To Roger’s relief de Vaudreuil seemed perfectly satisfied with this explanation and a moment later, as they turned into the broad carriageway between the Cour Henri Quatre and the Cour des Princes, the Count addressed him again.
“Monsieur de Breuc, after having enjoyed the pleasure of your conversation, I now find the duty with which I have been charged by Her Majesty a most distasteful one; but I can at least offer you a choice of prisons. Normally you would be conducted to the dungeon and placed under guard there, but if you prefer to give me your parole d’honneur that you will not attempt to escape, I should be happy to offer you a room in my apartment.”
Roger barely hesitated. Apart from the discomfort that would certainly be his lot if he elected to be confined in a cell his chances of escaping from it would be obviously small; and even if he succeeded, that would put a definite end to all prospect of his succeeding in his mission, for he could never hope afterwards to be received at Court. Whereas the friendliness and sympathy displayed by his two companions during their long ride had buoyed him up afresh, and encouraged him to believe that he might yet make his peace with the Queen if only she could be induced to give him a fair hearing. With a bow he replied:
‘I am indeed grateful to you, Monsieur le Comte. I willingly give you my parole for the privilege of accepting your hospitality.”
They had now turned right, through the Porte Dauphine into the Cour Ovale, and the carriage drew up at an entrance to the right just inside it. De Coigny handed the Queen out and escorted her up to her apartments; de Vaudreuil followed them into the entrance with Roger but conducted him along a ground-floor corridor and up a staircase at its far end in the oldest, central block of the Palace, where, just round the corner from the Galerie François I, he had his own quarters.
Having shown Roger the small but pleasant bedroom he was to occupy the Count told him that dinner would shortly be served for him in the sitting-room next door, and that in the meantime he would send someone to take his horse back to the inn and fetch his clothes. Then he left him.
As Roger gazed out of the tall window, which overlooked the Cour de la Fontaine with its statue of Ulysses and the carp pond beyond it, he began to wonder again how he could possibly bluff his way out of the mess he was in. But he was not given long to brood over his ill-fortune as the Count’s servant came in to lay the table, and he proved to be an extremely garrulous Bordelaise who seemed to consider it part of his duty to entertain his master’s guest with an endless flow of small-talk.
Neither was Roger given any opportunity to grow gloomy over his prospects that evening, for he had scarcely finished his dinner when de Vaudreuil returned, bringing with him a number of other gentlemen. It transpired that Her Majesty had a slight migraine, so had decided against holding a small musical which had been planned for that night, and it being de Coigny’s turn to remain in immediate attendance on her, he was the only member of her intimate circle not left free by her decision.
Among the newcomers to whom Roger was presented were the Due de Polignac, the husband of the beautiful Gabrielle who was the Queen’s closest friend and the governess of the royal children, the Duc de Biron and the Baron de Breteuil, all of whom recalled having at times transacted business with him when he was M. de Rochambeau’s secretary; while several of the others were known to him by sight and reputation. They included the Prince de Ligne, a soldier-poet and renowned horticulturist, whose talents and charm had made him persona grata at half the Courts in Europe; the Comte Valentin d’Esterhazy, a wealthy Hungarian noble who had been specially recommended to the Queen by her mother, the Empress Maria Theresa; the Baron de Besenval, an elderly but robust Swiss who commanded the King’s Swiss Guards; and Auguste-Marie, Prince d’Arenberg, who was known in France as the Comte de la Marck, and was the son of Maria Theresa’s most brilliant general.
They were a gallant and handsome company, fully representative of the gay and intelligent men whom Madame Marie Antoinette had delighted to gather about her in her happier days; and now as her old and best friends, having only the true interests of the monarchy at heart, they remained at her side, while the hundreds of time-serving courtiers who usually frequented the Palace had gone off to the provinces for the elections.
All of them remembered the affair of de Caylus’s death and Athénaïs de Rochambeau’s run-away marriage, and were eager to hear a first hand account of it so; while the daylight died the curtains were drawn, candles lit, fresh bottles of wine uncorked, and as they settled down round the big table Roger found himself called on to tell again the story of his famous duel.
Again he endeavoured to belittle the part he had played, but when he had done the whole company was both loud in its praise of his conduct and most sympathetic about his present position; so he was still further heartened in his hope that the Queen’s friends would use their influence to secure her clemency on his behalf.
The talk then became general and naturally many references were made to the unsettled state of France; thus Roger was provided with the opportunity, which had seemed so distant that morning, of hearing the views of these very men who stood so near the throne.
Somewhat to his surprise, he did not find them in the least reactionary; on the contrary, most of them appeared very liberal-minded. De Ligne and de Vaudreuil were particularly so, and the latter, after inveighing against the artificiality of life at Court, declared that he would have long since left it had it not been for his attachment to the Queen.
As they talked the wine was kept in constant circulation. It was not the habit to drink so heavily in France as in England, and the wine, although a rich Anjou, was considerably lighter than the Port to which Roger was accustomed. Nevertheless, by the time de Vaudreuil’s friends retired, Roger was carrying a good load, so on going to bed he thought no more of his worries and, within a few minutes of his head touching the pillow, was sound asleep.
However, when he awoke in the morning, the danger in which he lay recurred to him with full force, and over a breakfast of chocolate and crisp rolls, which was brought to him in bed, he tried to assess his chances of escaping the Queen’s anger.
He felt now that he had been extremely rash to return to France without having made quite certain that the old charges against him in connection with de Caylus’s death had been quashed, as he had believed them to be. Soon after his escape to England, in the late summer of ’87, his dear friend, the Lady Georgina Etheridge, had offered to arrange the matter. The ravishing Georgina had, at that time, numbered amongst her beaux the recently appointed French Ambassador, Monsieur le Comte d’Adhémar; and she had said that, having regard to the true facts, it should be easy for her to get the murder charge withdrawn, which would then reduce the affair to the much less heinous one of duelling.
Roger had gladly accepted her offer, and written out a long statement for her to hand to the Ambassador. As he knew that such personal matters were always subject to long delays before being dealt with, he had not pressed for an answer. He had been content to accept, via Georgina, d’Adhémar’s assurance after reading the statement that, if it was substantially true, the King would inflict on the culprit no more than a sentence of a year’s banishment; and as nearly two years had elapsed since his deed he had had good reason to suppose that he need fear no repercussion from it.
On thinking matters over, he assumed that the Queen would now have him handed over to the police for indictment before a magistrate. If that occurred he could demand that the papers revelant to the original affair should be produced, and with any luck d’Adhémar’s recommendation would be found among them, or, if Fortune really decided to smile on him again, a pardon by the King might come to light. On the other hand there was the unpleasant possibility that the Ambassador’s report had never got as far as His Majesty, and in that case only the Queen’s clemency could save him from being tried for murder.
His thoughts shifted to a murder trial that was still vivid in his memory. Barely six weeks before he and Georgina
had been very near paying for their year-old love affair by finding nooses round their necks. The odious publicity of the trial had sent her hastily abroad, and she was now with her clever, indulgent father in Vienna.
He wondered how she was faring there, but had little doubt her splendid health and amazing vitality were carrying her triumphantly through an endless succession of parties. He felt certain, too, that being the wanton hussy that her hot half-gypsy blood had made her, she would have added another lover to the long list of handsome gallants she had taken since she had first been seduced by a good-looking highwayman. Whoever she was allowing to caress her dark beauty in the city on the Danube now—be he Austrian, German, Hungarian or Czech—Roger had good cause to think him a monstrous lucky fellow, for he had laid seige to and won quite a number of lovely ladies himself, yet not one of them could offer Georgina’s rare and varied attractions as a mistress.
But she meant far more to him than that. They were both only children, and it was she who had filled the place of almost a brother, as well as a sister, to him in their early teens. Then, in a moment when he needed self-confidence above all else, she had led him to think that he was initiating her into the mysteries of love, although in reality she was initiating him, for he was the younger, and not yet sixteen. It was she who had given him the jewels that de Roubec had stolen, and whatever love affairs they might have when apart they always returned to one another as confidants and friends.
Again his thoughts shifted, this time to his last interview with Mr. Pitt, and in his mind he began to live through the scene once more.
As on two previous occasions the Prime Minister had asked him down to Holwood, his country residence near Bromley, for a Sunday, in order to give him his instructions at leisure and in private. Two old patrons of Roger had been there, whom he had first known as Sir James Harris and the Marquis of Carmarthen; but the former had been raised to the peerage the preceding year as Baron Malmesbury, and the latter—from whom, as Foreign Secretary, Roger always received the funds for his secret activities—had, only that week, succeeded his father as Duke of Leeds. Pitt’s shadow, the cold, unbending but upright and indefatigable William Grenville, had also been there, providing by his unapproachable hauteur a strong contrast to the gracious charm of the new Duke and jovial warmth of the recently created peer.
Mr. Pitt never concealed from such close friends as these the object of the missions upon which he sent Roger, so after they had dined the talk turned to the state of France, and European affairs in general.
All of those present felt convinced that in its absolute form the French monarchy could not survive much longer, but not one of them believed that the political unrest in France would culminate in the type of Great Rebellion that had cost King Charles I his head, and led a hundred and forty years earlier to Britain for a time becoming a Republic.
They argued that whereas in England the commercial classes had been supported by a large section of a free and powerful nobility against the King, the nobility of France had become too decadent to weigh the scales either way; that even the bourgeoisie, although determined to insist on political representation, were monarchist at heart, and would never take up arms against their Sovereign; and that the peasantry were so lacking in unity and leadership, that they were capable of little more than the local jacqueries which had been agitating certain parts of the country for some time past on account of the corn shortage.
The general opinion, too, was that France must continue to be regarded as a menace to Britain. They had all lived through the Seven Years’ War, in which Pitt’s father, the great Chatham, had led Britain from victory to victory, so that at its end France lay beaten and humbled, her hopes of Empire in Canada and India forever shattered, her fleets destroyed and her commerce ruined. But they had also witnessed her remarkable recovery, and lived through the desperate years in which, while Britain was endeavouring to suppress the risings of her rebellious Colonists in the Americas, she had been threatened with a French invasion at home, and had stood alone against a world in arms under French leadership.
They were all Englishmen who had been brought up in the hard, practical school that had been forced to regard the interests of other nations as of secondary importance provided that their country could continue to hold her own. Pitt alone among them had the vision to see that a new age was dawning in which the prosperity of Britain would depend on the welfare of her neighbours across the narrow seas.
As they talked of those grim days when half Britain’s immensely valuable possessions in the West Indies were lost to France, and the long-drawn-out siege of Gibraltar had been raised only at the price of withdrawing the main Fleet from American waters, so that from lack of supplies and reinforcements a British army had been compelled to surrender at York Town, Grenville said:
“Whatever the late war with France may have cost us it cost her more; for ’twas finding so many millions to support the Americans which has resulted in her present state of near bankruptcy.”
“I have always heard, sir,” put in Roger with some diffidence, “that her embarrassment is due to the vast sums spent on building by King Louis XIV and the almost equally great treasure that King Louis XV squandered on his mistresses, the Pompadour and the du Barri.”
“Nay,” Grenville replied ponderously, with a shake of his heavy head. “You are wrong there, Mr. Brook. ’Tis true that for generations the Kings of France have dissipated a great part of the nation’s income on their own pleasures or aggrandisement; but none the less the financial situation was by no means beyond repair when Louis XVI ascended the throne, some quarter of a century ago.”
“ ’Tis true,” Pitt agreed, “and although the King is in many ways a weakling, he has ever displayed a most earnest desire to economise. His progressive cutting down of his Household, and the disbandment of two entire regiments of Royal Guards, are ample evidence of that. I judge Mr. Grenville right in his contention that the Royal Treasury might again be in ample funds, were it not that it has never had a chance to recover from the huge drain upon it caused by France going to the assistance of the Americans.”
“Their interference in our business cost us dear at the time,” remarked the Duke of Leeds smoothly, “but now we should benefit from their folly; for whatever changes they may bring about in their system of government, poverty will continue to reduce their ability to challenge us again for a considerable time to come.”
Malmesbury had spent half a lifetime as a British diplomat in Madrid, Berlin, St. Petersburg and The Hague, often unsupported from home, yet by his skill, forcefulness and personal popularity at foreign Courts again and again thwarting French designs. He saw France as Britain’s only serious rival to world power, and did not believe that his country could enjoy permanent safety until her great rival had been entirely isolated and reduced to impotence. Roger remembered this, as the diplomat said quickly:
Your Grace’s wishes are the father to your thoughts. The emptiness of the French treasury does not affect the fact that the population of France is more than twice our own, or that the pride of the whole nation is involved in regaining its lost hold on India and North America. King Louis having been fool enough to disband his Musketeers is no evidence whatsoever of his pacific intentions. He still retains the biggest standing army in Europe, builds men-of-war with every sou that he can raise by depriving his nobles of their pensions—yes, even to denying his wife a diamond necklace so that he might build another—and he has spent a greater sum than his father squandered on the du Barri in creating a vast new naval base at Cherbourg, which can have no other purpose than the domination of the Channel and our shores. I would stake my last farthing on it that whatever new form of government may emerge in France out of her present troubles she will find the money somehow, whenever the opportunity seems favourable, to launch another attempt to destroy us root and branch.”
The Duke laughed lightly. “You overstress the danger, my lord. But should you prove correct we are, largely thank
s to your own efforts, now far better situated than we were a few years back to put a check upon any new French aggression. When we emerged from the last conflict in ’83 it was only by skilful diplomacy at the Peace of Paris that we saved the shirts on our backs, and after it we were still left entirely friendless. Whereas now that we have formed the Triple Alliance, should we be compelled to march again against the French, Prussia and the Dutch Netherlands will march with us.”
Malmesbury thrust his leonine head forward, his fine blue eyes flashed and he banged his clenched fist on the table. “ ’Tis not enough, Your Grace! Britain can never enjoy full and permanent security until the Family Compact has been broken.”
“In that I think your lordship right,” Pitt agreed. “All of you know that I have no animus against France. On the contrary, one of my dearest ambitions was achieved when we succeeded in negotiating our Commercial Treaty with the French two autumns back; for ’tis working most satisfactorily and may well bear out my hopes of forming a bridge over which the centuries-old enmity of the two countries may be forgotten. Again, you know that I am averse to the formation of new military alliances except when they are necessary for our own protection. Had I my way I would see us friends with all but committed to none; but that is impossible as long as there exist foreign combinations which may take up arms against us.”
He paused to pour himself another glass of port, then went on: “It is just such alliances that breed wars, and no better example of their potentialities in that direction could be cited than the Family Compact just mentioned by my lord Malmesbury. Our recent treaties with the Prussians and the Dutch will secure us their aid in the event of direct aggression by France, and that being so, coupled with her present internal difficulties, I do not believe that we have anything to fear from a renewal of her desire for aggrandisement at our expense. But, unfortunately, the Bourbon Family Compact still ties her to Spain.
The Rising Storm Page 5