Empire

be lovely in the summer.”

“I shall notify you legally. Here.” To her amazement, he gave her his handkerchief; then he left. To her amazement, she found that she was weeping.

3

BLAISE SAT AT THE EDGE of an artificial lake, and watched the swans sail back and forth, greedy eyes alert for food, predatory beaks ready to strike at any land-creature that moved within range. A perspective had been carefully arranged by an eighteenth-century gardener who believed that nature could only be revealed in its essential naturalness through total artifice. Trees of various sizes gave an odd sense of a huge park that extended to what looked to be a second larger lake, which was, actually, smaller than the first. Roses in full bloom made bonfires of color in the dim greenness. Blaise was content. If he had no inherent talent for marriage, Frederika had more than enough for two. With every show of amiability, she and Caroline had each taken over a wing of the chateau, and each kept to her wing unless invited by the other for a visit.

The state rooms were held in common, under the jurisdiction of the butler, who was also, in effect, the estate manager. M. Brissac had been at the chateau for thirty years; it was he who hired and fired and stole discreetly; it was he who had known both Mrs. Sanfords, and never had a word of the slightest interest to say about either. Now the old man approached Blaise from the central part of the chateau, an astonishing creation of rose-red brick, high mansard windows, gilded ironwork, and chimneys like so many monuments to Saint-Simon’s beloved peers of France.

Brissac bowed low, and presented Blaise with a telegram, which he opened: “Millicent and I and four others will come to lunch May 30. Hearst.”

It was typical of the Chief to give only a day’s notice. As Blaise gave orders to M. Brissac, Caroline and Emma appeared from the woods. They looked like figures on a Watteau fan, thought Blaise, once again thinking not only in French but with French malice, as he noted to himself that this fan could not be shut.

Emma ran forward to her uncle, who picked her up, and listened to her chatter in a combination of French and English. She had her grandmother’s complexion, hair.

“The Chief arrives tomorrow. For lunch. With four lords-in-waiting.”

“He does us honor.” Caroline sat in one of the curious carved sandstone thrones that the builder of the chateau, in a frenzy of premature pharaonism, had sculpted beside the lake. “With the beautiful Millicent?”

Blaise nodded. “He’s very respectable now. He expects to be elected mayor of New York in the fall.”

“Poor man. But I suppose it will give him something to do. Frederika fits in very well.”

Blaise was mildly disappointed that wife and half-sister got on so well. But then Caroline had known Frederika longer than he. “She has discouraged Mrs. Bingham,” he said, giving pleasure.

“She would not fit in.” Caroline put out her hand. “The key.”

“To what?”

“Father’s desk. I want to read Grandfather Schuyler’s memoirs, or whatever they are.”

“The desk’s open. They are in two leather-bound boxes.”

“Have you read them?”

“I don’t like the past.”

“That’s where the key is. If there’s one, of course. Come on, Emma.”

As Caroline collected her child, Blaise said, “Why did you divorce?”

“Why not?”

“It’s very American of you.”

“I am very American. Anyway, I wasn’t married in the church. It doesn’t count, really-for us, anyway. It’s just a legal convenience. Just another key, to just another lock.”

Blaise was still mystified by the whole affair. “Was John with… someone else?”

Caroline’s laugh dispelled any suspicion along that line. “I wish he were.”

“Are you?” Blaise was convinced that Caroline had, for some time, been having an affair, but she was even more guarded than he about her life. He assumed that the man was married; otherwise, now that she was divorced, she would have been free at least to mention if not marry him. Blaise did not rule out a passionate liaison with a lady: Mlle. Souvestre’s powerful example was a fact of their world. But Washington seemed hardly the setting for so Parisian an activity.

“I wish I were.” Caroline echoed herself and was gone.

Blaise found the Chief rather less phlegmatic than usual. He had gained so much weight that had he been shorter he might have presented to the world a comforting McKinley-esque rotundity. But because of his height, the result was more ursine-menacing than McKinley-majestic. The two couples with the Hearsts were part of his publishing life. “I’ve just bought Cosmopolitan magazine,” he said, as Blaise showed him through the suite of state apartments.

The Chief stopped at every painting, sculpture, tapestry, console. Blaise was pleased at the Chief’s awe. “I’ve never seen anything like this,” Hearst said, as they entered the grand salon, where windows opened onto the vista of lakes and forests, “outside of a royal palace or something. Those tapestries Gobelin?”

“Early Aubusson. It was my father’s hobby, fixing up this place. When he bought it, in the seventies, it was a ruin.” Behind them Frederika was hostess to Millicent, whose moon face shone with pleasure, as she said in her tough New York Irish accent, “Don’t sell a stick of furniture to Willy, or he’ll buy it all and put us in the poorhouse.”

“Warehouse is more like it.” Hearst enjoyed talk of his mania for acquiring everything on earth-including Saint- Cloud-le-Duc. “You’re not thinking about selling, are you?”

“Never,” said Caroline, making a grand entrance on Plon’s arm. “We’re home at last.”

After lunch, Blaise and Hearst walked together by the lake. “I want to know about Willie Winfield.” Blaise was direct.

Hearst stopped in mid-stride. For an instant, Blaise was struck by the incongruity of the splendid seventeenth- century facade behind them, the swans and topiary and pale statues before them, and the American political squalor that was their all-consuming subject. Of course, the great duke who had built the chateau had been a notorious thief; on the other hand, he had spent his stolen money with a splendor yet to be rivalled on Fifth Avenue or even Newport’s Ochre Point. “How do you know him?”

Blaise was cool. “He came to me, at the Tribune. He said he had been stealing letters from Mr. Archbold and that he’d taken them round to one of your editors at the American, and the editor would photograph them. Then you paid, he said.”

Hearst scowled down at Blaise. “You paid, too.” A statement, not a question.

Blaise smiled. “Not for the same letters, unfortunately. I bought a part of the first half of the 1904 letterbook.”

“I didn’t buy that one.” Hearst sat in one of the sandstone thrones. In the distance Caroline and Frederika were playing croquet with the guests, the ladies’ clothes almost as bright as the tall roses, all around them. Emma had been borne off to her nap.

“I thought we had enough. We got Foraker for good. You know, I’ve been pushing him for the Republican nomination. Then, just before the election, if he’s nominated, of course, I’ll spring the stuff. Now,” the Chief looked at Blaise sadly, “you can do the same thing, tomorrow morning, and someone else will get the nomination…”

“Someone who won’t have written Archbold any letters?”

Hearst nodded. “Like Root or Taft. Neither one’s in the file, so far’s I can tell. But all the small fry and a lot of the big-time politicals are being paid off. So what are you going to do?” Although Hearst’s physiognomy did not allow for displays of indecision or apprehension, the weak voice was suddenly, oddly tremulous. Apparently, Hearst was basing a considerable political strategy on the release-or withholding at a price-of the letters in 1908.

“We could work something out.” Blaise was by no means certain what, if anything, he himself could do with them. Hearst was capable of anything: he was Hearst. But a Sanford, though not so well-defined, could hardly publish stolen letters unless they were used as background, say, to an investigation of one of Rockefeller’s judges.