The Launching of Roger Brook rb-1

by Dennis Wheatley

  "Nay, God forbid! I think I'd kill myself rather than be led to the altar by such a man. But be not alarmed. I thought of him only as the richest man of title that I know. There were, though, several good matches proposed for me last winter. The Due de Vauguyon wants me for his eldest son, and the Comte de Porcin, who is passing rich, would have me replace his Countess who died two years ago. I doubt not, too, that on my return to Versailles overtures from numerous other quarters will be made to my father. Should one be forthcoming where the suitor has lineage equal to M. de la Tour d'Auvergne with greater wealth attached, the poor Vicomte will have to seek a bride else­where."

  Roger made a wry grimace. "I am in despair that you should be leaving Paris so soon. What hopes are there of my seeing you at such times as I bring papers out to Versailles for M. le Marquis?"

  "None, I fear." Athenais sought to soften the blow by speaking very gently. "Madame Marie-Ange will always be with me when I am in our apartments, and when out of them I shall be in the company of other ladies. But take heart, dear love. I shall return to Paris frequently for a night or more, to order new clothes and have them fitted. My father's attendance on the Queen will have no relation to my own and you may be sure that I shall arrange matters so that my visits here will be, as far as possible, during his absence. Each time I come to Paris we will meet in this room at six of the clock and snatch an hour of bliss together."

  Greatly consoled, Roger took her in his arms and kissed her fondly. Neither of them had the faintest doubt of the other's eagerness for another meeting at the earliest possible opportunity. She vowed that the balls and parties at Versailles would be a weariness without him, and he that he would be counting the moments until he could breathe the perfume of her hair again. Once more, with a distress that almost amounted to physical pain, they clung to one another for the last few precious seconds, until it became imperative that she should go down to dinner and, half bemused by the heady wine of her caresses, Roger stumbled out of the window.

  M. de Rochambeau had, on this occasion, remained longer than usual at Versailles; but when he returned on the 19th of January he was in as good a humour as his cold nature would ever allow him to demonstrate.

  By the nth, M. de Vergennes, worn out with battling against intrigue, and grief for the wife that he had loved so dearly, had become so ill that he could no longer cope with the onerous duties of his post as Foreign Minister. The King, loath to dispense altogether with the services of this wise and upright adviser, had asked him to carry on, but relieved him of the duty of entertaining the Ambassadors to dinner every Tuesday, and delegated this duty to the Baron de Breteuil.

  Louis de Breteuil was one of M. de Rochambeau's intimates and, with him, believed that France's best hope of recovery lay in expansion; so his appointment as official host to the Corps Diplomatique Was a great triumph for French Imperialism.

  By the 25th of January, M. de Vergennes's health had become so precarious that the King asked de Breteuil to act for him at the sessions of the Royal Council; and the courtiers, with their noses to every wind that blew, were laying odds that he would be the next Foreign Minister.

  Had Roger been of their company he might have made a fine haul by taking such bets, since he knew that de Breteuil did not desire the post, but preferred to continue as Minister for Paris and Keeper of the Seals.

  Towards the end of the month there were a number of high-power conferences held in the Marquis's sanctum at the H6tel de Rochambeau.

  De Breteuil, De Castries, De Polignac, De Segur, and the Marquis d'Adhemar, who was said to be the Duchess de Polignac's lover, and was shortly leaving to take up a new appointment as Ambassador to the Court of St. James, Were all present. After much deliberation it was decided, on the Marquis's recommendation, that the Comte de Montmorin should be recommended to the King to succeed M. de Vergennes. M. de Montmorin had served as Ambassador to Spain and later held the office of Royal Governor of Brittany, and it was in the latter capacity that the Marquis had come to know him as an able but pliant man who, lacking powerful family connections, had the wisdom to accept advice from those whose good will could maintain him in office. On the 13th of February, M. de Vergennes, the friend of all peaceful policies, died; on the 14th the King nominated M. de Montmorin to succeed him.

  The change meant nothing to the public; from the beginning of the year its whole interest had been centred on the rumour that the King intended to call an Assembly of Notables and hand over to them the direction of the ship of state. After many postponements the vacillating monarch at last brought himself to convene the Assembly on the 22nd of February, but the manner in which he addressed it, when assembled, was a grievous disappointment to the nation. Instead of asking this representative body to consider the desperate state of the country and advise him as to what measures could be taken for its salvation, he simply indicated that his Comptroller-General of Finance had already devised the measures and that their province was to place their Weight behind them by an unanimous vote of confidence in the Minister.

  M. de Calonne then made a most brilliant hour and a quarter's speech; but, to the amazement of everyone who listened to him, he performed a complete volte-face from every principle that he had followed throughout his three years of office. He now proposed, almost in their entirety, the reforms that Turgot had advocated a decade earlier. His revolutionary programme included: The removal of internal customs barriers; the erection of provincial, district and parochial Assemblies; that the hated forced labour of the corvées should be commuted for a monetary payment; that a remission of ten millions should be made in the Gabelle, and that this loss of income from salt be recovered by a stamp tax on paper; that all producers of grain should be given a free hand to market it where they would without hindrance; that the nobility and clergy should no longer be exempt from taxation, and that a Land Tax should be instituted to which all property owners, irrespective of class, would be subject.

  The next day, the better to deliberate on these matters, the Assembly was divided into seven committees, each of twenty-two members and each having a Prince of the Blood for its chairman. So urgent were the passage of these reforms now considered that all the committees sat every day, except Sundays; but it soon became apparent that opposition to the Royal will was rising in every quarter.

  Both the clergy and nobles showed extreme resentment at the proposal to tax their lands, and the Archbishop of Narbonne led a heated attack upon the measure. The representatives of the ancient provincial Parliaments fiercely opposed the proposals for establishing provincial Assemblies, as they feared that these would usurp their own functions. The trade guilds and entire commercial community of the country raised an outcry about the proposed tax on paper, saying that it would bring ruin to their business. In fact, every class represented in the Assembly had some reason to obstruct the new programme and all united in demanding that a full account should be given of how the national revenues were expended before further taxation was imposed.

  M. de Calonne was compelled to admit that the deficit for the current year amounted to one hundred and thirteen millions, but he would give no details. The Princes of the Blood were forced to represent the rebellious attitude of their committees to the King, and one of them, the Prince de Conti, was so impressed by their arguments that he refused to continue his work until forced to do so by a direct order from the Monarch. Another of them, M. de Due de Orleans, the most bitter enemy of the Court, skilfully slid out of his chairmanship on the plea that he could not be expected to give an impartial judgment on the reduction of the Gabelle as it would reduce his income by £30,000 a year. The King's brothers, M. le Comte de Provence and M. le Comte d'Artois, despite their normal preoccupations, the one with learning, and the other with women, worked hard with their committees. Both offered to reduce the cost of their stables by half a million francs a year, but this belated gesture was almost overlooked in the general alarm at the appalling state into which the finances had fallen.

  I
n mid-March the Comte de Mirabeau published a broadside openly attacking the administration and, on the 20th a Lettre de Cachet was issued for his arrest; but he was warned of it and succeeded in escaping to England. By early April the popular fury against M. de Calonne had risen to such a height that the King could no longer support him and, on the 9th, he was dismissed from office. On the 19th, M. Necker, the ex-Finance Minister, issued a pamphlet, stigmatising M. de Calonne for his three years of mismanagement, and the King ordered the Swiss banker into exile. On the 25th of May the King at last dissolved the Assembly of Notables, which, instead of supporting the Royal Authority, had gone against it on every measure and given vent to the discontent of the whole nation. He was said to have sworn that during his lifetime he would never call another, and he now placed his affairs in the hands of his new Minister, Lomenie de Brienne, the Archbishop of Toulouse.

  In the meantime, M. de Rochambeau continued to occupy himself with affairs in the United Provinces. The Stadtholder's situation was an extremely difficult one, as the Dutch possessed a very liberal Constitution which rendered him little more than hereditary Chief Magistrate. On the advice of the British Minister, Sir James Harris, he had now formed a bodyguard for his own protection, but he controlled so few troops that it was quite impossible for him to enforce his authority. On the other hand, the States-General were busy secretly recruiting a free-corps throughout the whole country for the maintenance of their independence.

  The three Ambassadors, Gortz, Harris and de Rayneval continued their mediation and appeared to be holding the two parties back from an open clash; but all through the spring and early summer the United Provinces remained a powder barrel which, if it went off, was liable to ignite half Europe.

  Roger followed every move with the keenest interest but, puzzle his wits as he would, he could still not make out what deep game M. de Rochambeau was playing. It seemed to him beyond belief that the Marquis could be seeking to bring about a war while the finances of France were in such a desperate situation, yet he knew that from the beginning of the year many warlike preparations had been undertaken.

  The British Control Commission having evacuated Dunkirk, on the ratification of the Treaty of Versailles, the French had at once begun to refortify the port, and they were now committed to a programme of works there almost as formidable as that for Cherbourg. It had also been decided that a camp of eighty thousand troops should be assembled in the summer for "manoeuvres" at Givet, in Flanders. The Navy too, was gradually being got into a state of readiness and the Marshal de Castries had mentioned to the Marquis in Roger's hearing that he had sixty-four ships-of-the-line which could now be made ready for action at short notice.

  Having become the repository of such secrets, Roger felt it his duty to pass them on to Mr. Gilbert Maxwell and from early in 1787 a regular correspondence ensued. The information that he sent would actually have been of considerably greater value if he had given with it the attitude and opinions on foreign policy of the many important people with whom he now came in contact; but, not being aware of that, he confined his reports to bare statements of fact which he considered had military significance.

  Mr. Maxwell's replies were little more than appreciative acknow­ledgements, although he occasionally asked in guarded terms if Roger could give him other specific pieces of information. Once he suggested that if Roger could, without endangering his position, get in touch with Mr. Daniel Hailes, the Charge d'Affaires at the British Embassy in Paris, this might prove useful; and added that Mr. Hailes had been instructed to supply him with funds if he should be in need of them.

  Roger still had qualms enough about betraying his employer and, while he was prepared to do so for his country's sake, the idea of selling information for money was highly repulsive to him. So he replied briefly that he was not in need of funds and that he thought it would be most ill-advised for him to have any dealings with the British Embassy.

  From Athenais's first appearance at Versailles, she became unavoid­ably involved in the series of endless entertainments that still occupied most of the energies of the feckless Court, but she managed to get back to Paris for a night once every ten days or so. Now and then, to Roger's fury, his work prevented him from taking advantage of her presence to keep their tryst, but the very difficulties that beset their coming together, while still preserving their secret, made them all the more eager for these stolen meetings.

  Most of the hours they spent in the old playroom were devoted to kisses, sighs, embraces and mutual vows of devotion, but occasionally they found time to talk for a little of her doings at Versailles. In mid-May she told him that she had now become quite intimate with the Royal circle as she had recently seen them with less formality.

  With the coming of summer the Queen had reopened her Swiss Chalet dairy farm beside the lake near the Petit Trianon. Once or twice a week the Royal family went out there for a picnic meat, with a favoured few of whom Athenais was now one. They all wore simple clothes, played at milking the cows, made butter, and cooked then-own supper.

  Marie-Antoinette loved to throw off the dignity of Queen for a few hours and she was gay and charming with everybody. Athenais said that it was a joy to see her acting the farmer's wife and romping with her children, the young Dauphin and the Uttle Princess Royale. Even the heavy-featured, tongue-tied King came out of his sheU a Uttle and joined in a game of blind man's buff, when he was not too tired from hunting and fell asleep in his chair.

  Athenais declared that he was very far from being the fool that many people thought him. He was, she said, a clever geographer, an expert locksmith, and spoke German and English well. It was his misfortune that he would much rather have been a bourgeois family-man than a King, and had it not been for his very simple tastes, gentleness and diffidence, he would have made an excellent Sovereign.

  Roger could not question such a first-hand portrait but all the same he accepted it with reservation. He had heard M. de Rochambeau say more than once that the King was so bored by affairs of State that during the meetings of the Royal Council he often drew pictures of locks on his blotting-pad, instead of listening to what his ministers were saying to him; and that on other occasions he returned so exhausted from his favourite pastime of the chase that he slept soundly, snoring his way through discussions of the utmost importance.

  Every time Roger saw Athenais he asked her if any decision had yet been taken about her marriage, dreading to hear that something definite had been decided which would soon put a period to their meetings; but each time she said that her father seemed in no hurry to dispose of her and, as summer approached, she sought to comfort Roger by saying that, even when her engagement was announced, a further two or three months must elapse while she got her trousseau together, so it was most unlikely that they would have to face separation until the autumn.

  M. de la Tour d'Auvergne continued to show the greatest devotion to her, and she freely confessed that, of her suitors whom she had met personally, she favoured him far above the rest; but, as all negotiations for her hand Were conducted through her father, there were several that she had not seen and, perhaps, others that she did not even know about.

  Roger had helped the Vicomte to find comfortable lodgings in the Rue de Richelieu, soon after Athenais had taken up her residence at Versailles, and he had since spent most of his time getting himself invited to every party at which he learned she was to appear; but he often looked in on Roger, or invited him to his apartment for a quiet talk about the object of their mutual devotion, and two or three times a week they fenced together.

  It was on the 4th of June that M. de Rochambeau said to Roger: "On the 30th of this month I intend to give a ball. It is Mademoiselle Athenais's eighteenth birthday, and on that night I propose to present her to her future husband. Their Majesties have promised to honour me with their presence on this occasion,, so I desire that no expense should be spared to give them pleasure. I wish you to go into the matter with my major-domo and make all the necessary a
rrangements. Everybody of any importance should be invited so I should also like you to get me out a list of guests. I will submit it to the Sovereigns for their approval and when they have made any amendments they may wish, you can employ your assistant on sending out the invitations."

  Roger could feel the blood draining from his face, and he prayed that the Marquis would not notice the tremor in his voice as he asked: "Er—is it your desire, Monseigneur, that the name of Mademoiselle's future husband should be given out as yet?"

  "No," replied the Marquis, quietly. "The match that I have arranged for Mademoiselle is extremely suitable and she could hardly hope for a better; but 'tis my secret, and I intend to keep it as a pleasant surprise for her on the night of the ball."

  At that, Roger had to leave it and, much as he hated the thought of Athenais marrying anyone, he could only pray that the pleasant surprise her father planned for her Was his consent to the suit of M. de la Tour d'Auvergne.

  When he saw her next he found that she was no wiser than himself and, although she knew all about the ball, she had not succeeded in securing even a hint as to whom she was to be affianced. Her own belief Was that her father favoured the young Prince de la Roche-Aymon; who was eighteen months her junior, but now that the day of her committal was fast approaching she hoped more than ever that his choice would be her devoted and charming Vicomte.

  In the weeks that followed Roger and Monsieur Roland consulted together with great frequency and gave countless orders to ensure the success of the entertainment. The Hotel was turned upside down and an army of workmen brought in to take down partitions, broaden doorways and erect canopies. The principal salons of the mansion were all ear-marked as supper or card rooms; the great courtyard was entirely floored over and tented above, to form a ballroom that would accom­modate a thousand dancers. The stables were evacuated, cleaned and converted into a mess for the troops of guards without which the King and his brothers never left their palaces. A hundred new liveries in the de Rochambeau colours were ordered so that every footman might have a brand-new one, and those hired for the evening not appear dissimilar to the permanent staff. Scores of additional candelabra were affixed to light the huge marquee and forty of the best fiddlers in Paris engaged to form the band. The Chef took on fifty additional scullions who worked for days to prepare a superb collation, and the wine butler got up over two thousand bottles of the Marquis's finest wines from the cellars.