Among the newcomers to whom Roger was presented were the Due de Polignac, the husband of the beautiful Gabrielle who was the Queen's closest friend and the governess of the royal children, the Due de Biron and the Baron de Breteuil, all of whom recalled having at times transacted business with him when he was M. de Rochambeau's secretary; while several of the others were known to him by sight and reputation. They included the Prince de Ligne, a soldier-poet and renowned horticulturist, whose talents and charm had made him persona grata at half the Courts in Europe; the Comte Valentin d'Esterhazy, a wealthy Hungarian noble who had been specially recommended to the Queen by her mother, the Empress Maria Theresa; the Baron de Besenval, an elderly but robust Swiss who commanded the King's Swiss Guards; and Auguste-Marie, Prince d'Arenberg, who was known in France as the Comte de la Marck, and was the son of Maria Theresa's most brilliant general.
They were a gallant and handsome company, fully representative of the gay and intelligent men whom Madame Marie Antoinette had delighted to gather about her in her happier days; and now as her old and best friends, having only the true interests of the monarchy at heart, they remained at her side, while the hundreds of time-serving courtiers who usually frequented the Palace had gone off to the provinces for the elections.
All of them remembered the affair of de Caylus's death and Athenais de Rochambeau's run-away marriage, and were eager to hear a firsthand account of it; so while the daylight died the curtains were drawn, candles lit, fresh bottles of wine uncorked, and as they settled down round the big table Roger found himself called on to tell again the story of his famous duel.
Again he endeavoured to belittle the part he had played, but when he had done the whole company was both loud in its praise of his conduct and most sympathetic about his present position; so he was still further heartened in his hope that the Queen's friends would use their influence to secure her clemency on his behalf.
The talk then became general and naturally many references were made to the unsettled state of France; thus Roger was provided with the opportunity, which had seemed so distant that morning, of hearing the views of these very men who stood so near the throne.
Somewhat to his surprise, he did not find them in the least reactionary; on the contrary, most of them appeared very liberal-minded. De Ligne and de Vaudreuil were particularly so, and the latter, after inveighing against the artificiality of life at Court, declared that he would have long since left it had it not been for his attachment to the Queen.
As they talked the wine was kept in constant circulation. It was not the habit to drink so heavily in France as in England, and the wine, although a rich Anjou, was considerably lighter than the Port to which Roger was accustomed. Nevertheless, by the time de Vaudreuil's friends retired, Roger was carrying a good load, so on going to bed he thought no more of his worries and, within a few minutes of his head touching the pillow, was sound asleep.
However, when he awoke in the morning, the danger in which he lay recurred to him with full force, and over a breakfast of chocolate and crisp rolls, which was brought to him in bed, he tried to assess his chances of escaping the Queen's anger.
He felt now that he had been extremely rash to return to France without having made quite certain that the old charges against him in connection with de Caylus's death had been quashed, as he had believed them to be. Soon after his escape to England, in the late summer of '87, his dear friend, the Lady Georgina Etheridge, had offered to arrange the matter. The ravishing Georgina had, at that time, numbered amongst her beaux the recently appointed French Ambassador, Monsieur le Comte d'Adhemar; and she had said that, having regard to the true facts, it should be easy for her to get the murder charge withdrawn, which would then reduce the affair to the much less heinous one of duelling.
Roger had gladly accepted her offer, and written out a long statement for her to hand to the Ambassador. As he knew that such personal matters were always subject to long delays before being dealt with, he had not pressed for an answer. He had been content to accept, via
Georgina, d'Adhemar's assurance after reading the statement that, if it was substantially true, the King would inflict on the culprit no more than a sentence of a year's banishment; and as nearly two years had elapsed since his deed he had had good reason to suppose that he need fear no repercussion from it.
On thinking matters over, he assumed that the Queen would now have him handed over to the police for indictment before a magistrate. If that occurred he could demand that the papers revelant to the original affair should be produced, and with any luck d'Adhemar's recommendation would be found among them, or, if Fortune really decided to smile on him again, a pardon by the King might come to light. On the other hand there was the unpleasant possibility that the Ambassador's report had never got as far as His Majesty, and in that case only the Queen's clemency could save him from being tried for murder.
His thoughts shifted to a murder trial that was still vivid in his memory. Barely six weeks before he and Georgina had been very near paying for their year-old love affair by finding nooses round their necks. The odious publicity of the trial had sent her hastily abroad, and she was now with her clever, indulgent father in Vienna.
He wondered how she was faring there, but had little doubt her splendid health and amazing vitality were carrying her triumphantly through an endless succession of parties. He felt certain, too, that being the wanton hussy that her hot half-gypsy blood had made her, she would have added another lover to the long list of handsome gallants she had taken since she had first been seduced by a good-looking highwayman. Whoever she was allowing to caress her dark beauty in the city on the Danube now—be he Austrian, German, Hungarian or Czech— Roger had good cause to think him a monstrous lucky fellow, for he had laid siege to and won quite a number of lovely ladies himself, yet not one of them could offer Georgina's rare and varied attractions as a mistress.
But she meant far more to him than that. They were both only children, and it was she who had filled the place of almost a brother, as well as a sister, to him in their early teens. Then, in a moment when he needed self-confidence above all else, she had led him to think that he was initiating her into the mysteries of love, although in reality she was initiating him, for he was the younger, and not yet sixteen. It was she who had given him the jewels that de Roubec had stolen, and whatever love affairs they might have when apart they always returned to one another as confidants and friends.
Again his thoughts shifted, this time to his last interview with Mr. Pitt, and in his mind he began to live through the scene once more.
As on two previous occasions the Prime Minister had asked him down to Holwood, his country residence near Bromley, for a Sunday, in order to give him his instructions at leisure and in private. Two old patrons of Roger had been there, whom he had first known as Sir James Harris and the Marquis of Carmarthen; but the former had been raised to the peerage the preceding year as Baron Malmesbury, and the latter—from whom, as Foreign Secretary, Roger always received the funds for his secret activities—had, only that week, succeeded his father as Duke of Leeds. Pitt's shadow, the cold, unbending but upright and indefatigable William Grenville, had also been there, providing by his unapproachable hauteur a strong contrast to the gracious charm of the new Duke and jovial warmth of the recently created peer.