Letters полностью

But my hand at her mouth, & my knife at her throat, prevented her [from availing herself of the little pistol Andrew now espies there and confiscates]. I vow’d to her I meant her no harm, nor was of any mind to publish her identity. That my life was forfeit if she should publish mine. That I knew her to have got intimate by some wise with Mme B., & to have posed as the Swiss clairvoyant Kleinmüller, to what end and in whose service I could not say. That I was come thither, thousands of miles out of my way, not to trouble her life but to save my own, to which end I sought no more from her than her story since our parting in Bordeaux half a dozen years past. In return wherefor, I would tell her mine or not, as she wisht, and be on my parlous way.

He now takes his final risk. His difficulty in recognizing Consuelo’s penmanship — after reading so many hundreds of pages of her manuscript fiction! — had been owing to the cipher, its unfamiliarity and noncursive letters. The identification made (nearly eight months since!) he had understood not only that Betsy Bonaparte’s Roman informant was, of all people on the planet, his erstwhile lover, but that she was very possibly, by some series of chances, that lady’s secret suisse—and that therefore Mme B. knew more about him than he had supposed, and from a particularly disaffected source, his last farewell to whom had been a bitter business. Nevertheless he now releases her, compliments her appearance, and (though retaining the pistol) resumes the manner and mien of Andrew Cook IV.

Consuelo sat; I too. She lookt me up & down; lookt away; lookt back; shook her head; reacht for her reticule. Another pistol, I wonder’d? Or the famous poison’d snuffbox? But she fetcht forth a mere silk handkerchief (gift from me in Halifax), wherewith to wipe her eyes as she rehearst her tale.

She has, she tells him, embarked since their last parting on a “Second Cycle” of her own, inspired by his rejection of her and by a certain subsequent humiliation. Against Renato Beluche she bore no grudge: he had made clear from the first the terms of their connection, and though she had hoped he might change his mind, she remained grateful for his protection. Nor could she blame Andrew for not loving her more, in Algiers, in Halifax, in New Orleans. Who can command love? Of the men in her life, only three had truly victimized her: Don Escarpio, of whom more presently; a certain ensign aboard that dispatch boat from Halifax to Bermuda in 1814, who upon a certain Gulf Stream night when she was downcast by Andrew’s teasing criticisms of her novel, had sworn to withdraw before ejaculating and had then, with a laugh, forsworn; and Joseph Bonaparte, whose patronage she had sought after all, for want of better, at Andrew’s suggestion, in Bordeaux in 1815, and who had not only neglected to give her the letter of introduction to Mme de Staël which he had promised in exchange for an hour in his bedchamber (he was summoned out by an urgent message from Napoleon in Rochefort, and never got back to either his coitus interruptus or to his payment therefor), but had neglected as well to advise her that he was enjoying a mild gonorrhea.

(I broke in to protest that I had offer’d her just such a letter, with no clapp attacht! She reply’d, ’Twas not from me she wanted it, or anything, not then…)