12:00 noon
Le Valentinois

Benjamin Franklin looked around the table at the assorted group who had collected, as customary, for the seven-course afternoon repast at the expense of his host. Today it was a few hours early—but then, time was of the essence, was it not?

Here at the table were those who would soon represent the past: the owner of this magnificent château, the pudgy millionaire Donatien le Ray de Chaumont, who had an ax to grind: he was still outraged with the American Congress, which had never paid his bills to supply arms for the Revolution. Beside Chaumont, his attractive wife—the mistress, some said (de temps en temps) of the naval hero John Paul Jones. Then the revolutionary playwright Beaumarchais, author of huge hits, The Marriage of Figaro and The Barber of Seville, a man who had run more munitions into the British colonies than any other, in aid of the revolution. Mme Helvetius was seated between Franklin himself and John Adams, with Abigail at Adams’s far side—looking annoyed by Notre dame d’Auteuil’s blithe bantering to her husband—part of her inane camouflage.

Thomas Jefferson sat at the side of the table that Franklin viewed as the future. Beside Jefferson was young John Quincy Adams, seventeen, who seemed to dote on the Virginian’s each word. Quincy’s sister, Abigail the younger—Nabby Adams—who at age nineteen seemed to have captivated Franklin’s twenty-two-year-old grandson, Temple. And Benny Franklin Bache, Franklin’s other grandson, the youngest at the table at age fifteen, who was bracketed at the other side by Edward Bancroft, the mission’s secretary and sometime spy.

After the soup course had been served and the servants had departed, Franklin announced portentously, “Thirteen at dinner, an inauspicious number—for it reminds one always of that other supper where the host said, ‘Tonight, one of you shall deny me and one of you shall betray me.’”

Mme Helvetius shot Franklin a steely sideways glance. Then, unilaterally changing the subject, she picked up her spoon with a charming smile, removed a bit of crayfish from her bowl and deposited it on her plate.

“This month does not have an R,” she informed the group. “One should never eat les crustaces in months spelled without R—they may contain poison.”

“But, Grandfather,” said Benny Bache, as if she had not spoken, “do you really expect someone to deny or betray you tonight? And even if you did, it surely wouldn’t be any of us, here at this table.”

“I have reason, my child, to believe precisely that,” Franklin assured his grandson. “In support of this view, I must mention that I have recently received an encrypted message…”

He paused, for Mme Helvetius was choking on her soup; Chaumont dashed around the table with some Madeira from the sideboard, and poured it into her glass. She swilled down several large gulps—more than the Adamses had ever seen a woman put away at one sitting. When things had calmed a bit, John Quincy Adams chimed in, “Dr. Franklin, we all realize that an encrypted message must be held in the greatest secrecy. Especially if it might pertain—as you seem to believe—to someone in this room. I confess I am fascinated with codes. And Mr. Jefferson here, like you, is an expert of sorts. He has promised to help train me in the basic ideas while my family and I are in France. I’d be glad if you could tell us only two things. How did you know that the message was encrypted? And have you been able to decipher what it means?”