Flopping into bed he was almost instantly asleep, and he slept on well into the following morning. When he did become fully awake he rang for the chambermaid and told her to bring him a substantial breakfast. Hungry as a hunter, he ate it in bed, then proceeded slowly to wash and dress himself in becoming clothes from the chest that had been brought down from the attic. While doing so he groaned more than once, for he was terribly stiff from his long ride on the previous day and the insides of his thighs were almost raw.
It was midday before he made his way downstairs and encountered the landlord coming out of the coffee room. With a smiling bow to him, Maitre Blanchard addressed him in a low voice as ‘Monsieur le Chevalier’ then said, ‘Knowing one of your favourite dishes to be duck, my wife is about to braise one in the Normandy fashion for dinner. We should be greatly honoured if you would join us.’
Roger had enjoyed many a good meal in the Blanchards’s private parlour, and he assented with the utmost readiness. He whiled away an hour scanning the latest issues of the Moniteur, then was summoned and went through to greet his motherly hostess.
Over the meal, which they washed down with two bottles of excellent Chambolle Musigny, Roger told them of the voyage he had made to India, of his return via Egypt and Venice and of his having been given a post on General Bonaparte’s Staff. To this simple couple India seemed as distant as another planet and they listened with rapt attention while he was describing its strangeness, colour and marvels. Then, when Maître Blanchard produced a dust-encrusted bottle of his native Calvados, Roger—knowing that his host followed all political developments with shrewd interest and that his clients kept him well informed about what was going on—said:
‘But enough of myself. Tell me now how you have fared, and the latest gossip in this great city of Paris.’
‘Monsieur, we cannot complain,’ replied Blanchard. ‘In fact by last September things had become quite like old times and———’
‘Old times!’ interrupted his wife. ‘How can you say that when those who rule us flaunt their godlessness and lechery so shamelessly?’ Turning to Roger, she went on indignantly, ‘Paris has become another Babylon, monsieur. The Christian faith is mocked at, the men have made money their god, and the women of all classes sell themselves; the richer ones for jewels, and the poorer ones for a good dinner or a few ribbons.’
‘That was already the case when I was last here,’ Roger commented. ‘While one does not approve such a state of things, it is, to some extent, understandable. Having lived in fear for so long, when any display of rich living could lead to the guillotine and all forms of enjoyment were frowned on by the Committee of Public Safety, it is hardly surprising that when the Terror ended a wave of hysterical relief should sweep people into giving free rein to their baser passions.’
‘You misunderstood me, my love,’ added her husband. ‘By “old times” I meant that there was much more money about, men were beginning to address one another as “Monsieur” again, instead of “Citoyen”, and many people who had been in prison or had fled from the Terror were once more freely walking the streets of Paris.’
‘The 18th Fructidor altered all that,’ Madame Blanchard put in quickly.
Her husband nodded. ‘As I was about to say, we have since suffered another revolution and, but for the threat of the guillotine, we again suffer under a tyranny almost as bad as that of Robespierre.’
‘That was General Augereau’s doing, was it not?’ Roger remarked.
‘Yes. He arrived here from Italy in the late summer. Covered with jewels and prancing about on his great charger, he rode round the city stirring up trouble wherever he went. By early September he had hatched a plot with Barras. On the 4th he led two thousand soldiers to the Legislative Assembly, arrested the officers of its guard and suborned their men. When the Deputies asked him by what right he dare break into their Chamber he waved his sabre in their faces and bellowed, “By the law of the sword”. He arrested some of them and dispersed the rest. By nightfall it was all over. Barras placarded the city with announcements that a Royalist plot had been discovered and that the revolution had been saved only by immediate action. Over two hundred Constitutionalist Deputies were permanently deprived of their seats. Carnot got away, but Barthélemy refused to flee. He, General Pichegru and some dozen other leaders of the Moderates were condemned to transportation and shipped off to Cayenne.’
Madame Blanchard raised her eyes and hands in horror. ‘Monsieur, you cannot conceive that even the worst of men could treat others of their kind with such brutality. They were trundled across France all the way to Rochefort in open iron cages on wheels, half-starved, and at every stop that was made their guards allowed mobs of ruffians to pelt them with refuse. Even worse followed, for it has since been learned that their voyage to America lasted seven whole weeks. For all that time they lay battened down in the hold with only weevilly biscuits and brackish water to sustain them.’
‘Indeed, madame,’ Roger agreed, with a sad shake of his head, the “dry” guillotine is far more to be feared than the “wet” one. Many of them, too, were men advanced in years who, as in the case of poor Barthélemy, had rendered valuable service to their country. It is disgraceful that they should have received such treatment.’
After a moment he turned to Blanchard and asked, ‘Is it believed that there was a Royalist plot?’
‘No; not the ghost of one,’ the landlord declared firmly. ‘I doubt if there was a single Deputy who wanted a King back, and most of the Constitutionalists differed so widely from one another in their views of what ought to be done that no group would have been large enough to overthrow the Directory.’
‘Since they had in common the aims of securing a greater degree of tolerance and bringing about a peace, I find it surprising that sufficient of them did not combine to form a powerful party.’
‘That can be partly explained by the seating arrangements in the Chamber, initiated by the Thermidorians. With the object of preventing the formation of such formidable blocs as the “Mountain”, which might have opposed them, the Directors got a law passed that a separate chair and desk should be provided for each Deputy, and once a month they had to draw lots for where they were to sit. The result was that no two of them sat side by side for more than four weeks. Men of similar opinions could not get together and consult with one another during a session, so their opposition was uncoordinated and haphazard.’
‘From what I am told, I gather the Jacobins again have complete control of the situation.’
‘Yes; and they’ve brought back all the old repressive measures. They have removed every magistrate and official in the Departments where the expelled Deputies were elected, and reinstated their own cronies. Between 10th Thermidor and 18th Fructidor over fifteen thousand names were struck from the lists of émigrés, but there have since been very few. Hearing of the turn things had taken, thousands of other exiles return without waiting to be struck off the lists. They were publicly welcomed by their friends and no action was taken against them. Now they are in hiding and again in fear of their lives. Should they be denounced to one of these Jacobin courts I was speaking of they are certain to be shot, as the penalty for returning without a permit is death.’
‘And the poor Fathers,’ lamented Madame Blanchard. ‘All over France they had come out of hiding and, although the churches remained closed to them, no objection was raised to their celebrating Mass. Everywhere people were crowding into rooms to hear them, and had begun publicly to observe Sundays again. But now, wherever they can be found, they are seized and killed. On Sundays, too, these abominable atheists compel everyone to work and the children to attend school, while on every tenth day shops must close and anyone who lifts a finger is liable to a heavy fine.’
Her husband nodded. ‘Yes, the persecution of the religious is as fierce as ever it was. And, of course, that has set La Vendée aflame once more. General Hoche had done a fine thing there. They sent him to exterminate the Breton priests and th
eir followers. But he was a clever man as well as a brave one. After defeating the Chouans he met their leaders and agreed to grant them a degree of religious tolerance. The country was pacified in no time so, instead of a great Army being tied up there burning villages and massacring indiscriminately men, women and children, he was able to send the greater part of his troops to reinforce our Armies abroad under General Bonaparte and General Moreau.’
‘I heard tell of Hoche’s wise conduct while I was in Italy,’ Roger said. ‘It was a tragedy that he should have been carried off by a consumption last September. And doubly so for a man like him, for one may be certain he would have been far happier had he died in action with his troops, even had it been when their transports were caught and sunk by Admiral Duncan at the battle of Camperdown.’
‘His death is a great loss; but I know one man who has no cause to regret it,’ remarked the landlord shrewdly, ‘and that’s General Bonaparte.’
Roger smiled. ‘You are right. Hoche was the only General with the ability, charm and strength of character to have become his rival. Now the “Little Corporal’s” place as first soldier in the Armies of France cannot be disputed.’
For an hour or so longer they continued to talk, then Roger thanked his good friends for the excellent meal and went out to pay his respects to his master.
The house occupied by Bonaparte in the Rue de la Victoire had been given by Barras to Josephine—whom most people believed to have been his mistress—before her marriage. A soldier now stood on guard between two stone lions flanking a long passage that led from the street. He accompanied Roger along to the small, two-storeyed villa at its end where, having sent in his name, Roger was allowed to enter. A servant took him through to the back of the house and into a drawing room with french windows looking on to a little garden.
Bonaparte was standing in a corner, talking animatedly in his harsh voice with its strong Italian accent to Pléville Le Pelay, the Minister of Marine. He acknowledged Roger’s entrance with only a nod. But Josephine was seated by the fireplace, with the son and daughter she had had by her ‘first’ husband, the Vicomte de Beauharnais, and all three of them greeted Roger with obvious pleasure.
Josephine was then in her thirty-fifth year and was a dark, well-preserved beauty. Her well-rounded form was supple, her manner languorous and she gave the impression that if a man took her in his arms she would give a sigh and melt in his embrace. Her reputation was far from spotless, but no worse than the majority of the women who made up the high society of the post-revolutionary era, and she was the soul of kindness. Her only physical shortcomings was that she had bad teeth.
Roger was one of the very few people who knew that her marriage to Beauharnais had been bigamous, as when a very young girl in Martinique passion had led her into a secret marriage with a youth named William de Kay. Just before she married Bonaparte, Roger had succeeded in saving her from the public exposure of her youthful folly and she had more than repaid the debt sixteen months later by saving his life; so they were firm friends.
The boy, Eugène, was now close on seventeen: a high-spirited and charming lad. In response to his desperate pleading, Bonaparte had taken him to Italy as his junior aide-de-camp; so, in his fine uniform, he now considered himself very much a war-hardened soldier. But he had not forgotten that it was Roger who had given him his first brace of pistols, or the friendship they had developed when they had met again in Italy. The girl, Hortense was younger by a year or so. She was no great beauty, but had a pair of fine-blue eyes and a mass of fuzzy, fair hair.
Someone must have told Josephine that Roger had narrowly escaped being shot as a spy, as she at once made him sit down and tell them about his terrible adventure. When he had finished he asked her about herself, upon which she began loudly to lament her husband’s conduct.
‘His behaviour is absurd,’ she declared. ‘When he first returned to Paris he was given a tremendous reception and quite graciously accepted the homage of the crowds; but since then he has gone like a snail into its shell. He refuses all invitations and declines to entertain here. I can get him to the Opera, because he enjoys that, but when the audience learn that he is in the house and call for him for minutes on end he flatly refuses to give them the pleasure of even seeing him. He sits through the whole performances in the back of the box, while Bourrienne, Junot or some other friend he takes with him is made to sit in front with me, so that he can pretend not to be there.’
Knowing Josephine’s love of excitement and parties, Roger could well understand how disappointed she must feel at being deprived of a wife’s right to share the glory of the national hero, particularly as before her husband’s return she had had a wonderful time, being hailed everywhere she went as ‘Our Lady of Victories’. But Bonaparte had caught what she said and, striding over, reproved her:
‘Madame, you are talking foolishly. There is nothing so fickle as the applause of the mob. Did I go here, there and everywhere I would be fawned on for a fortnight and then become just one more General. If I stood up at the front of the box each time we go to the Opera I should be wildly cheered once or twice, but on the fourth or fifth occasion the audience would not even turn their heads to look at me. No. I mean to keep the place that I have won in the imagination of the people by my victories. That is why I am anxious to get away from Paris as soon as possible.’
Turning to Roger he added, ‘For the moment, Breuc, I have no matters on which I can employ you. Leave your address in the hall so that you can be sent for if required. Should you not hear from me, report here again a week from today. By then I expect to have settled plans for the future. You may go now when you wish.’
As Roger’s call had already lasted about half an hour he stayed only for a few minutes longer, talking to Josephine and her children, then he took his leave.
That evening he went to the Palais du Luxembourg, in which each of the Directors occupied a handsome suite of apartments. Mounting the marble staircase to the long, lofty gallery that had been allotted to Barras as his ante-room, he found it packed with people. They were assembled there to ask favours or simply, by showing themselves as his courtiers, to retain the great man’s goodwill. Among them he found a score of acquaintances and soon learned that the story of his misadventures was already the talk of Paris.
Nothing could have pleased him better, for the more widely it was believed that he had an English cousin who resembled him, and for whom a British seaman had mistaken him, the stronger his position became.
In due course the great double doors at the end of the gallery were thrown open and handsome, flamboyant ‘King Paul’ emerged through them. The crowd divided, making a lane down which he slowly progressed, receiving petitions which he passed to a secretary who followed him and bestowing smiles of greeting on his friends.
On coming opposite Roger he paused and said with a smile, ‘I hear that you have been in even greater danger than when you charged that battery of cannon at Toulon. You must join us for supper and tell us about it.’
When he had made his way back up the lane two score or more of people, with Roger among them, whom he had invited followed him into the spacious supper room. Long tables were set along three of the walls, weighed down with every expensive food and extravagant confection that a great chef could devise. There was a row of silver wine-coolers, each holding half a dozen quarts of Champagne, and, for those who preferred them, there were Burgundy, Claret, Anjou, Tourraine, Sauternes, Florence wine, Alicanti, Rhenish and Moselle.
For the better part of three hours the company ate, drank and made merry, until the tables were a shambles, their clothes were slopped with spilt wine and the women, whose fashion in dress had progressed from décolletée to little more than a gold-trimmed tunic slit up one side to the hip, were openly allowing the men to take the freest liberties with them.
Roger enjoyed it up to the point when many of the women became maudlin. Nearly all were attractive and some were really beautiful. During the course of the
evening two out of three who had aroused his interest made it clear that they were quite prepared to leave the party for anywhere he chose to take them. But the memory of the nights he had spent with the incomparable Georgina were still too fresh in his mind for him to spoil them wilfully by a casual night of lechery with one of these young women, who were highly desirable but anybody’s property; so in the early hours of the morning he took a coach back to La Belle Etoile on his own.
Next day he went to the best tailor in Paris and ordered new uniforms, as he had had to leave his others at his little chateau in the south of France. The tailor was used to obliging officers who had received orders to leave at short notice for one of the battle-fronts, and promised to have Roger’s uniforms finished in three days.
During the week before he was to report to Bonaparte again he visited all his old haunts, and in the evenings attended the salons of Mesdames Tallien, de Chateau-Renault, de Staël and de Récamier. They were crowded with émígrés who had received permission to return from exile, ex-terrorists who had survived the Thermidorian purge, foreign diplomats, Army contractors who had made fortunes and lovely women who had made a name for themselves by their looks and immorality.
By this time they had recovered from the shock of Fructidor and spoke with cynical amusement of those who had been destroyed by it through not having been clever enough to ensure themselves of the protection of Barras and his cronies. No secret was made of the fact that such protection could be bought for a round sum down, and the bribes that had been paid to Ministers and officials for various services were talked of openly. In this connection the name of Talleyrand was mentioned as frequently as that of Barras. It was said that the Foreign Minister had blackmailed the ambassadors of several countries to the tune of over a million francs and demanded huge sums from them before he would consent to clauses which would benefit their countries being embodied in trade agreements.
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