The Launching of Roger Brook

by Dennis Wheatley

  ‘What is that, Monsieur?’

  ‘A métayer is one who acquires the right to cultivate a piece of land in return for a share of its produce. The system is always unsatisfactory, as the cultivator is naturally tempted to conceal the true bulk of his crops and the landlord, rightly or wrongly, always believes that he is being cheated,’

  ‘Even so,’ remarked Roger, ‘if the peasants have succeeded in buying nearly half the land in France it does not seem that their condition can be so deplorable.’

  Monsieur Lautrade nodded. ‘They would be no worse situated than the peasantry of other countries were they left to go about their work as they wished, and allowed to dispose of their produce as they thought fit. ’Tis the corvée and the droits de seigneur which deprive them of any hope of prosperity and fill them with discontent. By the corvée they may at any time, perhaps at such important seasons as the sowing or the harvest, be taken from their land for enforced labour on the roads, bridges and other government construction. And in many places the droits de seigneur are extremely oppressive.’

  ‘Do they vary then? I thought the droit de seigneur was the right of a noble to send for any girl living in one of the villages on his estate, on the night of her marriage, and have her sleep with him whether she was willing or no.’

  ‘’Tis one of the droits,’ agreed the bailiff, with a smile. ‘And ’twas exercised, no doubt, in the middle ages. But can you see a fastidious gentleman like Monseigneur taking one of our uncultured village wenches into his bed?’

  ‘I know one or two that I would not mind taking into mine,’ Chenou grinned.

  ‘You do so, anyhow, you handsome rogue,’ laughed Lautrade. ‘’Tis said that not one of them is safe from you, and that they fall willing enough victims to your fine black moustachios.’

  ‘Aye! I have my share of fun,’ the chief huntsman acknowledged. ‘But you’re right about Monseigneur, and his kind. They have no stomach for such strong, garlic-flavoured dishes and have long since ceased to exercise their privileges.’

  ‘I was referring to numerous other droits,’ Lautrade went on. ‘There are many and they vary with each manor, but some are common to all. There is the droit de colombier, by which the seigneur may keep as many pigeons as he chooses, which find their food as much in the peasants’ fields as in his own; the droit de chasse, which reserves all game exclusively for the seigneur’s amusement. Then there are the banalités which oblige the peasant to send his corn to the seigneur’s mills, his grapes to the seigneur’s winepress, and his flour to the seigneur’s oven. For each such operation a fee is exacted and on badly run estates the work is often ill-done or subject to irritating delays against which there is no redress. In addition there are the péages, or tolls that the peasant is called on to pay whenever he takes a cartload of produce more than a mile or so from his home. To use every road or cross any river he must pay something either to the Crown, the Church, or to some noble. But you must know this yourself, and that one must also pay to cross each line of customs barriers that separate the provinces from one another. ’Tis this infinity of little outgoings that rob the peasant of his substance.’

  ‘It sounds a most burdensome catalogue,’ Roger agreed. ‘But surely the noblesse could well afford to give some relief from this local taxation?’

  Lautrade shrugged. ‘The rich ones who live at Versailles know little of the peasants’ lot and care less. The rest, and they form the great majority, are mostly too poor themselves to make such a sacrifice. For hundreds of years such families have sent their menfolk to France’s wars, and to equip themselves for each campaign they have been compelled to part with a little more of their land to the thrifty peasants. Now, thousands of them have naught left but a château and a few acres of grazing ground. ’Tis that which makes them so insistent on the retention of their privileges. I know of noble families who eke out a miserable existence on as little as twenty-five louis a year; and if they gave up their droits they would be faced with starvation.’

  ‘To my mind, ’tis the restrictions on selling produce that hit the peasant hardest,’ cut in Chenou. ‘In a bad season he garners scarce enough to feed himself, so ’tis but fair that when he has a good one he should be allowed to make a bit for putting by. Yet the corn laws forbid him to sell his surplus to the highest bidder, and he is compelled to turn it in at the Government depôt for whatever skinflint price the grain ring have agreed to give for it. But come, I must be getting back to take a look at a mare that should be foaling some time tonight.’

  As he stood up Roger rose with him, and said angrily: ‘Such measures are iniquitous, and I no longer wonder that so many people curse the government. I doubt if people in any other country would suffer its continuance.’

  ‘Nay, take not an exaggerated view,’ demurred Lautrade, as he escorted them to the door. ‘Serfdom is now almost abolished in France, and the whole country is far richer than it was half a century ago. The peasants live a hard life but their condition here is better than in any other part of Europe, except perhaps in England and the United Provinces. If you would see real poverty, you should go to Spain as I did, not many years ago, to bring back a fresh supply of trees for Monseigneur’s orangery.’

  Still thinking of these things Roger rode back to the château, to find that a letter had arrived from his mother. In it she told him that, after two years at Portsmouth, his father had now been reposted as Rear-Admiral, Channel Squadron; so, as long as no war broke out, his ships would spend a great part of the year in harbour and, to her joy, he could continue to be much at home.

  Roger took the news quite casually. Occasionally he still longed to be back in England, but the time had passed when he would have given almost anything to return and have the chance of starting his career again. He now had not only good food and comfortable quarters, but servants to wait on him, horses to ride and a splendid library at his disposal. His task was a fascinating one and he was not tied to it by any regulated hours. His pay of forty louis a year was the equivalent of the salary that, on his last night at Sherborne, old Toby had told him he might hope to receive after getting his B.A. as a tutor to a nobleman’s son. It was no fortune, but it was clear gain as he could not spend a single sou of it as long as he remained at Bécherel. In the meantime he was, for all practical purposes, his own master and, enjoying as he did the droit de chasse, led a life not far removed from that of the petit noblesse, yet without any of its cares and responsibilities.

  By the approach of Christmas he found himself a little jaded from his long hours of poring over the old parchments, and while Chenou was the best of companions with whom to hunt or fence, Roger began to feel an oppressive sense of loneliness during the long dark evenings; so he decided to take a holiday and spend Christmas with the Légers.

  He could have ridden in to Rennes but he wanted to take a good supply of Christmas fare to his friends, so Chenou made no difficulty about placing a coach at his disposal: and when he left on the morning of Christmas Eve the coach carried more than his own weight in venison, hares and partridges.

  The Légers, Brochard, Manon and Julien Quatrevaux were all delighted to see him and, to his great pleasure, he learned that the latter two had decided to regularise their liaison by getting married in the spring; so Julien, as Manon’s fiancé, now made one of the family party.

  They gave him news of the other friends he had made in Rennes, related to him the latest gossip, and brought him up to date on the affairs of the wider world from which, in recent months, he had been almost completely isolated.

  The principal topic of interest was still a flood of rumours in connection with the affaire du Collier, as the scandal centring round the stolen diamond necklace had come to be called. It appeared that the necklace had been offered to the Queen, but she had publicly refused to buy it; saying that for a million and a half livres the King could get him a battleship, and that his need of another ship-of-the-line was greater than her need for more diamonds. But, so rumour ran, she had de
termined to buy this unique collection of gems privately and, as her agent, had used an ambitious and designing woman called the Countess de Valois de la Motte; then, having entered into the bargain, she had found herself short of funds and resorted to borrowing from the fabulously wealthy Cardinal, who was anxious to gain her favour. There seemed no doubt that the Cardinal had received the necklace from the jewellers and sent it to the Queen, imagining that he was acting on her wishes, by the hand of Madame de la Motte; but the Queen flatly denied having received the necklace and ever having entered into any correspondence with the Cardinal.

  Madame de la Motte, an adventurer styling himself Count Caglistro and a courtesan named Mademoiselle Gay d’Oliva, had been sent to join the Cardinal de Rohan in the Bastille; and he, although as a Prince of the Church not normally subject to the jurisdiction of a secular court, was so determined to prove his innocence that he had agreed to submit to a public trial by the Parliament of Paris. All France was agog for the disclosures which it was expected would be made at the trial, as the honour of not only the Cardinal but also the Queen was now at stake.

  One evening towards the end of Roger’s stay, Brochard took him down to their old haunt for a chat, and asked him how he spent his evenings at the château.

  ‘Sometimes I work,’ replied Roger, ‘but as the Marquis has given me the run of his fine library, I more often make myself comfortable in there with a book.’

  For a time they talked literature and on Brochard learning that Roger had been entertaining himself with the plays of Corneille, Racine and Molière, the serious-minded Bordelais reprimanded him; saying that if he wished to become a lawyer he should use this opportunity to ground himself in sociology, and read such authors as Montesquieu, Dupont of Nemours, de Quesnay, Rousseau, Voltaire, Mirabeau and Mably.

  To become a good lawyer was by no means Roger’s final ambition in life, but he said that he would be glad to have a list to take back with him as he had no doubt that many of those authors were on the Marquis’s shelves. Brochard then asked him if he still took an interest in international affairs.

  ‘As far as I am able to do so,’ Roger told him, ‘but since the departure of the family the news sheets no longer reach us. I heard, though, a few weeks ago, from Monseigneur’s bailiff that the Dutch affair had at last been settled.’

  Brochard nodded. ‘Yes, by the Treaty of Fontainebleau, signed on November the eighth. By it the Dutch have agreed to demolish their forts on either bank of the Scheldt and open the river to the Austrian traffic. The Emperor, in return, has given up his claim to the sovereignty of Maastricht for a payment of ten million florins. The Dutch would go only to five and half a million, so to clinch matters the balance is to be paid out of the French exchequer. ’Tis a great triumph for our Foreign Minister, the Comte de Vergennes, and the peace party.’

  ‘I don’t quite see why we should have to pay up for the Dutch,’ said Roger thoughtfully.

  ‘Nor do many other people. There has been a prodigious outcry on that account. Yet had we landed ourselves with war instead ’twould have cost us a hundred times that sum. ’Twas cheap at the price to my mind. The only trouble is that the Dutch may yet drag us into a conflict if we give full support to their Republican party, who are endeavouring to unseat the Stadtholder, and England comes to his assistance.’

  ‘You still feel that another war would spell ruin to France?’

  ‘More so than ever. Since Monsieur de Calonne became Comptroller-General he has launched loan after loan, each offering a higher rate of interest than the last and each less successful than its predecessor. But the country no longer has any faith in the stability of the Government. On the first of this month, as a last desperate measure, he resorted to an attempt to debase our currency. He is offering twenty-five livres for every gold louis having a face value of twenty-four, which is sent in to the mint; and the gold is to be reminted in new louis having a tenth less weight than the old ones. ’Tis the expedient of a bankrupt and it needs but a national calamity of some kind to produce financial chaos.’

  ‘Why are the French finances in such a parlous state?’ asked Roger. ‘Cannot the King possibly do something about it?’

  Brochard shrugged his broad shoulders. ‘He could, and has the wish but not the will. He is hopelessly weak and lacks the courage to support those who counsel wise reforms, against the intrigues of the Queen and the nobles.’

  ‘Perhaps he fears that if he sponsored measures of too liberal a nature the nobles would rebel against him?’

  ‘They no longer have the power to do so, and the game is in his hands if only he had the strength of mind to play it. When he came to the throne in ‘74 at the age of twenty, he was full of good intentions. He is of simple tastes and had kept himself unbesmirched by the mire of his grandfather’s court. He threw out Louis XV’s ministers with the Du Barry and the rest of that licentious rabble. He then had a golden opportunity, but, instead of taking some able economist for his principal minister, he appointed old de Maurepas, a man of over eighty; who had been a minister under Louis XIV, if you please, and had been ousted two generations before by Madame de Pompadour.’

  Roger nodded as Brochard went on, angrily:

  ‘Then, with the appointment of Turgot as Comptroller-General, he had another chance. Turgot had been Intendant of the Limousin. He was by far the most enlightened of these provincial viceroys, and later was Minister for the Navy. Turgot was, perhaps, the greatest man that France has produced in the present century. He comprehended all the fundamental ills from which the country was suffering and propounded suitable remedies. He was brilliant, broad-minded, honest, and the King believed in him; yet he allowed him to be hounded from office. After a period of retrogression, Necker arrived on the scene. He was an incomparably lesser man than Turgot; a slave to his own vanity, and a devotee of compromise who believed in doing things little by little. Yet he was a competent financier and saw the necessity of reform. Again the King had his chance to follow sound advice but, after a few years, he abandoned the Swiss as he had done Turgot. Since then he has allowed himself to be led by a succession of incompetents and, for the past two years, rather than face unpleasant facts he has followed a policy of drift on the advice of Calonne, who is nothing but an unscrupulous speculator.’

  ‘What would Turgot have done, had the King maintained him in office?’ Roger inquired.

  ‘His policy was no new taxes and no loans. The deficit was to be made good by rigorous economy in the expenditure of the Court and government departments, and the abolition of the hundreds of sinecure offices that carried unjustifiable pensions. He advocated a single tax upon the land and the abolition of all indirect taxation. He wished to remove all restrictions on trade, including corn, and to make all landowners contribute to the public revenue on a scale according to their means.’.

  ‘That would have meant revoking the privilege by which all persons of noble birth are automatically exempt from taxation.’

  ‘Indeed it would. And why not? France now has a population of some twenty-six million. Among them there are a hundred and forty thousand noblesse and a hundred and ninety thousand clergy. The first pays no taxes whatever, the second compromises en bloc for a purely nominal sum. That thirteen per cent of the population, with the Crown, enjoys two-thirds of the wealth of France; yet it contributes next to nothing. Can you be surprised that the country is on the verge of revolution?’

  ‘You really think so?’

  ‘I do. At my club we professional men now talk of little else. The Court has isolated itself and must reform or perish. The monarchy has become the symbol of oppression, and even the nobles regard the King with contempt. Were he different there might be some hope for the régime but his weakness will prove his ruin, and may bring ruin upon all France as well.’

  Roger was often to remember this conversation, but by the following morning he had dismissed it from his mind and, once more, entered wholeheartedly into the New Year gaieties. He danced a score of minue
ts, flirted again with several of his past casual inamoratas and enjoyed the hearty laughter at Maître Léger’s hospitable table. When he took leave of these good friends he could not know that he would not see them again until their comfortable world was shattered; and that they would then be hunted fugitives, seeking to escape with their lives from the Terror, which was so soon to engulf the bourgeoisie as well as the aristocracy.

  By the evening of 2nd January, 1786, Roger was back at Bécherel, greatly refreshed by his break and anxious to take up his intriguing work again. A few evenings later, with Brochard’s list in hand, he searched the shelves of the Marquis’s library and found quite a number of the books that had been recommended to him. Then, while early twilight still forced him to spend most of his leisure hours indoors, he gave himself up to a study of those works which had played such a large part in rendering the bourgeoisie discontented, and contributed in no small manner to the Revolution.

  As the days lengthened, Roger began to go hawking and coursing with Chenou again, but somehow it seemed that their sport nearly always brought them near the little river on the bank of which he had had his set-to with Athénaïs.

  The sight of the stream was enough to recall the memory of her to him with poignant vividness, and whenever he thought of her now it was to excuse her conduct there while condemning his own. He argued that she had behaved only in accordance with her upbringing whereas he should have known better than to take such a mean revenge. The fact that she had refrained from charging him with his crime, and a very heinous crime it was under French law, he put down to her generous and Christian spirit; and that she had returned good for evil by coming to dress his hurts made him see her now as a beautiful martyr turned ministering angel. For her to have done so, he persuaded himself, was a certain sign of her forgiveness and he regretted more than ever that she had left for Paris before he had had a chance to beg her pardon on his knees. With every week that passed his longing to see her again increased, and he felt that he would be prepared to suffer any humiliation if only it would restore him to her good graces. But Paris was a far cry from Bécherel and any hope of his getting there seemed as remote as if he had desired a journey to the moon.