The Confusion

Dunkerque Residence of the d’Ozoirs
13 DECEMBER 1689

WHERE BONAVENTURE ROSSIGNOL HAD FIBRILLATED between boredom and disbelief, the Marquis d’Ozoir was richly amused when Eliza told him the same story. At the beginning of the interview, she had been merely furious. When he began to smirk and chuckle, she tended toward homicidal, and had to leave the room and tend to Jean-Jacques for a little while. The baby was in a gleeful mood for some reason, grabbing his feet and fountaining spit, and this cheered her up. For he had no thought of anything outside of the room, nor in the past, nor the future. When Eliza returned to the salon with its view over the harbor, she had quite regained her composure and had even begun to see a bit of humor in this folly of the logs.

“And why did you send me on such a fool’s errand, monsieur?” she demanded. “You must have known how it would all come out.”

“Everyone in this business knows-or claims to-that to get French timber to French shipyards is an impossibility. And because they know this, they never even try. And if no one ever tries, how can we be certain it is still impossible? And so every few years, just to find out whether it’s still impossible, I ask some enterprising person who does not know it’s impossible to attempt it. I do not blame you for being annoyed with me. But if you had somehow succeeded, it would have been a great deed. And in failing, you learned much that will be useful in the next phase of our project-which I assure you is not impossible.”

He had risen to his feet and approached the window, and by a look and a twitch of the shoulder he invited her to join him there. Gone were the days when one could look out over the Channel and see blue sky above England; today they could barely make out the harbor wall. Raindrops were whacking the windowpanes like birdshot.

“I confess the place looks different to me now, and not just because of the weather,” Eliza said. “My eye is drawn to certain things that I ignored before. The timber down at the shipyard: how did it get here? Those new fortifications: how did the King pay for them? They were put there by laborers; and laborers must be paid with hard money, they’ll not accept Bills of Exchange.”

The Marquis was distracted, and perhaps a bit impatient, that she had strayed into the topic of fortifications. He flicked his fingers at the nearest rampart. “That is nothing,” he said. “If you must know, the nobility have a lot of metal, because they hoard it. Le Roi gets to them at Versailles and gives them a little talk: ‘Why is your coastline not better defended? It is your obligation to take care of this.’ ” Of course they cannot resist. They spend some of their metal to put up the fort. In return they get the personal gratitude of the King, and get to go to dinner with him or hand him his shirt or something.”

“That’s all?”

He smiled. “That, and a note from the controleur-general saying that the French Treasury owes him whatever amount of money he spent.”

“Aha! So that’s how it works: These nobles are exchanging hard money for soft: metal for French government debt.”

“Technically I suppose that is true. Such an exchange is a loss of power and independence. For gold can be spent anywhere, for anything. Paper may have the same nominal value but its usefulness is contingent on a hundred factors, most of which are impossible to comprehend, unless you live at Versailles. But it is all nonsense.”

“What do you mean, it is all nonsense?”

“Those debts are worthless. They will never be repaid.”

“Worthless!? Never!?”

“Perhaps I exaggerate. Let me put it thus: The nobleman who built these new fortifications around the harbor knows he may never see his money again. But he does not care, for it was just some gold plate in his cellar. Now the plates are gone, but he has currency of a different sort at Versailles; and that is what he desires.”

“I am tempted to share in your cynicism, for I don’t wish to seem a fool,” Eliza said slowly, “but if the debt is secured by a sealed document from the controleur-general, it seems to me that it must possess some value.”

“I don’t wish to speak of fortifications,” he said. “These were built by Monsieur le comte d’-” and he mentioned someone Eliza had never heard of. “You may make inquiries with him if you are curious. But you and I must not let our attention stray from the matter at hand: timber for his majesty’s shipyards.”

“Very well,” Eliza said, “I see some down there. Where did it come from?”

“The Baltic,” he returned, “and it was brought in a Dutch ship, in the spring of this year, before war was declared.”

“No shipyard could exist in Dunkerque, unless it got its supplies from the sea,” Eliza pointed out, “and so may I assume that this was a habitual arrangement, before the war?”

“It has not been habitual for rather a long while. When I came back from my travels in the East, around 1670, my father put me to work in the Company of the North down at La Rochelle. This was a brainchild of Colbert. He had tried to build his navy out of French timber and ran afoul of the same troubles as you. And so the purpose of this Compagnie du Nord was to trade in the Baltic for timber. Of necessity, this would be shipped mostly in Dutch bottoms.”

“Why did he put it all the way down in La Rochelle? Why not closer to the North-Dunkerque or Le Havre?”

“Because La Rochelle was where the Huguenots were,” the Marquis answered, “and it was they who made the whole enterprise run.”

“What did you do, then, if I may inquire?”

“Traveled to the north. Watched. Learned. Gave information to my father. His position in the Navy is largely ornamental. But the information that he gets about what the Navy is doing has enabled him to make investments that otherwise would have been beyond his intellectual capacity.”

Eliza must have looked taken aback.

“I am a bastard,” said the Marquis.

“I knew he was wealthy, but assumed ’twas all inherited,” Eliza said.

“What he inherited has been converted inexorably to soft money, in just the manner we spoke of a few minutes ago,” d’Ozoir said. “Which amounts to saying that he has slowly over time lost his independent means and become a pensioner of the French Government-which is how le Roi likes it. In order for him to preserve any independent means, he has had to make investments. The reason you are not aware of this is that his investments are in the Mediterranean-the Levant, and Northern Africa-whereas your attentions are fixed North and West.” And here he reached out and took Eliza firmly by the hand and looked her in the eye. “Which is where I would like them to stay-and so let us attend to the matter of Baltic timber, I beg you.”

“Very well,” Eliza said, “You say that in the early seventies, you had Huguenots doing it in Dutch ships. Then there was a long war against the Dutch, no?”

“Correct. So we substituted English or Swedish ships.”

“I am guessing that this worked satisfactorily until four years ago when le Roi expelled most of the Huguenots and enslaved the rest?”

“Indeed. Since then, I have been desperately busy, trying to do all of the things that an office full of Huguenots used to do. I have managed to keep a thin stream of timber coming in from the Baltic-enough to mend the old ships and build the occasional new one.”

“But now we are at war with the two greatest naval powers in the world,” Eliza said. “The demand for ship timber will go up immensely. And as the de la Vegas and I have just finished proving, we cannot get it from France. So you want my help in reestablishing the Compagnie du Nord here, at Dunkerque.”

“I should be honored.”

“I will do it,” she announced, “but first you must answer me one question.”

“Only ask it, mademoiselle.”

“How long have you been thinking about this? And did you discuss it with your half-brother?”

Jean-Jacques, with an uncanny sense of timing for a six-monthold, began to cry from the next room. D’Ozoir considered it. “My half-brother Etienne wants you for a different reason.”

“I know-because I breed true.”

“No, mademoiselle. You are a fool if you believe that. There are many pretty young noblewomen who can make healthy babies, and most of them are less trouble than you.”

“What other possible reason could he want me?”

“Other than your beauty? The answer is Colbert.”

“Colbert is dead.”

“But his son lives on: Monsieur le marquis de Seignelay. Secretary of State for the Navy, like his father before him, and my father’s boss. Do you have the faintest idea what it is like, for one such as my father-a hereditary Duke of an ancient line, and cousin of the King-to see a commoner’s son treated as if he were a peer of the realm? To be subordinated to a man whose father was a merchant?”

“It must be difficult,” Eliza said, without much sympathy.

“Not as difficult for the Duc d’Arcachon as some of the others-for my father is not as arrogant as some. My father is subservient, flexible, adaptable-”

“And in this case,” Eliza said, completing the thought-for the Marquis was in danger of losing his nerve-“the way he means to adapt is by marrying Etienne off to the female who most reminds him of Colbert.”

“Common origins, good with money, respected by the King,” said the Marquis. “And if she is beautiful and breeds true, why, so much the better. You may imagine that you are some sort of outsider to the Court of Versailles, mademoiselle, that you do not belong there at all. But the truth of the matter is thus: Versailles has only existed for seven years. It does not have any ancient traditions. It was made by Colbert, the commoner. It is full of nobles, true; but you fool yourself if you believe that they feel comfortable there-feel as if they belong. No, it is you, mademoiselle, who are the perfect courtier of Versailles, you whom the others shall envy, once you go there and establish yourself. My father feels himself slipping down, sees his family losing its wealth, its influence. He throws a rope up, hoping that someone on higher and firmer ground will snatch it out of the air and pull him to safety-and that someone is you, mademoiselle.”

“It is a heavy charge to lay on a woman who has no money, and who is busy trying to raise an infant,” Eliza said. “I hope that your father is not really as desperate as you make him sound.”

“He is not desperate yet. But when he lies awake at night, he schemes against the possibility that he, or his descendants, may become desperate in the future.”

“If what you say is creditable, I have much to do,” said Eliza, turning from the window, and smoothing her skirt down with her hands.

“What shall you do first, mademoiselle?”

“I believe I shall write a letter to England, monsieur.”

“England! But we are at war with England,” the Marquis pointed out, mock-offended.

“What I have in mind is a Natural-Philosophic sort of discourse,” Eliza said, “and Philosophy recognizes no boundaries.”

“Ah, you will write to one of your friends in the Royal Society?”

“I had in mind a Dr. Waterhouse,” Eliza said. “He was cut for the stone recently.”

The Marquis got the same aghast, cringing, yet fascinated look that all men did whenever the topic of lithotomy arose in conversation.

“Last I heard, he had lived through it, and was recovering,” Eliza continued. “Perhaps he has time on his hands to answer idle inquiries from a French countess.”

“Perhaps he does,” said the Marquis, “but I cannot understand why the first thing that enters your mind is to write a letter to a sick old Natural Philosopher in London.”

“It’s only the first thing, not the only thing, that I’ll do,” said Eliza. “It’s a thing easily done from Dunkerque. I would begin a conversation with him, or with someone, concerning money: soft and hard.”

“Why not discuss it with a Spaniard? They know how to make money that people respect all around the world.”

“It is precisely because the English coinage is so pathetic that I wish to take up the matter with an Englishman,” Eliza returned. “No one here can believe that Englishmen accept those blackened lumps as specie. And yet the trade of England is great, and the country is as prosperous as any. So to me England seems like an enormous Lyon: poor in specie, but rich in credit, and thriving through a system of paper transfers.”

“Which will boot them nothing in a war,” said the Marquis. “For in war, a king must send his armies abroad, to places where soft money is not accepted. Therefore he must send hard money with them that they may buy fodder and other necessaries. How then can England war against France?”

“The same question might be asked of France! By your leave, monsieur, her money is not as sound as you might like to think,”

“Do you suppose that this Dr. Waterhouse will have answers to such questions?”

“No, but I hope that he will engage in a discourse with me whence answers might emerge.”

“I believe that the answer lies in Trade,” said the Marquis. “Colbert himself said, ‘Trade is the source of finance, and finance is the vital sinews of war.’ What our countries cannot pay for with bullion, they will have to get in trade.”

“C’est juste, monsieur, but do not forget that there is trade not only in tangible stuff like Monsieur Wachsmann’s wax, but also in money itself: the stock in trade of Lothar von Hacklheber. Which is a murky and abstruse business, and a fit topic of study for Fellows of the Royal Society.”

“I thought they only studied butterflies.”

“Some of them, monsieur, study banks and money as well; and I fear they have got a head start on our French lepidopterists.”