It was now that the greatest risk had to be run, as Roger might just as well not have come there unless he could obtain a private interview with the General, and he could see no way to succeed in that without disclosing that he was acting as the Prince de Condé’s agent. If, as seemed quite possible from Pichegru’s sudden advance on Mannheim, he had come to the conclusion that Montgalliard and Fauche-Borel were untrustworthy, or if one of the Représentants en Mission was given the least cause for suspicion, the game would be up as far as Roger was concerned, and, ten to one, for good. But it would have been contrary to his nature to back out now; so, drawing a deep breath, he stood up, then made his way downstairs.
Owing to the constant coming and going in the big hall, he attracted no attention when he came into it by one of its side entrances and took up a position near to a service door that gave on to the kitchen. In his hand he had, folded into a small thick triangle, the note he had written at the Drei Kônige, and a twenty mark piece. As the waiter who had been serving the General came by he plucked the man by the sleeve, gave him a quick glimpse of the coin and the note, and said in a low voice:
‘I am a tradesman anxious to secure a share of the General’s patronage. Do me the favour to give him this.’
The man hesitated only a moment, then with a sudden grin he stuck the note in his cuff and pocketed the gold.
When he next emerged from the kitchen, carrying another load of platters, Roger followed his movements with a heavily pounding heart. He saw him place the note beside the General’s plate, but for what seemed an eternity, Pichegru did not appear to have even noticed it. At last he picked it up, opened it, and read the few lines that Roger had written, which ran:
Citizen General,
I am a partner in the firm of Fauche-Borel, booksellers and printers. I crave the distinction of being permitted to print such proclamations as Your Excellency may desire to issue to the people of Mannheim and its adjacent territories.
The die was cast. The name Fauche-Borel could not fail to register in the General’s mind. In another minute he might order the arrest of the sender of the note or make an assignation with him.
As Roger watched he saw Citizen Representative Merlin lean towards Pichegru. There could be little doubt that he was enquiring the contents of the note, which, in his capacity as one of the Convention’s watch-dogs, he was fully empowered to do.
It was at that moment that Roger saw Rewbell join the group. His heart seemed to jump into his throat, for Jean-François Rewbell was one of the old gang who had survived the fall of Robespierre. An Alsatian by birth, he had started life as a lawyer, had soon become a fanatical revolutionary, and had advocated many of the most ruthless measures of the Terror. He had already sent two Army Commanders back to Paris to be guillotined, and his shrewd, suspicious mind made him an expert at smelling out treachery.
To Roger’s momentary relief the three men laughed at something one of them had said. Then Pichegru beckoned to the waiter who had brought the note. They both looked in Roger’s direction, and the waiter began to walk towards him. His mouth went dry and again he was seized with near panic. Rewbell or Merlin might have found out that Fauche-Borel was a Royalist agent. If so Pichegru would have had no option but to save his own skin by sacrificing the bookseller’s colleague. Perhaps they had laughed at the idea of his presenting himself there to be led out and shot. There was still time to turn, slip through the nearest entrance and make a bolt for it. Even with so short a lead, among the maze of staircases and corridors he might succeed in eluding pursuit, and perhaps in the attics find a hiding place until darkness increased his chance of getting away from the building unrecognised. His palms were moist and his feet itched to be on the move; bu twith a great effort of will he stood his ground until the waiter came up to him, and said:
‘The General says that if you’ll wait in the outer hall he’ll try to find time to see you later.’
Suppressing a gasp of relief, and still too internally wrought up to trust himself to speak, Roger nodded; then made his way out of the great noisy chamber.
When he reached a low archway that gave on to the hall, he looked anxiously through it; and was much relieved to see that the sergeant to whom he had told his story about the brothel had been relieved by another. Stationing himself in an out-of-the-way corner and taking out his handkerchief, he mopped his face with it. Gradually the beating of his heart eased and he tried to persuade himself that his worst danger was over. But he could not be certain of that, as now that the offensive was going so well Pichegru might have decided against declaring for the Royalists, and, if he wished to strengthen his position with Rewbell, the turning over of an émigré agent to a firing squad would be a cheap way of earning himself a good mark.
The time of waiting seemed to Roger interminable, and actually it was over two hours before a club-footed private came down the wide staircase opposite the main door, limped up to him, and asked:
‘Are you the Citizen printer? ’
On Roger replying that he was, the soldier took him upstairs to a suite of rooms on the second floor. The first was an ante-chamber and had the General’s military equipment scattered about it. Pointing to a chair there, the soldier told him to sit down, and taking up a jack-boot set to work polishing it.
Through an open doorway Roger could see the bedroom, which he guessed to be normally used by the Mayors of Mannheim when in residence at the Rathaus. It was furnished with a vast bed and other heavy, ugly pieces, and Roger could well imagine that many a fat German City Father had fallen into a drunken slumber there after doing the honours in the banqueting hall below.
Still racked with anxiety about what might follow his coming interview with Pichegru, Roger endured a further twenty minutes’ wait; then, at last, the General’strode into the room.
Charles Pichegru was the son of a labourer, but had been educated by the Church and sent to the military school at Brienne, after which he had become an artillery officer. The Revolution had given him his chance and he was one of the most brilliant Generals it had produced. After successful campaigns in ’93 and ’94 his conquest of Holland the preceding winter had made him the most outstanding of them all. He was a tall, fine looking man, possessed of enormous physical strength, and was now thirty-four.
Giving Roger a penetrating glance, he motioned him into the bedroom, followed him in, told his man that on no account was he to be disturbed, and swung the door shut.
‘Now!’ he said without preamble. ‘Had your approach to me been only a little less subtle I would have had you taken straight out to a firing squad; and I may yet do so. Fauche-Borel has already endangered me more than enough by forcing himself upon me with wild-cat schemes that lack any concrete backing, and when last I saw him I told him if he pestered me again I would have him shot.’
It was far from being a propitious opening, but Roger was on his mettle now and replied with a calmness that he was far from feeling: ‘Citizen General, ’tis because it has been realised in the highest quarters that Fauche-Borel was incompetent to handle such business that I have been selected to replace him. I bring you a firm undertaking from His Royal Highness the Prince de Condé.’
The General’s eyes narrowed slightly, and he asked: ‘Do you mean that the Prince has actually put his hand to the terms that I supposed Fauche-Borel to have invented in the hope of gulling me into declaring for the Royalists?’
‘That I cannot say, but if these are they I scarcely think you can regard them as ungenerous.’ As Roger spoke he handed over the list of bribes that the Abbé Chenier had had signed by de Condé.
After reading slowly through them, Pichegru looked up and said: ‘These differ from those offered by Fauche-Borel only in that the sum to be paid in cash has been doubled’
Roger smiled. ‘Fauche-Borel acted only as the cat’s-paw of a rogue named Montgalliard. It was he who inspired these negotiations, and as he handles many of de Condé’s transactions, no doubt he counted on being nominated
to make the payment, which would have enabled him to keep half the money for himself’.
Sitting down in a huge arm-chair, Pichegru murmured, ‘The Prince’s having sent me this document puts a very different complexion on matters.’
‘Then may I take it that you agree the terms?’
‘I know not. I must think. Upon my decision depends the whole future of my country.’
‘Do you accept and act with vigour, it will make you, after the King, the most powerful man in France.’
‘I am already near that; and need no help from the Royalists to elevate myself still further. By marching on Paris I could have myself proclaimed Dictator.’
‘Perhaps; but what of the war in the meantime? Did you turn your army about, the Austrians would be back over the Rhine and hot upon your heels. Only by entering into this pact could you prevent them doing so.’
The General shook his head. ‘Nay, you are in error there. As I hold your life in my hands, I see no reason why I should not speak frankly to you. General Jourdan’s army has reached the north bank of the Necker. I have only to make the dash on Heidelberg, which I have been preparing for these past few days, to join up with him. With our combined forces we shall far outnumber either of the Austrian armies. ’Twill be child’s-play for us first to defeat Wurmser, then Clerfayt. That done, Austria must sue for peace; then I should be free to march on Paris.’
That was the very thing Roger feared, and he saw that he must play every card he had in an attempt to prevent it. Knowing the French hatred of the English, he had intended to pose as a French émigré, but he realised that Pichegru must know that de Condé was penniless, and that the huge money bribe he was offered could come only from England; so now he felt that it might serve him better to disclose his true nationality. After a moment, he said:
‘Even if the Austrians came in you will not be able to secure peace for France. Britain will fight on. The English are a dogged people, and the Scots and Irish no less so. Only twelve years ago, alone in arms, Britain fought all Europe to a standstill. To them surrender is unthinkable.’
Pichegru nodded. ‘I fear you are right in that. The English, too, are so vastly rich that with their gold they will suborn other nations to take up arms against us. Moreover, they love fighting for its own sake and are most ferocious enemies. I am told that such is their lust for blood that when at peace they spend all their time hunting, and devour raw the beasts they kill, tearing at them with their big teeth.’
Roger could not help laughing. ‘Nay, they are not quite as uncivilised as that. It is true that they make good fighters, but by far the greater part of them would much prefer to remain at home tilling their rich fields, to enduring a hard soldier’s life abroad and as often as not dying on some distant battle-field.’
‘You speak as though you knew and liked them.’
‘I do; for although I have lived for many years in France, I am an Englishman myself.’
‘The Devil you are! Then I am inclined more than ever to have you shot.’
‘No, General, I do not think you will do that.’ Roger made the statement with quiet confidence, and, opening his coat, displayed the émigré uniform beneath it. ‘You see, I have come to you as one soldier to another; and, apart from the laws of war, I cannot believe that you would act like a Rewbell. So brave a man as yourself would not descend to soil his hands in the manner of these terrorists.’
‘You have me there;’ Pichegru’s handsome face broke into a smile. ‘I may, though, have to imprison you for my own protection. But you are a brave fellow yourself, and a clever one. Why in thunder did not that fool of a Prince send you to me before, instead of a woolly-minded fumbler like Fauche-Borel?’
‘Because I had not then been brought into this matter. However, we were speaking of the English. Britain holds the seas, and even were you master of all Europe you could not drive her from them; therefore you can never bring her to her knees. While she, if need be for a generation to come, can deny the oceans to your commerce, blockade your ports, starve and harass you. That she will never make peace with a Revolutionary Government I am convinced. On the other hand she is ready to do so with a Constitutional Monarchy. I give you my solemn word that, whatever you may have been led to believe, Mr. Pitt is at heart a man of peace, and greatly desires it. If you will but bring about a Restoration, I am confident that he will agree to any honourable terms. He would, I believe, even go so far as to support France at a conference of the Powers in her claim to what she asserts to be her natural boundaries; and thus enable her to retain much of the territory that you and her other Generals have won for her in the present war.’
Pichegru stared at him, and asked slowly: ‘Who are you, that though dressed as a private in an army of outlaws, you should speak as though you knew the mind of Mr. Pitt?’
‘I am the personal envoy of His Britannic Majesty’s Prime Minister, ’Roger replied with suitable dignity. ‘I visited de Condé’s headquarters only to secure for you the document you are holding.’
As he fired his big gun, he watched anxiously for the General’s reactions. They came at once. Jumping to his feet, he exclaimed: ‘Then it is not de Condé alone who is behind this proposition! His name written in his own hand should be good enough; but there have been times when Princes of the House of Bourbon have gone back upon a bargain. If the British Government is prepared to guarantee the terms, I can count the fortune I am offered as good as already placed to my credit in the Bank of England.’
Roger bowed at the implied compliment. ‘That certainly is true as far as the money clauses are concerned. As to the honours, I can only say that, without casting doubt upon the Prince’s word, should Mr. Pitt’s influence be needed to secure them for you, feel sure he would exert it in your favour.’
With a vigorous nod, Pichegru murmured: ‘We have got a long way. A very long way. In a quarter of an hour with you I have got further than in all my weeks of dickering with Fauche-Borel.’
‘You agree, then?’ Roger asked, his hopes rising with a bound.
‘Nay; I do not say that. There are matters of far more weighty import than my own future to be considered. You spoke just now of the British Government’s being willing to agree a peace if France were a Constitutional Monarchy. Can you give me an assurance that the Bourbon Princes are prepared to make her one?’
‘No; that I cannot do. I had no converse with de Condé on that subject.’
‘It is, though, the vital question upon which the whole future hangs. It is my belief that nine-tenths of the French people would now welcome a Restoration, were it based on the Constitution of ’91. Last June, when the poor child in the Temple died and that fat dolt the Comte de Provence became technically Louis XVIII, he already had the game in his hands, had he only exercised a modicum of tact. He had but to announce that he accepted the principles of ’91 and would grant an amnesty to all who had taken part in the Revolution, for half France to have risen and spontaneously demanded his recall. Yet dull-witted bigot that he is, he had the folly to declare in public that the Constitutionalists were more detestable to him than Robespierre himself. How can we hope to restrain the emigres from taking their revenge for past ills, and the pursuance of liberal policies, should I put such a man upon the Throne?’
It was a hard question to answer, but Roger did his best. ‘I think,’ he said, ‘you overrate that danger. Whatever the personal views of the King and a handful of ultra-Royalists may be, theirs will be voices crying in the wilderness. The Governments of Britain and Austria no longer care a rap for the pretensions of the ancien régime, and should they make peace at all they will use their utmost endeavours to ensure that it has the basis for a lasting one. Such pretensions to autocracy could lead only to another revolution, with the prospect of further war; so you may be certain that the Allies would insist on the new King opening his reign as a monarch with strictly limited powers. After that, matters will be in the hands of yourself and men like you. Free elections would produce a Cham
ber almost entirely composed of Moderates, and the King’s only alternative to accepting its views would be to go once more into exile.’
‘Perhaps you are right,’ Pichegru muttered. ‘Yes, I suppose with virtually the whole nation behind us we could exert a reasonable control over him. There, is, though, another matter. Although I am satisfied that the majority of the people would welcome a Restoration, there are many prominent men who would not, and among them are several holding key posts in the Administration. When I was last in Paris, Carnot told me that did he have the King’s pardon in his pocket he would still not consider his life worth ten sous were a Bourbon monarch once more installed at the Tuileries; and, though for long a member of the Committee of Public Safety, he has harmed no man without just cause. Barras, Cambacérès, Larevelliére-Lépeaux, Cambon and Sieyès are of the same mind. As for villains like Rewbell, Tallien and others whose hands have dripped with innocent blood, they would rather die fighting in a ditch than trust to the mercy of a descendant of St. Louis. And rightly, for they would receive none.’
Roger’s blue eyes glinted. ‘What is to prevent you from having Rewbell hanged to the nearest flagstaff. As for the other ex-terrorists, make a list of them; then when you reach Paris put a price upon their heads, and have them shot at sight.’
‘With Rewbell and Merlin I can deal at my pleasure. But the situation of the others is very different. As I advance on Paris they will do their utmost to rouse the mobs. They will denounce me in the Chamber as a traitor, and give tongue to their old rallying cry that the Revolution is in danger. When I reach the city scores of agitators paid or inspired by them will mingle with my troops, and will inevitably undermine the loyalty of a great part of them to myself. Overnight the forces upon which I must rely may melt away, or turn against me. That is the great danger.’
The Dark Secret of Josephine Page 36
