take care.' It was Pere Emile, priest and schoolmaster, who gave the benediction of the entire town, for he said as he ran beside the cart for a short distance: 'Paul, you're a young man with a strong education and a strong character. Make something of yourself as a tribute to this town and to France.' And the young man, boy no more, rode down the mountain road with a determination to do as the priest instructed.

For a young man of intelligence and promise to cross all of southern France from the Italian border to the Atlantic coast in the closing months of 1791 was to acquire an education in contemporary realities. Along country roads he saw the impoverishment of a once-rich land, and in small villages he was greeted with looks of resentment and even hatred. One stagecoach driver warned: 'Young fellow, take off that jacket. It betrays you as one to be despised,' and Paul stuffed into his bag the lace-touched jacket his Uncle Mederic had given him as a parting present.

On the ferry which took him across the Rhone, a peasant with twitching hands told a terrible story of what had happened at Lyons just up the river: 'It started quiet. People like me askin' for bread. Police said: "You can't go there," but we went. Arrests. Heads busted. Turmoil in the streets. Then prisoners led from the jails. Well dressed. They could read and write, you supposed. Sixteen at a time lined up against a wall by ordinary men, not in uniform, with muskets. Then a bang. And down go the sixteen, but one not dead. A pistol was shot right through his face as he was lookin' up pleadin' for mercy. Horrible.'

West of the Rhone conditions worsened, and at the entrance to one village a man moderately well dressed halted the stagecoach: 'Don't go in there. They're going mad,' and everyone in the coach, including the two drivers, were well content to make a wide detour. Even so, that afternoon they entered another village where their horses were stopped by boys of twelve or thirteen, who shouted to their elders: 'n.o.bles fleeing the country!' and there were tense moments when it looked as if the coach might be emptied and its pa.s.sengers shot, but the drivers, rough countrymen, convinced the mob that these were ordinary folk, some of them headed for the sugar colonies via Bordeaux, and after one dreadful moment in which Paul was afraid that the young rascals who had halted the coach might search his luggage and find the jacket, the stagecoach was waved on. As they pa.s.sed through the village they could see pockmarks on the walls where victims had been shot.

When they were free of this ugly place smelling of death, Paul asked the man seated next to him: 'What's happening to France?' and the man said: 'Old scores being settled.'

At Bordeaux, just as Paul was about to board the s.h.i.+p heading for Guadeloupe to pick up a cargo of much-needed sugar, he heard astonis.h.i.+ng rumors: 'The king has been arrested and is in jail. Hundreds of his supporters arrested, so if you're a king's man, keep your mouth shut. Ma.s.sacres everywhere, and the Prussian army is trying to invade to protect the king, but our brave men are fighting them off.' And it was with such inconclusive intelligence that Paul left his homeland, with Pere Emile's counsel ringing in his confused ears: 'Make something of yourself as a tribute to this town and to France.' The achievement of such a goal had already become immensely difficult.

The long trip across the Atlantic was a time of reflection and peace, except for one ominous afternoon when a sail was sighted and the lookout called: 'British s.h.i.+p to starboard,' causing all pa.s.sengers to breathe deeply, but the French captain hoisted more sail until the distance between the s.h.i.+ps lengthened. At supper that night it was generally agreed that the British were a poor lot, little better than the pirates who used to prey upon these waters, and such horrible tales were told of Captain Kidd and L'Ollonais and Henry Morgan that one lady pa.s.senger spoke for the others when she said: 'I'll be afraid to go to bed tonight.'

In February 1792 the s.h.i.+p reached Ba.s.se-Terre, main port of the island on the western wing of the b.u.t.terfly island called Guadeloupe, without incident, and there several pa.s.sengers heading for Point--Pitre on the eastern wing of the b.u.t.terfly debated the practicality of hiring coaches to take them directly there. They were soon disabused of this preposterous plan: 'Do you know how high the mountains are between here and there? Goats couldn't negotiate them,' and one resident of Ba.s.se-Terre said simply: 'Coach roads? There are no roads of any stripe,' so the people headed eastward had to wait while they took aboard the sugar cargo.

But while the s.h.i.+p stayed in port, several smaller craft whisked around to the eastern wing, carrying exciting news to Paul's hometown: 's.h.i.+p in from Bordeaux. Lanzerac's aboard. All France in an uproar. King's fate uncertain.' So by the time the cargo s.h.i.+p had made its way to Point--Pitre, the townsfolk were eager for a sight of their returning son and the news that he would be bringing, and they crowded the dock to greet his arrival.

When he appeared at the railing of the s.h.i.+p they saw a fine-looking young man of twenty-one, with erect posture, light hair edging down toward his left eyebrow and a reserved countenance which was capable of breaking into a warm smile, but the lasting impression he created was one of dignity and capability. Many a mother seeing him about to land felt he was the kind of young man she would appreciate having visit her kitchen for a friendly chat and a supper with her daughter.

In the last moments, as the s.h.i.+p eased its way to the dock, Paul could see the two dear friends who stood side by side in the waiting area below, Eugenie Mornaix and Solange Vauclain, and he was struck by what beautiful young women they had become, each in her own way. Eugenie, the smaller and fairer of the two, was a little jewel with a delicate figure totally appropriate to her size, and a lovely smile which she flashed at Paul as he waved. Solange was taller, slimmer and more provocative as she stared at him with her dark, handsome face tilted slightly to one side. She was, he thought, like a Caribbean volcano waiting to explode.

Behind them he saw his patient father, who had provided the money for his stay in France, and to him he shouted special greetings, but when the pa.s.sengers were allowed to disembark it was to the two girls that he rushed, and for several dazzling moments there on the dock the citizens watched with admiration the tableau of these three handsome young creoles: the white daughter of a respected banker recently demised, the sinewy, dark-skinned child of a well-regarded planter, and between them the reserved son of the apothecary, home from France with a diploma of honor from a French ecole. It was a moment of restrained elegance that many would remember during the terrible days that awaited.

The troubles revealed themselves gradually. Paul laughed when his father warned: 'Two restless young women out there waiting for you, son.' He was intent only on reestablis.h.i.+ng his warm relations.h.i.+ps with his family, and reported twice each item of news from Barcelonnette.

'I met some wonderful girls in France,' he said, describing Brigitte and explaining to his parents what family she was related to.

'I know them!' Mme. Lanzerac cried. 'Oh, why didn't you bring her home with you?' He said: 'I could never get the girls of Point--Pitre out of my mind,' and forthwith he began his serious dual courts.h.i.+p, with the town aware of what was happening.