The Launching of Roger Brook (46 page)

On Roger making his bow the Marquis did not invite him to sit down, but the normally haughty expression of his aquiline features relaxed and his voice was affable as he said:

‘Monsieur, I have read your abbreviated report and spent half an hour glancing through the big brief that you have compiled. I consider that both are excellent. It will take some months for my lawyers to examine them and pronounce as to if they form a basis for an action which I may hope to win, but you have prepared the ground most admirably. You have also dealt with the matter much more speedily than I had any reason to expect, and I am very pleased with you.’

Roger bowed again. ‘Monseigneur; to some, such work might seem dull, but I have found it of engrossing interest. I am, too, fully convinced that your claim is a sound one, and I wish you all good fortune with it.’

‘Eh?’ The Marquis had opened a drawer in his desk and thrust a hand inside. He was not used to being wished good
luck by his employees and looked up with a faint astonishment in his blue eyes.

‘Er, thank you,’ he murmured, after a moment; and withdrawing his hand he threw a small, fat leather bag that clinked upon the desk, as he added: ‘There are a hundred
louis
for you as a reward for your diligence. You will need some new clothes if you are to remain in Paris. Or would you rather return to Brittany and Maître Léger’s office?’

As Roger picked up the bag it flashed upon him that the Marquis was offering to retain him there in his employ. The gift and the offer seemed almost too good to be true. Flushing with pleasure, he exclaimed:

‘Why, no, Monseigneur! I would much prefer to continue here in your service. And for this generous present I am most grateful.’

The Marquis waved his thanks aside. ‘D’Heury lost his assistant some weeks ago, and I promised I would find him another. Anyone who can write so succinct a report as you have done must be well qualified to fill the post. What salary have you been receiving?’

‘Forty
louis
per annum, Monseigneur.’

‘Tell d’Heury that in future I wish you to receive a hundred and twenty. You will find Paris more expensive in every way than Rennes, and at times you will be required to wait upon me with despatches at Versailles. As one of my secretaries I wish you to make a good appearance. Go now, and place yourself at d’Heury’s disposal.’

Still overcome by his good luck Roger bowed himself out of the room. D’Heury, who had become quite well disposed towards him in the past few days, received the news with satisfaction and suggested that before settling down to work Roger should take the following day off to equip himself for his new position.

When he awoke next morning Roger thought for a moment that his interview with the Marquis could only have been a dream, but there, under one side of his pillow, was the fat little bag of golden
louis
to confirm the sudden stroke of fortune that had lifted him from the prospect of being an out-of-work lawyer’s clerk to a permanent secretaryship with a rich and powerful noble. Recalling his dream in the previous February about Georgina, he felt now that it had clearly been in the nature of a glimpse into the future. It was true that his object in coming to Paris
had been to see Athénaïs, and he had failed in that, but in the dream there had been no thought of Athénaïs, only Georgina urging that in completing his work on the
Domaine de St. Hilaire
lay the road to fortune. He felt that now, at last, he could write a full account of himself to her without shame, and determined to spend the next few evenings doing so.

In addition to his hundred
louis
bonus he had over thirty
louis
saved from his time at Bécherel; and now he was to receive a salary of ten
louis
a month—as much as he had been paid a year when he had started with Maître Léger. He had never before possessed so much money and decided that he could well afford to spend lavishly for his own pleasure, as well as to do the Marquis credit. But he also thought that his old things might still come in useful, so, before going out, he wrote to Aldegonde, asking that his sea-chest should be forwarded to Paris.

That day he ordered three new suits with waistcoats of flowered satin, lace jabots and ruffles, silk stockings, a new hat, a pair of evening shoes, ribbons for his hair, a gilt-topped malacca cane, and a quantity of underclothes. With great impatience he waited until all these garments were delivered, then astonished the Abbé one day by appearing like a butterfly that had just emerged out of a chrysalis. From that time on he developed a sudden taste for dandyism and spent a good part of his salary on self-adornment; so that, with his tall, slim figure and dark good looks, he would, had it not been that he wore no sword, have been taken everywhere for a young noble.

Meanwhile, d’Heury was teaching him the minor duties of a private secretary. These proved, at first, a little disappointing, as the Abbé retained all important matters in his own hands, delegating to Roger only such things as purchasing stationery, affixing seals to letters, reporting on appeals for charity and getting out invitations whenever the Marquis entertained; but soon he was entrusted with interviewing casual visitors and occasional missions which took him to other great houses in Paris and out to the Palace at Versailles.

That spring another drought caused a great shortage of meat. Beef had risen from eleven to sixteen
sous
a pound and the butchers in the poorer quarters had been forced to close their shops. There was great grumbling about this and
Roger could not wonder when he actually saw something of the unbridled extravagance in which the Court lived.

In order to maintain the standard of splendour first set by Louis XIV hundreds of nobles, thousands of servants, whole regiments of guards and a legion of hangers-on from all classes, fed each day at the King’s expense. The dining and mess rooms of the vast palace were never empty, and the food served in each differed only in the degree of culinary art devoted to its preparation; from the highest to the lowest meat, fish, butter, eggs and wine were to be had in unlimited profusion.

As a spectacle the Court never ceased to intrigue him. He had not the
entrée
to the great apartments where the richly-clad host of lords and ladies dined, danced, gambled and flirted each night, but he could watch them arriving and departing at all hours in a never-ending stream of coaches, gaze his fill at them as they made their way up the great marble staircases, and look out upon them from the windows as, more colourful than the flowers, they strolled in little groups about the mile-long formal garden that Le Nôtre had laid out at the back of the palace.

On the 11th of May the King was to inspect the French and Swiss guards, so Roger asked for the day off, and d’Heury gave it to him quite willingly. It was the first time that he had seen Louis XVI and as he had expected, the King did not cut an impressive figure. He was a fat, ungainly man with a large pasty face and, perhaps owing to his bulk, he looked much older than his thirty-two years. The Queen, on the other hand, Roger thought both regal and beautiful. As she drove by in her carriage he was near enough to see that she had blue eyes and an aquiline nose, and he thought that when Athénaïs reached the age of thirty she would be very like her.

Roger was now getting to know most of the Marquis’s principal friends by sight, as he shared a workroom with d’Heury which served as an ante-chamber to the Marquis’s sanctum, and all visitors had to pass through it.

M. Joseph de Rayneval, the
premier commis
of the Foreign Ministry, was a very frequent caller, and it did not take long for Roger to discover that this high official was working hand-in-glove with the Marquis against the interests of his own master, the Comte de Vergennes. There also came to the house fairly often the Duc de Polignac whose
beautiful wife was the avowed favourite of the Queen; the energetic Maréchal de Castries, Minister for the Navy; M. Bérard, head of the French East India Company; the Baron de Breteuil, Minister for Paris; the Duc de Coigny, another close friend of the Queen, and her most trusted adviser, the Comte de Mercy-Argenteau, Austrian Ambassador to France.

There were two others who called with some frequency, to one of whom Roger took an instinctive dislike and to the other an instinctive liking.

The first was the Comte de Caylus. He came of an ancient family and possessed estates both in Brittany and in the French West Indies. His revenues from his slave plantations in Martinique and Saint Domingue were said to be immense, but with them he had also inherited a dash of black blood from a mulatto mother. He was in his late forties; a vigorous and powerfully built man with thick lips, a sallow skin and a flattened nose. He treated his inferiors with all the arrogance habitual to the great French nobles and, in addition, had a coarseness of manner quite unusual among them. However, M. de Rochambeau always received him with great cordiality, as they had many interests in common; both came from the same province and both were fervid imperialists, it being de Caylus’s most cherished ambition to bring the whole of the West Indian archipelago under French domination.

The second was the Abbé de Périgord or, as he was often called, L’Abbé du Cour. He was of middle height, a little over thirty years of age and had a curiously attractive face. His eyes were blue-grey, his nose slightly tip-tilted, his hair fair and expression piquant. He never dressed as a churchman but in the height of fashion, and whenever he moved he leaned gracefully upon a cane, as he was a permanent cripple, his right leg being shorter than his left.

D’Heury did not care for him, and said that, even in this age, when it was regarded as normal for a rich prelate to keep a mistress, de Périgord’s life was a flagrant scandal, since he not only lived openly with the young and beautiful Countess de Flahaut, by whom he had had a son, but he was one of the most dissolute roués in all Paris. Moreover, he was an intriguer of the first water who was clever enough to keep in with the Queen’s party on the one hand
while being on the best of terms with the Duc d’Orleans, the most deadly enemy of the Court, on the other.

Roger, however, took a great liking to the lame Abbé as he thought him, outwardly at least, all that an aristocrat should be. Not only did he, with his delicate hands and gentle smile, look the part, but his manners were a model of easy courtesy and he always had a kind word for everyone. It was not until some time later that Roger learned that de Périgord’s first names were Charles Maurice de Talleyrand.

Finding Roger willing and intelligent d’Heury began to entrust him with a certain amount of the Marquis’s correspondence. Roger was given the gist of what was required to be said, wrote the letters and took them in to M. de Rochambeau for signature. It was this which led to his being initiated into one of the secrets of the household.

Beyond the ante-room in which the secretaries worked there was a smaller room which contained a number of presses and had no exit. Roger had often seen d’Heury disappear into for ten minutes or more and had thought that he was busy filing papers there; but, on Roger’s promotion to handling correspondence, the round-shouldered Abbé revealed to him a short cut to getting the documents signed. One of the presses had a false back, the wall behind it was very thick and had been hollowed out to form a small closet; the panel at the far side of the closet was another secret door, which opened into the Marquis’s sanctum at its far end, just opposite his desk.

As d’Heury explained, this secret entrance enabled the secretary to communicate with the Marquis, if he wished, about any visitor who might be in the ante-room without the visitor being aware that he had done so; and could always be used unless the Marquis had someone with him. In that case it was M. de Rochambeau’s custom to push over a switch beneath his desk, which had the effect of locking both the panel in his room and the door of the press, so that no one could get into the closet and overhear what might be passing between his visitor and himself.

On the 1st of June the decisions of Parliament regarding the prisoners on trial for complicity in the affair of the Diamond Necklace were at last made public. The Cardinal de Rohan, Count Cagliostro and Mademoiselle Gay d’Oliva were declared innocent and set at liberty; but Madame de
la Motte was condemned to be whipped, branded upon both shoulders and imprisoned for life.

The populace of Paris received the verdicts with the wildest enthusiasm, and gave the Cardinal as great an ovation on his release from the Bastille as though he were a victorious General returning from the wars. They were inspired to this, not from any especial love for the Cardinal, but because they took the verdict to imply that since he was innocent the Queen must be guilty, and the unfortunate Marie Antoinette had already become the most hated woman in France.

That the Queen was, in fact, blameless there could be little doubt; as the letter purporting to come from her authorising the Cardinal to buy the jewels on her behalf was signed Marie Antoinette de France, and, as even the dull-witted King had pointed out, being by birth an Archduchess of Austria, she always signed herself Marie Antoinette d’Autriche. Nevertheless, the most slanderous rumours were rife, alleging that the Queen had been the Cardinal’s mistress, that he had given her the necklace as the price of her virtue and that, when the transaction had come to light, he had nobly allowed himself to be brought to trial and kept his mouth shut in order to save her honour.

The truth, as known to the Queen’s intimates, was that she had taken a strong dislike to de Rohan when she was a girl and he the French Ambassador at Vienna. Little thinking that she would later become Queen of France he had made some witty but disparaging remarks about her, and she had sworn never to forgive him. She had, indeed, never done so, but he had tried to buy her favour back by purchasing and sending her the necklace. It had, however, been stolen by his emissary, Madame de la Motte, in transit, and so the Queen had never even known of his intention.

D’Heury, having had the inside story from the Marquis, told it to Roger and they agreed, like everyone else who knew the truth, that the one thing which stood out in the unfortunate affair was the incredible stupidity of the King in ever allowing the matter to form the subject of a public trial, as anyone but a half-wit could have foreseen that, since the Queen could not also, be tried and vindicated, it must inevitably lead to her being pilloried.