Dennis Wheatley - The wanton princess

Besides these there were the veterans of the Revolutionary wars; Carnot, once a member of the dread Committee of Public Safety, never a General but, from having created seven armies out of a rabble and kept them supplied, christened 'The Organiser of Victories'; Kellerman of Valmy fame; Jourdan, the victor of Fleuras; Sérurier, Perignon and old Lefebvre—still looking like a tough Sergeant-Major—whose wife had once taken in and washed on credit young Lieu­tenant Bonaparte's patched underclothes.

Chatting with them and their ladies were scores of Briga­diers, Colonels, Adjutants and A.D.Cs. All were wearing their smartest uniforms; the plumed hats they carried under their arms, their tunics and their sabretaches glittered with gold lace, and jewels sparkled in the sword hilts of the senior officers as they strutted, their spurs jingling, across the polished floors.

Roger was acquainted with at least half the civilians and soldiers there and. having served with most of the latter in Italy and Egypt, looked on many of them as well-tried friends. As he moved from group to group it was borne in on him that whereas he knew well comparatively few people in England, here lie was hailed on all sides as a gallant comrade of the wars; so he felt more than ever that his decision to return permanently to France had been sound, and that few lives could be better than one lived among these gay, brave men and lovely women.

At one of the long buffet supper tables he ran into Joseph Fouche. The Minister of Police was the very antithesis of Talleyrand. He was tall and lean, his face looked like that of a corpse warmed up, his shifty eyes, with which he never gazed at anyone direct, reminded one of those of a dead fish. He was untidily dressed, his waistcoat was stained with snuff and, as usual, he was snivelling from the cold in the head that never left him.

He had been a Terrorist on the grand scale. As the conven­tion's Commissioner in Nevers he had sacked all the churches and cowed the citizens by his murderous ferocity. In Lyons he had had hundreds of Liberals lined up—men, women and children—turned a battery of cannon on them and mowed them down with grape shot. When the reaction came he had been lucky to escape with only banishment from Paris, and nobody had ever expected to hear of him again. But, after for a while scraping a living breeding pigs, he had somehow managed to make money as an Army contractor then, by intrigue and blackmail, miraculously emerged as a high official of the corrupt Directory. Owing to his unscrupulousncss. cold, calculating mind and immense capacity for work, he had now become, after Bonaparte, the most power­ful man in France. With him was his dowdy, pathetically ugly wife to whom he had always been completely faithful.

While respecting Fouche for his great ability. Roger regarded him with distrust and dislike but. as the principal enforcer of law and order, he was now on the side of the angels; so for a while they talked amicably together.He was rescued from this unprepossessing couple by Duroc and Hortense de Beauharnais, who had been dancing together. The former, a puritanical but charming man, had ' been Bonaparte's A.D.C.-in-Chief, and was one of Roger's closest friends. Now, after greeting him with delight, Duroc told him that he had just been given a new appointment as Controller of the Palace. From Hortense's starry-eyed expres­sion as she gazed at the handsome Duroc, Roger guessed her to be madly in love with him; but he did not appear to be particularly interested in her and, pleading duty as an excuse, soon left her with Roger.

After dancing with her and returning her to her mother Roger caught sight of Talleyrand. Immaculate as ever, his hair powdered just as it would have been had his hostess been Queen Marie Antoinette instead of Josephine Bona­parte, he was limping gracefully away from the ballroom. Catching him up, Roger thanked him for having broken the news of his return to Bonaparte.

The ci'devant Bishop smiled, 'Think nothing of it, cher ami. You are too useful a man for him to have vented his displeasure on for long. I did no more than prevent him from cutting off his nose to spite his face by depriving himself of your services for a few months.'

An hour or so later Roger left the Palace having enjoyed a thoroughly happy evening, and entirely content with the future that he had chosen for himself.

Next morning he found Fauvelet de Bourrienne installed in his new office in the Tuileries—now rechristened 'The Palace of the Government'—and duly reported to him. De Bourri­enne was the same age as Bonaparte and had been one of his few friends when they had been students together at the Military College at Brienne. Later he had entered the diplo­matic service and during the early days of the revolution had been en poste in Germany. On the mounting of the Terror he had been recalled but, realizing that as an aristocrat a return to Paris meant for him the guillotine, he had wisely remained in voluntary exile. Then, after Bonaparte's victorious cam­paign in Italy, the General had written to him and invited him to become his Chef-de-Cabinet, De Bourrienne had accepted and neither had since had cause to regret this arrangement. Bonaparte found Bourrienne's swift grasp of affairs invaluable, Bourrienne delighted in enjoying the great man's complete confidence, and their intimacy was now such that he could go in and talk to the General even when he had just retired to bed with his wife.

It was towards the end of the Italian campaign that, owing to his having recently returned from Egypt and India. Roger had first attracted Bonaparte's special notice, for he was already dreaming of becoming another Alexander and making himself the Emperor of the East. These countries held such a fascination for him that, while an armistice with Austria was being negotiated, he had spent many evenings conversing with Roger about them. As a result, he had dis­covered that, unlike his other A.D.Cs, Roger was not only a beau sabreur, but also a well-educated young man with an extensive knowledge of international affairs. In consequence, as for the time being there was no fighting to be done, he had made him Bourrienne's assistant.

Roger resumed this work with interest and enthusiasm. It now consisted of drafting reports on the suitability of individuals for new civil appointments and making precis from a mass of information on the matters in which the First Consul was interesting himself, and they were innumerable.

There was the question of religion. In '97, when Bonaparte had overrun middle Italy, the Directory had ordered him to depose the Pope. Realizing that, regardless of the official enforcement of atheism since '93, the great majority of the French people were still believers in Christianity, he had been shrewd enough to avoid the act which would have per­manently damaged his popularity, ignored the order and, instead, only extracted from His Holiness a huge indemnity. Now, appreciating that religion was a discipline of value in maintaining a stable government, he initiated measures to protect from further persecution such Roman Catholic priests as still remained in France, decreed that those willing to subscribe to the National Church should no longer be required to take an oath to the Constitution, but only give a promise of fidelity to it; and, having reclaimed a number of churches in Paris that were being used as dance halls and gaming hells, permitted again in them the public celebration of the Mass.

Another matter in which he showed concern was the situa­tion of the emigres. Since the fall of Robespierre some three hundred thousand ci-devant nobles and others had secretly returned to France, but under the laws of the Convention they were still liable to arrest. Now they were to be given security of tenure and. although he did not yet feel himself strong enough to defy the Jacobins and permit the return of the exiles still abroad, he passed a law that there should be no further proscriptions.