Chapter One
Paris
For him it began with a feather. A bright blue parrot feather that fell out of Ella Lynch's hat while she was horseback riding one afternoon in the Bois de Boulogne. Blond, fair-skinned and Irish, Ella was a good rider -- the kind of natural rider who rides with her ass, not her legs -- and she was riding astride on a nervous little gray thoroughbred mare. Cantering a few paces behind Ella and her companion, Francisco Solano Lopez was also a good rider -- albeit a different sort of rider. He rode from strength, the strength in his arms, the strength in his thighs. Also he liked to ride big horses, horses that measured over sixteen, seventeen hands; at home, he often rode a big sure-footed cantankerous brown mule. Pulling up on the reins and getting off his horse, his heavy silver spurs clanging, Franco -- as Francisco Solano Lopez was known -- picked the feather up from the ground; it briefly occurred to him that Inocencia, his fat sister, would know what kind of parrot feather it was, for she kept hundreds of parrots in her aviary in Asunción, but it was Ella and not the feather that had caught Franco's attention.
The year was 1854 and the forty miles of bridle paths and carriage roads were filled with elegant calèches, daumonts, phaetons; every afternoon, weather permitting, Empress Eugénie could be seen driving with her equerry. Every afternoon too, Empress Eugénie, in fashion obsessed Paris, could be seen wearing a different dress, a dress of a different color: Crimean green, Sebastopol blue, Bismarck brown. The Bois de Boulogne had recently been transformed from a ruined forest into an elegant English park.
Sent as ambassador-at-large to Europe by his father, twenty-six-year old Franco was dressed in a field marshal's uniform modeled on Napoleon's, only his jacket was green -- Paraguayan green. He was short, stocky -- not yet grown stout nor had his back teeth begun to trouble him -- and his thick eyebrows met in the middle of his forehead like a black stripe but he was not unattractive. He was self-confident, naïve, ambitious, energetic, spoilt -- never had anything, except once one thing, been denied him -- and he was possessed of an immense fortune. Franco put the feather in his pocket and mounted his horse again. He caught up with Ella easily and followed her home.
At age ten, Eliza Alicia Lynch had left Ireland; at fifteen, Elisa Alice Lynch married a French army officer; at nineteen, divorced and living with a handsome but impecunious Russian count, Ella Lynch needed to reinvent herself.
14 March 1854
A lovely afternoon! I rode the little mare again in the Bois with Dimitri. [Ella wrote in her diary that evening.] Each day I grow fonder of her -- her mouth is as soft as silk and a touch of the rein is sufficient. Her canter puts me in mind of sitting in a rocking chair! But how can I possibly afford to buy a horse? Already I owe John Worth a fortune! Oh, how I loathe worrying about money all the time! Money and servants both! When I returned home and was changing my clothes, I once again had to listen to Marie complain about Pierre whom she accuses of drinking my wine and who knows what other thefts -- servants are addicted to their tales of intrigue and to their jealousies! Also, Marie's chatter nearly made me late -- today was the opening of the Salon! However, as it turned out, I was fortunate. The President of the Jury himself, the Count of Morny, was the first person I met and he took me by the arm and recounted how the day before, his half brother, the Emperor, had gone through all the galleries never once stopping, never once glancing at the paintings, until he arrived at the last gallery -- the least important gallery, the gallery filled with the most mediocre paintings -- and then the Emperor, out of duty, the count supposes, stopped in front of a hideous picture of the Alps -- the Alps looking exactly like a stack of bread loaves! -- and after staring at it for a good five minutes, the Emperor turned to the poor count and said: "The painter should have indicated the relative heights." I could hardly contain myself and laughed until tears streamed down my cheeks! Rain was falling when finally I left the exhibition to go to supper and of course in my haste I had forgotten to bring an umbrella but, as luck would have it, a gentleman smoking a foul-smelling cigar was standing at the door and he offered me his.
From Paraguay, Franco had brought with him crates of oranges and tobacco. On board ship, the oranges started to rot, the sailors squeezed them and drank the juice; the tobacco fared better. The tobacco (the Paraguayan leaves are allowed to mature on the stem and, as a result, contain more nicotine) beat out the Cuban entry and was awarded a first-class medal at the Paris Exhibition; the citation read, Very good collection of leaves, especially suitable for cigars. In addition to the tobacco, Franco had brought dozens of ponchos as gifts; the ponchos were made from a vegetable silk called samahu whose softness was much admired. After he followed Ella home, he had one of the ponchos delivered to her house on rue du Bac with his card.
Pierre, Ella's valet de chambre, put Francisco Solano Lopez's card on top of the other cards on the silver tray on the table in the front hall of the house on rue du Bac; then he gave the package with the poncho in it to Marie, the maid. The poncho was badly wrapped in brown paper and, curious, Marie opened it. Also, the package smelled strange. Like tea. The color of red soil, the poncho, although soft and no doubt warm, did not look like the clothes Ella usually wore -- her fur stole, her velvet cloaks and paisley cashmere shawls. Holding the poncho in her arms, Marie shivered a little and, glancing out the window, noticed that it had begun to rain, a slight drizzle. God knows, she’ll never miss it, and anyway she owes me a month’s salary, Marie said to herself as, without another thought, she slipped the poncho over her head and went out the front door to do her errands.
Everywhere he went—to the home of the Errazu sisters, who, like him, were wealthy South Americans, to the home of Countess Walewska, an Italian whose husband was Polish, to the Duchess of Persigny, married to Napoleon III’s minister of the interior, to the Duchess of Malakoff, to the Marchioness Chasseloup-Laubat, a Creole whose skin was even darker than his, or to the Maréchale Canrobert, who had a large goiter on her neck—Franco took along his retinue of servants and his private Paraguayan band. Invariably, halfway through the reception, his mouth full of champagne and sticky petits fours, Franco motioned them to play, and, invariably too, it took the assembled guests a moment to realize that the tune the hapless Paraguayan band was playing on their wooden harps was "La Marseillaise."
Not only did Franco astonish French society, he impressed them with his intellect. He had read Jean Jacques Rousseau’s The Social Contract and could discuss the difference between "true" law and "actual" law; he had gone up in Monsieur Nadar’s giant balloon, which carried a complete developing laboratory, and could discourse on photography; still better he was an accomplished and graceful dancer. Un, deux, trois, he waltzed the Errazu sisters around the ballroom, un, deux, trois, he swung the Countess Walewska in a mazurka, then whirled the Marchioness Chasseloup-Laubat around the room in an energetic polka.
Messy, messy bang, messy bang—the only French words Justo José, one of the musicians in Franco’s band, had learned, he repeated. He hated France. Always cold, the food uneatable, and the people were pale and unfriendly. Worse still, there was no yerba maté. At home, he drank fifteen to twenty gourds a day, the silver straw never far from his mouth. The time he tried the French drink, a dark red substance the color of blood, he was sick to his stomach and the next day he felt worse—worse than when, as a boy, he was kicked in the head by the neighbor’s old burro who was blind in one eye. Another thing that bothered Justo José was the women. He had gone with one, a little blond—he had never been with a woman whose hair was the color of a yellow parakeet—he could not say her name although she made him repeat it—Eeyon. She had taken him up several flights of stairs to the top floor of a building; her room had a chair and a bed and a basin in it, and the first thing she did was make him wash his member in the basin, then she had lain on the bed with all her clothes on, her legs spread, and during the entire act she never moved or made a sound. Afterward, she asked him for ten francs—twice the amount they agreed on, he had held up the fingers of one hand. When he tried to leave, she stood by the door and screamed and Justo José screamed back at her: Puta, puta, but, in the end, he gave her the extra five francs.
At supper in Princess Mathilde Bonaparte’s house on the rue de Courcelles, Ella drank too much champagne and ate too many oysters. The room was filled with Russians, Poles, Italians and filled with the noise of silver knives and forks striking china plates, the noise of glasses clinking and being refilled, and of everyone talking too loudly and at once in different languages. The room too, with its velvet drapes, heavy crystal chandelier and arrangement of sweet-smelling lilies, felt airless and hot. Next to Ella, Jules de Goncourt was repeating the latest Paris gossip and Ella only half listened as names floated by her—the Countess of Castiglione, the Count Cavour, Monsieur Viollet-le-Duc, the Duchess of Alba, Monsieur Balzac, Monsieur Mérimée. On her other side, Adolphe de Custine was repeating to her what the Emperor had told the Count of Morny when he saw the painting of the Alps. But Adolphe de Custine was easy and charming and Ella could not help think it was a pity that he preferred young boys. Mostly during the meal, Ella kept glancing toward the dining room door. Earlier Dimitri had sworn that he would come and join her for supper but he never did. By the time she was ready to go home, Ella had both a headache and a stomachache.
"Ma chère, are you not feeling well?" Princess Mathilde had asked her as she kissed Ella good night.
With his unlimited bank account, Franco bought whatever took his fancy—snuffboxes, ormolu clocks and silver candlesticks, fine clothes and silk slippers, thoroughbred horses, carriages, and, more important, he bought arms and munitions (already, in England, he had negotiated a long-term contract with the Blyth Brothers, London’s leading arms merchant, for the construction of an arsenal in Asunción). Also, Franco bribed officials, shopkeepers, theater attendants. When a week went by and Franco still had not heard from Ella, he went again to her house on rue du Bac. This time, he gave Pierre, the valet de chambre, ten francs to make sure that Ella received his card.
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