So there you have M. Henri Stefan Oppert-Blowitz,' and if I’ve told you a deal about him and his crackpot notions of our "shared destiny", it’s because they were at the root of the whole crazy business, and dam' near cost me my life, as well as preventing a great European war—which will happen eventually, mark my words, if this squirt of a Kaiser ain’t put firmly in his place. If I were Asquith I’d have the little swine took off sudden; plenty of chaps would do it for ten thou' and a snug billet in the Colonies afterwards. But that’s common sense, not politics, you see.
That by the way. It was at the back end of ’77 that the unlikely pair of Blowitz and Sam Grant, late President of the United States, put me on the road to disaster, and (as is so often the case) in the most innocent-seeming way.
Like all retired Yankee bigwigs, Sam was visiting the mother country as the first stage of a grand tour, which meant, he being who he was, that instead of being allowed to goggle at Westminster and Windermere in peace, he must endure adulation on every hand, receiving presentations and the freedom of cities, having fat aldermen and provosts pump his fin, which he hated of all things, listening to endless boring addresses, and having to speechify in turn (which was purgatory to a man who spoke mostly in grunts), with crowds huzzaing wherever he went, the nobility lionising him in their lordly way, and being beset by admiring females from Liverpool laundresses to the Great White Mother herself.
Ulysses S. Grant never called for help in his life, but just then I seemed to catch a glimpse, within the masterful commander and veteran statesman, of the thin-skinned Scotch yokel from the Ohio tanyard uneasily adrift in an old so-superior world which he’d have liked to despise but couldn’t help feeling in awe of. No doubt Windsor and Buck House had been ordeal enough, and now the prospect of standing tongue-tied before the French President and a parcel of courtly supercilious Frogs had unmanned him to the point where he was prepared to regard me as a friendly face. Of course I agreed straight off, in my best toady-manly style; I’d never have dared say no to Grant at any time, and I wouldn’t have missed watching him and Macmahon in a state of mutual bewilderment for all the tea in China.
So there I was, a few weeks later, in a gilded salon of the Elysee, when Grant, wearing his most amiable expression, which would have frightened Geronimo, was presented to the great Marshal, a grizzled old hero with a leery look and eyebrows which matched his moustache for luxuriance—a sort of Grant with garlic, he was. They glowered at each other, and bowed, and glowered some more before shaking hands, with Sam plainly ready to leap away at the first hint of an embrace, after which silence fell, and I was just wondering if I should tell Macmahon that Grant was stricken speechless by the warmth of his welcome when Madame Macmahon, God bless her, inquired in English if we’d had a good crossing.
She was still a charmer at sixty, and Sam was so captivated in relief that he absolutely talked to her, which left old Macmahon standing like a blank file. Blowitz, who as usual was to the fore among the attendant dignitaries and crawlers, came promptly to the rescue, introducing me to the Marshal as an old companion-in-arms, sort of, both of us having served in Crimea. This seemed to cheer the old fellow up: ah, I was that Flashman of Balaclava, was I? And I’d done time in the Legion Etrangère also, had I? Why, he was an old Algeria hand himself; we both had sand in our boots, n’est-ce pas, ho-ho! Well, this was formidable, to meet, in an English soldier of all people, a vieille moustache who had woken to the cry of "Au jus!" and marched to the sausage music.' Blowitz said that wasn’t the half of it: le Colonel Flashman had been a distinguished ally of France in China; Montauban would never have got to Pekin without me. Macmahon was astonished; he’d had no notion. Well, there weren’t many of us left; decidedly we must become better acquainted.
The usual humbug, though gratifying, but pregnant of great effects, as the lady novelists put it. For early in the following May, long after Grant had gone home (having snarled his way round Europe and charmed the Italians by remarking that Venice would be a fine city if it were drained), and I was pursuing my placid way in London, I was dumfounded by a letter from the French Ambassador informing me that the President of the Republic, in recognition of my occasional services to France, wished to confer on me the Legion of Honour.
Well, bless the dear little snail-eaters, thinks I, for while I’ve collected a fair bit of undeserved tinware in my time, you can’t have too much of it, you know. I didn’t suspect it, but this was Blowitz at work, taking advantage of my meeting with old Macmahon to serve ends of his own. The little snake had discovered a use for me, and decided to put me in his debt—didn’t know Flash too well, did he? At all events, he’d dropped in Macmahon' s ear the suggestion that I was ripe for a Frog decoration, and Macmahon was all for it, apparently, so back to Paris I went in my best togs, had the order (fourth or fifth class, I forget which) hung round my unworthy neck, received the Marshal’s whiskery embrace, and was borne off to Voisin’s by Blowitz to celebrate—and be reminded that I owed my latest glorification to him, and our shared "destiny" .
"What joy compares itself to advancing the fortunes of an old friend to whom one is linked by fate?" beams he, tucking his napkin under his several chins and diving into his soup. "For in serving him, do I not serve myself?"
"That’s my modest old Blow," says I. "What d’ye want?"
"Ah, sceptique! Did I speak of obligation, then? It is true, I hope to interest you in a small affair of mine—oh, but an affair after your own heart, I think, and to our mutual advantage. But first, let us do honour to the table—champagne, my boy!"
So I waited while he gorged his way through half a dozen overblown courses—why the French must clart decent grub with glutinous sauces beats me—and when the waiters had cleared and we were at the brandy and cigars he sighed with repletion, patted his guts, and fished a mounted picture from his pocket.
"It is a most amusing intrigue, this," says he, and presented it with a flourish. "Voila!"
I’m rather a connoisseur of photography, and there was a quality about the present specimen which took my attention at once. It may have been the opulence of the setting, or the delicacy of the hand-colouring, or the careful composition which had placed two gigantic blackamoors with loincloths and scimitars among the potted palms, or the playful inclusion of the parakeet and tiny monkey on either side of the oriental couch on which lounged a lovely odalisque clad only in gold turban and ankle-fetters, her slender body arched to promote jutting young bumpers which plainly needed no support, her lips parted in a sneer which promised unimaginable depravities. A caption read "La Petite Caprice" ; well, it was a change from Frou-Frou … I tore my eyes away from the potted palms, a mite puzzled. As I’ve said, Blowitz had put me in the way of Society gallops, but never a professional.
"Très appétissante, non?" says he.
I tossed it back to him. "Which convent is she advertising?"
He clucked indignantly. "She is not what you suppose! This is a theatrical picture, made when she was employed at the Folies—from necessity, let me tell you, to finance her studies—serious studies! Such pictures are de rigueur for a Folies comedienne."
"Well, I could see she hated posing for it—"
"Would it surprise you," says he severely, "to learn that she is a trained criminologist, speaks fluently four languages, rides, fences and shoots, and is a valued member of the département secret of the Ministry of the Interior, at present in our Berlin Embassy … where I was influential in placing her? Ah, you stare! Do I interest you, my friend?"
"She might, if she was on hand. But since she ain’t, and posing for lewd pictures belies her stainless purity—"