Lastly, this semi-royal family circle was completed by Joseph Fesch, Laetitia's half-brother: a mild-mannered little priest. He had inherited nothing of her forceful, narrow, but clear-cut views and iron will to maintain her old principles, yet he was already being fawned upon by the Bishops and Cardinals who came to pay court to his pale, young, dynamic, and terribly explosive nephew.
After supper on Roger's first evening at Montebello, Josephine beckoned him to her and told Napoleon how she had rescued this old friend of theirs in Venice. Close to, Roger found him little changed either physically or in manner. He was as thin as ever, an undersized wisp of a man; yet his feats of endurance, and his having played a bold part in the hand-to-hand fighting on several critical occasions during the campaign, testified to his actual fitness, and the strength that lay concealed in his slender body. His skin seemed a little less yellow but it was stretched as tightly as ever over his high cheekbones, and his prominent nose stood out sharply from them. The greater part of his broad forehead was hidden under a fringe and long lank locks of hair fell down to his collar on either side of his immensely strong jaw. He seemed a little listless and disinterested as Josephine spoke to him of Roger, but his fine eyes had already shown friendly recognition and, when she had done, his mobile mouth breaking into a sudden smile, he said quickly:
'I am pleased that Madame, my wife, should have arrived so opportunely to save you. Sometime you must tell me what you have been up to for all these months. When I have a moment I will send for you.'
For the next two days, Roger mingled with the Court, renewing some acquaintances and making many new ones. Joachin Murat he already knew. It was this handsome, dashing Gascon who, in the pouring rain on the night of 12th Vendemiaire, had fetched the guns from Les Sablons and so enabled Buonaparte to give the Paris mob 'a whiff of grape shot' on the morning of the 13th. Since, starting with a brilliant charge at Borghetto, he had established himself as Boneparte's finest cavalry leader, and now decked himself out in uniforms of his own invention of which the cloth could hardly be seen for gold. Marmont, a young gunner who was Boneparte's special protégé, he had also met, and Alexander Berthier, the Chief-of-Staff, as ugly as Murat was handsome and rivalling him only in the splendour of his uniforms.
Among his new acquaintances were stolid old Serurier, tail stern, gloomy, with a big scar on his lip; Joubert, a young "General who had greatly distinguished himself and in a very short time become one of the most trusted leaders of the army; Andre Massena, tall, dark, thin, Jewish-looking, who seemed a dull man socially, but was said to be a living flame of inspiration on a battlefield. It was he who, in the final advance across the Alps, had stormed the Col de Terwis, and at Rivoli he had led his division in a way which had already earned him immortal glory. Desaix was also there. From discontent at the lack of initiative shown by the Army of the Rhine, he had left it and come down to Italy to offer his homage to Boneparte, His request for employment had been accepted and soon this brilliant soldier was being looked on by the General-in-Chief as one of the ablest of his lieutenants. Lannes was another; as yet only a Brigadier, and still suffering from terrible wounds received in the campaign, but he had been the first man to cross the river Adda and was already regarded as the most audacious leader of infantry assaults.
It was on the third morning that Roger was sent for, and he found the General-in-Chief in one of his tempers. He had been reading some news-sheets financed by the extreme Right which had articles in them deliberately belittling his achievements, because he was regarded as a die-hard republican.
As Roger was shown in, he threw the papers on the ground, trampled on them and cried in his harsh French, with its atrocious Italian accent, 'Lies! Lies! Lies! How dare they say that all my plans are made for me by Berthier, and that old Carnot sends me day-to-day orders from his Cabinet in the Luxemburg.'
Pausing for a moment, he stared at Roger, then went on angrily, 'But you know the truth, Monsieur Breuc; you know the truth. When we had that long talk together in my1 room at the Rue des Capucines, I told you my intentions, did I not?'
'Indeed you did, mon General,' Roger replied enthusiastically, 'and you have carried them out most brilliantly.'
'All but; all but. We should be in Vienna now, had my colleagues accomplished a tenth of what I have done. Four times the Austrians have put armies in the field much greater than mine, and four times I have defeated them.
'And what with, I ask you? What with? When I came to it the army was no more than a rabble. I spoke to the men. I said: "Soldiers, you are naked, badly fed. The Government owes you much; it can give you nothing. Your long suffering, the courage you show among these crags, are splendid, but they bring you no glory; not a ray is reflected upon you. I wish to lead you into the most fertile plains in the world. Rich provinces, great towns, will be in your power; there you will find honour, glory, riches. Soldiers of the Army of Italy, can you be found lacking in honour, courage and constancy?
As Roger listened, he realised what such a declaration must have meant. Up till them, France had been fighting against a Monarchist coalition to save the Revolution-to defend herself from invasion and having a King put back on her throne by force of arms-and, where her legions had carried the war into other countries, Belgium, Holland and Piedmont, it had been with the proclaimed ideal of liberating these peoples from the tyranny of autocratic rulers. But Boneparte had thrown all that overboard. He had altered the whole policy of the war to one of open aggression, declaring it upon peaceful states that in no way threatened France, and inciting his troops to follow him by promises of a free hand to loot and pillage them.
Roger's face remained impassive, but he realised now that the small thin man, dressed so quietly in white breeches, tricolour sash and green coat, who ranted at him, was another Attila who, for his own glory, would stop at nothing and prove a terrible scourge to mankind. Meanwhile the tirade went on:
'I marched them and fought them until they could no longer stand. In eleven days, I forced the Piedmontese out of the war. In a campaign of fourteen days I conquered the Milanese. In fifteen days I forced the Pope to sue for peace. Within thirty-six days of leaving Mantua I was only seventy miles from Vienna. Had I consulted my own interest, and the comfort of the army, I should have remained in Italy. But I threw myself into Germany to extricate the armies of the Rhine. I crossed the Julien and Nordic Alps in three feet of snow. I brought my artillery by roads where not even a cart had ever been and everyone said it was impossible. Had Moreau crossed the Rhine to meet me, we should be in a position to dictate the conditions of peace as masters. As it is, I am left to bluster and intrigue to hold the half of what I have won. Meanwhile, these gentlemen in Paris have the insolence to criticise my treatment of the Milanese and the Venetians. But I shall show them. Yes, I shall show them. I have sent Augereau to Paris and he will know how to deal with such traitors.'
Suddenly he broke off, gave Roger a long stare and snapped, 'And you? What have you been doing?'
Roger told him that knowing that one of his greatest ambitions was to conquer England, he had in the spring of '96 had himself smuggled over to renew his contacts there and to be the better able to report on the chances of a successful invasion.
At first he seemed to be only half listening and thinking of something else; but when Roger went on to say that a chance had arisen for him to go to India, Boneparte's large luminous eyes suddenly lit up.
'India!' he exclaimed. 'The East has always fascinated me. You must tell me about it. Every detail. But not now. Tell them to lay a cover for you at my table. Over dinner I shall have time to please myself in listening to you.'