Page 49 of My Dear Hamilton

“Have I offended?”

Oh, how great a fool must I make of myself?

“No,”

I said, swallowing a groan.

“Of course you haven’t.

It’s merely that I-I . . .”

Lafayette leaned closer, expectant.

For a moment, it seemed as if every guest listened for my excuse.

Madame de Sainte-Amaranthe smirked knowingly at my predicament, and I felt young, exposed, and at a complete loss.

Just when I thought I might melt of humiliation, I was rescued by a sweet-faced little savior.

“Grouchette is too polite to say that I trod upon the back of her dress and nearly knocked her off balance,”

émilie offered, and I cast a grateful look at the young girl for her merciful lie.

She beamed in return.

“I’m new to satin heels and clumsy in them.”

Laughing, Lafayette offered his arm to émilie.

“Well then, my dear girl, kick them off and make yourself comfortable in my home!”

Lafayette ushered us into the dining room where democratic informality reigned, the seating was unassigned, and we were meant to serve ourselves from a stack of plates.

This was, Lafayette said, how meals were served in America and not, as someone jested, on tree trunks eaten with bare hands.

I must have been staring too admiringly, still, because émilie’s mother whispered in my ear.

“I’m afraid Lafayette is a lost cause for you, my dear.

To him, you can be nothing more than a charming child.”

I wanted to lie and say, with a flutter of my lace fan, that it made no difference what Lafayette thought of me, or whether he did at all.

That was the game to be played in the parlor and it was a game I usually played quite well.

But that night I felt too disgusted with myself to dissemble.

“We’re nearly the same age . . .”

Madame de Sainte-Amaranthe smiled.

“It’s not the years but the experience, mademoiselle.

You may be—at least until my émilie fully blooms—the prettiest girl in Paris, but everyone knows you’re still an innocent.”

I’m not an innocent, I thought, mildly aggrieved.

Not after having watched a man die.

I was awakened to the rot in our society and not innocent at all.

But what Madame de Sainte-Amaranthe meant was that I was a virgin.

That, as a woman, what remained untouched between my thighs was called virtue and comprised the whole of my worth and maturity.

To a lady like Madame de Sainte-Amaranthe, who traded in sexual favors, I must’ve seemed very innocent indeed.

“No Frenchman is above taking a mistress,”

she continued.

“Not even Lafayette.

But he would never take an unmarried aristocratic girl to his bed.

He may speak like a wild American revolutionary, but his heart is filled with old-fashioned chivalry.”

This was nothing I didn’t already know, and a familiar ache bloomed in my breast.

Both at the impossibility of being with the man I wanted and irritation with my infatuation.

As if she understood my dilemma well, Madame de Sainte-Amaranthe patted my hand.

“If you’re looking for a man to transgress the rules of society, you’d do better with royalty . . .”

She tilted her head and laughed.

“Or the Condor.”

I tilted my head too.

“The Condor?”

“It’s a new world bird,”

she explained, indicating with a discreet gesture a dour middle-aged nobleman with a beak of a nose.

“It’s also my pet name for the Marquis de Condorcet . . .”

I knew Condorcet only slightly.

He was a prodigy, they said, in philosophy, science, economics, and mathematics.

But, to the horror of fellow aristocrats, he’d taken on the habits of the working class, accepting positions as permanent secretary of the Académie des Sciences and inspector general at the Mint.

Condorcet rather dressed like a member of the lower classes too.

No embroidered waistcoat or lace—just a simple cravat, carelessly tied, and a shabby dark blue coat that had not been brushed of its lint, as if he didn’t keep a valet. “He doesn’t look like a libertine . . .”

Madame de Sainte-Amaranthe laughed.

“Libertines rarely do.

Never gamble with the man; you’ll lose your petticoats.”

I glanced again at Condorcet—a man who looked to be even older than my uncle.

As he bumbled at the edges of the table, seemingly unable to find a seat he liked, I wondered if she was making sport with me.

“Yet he has a reputation as a cold man of science.”

Madame de Sainte-Amaranthe smiled knowingly “Oh, those of us who know him best say he’s a volcano covered in snow.”

I might’ve asked what she meant, but I had no interest in Condorcet and didn’t wish to engage in malicious gossip.

So I politely excused myself in favor of helping Uncle Charles slip mention of his case into polite discussion, which Lafayette conducted in English for his American guests.

Thankfully, I spoke English well.

But the talk at the table was all of a mercantile nature.

France had paid a high price to help liberate the American colonies but both Lafayette and Jefferson confidently predicted that free trade with the new nation would compensate.

Meanwhile, the women shared ugly gossip about our queen, whispering about Marie Antoinette’s lovers, diamond necklaces, and foreign ways.

Other than myself, the only lady not to indulge in this gossip was Lafayette’s wife, a shy woman who gave the impression that she’d have preferred to be in confessional with her rosary beads.

After dinner, Lafayette invited the assembly to his grand cabinet and adjoining library to admire his copy of the American Declaration of Independence in a double-paned frame, only half of which was filled with the famous document.

Pointing to the empty half, Lafayette said, “I am honored to display this declaration, which spells out the rights of man.

But I leave this side of the frame empty ... do you know why?”

No one hazarded a guess.

The urbane Mr.

Jefferson, who had been the primary author of this document, merely smiled enigmatically.

But earlier in the evening, I’d heard the freckled Virginian say that he hoped the ideals of the American Revolution might spread liberty to the whole earth.

My heart filled with hope that might be true, so I dared to guess, “Are you waiting for a French version to match it?”

Lafayette broke into a sunny smile.

“Oui, oui, Mademoiselle de Grouchy.

We must have reform in this country.

Until then, we’re all left, like this frame, half empty and wanting . . .”

I told myself it was his words about reform that stirred me, and not the playfulness he put behind the word wanting.

Alas, for me, it was no game.

I positively burned with wanting and worried everyone could see it.

Fortunately, Lafayette turned everyone’s attention to my uncle.

“Dupaty, I’ve read your pamphlet, you know.

I purchased it for a handful of coins, so the proceeds may go to the good cause.

And I’ve guessed you might wish for me to write in support of your prisoners.”

We’d only hoped Lafayette might bring our cause to the attention of the royals.

That he might write in support of it left me breathless.

Perhaps our luck was about to change.

“Your words carry great weight with the public,”

said Uncle Charles, eagerly.

With altogether too much adoration in my voice, I added, “My dear Marquis, you may save these men’s lives if you write in support of them.”

“Mademoiselle, I would attempt it if only for the reward of your dimpled smile,”

Lafayette replied, taking a gulp from his wineglass.

“But you’d be sorry for the result.

Give me a battle to win with a sword, and I’ll fight.

Give me a battle that must be won with a pen ... and I flop like a fish in mud.”

I deflated with disappointment until he gestured with his glass.

“My esteemed friend Condorcet, though, has great powers of argumentation.

I hope you won’t think me presumptuous to have asked him to take up his quill in support of your case . . .”

The beak-nosed Marquis de Condorcet, who’d said not a single word to anyone through dinner, made a sound somewhat like a grunt.

I couldn’t tell if that meant he’d agreed to help us or not.

Or whether or not we should wish him to.

Uncle Charles said we needed the support of a man in the political sphere—not the academic one.

But if Lafayette thought Condorcet might be of assistance, then I wished to encourage it.

I flashed my most winning smile.

“If the Marquis de Condorcet were to acknowledge the merits of our cause, and write in support of the condemned prisoners, he, too, would have my deepest gratitude.”

“I wouldn’t do it for your gratitude,”

Condorcet said so sharply his words might have cut.

“I’d only take up my pen in this matter to demonstrate the need for a jury-based system of justice.”

I startled at his curtness.

And Uncle Charles—who was not so liberal a magistrate as to be entirely easy with the idea that legal decisions should be left up to a jury of uneducated, ordinary persons—looked like he’d bitten a lemon.

I could see he was thinking it might actually be worse to be defended by an eccentric like Condorcet than to be left twisting at the mercy of the Paris Parlement.

But with the lives of the prisoners in the balance, it was worth the risk.

“Trial by jury I’ve seen in America,”

Lafayette was saying.

“It better reflects public opinion, but there are those who argue a jury is not wiser or more merciful than a judge . . .”

Madame de Sainte-Amaranthe chuckled.

But Condorcet said, “I can prove otherwise, sir.

Mathematically.”

“Mathematically?”

I asked, with a chuckle of my own.

Condorcet’s frosty expression told me he was not making a jest.

“Yes, mademoiselle.

Mathematically.

I’ve published an essay on the application of analysis to the probability of majority decisions.

A jury theorem, if you will . . .”

Then, with clipped gestures, Condorcet explained what he called the social arithmetic by which he could prove that the more reasonably informed people vote on a decision, the more likely they are to reach the correct answer.

It was not, of course, the most stimulating discourse for a dinner party.

Or so I gathered from the glazed expression of his listeners.

When Condorcet took paper from Lafayette’s mahogany secrétaire to scratch out equations, people fled the room.

But I remained, watching over his shoulder, impressed by his statistical defense for democratic decisions.

“I’m sorry for laughing,”

I said when he was finished.

“I’d no idea mathematics could be applied this way.”

Condorcet straightened, stiffly, and tugged his waistcoat.

“You’re not the first to laugh at me, and I doubt you’ll be the last.”

I hadn’t laughed at him, and his prickliness bordered on rude.

I would’ve taken offense but for the fact that he’d explained his work to me rather than assuming, as most men of his stature might, that I couldn’t understand.

That emboldened me to ask, “Is there not an exception to your formulation? What if the jurors are all uneducated, or unenlightened and ill-informed?”

He lifted an appreciative brow at my question.

“In that case, the math would lead to the opposite conclusion, where the ideal jury is one.”

“Like a judge,”

I said, enjoying our intellectual discussion in spite of his curtness.

“Or a king,”

he replied.

“But we’re not savages in France.

Only give a free secular education to all the people and we can govern ourselves.”

Reflexively, I glanced over my shoulder, wary that anyone should overhear talk that sounded seditious if not treasonous.

Fortunately, everyone had bolted for the wine trays and no one was paying us the slightest attention.

Feeling as if we now shared some manner of confidence, I asked, almost in a whisper, “You favor a free education for all people?”

Condorcet nodded.

“From serfs to noblemen.”

“And women?”

He glanced up in surprise.

Perhaps he’d not considered the possibility before.

Few men would have.

“Why not? You’d seem to be an excellent example of how education may benefit the female sex.”

I tilted my head again, unsure of whether or not I’d just been complimented.

What a very strange man, I thought as our conversation concluded, never realizing the degree to which Condorcet might change the world, and my life in particular.

My father declared that it was time for our family to leave Paris and return to our estate at Villette for the summer.

This would—not coincidentally, I thought—prevent my continued involvement in my uncle’s case.

So I was thrilled when, before my parents could whisk me away, we received an invitation to call upon Condorcet at the H?tel des Monnaies, the palace on the Left Bank where he oversaw coin makers and clerks.

Uncle Charles and I arrived precisely at the appointed hour and the liveried servants showed us up the impressive double staircase to Condorcet’s office.

At his desk, which was cluttered with papers and books, Condorcet came directly to the point.

“If I’m to take a public position on this case, I’ll need to know everything about your condemned peasants.”

I noticed that Condorcet neither questioned my presence as my uncle’s secretary nor seemed vexed by it.

So I told myself not to be vexed by the fact that he didn’t offer refreshments or even a seat.

Had the man been raised in a barn?

My uncle and I took seats anyway, and while he reviewed the legal matters, I supplied the information that one of the condemned men had a young son—a youth of perhaps nine years of age—now living on the streets.

“He’ll be made an orphan if his father is executed,”

I said.

“Then who could it surprise if the poor boy should turn to crime?”

Condorcet didn’t look up from whatever he was writing.

“A boy with an education wouldn’t need to turn to crime.

Education is our liberation.”

Be that as it may, the boy was too poor to afford an education, so I directed the conversation back to a pattern of recent judicial abuses, which included blameless persons being tortured in front of their children.

After this discussion, my uncle rose to fetch some documents he’d left in a satchel with the steward, and I found myself momentarily alone with Condorcet.

“Surely you wish to help remedy these crimes against the innocent,” I said.

“It isn’t the innocence of the condemned that make them crimes,”

Condorcet replied.

“I saw a man burned alive for vandalizing a crucifix.

He was assuredly guilty.

But it is cruel to subject another person to torture and death.

You cannot undo such a punishment if the judgment was in error. More importantly, death is an immoral punishment, unworthy of us.”

Condorcet wasn’t the first to make this argument, of course.

Several reformist lawyers of the time believed the death penalty should be abolished—prominent amongst them, a young associate of my uncle’s named Maximilien Robespierre.

But at the time, Condorcet was a far more prominent man.

“Have you decided to help us, then?”

I asked, hopefully.

Condorcet rubbed his chin.

“There’s an argument to be made that with the nation’s finances in shambles, my time is better spent persuading the royals to rein in expenses and reform our tax system, which burdens the poor for the benefit of the rich.”

Maman would’ve scolded me for arguing with a man of his stature, but I never could stifle my natural predilection for debate.

“That is an important matter, but less urgent than the impending torture and death of three men.”

Condorcet leaned back in his chair.

“If I’m asked to weigh the fate of three individuals versus twenty-eight million French subjects . . .”

“That’s a cold calculation, sir,”

I argued.

“Moreover, I believe it’s a miscalculation.

Because our case only requires persuading the courts to show clemency and reason.

Whereas in the case of the twenty-eight million French subjects, you must persuade the nobles and the clergy to voluntarily surrender their ancient privileges.

It seems to me that the likelihood—”

“The likelihood is that, if I take up your case, I may actually accomplish something for a change?”

I pressed my lips together.

“I beg your pardon if I’ve given offense.

My mother says that I have an unfortunate habit of frankness.”

I thought I saw him smile, ever so slightly.

“Something we have in common.”

This emboldened me to say, “Then perhaps you won’t mind my frankness in confessing that all this talking has made me quite thirsty.”

Condorcet stared.

Blinked.

Then remembered his manners.

“I am terribly absentminded.

I should’ve called for tea . . .”

Grinning, I said, “I imagine you can still do so.”

And because there’d always been in my breast a desire to provoke, I added, “Maybe even some sweets.

Perhaps puits d’amour . . .”

Condorcet’s cheeks colored at the erotic name of the little treats—slang for a woman’s genitalia.

And I decided Madame de Sainte-Amaranthe must have been making sport of me to imply that he was a libertine.

He was red as a schoolboy as he mumbled, “There must be some sort of, um, pastry in the kitchen . . .”

Clearly the man had been born in a barn.

After calling for a servant, he looked so pained, I decided to rescue him.

I noticed a version of Adam Smith’s work open on the table.

“You’re reading The Theory of Moral Sentiments.

I am an adherent.”

He looked vaguely surprised.

“I was under the impression all the ladies in France were adherents of Rousseau.”

“Only the foolish ones.

Rousseau seems to believe a woman’s only purpose is to torture men or cater to them.”

“And you believe?”

I didn’t know how safe it might be to confide my beliefs, so I only said, “I believe this is a bad translation of Smith’s work.”

He stared with disconcerting directness.

“Can you recommend a better one?”

“Mine,”

I said, recklessly.

I’d started translating Smith’s work into French—an endeavor I believed might one day be a real achievement.

But now I was embarrassed.

“It isn’t finished.

Mostly, I have notes with my own critique.”

“I’d like to read your notes.”

I flushed, torn between being flattered by his interest and fearful of his mockery.

“You don’t find it strange that a lady should occupy herself in such a way?”

He shook his head.

“I know what it is, mademoiselle, to desire a different vocation than expected.

I myself was nearly forced to be a soldier like my father.”

I couldn’t imagine Condorcet as a soldier.

The man of science didn’t look as if he’d harm an insect.

“Well, you seem to have found a more suitable calling, sir . . .”

“You can too.”

My cheeks grew hotter, as I feared he might be mocking me after all.

My uncle indulged my scholarship, but Condorcet seemed to be encouraging it.

It made me curious to see just how far he would continue to do so.

“Maman says it’s heresy to defy the divine order in which God has ordained women occupy themselves with domestic concerns.”

“I believe neither in God nor a divine order,”

Condorcet replied, leaning to me with what might almost be a smile.

“Only a natural order.

Thus, if men have natural rights simply because they’re capable of reason and morality, then I suppose women should have exactly the same rights.”

My breath caught.

It’s what I believed.

But hearing it said aloud was a shocking sensation.

Electric.

Even Uncle Charles would never have gone so far. Which meant that Condorcet was, quite possibly, the most radical man I’d ever met.

It was for that reason I agreed to send him my notes before I left Paris for the summer.

And that is how our correspondence began . . .