The Launching of Roger Brook (49 page)

Roger smiled at this charming cynic. ‘I wonder, though,’ he said after a moment, ‘that with your high connections you have not yet received greater preferment.’

The Abbé took a pinch of snuff, and returned the smile. ‘Well may you do so,
mon ami
. I wake each morning with amazement on that score myself. So far I have been given but one miserable Abbey, that of Saint Denis in the diocese of Rheims, and been made Vicar-General of the Archbishopric. ’Tis true that I am also
Agent du Chargé
for the Church in the province of Tours, but that brings me little; and I am ever being put to the most shameless shifts to make two ends meet. I should have been given a Bishopric long since, and a rich one at that, but I am past caring overmuch any longer. Great changes are coming to France and in them will lie my real opportunity.’

‘You think then that the present régime will not last much longer?’

‘It cannot, as you would know if you talked with many of my friends; and I do not refer to those who still hide their heads like ostriches in the gaieties of the Court, but men of affairs who are in a position to appreciate the true state and temper of the nation. I am, alas, so poor that I have perforce to eat my dinners at other people’s tables, but I give breakfast to a dozen or so of my friends here every morning. At any time you care to take a cup of chocolate with us you will be most welcome. I mean that; and please do not refrain from coming through any fear that you will be cold-shouldered because I may not introduce you by your true rank. The men who meet here are mostly nobles, it is true, but they have the sense to realise that the time is coming when a coat of arms will not be worth a button,
and they are interested only in men as men, for what they think and have to say.’

‘I will certainly avail myself of your kind invitation,’ Roger replied. ‘M. le Marquis rarely requires any attendance in the mornings and I can always catch up with my routine work at other hours. But now that I am well enough I feel that I ought to return to the Hôtel de Rochambeau, as with d’Heury’s death and my absence there must be a mighty accumulation of matters requiring attention.’

‘My carriage shall take you back tomorrow morning,’ said de Périgord. So Roger, having parted from his new friend with many expressions of good will on both sides, returned to his duties on the third day after their unforeseen interruption.

That afternoon he saw his master in an entirely new, and far from pleasant, light. Previously the Marquis had always appeared to him cold, haughty and dispassionate, but just and not unkind. Now, on his arrival from Versailles, he displayed a most evil temper. Its cause was the confusion into which his affairs had been thrown by suddenly being deprived of both his secretaries. He had at once been informed of the reason for this by de Périgord; but, instead of showing the least distress at the unfortunate d’Heury’s death and Roger’s injury, his mind was entirely taken up with the comparatively slight inconvenience that their absence had caused himself.

For five minutes he ranted at Roger, abusing him for looking no less well than usual, and asserting that clearly he had been fit enough to return to work the day before, instead of idling out at Passy. Then he thrust a great batch of papers at him and snapped:

‘Get those into some sort of order and brief me on them by tomorrow morning. With that fool d’Heury getting himself killed I scarce know which way to turn, but you have been here long enough now to take his place temporarily. ’Twas by God’s mercy that His Majesty left for Cherbourg on the day you got yourself into trouble, otherwise my affairs would be in a still worse tangle. I had my steward send up two clerks from his department during your absence, but I found them worse than useless, and neither can find me a single paper that I require. Keep them to help you if you wish or send the fools back to Roland. Get out
of my sight now and make up for lost time, or ‘twill be the worse for you!’

This brief encounter destroyed for Roger all the respect, if not affection, with which he had come to regard the Marquis during the preceding months. He had been granted a glimpse of the man beneath the lace and satin clothing of the aristocrat and for the first time understood his true nature. The Marquis was hard and selfish to the core. All his life he had been in a position to command service but he regarded those who served him merely as convenient machines designed by God to carry out his wishes and since they could readily be replaced, he did not care one iota if they lived in comfort or died in squalor. It was this revelation which later freed Roger from many serious qualms he would otherwise have felt in his dealings with his master.

Nevertheless, shocked as he was, he was shrewd enough to realise that for the time being his fortune lay in maintaining his place in the de Rochambeau household; so, although by midnight his head was splitting from his recent wound, he worked on until the small hours of the morning, in order to get the Marquis’s affairs properly straightened out.

Next day, when he presented the results of his labours, M. de Rochambeau, still in an evil temper, only grunted; but by the end of the week he had resumed his usual haughty placidity and seemed to have forgotten that d’Heury had ever existed.

It was Roger who raised the matter, by saying that he had sent one of the clerks back to the steward but proposed to keep the other, a diligent young man named Paintendre, as he was making himself quite useful.

‘Ah yes!’ said the Marquis. ‘That reminds me. I have done nothing about seeking a replacement for d’Heury. But after all, ’twould be no easy matter to find someone really suitable, and you seem to be managing very well. For a young man your grasp of affairs is quite exceptional. Let us leave matters as they are and if you continue as you are doing I shall have no complaints. What am I paying you?’

‘One hundred and twenty
louis
a year, Monseigneur.’

‘Then take two hundred and forty in future, so that you may properly support your new position.’

As Roger thanked him he felt no sense of gratitude. This
doubling of his salary was not a generous gesture, as he would earlier have thought it. He knew now that he owed it only to the fact that the Marquis had canons of his own. M. de Rochambeau would have felt himself dishonoured by receiving anything from an inferior for which he had not paid what he considered to be an adequate price, and the maintenance of his own self-esteem demanded that his principal secretary should not live at a lesser standard than those of other nobles of his own status.

All through July Roger had his work cut out to get a full grasp of the confidential affairs into which d’Heury had never initiated him and, when the Marquis’s current business did not require his attention, he spent many hours reading through old correspondence so as to fill in the gaps in his knowledge. By the end of August he had mastered all the most important matters and, in the process, had acquired a good general picture of what was going on in most of the principal Courts of Europe, so he was rarely at a loss when M. de Rochambeau asked him about some point that had slipped his own memory.

Horses, carriages and messengers were always at his disposal, so with few expenses other than dressing himself, and ample money with which to indulge his taste, he now became quite a dandy. Once or twice a week he went out to breakfast at the Abbé de Périgord’s little house in the Rue de Bellechasse at Passy, and even that exquisite took occasion to compliment him on his choice of waistcoats.

On these visits to Passy he at first kept himself very much in the background, but gradually he was becoming known as one of the circle that gathered there, and he enjoyed the witty conversation of many intellectuals who were, before many years had passed, to exercise great influence on the destinies of France.

Among them were such men as the famous authors, Dupont de Nemours and l’Abbé Delille; the gross and pockmarked but brilliant Comte de Mirabeau; Louis de Narbonne, the elegant and gifted illegitimate son of the King’s youngest aunt; August de Choiseul-Gouffier, nephew of Louis XV’s Prime Minister; Borthés, Champ-ford, Mathieu de Montmorency, Rulthière and a score of others. They discussed every topic under the sun and nothing was sacred to them. They spared neither women, poets, ministers, playwrights, royalty nor one another.
They were mostly under thirty-five, nearly all revolutionaries at heart, and all dissolute of habit. Their conversation sparkled with epigrams and reeked of scandal, yet their thoughts were in the main original and their ideas dynamic.

It was finding that on occasion he could hold his own with the Abbe’s brilliant friends that added new impetus to Roger’s ambitions. During the past hundred and fifty years by no means all the ministers to the Crown had been nobles; many of the most able had been of humble birth and risen to high office by way of secretaryships and Intendances. Cardinal Mazarin had been the son of a poor Italian fisherman, yet he had become Prime Minister and a multimillionaire during the Regency of Anne of Austria, and, so it was said, been secretly married to the Queen. Colbert, Louis XIV’s greatest minister, had started life as a clerk, and the Abbé Dubois, from being a poor cleric, had raised himself under the Regency of the Duc d’Orleans to First Minister of the State with a Cardinal’s Hat.

Roger was not so conceited as to aspire, as yet, to such high office, but he had acquired sufficient confidence in himself to believe that a wide field of advancement now lay open to him. In the service of the Marquis he was gaining invaluable experience, so he was in no hurry to make a change, but he felt confident that at any time he wished one or other of his new and influential friends would willingly recommend him for some other post which would greatly better his position.

September proved a difficult month for Roger, as the Marquis was much out of humour. The Treaty of Versailles had stipulated that it should be followed by a Commercial Treaty designed to bring Britain and France much closer together, and for the past two years M. de Rochambeau had devoted much of his time to intriguing successfully against all proposals for the development of this trade agreement.

He argued that Britain would gain infinitely more from facilities to export her hardware, cutlery, cottons and woollens to France on easy terms than France could possibly do from similar facilities to export her wines and silks to Britain.

In the previous year he had had to combat only a Mr. Craufurd whom Britain had sent over as a special emissary to negotiate the Treaty, and Mr. Craufurd had proved both
weak and idle. But in May the British Foreign Secretary, Lord Carmarthen, had recalled Craufurd and replaced him by the able and active Mr. Eden. In the summer, therefore, M. de Rochambeau had found himself fighting a losing battle and this reached its culmination in September.

Owing as much to the apprehensions of the British as the French, the Treaty in its final form was far from an agreement for ‘free trade’, but prohibitions were withdrawn and duties greatly reduced on many articles; and, as each clause was agreed, the Marquis became more irritable until, to his extreme chagrin and Roger’s secret delight, the Treaty was definitely agreed and signed on the 20th of September.

It was early in October that the Marquis said to him one day:

‘M. de Vergenne’s wife is seriously ill and the old Count is so distraught that he has sought leave of absence from the King to remain at her bedside until she is either dead or better. While he is away no major decisions on foreign policy will be taken, so I propose to give myself a holiday and take the waters at Vichy for my health. I have recently heard from my Paris lawyers that they advise proceeding with the affair of the
Domaine de St. Hilaire
. As families living in different provinces are concerned the case will be heard before the Parliament of Paris. All the original documents that are relevant will have to be produced in evidence. So, during my absence I wish you to journey to Bécherel and bring them back with you.’

Roger’s heart bounded with joy. For some weeks past he had been very much alive to the fact that Athénaïs would soon be returning to Paris for the winter season, but that did not open properly until the Court returned from Fontainebleau in mid-November; and this order meant that he would see his cherished angel considerably earlier than would otherwise have been the case.

Within an hour of the Marquis’s leaving Paris, Roger was on his way. Once more he passed through Rambouillet, Chartres, Alençon, Mayenne, Vitré and Rennes without giving a thought to their historic interest. The hooves of the many horses he bestrode all rang out the same magic rhythm: ‘Ath-én-aïs, Ath-én-aïs, Ath-én-aïs.’

When he reached Rennes it was already well on in the afternoon, but he pushed on and covered the last miles after darkness had fallen. This time he did not go round to
the stable entrance, but rode up to the front door and hammered upon it with his riding-crop as impatiently as any young lordling.

From the subdued greeting of the footman who answered it he sensed that something was wrong. Then he noticed that the man was wearing a pair of old cloth breeches, that his livery coat was half unbuttoned, having been pulled on hastily, and that the great hall was not lit as brightly as was customary when any member of the family was in residence. Throwing the reins of his horse over an iron hook, Roger stepped inside. The gloomy shadows seemed to reach out, engulfing him in a cold fear.

‘What has been happening here?’ he cried to the servant, his voice high with sudden apprehension. ‘Where is Aldegonde? Why do you stare at me so glumly? Tell me what’s wrong; or if you’ve not the courage, go get him—instantly.’

At that moment the fat major-domo came shambling through a door at the back of the hall. He was not in livery but wore an old dressing-gown and heel-less slippers.

‘Ah, Monsieur Breuc!’ he exclaimed in a doleful voice, as he came forward, ‘I heard your horse’s hooves and wondered who it could be riding up at this late hour. You find us in a poor state to welcome anyone.’

Roger slapped his leg impatiently with his riding-crop. ‘What has befallen you all? Why is the place in semi-darkness? What calamity has plunged you in such gloom?’