After calling greetings to the company now scattered about the long, low taproom, they all trooped upstairs. As Santerre had failed to recognise Roger, Jereau ran after him. A few minutes later the landlord returned and took Roger up to a room on the first floor. There, the Slum King and his cronies had settled themselves round a big table, and were being served with drinks by a potman.
They were a queer-looking crew and Roger judged at a glance that if they discovered him to be a spy he would stand very little chance of leaving the place alive. There were less than a dozen of them, but every face in the group betrayed brutality, viciousness or fanaticism. Only two displayed bare, hairy chests and arms, and could truly be termed sans-culottes; the others looked as if they might be professional card-sharpers, small tradesmen ruined by vice, pimps, or deserters from the army. Later Roger learned that every one of them had either actually been in prison or had committed some crime which would have landed him therein but for the Revolution.
Santerre gave him a searching stare and said, “So you found your way here, Comrade, but not till this morning; and during the night you seem to have taken a step up the social ladder.”
With the boyish grin that had disarmed so many people, Roger replied, “After I left you, Citizen, I had a bit of luck. I ran into a young woman I knew when I was in Paris two years ago. Like a sensible girl she prefers fellows of my age to her doting old husband, and as he was away on business I helped keep his bed warm for him. What is more, I exacted payment for my services this morning by making her give me his second-best suit.”
A general guffaw greeted his bawdy innuendo, but Santerre remarked, “Yesterday I thought you a sans-culotte, but you no longer have the air of one.”
Roger shrugged. “That’s hardly surprising, as I’ve never worn clothes like those in which you saw me yesterday except during the past week.”
Santerre motioned to a vacant place on one of the wooden benches that surrounded the table and said non-committally, “Sit down, Citizen, and tell us about yourself.”
A foxy-faced man moved up a little to make room, filled an earthenware mug from a pitcher of the Rhône wine that stood on the table, and pushed the mug towards Roger as he stepped over the bench. After taking a drink, Roger said:
“I come from Strasbourg and my name is Rojé Breuc, but my parents died when I was still a youngster and my godmother had done well for herself by marrying an English merchant; so she took charge of me and brought me up in England.”
Suddenly he received a most unexpected challenge. A man in the middle thirties, with a head as round as a cannon-ball and with close-cropped fair hair, shot at him in German:
“When were you last in Strasburg?”
As that language was used almost universally in Alsace, ignorance of it might easily have spelled Roger’s death warrant. Fortunately he spoke fairly good German, and the varieties of its patois were so numerous that when he answered the Prussian who had questioned him his accent was accepted without comment as that of a native of the Upper Rhine.
Nevertheless, he found the stare of the expressionless china-blue eyes that bored into his most disconcerting, and it was not long before he learned that they were those of Anacharsis Clootz, a most dangerous criminal maniac. A Prussian Baron of Dutch descent, Clootz had stumped Europe from the age of twenty preaching revolution and atheism, describing himself as the personal enemy of Jesus Christ. The outbreak of the French Revolution had brought him hurrying to Paris, and in 1790 he had led thirty-six other foreigners to the bar of the Assembly to declare that the world adhered to the Declaration of the Rights of Man. This had earned for him the title of “the orator of the human race”, which he had adopted instead of Baron; and he had since spent his time fermenting violence, destruction and murder by every means in his power.
Santerre recalled Roger’s attention by saying abruptly, “Well! Let’s hear some more about you.”
“I received a good education at Ringwood Grammar School in Dorset,” replied Roger, “and on completing it I took up journalism as a career; but it does not pay well, so I continued to be dependent on an allowance from my godmother. As I had never ceased to regard myself as a Frenchman I was thrilled by the news that the tyrant Louis had at last been compelled to summon the Three Estates, and I returned to France. For some time I contributed newsletters from Paris to several English Whig journals that were in sympathy with our efforts to gain freedom. In those days, as you know, most of the English were heart and soul with us, so I was paid well for my articles and lived very comfortably; but that did not last, because my views were greatly in advance of those of my paymasters. I chanced to learn that the Spanish Envoy was plotting to drag France into a war with England as an excuse to march a Spanish army into France and restore the power of the Monarchy, so I incited a body of patriots to hang him from a lamp-post.”
“Ah,” exclaimed a keen-eyed, elderly man with the bridge-less nose of a syphilitic, “I now recall where I have seen you before; I remember you speaking against the war in the Club des Jacobins.”
Roger now thanked his stars that he had taken the bull by the horns instead of attempting to conceal his past activities. He nodded. “I am glad, Citizen, that you should recall that great moment in my life; but my act cost me dear. My bourgeois editors refused to accept further articles from me, and my rich godmother cut me off with a shilling. Being able no longer to support myself in Paris I returned to London; there I found the English becoming more and more reactionary. My story was known; I was regarded as a dangerous firebrand, and as I refused to alter my opinions I was soon reduced to such straits that I could not even find the money to get back to France, where patriots such as yourselves might have found a use for me.”
“How did you manage to do so after all?” enquired Santerre.
Roger smiled. “Some weeks ago, Citizen, I had a windfall. An uncle of mine died this spring in Strasbourg, and I was informed that he had left me a small legacy. On the strength of this information I raised enough money to go and collect the principal. When I arrived, my rascal of a cousin, who is a lawyer, told me that the money could not yet be paid over, and provided me only with a weekly pittance to keep me from starvation. I joined the local Jacobin Club and, learning how badly the Revolution had hung fire, determined to get back to Paris. I am a Republican, and hoped to aid those who think like myself that we should finish with the tyrant once and for all. My cousin is one of those servile creatures who has always been content to earn his living as a parasite on the nobility. Naturally we quarrelled violently, but at length I obtained the money, and I arrived in Paris yesterday.”
“Since you are a man of some standing, Citizen, and possessed money, why did you arrive begrimed with dirt and dressed in rags?”
Roger smiled again, slyly this time, and his glance took in all the intent faces round the table. “We are all friends here,” he said slowly. “We serve the same cause, and in order that we may continue to do so it is sometimes necessary for us to put personal scruples aside. I said that I obtained the money—not that it was paid over to me.”
An ex-sergeant of the Garde Française burst out laughing. “So you had to get out of Strasbourg in a hurry, eh, Citizen? Well, you’re not the only patriot the tyrant’s police would have laid by the heels if they could. It was a good ruse to put them off the scent by making your journey disguised as a sans-culotte.”
Big Santerre and all the others were smiling now. The jugs of wine were passed again, then Roger’s health was drunk as a Comrade who had suffered for liberty, and had earned their regard by showing resource in outwitting both his bourgeois relative and the authorities.
Roger knew that Amanda always visualised him as doing his secret work in the Cabinets of Ministers and the boudoirs of Queens. He wondered what she would say if she could see him now.
CHAPTER IX
THE GREAT CONSPIRACY
When Santerre’s crew of blackguards had emptied their mugs to Roger’s health, he asked, “And
now, Citizens, when do we march against the Palace?”
Santerre shook his head. “Yesterday’s fiasco has had more serious repercussions than I expected. The tyrant’s lack of resistance surprised those who know nothing of him, and it is reported to me that in the taverns last night some of our thickheads were even saying that he seemed quite a good fellow. We’ll need a new pretext before we can work them up again. You had best leave us now, Citizen, as we have private matters to discuss, but keep hereabouts as there are plenty of ways in which I can employ you.”
Surprised but greatly relieved to hear that the conspirators had received even a temporary check to their murderous intentions, Roger gave the company a fraternal salutation, then swaggered out of the room. As he went downstairs he sighed with relief at having survived so well such a dangerous ordeal, then smiled at the thought that his luck had proved even better than the best he could have expected. Not only had his life-story been accepted, but the elderly man having publicly identified him as an old member of the Jacobin Club had provided, without further trouble, the bridge with his past, the establishment of which was so essential to his safety. When he now ran across old acquaintances he would have nothing to fear. Royalists and respectable moderates might speak of him with the same repulsion as had the Queen, but that would now be all to the good. What really mattered was that he had succeeded in consolidating his position with the extremists, among whom henceforth lay his only prospect of carrying on his secret work in a way that might prove valuable.
It soon became evident that Santerre, and those who gave him his instructions, had been right in their decision not to attempt another attack on the Palace for the time being. On the day after Roger’s arrival at the Axe and Facies the King made a dignified protest to the Assembly and followed it by a proclamation to the nation. The result was a strong reaction in his favour. Many of the Sections of Paris dissociated themselves with the insurrection, an enquiry was instituted, and on the 1st of July a petition was presented signed by 20,000 people condemning the attitude of the Municipality and the inaction of the Commandant of the National Guard. Clearly an overwhelming majority of the people of Paris deeply sympathised with the Royal Family and wished to see all possible measures taken to prevent further outbreaks of lawlessness.
In the summer of 1790, with the object of destroying the esprit de corps which was still a source of strength to the Monarchy in the old Provincial Governments, the Assembly had decreed the abolition of these Governments and a new division of France into eighty-three Departments. The affairs of each Department were managed by a Directory, that of Paris being dominated by a majority of liberal, ci-devant nobles, including such men as the Duc de la Rochefoucauld and de Talleyrand. The powers of the Directory were ill-defined, but it now endeavoured to assert itself, and became the rallying point of all moderate opinion in opposition to the Municipality, which was elected from the forty-eight Sections of Paris and was strongly radical. On the 7th of July the struggle between the two factions was brought to a head by the Directory suspending Pétion and his right-hand man, the procureur Manuel, for failing to use their powers to suppress the insurrection of the 20th of June; and for a few days it looked as if this definite bid to gain control of the situation might result in a permanent restoration of law and order.
Roger, meanwhile, found plenty to occupy him. Philosophically, he made the best of his bug-ridden, uncomfortable quarters, and, until June was out, he left the Faubourg St. Antoine only once, in order to arrange with Dan a weekly rendezvous at a small café near the Arsenal. As he was always on hand he quickly dropped into the position of one of Santerre’s unofficial aides-de-camp and attended to a score of small matters for him. His willingness and intelligence soon made their mark and although he was not yet trusted with any of the conspirators’ secrets, he had ample opportunity to gain a general comprehension of the local organisation.
As an outsider, he watched the struggle between the Directory and the Municipality with intense interest, and included all the details he could secure about it in a first report to Mr. Pitt—which he sent by Dan to Lord Gower for safe transmission to London in the Embassy bag—but he ended his report by stating that in his opinion the Directory would not succeed for long in checking the development of the Revolution.
After dismissing the Girondin Ministers and accepting the resignation of Dumouriez, the King had replaced them with nonparty men of little standing; but de Monciel, his new Minister of the Interior, fearing that the arrival in Paris of thousands of war volunteers was certain to add to the disturbances, had courageously ordered the Departments to keep these fédérés at home. Yet at the instigation of the Jacobin Club, which had branches in all the principal cities of France, this order was being ignored in many instances, and Roger knew that the conspirators were only awaiting the arrival of these reinforcements before recommencing hostilities.
Even so, now that the King had the majority of the people behind him, and the active support of the Directory, he might, once and for all, have crushed those who planned his destruction, for into his hand was given the one weapon with which he could have done so. On learning of the insurrection of the 20th of June, General Lafayette had hastened to Paris. He was in a sense the Father of the Revolution; few men had done more to bring it about and his passionate admiration for American institutions had made him a convinced Republican from the very beginning. Being a vain and not very clever man, he had persistently courted the favour of the mob at the expense of the King, and had contributed largely to the humiliations that the Royal Family had suffered. But in the preceding spring he had at last realised that while a republican government might suit a young country like the United States, it could not be achieved without anarchy in a society, such as that in France, based on ancient traditions. He had, as de Talleyrand had told Roger, then sought a rapprochement with the King, but when his advances were repulsed he had taken himself off to the army. Now, he appeared again, determined to gamble everything on an attempt to save the Monarchy.
His prestige with the people was still immense; he possessed a curious ability to win over to his views all but the extremists whenever he spoke in the Assembly, and having commanded the Paris National Guard for over two years from its inception there was little doubt that it would accept his orders in preference to those of any of its temporary commanders, who were now appointed monthly. On his arrival at the bar of the Assembly the extremists endeavoured to spike his guns by moving a vote of censure against him for having deserted his post in the face of the enemy; but the vote was defeated by a large majority, and he succeeded in arousing the deputies to the danger in which they stood of being coerced by the mob into passing measures which were against the true interests of the people. He then went to the King and offered to take over the control of the city.
Had he been allowed to do so the fédérés could have been turned back outside its gates by the National Guard, further insurrection in it could have been suppressed by them, and the Constitutional Monarchy could at last have been established on a firm basis to the great relief of nine-tenths of the nation. But the King once more refused to grasp the lifeline that had been thrown to him. With that hopeless lack of judgment which had caused him to overlook the sly and treacherous Pétion’s past record and back him for Mayor, he now decided against trusting the honest, if misguided, Lafayette. The General’s repentance had come too late, and on the 30th of June he left Paris for his headquarters, having failed in his sincere effort to repair the worst of the damage he had caused.
It was the King himself too who, by his crass stupidity, gave the deathblow to the attempts of the Directory to save him. Instead of endorsing the suspension of Pëtion and Manuel, and using all the authority that remained to him to support it, he tamely referred the matter to the Assembly. For a week they refused to take a decision, then, on the 13th of July, they decreed that the two revolutionaries should be reinstated; and followed that, at the instigation of the Rolands, by offering all the féd�
�rés who were advancing on the capital free quarters therein from the 14th to the 18th of the month to celebrate the anniversary of the fall of the Bastille.
After the life of near-luxury that Roger had led for so long, he found conditions at the Axe and Facies trying in the extreme. To have left the inn for better lodgings near by would have deprived him of many opportunities for casual chats with Santerre and the other leaders of the Section, and while he remained there he felt that, however distasteful, he must accept its normal life as his portion. Having established himself as an educated man who in the past had made good money, he could have brought in some comforts and taken some of his meals at better-class restaurants without exciting suspicion, but he knew that in the long run it would pay him infinitely better to go the whole hog and practise the doctrines of equality and fraternity that he now preached. In consequence it was only by concentrating entirely on his work that he was able to keep his mind off his physical miseries.
As it was high summer he was at least spared the additional discomfort of acute cold under the sparse coverings of his bed, and as he was young and healthy the lumpy straw of his palliasse did not prevent his sleeping soundly when he threw himself upon it after a long and tiring day. But at other times the fleas and bed bugs drove him nearly crazy, and the food that he had to eat along with his rough companions sometimes made him actually sick after a meal. All of these ruffians had been reared in hunger, so to refuse a dish suggested a faddiness that was certain to be taken as a sign of an aristocratic upbringing, and to invite any such inference about himself was the one thing above all others he was determined to avoid. Fortunately, the usual fare in the common-room was vegetable stew followed by a good variety of cheeses, but sometimes a platter of meat was dumped in front of him, and to get it down with apparent relish always proved a horrible ordeal; vinegar was poison to him, and in the summer heat the meat that the poor ate, when they could get it, always had to be soused in vinegar because it had gone bad long before it reached Paris.
The Man who Killed the King Page 16