Actually, as far as he knew, there was little likelihood of his being sent by the Comité on another journey. In view of the great number of Commissioners who had been despatched to all parts of the country during July, he had daily dreaded being nominated himself; but he had recently learned through the tittle-tattle at the Cordeliers that, although his work in Brittany had been considered satisfactory, he was not deemed to possess the ruthlessness necessary to cope with emergencies. That piece of intelligence had afforded him great relief, but it neither helped nor hindered him in the matter of Amanda.
As she was digging her toes in about remaining at Passy only because it was easy for him to come out there as long as he remained in Paris, he had no doubt that she would be willing enough to move if he suggested a place where it would be as easy or easier for him to be with her; but he dared not expose her to danger by bringing her into the capital itself. On the other hand, Athénaïs would run no special danger if she was installed at La Belle Étoile; so, now at his wits’ end, he decided that, somehow or other, he must head her off from meeting Amanda, and take her there.
It was now the 4th of August, and next day he was due to go on duty at the Temple at 8 p.m. for forty-eight hours. He would not be free again until the evening of the 7th; so there was the unpleasant possibility that Athénaïs might turn up in his absence, and that next time he went out to Passy he would find that the fat was already in the fire. Almost hourly from the beginning of the month his secret agitation had been increasing, and now that the collision of his two beauties seemed imminent, he could hardly take his mind for a moment off the unhappy contretemps that it conjured up.
Athénaïs, arriving without being warned that Amanda was his wife, could hardly be expected to hide her annoyance at finding another pretty woman already in the house. Amanda was much too quick-witted not to smell a rat. Inevitably something would be said on one side or another to spill the whole bag of beans. Both would be furious. Athénaïs would have every right to be intensely indignant at his having placed her in such a humiliating situation, and Amanda, although in a much stronger position, would also feel humiliated and be most terribly upset.
With a heavy sigh, he recalled that line of Gay’s in the ‘Beggar’s Opera’, “How happy could I be with either, weret’ other dear charmer away,” for that exactly expressed his own feelings; but he had a horrid foreboding that in the event of an encounter he would be given no option, and no happiness at all. The probability was that his entrancing mistress would disappear in a cloud of black anger, never to be seen again; and his charming wife would prove anything but charming to him for a long time to come.
Greatly depressed, but still determined to leave no step untaken which might save the situation, he sought out Dan early on the morning of the 5th and informed him exactly how matters stood. As Dan had seen Athénaïs in Rennes, and knew that after rescuing her his master had disappeared for three weeks, the story he was now told did not surprise him in the least; but to Roger’s annoyance he seemed to find it very funny. However, he gradually suppressed his mirth, and with a more suitable gravity took his instructions.
He was to go out to Passy and tell Amanda that on leaving the house that morning his master had seen some suspicious characters loitering about; so for the next few days he was to remain there and act as watchdog. It was unlikely that Athénaïs would arrive before the 7th, but she might be a day early. In any case, should she turn up, Dan was to tackle her before she reached the front door, tell her the house was no longer a safe hideout, use the conveyance in which she had come to take her to La Belle Étoile, then report to Roger at the Temple. Should Amanda witness this little scene from one of the windows, she could be told afterwards that Athénaïs was an escaping suspect who had been sent out there by mistake, but fortunately Dan had recognised her, and been able to put matters right.
Only very slightly easier in his mind, Roger went on duty at the Temple. Dinner there with the other Commissioners served to distract him a little; and later that night he heard from Michonis his first news of how the Queen was situated in her new prison, as the Inspector had paid her an official visit there the preceding day.
General Custine, who was shortly to be guillotined for having failed to relieve Mayence, had been transferred to a common dungeon so that his private cell could be used for Marie Antoinette. It was a gloomy little room with barred windows that gave on to a court in which over 300 prisoners had been butchered during the September massacres. It contained no political prisoners now, but during the daytime was used as a buvette where common criminals were allowed to receive visitors, and to smoke and drink with them. The window of the cell was too high up for them to see into it; but the noise, stench and filthy language arising from this thieves’ kitchen were an infliction which the Royal prisoner was forced to bear for most of her waking hours. The stonewalled cell itself was divided by a wooden partition with a gap in its centre only partially closed by a battered screen, and in the outer half of the cell two gendarmes were on duty day and night; so the Queen was under constant supervision.
As against this, Michonis said, sympathy for her, coupled with her own dignity and charm, had already gained her some friends inside the prison. Madame Richard, the wife of the chief turnkey, had done all she dared without risking a reprimand to make the cell comfortable; and a beautiful peasant girl named Rosalie Lamorlière, who was employed as a cook, was taking special pains to find out what the Queen liked to eat, in order to tempt her poor appetite with specially prepared dishes. But the Inspector added that he thought it was going to be very difficult to arrange an escape.
Next day Roger saw the little King again, and was shocked afresh by the boy’s disgusting behaviour. He also saw the two Princesses, but as nothing was to be gained by contravening standing orders he did not attempt to hold any private conversation with them. From the morning of the 7th he was too absorbed in his own worries to think of much else, and as soon as he could leave in the evening he hastened back to Passy in a turmoil of apprehension that the worst might be happening at that very moment.
As he approached the house, the sight of Dan standing in the lane made his heart contract more violently than it would have done had a footpad suddenly jumped out of the hedge and levelled a pistol at him; but his faithful henchman was waiting there only to let him know that Athénaïs had not yet put in an appearance. In consequence, over supper, he made a final effort to move Amanda by telling her that Michonis considered the rescue of the Queen to be hopeless; so that there was no longer any reason why she should postpone her return to England.
For a moment she remained silent, then gave him a queer look, and said, “You seem very anxious to be rid of me, Roger; and I cannot see why, as long as I remain quietly here, you should be so concerned for my safety. Your persistence in this matter might almost lead one to suppose that you wanted me out of the way because you are having an affair with another woman.”
Roger hoped that his laugh was not as hollow as it sounded to himself; but he promptly pooh-poohed the idea, and only afterwards began to wonder if he had been really wise to do so. To have told the truth and shamed the devil would certainly have relieved him of the awful strain he had been under for the past week; but he swiftly rejected the idea. That would have been relieving his feelings at Amanda’s expense; so most unfair to her. He knew that he had got himself into this mess, and was now paying the price of his infidelity. Clearly he must continue to do so as long as that would serve to spare her unhappiness.
For the next three days he lived in perpetual torment. Every morning he went off to his work as usual, leaving Dan on guard, but he could settle to nothing and returned each evening expecting to find Amanda in tears and Athénaïs gone out of his life for ever. The last thought harrowed him intensely. Amanda, he felt sure, would forgive him after making both him and herself thoroughly miserable for a while, but he had convinced himself that the proud Athénaïs would not; and, since the Revolution compelled her to live u
nder false names anyhow, it would be impossible for him to trace her and make his peace. The more he thought about her, the more desirable she became; and the idea of losing her for good seemed as bad as a threat of never knowing another summer.
By the 11th his anxieties had taken a new turn. Dan vowed that he had never been off duty for more than a few moments at a time, and Amanda’s unruffled contentment was ample evidence that Athénaïs had not arrived during one of the brief spells when he had ceased to be on the look-out for her. What, then, could have happened to prevent her keeping to their arrangement? Roger felt certain that nothing would have stopped her reaching Passy between the dates agreed had she been in a position to do so. Was she ill? Was she in prison? Was she dead?
Day and night such grim speculations now plagued him like an aching tooth, and in a few more days he was praying that she would arrive even if she ran slap into Amanda. Surely, had she been detained only by illness, she would have written to him? It must be that she was either dead or once more in the clutches of the Revolutionaries. To have known that she was safe he would now have faced any sort of upset willingly; but still there was no sign of her, and there was nothing whatever he could do to trace her whereabouts.
Meanwhile his duties had been particularly onerous. Since 1790, a national feast day had been held on the 14th of July to commemorate the fall of the Bastille; but this year the 10th of August had been selected as more appropriate to celebrate the termination of the ancien régime. Thousands of Municipals from all parts of France had come to participate, and, as a member of the Commune of Paris, Roger was one of their official hosts.
From four in the morning till late at night there were marches, receptions, speeches, blaring bands and displays of symbolism. David, the bloodthirsty painter, acted as master of ceremonies; the eighty-six senior members of the Convention played the part of the Departments, carrying spears to represent the rods of the National Fasces; the other deputies bore sheaves of corn; there was an Ark containing a scroll bearing the Rights of Man, and an Urn containing the ashes of an Unknown Soldier; every trade was represented in the long procession, and at its end came several tumbrels filled with crowns, sceptres, coats of arms and fleur-de-lis spangled banners, which in due course were formally burnt. There was a huge statue of Regeneration, with water, of which everyone drank, spurting from her breasts; and an even vaster one of the French people striking down Federalism and stifling it in the mud of a marsh.
The excitement was intense; and, in a lesser degree, so it continued for many days afterwards, as the hordes of official guests were all eager to take a hand in running the country. Their deputations besieged the Convention, the Commune and the jacobins, and had to be listened to patiently, then fêted afterwards. The state of the country made their representations more urgent, as it was still menaced on all sides, and torn by three major internal revolts.
The Federalists of Marseilles had been forced to abandon Aix, but were still in control of a large part of the south. In Lyons an army of 40,000 men with 300 guns had been assembled; the Royalist Comte de Précy had been nominated as its Commander, and on the 8th the city had declared war on the Convention. Meanwhile La Vendée continued to be a festering sore in the side of the Republic. Down there, men, women and even children had taken up arms, and were fighting for Church and King with the utmost ferocity. Their fanatical priests were promising them resurrection in three days if they died in battle, and the superstitious peasants were hurling themselves in hordes upon the levies of sans-culottes sent from the cities to quell them.
The ci-devant Duc de Biron had been transferred from his command on the Rhine and given the uncongenial task of suppressing the rebellion, but he was not a strong enough man to compel his subordinates to co-operate; so Westermann, Santerre and Rossignol were all raging through the country independently, burning whole villages and committing the most appalling atrocities, but unable to make any permanent headway against the equally ferocious Royalists.
It was these threats to the Revolution from without and within that caused the visiting Municipals to demand that the Convention should decree a levée en masse, and on the 23rd of August a law was passed to the following effect:
“From this moment till the enemy shall be driven from the territory of the Republic, all the French shall be in permanent requisition for the armies. The young men shall go forth to fight; the married men shall forge the arms and transport the supplies; the women shall make tents and clothes and serve in the hospitals; the children shall make lint out of rags; the old men shall cause themselves to be carried to the public places, to excite the courage of the warriors, to preach hatred of Kings and love of the Republic.”
It was a magnificent declaration; and the brave common people of France hailed it with enthusiasm, although it bore with great severity upon them. Danton, keeping his head during this orgy of patriotism, pointed out that to conscript the whole nation simultaneously must kill it from famine within a month; and he succeeded in modifying the immediate application of the law, which also applied to grain, horses and every type of vehicle. The whole population was called up at once only in the danger areas of La Vendée, Lyons, Toulon and the Rhine; elsewhere the Convention contented itself temporarily with a first requisition, embodying all unmarried men and widowers without children, between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five. Yet even these measures resulted in providing another 450,000 for the armies.
It was not until the 28th that Roger heard further from de Batz. That morning the orange-girl passed him a slip, and in the evening he went to the Café Coraeza at the time appointed. On this occasion the Baron was alone, and with his irrepressible optimism at once launched into particulars of a new plot he had been hatching to save the Queen.
He said that unofficial negotiations were proceeding between the Convention and the Court of Vienna, in which the former were using the Queen as a bargaining counter in an endeavour to stop the war, and that it was for this reason she had not yet been brought to trial; but the Allies now showed no inclination at all to abandon their campaign against communism and atheism as the price of the life of a single woman. On the other hand, they showed an equal reluctance to gamble everything on a forced march on Paris, as every King and Commander among them was being implored to do in a spate of letters from de Fersan and de Mercy-Argenteau, and other personal friends of the Queen. She could, therefore, hope neither to be ransomed as one of the terms of peace, nor rescued by the swift advance of an allied army; so everything must now be risked on another attempt to snatch her from prison.
Only the sadist Hébert and the fanatics whom he led were now endeavouring to hound her to her death; the common people felt that she had been made to suffer more than enough already, and thought of her with sympathy. There was strong evidence of this from the markets. Madame Richard had gone out to buy her a melon; the woman behind the stall had said, “I am sure you want it for our poor Queen. You shall have the best one I’ve got, and I refuse to take any money for it.” Her brave words had met with applause and been carried to the other markets; now, every day, women who had screamed “Austrian whore” at Marie Antoinette in the days of her prosperity came to the gates of the Conciergerie bringing her presents of the choicest fruit, fish and flowers. Many of them had husbands and brothers among the soldiers who formed the prison guard, and, de Batz argued, under the influence of their womenfolk they might tacitly abet an escape.
Michonis had been in to see the Queen on several occasions and had won over the Richards. He had also introduced into her cell a new associate of the conspirators. This was an old friend of the Queen’s, named the Chevalier de Rougeville. He had approached Michonis independently, and the Inspector, convinced of his good faith, had passed him on to de Batz. It had been agreed that the Queen needed the sight of someone she had known well in the old days to give her confidence in a new attempt; so on the previous evening Michonis had taken de Rougeville in to her. Even in the dim light of the cell she had recognised hi
m at once, but they had not dared to exchange more than a fragment of conversation. While Michonis engaged the attention of the guards, the Chevalier had said:
“Take courage, Madame; we have arms and money.” Then, seeing how frail-looking she had become, he asked, “Does your heart fail you?”
To that she had replied, “It never fails me, but it is deeply afflicted,” and, placing her hand on her heart, had added, “If I am weak and downcast, this is not.”
As one of the guards had poked his head through the opening at that moment, de Rougeville had dropped at her feet a red carnation that he held ready for the purpose. A note had been concealed in it, asking her if she would trust herself to him a week from that night, which would be the coming Friday, the 2nd of September.
The new plan was that de Rougeville, disguised as an officer of the National Guards, and a squad of trusted Royalists, dressed as soldiers, should accompany Michonis and Roger to the Conciergerie in the middle of the night. The two Commissioners would produce a forged order instructing them to convey the Queen back to the Temple. Richard would accept it as genuine and ask no questions. When they had taken the Queen outside they would drive her to a prearranged rendezvous, where she would transfer to the Baron’s carriage, and he would drive her out of Paris to Lady Atkyns.
The scheme seemed as sound as any that could be hoped for, and Roger saw that it might be thought suspicious if only one Commissioner was sent on such an important undertaking; so he at once agreed to give Michonis his support. It was settled that he should come again to the Café Coraeza on the night before the attempt for a final conference with Michonis, de Rougeville and the Baron, and that he should also warn Amanda to be ready to play, on the night of the 2nd of September, the original rôle assigned to her. On leaving the café he went out to Passy, and when he had told her the plan they agreed that she should leave there to rejoin Lady Atkyns at Neuilly on the afternoon of the 1st.
The Man who Killed the King Page 45