United States of Atlantis

Victor also knew the parlous state of the Atlantean Assembly's paper-who didn't? But he answered, "Would you rather I had told the English commissioners we intend to repudiate those debts? They lodge down the street. I will introduce them to you later this morning. If you intend to convey that message, you may do so yourself."

"No, no," Fe

"Never fear. We can always find some cozening trick or another to befool our creditors," Cawthorne said. "France has proved that year after year."

"How was France?" Victor asked him. "Most enjoyable, at the level where I traveled," Cawthorne said. "If you have the means to live well-or have friends with the means to let you live well-you can live better in and around Paris than anywhere else on earth. But the peasantry? Dear God in heaven! Upon my oath, the grievances the French peasants have against their king and nobles make ours against England seem light as a feather drifting on the breeze by comparison."

"Then let them rise, too," Fe

"Would you say the same, Mr. Fe

Custis Cawthorne chuckled softly to himself. Fe

"Makes the slaveholders piles of filthy lucre," Cawthorne broke in.

"Not how I should have phrased it," Fe

Why not? Victor wondered. His son could be sold at any time, for no better reason than to line Marcel Freycinet's pockets. That made him look at holding Negroes and copperskins in perpetual servitude in a whole new light.

But Fe

"How many years?" Blaise pressed, as if wondering how patient he should-or could-be.

"I should be surprised if it came to pass in fewer than twenty years," Isaac Fe

Blaise made a noise down deep in his throat. That did not please him. No-it did not satisfy him. Isaac minks my son Nicholas will grow to manhood a slave, Victor thought. He minks my son may live out his whole life as a chattel. Put in those terms, Fe

"Can I bring you anything else, gents?" the serving girl asked.

Custis Cawthorne shoved his mug across the table toward her. "If you fill this up again, I shall thank you sweetly for it"

"And you'll pay for it, too," she said, and walked off swinging her hips.

"One way or another, we always end up paying for it," Cawthorne said with a sigh.

Fe

"We might have squeezed better terms from them here and there." Fe

"I have," Victor said. "They may possibly reconsider: I daresay there are certain small advantages they still hope to wring from us. If you reckon the game worth the candle, I do not object-too much-to your proposing further negotiation to them."

Isaac Fe

"So we might," Cawthorne said, "not that that necessarily stops anyone."

Chapter 25

Victor hadn't thought it would stop Fe

Victor had wondered whether the English commissioners would want anything to do with Isaac Fe

But Cawthorne made all the difference. Richard Oswald and David Hartley were as delighted to meet him as if he were a young, beautiful, loose-living actress. Oswald used a pair of spectacles of Cawthorne's design, so that he could read with the lower halves of the lenses while still seeing clearly at a distance through the uppers.

"Ingenious! Most extraordinarily ingenious!" the Scot exclaimed. "How ever did you come to think of it?"

"What gave me the idea, actually, was a badly ground set of reading glasses, in which part of the lenses were of improper curvature," Cawthorne answered. "I thought, if what had chanced by accident were to be done better, and on purpose- Once the notion was in place, bringing it to fruition proved easy enough."

"Remarkable," Oswald said. "It takes an uncommon mind to recognize the importance of the commonplace and obvious."

Curtis Cawthorne preened. The only thing he enjoyed more than hearing himself praised was hearing himself praised by someone with the discernment to understand and to state exactly why he deserved all those accolades.

Because the commissioners so admired Cawthorne, they even put up with Fe

The one phrase David Hartley declined to change was "earnestly recommend" in the fifth article. Fe

Finally, Victor took Fe

"Ah!" Fe

Although Victor might not have phrased it just so, he found himself nodding. "That is the condition"-he didn't want to say disease-"controlling him."

"Very well, then." By Fe

"That is handsomely said, Mr. Fe

"My pleasure, sir," Victor replied. He still wasn't sure he liked the way Isaac Fe