Jefferson by Max Byrd Page A

blushing. “I take it from Edmund Burke. The ‘sublime’ is what gives us a feeling of danger or violence, but without real risk.”
    “I have seen the Natural Bridge.” It was all Short could think of to say.
    Jefferson took the proof sheet from him and smiled. “People compare it, you know, to the great falls at Niagara—a tremendous, terrifying roar and spectacle, but you watch it from below, on a rock shelf, in perfect shivering safety.”
    “And the ‘beautiful’?”
    Jefferson bowed in greeting to Pierres, who had that moment entered from the thumping press room. “The beautiful,” he said, “is harmonious, orderly, regular—much inferior to the torrential sublime, Burke claims.” With an exaggerated gesture Jefferson presented to the scowling Pierres a new bundle of manuscript for printing. “Our friend here, for example,” he said mischievously in English, “is clearly a ‘sublime’ man.”
    Short laughed and picked up his hat from the stool. “Homer is sublime,” he said.
    “And Pope is beautiful.”
    Jefferson turned away to study a sheet of figures that Pierres had silently presented, and Short felt a quick rush of disappointment. But after a moment Jefferson lifted his long aristocratic chin and added in the same mischievous tone, “Now which are you actually, William, a sublime man or a beautiful?”
    “Is it necessary to choose, sir?”
    “Well, I suppose I have found it a condition of life always to be choosing one thing and losing another.” The smile never faltered, but melancholy suddenly ran silver-thin through his voice. Short raised his hand in involuntary protest.
    Jefferson pushed away the sheet of figures. “I’ve dismissed my carriage. Come outside and walk with me a bit. Our friend Pierres can send all this home by messenger.”
    There was no gainsaying such an invitation. Short tucked his hat under his arm, like a Frenchman, and turned toward the door.
    On the street he expected that they would proceed along the river, in the shadow of Notre-Dame, toward the Quai des GrandsAugustine, where all the antique booksellers’ shops were clustered and Jefferson was well known as a customer. Instead, Jefferson chose an odd, many-angled side street, apparently unnamed, and began to lead him in the other direction, uphill toward the Sorbonne.
    “I like these little out-of-the-way bric-a-brac shops. You never know what you’ll discover.” He halted to indicate a dusty display window at street level. “The owner of this one told me the other day he was at work on a perpetual motion machine that would astound the world.”
    “Just like America. Half the artisans I knew at home were trying to make a machine like that.” Short peered into the window, but thanks to the sun’s glare saw only Jefferson’s reflection. It was a tall, calm, reassuring presence against the ever-present tumult of Parisian wagons and horses. The haunting oddities of
Notes on Virginia
had vanished from his mind, and inwardly Short was relishing, not for the first time, the idea that he could now spend day after day like this in Jefferson’s company, in perpetual motion, perpetual friendship.
    “Exactly like America.” Jefferson beamed at the thought. “It appeals to the optimistic temperament, the American temperament. You meet it rarely here. But when I was practicing law in Williamsburg, I must have seen at least two dozen inventors who had put together some unheard-of combination of springs, weights, and balances and claimed it was a machine that would run forever.”
    In the case of anything mechanical, Short was on uncertain ground. “Theoretically, I suppose,” he said doubtfully, “such a machine is possible.”
    Jefferson shook his head. “I am, alas, that contradictory thing, a skeptical optimist. Newton’s laws of motion show that energy can be released but not created. Friction will eventually stop the parts of any machine. To tell the truth, though I would never want to discourage