The Confusion

The coat of arms painted on the door of that carriage matched the one on the gates. Or so she guessed. To verify as much would have required a magnifying-glass, a herald, and more time and patience than Eliza had just now. The arms of Charlotte-Adelaide were a quartering of those of de Gex and de Crepy, and to make the arms of d’Ozoir, these had been recursively quartered with those of the House of de Lavardac d’Arcachon-themselves a quartering of something that included a lot of fleurs-de-lis, with an arrangement of black heads in iron collars, slashed with a bend sinister to indicate bastardy. At any rate, what it all meant was that the lord of the manor was back. Just as he stepped down from his carriage, the bells in the old, alienated belfry down the street began to toll noon. Eliza was late for church, and that was an even worse thing than usual, because on this day the proceedings could not go forward until she and her baby arrived. She sent an aide down to explain matters, and to tender apologies, to the Marquis, and hustled out one door with her baby and her entourage just as Claude Eauze entered through another. Presently he did the chivalrous thing, viz. got his carriage turned round and sent it rattling down the street after her. But so close was one thing to another in Dunkerque that, by the time the carriage caught up with her, Eliza was already standing at the church’s door. She might have given it the slip altogether if she had gone in directly. But she had paused to look at the Eglise St.-Eloi, and to think.

She favored the looks of this church. It was late-Gothic, and could have passed for old, but was in fact a new fabrique. The Spaniards had levelled the old one some decades past in a dispute as to the ownership of Flanders. All that remained of it was the belfry, and if its looks were any indication, the Spaniards had wrought a great improvement on the appearance of this town. The new one had a great rose window filled with a delicate tracery of stone, like the rosette on the belly of a lute, and Eliza always liked to stop and admire it when she passed by. Now, holding her baby to her bosom, she stopped to admire it one more time. At that moment a counter-factual vision entered her phant’sy, wherein Rossignol was by her side, and the two of them went in to be joined in marriage, and then walked down to the water and boarded ship and sailed off to Amsterdam or London to raise their baby in exile.

The dream was interrupted by the raucous vehement on-rush of the carriage of the Marquis d’Ozoir, which was about as fitting and about as welcome in this scene as musketry at a seduction. Lest she get trapped outside exchanging pleasantries with the Marquis, she hurried through the door.

The church’s vault was supported by several columns that were arranged around the altar in a semicircle, reminding Eliza of the bars of a giant birdcage: a birdcage into which she had been chased, not only by the banging and rattling carriage, but by divers other sudden and frightening onslaughts as well. She could fly no farther. She was caught. Best to flutter up onto her new perch, preen, and peer about. The Marquis slipped in alone, and took a seat in his family pew. She peered at him; he peered, discreetly, at her. Jean Bart watched them watching each other. They, and several servants and acquaintances who’d showed up, joined in the standings, sittings, kneelings, mumblings, and gestures of the Mass. Jean-Jacques turned out to be one of those infants who accepts the dunking, not with hysterical protests but with aghast curiosity; this made his godfather immensely proud, while giving his mother a vision of long rambunctious years ahead. The Jesuit crossed his forehead with oil and said that he was a priest and a prophet and that his name was Jean-Jacques: Jean after Jean Bart, who became his godfather, and Jacques after another man of Eliza’s acquaintance who was unable to attend the rite, being either dead, or crazy and chained to an oar. No mention was made of the child’s natural father. Indeed very little notice was given to the mother; for the story being given out was that Jean-Jacques was an orphan rescued from some massacre in the Palatinate and only being looked after by Eliza.

Over joyous bonging from the belfry, the Marquis-who, she now remembered, was a tall man, physically impressive, and handsome in a disreputable way-insisted on a celebration at his place. The produce of local vines, orchards, and distilleries was made available to a small and select list of guests. Some hours later, Jean Bart could be seen making his way home, tacking down the street in the manner of a ship working to windward.