The Sultan's Daughter (62 page)

Eugène thanked him for his counsel and left the inn. As Roger watched him go, he was far from sanguine about Josephine's chances. He felt that, had
La Bellilotte
accompanied Bonaparte back to Paris, there would have been no hope at all for Josephine; but after his two-month journey the passionate little Corsican must be in a susceptible state with regard to women, so it was just on the cards that, if only Eugène could persuade him to see Josephine, she might arouse his old passion for her and win him back.

Early next morning Eugène came to La Belle Etoile again. He was tired but beaming, and told Roger about the terrible time he had been through. During his absence the previous evening his mother had got back to Paris, found her trunks in the hall and, overwhelmed with despair, gone to pour out her woe to Madame de Château-Renault. Her friend had insisted that she make a fight for it and sent her back. Eugène had found her kneeling outside Bonaparte's door, pleading with him, but he had maintained a stony silence. With his fifteen-year-old sister, Hortense, Eugène took his mother's place. Alternately they implored their step-father to have mercy on their mother and themselves, while Josephine lay at the bottom of the stairs weeping hysterically. At last, the children had persuaded Bonaparte to see his wife. Josephine had staggered up on to the landing. The door had opened. The faces of both were streaming with tears. Without a word, they had fallen into one another's arms.

Pleased and relieved at the outcome of this domestic crisis, Roger sallied forth to savour the autumn air of Paris and order some new uniforms. Later in the day he heard that during the morning Bonaparte had made an official call on the Directors. It was reported in the cafés that they had received him coldly and rumoured that Bernadotte had urged that, for having deserted his Army, he should be arrested. But the
Moniteur
carried, heavy headlines announcing his arrival in Paris, and giving an account he had sent them of what he termed his ‘greatest victory'.

With splendid effrontery he declared that at Aboukir he
had driven thirty thousand Turks into the sea, thus permanently destroying the power of the Sultan to make any further attempt to regain Egypt. He stated that, but for this achievement, he would never have left his beloved Army; but it was in good health and splendid spirits so, with Egypt secure, he had felt it his duty to return and place his sword at the disposal of the Government against the enemies of France nearer home.

It was the first news to be given out in France about the battle of Aboukir, and Paris was thrilled by it. For so many years the Parisians had been fed on accounts of victories in Europe, or defeats that had been more or less covered up as brilliant strategic withdrawals, that such news meant little to them. But the picture conveyed of a few thousand Frenchmen, far from home, triumphing over ten times their number of ferocious barbarians was something new about which to cheer in earnest. Brune's able generalship in Holland and the fact that Masséna had in Switzerland saved France from invasion by a Russian horde were, in a moment, forgotten. Bonaparte was once more the hero of the hour, the idol of the populace.

Roger felt that he had good reason to be pleased with things. The master to whom he had attached himself might be a liar and an opportunist, but he was in most ways a far finer man than the corrupt and inefficient politicians to whom he was secretly opposed; and he was more than holding his own against them. Josephine, meanwhile, had been reinstated. She was once more being hailed by the people as ‘Our Lady of Victories' and Roger knew he could count on her friendship.

His own position left nothing to be desired. He had now been a member of the great man's Staff for well over two years and had become one of his intimates. That he did not fully deserve his companions' belief in his bravery he was well aware, as several of his exploits had been faked. But everyone believed that he had escaped from the British after the battle of the Nile, escaped from slavery in Tripoli, escaped again from Djezzar during the siege of Acre and brought with him a Turkish standard. That he had actually come through several desperate situations by his own courage
and resource was beside the point. He had been cited in an Order of the Day by Bonaparte, after personally defending him near Venice, and had been presented with a sword of honour. He had again been cited in an Order of the Day, after rejoining Bonaparte outside Acre, and was now known in the Army as ‘
le brave Breuc
'. Conning over his record to himself, he felt that even the astute Talleyrand must now be convinced that at heart he was truly French. It had needed only that to make his position unassailable.

That evening he decided to call upon his charming and brilliant friend. Before doing so he returned to La Belle Etoile to freshen himself up and have the patched and faded uniform he still wore smartened up as far as that was possible. As he entered the inn a potman gave him a letter. Opening it he saw that it was headed, ‘Ministry of Police'. It read:

The Minister presents his compliments to Colonel Breuc and desires him to call upon him at his earliest convenience
.

It was signed
Joseph Fouché
.

Roger went as white as the paper on which the letter was written. It seemed incredible, yet it must be true. Somehow, during his absence from France, the subtle, scheming, exterrorist had succeeded in climbing from obscurity back to power. Fouché was Roger's most deadly enemy, the one man who had it in his power to ruin him utterly. And he was now Minister of Police.

Roger had absorbed the contents of the communication at a single glance, Its very brevity precluded any possibility of mistake and it was a summons that he dared not ignore. Abruptly he told the potman to bring him a pint of Anjou wine. Then he sat down to think.

He had last seen Fouché in March, '96. Unlike a number of other prominent terrorists who had saved their own necks by conspiring to bring about Robespierre's downfall in the summer of '94, Fouché's record had been so black that he had been hounded out of the Convention. All his skill at intrigue had failed to save him from the malice of his enemies, and for close on two years he had lived in obscurity and poverty. In the spring of '96 he had striven to secure for himself, by a pretty piece of blackmail, at least a minor post in one of the Ministries; but Roger had outwitted him. Still worse, for him, as his activities had menaced Barras's plans the all-powerful Director had issued an order of banishment, forbidding him to reside within sixty miles of Paris.

How, Roger wondered, with Barras still the most prominent man in the Directory, had Fouché not only secured permission to return to Paris but become Minister of Police, the most powerful official in the capital? Before opening Fouché's letter he had felt so fully assured of his own security. Now, as he slowly drank his wine, he endeavoured to assess how seriously it might be threatened by this extraordinary change in the fortunes of his old enemy.

Had Fouché emerged again as a private individual or even in some minor post, Roger would have had little to fear. Apart from occurrences during his first year in France, of which only Talleyrand and Fouché knew, his record was unassailable.
With his many friends in high places, Barras and Bonaparte among them, he could have laughed to scorn an accusation by any ordinary ex-terrorist; but if the Minister of Police personally vouched for it that he knew Colonel Breuc to be an Englishman and a secret agent, that would be a very different matter.

In France, for the past eight years, all protection of the liberty of the individual had ceased to exist. There was no such law as Habeas Corpus, or any Court before which an accused person might demand to be heard. The country had been ruled by a succession of tyrants who maintained themselves by giving full powers to their secret police to suppress all opposition. Many thousands of people had been arrested merely on suspicion and had been imprisoned indefinitely or shipped off to die in the fever-ridden penal settlements at Cayenne. So Roger now had to face the appalling thought that Fouché could arrest him and, unless he could very speedily get help, order his immediate transportation. Roger had no doubt that Bonaparte would intervene on his behalf. But the Corsican must be immersed as never before in his secret struggle with the Directory; and he might not even hear of Roger's arrest until the latter was a prisoner in the hold of a ship well out in the Atlantic.

Before many minutes had passed, he decided that his one hope of protecting himself lay in informing his friends of his danger so that, should he fail to return from his interview with Fouché, they would at once take steps to do what they could for him. Yet he also saw that for him to run round Paris telling all and sundry that he feared he was about to be arrested as an English spy was out of the question. The old adage, ‘
qui s'excuse s'accuse'
flashed into his mind. As yet he had not even been accused, so what possible grounds could he give for fearing that he would be?

It was then he recalled that, at the moment he had received the bombshell, he had been about to freshen himself up before going to call on Talleyrand. He finished his wine at a draught, then went up to his room. Talleyrand was the one man who knew as much about him as did Fouché, so he could at least consult him without throwing suspicion on himself. It was most unfortunate that the ex-Bishop was no
longer Foreign Minister; but though he now lacked the power to protect a friend he could still be counted on for good advice.

Fifteen minutes later Roger left La Belle Etoile in a sedan chair for the Rue Taitbout, where he learned that Talleyrand had moved on leaving the official residence of the Foreign Minister in the Rue du Bac. Darkness had come and rain with it, converting the surface of the streets into inch-deep mud. As his chairmen sloshed through it Roger thought how terribly the state of Paris had deteriorated since he had first known it.

Then, though the streets were narrow, they had been reasonably clean and there were scores of fine mansions in which hundreds of wax candles burned every night. Now, the streets were pot-holed and half choked with refuse. Hardly a glimmer of light was to be seen. The mansions had leaking roofs and broken windows; most of them had become rat-infested tenements, while many of the formerly splendid churches had been turned into shoddy dance halls or gaming dens. The Armies of France had sent back thousands of millions of francs, extorted from conquered countries, yet the Governments had been so corrupt and inefficient that money was never forthcoming to stop the capital from falling into an ever-worse state of rack and ruin.

Talleyrand's house had a courtyard flanked by two pavilions. It was one of the few that, owing to his genius for acquiring money, and a good taste that no money could buy, was kept up with the same elegance that had graced those of the old nobility. After Roger's many months spent in the cramped quarters of ships going to and fro across the Mediterranean, and in the insalubrious East, the very sight and warmth of the handsomely furnished hall cheered him a little; but to his annoyance he learned that the master was out, making a round of the salons.

When he said he would await M. de Talleyrand's return, the footman fetched the Majordomo. This portly factotum recognised Roger and said he feared his master might not return home for several hours. But Roger said it was imperative that he should see M. de Talleyrand that night; so
the Majordomo showed him into an ante-room, had the footman bring him wine and biscuits, then left him.

For a while he continued to muse over the alarming turn his fortunes had so suddenly taken; but after a time it struck him that no good could come from his spending half the night brooding, so he had better find some other way to employ his mind. The ante-room contained two bookcases and a large, mahogany rack containing news-sheets. On glancing at these he found that they were the files of the
Moniteur
for several months past; so he spread out some of the sheets on the table and began to look through them.

He already knew that in the previous June there had been a further change in the Directory and another bloodless revolution, termed the
coup d'état
of Prairil. Now he was able to follow its course through the official reports of speeches in the Five Hundred and, from his knowledge of the principal participants, more or less read between the lines what had taken place.

It was clear to him that, when Rewbell had retired from the Directory in May, the Abbé Sieyès—then the Ambassador of France in Berlin—had been elected in his place, not because the remaining Directors wanted him but because the Assembly had forced him upon them.

That they had done so was further evidence of the country's desperate desire for an end of corruption and inefficiency. Sieyés at least had a reputation for honesty and although he was cunning enough to make few public pronouncements, he was credited with profound wisdom. The Directory had failed so dismally as a form of government that it was felt on all sides that a change in the Constitution was long overdue. Who could produce one with more likelihood of converting the muck-heap inherited from the Revolution into a modern Utopia than this dry-as-dust little Abbé who, for years, had posed as another Solon? Moreover while on the one hand he had never been an active terrorist, so would curb the Jacobins, on the other he was a veteran anti-Royalist and had voted for the King's death, so could be trusted to preserve the principles of the Revolution.

But by the time Sieyès had arrived from Berlin new elections had taken place, greatly strengthening the Jacobin
Party in the Five Hundred. They had violently denounced the Directory and forced through a law restoring freedom to the Press. This had led to scores of articles and pamphlets appearing, attacking the Directory and especially the opposition to reform displayed by Lareyellière, Merlin and Treil-hard. Sieyés had obviously seen the necessity for getting rid of them, and Barras, playing as ever for his own hand, must have aided him.