The wanton princess rb-8

by Dennis Wheatley

  Roger had a shrewd suspicion that Jeanne knew perfectly well what was happening and had asked his advice only to provide a reason for them to have further meetings. In con­sequence, instead of giving his opinion right away, he said that the matter needed going into carefully, and if he might take the papers away he would study them that night. He added that it was her turn to try a bottle of his previous year's vintage, then suggested that she should do so at the chateau next morning when he would be ready to discuss her affairs with her.

  She willingly agreed to do so. and arrived at midday, dressed in a pretty gown of sprigged muslin and carrying a parasol: a small but well-made little person, pink-cheeked and smiling Having given her his views about her papers Roger said they must later consult on what was to be done, then shelved the subject and took her on a leisurely tour of the chateau.

  When she said that she ought to be getting back for her midday meal, he expressed surprise and told her that he had taken it for granted that she would have it with him. Seeing her hesitate, he went on with a smile, 'Surely you cannot be such a stickler for the old conventions as to count it culpable that two neighbours should enjoy a meal together just because they happen to be of opposite sexes?'

  Despite the Revolution. Jeanne had been brought up with bourgeois traditions; but fearing that this splendid gallant from Paris might think her a country bumpkin, she gave way to her own inclination and replied a little hurriedly, 'Cer­tainly not! Such ... such stupidities went out of fashion long ago.'

  Their luncheon together was a great success, and she stayed on well into the afternoon. It was followed by others and two days later, when Roger asked her to brighten one of his lonely evenings by dining with him, she cheerfully waved good-bye to her reputation as of far less importance than pleasing this wonderful man who had come into her life. An hour or so after they had dined, Roger found little difficulty in seducing her.

  That having been satisfactorily accomplished, there was no further point in continuing to pretend that they met mainly to discuss her inheritance, and Roger took her affairs in hand in earnest. Having sent for Maitre Lacourbe to come over from Toulon for an explanation, he gave the lawyer one of the worst half hours he had ever experienced.

  Displaying the cold, hard anger that he could simulate so well when it suited his purpose, he accused his visitor of having callously defrauded a woman whose interests, as his late partner's daughter, it was his sacred duty to protect, on the assumption that because she had no husband or brother to advise her he would not be found out.

  For a few minutes Lacourbe protested violently and threatened to bring an action against Roger for slander. But Roger called his bluff.

  'Go to it, then,' he snapped. 'And, by God, I'll see you rue it. As we are far from Paris and you have influence in these parts, no doubt you are counting upon some corrupt magistrate to give a verdict in your favour. But those days are gone. And you will find the arm of my master, the First Consul, long. Moreover he is swift to act. I have but to write him an account of this matter and before the month is out you will find yourself disbarred. Ah, and facing a charge of malefaction that, knowing the origin of the Prosecutor, no judge will dare set aside lightly.'

  The outcome of this interview was that Lacourbc not only agreed to make restitution, but was blackmailed by Roger into paying such a heavy sum as compensation, for loss of interest, that he positively wailed with grief. Roger then arranged for all of Jeanne's money to be invested in the

  Funds, feeling confident that, under the new government, they would continue to rise and so greatly increase her small fortune.

  Little Jeanne gave expression to her gratitude in a highly practical manner and it was obvious to Roger that she derived great pleasure from doing so. As a 'sop to Cerberus' they continued to live in their respective houses but, as in so small a place it would have been impossible to conceal for long that they were having an affaire, they made no attempt to do so and spent the better part of-each twenty-four hours together. Naturally the servants talked, and this caused con­siderable tittle-tattle among the ladies of the district. A few of the plainer ones said some spiteful things about Jeanne; but the majority envied her her luck and maintained that to expect any young woman who had been a widow for over a year to resist such a dashing figure as the Colonel would have been asking too much. Some even thought that by acting as she was she stood a better chance of hooking him than if she had played the prude.

  For a brief while Jeanne had herself toyed with the breath-taking thought that he might marry her. But in order that she should know where she stood Roger had disabused her of any such idea before persuading her to go to bed with him. With the beautiful Zanthe in mind, he had told Jeanne that while in Egypt he had engaged himself to a noble Tur­kish lady who might at any time arrive in Paris, refraining from adding that Zanthe had since married the young banker Achilles Sarodopulous and some three months before had given birth to a child of whom he was the father.

  Quickly reconciling herself to the knowledge that her relationship with Roger could only be a temporary one, Jeanne had determined to make the most of it while it lasted and Roger found her a delightful companion. Her education left much to be desired, but she had abundant vitality, a happy nature and a ready laugh. For his part he found it a pleasant change to have a mistress who knew little about the great world and international affairs. It was a long time since he had enjoyed a spell of carefree idleness; so through the warm autumn months they were as happy together as two young people on a honeymoon.

  Yet, after four months of this halcyon existence Roger's congenital restlessness again bescl him. He had been given indefinite sick leave but it was getting on for six months since he had been wounded and, having taken good care of him­self, his old capacity for physical exertion was almost res­tored. More and more frequently he found himself wondering how things had been going in Paris and what new schemes Bonaparte was hatching in his fertile brain.

  At the end of the first week in December, not wishing to hurt little leanne by giving her to think that he had tired of her, he told her that he had received a despatch recalling him to duty. And after loving farewells, he set off next morning for Paris.

  7

  Away to Pastures New

  It was in Lyons that Roger heard about the Battle of Hohenlinden. It was common knowledge that after Marengo the First Consul had again offered peace to the Emperor of Austria on the basis reached at Campo Formio, but the Emperor had rejected it; so the war on the far side of the Rhine had continued throughout the autumn.

  According to the bulletin in the Moniteur, the Archduke John, seeking to emulate the new methods of war introduced by Bonaparte, had formed the ambitious project of out­flanking the French and cutting off their retreat. But such operations depended for their success on swiftness of movement and to that the Austrian had never been trained. In consequence, after rashly leaving his strong position, the Archduke's deployment was too slow to take the French unawares. On December 2nd Moreau concentrated his troops round the village of Hohenlinden on an open plain in the middle of the forest that clothes the great plateau of Ebersberg. To penetrate the woods the Austrians had to break up their formations and were unable to make use of their cavalry. Leaving General Grenier with a strong force to oppose the enemy as they approached the village, Moreau had executed a flank movement with the rest of his Army, led it through the forest and round to the Austrian rear. Caught between two fires, the Archduke's troops had surged back on themselves, broken and completely routed. They lost twenty thousand men in killed, wounded and prisoners, so it was a victory of the first magnitude.

  Roger already knew that early in September Malta had surrendered to the English, and that on the same day that Desaix was killed. General Klebcr, whom Bonaparte had left to command in Egypt, had been assassinated in Cairo. Then on reaching Paris he soon caught up with the other news.

  The Blanchards told him of Bonaparte's triumphant return from Marengo and of how, as he w
as more popular than ever, great indignation had been caused in October by a plot to assassinate him. He was a great votary of the Opera, and said then to be having an affaire with a beautiful singer named Madame Grassini, whom he had brought back from Italy with him. On the 10th he had gone to a performance, and an attempt had been made to murder him as he left his box. The leaders of the conspiracy had been two Corsicans named Ceracchi and Ardna, and the painter Demerville. Most fortunately, they had been seized and overpowered before they could harm him.

  From Talleyrand Roger heard the inside story. Demerville, being a braugart, had boasted of the plot to a penniless officer named Harel, who had been dismissed from the Army, and he had reported the matter to Bourrienne. On being informed of what was afoot, the First Consul had ordered that the attempt should be allowed to proceed while Fouche took precautions to protect him against it. In conse­quence, he had never been in any danger but made great capital out of the affair.

  With lazy satisfaction Talleyrand then spoke of the success that had crowned his negotiations with Russia. Having detached Paul I from the Coalition the previous winter France had since been wooing him. The vain, feeble-minded Czar had taken a childish delight in having been elected Grand Prior of the Knights of Malta and had had a gorgeous uniform suitable to that dignitary made to strut about in. The British having captured Malta, he had expected them to hand it over to him and had taken great umbrage at their refusal. Bonaparte had then made him a present of the Knights' famous sword of Valetta, which had pleased him greatly. Declaring himself to be the friend of France, he had revived the League of Armed Neutrality, by which ships of the Northern Nations resisted attempts by the British Navy to search them for and confiscate, any contraband-of-war they might be carrying: and this interference with their profitable commerce had resulted in Denmark and Sweden declaring war on Britain.

  As a result of the armistice after Marengo. French and Austrian plenipotentiaries had met at Luneville to discuss the possibilities of a permanent peace; but the Austrians had shilly-shalleyed for so long that Bonaparte had lost patience with them and, in November, declared his intention of resuming the war.

  Brunc had succeeded Massena as Commander-in-Chief Italy. He had been joined by Macdonald, who had brought his army over the Splügen Pass—a feat much more remarkable than Bonaparte's crossing of the St. Bernard because the former had been accomplished so late in the year and in spite of vile weather. Brune had then crossed the Mincio in force, and the two Generals were now driving the Austrians before them up into the old Venetian lands. Meanwhile Moreau had shattered the other Austrian army by his great victory at Hohenlinden: so Talleyrand was in hopes that, soon now, the Austrians would at least see reason and throw in their hand. Murat, meanwhile, had been despatched south, had driven all before him. entered Naples and compelled King Ferdinand to accept a French garrison and sign a Convention closing his ports to British ships.

  Roger's reception by Bonaparte proved not only disap­pointing but alarming. Later he put it down to the First Consul's being in an ill humour from having learned that for the past few days everyone in Paris had been saying that Moreau's victory at Hohenlinden was a much greater triumph than his at Marengo; as indeed it was, since Moreau had not first nearly lost the battle and he had inflicted more than double the number of casualties on the enemy.

  It was in any case well known that Bonaparte, while a generous man in other ways, was always jealous of the suc­cess of other generals and mean in his praise of them. After Marengo he had claimed the credit for Desaix's splendid counter-attack and, instead of promoting young Kellermann for his well-judged action which had proved decisive, had merely remarked to him, 'You made a very good charge'.

  Whatever the cause of his irritability on the morning that Roger reported to him, after briefly congratulating him on his recovery he said abruptly:

  'Bourrienne no longer has a use for you. He has acquired a very able young man named Meneval as his assistant.'

  'What then would you have me do, Consul?' asked Roger.

  'I know not,' came the testy reply. 'If you can think of some way to serve me, come to me again.'

  Roger bowed, turned and made for the door. He had nearly reached it when the harsh voice cried behind him, 'Stay! I am losing my wits. I'll forget my own name next. You travelled across India in the summer of '97, did you not?'

  Actually, that after three and a half years he should have recalled such a fact about one of the hundreds of officers with whom he was in contact was a demonstration of his remarkable memory. Replying that he had, Roger turned about to find him perched on the edge of his desk swinging his legs and now all smiles.

  'Then, Breuc, you are the very man I'm looking for,' he said quickly. 'It is probable that you can inform me on many matters about which I am anxious to know.'

  Slipping off his desk he crossed the room to a cabinet of maps, pulled one out, opened it, spread it on the floor, lay down at full length facing it and signed to Roger to join him. Having made Roger trace his journey right across the sub­continent from Calcutta to Bombay, during the next half hour he shot a hundred questions at him about the cities through which he had passed, the personalities of their rulers, the religions of the people, their like or dislike of the British, the climate, the navigability of the rivers and a score of other matters.

  At length he got to his feet, playfully pulled Roger's car and said:

  'Breuc, your arrival is most opportune. I am preparing an expedition to wrest India from the English. You shall go with it as A.D.C.-in-Chicf to the Commander. You will be invaluable to him. Report to Berthier, tell him I have nominated you for that post and that I wish you to work with him on the preparations for this project.'

  The appointment meant promotion, so Roger hurriedly stammered his thanks, then left the room filled with dismay. With the possible exception of Egypt, India was the last place in the world that he wanted to go to again; but it would have been useless, even dangerous, to say so.

  At Berthier's headquarters, he found the ill-made little Chief-of-Staff clad in one of the spectacular uniforms that he and Murat were so fond of designing for themselves; but where the tall cavalryman had the figure and panache to carry them off, they made this human filing cabinet only look ridiculous.

  Having said that Roger's assistance would be welcome, Berthier informed him that General Menou had succeeded Klebcr as C.-in-C. Egypt, and that before going on to India the new expedition would reinforce and secure his position there. He then spoke of Kleber's assassination. It had occurred on a spot that they had both known well—the terrace of a Palace that Bonaparte had occupied while in Cairo. Adjacent to the terrace there was an old empty cistern which could be entered from the garden. The assassin, a young fanatic named Soleiman Haleby, had concealed him­self in the cistern and. when Kleber had come out to stroll on the terrace, scrambled out of the cistern and stabbed him with a dagger. Bonaparte, when occupying the Palace, had often taken his exercise on the terrace in the evenings, and had been warned of the danger of leaving the cistern unguarded, but had ignored it. They now agreed that it was fortunate for France that it was not he who had fallen a victim to the Mohammedan's dagger.

  The following morning Roger started work with a group of officers who were planning the expedition to India. In his free time, he looked up a number of friends and paid his duly calls.

  The First Consul had offered his mother a suite of apartments in the Tuilleries, but she had refused it and was living with her eldest son Joseph and his sweet wife Julie, at their splendid mansion in the Rue du Rochcr.

  Although Madame Letizia was as yet only fifty years old, the hardships through which she had passed, her great strength of character and the uprightness of her disposition combined to give her the prestige of a far more venerable woman. Having questioned Roger closely about his wound, knowing him to be intimate with her most brilliant son, she spoke to him openly of her distress that Napoleon should have quarrelled with Lucien.

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sp; She had not the least interest in politics and thought only of the well-being of her children, maintaining always that she loved best, at any time, the one who was suffering most. Put it could not be doubted that Lucien was her favourite son and she intensely resented Napoleon's having deprived him of his office.

  The only sympathy that Roger felt for Lucien was that he had lost his simple, sweetnatured wife Catherine in the pre­ceding Spring. Otherwise he regarded him as a dangerous fanatic who might, if given the chance, endanger the First Consul's regeneration of France. Further, Roger despised him as the worst possible type of pseudo 'Friend of the People' for he had used his position as Minister of the Interior to amass a great fortune at their expense and to persuade or blackmail into sleeping with him many pretty women.

  Napoleon's oldest sister, Eliza, was also a great partisan of Lucien's. After Brumaire her ineffective husband, Bacciocchi, had been packed off to attend to certain administrative matters in Corsica and Marseilles, upon which she had hap­pily settled down, Lucien's wife being ill, to take charge of his menage in the Grande Rue Verte. They regarded themselves as spiritual affinities and both looked on the other as an astute literary critic. On the money that they owed to the First Consul's liberality they had a happy time gathering distinguished writers round them and encouraging them to write articles criticizing Napoleon.

  When Roger called upon Eliza he found her dressed in an unbelievably ugly garb of her own design which she told him was to serve as the uniform of a new Literary Society she was forming and, knowing him to be an educated man, she invited him to become a member. Having pleaded that his military commitments were, at the moment, too onerous to permit him that pleasure, he bowed himself out of the pre­sence of Napoleon's blue-stocking sister.

  Young Caroline Murat he found equally discontented with the way things were going. She alone of Madame Letizia's children possessed the individuality and determination which, had she been a man, could have made her another Napoleon. As things were she could achieve her boundless ambitions only through her husband. As a girl of seventeen, when at Bonaparte's headquarters in Italy after his victorious cam­paign of '96, she had fallcn in love with Murat. and he with her. To her fury she had then been sent to Madame Campan's Academy to acquire a finishing education. She had sullenly refused to take advantage of this opportunity: but those years of boredom had not deflected her from her pur­pose of acquiring Murat for a husband, and he had con­tinued to regard her, as his General's sister, as a good catch. So much so that, on the night of 18th Brumaire, he had sent a couple of his Hussars to pound on the door of the Academy and shout the news to her that he and Bonaparte had saved the Revolution.