That evening he decided to call upon his charming and brilliant friend. Before doing so he returned to La Belle £toile to freshen himself up and have the patched and faded uniform he still wore smartened up as far as that was possible. As he entered the inn a potman gave him a letter. Opening it he saw that it was headed, 1 Ministry of Police \ It read:
The Minister presents his compliments to Colonel Breuc and desires him to call upoh him at his earliest convenience.
It was signed Joseph Fouche.
Roger went as white as the paper on which the letter was written. It seemed incredible, yet it must be true. Somehow, during his absence from France, the subtle, scheming, ex-terrorist had succeeded in climbing from obscurity back to power. Fouché was Roger's most deadly enemy, the one man who had it in his power to ruin him utterly. And he was now Minister of Police.
23
Out of the Past
Roger had absorbed the contents of the communication at a single glance. Its very brevity precluded any possibility of mistake and it was a summons that he dared not ignore. Abruptly he told the potman to bring him a pint of Anjou wine. Then he sat down to think.
He had last seen Fouche in March, '96. Unlike a number of other prominent terrorists who had saved their own necks by conspiring to bring about Robespierre's downfall in the summer of '9', Fouche's record had been so black that he had been hounded out of the Convention. All his skill at intrigue had failed to save him from the malice of his enemies, and for close on two years he had lived in obscurity and poverty. In the spring of '96 he had striven to secure for himself, by a pretty piece of blackmail, at least a minor post in one of the Ministries; but Roger had outwitted him. Still worse, for him, as his activities had menaced Barras's plans the all-powerful Director had issued an order of banishment, forbidding him to reside within sixty miles of Paris.
How, Roger wondered, with Barras still the most prominent man in the Directory, had Fouche not only secured permission to return to Paris but become Minister of Police, the most powerful official in the capital? Before opening Fouche's letter he had felt so fully assured of his own security. Now, as he slowly drank his wine, he endeavoured to assess how seriously it might be threatened by this extraordinary change in the fortunes of his old enemy.
Had Fouche emerged again as a private individual or even in
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some minor post, Roger would have had little to fear. Apart from occurrences during his first year in France, of which only Talleyrand and Fouché knew, his record was unassailable. With his many friends in high places, Barras and Bonaparte among them, he could have laughed to scorn an accusation by any ordinary ex-terrorist; but if the Minister of Police personally vouched for it that he knew Colonel Breuc to be an Englishman and a secret agent, that would be a ve^y different matter.
In France, for the past eight years, all protection of the liberty of the individual had ceased to exist. There was no such law as Habeas Corpus, or any Court before which an accused person might demand to be heard. The country had been ruled by a succession of tyrants who maintained themselves by giving full powers to their secret police to suppress all opposition. Many thousands of people had been arrested merely on suspicion and had been imprisoned indefinitely or shipped off to die in the fever-ridden penal settlements at Cayenne. So Roger now had to face the appalling thought that Fouché could arrest him and, unless he could very speedily get help, order his immediate transportation. Roger had no doubt that Bonaparte would intervene on his behalf. But the Corsican must be immersed as never before in his secret struggle with the Directory; and he might not even hear of Roger's arrest until the latter was a prisoner in the hold of a ship well out in the Atlantic.
Before many minutes had passed, he decided that his one hope of protecting himself lay in informing his friends of his danger so that, should he fail to return from his interview with Fouché, they would at once take steps to do what they could for him. Yet he also saw that for him to run round Paris telling all and sundry that he feared he was about to be arrested as an English spy was out of the question. The old adage, * qui s'excuse, s'accuse\ flashed into his mind. As yet he had not even been accused, so what possible grounds could he give for fearing that he would be?
It was then he recalled that, at the moment he had received the bombshell, he had been about to freshen himself up before going to call on Talleyrand. He finished his wine at a draught, then went up to his room. Talleyrand was the one man who knew as much about him as did Fouche, so he could at least consult him without throwing suspicion on himself. It was most unfortunate that the ex-Bishop was no longer Foreign Minister; but though he now lacked the power to protect a friend he could still be counted on for good advice.
Fifteen minutes later Roger left La Belle fitoile in a sedan chair for the Rue Taitbout, where he learned that Talleyrand had moved on leaving the official residence of the Foreign Minister in the Rue de Bac. Darkness had come and rain with it, converting the surface of the streets into inch-deep mud. As his chairmen sloshed through it Roger thought how terribly the state of Paris had deteriorated since he had first known it.
Then, though the streets were narrow, they had been reasonably clean and there were scores of fine mansions in which hundreds of wax candles burned every night. Now, the streets were pot-holed and half choked with refuse. Hardly a glimmer of light was to be seen. The mansions had leaking roofs and broken windows; most of them had become rat-infested tenements, while many of the formerly splendid churches had been turned into shoddy dance halls or gaming dens. The Armies of France had sent back thousands of millions of francs, extorted from conquered countries, yet the Governments had been so corrupt and inefficient that money was never forthcoming to stop the capital from falling into an ever-worse state of rack and ruin.
Talleyrand's house had a courtyard flanked by two pavilions. It was one of the few that, owing to his genius for acquiring money and a good taste that no money could buy, was kept up with the same elegance that had graced those of the old nobility. After Roger's many months spent in the cramped quarters of ships going to and fro across the Mediterranean, and in the insalubrious East, the very sight and warmth of the handsomely furnished hall cheered him a little; but to his annoyance he learned that the master was out, making a round of the salons.
When he said he would await M. de Talleyrand's return, the footman fetched the Majordomo. This portly factotum recognized Roger and said he feared his master might not return home for several hours. But Roger said it was imperative that he should see M. de Talleyrand that night; so the Majordomo showed him into an ante-room, had the footman bring him wine and biscuits, then left him.
For a while he continued to muse over the alarming turn his fortunes had so suddenly taken; but after a time it struck him that no good could come from his spending half the night brooding, so he had better find some other way to employ his mind.