The Dark Secret of Josephine

by Dennis Wheatley

  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 such a family.

  They consisted of a widow named Permon, 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 the Côte d’Or and the son of an official. He had been destined for the law, but the Revolution had sent 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 Permon, 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 as 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 Permon 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 beautiul 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 tyrannised 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, Sieyès, Larevellière-Lépeaux 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 colleague among the Ancients, the Thermidorians and Jacobins succeeded in ensuring the continuance of a government wholly anti-monarchist in character.

  Sieyès, 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 Côte 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 Organiser of Victories’, as Carnot had been called, was hailed with enthusiasm by all classes.

  Larevellière-Lépeaux 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 enragés 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 Représentant en Mission he had for long bullied and terrorised 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 Luxembourg Palace, and set about appointing their Ministers. In the meantime Roger had already made the first moves towards going homeland 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 command; 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 the round of visits to the ladies of the salons, and other peo
ple 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 Luxembourg. 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.

  As he waited on the steps of the Palace for the porter to beckon up a coach to take him home, a tall, thin figure emerged from the shadows of the courtyard, stepped up to him and said:

  ‘May I have a word with you, Citizen?’

  By the flickering light of the torches Roger recognised Fouché; and, as the coach halted opposite them at the moment, he replied:

  ‘Certainly, if you wish. Jump in. I will drive you home.’

  When they were settled in the coach, Fouché said: ‘So you are leaving Paris?’

  ‘Yes; how did you know?’

  ‘Things get about, and I hear most of them; just as I did that you would be among Barras’s guests tonight.’.

  ‘It seems that you must have been very anxious to see me, to wait about in the rain. You’ve been lucky too in that I did not remain till the end of the party, as it will go on for some hours yet.’

  ‘I have never lacked patience where my own interests are concerned,’ Fouché replied acidly. ‘But you might have spared me the necessity of seeking you out in so uncomfortable a manner. Why did you not get in touch with me again, as you promised?’

  Roger shrugged. ‘I saw no point in doing so. Thirteenth Vendémiaire rendered the plan we had evolved quite impossible of execution; so there was nothing for us to discuss.’

  ‘I disagree. The fact that Buonaparte ruined our prospects does not affect the fact that you still hold the little Capet.’

  For a moment Roger thought of telling Fouché that he could rid his mind of the hope that he might gain anything from that belief, because the boy was dead. He would either reach that conclusion or have to be told so sometime, and the fiction that the child was still alive had served its purpose. By keeping what he knew to himself, Fouché had given him a free run on his return to Paris. Luck and his own wits had enabled him to make excellent use of it. He was now as safe as the Bank of England whereas Fouché was still friendless and discredited. The ex-Terrorist might swear until he was black in that face that Roger was an English spy; but he had not one atom of proof and no one would believe him.

  But, on second thoughts, Roger decided that now was not the time to reveal to Fouché how he had been tricked. He might have a pistol or a dagger on him and, in a fit of ungovernable rage, attempt to use it. The close darkness of the coach was no place to invite a fight, and it would be folly to risk death or serious injury to no purpose. So, after a moment, he said:

  ‘I waited in Paris to learn the results of the elections to the Directory, although I had little hope that they would provide us with a possible opening; and so it has proved. Letourneur is a man of straw. Larevellière-Lépeaux is so intense an atheist that he would die rather than assist in the re-establishment of the Church, without which a Restoration is unthinkable. Carnot, Rewbell and Barras are all regicides. Their past deeds pledge them to fight to the last ditch for the continuance of a Republic. And behind all five now stands Buonaparte with his cannon. Surely you can see that the executive power having been given into the hands of such men renders any attempt by us to use our Royal pawn more hopeless than ever.’

  ‘To that I agree; but you could open negotiations about him with the Bourbon Princes.’

  ‘No. When last we talked of this, you said yourself that the Comte de Provence having had himself proclaimed Louis XVIII blocked our prospects in that direction. It is certain that he would repudiate the child, and declare him to be an imposter.’

  ‘That is possible, but not certain,’ Fouché argued. ‘And I am in desperate straits. Nearly all our old associates, have been more fortunate than myself. They have succeeded in burying their pasts, and are now accepted as honest men who did only what they were compelled to do for the safety of the Republic in the days of its danger. I, too, could have whitewashed myself had I remained a member of the Convention. But having been expelled from it makes me a marked man, and no one will give me employment. Will you not please consider approaching the Comte de Provence?’

  The drive from the Luxembourg to the Passage Pappilote, where Fouché had his little house, was a short one, and as the coach pulled up at its entrance, Roger said firmly:

  ‘To do as you ask would be to show our hand prematurely, and with little chance of gaining anything from it. I think you should consider yourself lucky not to have been sent to the guillotine with Carrier, or despatched to Cayenne with Billaud and Collot. In any case, no man with a brain as good as yours is likely to starve. Meanwhile, I can only suggest you should be patient until some new turn of events here decides me that the time has come to return to Paris with a good prospect of our being able to use the little Capet to the best advantage.’

  Reluctantly Fouché got out, and, not very cordially, they wished one another good night.

  Early in the morning Roger bid good-bye to the faithful Bianchards, and mounted a good bay mare that had his valise strapped to the back of her saddle. He had decided to travel by horseback so that no coachman could later give away the direction he had taken. He also took the precaution of leaving Paris by its southern gate and riding some distance along the road to Melun before making a great detour via Rambouillet to Mantes, where he spent the night. Thence he followed the road north-west to Eibeuf but then left the Seine and branched off to Pant Audemer. There he spent the second night, and soon after noon on the third day arrived at Harfleur.

  Dan Izzard had many friends among the smugglers on both sides of the Channel, and through him Roger knew how to set about finding one who would run him across. The war had caused a huge boom in smuggling, as the demand in England for French wines and brandies was as great as ever, and, now that luxury goods could again be sold in France, there were eager buyers there for Yorkshire cloth, Lancashire muslins and Nottingham lace. A few tactful enquiries soon produced the Captain of a lugger who was waiting only for better weather to run a cargo.

  The lugger was lying in Trouville, a little fishing village a few miles down the coast; so Roger moved to the inn there. Next day the weather eased a little, so the skipper decided to sail on the night tide. It proved a horrible crossing, and Roger hated every moment of it, but the smugglers set him safely ashore twenty-four hours later not far from Deal. On the evening of November the 12th he reached London.

  There, one of the surprises of his life was waiting for him. At Amesbury House he found two letters from Amanda. Opening the one of the earlier date he saw from its first few lines that she was going to have a baby.

  She wrote that she had already been five months’ pregnant when he had left Martinique; but had wished to keep her secret as long as possible. Then in the desperate rush of his departure there had been no suitable opportunity to tell him. Her health was excellent and she expected her child to be born about Christmas. He need have no fears for her, as Cousin Margaret was being more than a mother to her and had already engaged a French doctor of the highest reputation in such matters to attend the accouchment. She was plagued with no longings, except the natural one to have him near her when his child was born, but with the ocean between them she had resigned herself not to hope for that; though she did hope that his duty to Mr. Pitt would not detain him so long in Europe as to deprive her of the joy of presenting his first-born to him while still an infant.

  The second letter co
ntained assurances of her continued good health and general news about social life in Martinique, including several paragraphs about Clarissa, who continued to be the toast of the island, but would give preference to none of her beaux for more than a few weeks apiece, and had now refused at least a dozen offers of marriage.

  Roger had hardly digested Amanda’s great news when Droopy came in from a meeting of the Royal Society of Arts; and over supper together the two old friends drank far more than was good for them in healths to Amanda and her precious burden.

  Next morning Roger went round to Downing Street and sent up his name to Mr. Pitt. His master kept him waiting for the best part of two hours, but then received him with a smile and said: ‘I feel sure you have much to tell me, Mr. Brook; so I have despatched my most urgent business and am now freed to listen to you with an easy mind. You will, I trust, join me in a glass of port?’

  With a word of thanks, Roger accepted the wine the Prime Minister poured for him and sat down on the far side of the document-strewn table, then proceeded to give a lucid account of his doings for the past seven weeks. He ended by saying:

  ‘So you will appreciate, Sir, that for several months at least our plans must lie dormant. Without assurances of support in Paris, Pichegru will not move; and I am convinced that there is no hope of such support being forthcoming until some fresh turn of fortune’s wheel displaces the rogues who have recently secured to themselves the supreme power in France. That I should have failed you in this I deeply regret, but.…’