Gore Vidal - Empire

Ignobly, Blaise wondered how he could put together this story before Hearst did. Obviously, he could not unless he knew the contents of Hearst’s letters, all written before 1904. “I suppose you’ll use this when Roosevelt does something that favors Standard Oil, if he does.”

Hearst shook his head. “I’ll use what I’ve got-or not use it-in connection with my own campaign in 1908.”

Blaise did not use to himself the word “blackmail,” but that was indeed the Chief’s intention. As the owner of eight popular newspapers and the Archbold letters, he could make the leaders of the republic leap through any hoop of his choice. “There’s one more detail you should know,” said Hearst. “John D. Archbold is an old personal friend of Theodore Roosevelt.”

“That is something.”

“That is something.”

“If,” said Blaise, doing his best not to sound eager, “you were to publish these letters, what excuse would you give, for having stolen them…?”

Hearst attempted another chorus of “Everyone Works,” with invented words. “Well, I certainly wouldn’t say I’d stolen them. They came to my attention, that’s all. Then I’d also say that I do not consider that letters written to public men on matters affecting the public interest and threatening the public welfare are ever private letters.” At that moment, Blaise realized that Hearst might yet become president and, if he did, he might surprise everyone; in what way, of course, it was hard to tell.

CAROLINE SAT AT the large marquetry table, said to have been the very one that the Duke had used when he was the controller of the royal revenues, and opened the two letter-boxes. The first contained fragments of Aaron Burr’s autobiography, with a commentary by his law-clerk Charles Schermerhorn Schuyler. She glanced through the pages, and decided that Henry Adams, if no one else, would be fascinated. She skipped to the end of the book, written years after Burr’s death, and read what she already knew, of her grandfather’s accidental discovery that he was one of Burr’s numerous illegitimate children.

The second leather box was a final journal by her grandfather, covering the year 1876. He had returned to New York for the first time since 1836, with his daughter, Emma, the Princesse d’Agrigente. This was the volume that she intended to read carefully.

Once the Hearst party had left, Caroline spent every moment that she could reading her grandfather’s journal. She was charmed by his amusement at the strange American world, fascinated by his description of her mother’s campaign to find a wealthy husband, the object of the visit, appalled at her grandfather’s cynical complaisance. But then father and daughter were broke, and he was just able to support the two of them by writing for the magazines. Fortunately, Mrs. Astor took them up; and they were in demand socially, thanks to Emma’s beauty, and her father’s charm. At one point, Emma had almost married an Apgar cousin, for convenience, something her daughter had actually done.

As Caroline read on, she began to see something alter in Emma’s character-alter or be revealed to the reader, Caroline, but not to the narrator, who seemed unable to understand the thrust of his own narrative. Sanford made his entrance, with wife Denise, who could not give birth without danger. As Denise and Emma became closer and closer friends, Caroline found that her fingers were suddenly so cold that she could hardly, clumsily, turn the pages. Caroline knew the end before the end. Emma persuaded Denise to give birth to Blaise. In effect, Emma murdered Denise in order to marry Sanford.

Emma’s expiation was the long painful time she took to die after Caroline’s birth. But did Emma feel guilt? Did she atone? Confess?

Caroline sent for Plon. It was late afternoon. She wanted to talk to Emma’s oldest son while the-crime was still vivid in her mind. Plon sprawled handsomely on a sofa. Caroline told him what their mother had done. At the end, somewhat dramatically, she held up the journal and waved it in the air; told him of the murder. “Brûlez,” Plon read from the cover. “That’s what you should have done, you idiot! Burn it. What difference does any of this make now?”

“You knew all along, didn’t you?”

Plon shrugged. “I thought something had happened.”

“Did she say anything?”

“Of course not.”

“Did she seem tragic or sad or-dark?”

“She was adorable, as always, even at the end, when there was pain.”

“Did she make confession, to a priest?”

“She was given the last rites. She was conscious. I suppose she did.”

Plon lit a cigarette from a new gold case. “You know, when someone becomes emperor of the French, and conquers all Europe, he doesn’t brood much about the people he killed.”

“But she was a woman, and a mother, not emperor of the French…”

“You don’t know how- I don’t know how-she saw herself. She had to survive, and if the sad lady, her friend, Blaise’s mother, must die, naturally, in childbirth, then die she must.”

The next morning, Caroline invited Blaise to breakfast in her wing of the chateau. He knew why. Plon had told him. They sat in an oval breakfast room, with du Barry dove-gray walls. “Now you know,” he said, casually, “that your mother killed my mother for our father’s money. I’m sure it happens all the time.”

“Don’t be-don’t make a joke of it. Now I know why your grandmother was so insistent with me. I am to expiate…”

“You? Don’t exaggerate your importance. You weren’t even there. I, at least, was the direct cause of my mother’s death.”

“I think these things go on, into the next generation, and further, maybe.”

“ You! The atheist from Mlle. Souvestre’s stable.” Blaise laughed into his omelette.

“Atheists believe in character, and I certainly believe in cause and effect, and consequence.”

“The consequence is that you and I are still fairly young by the standards of our world and very rich by any standard. This isn’t the house of Artois.”

“Atreus.” She corrected him from force of habit. “Plon sounded as if he would have done the same.”

“I doubt it. Men are never as cruel as women when it comes to this sort of thing. Look at your dismissal of John. That was very Emma-esque. I couldn’t have done that.”

Caroline felt a chill in the room, which turned out to be not a ghost but a sudden cold wind from the lake; a summer storm was on its way. Blaise closed the window. “You prove my point then,” she said. “The old crime.”

“Don’t be carried away. Think of all the new crimes we can commit. Let poor Emma rest in peace. I have never, once, thought of Denise. Why should you think of Emma, who, according to Plon, except for one nicely executed murder, was delightful, as a woman, and admirable as a mother?”

“You are immoral, Blaise.” Caroline wanted to be shocked; but felt nothing at all.

“I never said I wasn’t. I’m indifferent. You remember our last night in New York, at Rector’s? when you were so shocked by the way the whole room sang that song?-well, I was thrilled because I was just like the singers of that song.”

Caroline shuddered at the memory. The latest Victor Herbert musical contained a highly minatory song called “I Want What I Want When I Want It.” On the night that she and Blaise came, as it were, full circle, in their knowledge of each other, they had dined at Rector’s, and when the singer from the musical comedy entered the restaurant, he boomed out, “I want…” and the entire restaurant took up the chorus, and on the word “want” everyone banged a fist on the table. It was like a war being conducted by very fat people against-the waiters? or everyone on earth who was not as fat or as rich as they? “So Emma was right, to want what she wanted?”