The Dark Secret of Josephine rb-5

by Dennis Wheatley

  Another salon, which now rivalled and was soon to surpass Madame Tallien's, was that of Madame de Stael. She was the daughter of M. Necker, the Swiss banker whose pompous ineptitude and popularity-seeking at the expense of his soveriegn, while acting as Louis XVI's last Minister at Versailles, had done much to precipitate the Revolution. In '86 she had married the Swedish Ambassador to France and after Thermidor had returned with him to their Embassy, an imposing mansion fronted with pillars in the Rue du Bac. No one would have called her a beauty, and she was of a most restless disposition; but she had good eyes, a fine brow and a great gift for intelligent conversation.

  In allowing Garat, the handsome singer who was at that time the idol of Paris, to take him to Madame de Stael's, Roger knew that he was running a certain risk. He had been slightly acquainted with her

  in the old days, and might at her house run into someone who had known him well before he had transformed himself from the Chevalier de Breuc into a Revolutionary Commissar. In that event an unpleasant incident might occur and land him with a duel. On the other hand, there was a much brighter possibility, for Madame de Stael had been the devoted friend of Louis de Narbonne, Charles Maurice de Talleyrand,

  Mathieu de Montmorency and many other Liberal nobles who had sided with the Third Estate in the early days of the Revolution. It was therefore possible that her salon might prove the very bridge he needed unostentatiously to link up his two identities; and it was that which decided him to risk a visit to her.

  When Garat had presented him, she gave him a searching look and said: "Both the name Breuc and your features are vaguely familiar to me, Citizen Colonel. Can we have met before?'''

  Roger took the plunge. "Yes, Madame la Baronne. It was at the house of M. le Talleyrand-Perigord, out at Passy." Then with a twinkle, he added: "And about that I will tell you a secret, if you will promise to keep it"

  "Certainly I promise," she smiled. "I adore secrets."

  She waved away the people nearest to them, and, stepping up to her, Roger whispered in her ear: "I have looked after the house for him all through the Revolution, and when he returns he will find it just as he left it"

  "You intriguing man." She tapped his arm lightly with her fan. "You are then another of those whom we now discover to have disguised themselves as destroyers in order that they might act as preservers. It is quite a revelation these days to learn how many of our friends succeeded in making fools of that horrid little Robespierre and his brutal associates. How delighted our dear Bishop will be. I am so glad for him."

  Turning, she beckoned over a good-looking young man whose fair curly hair fell in ringlets to his shoulders, and introduced him. "This is Mr. Benjamin Constant He has recently arrived from America, and can give you news of our mutual friend."

  From Constant, Roger learned that de Talleyrand, while living in very straitened circumstances in Boston, had been employing his fine brain in evolving numerous vast commercial ventures; but none of these attempts to repair his fallen fortunes had yet come to anything. Moreover, the amorous ci-devant Bishop had given great offence to the ladies of Boston society by appearing openly in the street with a lovely young mulatto girl on his arm; but the less strait-laced among the men continued to seek his company on account of his charm and wit

  Garat then introduced Roger to his mistress, a beautiful blonde cendree named Madame de Krudner. She was a Courlander and at the age of fourteen had been married to a Russian ambassador. It was said that she possessed mediumistic powers, and occasionally she fell into trances, which were probably mild epileptic fits, in the middle of parties.

  She was certainly an angelic-looking creature, but Roger found her vapid and distrait He was much more intrigued by an equally lovely and much more vivacious chestnut-haired beauty of eighteen. Her name was Madame Recamier, and she had already been married for two years to a man twenty-six years older than herself. He was an immensely rich hat manufacturer of Lyons, and during the Terror had not missed watching the guillotine at work for a single day; the excuse for this macabre pastime that he gave his friends being that; as he must sooner or later die by that instrument, he wished to familiarize himself with it.

  Yet he had not parted with his head under its blade, and Roger now found remarkable the number of titled and wealthy people who had succeeded in escaping a similar fate although they had remained in Paris all through the Revolution. Nearly all of them had been in prison for a few months during the height of the Terror, and had resigned themselves to death; but Robespierre's fall had saved them, and by bribing the venal revolutionary officials most of them had managed to retain a good part of their fortunes.

  Previously to 1789, although the Government had become bankrupt through mismanagement, and the poor in the cities were forced to toil for little more than a starvation wage, France had been by far the richest country in the world. This wealth lay not so much in the hands of the nobility as—apart from a few hundred extremely rich farnilies, their refusal to demean themselves by engaging in any form of com­merce had kept them poor—but in the coffers of enormous numbers of prosperous bourgeoisie. It was mainly the nobility that had emigrated and sent its sons to fight in the army of de Conde; while the bulk of the professional and merchant classes had remained, simply lying low.

  Now, although the Government was still bankrupt and the masses starving, thousands of property-owners were digging up large and small hoards of coin from their gardens, or recovering them from under floor boards and other hiding-places. The revolutionary paper money was at a huge discount, but purses full of louis d'or and cart­wheel silver ecus were once more changing hands in Paris with the utmost freedom.

  With the disappearance of the fear that ostentation would result in imprisonment and perhaps death, a new era of luxury had set in. It was apparent not only in the exclusive salons, but everywhere. No sooner had the actors and actresses of the Comedie Francaise been released from prison than the theatre had nightly become packed with well-dressed people applauding anti-revolutionary quips. The boxes at the Feydeau were now always occupied by bevies of lovely women and elegantly attired men. In the streets, handsome equipages with coachmen vin livery were again to be seen by the score. Shops long closed were once more open for the sale of jewellery, lace, furs, brocades, perfumes, wines, delicacies of all sorts and clothes in the new fashion.

  Previously to the Revolution, apart from the aristocratic oligarchies of Venice and Genoa, there had been no Republics in Europe; so the new France had modelled herself largely on the ancient ones of Greece and Rome. The smart women were termed merveilleuses. They had adopted the high-waisted tunic of Corinth and wore their hair piled high in a cone bound with ribbon, leaving the neck bare. Arms and legs were also left bare and the dresses were made of the thinnest obtainable materials; while beneath them so little was worn as to be barely decent. In fact they vied with one another quite shamelessly in exposing their limbs, and often wore tunics slit down the sides which were caught together only by cameos at the shoulder, waist and knee.

  The fashion for men had also changed out of all recognition. The incroyables, as the exquisites among the Jeunesse doree were called, wore their hair turned up behind but with long tresses nicknamed "dog's-ears in front. Their high-collared, square-cut frock-coats were buttoned tightly over the stomach and had tails coming down to the calf of the legs, which were encased in silk stockings striped with red, yellow or blue. For evening wear waistcoats were of white dimity with broad facings, and small-clothes of pearl-grey or apple-green satin, over which hung double gold watch chains. But the most out­standing feature of this costume was a huge muslin cravat worn so high that it dipped from ear to ear concealing the chin and almost hiding the mourn.

  As a final mark of their antithesis from the sans-culottes both merveilleuses and incroyables, as they called themselves, spoke in drawling affected voices and dropped their ‘r's’ which reminded Roger somewhat of the Creole French used in the West Indies. From mixing with them he derived
only one satisfaction: it showed him that he no longer had the least reason to fear being charged by some noble that he had known in the past as a renegade.

  Madame de Stael’s implication, that few people knew what their friends had been up to, or the true motives behind their actions during the past few years, was unquestionably correct. And, apparently, they could not have cared less. Scores of men who had, in part at least, been responsible for wholesale murder and plunder, but could point to a few acts of mercy, now dressed as incroyables and were freely admitted to the salons. Many of them were even accepted as friends by the emigre nobles, considerable numbers of whom, although still technically liable to the death penalty, had returned to Paris in the hope of getting their names removed from the lists of outlaws; and there were actually cases in which ex-terrorists had been taken as lovers by young demoiselles of the nobility whose fathers they had sent to the guillotine.

  Such was the cynical, worthless and abnormal society, bred by a mating of upheaval and terror, in which Roger moved during October 1795. Yet he knew that side by side with it there existed plenty of families which, without being in the least puritanical, lived respectable lives; and Buonaparte, whom he saw almost daily at his office, one evening spontaneously suggested taking him to meet some old friends of his, who proved to be just such a family.

  They consisted of a widow named Pennon, her son Albert, who was about twenty-five, and a high-spirited little daughter of eleven called Laurette, who promised soon to become a most attractive young woman. Madame Permon was a Corsican, a great friend of Buonaparte's mother, and, as she had known him from his birth, she addressed him as Napolione.

  In this setting the young General seemed to Roger a different person. The contemptuous twist he could give to his mouth, and the acid rebukes, which could make much older men break out in a sweat of apprehension, were evidently reserved for his hours of duty. Here he laughed freely, treated Madame Permon with an affectionate gallantry and allowed the quick-witted little Laura to tease him to her heart's content

  Moreover, he made no secret of the fact that during the past few months, had it not been for Madame Permon and Junot who was also present, he would positively have starved. The one had provided him with many a supper, which had been his only meal of the day, and the other had forced him to accept the major part of the remittances occasionally received from his family.

  Junot, a fair, curly-haired young man of twenty-four, with a pleasing and open countenance, was a native of tile Cote d'Or and the son of an official. He had been destined for the law, but the Revolution had swept him into the army. His fellow privates had elected him sergeant for his gallantry on the field of battle, and later, at the siege of Toulon, further acts of bravery had led Buonaparte to single him out for a commission and make him his first A.D.C. His devotion to his General was religious in its intensity; and he had hitched his wagon to no small star, for in course of time it was to make him the husband of the delightful little Laura Pennon, the Military Governor of Paris, a Duke, and the only man who had the right to walk in on his future Emperor at any hour of the day or night

  They laughed now over the way in which Junot, who was lucky as a gambler, had more than once ventured his last twenty francs at vingt-et-un in order that he might pay the bills of his Brigadier and himself at the modest Hotel of the Rights of Man, where they shared a room; and how Madame Pennon had often reprimanded Buonaparte for coming in with muddy boots and making a horrid smell by drying them at the fire.

  But those days were past The cantankerous, out-at-elbows young officer who had been contemptuously nicknamed by one of Barras's beautiful mistresses 'the little ragamuffin' had disappeared never to return. Buonaparte had bought himself a handsome carriage and a fine house in the Rue des Capucines. His uniform was new and heavy with gold lace, and he had not forgotten those who had befriended him in the dark days of adversity. Junot had been promoted from Lieutenant to Colonel; Madame Permon, who had recently lost her husband and, although it had been kept from her, been left very badly off, was being secretly assisted through her son; and in addition the young General was supporting a hundred other families in the neigh­bourhood who had fallen on evil times.

  On the 26th of October the Convention, which for so long had tyrannized over the French people, was at last dissolved; but the majority of its members together with the newly elected third met the following day under the warrant of the new Constitution. As was to be expected, the nominees of the old majority were chosen to fill the offices of State in both the Council of the Five Hundred and the Council of the Ancients.

  They then proceeded to the election of the five Directors who were in future to wield the executive power. At the head of the list submitted by the Five Hundred to the Ancients stood the names of Barras, Rewbell, Sieyes, Larevelliere-Lepeaux and Letourneur; below them were those of forty-four nonentities none of whom was in the least suitable to hold high office. By this barefaced piece of political jobbery, and the complaisance of their old colleagues among the Ancients, the Thermidorians and Jacobins succeeded in ensuring the continuance of a government wholly anti-monarchist in character.

  Sieyes, out of spleen that his own draft for a new Constitution had been rejected, refused to take office; so Carnot's name was put up and he was promptly elected. After Thermidor, as a member of the dread Committee of Public Safety, this truly great military genius had been indicted with the rest of the Committee for its crimes. But he, Prieur of the Cote d'Or, and Robert Lindet. had all been exonerated, as they had concerned themselves entirely with feeding the nation and maintaining its armed forces. Lindet, an honest man and a tireless worker, had gone so far as to insist on having a separate office, and Carnot had shut his eyes to all else while performing the remarkable feat of increasing the armies of France in less than a year from one hundred and twenty, to seven hundred and fifty, thousand men. Yet they had been deprived of their offices, and the loss of their competent direction had resulted in a chronic shortage of supplies of all kinds in all the French armies for many months past. So the appointment as a Director of the 'Organizer of Victories', as Carnot had been called, was hailed with enthusiasm by all classes.

  Larevelliere-Le'peaux had been elected because, on the one hand, he was a typical Girondinist lawyer, and, on the other, had an intense hatred of Christianity, which strongly appealed to the old enrages of the Mountain; so he received backing from both parties and polled more votes than any of the others.

  Why Letourneur's name had been put forward was a mystery, as he was a man of no distinction: simply an ex-Captain of Engineers who had worked under Carnot at the War Office. But he was an honest man and had no enemies; so overnight he found himself a celebrity.

  Barras, in spite of his vices, at least had to recommend him his courage and initiative at times of crisis, but he was incurably lazy where routine matters were concerned.

  Rewbell was a much stronger character than any of the others and a dyed-in-the-wool revolutionary. As Representant en Mission he had for long bullied and terrorized the officers of the Army of the Rhine. He was a fanatical believer in the type of Dictatorship practised by the old Committee of Public Safety and regarded all forms of personal liberty as harmful to the State. He was dishonest himself and had a cynical disbelief in the honesty of others. His manner was rough, he had a harsh voice and expressed his opinions with brutal frankness. Nevertheless, he had an enormous capacity for business, great ability, and a will of iron; so anybody who knew the five men could have little doubt that he would be the one to dominate their councils.

  On November the 3rd, dressed in magnificent uniforms specially designed for them, the five new 'Kings of France’ were installed in the Luxemburg Palace, and set about appointing their Ministers. In the meantime Roger had already made the first moves towards going home, and meant to leave shortly after witnessing this epoch-making event

  Under the new Constitution, Barras, by becoming a Director, had automatically had to relinquish his military c
ommand; so Roger's appointment as a Colonel on his staff had also lapsed. Buonaparte, who had stepped into Barras's shoes as C.-in-C. Army of the Interior, had taken a liking to Roger and told him that although he was not a professional soldier he would be happy to find him employment Barras, too, offered to secure him a good post in the civil adminis­tration. But to both he made the same excuse for declining.

  He said that the indifferent food and harsh conditions under which he had lived while for so long a prisoner in England, had undermined

  his health; and to restore it fully he felt the only course was to get away from Paris during the winter months to the sunshine of the South of France, where he intended to rent or buy a small property. Both expressed their sympathy, approved his decision and said that he could count on their good offices when he returned to Paris in the spring. During a round of visits to the ladies of the salons, and other people with whom he had recently spent much of his time, he received some expressions of sympathy and more of envy that he should be leaving cold, rainy Paris for warmer climes, but everyone said they would be glad to see him back; so the stage was set for his departure under the most pleasant auspices.

  On his last night he supped with Barras in his palatial new quarters at the Luxemburg. It was a gay party of a dozen men, and as many ladies all clad in transparent draperies and hoping to play the role of Aspasia to King Paul I, as they laughingly christened their host; or failing that, to ensnare one of the guests who had influence with him. The party promised to go on into the small hours, but Roger was making an early start in the morning; so soon after midnight he excused himself.