Dennis Wheatley - The Rising Storm

"What is your opinion of Monsieur Necker ?" interjected Roger.

"He is an extremely capable financier but a most incapable states­man," replied de P6rigord succinctly. "No one short of a financial genius could have kept the Treasury solvent during these many months it has taken to arrange the elections; but in all other respects he is a mediocre man. His mind is not big enough to grasp the magnitude of the issues at stake, and his Liberal leanings are inspired by sentiment rather than any true understanding of the needs of the nation. A year ago I placed considerable hopes in him; but I have come to know him better since, and soon perceived that vanity governs nine-tenths of his actions. Were it not that when faced with a crisis he often takes the shrewd advice of his daughter I am convinced that long before this the public would have recognized him for what he is—a man of straw."

"By 'his daughter' I take it you refer to Madame de Stael?"

"Yes. He has but one; and I count her far his superior in intelligence. She is a brilliant woman and should have done better for herself than to marry the Swedish Minister here. 'Tis a thousand pities that matters between her and your Mr. Pitt came to naught."

"Mr. Pitt!" exclaimed Roger. "I had never thought of him as a marrying man."

"No doubt he has found himself too fully occupied in recent years to concern himself with matrimony. But when he paid his only visit to this country, in '83, I can assure you that the project of his espousing Madamoiselle Necker was broached, for he told me so himself. Monsieur Necker, although very rich, was no more than Sub-Controller of the Finances at the time, and an alliance with Lord Chatham's brilliant younger son would have been a strong card for his advancement; so both he and his wife were eager for the match. Mr. Pitt, too, was by no means disinclined to it. But I believe the young lady had other views, and it was on that account that matters got no further."

"You amaze me. But please continue with what you were telling me of Monsieur Necker's character. It seems from what you say that there is little likelihood of his being able to dominate the States General."

De Perigord shook his head. "Far from it. And his task will be rendered no more easy from the fact that both the King and the Queen distrust him. In that, for once, they are right. His popularity with the masses has gone to his head, and to retain the favour of the mob himself he is capable of advising them to commit any folly."

"Then unless the King makes a change of Ministers it looks as if the deputies will be given free rein. Which among them do you consider are likely to prove the leading spirits ?"

"It is impossible to say. 'Tis clear too that you do not yet appreciate the complete novelty of the situation. As I was remarking a while back, no election even remotely similar to this has ever been held in France before. Only the very poorest persons, who pay no taxes at all, have been excluded from the franchise, so the total number of voters is near six million. But they do not vote directly for the deputies who will repre­sent them in the States. The electoral machinery is of an incredible complexity, and final agreement on it was reached only after months of bitter wrangling. Many cities stood out for making their own arrange­ments and the system in some provinces differs from that in others. But, in the main, groups of people, varying widely in numbers, vote for somebody to represent them in a local assembly, and it is these assemblies which in turn elect the deputies.

"Such a loose arrangement means that all sorts of strange characters will arrive at Versailles next month. One thing is certain: not even the names of most of them will be known to any of the others. Yet any one of them may prove a man of destiny whose name will soon be known throughout all Europe."

Roger nodded. "You are, of course, speaking of the Third Estate; but what of the first two Orders ? Surely they will also include many able men, and men of far wider experience; so is it not highly probable that some among them are likely to become the new leaders of the nation?"

"Their assemblies will prove almost as chaotic. It is estimated that there are some one hundred and fifty thousand clergy in France, and that the nobles total about the same number; for the latter include all the lesser nobility, which in England you term your gentry. Yet each of these great bodies of electors will be represented by only three hundred-odd deputies. In the elections of the clergy many high dignitaries have been passed over and a considerable number of cures who have never before left their villages have been returned. The same applies to the nobles. More than half of those so far elected are poor country dwellers whose fortune consists of little but a few acres of land and a coat of arms. And the Nobility of the Robe, which you might term the law-lords, who are undoubtedly the class most fitted to give an opinion on the matters we shall be called on to consider, are hardly represented at all."

The Bishop offered his snuff-box; took a pinch himself, held it for a moment under the slightly retrousse nose that gave his face such piquancy, made a graceful gesture of flicking away the grains with a lace handkerchief, then went on:

"Moreover, I greatly doubt if either of the first two Orders will be in any situation to influence the Third. On ancient precedent all three should have had an equal number of representatives; and had I been the King I would have stood out for that, even had it meant calling out my troops. But the weak fool gave way to popular clamour, as usual, and assented to the agitators' demands that the Third Estate should be allowed to send deputies to Versailles that equalled in numbers the other two together. Since it is certain that many of the poorer clergy and nobility will side with the Third Estate, and few, if any, of them with the other Orders, it seems to me inevitable that the natural defenders of the royal prerogative are doomed to defeat from the very outset."

"But I thought the three Orders were to deliberate separately," Roger demurred. "If so, you will still be two to one."

"That is the present arrangement; but how long will it hold good when put into practice ?" asked de Perigord darkly.

After a moment's silence, Roger said: "From what you tell me, when the States do meet they will add up to a fine penn'orth of all sorts, so out of it should come some original ideas of merit."

"Later, perhaps; but not to begin with, as all the deputies must, in theory, voice only the views expressed in their cahiers. The King has not convened the States to deliberate upon certain measures that his Ministers will put before them. He has been idiotic enough to ask everyone in the country to advise him how to get it out of the mess that it is in. So hundreds of thousands of know-alls have taken upon them­selves the role of acting as his Ministers-designate overnight. For the past six months every group of voters has become a heated debating society, and the most determined members of each have drawn up programmes which their elected representatives took with them to the local assemblies. In the assemblies, once more, each separate cahier has been the subject of violent dispute, and at length the salient points in all have been combined in still longer cahiers for each deputy. The deputies will bring these cahiers to Versailles as their instructions from their constituents, and they have no legal right to depart from them."

Roger nodded. "Of that I was aware; but surely the cahiers, being the consensus of opinion of every thinking man in France, must contain many new proposals of value ?"

"From those I have so far seen, they contain far fewer than one would expect. Most of the originals emanating from the peasantry were completely valueless. Naturally, such people are utterly lacking in every kind of knowledge outside their local affairs. Apart from the childish demand that all taxes should be abolished, and the two senior Orders deprived of their manorial rights, they contain little other than such requests as that His Majesty should be graciously pleased to order the cleaning out of the village ditch. As to the others, they are almost universally of a pattern, modelled upon prototypes which were widely circulated in pamphlet form, having first been drafted by men such as Monsieur l'Abbé Sieves."