'Indeed I do.' Mr. Pitt gave one of his rare smiles. 'It was largely due to your skilful machinations that Madame de Beauharnais agreed to marry him, and that he was diverted from his assignment to prepare an army for the invasion of England by being given command of the Army of Italy.'
Roger made a little grimace. 'It was my knowledge of how ill-prepared we were to resist invasion which led me to take that course; yet more than ever now I have the feeling that it would have been wiser to let him risk destruction in the Channel. It was not of that, though, that I was thinking.'
'I see. You meant to remind me of your assessment of him as the most intelligent and dangerous of all the French generals. It was a shrewd appreciation, since he had never then directed a battle.'
I had had the advantage of seeing him in the field; for I met him when he was still an unknown Artillery officer.'
'That was at the siege of Toulon, was it not?'
'It was.' Roger gave a sudden laugh. 'It might almost be said that we won our spurs together. I got myself into a pretty fix, and as Citizen Representative Breuc was under the necessity of leading French troops in a daylight charge against a Spanish battery. It near cost me my life, but later paid most handsomely; for ever since, the little Corsican has accounted me a gallant fellow and worthy of his friendship. But for that he would never have discussed so frankly with me last February the project for invading England, and offered me a Colonelcy on his staff. There was, though, another project on which he spoke to me with equal frankness, and 'twas to that part of my report that I was hoping to direct your memory.'
'You refer to the Italian campaign. Yes, I remember now. It was his pet hobby-horse and he had long been endeavouring to persuade the Directors to accept his plan for it. No wonder he so readily abandoned all else when given the chance to carry it out himself, and within forty-eight hours of his marriage jumped out of his bride's bed to gallop off and take up his new command. Well, he has certainly justified your belief in his capabilities; but what of it?'
Since Roger's tactful references to his report had failed to ring the right bell in his master's brain, he felt that he now had no alternative but to speak out and endeavour, once and for all, to shatter his dangerous illusions.
'Sir,' he said. 'You have evidently forgotten the salient point that has reference to our conversation. It is my having informed you that General Buonaparte spoke to me of Italy as the treasure-chest of Europe. And he was right. Nowhere in. the world is there so much accumulated wealth. We know, too, that the French Republicans have no scruples in plundering unmercifully the cities that their armies overrun, by means of indemnities, forced loans, fines for alleged wrongs, and open looting. I think Buonaparte too big a man, and too confident in his own future, to exact for himself more than he requires for his immediate needs; but you may be sure that one thing he is set upon is to be allowed the continuance of a free hand in Italy. To ensure that he must keep the good-will of the Directors, and the one way in which he can make certain of doing so is by supplying them with money. I. would wager all Lombard Street to a China Orange that during these past few weeks treasure convoys despatched by him have carried many million ducats across the Alps into France. And those ducats will buy the food she needs so badly. Yet worse, there is no reason to suppose that this river of gold will cease to flow until Buonaparte's victorious advance is halted. Distressed as I am to disabuse you of your hopes, I am convinced that there is not the least foundation for the supposition that France must shortly collapse as the result of an empty Treasury.'
Mr. Pitt's grey face had gone a shade greyer. Slowly removing his arm from a stone crenellation on which he had been leaning, he walked over to a painted iron table that had on it a decanter of port and two glasses. Refilling them both he drank from his own, set it down and remarked sourly:
'I have often found you a disconcerting person with whom to’ discuss foreign affairs, Mr. Brook; but never more so than this morning.'
Roger, too, took a swig of port, then murmured, 'I am truly sorry, Sir, but I would serve you ill did I not give you my opinions with complete frankness.'
'That is true'; the Prime Minister laid a friendly hand on his elbow; 'and believe me, far from resenting it, I am grateful to you. Yet, if you are right, and the rejection by the French Government of my overtures implies that you are, it means that we must resign ourselves to another year or more of war. I would to God I could be certain that the nation will stand up to that.'
'What!' exclaimed Roger. 'You cannot mean it! In the last war we stuck it out for twice the time we have been involved in this, and as a nation we still have all those advantages over the French of which you were speaking a while ago.'
'Alas, there you are quite wrong.'
'Wrong! How so? The nation is united under a stable government. The Coalition gives you an overwhelming majority in the House. We are still sustained by our Christian faith. The war may again be making heavy in-roads on our resources, but we still adhere to our traditions and are as determined as ever to maintain our rights.'
'Mr. Brook, having lived for so long abroad it is understandable that you should have remained unaware of the changed feeling in your own country. Last October, on His Majesty's going to open Parliament his coach was stoned by the mob.'
'So I heard, Sir, and was most deeply shocked; but I took it to be an isolated act by a small group of fanatics.'
'It was far from that. Thousands thronged the Mall and booed him. No such demonstration against a British Monarch has taken place within living memory. That it should do so is clear evidence that the loyalty of the masses has been undermined by the pernicious doctrines of the French. During the past two years they have spread like wildfire, and every town now has its proletarian club at which agitators preach revolution. Were the franchise universal at the next election there would be a real danger of this country becoming a Republic. So you may rid your mind of the idea that the people are still united.'
Roger finished his glass of port, then said with a frown, 'I was, of course, aware that hot-heads like Horne Tooke had long been creating trouble, and of the near-treasonable activities of the London Corresponding Society; but I had not a notion that sedition had become so widespread.'
'Last autumn the Society of which you speak convened a meeting in Islington Fields. It was attended by no less than fifteen thousand persons, and resolutions were passed at it advocating armed rebellion. God knows what might have happened had I not promptly ordered numerous regiments of troops from their stations in the country to the outskirts of London. Norwich, Birmingham, Sheffield, Bristol, and a score of other cities have become hot-beds of revolution. I am at present holding the masses down only by having suspended Habeas Corpus and having put through a Treason Act making malcontents who speak against the Constitution liable to transportation for seven years.
'You spoke, too, of the Christian Faith,' Mr. Pitt went on, with a shrug of his narrow shoulders. 'It has recently suffered as serious a decline as loyalty to the Crown. John Wesley's teachings detached a great part of the masses from the Established Church. Methodism is a revolt from religious discipline and on doctrinal matters near synonymous with Freethinking. What more fertile breeding ground could you have for complete disbelief? Those who preach anarchy also preach atheism and, alas, thousands, many thousands, of the proletariat have now accepted both.
'With regard to money: in the present war I have had to find vast sums to subsidise our allies. Without British gold they could never have kept their armies in the field so long, and the drain has near ruined us.