The Rising Storm

by Dennis Wheatley

  “Mon ami, to mix up one world with the other is to ignore reality. Like hundreds of other ordained priests—yes, and many of them high dignatories like myself—I was not consulted when put into the Church, and felt no calling whatever for it. Women, scripture tells us, were created for the joy of man, and to deny us our right to the enjoyment of them is, therefore, clearly against the will of God, let alone Nature. Since we are forbidden to marry we resort to other measures, and where is the harm in that? From time immemorial the Kings of France have known and condoned it. And I count it most unfair that the fact that I have been more fortunate than many in securing those enjoyments should be held against me.

  “On the other hand, in my role of Agent General to the Clergy of the Province of Tours I was zealous in my duties and proved myself a capable administrator. So much so that when the subject of my nomination to a see came before the King I had the full support of the leading Churchmen in France, who made strong representations to His Majesty in my favour, and urged that my love affairs should be overlooked as no more than youthful peccadilloes.”

  “Am I to take it, then, that you have now become a model of rectitude?” Roger grinned.

  De Périgord grinned back. “Far from it, I fear. And I have no more liking for playing the Churchman than I had of old. But you may have noticed the suit I am wearing. I found the violet robes of a Bishop most becoming to me, so as a graceful concession to the Church I had some lay garments made of the same colour.”

  “How did your flock take that?” asked Roger. “For I sought you out when I first arrived in Paris, some three weeks back, only to learn that you were absent on a visit to your see.”

  “Ah,” sighed the Bishop. “That was a serious business, and I could afford to take no chances of giving offence by my preference for lay attire. Believe it or not, for a whole month I played the dignified Churchman. But unfortunately I was so out of practice that at one High Mass I forgot the ritual.” He laughed, and went on: “I had never visited my see before, feeling that it was quite sufficient to send them from time to time a pastoral letter that positively stank of piety; and I pray God that I may never have to go there again. But this visit was essential, as I wished to get myself elected to represent the clergy of the diocese at the forthcoming meeting of the States General.”

  “From the news-sheets I gather that you succeeded, and I offer Your Grace my felicitations.”

  “A thousand thanks.” De Périgord gracefully inclined his head. “The result, though, was a foregone conclusion. I gave the poor wretches of clergy dinners the like of which they had never seen, and flattered every woman of influence into the belief that I wanted to sleep with her. But once elected I cared not a fig for what any of them thought of me. In fact, so little did I care that, being near desperate to get back to the civilised air of Paris, I shook the dust of Autun off my feet and drove off in my coach at nine o’clock on the morning of Easter Sunday.”

  The conversation having got round to the States General, Roger had no intention of letting it wander away again, so he said:

  “There have been so many postponements of the meeting of the States, that one begins to doubt if it will ever assemble.”

  “You need have no fear on that score,” De Périgord assured him quickly, “and the postponements were quite unavoidable. As an Englishman you can have little idea of what this meeting means to France, and the innumerable questions which have had to be decided before it could be brought about at all. Not only have the States not been convened for seven generations, but when last called together they were by no means representative of the nation; and in the present crisis to summon any assembly that was not would have been completely futile. In consequence nearly all ancient precedent was found to be worse than useless. It is in fact the first general election that France has ever had, so we had to work out the principles upon which it was to be held from the very beginning. I spent several months last year assisting Monsieur Necker to do so, and the problem positively bristled with difficulties,”

  “What is your opinion of Monsieur Necker?” interjected Roger.

  “He is an extremely capable financier but a most incapable statesman,” replied de Périgord succinctly. “No one short of a financial genius could have kept the Treasury solvent during these many months it has taken to arrange the elections; but in all other respects he is a mediocre man. His mind is not big enough to grasp the magnitude of the issues at stake, and his Liberal leanings are inspired by sentiment rather than any true understanding of the needs of the nation. A year ago I placed considerable hopes in him; but I have come to know him better since, and soon perceived that vanity governs nine-tenths of his actions. Were it not that when faced with a crisis he often takes the shrewd advice of his daughter I am convinced that long before this the public would have recognised him for what he is—a man of straw.”

  “By ‘his daughter’ I take it you refer to Madame de Staël?”

  “Yes. He has but one; and I count her far his superior in intelligence. She is a brilliant woman and should have done better for herself than to marry the Swedish Minister here. ’Tis a thousand pities that matters between her and your Mr. Pitt came to naught.”

  “Mr. Pitt!” exclaimed Roger. “I had never thought of him as a marrying man.”

  “No doubt he has found himself too fully occupied in recent years to concern himself with matrimony. But when he paid his only visit to this country, in ’83, I can assure you that the project of his espousing Madamoiselle Necker was broached, for he told me so himself. Monsieur Necker, although very rich, was no more than Sub-Controller of the Finances at the time, and an alliance with Lord Chatham’s brilliant younger son would have been a strong card for his advancement; so both he and his wife were eager for the match. Mr. Pitt, too, was by no means disinclined to it. But I believe the young lady had other views, and it was on that account that matters got no further.”

  “You amaze me. But please continue with what you were telling me of Monsieur Necker’s character. It seems from what you say that there is little likelihood of his being able to dominate the States General.”

  De Périgord shook his head. “Far from it. And his task will be rendered no more easy from the fact that both the King and the Queen distrust him. In that, for once, they are right. His popularity with the masses has gone to his head, and to retain the favour of the mob himself he is capable of advising them to commit any folly.”

  “Then unless the King makes a change of Ministers it looks as if the deputies will be given free rein. Which among them do you consider are likely to prove the leading spirits?”

  “It is impossible to say. ’Tis clear too that you do not yet appreciate the complete novelty of the situation. As I was remarking a while back, no election even remotely similar to this has ever been held in France before. Only the very poorest persons, who pay no taxes at all, have been excluded from the franchise, so the total number of voters is near six million. But they do not vote directly for the deputies who will represent them in the States. The electoral machinery is of an incredible complexity, and final agreement on it was reached only after months of bitter wrangling. Many cities stood out for making their own arrangements and the system in some provinces differs from that in others. But, in the main, groups of people, varying widely in numbers, vote for somebody to represent them in a local assembly, and it is these assemblies which in turn elect the deputies.

  “Such a loose arrangement means that all sorts of strange characters will arrive at Versailles next month. One thing is certain: not even the names of most of them will be known to any of the others. Yet any one of them may prove a man of destiny whose name will soon be known throughout all Europe.”

  Roger nodded. “You are, of course, speaking of the Third Estate; but what of the first two Orders? Surely they will also include many able men, and men of far wider experience; so is it not highly probable that some among them are likely to become the new leaders of the nation?”

&nb
sp; “Their assemblies will prove almost as chaotic. It is estimated that there are some one hundred and fifty thousand clergy in France, and that the nobles total about the same number; for the latter include all the lesser nobility, which in England you term your gentry. Yet each of these great bodies of electors will be represented by only three hundred-odd deputies. In the elections of the clergy many high dignitaries have been passed over and a considerable number of curés who have never before left their villages have been returned. The same applies to the nobles. More than half of those so far elected are poor country dwellers whose fortune consists of little but a few acres of land and a coat of arms. And the Nobility of the Robe, which you might term the law-lords, who are undoubtedly the class most fitted to give an opinion on the matters we shall be called on to consider, are hardly represented at all.”

  The Bishop offered his snuff-box; took a pinch himself, held it for a moment under the slightly retroussé nose that gave his face such piquancy, made a graceful gesture of flicking away the grains with a lace handkerchief, then went on:

  “Moreover, I greatly doubt if either of the first two Orders will be in any situation to influence the Third. On ancient precedent all three should have had an equal number of representatives; and had I been the King I would have stood out for that, even had it meant calling out my troops. But the weak fool gave way to popular clamour, as usual, and assented to the agitators’ demands that the Third Estate should be allowed to send deputies to Versailles that equalled in numbers the other two together. Since it is certain that many of the poorer clergy and nobility will side with the Third Estate, and few, if any, of them with the other Orders, it seems to me inevitable that the natural defenders of the royal prerogative are doomed to defeat from the very outset.”

  “But I thought the three Orders were to deliberate separately,” Roger demurred. “If so, you will still be two to one.”

  “That is the present arrangement; but how long will it hold good when put into practice?” asked de Périgord darkly.

  After a moment’s silence, Roger said: “From what you tell me, when the States do meet they will add up to a fine penn’orth of all sorts, so out of it should come some original ideas of merit.”

  “Later, perhaps; but not to begin with, as all the deputies must, in theory, voice only the views expressed in their cahiers. The King has not convened the States to deliberate upon certain measures that his Ministers will put before them. He has been idiotic enough to ask everyone in the country to advise him how to get it out of the mess that it is in. So hundreds of thousands of know-alls have taken upon themselves the role of acting as his Ministers-designate overnight. For the past six months every group of voters has become a heated debating society, and the most determined members of each have drawn up programmes which their elected representatives took with them to the local assemblies. In the assemblies, once more, each separate cahier has been the subject of violent dispute, and at length the salient points in all have been combined in still longer cahiers for each deputy. The deputies will bring these cahiers to Versailles as their instructions from their constituents, and they have no legal right to depart from them.”

  Roger nodded. “Of that I was aware; but surely the cahiers, being the consensus of opinion of every thinking man in France, must contain many new proposals of value?”

  “From those I have so far seen, they contain far fewer than one would expect. Most of the originals emanating from the peasantry were completely valueless. Naturally, such people are utterly lacking in every kind of knowledge outside their local affairs. Apart from the childish demand that all taxes should be abolished, and the two senior Orders deprived of their manorial rights, they contain little other than such requests as that His Majesty should be graciously pleased to order the cleaning out of the village ditch. As to the others, they are almost universally of a pattern, modelled upon prototypes which were widely circulated in pamphlet form, having first been drafted by men such as Monsieur l’Abbé Sieyès.”

  “What think you of Sieyès?” Roger enquired.

  “I have no personal liking for him. He is a dry, withered little man to whom nature gave a cold, calculating brain instead of a heart. Beyond self-interest he has few passions, except for his bitter hatred of aristocracy in all its forms. As a Churchman he is no better than myself, and his own Order passed him over in the elections. But I understand that in view of his great services to the opponents of absolutism he is being permitted to offer himself for election as one of the deputies for Paris; so no doubt he will secure a seat in the Third Estate.”

  The Bishop paused to refill the wine-glasses, then went on. “As an Englishman you may not have seen his pamphlet which began: ‘What is the Third Estate? Everything. What has it been until now in the political order? Nothing. What does it ask? To be something.’ Its circulation ran into many thousands and instantly placed him in the forefront of the struggle for reform. I would not trust him an inch, and do not believe that he has the courage required to become a great leader; but if we achieve a Constitution he may go far. His specimen cahier has certainly exerted an immense influence on the drafting of a high proportion of those which will be brought to Versailles.”

  “And what of your own?” smiled Roger.

  De Périgord laughed. “I have no worries on that score, for I drafted it myself.”

  “It would interest me greatly to hear its contents.”

  “Mon ami, I would not dream of boring you with it. ’Tis full of the the sort of clap-trap that fools swallow readily, and I have no intention of giving it another thought.”

  “Tell me what other men besides Monsieur l’Abbé Sieyès you think likely to make their mark.”

  “Malouet should stand out from the integrity of his character, if men of moderate views are listened to. Mounier also, for he is the best-known politician in France, and esteemed an oracle on all questions of parliamentary procedure. Then there are Dupont de Nemours, the economist, Bailly, the much-respected astronomer, Louis de Narbonne and Clermont-Tonnerre, all of whom you will recall having met here when you used to frequent my breakfast parties, and all men of considerable ability. But, as I have already told you, the potentialities of the great majority of the deputies-elect are still entirely unknown to us here in Paris.”

  “You make no mention of the Comte de Mirabeau.”

  “I thought it unnecessary. Honore Gabriel Riquetti stands head and shoulders above all the others I have mentioned, not only physically but mentally. As his cantankerous old father, the Marquis, refused to give him even the small fief required for him to qualify for election to the Second Estate, he stood for the Third at both Marseilles and Aix. Both cities elected him and he has chosen to sit for the latter. Whatever may be the fate of other deputies, in an assembly resembling the Tower of Babel from everyone wanting to air his opinions at once, you may be certain that de Mirabeau will not allow himself to be howled down.”

  “Think you he has the qualities to make himself a great leader?”

  For once de Périgord hesitated, his smooth forehead wrinkling into a frown; then he said: “ ’Tis difficult to say. All the world knows that the fellow is a born scamp. That he has spent several years of his life in a variety of prisons is not altogether his own fault, as his father pursued him with the utmost malice, and consigned him to them on a number of lettres de cachet. But whenever he was out of prison he lived in a most shady fashion, resorting to many a degrading shift in order to get money to gratify his passions. I doubt if his immoralities have actually been greater than my own but he has certainly conducted them with greater folly. He deserted his wife and abducted that of a Noble of the Robe. Then he deserted her and ran away with a young woman from a Convent who was near becoming a nun.

  “I believe him to be honest and a true patriot. He is certainly a man of great intellectual gifts and fierce determination. I am sure that he would shrink from saying, writing or doing nothing which he believed to be in the interests of his cause. But
the Riquetti are of Italian origin, and his hot southern blood goes to that great head of his at times, and I fear that the violence of his passions may prove his undoing.”

  “Great as is his popularity with the masses,” Roger remarked, “one can hardly imagine that, should the King grant a Constitution, he would be inclined to entrust a man having such a history with the formation of a Government.”

  A cynical smile twitched the corners of the Bishop’s lips, as he asked: “Who can tell, mon ami, how much say the King will be allowed in the choice of his future Ministers?”

  “You feel convinced then that the States will not only succeed in forcing him to grant a Constitution, but reduce him to a cipher into the bargain?”

  De Périgord nodded. “I do. I think the monarchy, decadent as it has become, rests upon too secure a foundation to be overthrown, and none but a handful of extremists would wish it. But once the States meet you may be certain that they will not rest content with any half-measures.”

  “I agree with what you say about the monarchy, but what of the present occupant of the throne? Is there not a possibility that the Duc d’Orléans may attempt to supplant him; or at least get himself made Lieutenant-General of the Kingdom, with the powers of a Regent?”

  The expressive eyes of the wily Churchman suddenly became quite vacant, then in a casual tone he replied: “His Highness of Orléans undoubtedly has ambitions to play a greater part in affairs of State, but I can scarce believe that he could carry them so far as to become guilty of treason to the King.”

  Roger felt certain that his clever friend was now lying, and so, almost certainly, involved to some extent in the Orleanist plot himself. He therefore refrained from pressing the point and asked:

  “Do you perchance know Monsieur de St. Huruge?”

  “Not intimately. He frequents the royal circle, I believe, and for a long time past I have not been persona grata at Court. But why do you ask?”