The Rising Storm

She said at once that, although she regretted the necessity for her sister's sake, she would willingly receive the Dauphin. The King's consent would have to be obtained, but the getting of it was a mere formality. She and General Acton would arrange that between them. Then, after her long talk with Roger, she sent a page to find the General and request him to join them.

The half-French, half-British Neapolitan Prime Minister was a fine-looking man in his early fifties. His manner was firm but courtly, and it was clear that he knew just how to handle his royal mistress. Although he made no direct mention of it, after a few minutes' con­versation it was also clear to Roger that he had already been primed on the subject in hand by Sir William. He was entirely at one with the Queen in her wish to receive the Dauphin, but he tactfully overruled her impulsive wish to speak to the King about it there and then.

He shrewdly pointed out that at this hour of night His Majesty might resent being worried with business, whereas tomorrow there would be an excellent opportunity for catching him in just the right humour. As the forest at Caserta had not been disturbed for over three weeks the King was assured of a good hunt in the morning, so if they asked him to attend a short counsel in the afternoon he would then be in a mood to agree to anything without argument.

Roger mentally sighed with relief, as these tactics meant that even if a northward-bound ship happened to be sailing next day they could hardly now attempt to pack him off back to France in her. Having come to the ball would give him an unforeseen chance of attempting to bring Isabella to a decision during a dance that night, and, if he were success­ful, their meeting at midday next day could then be devoted to arrang­ing final plans. So, as soon as the Queen dismissed him, he made his way to the ballroom and began to search anxiously for his beloved.

He had seen both her and Don Diego several times in the distance, but now could not find either of them. While he was still hunting frantically for her in the ante-rooms he ran into Donna Francavilla, from whom he learned to his dismay that Isabella had been feeling ill, so the Sidonia y Ulloas had already gone home on that account.

Roger was both distressed and furious. Isabella had told him that she was going to the ball, so if only he had known earlier that he would be bidden to it himself he could have arranged for her to keep an assignation with him there; but now, owing to the Queen having kept him for so long, this excellent opportunity of thrashing matters out with Isabella had escaped him.

He was still standing, angry and disconsolate, where the Princess and her partner had left him, when a tall, thinnish, middle-aged man came hurrying round the corner. His powdered hair was a little untidy and his waistcoat was buttoned up unevenly, but he was covered in stars and orders, and Roger instantly recognized him as the King.

Quickly he drew himself up to bow, but the boisterous Monarch suddenly halted opposite to him, grinned, clapped him heartily on the shoulder and said something in Italian.

Not understanding what he said, Roger swiftly excused himself in French; upon which King Ferdinand gaily broke into that language.

"I don't know who you are, young man," he cried with a laugh, "but you're very welcome here. You've kept that wife of mine busy the whole evening. Each time I've passed the gallery I've seen her talking her tongue off to you out there. You must come here again. Nay, better still, stay here. I'll make you an officer in my Volontari della Marina."

A sly look came over his oafish face, and he added in a lower tone: "It gave me just the chance I needed with the Marchesa. But say nothing of that, or I will have you clapped into St. Elmo." Then, with another grin, he turned to hurry away.

"Sire! One moment, I beg," Roger called after him.

"What is it, eh?" The King glanced over his shoulder, with a sus­picious frown. " 'Tis no use asking me for money. I cannot spare any."

"Nay, Sire," Roger smiled. "But permit me to draw Your Majesty's attention to your waistcoat."

King Ferdinand looked down, adjusted the give-away buttons and exclaimed gratefully: "Dio mio! What an escape! Had the Queen seen that she would have cancelled my hunt tomorrow." Then, grabbing Roger by the arm, he added: "You must certainly stay with us. Come along now, and have some supper."

In the supper-room a meal was being served in what seemed to Roger novel and uncomfortable conditions. There was an abundance of food on tables ranged round the walls but no table in the centre of the room. Instead there were four rows of gilt chairs formed into a square and facing inward. On these a number of the guests were sitting, eating from plates balanced on their knees.

"Look!" said the King. "Are not their struggles to cut things up amusing to watch ? And now and then one of them drops a plate, which makes everyone laugh. Go now and try your luck."

As Roger struggled with the half of a crayfish, he sighed at the thought of the King's offer of a commission in his crack regiment of Sea Cadets. If only he could have accepted it and remained on in Naples! But he knew only too well that even were the offer to be renewed tomorrow in all seriousness, he would have to refuse it.

By the time he had supped it was getting on for one in the morning, and soon afterwards he ran into Sir William, who asked if he felt like going home. Roger agreed at once, so they went down to the diplomat's carriage and set off for the Palazzo Sessa.

The carriage had hardly turned into the Calle Toledo when Sir William said: "The Royal Family will be taking up their residence at Caserta tomorrow, and I have been ordered to take you out there. It is a drive of about sixteen miles, so we had better start at ten o'clock.""

"Then I must beg you to excuse me, sir," Roger said firmly. "I have an appointment here in Naples at midday which it is impossible for me to cancel."

Sir William raised an eyebrow. "Really, Mr. Brook! I should hardly have thought it necessary to remind you that the orders of Her Majesty-take precedence of all private matters."

Roger bit his lip for a second, then exclaimed: "That, sir, obviously applies to everyone who is in the service of the Queen of Naples; but I am not."

"You are, however, in that of His Britannic Majesty," Sir William replied coldly, "and I regard this as His Majesty's business."

"Indeed, sir, I pray you pardon me." Roger's voice was desperate. "After all your kindness to me my behaviour must seem monstrous-churlish. But this matter is to me one of life and death. Could I not follow you on horse-back and still arrive in time? What is the latest possible hour at which it is imperative that I should be at Caserta?"

Seeing his distress, the elderly diplomat said kindly: "I do not think the Queen and General Acton will tackle the Ring until the-afternoon; but if a particularly favourable opportunity offered they-might decide to do so any time after he returns from hunting, and that, should be between twelve and one."

"If you could furnish me with a mount, sir, I could make the-journey in an hour."

"How long will your appointment detain you ?"

"I had hoped for half an hour at least."

"Then I fear it is out of the question. Too much hangs upon the-matter for us to jeopardize the issue."

"Will it satisfy you, sir, if I give you my word to be at Caserta by one o'clock? If I ride all out I can do the sixteen miles well under the hour, so that would give me five or ten minutes with ... to see . . ."

"So be it then," Sir William covered Roger's hesitation. "But remember that I shall count upon you."

At twenty to twelve next day Roger was at the Francavillas'. He had come early, praying that Isabella would be early too, and down in the­street a groom was holding Sir William's fastest riding-horse ready for him. But Isabella did not c ome early, and when midday chimed out he was still waiting for her in a fury of impatience, up in Donna Francavilla's boudoir. It was already seven minutes past twelve when Isabella arrived looking pale and wan.

Knowing the situation the Princess left them together at once; and Roger, seizing Isabella in his arms, told her that they had only a bare few minutes before he must take the road.

A couple of those precious minutes went in kisses, and his asking her if it was really illness that had caused her to leave the ball early the preceding night; but she assured him that she had done so only on account of the strain she had been under, and that she had not seen him, or known that he was there, otherwise she would have remained.

He then plunged into the matter that concerned them so desperately; swore that he could not live without her, and urged her again either to agree to his returning to Naples or to elope with him.

Wringing her hands she declared that in no circumstances must he return, as if he did he would be dead within three months; then tear­fully advanced the arguments she had used the day before against an elopement.

Hurriedly, he cut her short. "Yes, yes, my sweet! But what I had no chance to say yesterday was this. We should have to live quietly in the country only for a time, as in due course we could regularize our union. You could get an annulment of your present marriage."

She sadly shook her head. "Nay, Rojé. The Catholic Church would never grant an annulment to a woman who had left her husband and was living in sin, for the purpose of enabling her to marry again."

"But what of Don Diego ?" he exclaimed. "Should you leave him, will the Church condemn him to remain wifeless for life through no fault of his own? He is rich and influential; moreover, he is barely thirty and will not wish to spend the rest of his days like a widower. Surely the Church would not refuse an annulment to him?"

Isabella sharply drew in her breath. "Perhaps you are right. Yes, I cannot think they would refuse him. But how long will it be before he meets someone that he wants to make his wife? And we cannot even be certain that he will wish to marry again. We should be pledging our lives on a desperate gamble. Rojé', you must give me time to think! I must have time to think!"

"God forbid that I should hurry you in taking such a decision; but "'tis as good as certain now that I shall be leaving Naples tomorrow. .1 will come to the house for your answer tonight."

"Nay, Rojé! I implore you not to! I forbid it!"

"I must! I shall be held at Caserta all this afternoon. 'Tis our only chance for a last meeting; and if I die for it I must hold you in my arms again."

As he finished speaking a nearby clock chimed the quarter after twelve, and he cried desperately: "My poor sweet, I positively must leave you now. I will come for your decision tonight."

Suddenly she seized and clung to him. "One moment! Listen, I beg, or you will get us both killed. Diego is in one of his black moods. Before he left for Sicily he had fixed his eye on a Signora Goudar. She is little better than a courtesan, but difficult in spite of that; and so far she has rejected his advances. His unsatisfied passions disturb him to such a pitch that when one of them has gripped him he often paces up and down for hours at a stretch by night, in the garden. Should you enter it tonight I vow there will be murder done."

Roger was silent for a moment, then he said: "I care naught for an encounter with him; but if you fear he would attempt your life as well, I dare not risk it."

"He would! I know it! Did he surprise us together he would do his utmost to kill the two of us."

"Then I'll not come tonight. Somehow I will get my departure postponed for twenty-four hours. And in some way I'll lure Don Diego from the house tomorrow night. I'll come to you then and bring a carriage with me. That will give you ample time to decide upon our future. If 'tis favourable to me, I beg you have your things packed and Maria and Quetzal ready to leave with you; for we must take advantage of the night to get away unseen."

With the tears streaming down her face Isabella nodded dumbly. Then, as he released her, she swayed and fainted. Catching her in his arms again, he laid her on a couch, and dashed out of the room.

At breakneck speed he rode out to Caserta; and, as he entered the fine avenue of elms that led to the palace, the clear single note of one came to him from a clock in the stables behind it.

In view of the comparative smallness of the Kingdom of Naples the size of the palace astonished him, for, as he galloped up the straight towards its thousand-foot-long facade, the building seemed positively immense. But the thought was only a passing one. Leaving his sweating mount with one of the grooms at the main entrance, he mopped the sweat from his own brow and hurried inside.

The entrance hall, great staircase and galleries around it were even more astonishing than the exterior, as they were entirely fashioned from the most rare and costly marbles, but his surprise was still further added to by the fact that there was hardly anybody about. A swift enquiry from a portly factotum produced the laconic reply that His Majesty was out hunting and might not yet be back for some time. Roger was furious. He had curtailed his all-important interview with

Isabella, winded Sir William's best horse, and had his gruelling ride, all quite unnecessarily.

The official pointed through the open door to an upward slope of the park beyond which he said the royal party would be found; so, having given his horse a good breather, Roger mounted again and set off in that direction. On the far side of the hill he arrived at a big enclosure with rustic arbours for protection from the rain, and in it was the Queen surrounded by most of her Court. The enclosure faced towards a natural amphitheatre of woods so that the spectators had a fine view of the sport which was in progress. In the woods hundreds of beaters were banging kettles and firing off petards so that the game, which consisted of deer, boar, hares and foxes, should be driven out into the open for the King to shoot at.

After watching for a few moments Roger found Sir William, who apologized with a wry smile for having caused him to hurry his departure from Naples unnecessarily, and explained the present situation by adding that the King had found the sport so good that he had sent a message at midday saying that he intended to prolong his shoot for an hour longer than usual. He then took Roger to the Queen, who had General Acton beside her, and they both received him with marked kindness.

Half an hour later King Ferdinand reached the enclosure. His hair was tousled and he was dressed so like a peasant that he could easily have been mistaken for one. When Roger commented in a low voice to Sir William on the Sovereign's strange choice of costume, the diplomat laughed and replied:

"Nothing delights him more than to be taken by some young beater who does not know him for one of themselves, and egging the poor fool on to grumble to him about what a bad King he is. But such episodes do not cause him to become a better ruler. He regards the matter as a joke, and does not even give the fellow who has amused him a sixpence. He is much too mean for that."

In a fine good humour the boorish King watched the big bag of mixed game he had shot piled in a small mountain at the Queen's feet. Then, when this ceremony was over, the company entered a row of waiting carriages and was driven back to the palace.

A huge meal followed the hunt and when everyone had eaten their fill the King sent for a blanket. On seeing it brought in Sir William tapped Roger on the arm and whispered: "Quick! Follow me, or you'll rue it."

Much mystified Roger got up, and slipped after his mentor to the nearest doorway. As he did so he noticed that quite a number of other courtiers who had been standing about were making unostentatiously for the entrances, and on catching Sir William up he asked what was afoot.

"Watch from here and you will see," replied the diplomat, entrench­ing himself behind one of the great marble pillars that flanked the door. "I have seen him play this game before, and know its sequel."

As Roger watched, the King began to undress himself, and although the ladies pretended to hide their blushes behind their fans they were clearly much amused. When His Majesty was stark naked, he stepped on to the middle of the blanket, which had been spread out on the floor, and, at his order, twelve lusty footmen began to toss him in it. "One ! Two! Three!" chanted the footmen, and up towards the ceiling sailed the nude monarch.

A dozen times he was shot into the air, amidst clapping of hands and shouts of applause. Then, having ordered a halt, he scrambled out of the blanket, pointed at a fat man near by who had been laughing heartily, and cried: "You next! Your turn next."

In vain the fat man protested. He had to submit to the King's will, undress himself and be tossed in the blanket.

"You see," remarked Sir William to Roger, "from what I have saved you. That unfortunate is a German diplomat but recently arrived here; and as you are also a stranger His Majesty would certainly have had you tossed had his eye lighted on you."

Roger was quick to voice his thanks, and they remained carefully concealed from the royal buffoon's eye while half a dozen other victims suffered a similar indignity to that undergone by the German. At length the Queen persuaded his Neapolitan Majesty to dress, and with tears of mirth still streaming from his eyes he was led away between her and General Acton to the council chamber.

They remained in council only half an hour, then General Acton came out to Sir William and Roger, and told them that King Ferdinand had formally consented to receive the Dauphin in his realm. He added that it was Her Majesty's wish that a sloop of the Royal Neapolitan Navy should be placed at Roger's disposal to carry him back to France as soon as possible; but that she wished him to bear a letter for her to Madame Marie Antoinette, which she would write that night, so he was to wait upon her to receive it the following morning.

At the mention of the sloop Roger's heart had gone down into his boots, as he had feared to receive an order for his instant departure; but the codicil about carrying the letter restored his equilibrium, and he breathed again.

When the Prime Minister had left them, Sir William said: "I keep up a small villa just outside the park, to spare myself the inconvenience of having to return to Naples every night when the Court is resident at Caserta. I shall be happy to offer you a bed there."

"I thank you, sir, but I beg you to excuse me," Roger replied. "Owing to my hasty departure from the capital this morning, my business there is not yet concluded. Fortunately I have not been bidden to attend the Court this evening, so with your leave I propose to return to Naples."

Sir William gave an understanding nod. " 'Tis certain that Her Majesty will expect to see you at supper; but since she has issued no command for your appearance, you are free to do as you wish. She will have ample time to talk further with you in the morning. I suggest that you should be here not later than eleven o'clock, as she does her business from that hour onwards."

"I will be on hand at that hour without fail, sir." Roger paused a moment, then went on: "My business tonight concerns a Signora Goudar. I wonder if you can tell me anything of her?"

"I can tell you that she is plaguey expensive." Sir William eyed Roger speculatively through his quizzing glass. "Unless you have five hundred guineas to throw away, and are more of a fool than I take you to be, you will find a less ruinous wanton with whom to pass the night."

"Five hundred guineas 1" repeated Roger, shocked into a vulgar whistle. "Strap me, sir. But she must be the eighth wonder of the world to demand such a sum for her favours."

"She is not far from it," came the quiet murmur. "Few women that I have met are more beautiful, her conversation is delightful, and her career at least unusual."

"I pray you inform me of it, sir; though I assure you that I wish to meet the lady only on a matter of business."

"Then I must give you another warning. Her husband is a rogue of the first water and she is his willing accomplice. As you may know, gambling is forbidden by law in Naples; with the inevitable result that even the beggars gamble in the gutters, and the rich, having no public casinos to go to, feel the greater itch to stake their money, so get them­selves fleeced nightly in private houses where professional games are run. Goudar is the proprietor of the establishment most frequented by Neapolitan society. Thousands of guineas are often won or lost there at a single sitting, and Madame Goudar acts as the lure to draw rich foreigners into this gilded thieves'-kitchen."

"I had no thought to gamble, either, sir. 'Tis another person's business upon which I wish to see the lady."

"Even so you may burn your fingers unless you have a care. A com­bination of brains and beauty make the Goudars a pair of cheats second to none in my experience."

Roger fingered the lace at his throat. "I will heed your warning well, Sir William. But you intrigue me mightily. I pray you tell me Madame Goudar's history."

"Some sixteen years ago the lovely Sara was a little slut serving in a London tavern. She had hardly a rag to her back and could neither read nor write. Goudar saw her there and with the eye of a connoisseur appreciated the fact that one day she would be a remarkable beauty. He took the child away, made her his mistress, and spent six years in educating her. He was abundantly repaid for his trouble, for she proved quick to learn, and now, or even when he first brought her to Naples, I would defy you to detect that she had not been brought up among people of the first quality. On arriving here he devised a most skilful expedient for drawing attention to this beautiful little stool pigeon, that he had reared with such care; he made her appear in sackcloth and publicly renounce the Protestant religion as the work of the Devil." "What a monstrous thing to do!" exclaimed Roger. "Not at all," laughed Sir William, "for she was of Irish descent and birth, had been baptized into the Catholic faith as an infant, and had never subscribed to any other."

Roger joined in the laugh. "What a delightful cheat! They certainly deserved to do well for themselves."

"And they did," Sir William rejoined. "The Neapolitan nobility flocked to Goudar's house to make the acquaintance of the beautiful apostate, and their gaming-room prospered exceedingly. But more, the ladies were so intrigued that they wanted to know her too; and her manners were so charming, her taste so exquisite, her ton so exactly right, that she acquired the friendship of many of the best-born women in Naples, including even that of the Queen. She does not, of course, visit them, owing to the anomaly of her position, but they visit her; and in the afternoons there are often half a dozen titled ladies to be found taking a dish of tea with her in her apartment."

" 'Tis an amazing achievement for one of such lowly beginnings," Roger murmured, "and makes me all the more eager to meet her."

"They had one setback," Sir William remarked. "It was several years ago, round about '82, I think, as it was at the time that a notorious rogue called Giacomo Casanova was living in Naples, and held a part­nership in Goudar's crooked bank. King Ferdinand took a fancy to the lovely Sara Goudar, and rumour has it that she was not unkind to His Majesty. In any case, the Queen found a billet-doux from her in the King's pocket, with the result that the Goudars were promptly sent into exile. But after eighteen months they returned, and ever since have enjoyed such an admirable prosperity that Sara will not even consider an offer for a single night with her if it be less than five hundred guineas."

It was now getting on for seven o'clock, so Roger thanked Sir William for his valuable information and excused himself to return to Naples. By half-past eight he arrived at Crocielles, supped there and secured the address of the Goudars' house. After what he had heard from Sir William of Madame Goudar's firm adherence to her enormous fee he was far from sanguine about his chances of bringing to fruition the plot he had hatched; but he could think of no other way of securing his own ends, so desperation drove him on to attempt it, and soon after ten he knocked at Goudar's front door.

A negro porter dressed in scarlet livery opened it. On seeing Roger's well-groomed appearance and learning that he was an Englishman who had come from Crocielles the porter made no difficulty about letting him in. A footman took his cloak and hat, asked him to be good enough to leave his sword in the sword-rack, and conducted him upstairs.

He was ushered into a big, comfortably furnished salon. It con­tained only one large table at its far end, and at that, owing to the early hours which were kept in Naples, the game was already in full swing. About a dozen men were seated at it and most of them wore broad-brimmed straw hats, which looked incongruous in conjunction with their satin clothes, but were part of the stock-in-trade of such places, as they shaded the eyes of the gamblers from the strong light thrown from the multi-branched pair of candelabra on the table. On a sofa at the end of the room nearest the door a lady was sitting, holding a small court of four cavaliers, but as Roger entered she at once stood up, left them and came over to greet him.

She curtsied, he made a leg, then introduced himself. As he did so he had no doubt at all that he was addressing the remarkable Sara. Her hair was beautifully coiffured and powdered, so he could not tell if it was black, but in all other respects she possessed the typical colour­ing of an Irish colleen. Her eyes were a midnight blue, her lips cherry red, her brows arched and dark, her skin fresh, and her cheeks held a rosy flush that art might have added to but could not have simulated. Her figure was well rounded; and if she was on the wrong side of thirty, as from what Sir William had said she must be, she certainly did not look it. Roger agreed with the diplomat's estimate that she was an out­standingly handsome woman.

She had greeted him in French, which she spoke almost as fluently as himself, so for a few minutes he conversed with her in that language. With long-practised skill she plumbed him with the utmost discretion on his visit to Naples and his acquaintances there. Then, quickly satis­fied by his air of breeding and casual mention of a few of the leading families, she led him over to the gaming table and introduced him to her husband.

Goudar was holding the bank. He was a small, sharp-featured man, with a guilelessly innocent expression. After bowing politely to Roger he gave him a swift appraising glance, then waved him to a chair. Roger pulled out a fistful of gold ducats, put them on the table, and was dealt a hand of cards in the next round. He had not the least desire to play, but felt that to win the goodwill that was so imperative to the success of his plan he must lose a certain amount for the good of the house.

As so frequently happens in such cases, he positively could not lose. He was very far from being one of the highest players at the table, so Goudar showed no particular interest in him, obviously regarding him as one of the casual visitors to Naples who was no true gambler but just liked an occasional flutter, and normally left a score or so of ducats behind which helped to pay the running expenses of the establishment. When such people went away in pocket they usually came another night and lost their winnings with a bit more in addition. When they did not they were a good advertisement to the place and its proprietor's apparent honesty.

After an hour's play Roger found himself nearly forty ducats to the good, so deciding not to waste any more time he picked up his winnings and left the table.

Madame Goudar had from time to time been over to see how Fortune was treating the gamblers. She now got up at once and came to meet Roger. With a charming smile she said: "Monsieur is in luck tonight. But he will come again to give my husband his revenge; is it not so?"

Roger returned the smile, but shook his head. "Alas, Madame, my time in Naples is short; yet, all the same, I would not have you be the loser by my visit." Then, taking her hand, he poured the fistful of gold that he had won into it, and added: "These are to buy roses for you, Madame; but no roses that you can buy will equal those you already carry in your cheeks."

Her blue eyes lit with swift appreciation of his gesture and compli­ment; then with a modesty all the more fascinating from being un­expected, she veiled them with her long, dark, curling lashes, and murmured: "Ca'cest tres gentill, Monsieur.’

'Won, Madame; c'est une tribute juste" replied Roger.

Suddenly she lifted her eyes and asked shrewdly: "Why do you do this, Monsieur? You are both young and handsome, and men who are that are rarely rich."

"Because I would crave a few words with you apart, Madame."

She smiled again, and beckoned him to a smaller settee, out of ear­shot of both the gaming table and the big sofa round which she had been holding her little court of changing men ever since Roger had arrived. As they sat down she said quite simply: "You wish to make your suit with me?"

"Nay, Madame," he replied frankly. "Were I to be longer in Naples I would be greatly tempted to haunt your doorstep until you either gave in or drove me from it; but tonight I come to plead the suit of another."

He caught her glance of surprise, but went on quickly: "I have reason to believe that Don Diego de Sidonia y Ulloa is quite mad about you, yet you are so stony-hearted as to treat him with disdain."

Instantly she stiffened, and asked: "Is he, then, a friend of yours?"

"Hardly that, Madame. No more than an acquaintance; yet I am vastly concerned that you should regard his suit with greater kindness."

"Why should I?" she replied, with a hard note in her voice. "I am no ordinary courtesan, to jump into bed at any man's bidding. Time was when I had to oblige certain of our best patrons, but thank God 'tis no longer so. At a price I am still willing to consider giving myself to a man from whom I shall derive little pleasure, providing he be reason­ably personable. Don Diego fails to raise a flicker in me, and so far he has come up to only half the price I ask. Why should I put myself out to oblige that stiff-necked Spaniard?"

"Madame, I have a genuine appreciation of your feelings," Roger murmured tactfully. "As you have guessed, I am unfortunately by no means rich myself. Otherwise I would offer to make up the price you demand. As it is I can only cast myself on your good nature. I beg you, as the greatest possible favour to myself, to accept the sum he offers, and give him an assignation for tomorrow night."

She gave him a cynical little smile, then began to laugh. "I see it now. You are in love with that equally stiff-necked black-browed wife of his, and want me to take care of him so that the coast is clear for you to get into his house."

Roger grinned at her. "Madame, it would ill become me to admit it; but if you choose to think that the reason for my request, I should be hard put to it to prove you wrong."

Sara Goudar shook her head. "Nay, Monsieur. You have afforded me much amusement, but I am no philanthropist. The Spaniard can well afford to pay, so if he wants me let him disgorge his ducats. As for yourself, love is the best of locksmiths and time brings opportunity. If you have an urge to enjoy his wife, good fortune to you."

"Alas, you have named my trouble," Roger said sadly. "I am de­barred the benefits with which time so often rewards her patient votaries. I am under orders to leave Naples within thirty hours, and 'tis tomorrow night or never."

Again she shook her head, now a little impatiently. " 'Tis my time and your own that you are wasting, Monsieur, in this profitless con­versation. I see no reason whatever why I should incommode myself to further the amours of people who are of no account to me."

Roger now feared that he was bowling against an impregnable wicket, but he pulled his last trick. Taking her hand he suddenly changed from French to English; and, gambling on the fact that as far as he knew she had not been in Ireland since her childhood, he said with the best imitation of an Irish brogue that he could muster:

"Ach, come now! Ye'll do it fer the sake of ould Ireland?"

Her blue eyes lit up again as she stared at him in surprise. "Are ye tellin' me you're Irish then?"

"Bejabbers, I am! Now wasn't I born no more than five miles from Limerick town?"

"Ach, well now, to be sure." She clasped his hand and put her other upon it. " 'Tis all the difference in the wide world that's makin'. An' how could I bring meself to refuse such a broth of a bhoy ? It's an ould hack I am if the truth be known, for all that the blessed Saints have preserved me looks. What's a night in a lifetime to such as meself? Sure an' I'll give that tailor's dummy of a Spaniard an assignation just as yourself is wishin'. Though I'd leifer 'twas you than he that had designs on this bit of a woman that I am."

So Roger and Sara parted the best of friends, and with a firm under­standing that she should send a billet-doux to Don Diego saying that she had relented, and was prepared to receive him at midnight the following night.

Roger slept at the Palazzo Sessa. In the morning he made his adieux to Mrs. Cadogan and the Junoesque Emma, thanked them for the hospitality that they had afforded him, and said he hoped that the future might bring him some opportunity of being of service to them. Then he rode out to Caserta.

Queen Caroline received him a little before midday. They had another long talk about the difficulties of Madame Marie Antoinette, then the Queen gave him her letter, told him that he would always be welcome at the Court of Naples, and bade him god-speed.

Afterwards General Acton gave him another letter. It was addressed to the Tenente Umberto Godolfo, of the sloop Aspide. The Prime Minister said that it contained instructions for the sloop to put to sea at the earliest possible moment and convey Roger to Marseilles, or the nearest French port to which contrary winds might bring her. He added that he had selected Lieutenant Godolfo for this task because he spoke French well, and so could readily be made aware of the wishes of his passenger.

Roger thanked the General, took leave of him, then said good-bye to Sir William Hamilton with real affection and regret. By half-past two he was back in Naples. Having stabled Sir William's horse, he had a quick meal, then took a carozza down to the harbour, where enquiries at the Castello dell’Ovo soon enabled him to run Lieutenant Godolfo to earth.

The Tenente proved to be a tall, dark young man of about the same age as Roger. On reading the Prime Minister's order he said that he was delighted with his mission, and would be most happy to serve the Chevalier Brook to the best of his ability.

Roger then asked him how long it would take to prepare the sloop for sea.

"We have first to water and provision her," replied the Tenente; "that will take some six hours; but I will hasten matters all I can to meet the wishes of the distinguished passenger that the Aspide is to have the honour of carrying."

Having seen a crew of Corsican fishermen do a similar job in two hours, on the felucca that had brought him from Marseilles, Roger was not impressed; but, in view of all he had heard of the Royal Neapolitan Navy's shortcomings, he was not surprised, and he would not have minded if the Tenente had required double the time. So he said:

"That is excellent, Tenente mio. But I beg you, do not work your­self or your men too harshly, as the lady is unlikely to come aboard before midnight. In fact I doubt if she will have completed her packing by then, so I may have to kick my heels for her till one or two in the morning."

"The lady ?" exclaimed the young officer, giving him a puzzled look.

"Yes," Roger replied with a frown. "A lady, her maid and page are making the voyage with us."

The Tenente glanced again at General Acton's letter. "His Excellency the Prime Minister says nothing about a lady here."

"Does he not!" Roger shrugged. "Ah well! Excellentissimo Acton is a busier man than you or I, Tenente, and has little time for making his letters longer than they need be. No doubt he thought it unnecessary to mention the matter, and considered it quite sufficient to order you to place yourself at my disposal."

"Indeed, Monsieur le Chevalier," the Tenente agreed eagerly. "I feel sure you must be right. You have only to tell me your wishes. The lady will not be as comfortable as I would like on board my little ship; but I will make the best possible preparations for her reception."

Roger thanked him graciously, said that he hoped to bring the lady and her attendants down to the quay at about one in the morning, and, returning to his carozza, ordered its driver to take him to Crocielles.

There he booked a room, said that he was going straight to bed, asked to be called at ten o'clock that night with a light meal, and arranged for a coach with a reliable driver to call for him at a quarter to eleven.

When he was woken after his six hours' sleep he felt fit for anything, and extraordinarily confident of success. He was sure that he could count on lovely Irish Sara to do her part, and that Isabella, having had nearly thirty-six hours for reflection, would have decided to come with him.

To his mind it was unthinkable that the proud Don Diego should take any course other than that of repudiating a wife who left him. A noble Spaniard of such ancient lineage would naturally wish to have an heir to succeed to his titles and estates, and he could not beget a legal one without a wife. For that, if for no other reason, he would obviously set about getting an annulment of his first marriage without delay, thus leaving Isabella free to marry again. Roger felt certain that after a little thought she would see that for herself; so he was now untroubled by any further doubts about the issue. Since she loved him, had abundant courage and could rest assured of reassuming an honour­able status within a comparatively short time, he would find her packed and ready to enter on a new and happier future as his wife-to-be.

Having eaten his meal, washed, dressed and scented himself, he came downstairs, settled his reckoning and, going outside, gave the driver of the coach careful instructions. He then had himself driven to within a few hundred yards of Isabella's home, got out and walked to a spot near the garden gate where he could keep it under observation without being seen.

To his great satisfaction, shortly after eleven o'clock, Don Diego's tall figure emerged, and the Spaniard's jaunty step was sufficient to indicate the happy errand on which he was bent. Roger watched him disappear from view, allowed a safety margin of ten minutes, then went in over the wall.

A light was burning in Isabella's bedroom, so he advanced boldly across the garden and called softly up to her. After a moment she appeared darkly silhouetted against the partly open, lighted window.

"All is well, my sweet," he said in a low voice. "Don Diego went off a quarter of an hour ago to keep a rendezvous with Madame Goudar. I arranged the matter with her myself, so I am certain of it; you have nothing to fear. Are Maria and Quetzal ready? I have a coach waiting. Shall I come up and help carry down your boxes?"

She shook her head and began to sob.

"What is it? Surely you are not still hesitating?" he asked in a slightly louder voice that held a tremor of uneasiness. " 'Tis as certain as that tomorrow's sun will rise, that Don Diego will ask for an annul­ment. He must! And the Church could not refuse to grant it to him. 'Tis the only way in which he can beget himself an heir."

"I cannot come with you, Rojé!" she sobbed. "I cannot!"

"Why?" he cried sharply, made terse by sudden desperation. "Why not?"

"I—I cannot!" she choked out. "I—1 love you! I would remain your mistress all my life. I would be your slave! There is nothing I would not do for you, except—except this. I—I—I already carry his child! I shall be the mother of his heir and—and 'twould be unfor­givable to deprive him of it. I cannot go with you!"

Turning suddenly she fled back into her room. Stunned for a while,

Roger stared up at the lighted oblong of the window. For him, those words of hers, "I already carry his child," conveyed a terrible finality. He knew now instinctively that no threats, arguments or prayers could prevail. Slowly he turned about, stumbled across the garden and climbed out over its wall.

Half an hour later Lieutenant Umberto Godolfo received him aboard the sloop Aspide. Advancing across the narrow deck the young Neapolitan spread out his hands and asked in surprise:

"But, Monsieur le Chevalier, where is the lady that you were to bring with you?"

"As far as I am concerned she is dead," replied Roger tonelessly. Then, with a touch of his father the Admiral, he added in a voice that brooked no reply:

"Tenente. Be good enough to order your ship to sea."

CHAPTER NINETEEN

THE RISING STORM

ROGER had spent nine days and nights in Naples. During that time he believed himself to have been carried up to the highest peaks of human happiness and dashed down to the lowest depths of human misery. He had not only burnt the candle at both ends, but also burnt himself. For a week, lack of sleep, except for a few hours a day snatched when most other people were getting up, had made no impression on him. His splendid youth, fortified by love as by draughts of some Olympian nectar, had given him temporarily the buoyancy of a demigod. But the past forty-eight hours of uncertainty, strain and desperation had done what his physical excesses had failed to accomplish. His nerves were in shreds; he felt empty as a drum, mentally exhausted and absolutely at the end of his tether.

Yet, as he drove down to the harbour, the core of sound common sense, that acted as a balance to his highly strung nature, had enabled him to take stock of his position clearly.

It was seven months since he had first met Isabella. For one month of that time he had enjoyed a love idyll with her, and for one week a tornado of passion; but for close on half a year his love for her had deprived him of all his normal zest for life. The future offered no hope of a higher proportion of happiness against misery either for her or him.

Therefore, it seemed, there was only one sensible thing to do. If he wished for any contentment in the future he must exercise his will­power as he had never done before. Each time he thought of Isabella, instead of letting his mind dwell upon her, as he had previously, he must force himself to think of something else. He must cut her right out of his life, and henceforth regard her as though she had died that night.

On his return voyage to Marseilles the weather did not favour him as it had on his outward trip. For a good part of the time it rained and blew, but not sufficiently to make him sea-sick; and so that he should not have time to brood he spent all his waking hours helping the crew with the sails and winches. On the evening of Tuesday, November 24th, after six days at sea, he said good-bye to Lieutenant Godolfo and stepped ashore. Then, knowing how anxious Madame Marie Antoinette would be to learn the result of his mission, he took post-chaise first thing next morning, sustained three days and nights of appalling jolting, and arrived in Paris at midday on the 28th.

He was, once more, incredibly tired from his arduous journey and, feeling that his reappearance at the Tuileries might arouse comment, he wished to make it at a time when it was least likely to attract atten­tion. The next day was a Sunday, and knowing that the Sovereigns received the Foreign Ministers on that day, he felt that it would offer as good an opportunity as any; so he slept the clock round at La Belle Etoiley and made his way to the palace on the following afternoon.

There he found things much as he had left them. The Royal Family had practically no privacy. The garden was full of idlers staring in at the windows, and 800 National Guards were posted in and about the building; there were groups of them lounging in all the halls and principal rooms, and sentries on the staircases and at almost every door.

Mingling with the crowd of diplomats and such courtiers as continued to attend the royal receptions, he made his way upstairs. Most of the Ambassadors were known to him by sight, but there were not many people there with whom he had ever exchanged more than a few words, and, with one exception, to those who addressed him he mentioned casually that for the past three weeks he had been absent from Paris on a trip to England.

The exception was Lord Robert Fitz-Gerald, who was still acting as the British Charge'd'Affaires pending the appointment of a new Ambas­sador. They had met several times at the far more brilliant receptions of a similar nature held at Versailles, and Lord Robert knew from Mr. Hailes of Roger's secret activities. Roger was responsible only to Mr. Pitt, and his connection with the Embassy was limited to using it as a post-office and a bank; but, as a matter of courtesy, he thought it proper to inform Lord Robert where he had actually been; and, having done so in a low voice, he added that he would be making a full report of his journey direct to the Prime Minister.

At the entry of the Sovereigns a human lane was formed and the usual procedure gone through. Roger had placed himself in a position where the Queen could hardly fail to see him, and, on doing so, she gave a faint start, then a little nod of recognition; but she did not beckon him towards her. For the better part of an hour the King and Queen talked to various people each for a few moments, then they withdrew.

The company did not disperse at once, as these bi-weekly receptions of the Corps Diplomatiquewere a good opportunity for the representa­tives of the foreign Powers to exchange news and conduct informal business; so Roger was able to remain among them inconspicuously while waiting to be sent for, as he felt sure he would be in due course.

Presently a fair woman, some five or six years older than the Queen, paused near him. As he took in her large gentle eyes and air of tender melancholy, she gave him a faint smile. He was somewhat surprised, as, although he recalled having seen her at the Tuileriesbefore his departure for Naples, he did not know her; but he at once returned her smile and made her a bow.

She sank in a curtsy and, as she rose from it, murmured: "Monsieur. J’ai suis la Princess de Lamballe."

Her whispered introduction at once recalled to Roger all he had heard about her. She was said to be not overburdened with brains, but very pious and extremely charitable. She had married the only son of the immensely rich Due de Penthievre, so was the sister-in-law of the Due d'Orleans, but, unlike him, she was wholly attached to the Queen. After only a year of marriage her husband died, so she had devoted her­self to good works on her father-in-law's estates; but on coming to Court for the wedding celebrations of Madame Marie Antoinette, the young Dauphine had taken a great fancy to her, begged her to remain and made her Superintendent of her Household.

For some six years she had remained the Queen's closest friend; until the latter began to frequent the gayer company of Madame de Polignac. Then, for the ten years that followed, the Princess had again given most of her time to improving the conditions of the peasants on her father-in-law's estates, so that she had become known throughout the Province as "the good angel". During the terrible events that had taken place at Versailles early in October she had been at Rambouillet; but, immediately on hearing of them, she had courageously driven through the night to Paris, arrived at the Tuilerieson the morning of the 8th, and at once resumed her old place as the Queen's first lady and confidante.

For a few minutes Roger exchanged the type of banalities with her that might have passed between two acquaintances who had not met for a few weeks; then she dropped her handkerchief. As he picked it up he felt the stiffness of a piece of paper in its folds. Guessing it to be a note for him, he swiftly palmed the paper before handing the hand­kerchief back to her. After a few more airy exchanges she left him; then he strolled out of the room, and as soon as he could find a corridor in which he would be unobserved, read the note. It ran:

My apartments are above these. Please go to them. Show this note to my maid and she will let you in. Wait there until I conjoin you.

Unhurriedly, so as not to attract attention, he followed the directions he had been given. In the ante-room he found an elderly maid busy with some mending. At sight of the note she led him through to a salon, and asked him to take a seat by the fire.

After about ten minutes the Princess de Lamballe came in, and locked the door of the ante-chamber behind her. With no more than a smile in response to Roger's bow, she walked across the salon to a door at its far end, and disappeared through it. Wondering what these mystifications portended, Roger sat down again. He had not long to wait for an answer. Within two minutes the door opened and the Princess came out, but this time she was preceded by the Queen. Evidently the two sets of apartments were connected by a secret stair­case in the thickness of the wall, and the Queen was now coming up to Madame de Lamballe's rooms whenever she wanted to prevent it becoming known that she was giving anyone a private audience.

Roger thought her looking somewhat better than when he had last spoken to her; but she had aged a lot in the past few months, and he noticed a slight nervous twitching of her hands as she asked him about his mission.

With a cheerful smile he at once assured her that it had been successful and presented the letter he had brought her from her sister; so he felt a natural disappointment when she said, with a sad shake of her head:

"Alas, Monsieur, I fear you have had your long journey to no purpose. At first the King was in favour of my idea, but he has since decided against it, and he now feels that it would be both impolitic and wrong to send the Dauphin from us."

Roger was silent for a moment, then he said: "Forgive me, Madame, but His Majesty has frequently been known to change his mind on other matters; is there not a possibility that he will do so on this?"

"I fear not," she replied unhappily. "Since your departure we have enjoyed a reasonable tranquillity. How long it will last it is impossible to say; but His Majesty fears that the moment it became known that we had smuggled the Dauphin out of the country another outbreak of violence would result."

" Tis a risk, Madame, but one that I should have thought well worth taking," put in the Princess. "Further outbreaks may occur in any case, and if you take this chance you would at least have the satis­faction of knowing His Highness to be safe; whereas, if you do not send him away now it may prove impossible to do so later."

"Oh, dear Lamballe, how I agree!" exclaimed the Queen. " 'Tis my worse nightmare that a time may come when we shall be still more closely guarded,.and those furies breaking in again will do my son a violence. But His Majesty has ruled that even our child is no longer our own to do with as we will. Like everything else I once thought was ours, he maintains that we hold the Dauphin in trust for the Nation, and that to send him away would be to wrong the people. If there be reason in that, then my mother's heart makes me blind to it; yet the King has so many cares that, even in this, I could not bring myself to argue with him."

Roger would have liked to suggest to the Queen that the best thing she could do was to box her stupid husband's ears, and tell him. that when it came to the safety of her son she would not stand for any more of his pathetic day-dreaming; but, since such sound comment was impossible, he remained silent until she asked him how he had found Queen Caroline.

For some twenty minutes he gave her the news from Naples, then she took a paper from her pocket and, handing it to him, said:

"This, Mr. Brook, is to cover the expenses of your journey. And, believe me, because it can have no sequel, I am none the less grateful to you for undertaking it. For what little it is worth in these sad times you may always count upon my friendship."

Having murmured his thanks and kissed her hand, he watched her leave the room by its far doorway with the Princess; then, a few minutes later, Madame de Lamballe returned and let him out into the ante-room. He did not look at the paper the Queen had given him until he was outside the palace, but when he did he was pleasantly surprised. It was a draft on Thellusson's Bank for 500 ecus, and his journey to Naples had cost him barely a third of that sum.

Now that Roger was once more free of the Queen's business he felt that he must try to make up for lost time in cultivating the most prominent figures in the National Assembly; so he began to spend several hours each day in the Riding School of the Tuileries, where it now met. As he already knew quite a number of the deputies it was not difficult for him to get himself introduced to others that he wished to meet, and he soon had acquaintances in all parties.

In the late summer, during the first few weeks that the Three

Estates had sat as one body, the Assembly had naturally resolved itself into two parties: those who had been in favour of joint sittings and those who had opposed them. The more reactionary nobles and clergy, who composed the latter, had taken little part in the debates, treated the deliberations with cynical contempt and, wherever possible, sabotaged the proceedings. But in the autumn, realizing the futility of such a policy, the more sensible among them had begun to play a more constructive part, and this had resulted in the whole body splitting into a great number of small parties, all varying slightly in their views and ranging from absolutists to outright republicans.

The Extreme Right was led by d'Espremenil and the Vicomte de Mirabeau, brother of the great orator. The Main Right was a slightly larger body and possessed two of the best statesmen in the Assembly: the Vicomte de Cazales, a young Captain in the Queen's Dragoons who had emerged as a clear-thinking and lucid speaker, and the Abbé Maury, an extraordinary skilful and subtle debator. The Right Centre, which aimed at a Constitutional Monarchy on English lines, was a loose but still more numerous party. It included many of the most respected members of the original Third Estate, Mounier and Malouet among them; also the Counts Lally-Tollendal and Clermont-Tonnerre, with most of the other Liberal nobles.

The Left, which desired a strictly limited monarchy, was nebulous but powerful in numbers, as it consisted of the larger part of the deputies elected to the Third Estate and the majority of the cures who had been elected to the First. The Protestant pastor, Rabaut-Saint-litienne, Duport, Alexander Lameth, Barnave, Camus, Le Chapelier, Lafayette, Bailly and the Abb6 Sieyes were all members of it, but a number of them were now gravitating towards the Extreme Left, which consisted of a small group of enrages, as they were called, led by Potion and a dry little lawyer from Arras named Maximilien Robespierre.

Roger found that even his three weeks' absence from Paris had brought about a marked change in the character of the Assembly. As early as August, the surrender of the King after the taking of the Bastille and the "Great Fear" had led to a number of the most reaction­ary among the nobles who sat for the Second Estate following the Comte d'Artois, and other Princes, into exile. The attack on Versailles and removal of the Royal Family to Paris in October had greatly accentuated the movement, so that over two hundred deputies, all of whom were strongly Monarchist in principle, had now abandoned their seats and gone abroad, thus enormously weakening the Right and Right Centre.

Moreover it was apparent that the mob that daily filled the public galleries of the Assembly now exercised an even greater influence on its deliberations than before. The Riding School was a somewhat smaller chamber than the Salle des Menus Plaisirs in which the Assembly had sat while at Versailles, but, owing to the decrease in the number of deputies that now attended, the accommodation for the public was as commodious as before. In consequence, the deputies of the Right were constantly exposed to methodical terrorism from the supporters of the Left, both in the chamber and out of it. In several instances members who spoke strongly in support of the monarchy were threatened with having their houses burnt down, and all those who held moderate opinions found it necessary to go about armed. Even the highly respected Malpuet never attended a sitting without a brace of pistols in his belt; and Mounier, wearied out with the threats and heckling of the people to secure whose liberties he had done so much, had resigned in disgust and joined the exiles abroad.

This recent abandonment of the struggle by Mounier struck Roger as a particularly alarming portent, as the deputy for Grenoble could be considered, even more than Lafayette, Bailly or Mirabeau, as the Father of the Revolution. As far back as June 1788 the noblesse of Grenoble had held a consultation with local representatives of the other Orders and decided that, in view of the troubled state of the country, the ancient Estates of Dauphine should be revived. Without the royal consent elections had been held, and deputies nominated to sit in a Provincial Assembly to consist of the Three Estates deliberating together, and in which the representatives of the Third Estate equalled the total of the other two.

The Government had sent the Marshal de Vaux with troops to put a stop to these unorthodox proceedings, but he had found opinion in the Province so firmly united that he had been forced to compromise, exacting only the concession that, instead of the Assembly sitting in the Provincial capital, it should meet at the nearby town of Vizille. And there it had met, ten months before the States General assembled at Versailles, and already constituted on a basis that it later took the States General two months to achieve. The mainspring of this extra­ordinary innovation in the Government of the ancient Monarchy of France had been the young and energetic lawyer Jean-Joseph Mounier, who was chosen Secretary to the Assembly and drafted most of its resolutions. Moreover, when the States General met in the following year it had naturally adopted most of the precedents set by the Assembly of Vizille as the only example of democratic government then existing in the country, and recognized Mounier as the leading authority on parliamentary procedure.

Yet now, only seven months after the States General had assembled, such an iconoclastic fervour had seized on the mentality of the people, and so intolerant had they become of all moderate opinion, that this great champion of democracy had despaired of seeing a stable Constitution emerge from the state of semi-anarchy to which the surrender of the royal authority had reduced France. He had been driven into exile amidst the hoots and menaces of the scum of the faubourgs, who used the cry of "liberty" as an excuse to set all law at defiance, and whose sole object was to raise riots which would enable them to plunder the houses of the richer citizens.

This question of formulating a Constitution had naturally been one of the first matters with which the Assembly had concerned itself. The King had long been willing to grant one and, if he had had the courage of his convictions, he could have saved himself infinite trouble by doing so in '87 or '88. Then, practically any Charter ensuring the people reasonable liberties would have put an end to all serious agitations for reform. Even after the States General met, had he possessed an ounce of resolution he could still have taken matters out of their hands, and by giving the people a permanent voice in the government of the country retained the whole executive power himself. But his policy of drift had now landed him in a situation where he was not to be allowed any say in the matter at all; and as the year '89 drew to a close a succes­sion of debates in the Assembly showed an ever-increasing tendency to leave the King as nothing but a puppet to be paraded for the amusement of the people on State occasions.

Owing to the innumerable problems that confronted the Assembly, and the impossibility of its hearing all the deputies who wished to speak, it had adopted the wise course of appointing a number of Committees to look into various matters and report upon them. On the very day of the fall of the Bastille a Committee had been set up to draft the Constitution, its members being: the Archbishop of Bordeaux, the Bishop of Autun, Counts Lally-Tollendal and Clermont-Tonnerre; Mounier, Sieyes, Le Chapelier and Bergasse. They had laboured for two months, but by the time they produced their recom­mendations public opinion had so far outstripped them that all the most important clauses in their draft were rejected. Another Committee had then been appointed, this time consisting entirely of members of the Third Estate with the one exception of the Bishop, and, gifted as Monsieur de Talleyrand-Perigord might be, he could hardly be con­sidered as a typical representative of the clergy. He had in fact, two days before Roger left for Naples, actually proposed and carried through the Assembly a motion that all Church property should be confiscated and sold for the benefit of the State.

Roger was greatly interested in this question of the Constitution, because he was shrewd enough to see that, in its final form, it would decree the manner in which all vital decisions were to be taken by the French Government in future. If France was to continue as a monarchy —and that was clearly still the wish of 95 per cent, of her population— the King must be left with some functions, otherwise it was pointless to retain him. But would he be left, for example, with the power to make war or peace without the consent of the Assembly? That was the type of knowledge which, should a sudden international crisis arise, would prove invaluable to Mr. Pitt; and it was Roger's business to obtain it.

In the last days of November and the first half of December Roger dined or supped with a number of interesting people—the Monarchist leader Cazales, the clever anti-Monarchist lawyer Barnave and the fiery young journalist Camille Desmoulins among them—but he had been disappointed in his efforts to secure more than a few words at any one time with his old friend, the now extremely busy Bishop of Autun. As de Perigord was one of the only three men who had served on the Committee of the Constitution since its inception, and therefore in an almost unique position to talk about it with authority, Roger decided that he must somehow get him to give him an evening. So one morning he tackled the lame prelate as he was about to enter the Chamber, and said with a smile:

"Monsieur l’Eveque, I never thought I would have to reproach you on the score of hospitality; yet I feel the time has come when I have some right to do so."

"Indeed !" exclaimed the Bishop, raising a quizzical eyebrow. "And why, pray, may I ask?"

"It was June when you promised to arrange for me to meet Monsieur de Mirabeau at dinner, and here we are in December; but you have not done so yet."

"Well, well!" De Perigord murmured. "The distractions of a changing world must serve as the excuse for my forgetfulness. But by a lucky chance de Mirabeau is pledged to dine with me on Saturday next. We have some private business we wish to discuss after dinner; but if you would not take it ill of me in asking you to make some excuse to leave us early I should be delighted if you will join us for the meal."

Roger was enchanted with this opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. He had met the Comte de Mirabeau several times in '87, at the famous breakfasts that de Perigord used to give for talented men of Liberal views; but in the present year he had found the now famous deputy much too occupied to acknowledge their acquaintance when they met by more than a smile and a brief greeting. It had been only as an excuse to secure a good long talk with de Perigord that he had mentioned de Mirabeau's name, but Fortune was now favouring him with the chance to talk on terms of intimacy with both these intellectual giants at the same sitting.

On the Saturday, feeling that his promise to leave soon after dinner justified his arriving early, he was at the wicket gate of the charming little house at Passy by a quarter to four. The first snow of the year had fallen, but the garden path was neatly swept; and within a few moments of knocking on the door he was standing in front of the bright wood-fire in the sitting-room.

Having greeted his host he remarked: "Is it not positively fantastic to consider the changes that have occurred in France since I was last in this room; and that less than eight months ago ?"

De Perigord smiled. "At least there no longer exists a Bastille for the Queen to pop you into, and lettres de cachet are quite gone out of fashion."

Roger suppressed a start. He had completely forgotten the lie he had told on his last visit there; but fortunately the Bishop failed to notice his guilty flush, as he was fiddling with his snuff-box before offering it. As he did so, he went on: "Joking apart, though, there have been changes enough, and in my opinion far too many."

"It surprises me to hear you say so," Roger replied, accepting a pinch with a little bow. "I thought you firmly set upon overturning the old order."

"Rehabilitating rather than overturning," corrected de Perigord mildly. "I pride myself somewhat upon being a realist; and it was clear to most of us who used to meet here at my little breakfasts in the old days that the Court were living in a land of make-believe. I wished to bring them down to earth with a full realization of their responsibilities; but it was far from my desire to witness the degradation to which the monarchy has been subject in these past few months."

"Since we have always spoken frankly," Roger said a little diffi­dently, "you will forgive me if I remark that Your Grace's name ranks high among those who have brought the degradation of the Monarch about."

De Perigord gave him a swift calculating look. "That is fair com­ment upon my public acts. My only desire is to serve France, and if I am to do so I must continue to swim with the tide. But my private hopes for the outcome of events in this momentous year were very different. As far back as last July, on the day the Bastille fell, so per­turbed was I by the course matters were taking that I went secretly, in the middle of the night, to the Comte d'Artois and woke him in his bed."

For a moment the Bishop paused, then, with a flutter of his lace handkerchief, he went on: "For the King I have nothing but con­tempt, and I regard the Comte de Provence as a treacherous and pompous fool; but I am not altogether without respect for the younger of the three brothers. I told His Highness that, in my opinion, owing to the King's mental cowardice, matters had already been allowed to go far beyond the point at which all reasonable reformers aimed, and that the monarchy was in grave danger. I added that the only way to save it was for the King to dissolve the National Assembly—by force if need be—and to march on Paris with his troops. I implored him to tell the King that this was his last chance; and that if he failed to act, in another twenty-four hours it would be too late. His Highness was so impressed with my earnestness that he at once got up, dressed and went to the King. No doubt His Majesty made his usual promise that he would 'think it over’. In any case, he did not take my advice; but it is not my fault that he is where he is now."

Roger had been staring at his friend in astonishment, and he exclaimed: "Knowing as I do your animosity to the Sovereigns, I think the step you took does you great credit."

"Mon ami, I do not care a rap for the Sovereigns, but I did and do care a very great deal for the future of my country."

"That I have always realized; yet I have always regarded Your Grace as a cautious man, and in this instance you took an extraordinary risk. Were your act to become known your colleagues in the Assembly would tear you to pieces."

The Bishop shrugged. "Only one man could prove it—Monsieur d'Artois himself. It may even be that should he ever ascend the throne of France as Charles X he will recall my warning, and in some similar emergency seek my advice with a mind to put it to better account."

With extraordinary prescience Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord was at that moment looking into the future; for a quarter of a century later, after the Napoleonic Empire had waxed and waned, Charles d'Artois returned to France to take over the Kingdom for his elder brother. In all those years the two had never met; but the Prince at once sent for Talleyrand, recalled their meeting on the night that the Bastille had fallen, and sought his counsel; and he became in turn Grand Chamberlain to both Louis XVIII and Charles X.

Roger was still pondering this revelation of the revolutionary Bishop's true feelings when he was almost startled out of his wits by the subtle prelate adding: "However, I should not have told you of the matter had I been averse to your mentioning it in your next report to Mr. Pitt."

"Eh!" Roger exclaimed. Then he laughed. "Why in the world should you imagine..."

With a wave of his elegant hand, de Perigord cut him short. "To others you may pass as a rich young man who likes to spend a good part of his time in France; but not to me. I am probably the only person in Paris who knows it, but your family are not of sufficient fortune to keep you in idleness. Someone in Whitehall had the sense to realize that your training here as confidential secretary to Monsieur de Rochambeau fitted you admirably for your present work; and your recent comings and goings this year opened my eyes to it."

The wily Bishop paused and quizzed Roger through his glass, obviously much amused by his young friend's discomfiture. Then, relenting, he went on with a smile: "But you need have no fear that I shall give you away, unless it comes to my knowledge that your opera­tions are in the long run likely to prove harmful to my own country. On the contrary, I have for some time had it in mind to put a proposal to you. If you will be guided by me I believe that we may both serve our countries well, and be of great use to one another. So I suggest to you that we should agree to work together."

Roger had to make a quick decision. If he denied de Perigord's assumption the odds were all against his being believed, and there would then be no guarantee that the prelate would keep his shrewd guess to himself. Moreover, to reject the offer might turn a good friend into a dangerous enemy. On the other hand the Bishop was in the position to give him invaluable information from time to time, so a secret alliance with him might prove extraordinarily valuable.

"Since Your Grace has faced me with the matter," he replied after only the briefest hesitation, "I will admit that I am here as an observer. I am as anxious as yourself to see France in a settled and prosperous state again; so I willingly accept your proposition."

De Perigord smiled and held out his hand. "Let us shake hands upon it then. For my part I have always believed that France and Britain should forget their old differences and enter on an alliance. If united they could ensure the permanent peace of Europe, and that should be the first aim of all right-thinking men. De Mirabeau, who should be here shortly, believes that, too; otherwise I would not have asked you here this evening. I shall, of course, make no mention to him of our personal pact. To disclose it to a single soul might later jeopardize its usefulness. But we may not now have much time left to talk alone together, so tell me the matter upon which you sought this meeting with a view to pumping me."

" ‘Tis the making of the Constitution," Roger said frankly. "I have followed the deliberations upon it to the best of my ability, but the subject seems of an incredible complexity. Since you sit on the Com­mittee I was in hopes that you would be able to tell me what shape its final form is likely to take."

"You ask something that it is beyond my powers to predict," the Bishop replied with a shake of his head. "Even the declaration of the 'Rights of Man', that Lafayette was so anxious we should proclaim in imitation of America, took weeks of work to formulate. Most of my foolish colleagues thought that it could be drafted in a single sitting, but every clause provoked most bitter argument; and now 'tis done 'tis little more than a long hotch-potch of mainly irrelevant aphorisms. As to the Constitution, it would not surprise me in the least if another year or more elapses before the Assembly will accept it. And who can tell to what degree its present draft will have had to be twisted to meet with the approval of the men who may then be the masters in that bear-pit ?"

"How far has it progressed up to the moment?" Roger enquired.

"To the extent of settling the organization of the legislature; no more. The first Committee recommended that it should consist of three parts, as with you in England; a Representative Chamber, a Senate, and the King with power to exercise an absolute veto. But the recommendation was rejected. The Assembly would agree neither to the creation of an Upper House nor the King being allowed the right to quash its measures."

"So much I gathered from the debates. The last did not surprise me; but I should have thought the whole of the Centre as well as the Right would have supported the project of two Chambers. Is there no hope of its being revived ?"

"None; and it was not killed by the moderates but by the reaction­aries. The grand seigneurs are so stupidly jealous that they feared the Senatorial dignity, if conferred on men of lesser birth, might create a new nobility with a prestige greater than their own; so they combined with the Left and cut off their noses to spite their faces."

"What incredible folly to sacrifice the safeguard of an Upper House to such a paltry consideration!"

"It was indeed. And that made it infinitely more important that the right of exercising an absolute veto should be conferred upon the King; for it then became the only safeguard left against the people's representatives running amok, as they did on the famous 'Night of Sacrifices'. Mirabeau, with his usual sound common sense, saw that, and declared that he would rather live in Constantinople than in France if the legislature were to dispense with the royal sanction. Mounier, Malouet, Lally, Cazales, Maury, all the soundest leaders worked desperately hard to get it through, and we had the backing of every prudent man in the Assembly."

"What, then, caused your failure to do so?"

De Perigord sighed. "Again, 'twas not the bitter opposition of that monarchy-hater Sieyes, and other champions of the mob. 'Twas a combination of ill-applied idealism and timidity, in men who should have known better. That honest fool Lafayette is so imbued with the perfection of all American institutions that he can scarce abide the thought of our having a King at all, and feels impelled to use all the influence he has to reduce the monarchy to a cypher. Apparently, quite forgetting that the United States has a Senate to put a check on any rashness in its Lower House, he wrote to Necker urging him to advise the King to win popularity by voluntarily forgoing an absolute veto and asking only for a suspensive one. Necker, whose one object in life now is to regain his own failing popularity, naturally jumped at the chance to get the credit for a further abasement of the Court, so he advised the Council and the King in that sense. I need hardly add that the royal weakling ran true to form; so the very ground was cut from beneath our feet, and France is today in all but name a republic."

"Should a sudden international crisis arise, and the country be threatened from without, what is the King's position? Could he still declare war upon his own authority?"

"At present he could; for his right to do so has never yet been called in question. But I greatly doubt if he will be allowed to retain that power without certain restrictions. It is one of the many problems involved in the Constitution that the Committee has so far not had time to consider."

Through the window Roger saw a richly gilt coach drive up, and he said quickly: "About Monsieur de Mirabeau. From his speeches in the Assembly I have never yet been able to decide to which party he belongs. A word of guidance on that would at the moment be most helpful."

"He belongs to no party," de Perigord smiled. "Whatever he may be in other things he is at least honest in his politics. Being a very clear­sighted man he is quick to see the weakness in the policies of others, so he will tie himself to none. Only so can he retain his liberty to criticize every measure that he feels to be unsound. Like myself, although he frequently supports the Left, he is a convinced Monarchist; and in the Assembly there are many men of a similar disposition. It is that great floating vote that makes Mirabeau such a power in debate. Upon whatever subject he may speak his common sense attaches to him all those who are not committed to a course of action in advance; and men of the most diverse opinions will rub shoulders in order to follow him into the lobby."

"Think you, in view of the reduction of the Monarch to near a cypher, that he is likely to emerge as virtually the new ruler of France ?"

The Bishop sadly shook his head. "I fear that things have now gone too far for anyone of such moderate views to long remain master of the situation. Do not be deceived by the present comparative quiet of Paris. Terrible forces have now been set in motion, and no man can gauge the destructive power with which they may yet sweep not only France but the whole world. This year, for the first time in history, the proletariat has become conscious of its power. The fall of the French monarchy is a threat to all others, and a new kind of war may result. Instead of Kings fighting Kings there may be a bloody clash of ideologies in which class will fight class, throughout the length and breadth of Europe.

In such a war no true democracy could survive, and the proletarian leaders will inevitably be men of utter ruthlessness; dictators, driving their peoples on with a tyranny and ferocity greater than they have ever suffered under any King. It is my belief that this year of '89 will be termed by historians that of the rising storm."

CHAPTER TWENTY

THE QUEEN'S FRIENDS

As de Talleyrand-Perigord ceased speaking the most talked-of man in France at that period was shown into the room.

The Comte de Mirabeau was then forty, but years of overwork, anxiety and dissipation had made him look considerably older. He was a giant of a man; tall, broad-shouldered, deep-chested; though his huge hands, wide forehead, and the great mane of coarse black hair that swept back from it made him appear even larger than he was in fact. The scars left by the smallpox, which he had contracted at the age of three, made him quite incredibly ugly; but he radiated vitality and good humour.

Most of his adult life had been spent—owing in part at least to his own folly and extravagance—in abject poverty; but now that France had a free Press, and he was the man of the hour, his pamphlets and journals were bringing him in a huge income. In consequence, he was at last able to give free rein to his flamboyant tastes. At a time when most of the noblemen who had remained in Paris were going about the capital as unostentatiously as possible in hired hackneys, Mirabeau, for the first time in his life, had a coach of his own—and it was a vast gilded affair with the arms of his family emblazoned on its panels. His dress, too, was now always of an almost Eastern splendour—-although the rich fabrics sat ill on his unwieldy person—and from his hands and the lace at his neck there flashed diamonds, sapphires and rubies.

The half-dozen or so very able secretaries whom he employed no doubt paid for their keep; as, after touching up their work with a few strokes of genius, he published all their writings under his own name. But the establishment he ran, the money he gave away and his personal adornment, ate up such sums that it was hardly to be wondered at that, however big the income he made, he was still always hopelessly in debt.

De Perigord had no need to introduce his two guests; and imme­diately Mirabeau set eyes on Roger he said jovially: "When last we met here, Monsieur Breuc, I recall that it was between two of my visits to Berlin. I was very grateful then for the chance our friend the Bishop secured me to earn a few hundred livres acting as his correspondent from Frederick the Great's deathbed."

"And I was grateful to be invited here to drink His Grace's choco­late," replied Roger, not to be outdone, "for I had few friends in Paris in those days; and 'twas a great privilege for a youth like myself to meet men like you, Monsieur le Comte, who have since made history."

The Bishop's man-servant had been waiting only for de Mirabeau's arrival to announce dinner; and while they went into the next room, settled themselves at table and tucked their napkins under their chins, Roger thought his fellow guest deserved full credit for his frank, unabashed mention of his visits to Berlin.

Everyone now knew the story, as de Mirabeau had recently published the reports he had sent back to France of his activities and observations while in the Prussian capital. Their publication had created a furore, since the documents were not his to publish but belonged to the French Government, as he had written them while a secret agent in its employ. He had endeavoured to exculpate himself by declaring, first that the papers had been published without his authority, then that they had been stolen from him; but it was universally believed that he had connived at the business in order to make some quick money. It was now, in any case, common knowledge that de Perigord, having recog­nized de Mirabeau's genius from the beginning, had begged the Govern­ment to employ him; and that, failing to get him anything better, he had induced Monsieur de Calonne to send him on this secret mission to Berlin.

The thing Roger knew about the original transaction that de Mirabeau did not—and Roger's knowledge was in all probability shared only by his old master, Monsieur de Rochambeau—was that de Perigord, having been instructed to act as a post-office for de Mirabeau's secret reports, had, being hard up himself at the time, sold copies of them before passing the originals on to Monsieur de Calonne.

Glancing from one side of the table to the other, Roger wondered which of his two companions was the greater rogue; and decided that there was really little to choose between them. Both were honest according to their lights, and both would not hesitate to cheat if their own well-being or that of their country depended upon it. But if a capacity for unscrupulousness was to be judged in proportion to the strength of character of the two men, Roger had no doubt at all that the Bishop would win at a canter. Mirabeau could dominate the Assembly; he could quell a riot and make a murderous mob whose hands were still dripping blood hang upon his words, but with effortless ease de Perigord dominated him. Beside the slender, elegant Bishop, the bear­like Mirabeau was common clay.

Over dinner the talk covered many subjects, and Roger was pleasantly surprised to see his host shine in a new light. He had always found de Perigord a most charming and stimulating companion, but had thought of him as a selfish hedonist whose main aim in life was his own pleasure and advancement; now, he was given a glimpse of the great humanitarian that the "unworthy priest" usually concealed beneath the cynical aristocrat. One after another he spoke of the reforms he wished to have passed by the Assembly, and pressed de Mirabeau for his support.

He wanted the royal lotteries abolished, because they beggared far more people than they enriched; he wanted the Jews emancipated and given equal rights of citizenship; he wanted a Franco-British conference arranged to agree on a uniform system of weights and measures; he wanted pressure to be exerted on the Pope to allow the wives of fisher­men to presume the death of husbands who had been reported lost at sea, after three years, so that they might marry again; he wanted to revolutionize and co-ordinate in one national system all the schools and colleges in the country, so that every child in France should receive the benefit of an education.

De Mirabeau was wholeheartedly with him, but said at last: "All these things should be done, and many more. I am impatiently awaiting an opportunity, myself, to introduce a bill for the abolition of slavery in our West Indian islands. The trouble is, as you know well enough, that nine-tenths of the Assembly's time is wasted by the windy verbiage of our colleagues. Hardly a man among them can make the simplest statement without employing twice as long in telling us all what mighty fine fellows we 'restorers of French liberty' are, and urging us to fresh efforts, instead of sitting down and letting us get to practical reforms such as you suggest. Could he but know it Jean-Jacques Rousseau served the cause he had so much at heart ill, instead of well, by his writings; for not a day goes past but an hour or more that should be devoted to business is frittered away by nonentities declaiming long passages from his Contrat Social"

"How right you are!" exclaimed de Perigord. "And, heretical as it may sound, I would to God that Saint of the Revolution had never been born. 'Tis positively tragic that the Assembly should have taken his sentimental, impractical nonsense for their Bible. At the moment it threatens to force upon us the worst possible solution for some of the most important clauses in the Constitution."

"You refer to the status of Ministers of the Crown?" said de Mirabeau.

"I do. The English system by which they are chosen from the members of the National Assembly, sit with it, debate with it and are responsible to it, is so obviously the right one. Any other is sheer madness; for, if the Ministers are to remain outside it, as at present, they are debarred all opportunity to assess the feeling of the Assembly, and reduced to no more than ill-informed private advisers to the King. Yet an overwhelming majority of the deputies are so hypnotized by the dogmatic doctrines of Montesquieu and Rousseau—that the separation of the executive and legislative powers is a first essential for the main­tenance of liberty—that I greatly fear we shall have to submit to that farcical form of Government."

"We will fight it, though!" declared de Mirabeau truculently; and, although his black eyes were dimmed by ophthalmia from overwork, they flashed as he spoke. "I regard it as imperative that the King's Ministers should be drawn from the Chamber yet retain their seats in it. Where else can he find men capable of governing France? Necker, Montmorin, and the rest of his present crew are all men of straw. In fact the Queen is the only man the King has about him."

He paused for a moment, then went on to describe in glowing phrases the type of Minister he thought the King should have; naively enumerating one after another all his own qualities. De Perigord caught Roger's eye, waited until de Mirabeau had done, then remarked with gentle irony:

"Mon ami. You forgot one thing. Such a man should also be marked with the small-pox."

De Mirabeau took the jest in good part, roared with laughter, and said: "Well, the King might do worse. If he would only give me the chance I would save the monarchy for him."

All too soon for Roger, the coach he had ordered, to fetch him was announced; but true to his engagement with de Perigord he excused himself and left the two great men together.

Having had his true business guessed by de Perigord had shaken him badly, and for most of the way back to Paris he took serious thought about the possibility of other people unmasking him. On the whole it seemed unlikely, as not only was the Bishop a man of exceptional shrewdness but he also had had information about "Monsieur le Chevalier de Breuc's antecedents that no one else in Paris possessed. The disquieting episode had, however, served to call Roger's attention to an important development he had overlooked.

Up to the preceding August it had been good enough cover to pose as a young Englishman of means who was travelling for pleasure and liked to spend a good part of his time in Paris, as there had been many such; but it was so no longer. The riots culminating in the fall of the Bastille, the "Great Fear", and finally the removal of the Court from Versailles, had driven the rich English milor's to take their pleasures in the German and Italian cities. Most of their friends among the French nobility had fled, and, as the gay Duke of Dorset had gone home, this winter there were not even any elegant this-dansant to attend at the British Embassy.

After some thought, Roger decided to adopt a new line. He would gradually put it about that he was staying on in Paris because he had taken up journalism, and was now writing a weekly news-letter. For the paper in which these mythical articles were to be published he chose the Morning Chronicle, as that was the most important Whig organ of the day and would sound well with the majority of his French acquaintances, as most of them were men of Liberal opinions.

However, in spite of that unnerving moment when de Perigord had blandly charged him with being an agent of Mr. Pitt, he felt that he had had an extremely fortunate day; as not only did his secret alliance with the Bishop hold great possibilities for the future, but de Mirabeau had promised to introduce him to a Club called the Jacobins, which was beginning to assume considerable importance on the political stage.

Three nights later Roger dined in very different company. He had continued to see the Comte de la Marck occasionally when visiting the Tuileries or about the city, and in the previous week the young Austrian had asked him to dine at his Embassy, where he was still living.

During the past six months fashions in Paris had undergone a greater alteration than in the whole of the preceding sixty years. Silk coats, satin breeches, gold lace and feathers were now regarded as the outward symbols of an inward desire to arrest the march of Liberty; so few men any longer wore them in the streets or had their hair pow­dered before going out in the evening. But, realizing that the Embassy was Austrian soil, and that few changes were likely to have occurred there, Roger had his hair powdered for the first time since leaving Naples, put a patch on his chin, and went out to dine clad in his best satins and laces.

When he arrived he was pleased to find that he had done the right thing, as the party consisted of a dozen people and it was being con­ducted with all the courtly formality that only such a little time ago had been the fashion, yet in Paris already seemed of a bygone age. Even for this small gathering, hundreds of candles lit the great chan­deliers in the hall and above the staircase; a string band played softly behind a screen of palms; black-clad major-domos, with silver chains about their necks, and a line of rigid footmen stood ready on either side of the entrance doors to take the wraps of the guests.

The Ambassador, Count Florimond de Mercy-Argenteau, was himself receiving. Roger knew him well by sight but had never before spoken to him, so he was pleasurably surprised when the elderly dip­lomat returned his bow with the words: "Monsieur le Chevalier, I know you to be a friend of the Queen; so I hope you will permit me to make you one of mine, and to assure you that you will always find a very warm welcome here."

As Roger thanked him and turned to greet de la Marck, he wondered if the Queen had told Mercy-Argenteau of his journeys on her behalf to Florence and Naples, and thought it highly probable that she had. The Ambassador had represented Austria at the Court of Versailles for over twenty years; so from Madame Marie Antoinette's arrival there as a child-bride of fourteen he had been her counsellor and champion, and had come to be regarded by her almost as though he was a favourite uncle.

De la Marck presented Roger to the Spanish Ambassador, the Conde Fernanunez and his Condesa; then to the charming old Abbé de Vermond, who shared with Mercy-Argenteau the distinction of being the Queen's oldest friend in France; for he had been sent to Vienna to teach her French when her marriage had first been mooted and, returning to Versailles, in her entourage, had continued as her preceptor until she left the schoolroom.

But Roger broke away from the group as soon as politeness permit­ted, for he had seen an old friend on the far side of the room. It was Count Hans Axel Fersen, who had entertained him most hospitably when he was in Sweden two summers earlier.

The Swedish nobleman was a tall good-looking man in his middle thirties, and all the world knew the story of how he met the Queen when she was Dauphine, and they were both still in their teens, at a masked ball at the Opera. Fersen had himself admitted to Roger that he had fallen in love with the beautiful Princess, and later gone to fight in the American War in an endeavour to forget her; but everyone who knew the Queen's character discredited the story that he had actually been her lover, just as they did of those concerning innumerable other men—including even the old Abbé de Vermond—with whom the gutter pamphleteers never tired of coupling her name.

Fersen was delighted to see Roger again, and when they compared notes both were a little surprised that they had not run across one another during the past few months, as Count Hans said that after revisiting France in the autumn of '88 he had returned there per­manently the previous summer. But that they had not met was explained by Roger's journeys, and the fact that Fersen spent much of his time at Valenciennes with a French regiment of which the Queen had procured him the Colonelcy.

The round dozen in the party was made up by ladies, and Roger was allotted to take in to dinner a niece of the Ambassador who happened to be staying in the Embassy for a few nights on her way through Paris. After he had talked to her for a while he turned to his other neighbour, who was the Condesa Fernanunez, and she asked him if he numbered any Spaniards among his acquaintance.

For a second he hesitated. Since leaving Naples he had stuck to his resolution to discipline himself against thinking of Isabella, and, although the temptation to do so had proved too much for him at times, he had at least succeeded in banishing her image from his brain except when some special occurrence reminded him of her. This was just such a chance occurrence; and it suddenly struck him that, since the oppor­tunity offered, it would be a good test of his progress to talk about her now and see if he could get to sleep that night without suffering his old tormenting longings. So he replied:

"I had the good fortune to form a most sincere friendship early last summer with a lady of your country, Madame; and I should be much surprised if you do not know her. She is the daughter of General Count d'Aranda."

"But of course!" exclaimed the Condesa. "A most charming and sweet-natured creature. I knew her well; for when her father was succeeded as Ambassador here by my husband he left her in my care. Naturally, as she was one of Madame Marie Antoinette's ladies, Her Majesty was formally responsible for her well-being, but I assumed towards her the role of a benevolent aunt. I do not remember, though, her ever mentioning you to me."

Roger explained that while he had been presented to Isabella by the Queen at Fontainebleau, he had not come to know her at all well until chance decreed that he should act as her escort on the greater part of her journey south to Marseilles. He refrained from any mention of her having accompanied him to Florence, or their having met again more recently in Naples; but he was under no necessity to pursue the sub­ject himself, as the Condesa proved to be a garrulous lady and talked for quite a time, first in praise of Isabella, then about her marriage. As a dinner-table topic the subject seemed near exhausted, when she added:

"I heard of her through a mutual friend only last week. It seems that her marriage was swiftly blessed. She is expecting a child towards the end of March, so she and her husband are leaving Naples to return to Spain in the New Year."

"Why should they do that, Madame?" Roger enquired, not seeing any connection between the two statements.

The Condesa smiled at him. "Naturally they must be hoping that it will be a boy, and whenever an heir is born to a noble Spanish family a great fiestais given on the father's estates. Even if it is a girl many bulls will be slaughtered and casks of wine broached. At such a time the lord and his lady always repair to the family's ancestral home, so that after the lying-in they may witness the rejoicings of their serfs. It will prove a good opportunity, too, for the Sidonia y Ulloas to make their court to our new King and Queen; so no doubt when Isabella is safely delivered they will spend some months in Madrid. That will be pleasant for her, as she has not been in the capital since she was quite a young girl, and there must be many of her relatives . . ."

For several moments longer the Condesa rattled on, but Roger was listening to her with only half an ear. His hands had gone clammy at the awful thought of Isabella in the agony of childbirth and he was wishing desperately that he could be near her at the time to give her at least the comfort of his love during her ordeal.

Automatically he continued to make polite conversation until the ladies left the table. When they had gone the dozen footmen, one of whom had waited behind each chair during the meal, the two wine butlers and the major-domo, silently withdrew. As the doors closed behind the last of the servants the Ambassador beckoned Roger up to a vacant place near the head of the table, and only then did he manage to thrust Isabella out of his mind.

The conversation of the six men at once turned to politics and, in particular, the situation of the Queen. Roger felt certain now that he had been asked only because de Mercy-Argenteau knew of his journeys and felt that he was entirely to be trusted, as they began to talk with complete frankness of ways and means to save her should another emergency arise in which her life was threatened.

It struck Roger as interesting that the old Abbé was the only Frenchman present; but it occurred to him that, since so many French­men were now being torn between two loyalties, it might have been decided that it was wiser to keep them out of it, and that an exception had been made in the Abbé's case only because, in the role of a father confessor, he would never be denied access to the Queen, however closely she might be guarded. Roger hazarded a guess, too, that de Mercy-Argenteau's reluctance to take Frenchmen into his counsels was probably the reason why, on de la Marck's recommendation, he should have been singled out for the honour of inclusion in such a company.

It soon emerged that although Count Axel Fersen held no official diplomatic status, he had come to France as the secret representative of King Gustavus III, charged to do everything in his power to aid the Queen. The Spanish Ambassador had also been instructed by his King to take all possible steps to succour and protect the French Royal Family. Both were of the opinion that while the prisoners of the Tuileries still had some degree of liberty they should leave the capital on the pretext of a Royal Hunt, and when the carriages were well out in the open country order them to be driven to Compiegne, Rheims or

Metz, at any one of which they could swiftly surround themselves with the Army.

Roger had naturally refrained from putting any view forward during the early part of the discussion; but now he said: "Such a scheme would be well enough if you could rely upon the loyalty of the Army. But can you do so? From all I hear the rate of desertion has been appallingly high in the past few months, and in many of the regiments the men who remain will no longer take orders from their officers."

"That is true in many areas," agreed Count Hans. "But the Army of the East is still mainly loyal. General de Bouille" has some good troops under him, and I can vouch for my own regiment. It was in order to make certain of its dependability for just such an emergency that I spent so much time with it this summer and autumn."

"Messieurs, I too should be in favour of such a plan, did I not know it to be impractical," announced de Mercy-Argenteau. He spoke with the German accent that he had never quite lost, and went on heavily: "To do as you suggest would mean civil war, and we shall never bring the King to face that. Quite apart from his morbid horror of bloodshed, he is obsessed with the example of the Great Rebellion in England, and he maintains that the unhappy Charles I would never have lost his head had he not taken up arms against his subjects."

"There may be some truth in that," remarked the Spaniard. "In any case there appears to be little danger of Louis XVI losing his head as long as he remains in Paris."

"I agree, Excellency," the Austrian nodded. "For the King's life we fortunately have no reason to concern ourselves. It is for the life of the little Arch-Duchess who was entrusted to me as a child that I am so gravely perturbed. The hand of God has already saved her from more than one attempt upon her life, and it is known to me that others are maturing. Her enemies are well aware that it is her courage alone that stands between them and the achievement of their evil designs, and they are seeking to poison her. She now dare eat nothing but the plainest food prepared for her by her own attendants, and the sugar she keeps in her bedroom to make eau sucre at night has twice been tampered with, so that Madame Campan now has to keep a secret supply for her."

"Then," said Fersen, with an anxious frown, "we must get Her Majesty away. And with the minimum possible delay."

The Abbé Vermond sadly shook his head. "Alas, Monsieur, she will not leave the King, I am convinced of that."

"Somehow, we must find means to persuade her. She would perhaps if we could bring her to believe that the Dauphin's life was in danger, and that it was essential that she should escape with him."

De Mercy-Argenteau gave a swift glance under his grey eyebrows at Roger; then, as Roger remained silent, he said: "Her Majesty made a plan some time ago to send the Dauphin to Naples, but the King refused his consent to the project. She then had no thought of going with her son, and even if the King changes his mind I greatly doubt if she could be persuaded to do so."

"I am certain that she could not, Excellency," declared the Abb6. "She is a convinced fatalist, and with superb courage has already made up her mind to face some tragic end that she believes Fate has in store for her. She is a religious woman as we all know, but even her accept­ance of the fundamental goodness of God is insufficient to overcome her conviction that destiny has marked her down. And one cannot deny that there have been portents enough in her life to give her reason for that black thought."

The Abb6 paused for a moment, then went on: "We have but to recall the terrible tempest that raged upon the night of her marriage. A wind so great that the park at Versailles was devastated; mighty oaks rent in twain by lightning; the windows of her bridal chamber blown in, their shutters battered to matchwood, and the gale howling in the room so that the very coverlets were blown from the bed. Then a fortnight later the public celebrations for her marriage in Paris. I shall never forget how we set out from Versailles to witness the great display of fireworks that had been arranged. That beautiful child, so gay, so happy, so excited; and when we arrived the vast sea of people who had assem­bled to do her homage, cheering and throwing flowers as she smiled and blew kisses to them standing up in her carriage.

"Then the rocket accidentally igniting the pile of wood, the flames reaching the powder barrels before the firemen could get to them; the terrible explosion, the crowd stampeding, the cheers turning to screams of agony, the hundreds of people trampled to death, and the number of injured so great that it was beyond the capacity of the hospitals to take them."

Again the Abb£ paused, then he looked up at de Mercy-Argenteau. "And above all, Your Excellency, you and I are old enough to remem­ber the day she was born. November the 2nd, 1755. On it there was the most frightful disaster that has afflicted Europe for centuries: the Lisbon earthquake. No Princess has ever had a more inauspicious omen at her birth; so can one wonder that she has always felt the hand of Fate to be upon her?"

Roger was twelve years younger than Madame Marie Antoinette, but he remembered the stories of the earthquake that had still been current in his childhood. The shock had been so terrific that it had been felt at places as far distant as the Baltic, the West Indies, Canada and Algiers. The greater part of Lisbon had been thrown to the ground. The great marble quay sank down with hundreds of people on it; every ship in the harbour was engulfed, and neither wreckage nor bodies ever came to the surface. In six minutes 40,000 people had perished.

For a moment there was silence, then the Conde Fernanunez spoke. "If she is adamant in her determination not to leave, the only course open to us is to endeavour to concert measures to restore some degree of the royal authority."

"That is my own view, Excellency," nodded de Mercy-Argenteau. "And it seems to me that our only hope of doing so lies in winning over to the Court some of the popular leaders."

"But who?" asked Fersen pessimistically. "All the honest leaders who incline to support the monarchy no longer carry any weight with the masses. For the rest, the Assembly is made up of little men, who would be useless to us, or rogues."

"Then let us buy a rogue," suggested the Spaniard. "What does it matter, provided that he be a man with great enough prestige to sway the people?"

"I believe there is only one man big enough to do this thing," put in Roger, "and that at heart he is by no means a rogue. The Comte de Mirabeau."

"I agree with you," said de la Marck quickly. "He is the very man I have myself long had in mind for such a role."

Fersen turned and looked at Roger. "Think you he would agree to such a proposal? Are you shooting in the dark, or do you know him personally?"

"I dined with him three nights ago. Like many others who took a hand in stirring up this hornets' nest, he is much perturbed by the way events are trending. He came out most strongly in favour of an absolute veto for the King and deplores the weakness of the present Ministry. One remark he made struck me particularly; he said: 'The Queen is the only man the King has about him.' "

De Mercy-Argenteau was now leaning forward, listening to Roger with the greatest interest. "If de Mirabeau said that," he murmured, "it is certainly a good indication that he would be willing to serve Her Majesty. But please go on, Mr. Brook."

"I would only add, Your Excellency, that I believe it would be a mistake to ask too much of him. I think that he would willingly co­operate with Their Majesties in an effort to give the country a sound Liberal Constitution, and enforce the restoration of order in it. But I feel certain that, dubious as his private life may have been, where the welfare of his country is concerned he has a conscience; and neither promises nor bribes would induce him to assist the Court in an attempt to re-establish an autocratic Government."

De la Marck nodded vigorously. "That is exactly my opinion; and I have taken some pains to get to know de Mirabeau well. He is of course, always in need of money, and under the guise of literary patronage I have allowed him a small monthly pension ever since I came to appreciate his worth. But no amount one could offer him would tempt him to betray his political ideals. If he accepts a salary from the King it will be only on his own conditions, and then because he would feel that he was just as much entitled to it as any other Minister."

"If the King made him a Minister he would lose his seat in the Assembly," objected the Conde Fernanunez. "Then more than half his value would be lost to us. His power to influence the decisions of the Chamber is his main asset."

"I fear I did not make myself plain, Excellency. I meant the salary he would receive if he were a Minister; not that he should be made one. The suggestion is that he should be asked to formulate a secret policy for Their Majesties and be paid a retainer for advising them on every stage of it; but himself continue as a deputy, and do all he can to forward the programme in the Chamber."

After some further discussion it was agreed that in a secret alliance such as de la Marck suggested lay the best hope of preventing the extremists from becoming absolute masters of the State, and it was decided that he should sound de Mirabeau upon it. De Mercy-Argenteau then thanked everyone present for the advice they had offered, and asked them to keep in touch with him.

Christmas fell two days later, but as it was not kept up in France with the gaiety and good cheer traditional in England Roger hardly noticed its passing. As he enjoyed full liberty to come and go as he pleased, he had thought of taking ten days' leave to go home for it, but had decided against doing so for a variety of reasons. It was highly probable that Amanda would be at Walhampton and meeting her again at all the local parties would be awkward after their affaire in the summer. During his last visit to Lymington he had been driven half crazy by his longings for Isabella; and, although he was well on the way to freeing his mind of thoughts of her, he feared that such an early return to the scene of his misery might bring them flooding back. But the decisive factor was that he felt he was now really getting to grips with his mission, and that the reports he was sending to Mr. Pitt must be too valuable for him to be justified in losing touch with his contacts even for a matter of ten days.

On the 30th of December he made his first appearance at the Jacobin Club. It had been started while the National Assembly was still at Versailles by a few Breton deputies who wished to discuss overnight the measures that were to be brought before the Chamber on the following day. Since the removal to Paris it had enormously

increased both its membership and its influence. Men of all shades of opinion, other than declared reactionaries, went there, but it was tending more and more to become an unofficial headquarters of the Left. As a club-house the ex-Convent of the Jacobins, off the Rue St. Honore within a hundred yards of the Place Vendome, had been taken over, and thus gave the Club the name by which it had now become generally known.

Roger kept de Mirabeau to his promise to take him there and the Count said that there would be no difficulty about his becoming a member of the Club if he wished to do so. Anyone could join provided they were introduced by an existing member and had either published some work expressing Liberal sentiments or were prepared to make a short speech which met with the approval of the members present at the time. Colour, religion and race were no bar to election, as the spirit of the Club was "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" for all; and British subjects always received a particularly warm welcome on account of their having been the first people in the world to throw off the "tyranny of Kings". The Count added that only a few days before Christmas an English gentleman-farmer of Suffolk, named Arthur Young, who was staying in Paris with the Due de Liancourt, had been elected a member with much enthusiasm.

The great hall of the Convent was already famous in French his­tory, as it was here that the Catholic League had been formed in the reign of Henri III, to resist the armies of the insurgent Huguenots. When de Mirabeau led Roger into it a further chapter of French history was being written, but by a very different type of man from the great nobles who had once stuck white crosses in their feathered caps and sworn an oath there with drawn swords. It was crowded with democrats of all classes and over a hundred deputies were present, debating the policy they should pursue in the Assembly the following day. After listening to diem for a while it was soon clear to Roger that Barnave, the Lameths, Petion and other enrages, as the most violent revolutionaries were called, were much the most popular speakers.

In due course a halt was called to the debate to elect new members, and de Mirabeau introduced Roger as an English journalist of sound Whig convictions. Roger then spoke briefly, saying several things in which he fully believed, with regard to the liberty of the subject, and ending with a peroration in which he did not, concerning the imperish­able glory of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He was elected with acclamation and afterwards signed the book as a member.

On January 1st he celebrated the opening of the year 1790 by buying himself one of the new hats. Three-cornered hats were now rapidly going out of fashion and being replaced by two new types of headgear. The first, now being worn by more sober men of substance,

was a round beaver or felt with an insloping crown, like a steeple that had been cut off short The second, affected by the fashionable youth of the new era, was a sickle moon-shaped cocked hat of moire silk, worn on the back of the head with its points sticking out level with the ears; which could be folded flat for holding under the arm more conveniently than the old three-cornered type. Roger chose one of the latter and had just completed his purchase when he ran into de la Marck.

Somewhat to his surprise the young Austrian told him that he had been seeking to use the Comte de Provence as a medium for negotia­tions between de Mirabeau and the King. Louis XVI had not con­sidered it necessary to send his younger brother abroad, as, unlike d'Artois, he had not. incurred the hatred of the mob. On the contrary, he had pandered to it and, on the removal from Versailles, come to live at the Palais du Luxembourg, on the south side of the river, where he now enjoyed a faint replica of the popularity that the Due d'Orleans had had while living at the Palais Royal.

De la Marck explained that he had been influenced in the course he had taken by knowing that although the Queen had never met de Mirabeau, all she had heard of him had led her to dislike and distrust him intensely; so he had feared that a direct approach to her might result in the project being killed at birth, and had decided to attempt to interest the King in it through his brother.

However, he felt now that he had been something of a simpleton to count on family loyalty, and had probably underestimated de Provence's jealousy of the King and hatred for the Queen, as the pompous Prince had merely temporized, and was proving of very little help.

Roger strongly advised a direct approach to the Queen, and some days later he was gratified to hear from de la Marck that the move had proved successful. At first Madame Marie Antoinette had proved extremely difficult to convince that de Mirabeau would observe any pact loyally; but in the end she had been won round, and an agreement had been reached by which the King was to pay de Mirabeau's debts and allow him 6,000 livres a month; and the great demagogue was now busy compiling in secret a long paper on innumerable questions, for the future guidance of Their Majesties.

The rest of January and the first half of February passed for Roger in a round of intense activity. There were outbreaks of disorder in Versailles and the Provinces, and rumours of plots of all sorts, to be investigated. He continued to attend the Queen's public receptions occasionally, went frequently to the National Assembly and spent several evenings each week at the Jacobin Club. He kept in dose touch with de Perigord and, now fully convinced of his fundamental loyalty to the Crown, confided to him the secret alliance that had been entered into between de Mirabeau and the Sovereigns; in ex­change for which he received much valuable information. In turn he dined with de la Marck, Fersen, de Cazales, Barnave, de Mercy-Argenteau, Desmoulins, and many other men of all shades of opinion.

He was quieter, graver and much more sure of himself than when he had come to Paris in the spring; but he was enormously interested in his work, had regained much of his old natural cheerfulness, and now rarely thought of Isabella.

It was on the afternoon of February 14th that he received a note by hand from Lord Robert Fitz-Gerald. It read simply: A certain person requires your immediate presence in London.

That night he was in the fast diligence, rumbling along the road towards Calais. The weather was filthy and the diligence an ice-box, the straw on its floor barely keeping the feet of the passengers from freezing; and he thanked his stars that he had decided against making the trip home for Christmas, when it had been even colder. But only a moderate sea was running and the wind was favourable, so on the 17th the Dover coach set him down at Charing Cross.

Tired as he was, he went straight to Downing Street; and only ten minutes after he had sent up his name he was ushered into the Prime Minister's room.

After greeting him pleasantly and offering him a glass of Port, Mr. Pitt came to the point with his usual directness. He said:

"Mr. Brook, I recalled you from Paris because I wish you to proceed at once to Spain."

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

ON THE BEACH

FOR a moment Roger was silent. A mission to Spain could only mean that the Prime Minister was sending him to Madrid. It would take him a fortnight or three weeks to get there. Isabella's baby was due to be born in little over a month. The Condesa Fernanunez had said that after Isabella's lying-in the Sidonia y Ulloas would be certain to spend some months in Madrid making their court to the new King and Queen. So if he went there it was a virtual certainty that he would see Isabella again within six or seven weeks.

"I am sorry, sir," he said. "But I cannot go to Spain."

"Cannot I" Mr. Pitt repeated, raising his eyebrows in astonishment. "That, Mr. Brook, is a word which I do not permit those I employ to use to me."

"Nevertheless," said Roger, "much as I regret to have to do so, I fear I must use it now. I am extremely sorry, but I cannot go to Spain."

"Why?" asked the Prime Minister coldly. "Have you committed some crime which would make you non persona grata at the Court of Madrid?"

"No, sir. It is a purely personal matter. I will willingly go anywhere else that you may choose to send me, but not to Madrid."

"But I do not wish to send you anywhere else. I have special work of urgent importance that I wish you to undertake for me in the Spanish capital."

"Then, greatly as it distresses me to refuse you, sir, I fear you must find someone else to do it."

The Prime Minister's long, thin face paled slightly, and he said with extreme hauteur: "Mr. Brook, your personal affairs cannot be allowed to interfere with the business of the State. Either you will accept the orders that I give you or find another master."

Roger's face went whiter than Mr. Pitt's. He had been shocked into an abruptness that he did not intend. "I—I pray you, sir, reconsider this matter," he faltered. "I now have excellent contacts in Paris, and have good reason to believe that I am serving you well there. I beg you to send somebody else to Spain and allow me to return to France."

"On the contrary," replied Mr. Pitt sharply, "I am by no means satisfied with your activities in Paris. In my opinion you have become involved with the wrong type of people. On the one hand you have entered on what may be termed a conspiracy with the Austrian Ambas­sador to forward the reactionary projects of the Queen in opposition to the new democratic Government; and that is contrary to the interests of this country. On the other you have entered into an alliance with Monsieur de Talleyrand-Perigord. Having met him when I was in France I have a great admiration for his intellectual gifts; but he has proved himself to be an iconoclast of the most dangerous description, and as he is completely unscrupulous it is certain that he will use you for his own ends.

"Lastly, there is this story of yours about a rapprochement between Monsieur de Mirabeau and the Queen. One might as well try to mix oil and water, and I do not believe there is one grain of truth in it. Except upon purely general matters the information you have been sending is in complete contradiction to that furnished by the British Embassy, and I can only conclude that you are being made a fool of by de Perigord and your other friends."

Utterly flabbergasted, Roger stared at him in dismay. Then he burst out angrily: " 'Tis the British Embassy that is being fooled, not I; as time will show."

"You must pardon me if I doubt that. In any case, I have decided to send another man to Paris. But in the past you have shown much courage and initiative, and I had hopes that you would recover them by a change of scene. Are you, or are you not, prepared to receive my instructions for this mission to Madrid?"

"No!" declared Roger firmly. "I am not."

The Prime Minister stood up. "Very well then, Mr. Brook, It only remains for me to thank you for your endeavours in the past, and to wish you success in some other career. This evening I will have a word with His Grace of Leeds and request him to have your accounts looked into. If you will wait upon His Grace some time next week he will see to it that you receive any monies that may be due to you."

Five minutes later Roger found himself in the street. He was utterly bewildered at the course events had taken, and wondered now if he had acted like a fool in refusing the mission to Spain. But, almost at once, he decided that he had been right to do so. Both Isabella and he had suffered too much from their affaire for it to be anything but madness to renew it, and that would have been inevitable if he had given way to Mr. Pitt and gone to the Court of Madrid. She would soon have her child about which to build her life, and for the past two months the vision of her had ceased to obsess him; so of two evils he felt sure he had chosen the lesser. Yet the price he had had to pay filled him with dismay. He could hardly realize it yet, but he was now, as his father the Admiral would have said, "on the beach". No, worse! For him there was no chance at all of another ship; he was a man without a future.

Mr. Pitt, meanwhile, was much annoyed at Roger's refusal of his mission, as he had counted on him for it. In less than three years Roger had been instrumental in checking two serious foreign aggressions that threatened to lead to war, and the Prime Minister had felt that his peculiar flair for such situations might help in arresting another.

Having become Prime Minister at the age of twenty-four, Mr. Pitt naturally did not share the common belief that a man must reach middle-age before he could be entrusted with discretionary powers in matters of high policy. There had been no British Ambassador at Madrid since the previous June, so, until a new one could be ap­pointed, he had intended to send Roger there with Letters of Marque which would have given him wide scope for his talents, and he felt aggrieved both at the upsetting of his own plans and that his young protege should have missed such an excellent chance to distinguish himself. On the other hand, as he knew much more about Mr. Brook's private affairs than that young man supposed, he was not altogether sorry that his insubordination had offered the opportunity to give him a sharp lesson.

It was not that he wished to reduce Roger to a cautious, hum-drum collector of information; as to have attempted it would have deprived him of the use of his most valuable assets—imagination and initiative —but he did want him to develop a greater sense of responsibility regarding his work.

Mr. Pitt had no personal animus against Madame Marie Antoinette, but since her removal to the Tuileries he had had no confirmation of Roger's story that her life was in danger, and he saw no reason why he should pay him to further her intrigues.

In the matter of de Perigord he had been much influenced by the opinion of his old preceptor and friend Bishop Tomline, and he recalled the positive horror that had shaken the poor Bishop when he had learned of de Perigord's bill to rob the Church of all its property in France. As a fiscal measure there might be sound arguments for such a step; but for an ordained priest to propose it had seemed to both of them a perfidy which put him for ever outside the pale. As for the story of his midnight visit to the Comte d'Artois, there was no possibility of checking that, as His Highness had taken refuge with his wife's relatives at the Court of Turin, but Mr. Pitt did not believe it for one moment.

The intelligence about de Mirabeau sounded even more improbable. Billy Pitt was of aristocratic descent only on his mother's side, but the truly noble mentality of his great father, and a very unusual up­bringing, had combined to make him the most fastidious of aristocrats; and he regarded de Mirabeau as a renegade to his order. According to British Embassy reports the King and Queen of France continued to hold receptions in the Tuileries, to transact business and be advised by the same Ministers as they had had while at Versailles; so, as yet, Mr. Pitt had no true appreciation of their situation. In consequence, to anyone of his haughty nature it was inconceivable that Madame Marie Antoinette could have brought herself to have dealings with any demagogue, let alone one having de Mirabeau's debauched and venal history.

The Prime Minister had always regarded Roger as rather a shrewd young man, so he was somewhat surprised that he should have allowed himself to be taken in to such an extent; and could only account for it by the supposition that outside interests had prevented him giving his full mind to his proper duties. In any case, he had for some time been of the opinion that Roger's talents could be used to better advantage at a Court than in a democratic society; and William Grenville, Mr. Pitt's trusted friend, had suggested that one William Augustus Miles should be sent to Paris to replace him. Mr. Miles had got on very well with the Dutch burghers while acting as a secret diplomatic agent in Holland, so no doubt he would prove equally successful in winning the confidence of the bourgeois politicians from whom the new governing class in France were mainly drawn. He might not have the debonair charm of Mr. Brook, but he was much better qualified to operate in the Paris of the new regime.

Nevertheless, the long-sighted Mr. Pitt had no intention of denying himself Roger's services permanently. He considered that the young man had more than proved his value in the past and believed that, given the right opportunities, he might do so many times again. In the meantime it would do him a lot of good, and make him more cautious in the future about cultivating contacts of such dubious value, if he were left to cool his heels for a little with no prospect of employment. In due course a chastened Mr. Brook would, no doubt, be very happy at being given another chance to exercise his wits and courage to better purpose.

Mr. Pitt emptied the remaining contents of the decanter of Port into his glass, and having no British Ambassador in. Madrid to instruct, began to draft a letter to the Spanish Ambassador in London, to the effect that an insult having been done to the British Flag in distant Nootka Sound, he could not even consider any discussion of the reasons alleged by the Spaniards for their act until the wrong had been acknowledged and full reparation for it made.

Roger, knowing nothing of Mr. Pitt's intentions, walked slowly across the Green Park to Amesbury House. There he found his baggage just being delivered from the coach station, and was roused a fraction from his half-stunned state by the welcome news that his friend Lord Edward Fitz-Deverel was in residence.

"Droopy Ned", as his lordship had been nicknamed at school from the permanent stoop that afflicted his tall, frail figure, spent most of his life cultivating three hobbies: the collection of antique jewellery, experimenting with Eastern drugs, and studying ancient religions. That day he was devoting to the last of these, and on going up to his rooms Roger found him employed in carefully unwinding the hundreds of yards of bandage that encased an Egyptian mummy. On a table beside him there were already over a dozen little amulets that he had found among the successive layers of wrappings, and his long delicate hands were trembling with excitement as he picked out another.

Seeing his friend's absorption in his task, Roger restrained his impatience to begin talking about his woes; and, when they had greeted one another, sat down to watch the completion of the business. At length the brown parchment-covered body of a short, slender woman was revealed. Her mummy was in an excellent state of preservation, having a cavity only below the left ribs where the flesh had gone to powder, and when Droopy tapped it on the chest it gave out a hollow note. He remarked that his agent had had to pay an Arab merchant two hundred guineas for it; and that owing to the superstitious fears of sailors at having a corpse on board he had had to pay a Greek captain a further hundred to smuggle it to England for him disguised as a bale of carpets; but he was well satisfied with his purchase. Only then did Roger announce the shattering result of his interview with Mr. Pitt.

Immediately, Droopy was all concern, and they set about discussing Roger's future. Financially he had had an excellent nine months, as with the money Madame Marie Antoinette had given him, the balance of the sum he had received from Isabella, his accumulated allowance from his father and what was due to him from the Foreign Office, he reckoned that he had the better part of fourteen hundred pounds to his credit. So after they had been talking for a while, he said:

"Fortunately I am well in funds, so in no situation where I must take the first thing that offers from immediate necessity to earn my living. The things that distress me most are the breaking of my associa­tion with Mr. Pitt, and the unlikelihood of ever obtaining another opening which would afford me both the means and opportunity to continue my travels."

Droopy scratched his long nose and said thoughtfully: "It would not surprise me greatly if after a while Mr. Pitt sends for you again. Should you prove right in your contention that the information you have sent from Paris is better founded than that supplied by the British Embassy, the fact will emerge in due course. 'Tis even probable that the Prime Minister repudiated your beliefs simply because they do not fit in with his own preconceptions. I doubt if in recent weeks he can have followed events in France at all closely, as such time as he would devote to foreign affairs must have been occupied with the far more serious developments in Belgium."

"More serious!" Roger exclaimed. "Oh come, Ned!"

"Egad, man, they are so regarded in England. The fall of the Bastille and the attack by the mob on Versailles are now half a year old. The general opinion here is that the most dangerous phase of the French Revolution is over, and that in a few more months the nation will settle down under a Liberal Constitution. But the troubles in Belgium came to a head only just before Christmas, and their outcome still lies in the balance."

"I had heard that there have been riots in the Low Countries in favour of a Republic, but have been too occupied to acquaint myself with the details. Have the Belgians also established a democratic form of government?"

Droopy's wide mouth opened in a grin. "You are indeed out of touch with what we look on here as the burning question of the moment. I had best give you the gist of it. The revolution in Belgium has been of an entirely different character from that in France, and has sprung from a diametrically opposite cause. For a long time past the Emperor Joseph II has been endeavouring to introduce a great variety of reforms in the Austrian Netherlands; but the people appear to prefer their own time-honoured way of life, that has existed almost unchanged since the Middle Ages. The root of the trouble lies in the Emperor's Germanic passion for uniformity. Each Province formed a miniature State differing in its constitution and administration from the others. He wished to do away with all these inconsistencies so that everyone should enjoy the same degree of liberty. He wanted all the priests to be educated in one central Seminary at Lou vain; and he wanted the Kermesses—as the great Fairs are called—of all the different towns to be held on the same day."

Blinking his weak blue eyes, Droopy went on: "The edicts from distant Vienna ordering these innovations met with increasing resist­ance, until last November the Estates of Brabant and Hainault defied the Emperor and refused to vote further taxes. On Joseph resorting to disciplinary measures the normally pacific burghers took up arms against him. In December they threw off the Austrian yoke and pro­claimed their country as the Republic of the United States of Belgium. At the moment the Emperor is still in negotiation with his rebellious Netherlander, but he is known to be mobilizing an army for their suppression. Meanwhile they are endeavouring to secure armed support against him from the Prussians and the Dutch."

Roger knew that it had for long been a cardinal factor in British Foreign policy that the Low Countries, and particularly the great port of Antwerp, should remain in the hands of a power incapable of using them for offensive purposes; so he felt that Droopy's guess—that Mr. Pitt had recently been concentrating his interest on events in Belgium to the exclusion of those in France—was very probably right. But, if it were so, that still did not alter the fact that he had been dismissed for refusing to go to Spain; and the problem now uppermost in his mind was whether to start seeking some new permanent career right away or first to take things easy for a while at Lymington.

Knowing his friend's highly strung nature, Droopy was much against his going to the country, as he feared that there he would brood over his dismissal. He urged that, while there was no hurry to settle on anything, Roger ought to remain in London, as only in it was he likely to meet people in a situation to offer him some post suitable to his talents, and that if he could first collect a few ideas to think over he would later enjoy a visit to his home much more.

In consequence, instead of staying at Amesbury House for only a few nights, Roger remained on; and, in the company of the foppish, short-sighted, but extremely astute Droopy, once more entered the idle round of pleasure that made up the life of London society.

In the latter half of February fresh impetus was given to interest in the Belgian situation by the arrival of the news of the Emperor Joseph's death; and few vigorous, intelligent, Liberal-minded Monarchs have died in such sad circumstances. He had started out with high hopes of consolidating his vast, scattered dominions and bringing liberty to all his subjects. Diplomatic defeats had prevented him from achieving the former and the backwardness of the peoples he governed prevented the latter. At the time of his death Belgium had declared her independence; the nobles of Hungary had forced him to cancel all his reforms with the single exception of the abolition of serfdom; he was at war with Turkey in the south; his only ally, Catherine II of Russia, was in no situation to help him; and the Turks had just concluded an alliance with the Prussians, who, in conjunction with the Poles, were now mass­ing an army with the intention of invading Austria from the north. So it looked as if the whole Habsburg Empire was about to fall into ruins.

He was succeeded by his younger brother, Leopold of Tuscany; and Roger wondered if even the outstanding abilities of the equally Liberal-minded but much more cautious Grand Duke would prove up to pulling the Empire out of the mess it was in. He wondered, too, if the beautiful Donna Livia had accompanied Leopold to Vienna; and recalled his brief affaire with her as one of the most amusing and delightful adventures of its kind that fortune had ever sent him.

Early in March his memories of another titian-haired lady with whom he had dallied, although in a more discreet manner, were revived with much greater directness. At a ball at Chandos House he ran into Amanda Godfrey.

Somehow he had never associated her with London, so he was all the more struck by seeing her for the first time in such a setting and dressed in the height of fashion. Her tall figure and graceful carriage lent themselves well to fuller petticoats and a higher headdress than she ever wore in the country; yet she retained her natural, imperturbable manner, which made her even more outstanding among the affected young women who were flirting their fans and sniffing their salts near by.

Roger at once asked her for a dance, and she said with her usual vagueness that she had no idea if she had any left, but would be enchanted if he cared to snatch her sometime during the evening; so snatch her he did, and to avoid possible trouble with other claimants to her company they sat out three dances running in an alcove off the refreshment-room.

After they had been talking for some twenty minutes she said: "Roger, my dear, you are mightily improved since we last met, and I am happy indeed to find you so much more like the man you were a twelvemonth back."

"That is easy to explain," he laughed. "I am no longer in love. Except, of course, in being newly smitten with your fair self."

"You foolish fellow," she smiled languidly. "But I am glad to hear it. That you are no longer in love, I mean. 'Tis a plaguey wearing business."

He sighed. "There is certainly no other to compare with it for depriving a man of his normal faculties, and reducing him to a morose, hag-ridden shadow of himself."

"Or a woman either. I pray God that I may never again be afflicted with the disease in virulent form."

"So you, too, have known that agony?"

She nodded. "I thought I would ne'er recover when first we met, but your gallant attentions over that Christmas did much to help me. They were flattering without being serious enough to cause me any perturbation, so the very tonic needed to restore my amour propre’

"I am glad," said Roger seriously, "that I should have been even the unconscious means of assisting your recovery."

"I would that I could have done as much for you," she replied, "but your amour propre needed no restoring."

"Your kindness in allowing me the status of a favoured beau last summer, while knowing that my heart was set elsewhere, was truly generous, and helped me mightily."

"Nay; not in the healing of your wound." She shook her head, then went on thoughtfully: "I had been near desperate with love for a man who would have none of me. He thought me a fool. Mayhap he is right in that, for I know well that at times I both say and do the most plaguey stupid things. 'Twas my hard lot to have to play gooseberry to a cousin of mine while he courted and married her. She has a bookish cleverness that I shall ever lack; but a mean, petty mind; and that made it all the harder.

"Then there came Christmas at Lymington, and yourself. I knew full well that your intentions were not serious; but you were the hand­somest beau in the district, so well enough to flirt with. And it was, I think, the very fact that you were not obsessed with my physical attractions that made you talk to me the more. I mean, apart from the usual persiflage of gallantry. You would not recall it, but you asked my opinion upon a hundred matters, ignored my vagueness about things that are of little account, and showed a genuine interest in all I had to say. On one occasion you said to me: ' 'Tis the combination of such femininity with so clear and deep a mind as yours, Amanda, that enables great courtesans to rule Empires.' Oh, Roger, had you been the ugliest man on earth I could have kissed you for that!"

He placed a hand gently over hers. "My dear, I vow to you I meant it."

She smiled. "The way you said it at the time convinced me of that; and although clever I shall never be, no one will ever again make me believe that at bottom I am a fool. But your case last summer was very different. You were in love with a woman who returned your love, but debarred by circumstances from attaining your mutual desires. Con­sciously or unconsciously I could do nothing to aid you in such a pass. Yet I find you now recovered. Tell me; how have you managed to free yourself from the grip of this ghastly malady that is praised by poets with such stupendous unreason?"

"I hardly know myself," Roger confessed. "In part, perhaps, 'tis because when I was last abroad I met the lady of my love again, under unexpected and most-favourable conditions. Yet since we were little more than a week together 'tis no case of having satiated our passion, on either side. I moved heaven and earth in an attempt to persuade her to fly with me, but she would not; and her refusal was no slight upon her love, as she considered herself tied from the fact that in a few weeks now she is to bear her husband a child."

"You could rejoin her later; visit her from time to time and seize such opportunities as offer to renew your transports."

"Nay. What kind of a life would that be? 'Tis better, far, that she should build a new life round her child; and that I should consider myself free to marry."

"If you marry—even had you been able to marry her—do you believe that you would remain faithful to a wife?"

Roger laughed. "You have me there! I fear 'tis most unlikely."

"I am glad you have the honesty to admit it," Amanda smiled, "for all I have ever learnt of men has led me to believe that 'tis against nature in them to be monogamous. Granted then that you would be unfaithful to a wife, why should you not marry if you have a mind to it, and still at intervals indulge your passion for your Spanish mistress, rather than for some other?"

"Your logic is unanswerable," Roger replied, after a moment. "But recently my circumstances have changed, and in future 'tis probable that my work will lie here in London. Were I to marry, 'tis hardly likely that my wife would be agreeable to my going gallivanting alone on the Continent."

"Then she would be a ninny," Amanda declared serenely. "A wife whose husband deceives her only when he is abroad should count herself lucky. At least she is spared the sweet innuendoes of her friends when his latest affairebecomes common knowledge in her own circle. I only pray that I may be sent a husband who betakes himself once or twice a year to foreign parts and confines his infidelities to his absences from England."

Roger sighed. "How wise you are, my dear Amanda. Yet even had I the good fortune to marry a wife so clear-sighted as yourself I believe it would be a great mistake to follow the course you propose. The nature of my Spanish love is so intense that I feel sure she would consider herself desperately aggrieved did I marry another. And though I am in no situation to marry at the moment I have recently felt more than once that I would like to settle down in a home of my own. So 'tis best for both her and me that we should not meet again."

"If you now feel that, you are cured."

"Yes; for I no longer think of her with any frequency, and am able once more to regard life as a joyous adventure."

"Think you that you are now inoculated of the fell disease?"

"I trust so. It went so deep that 'tis unlikely a similar madness will seize upon me for some other woman, at least for some years to come."

"I feel that, too; for my love also was most desperate while it lasted, and I'll not willingly surrender the freedom of my mind again. In that I intend to model myself on Georgina Etheredge; though I am not of a temperament ever to become quite so reckless a wanton as her hot, half-gipsy blood has made her. She has reduced love to a fine art. Whenever she finds herself becoming too deeply attached to a man she dismisses him and takes another."

Roger glanced up in surprise. "I did not know you knew Georgina."

"I met her first when she was married to Humphrey Etheredge, then again on her return to England last October. I stayed with her for a while at Stillwaters and found her positively enchanting."

"She is my oldest and dearest friend."

"I know it; and you had written to her most gloomily from Lyming-ton last summer, mentioning me in your letter. 'Twas the discovery that we were both worried on your account which formed a special bond between us; for the ravishing Georgina is not normally given to making women friends."

"I have not seen her now for close on a year; and 'twas a sad blow to me to learn on my return from France last month that she had gone abroad again."

"She and her father left early in December to spend the worst months of the year in Italy; but they should be back soon, as she told me that she could not bear the thought of missing another spring at Stillwaters."

Roger nodded. " 'Tis a heavenly place. When Georgina returns we must arrange a visit to her."

For the third time since they had been sitting there the violins struck up, so Amanda said: "Roger, my dear, we must dally no longer, or the number of my irate disappointed partners will be greater than even my notoriously poor memory will excuse."

As he escorted her back to the ballroom he asked if he might call upon her, and she replied: "Do so by all means. I am as usual with my Aunt Marsham in Smith Square; but let it be within the next two days, as we leave on Thursday to stay with friends at Wolverstone Hall in Suffolk."

On the Wednesday Roger had himself carried in a sedan down to Westminster, and took a dish of tea with Amanda and Lady Marsham. The latter had mothered Amanda ever since she had been orphaned as a child of four, and Roger had met her on numerous occasions when she was staying with her brother, Sir Harry Burrard, at Walhampton. There was a striking family resemblance between Amanda and her aunt. Age had increased Lady Marsham's figure to august proportions, but she was still a very handsome woman of fine carriage, and she had the same effortless charm of manner. In her vague way she at first took Roger for someone else, but welcomed him none the less heartily when her mistake was discovered.

Nevertheless the visit was not an altogether satisfactory one, as the two ladies were in the midst of packing. Their mutual untidiness had turned Lady Marsham's boudoir, in which they took tea, into a scene, of indescribable confusion, and frequent interruptions by the servants to hunt there for articles that had been mislaid played havoc with all attempts to carry on an intelligent conversation.

It was perhaps Amanda's departure for the country that subcon­sciously decided Roger to pay a visit to his mother. His own enquiries and those of Droopy Ned had so far not produced any suitable opening, and while he was anxious not to waste longer than necessary before starting a new career, he had funds enough to keep him as a modish bachelor for two or three years; so there would have been little sense in his jumping into a blind alley simply to salve his conscience.

On arriving at Lymington he found, to his distress, that his mother was far from well. Lady Marie had for some months been suffering from pains in her inside, and although the doctors had failed to diagnose the cause of the trouble they feared a tumour. She had not taken to her bed, but tiredness now brought on the pain, and having always led a very active life she naturally found it hard to have to limit herself in the time that she could now spend in her stillroom and garden.

Roger had meant to spend only a few nights at Lymington but, in the circumstances, he prolonged his visit to a fortnight; and, seeing his solicitousness for her, she took occasion one evening to speak to him more seriously than she had done for a long time past.

She disclosed how worried she had been about him in the summer, so he told her about his affaire with Isabella; and also that it was unlikely that he would be going abroad again, as his work for the Government had been terminated. With her usual tact she refrained from telling him that she had guessed him to be involved in some foreign entanglement, or remarking how pleased she was to hear that he was now free of it; but she expressed considerable concern about his future, and discussed various possibilities with him. However, the trouble—as had been the case with Roger on his first return from France two and a half years before—was that the combination of qualities he possessed did not particularly fit him for any career outside the fighting services.

It was not until he kissed her good night that she said quietly: "I do not wish to alarm you, Roger; and when next you write to your father in no circumstances are you to put ideas into the dear man's head. But I do not think I shall live to make old bones."

He knew that she was confirming his own half-formed fears, that her illness was serious; so in a swift effort to comfort her he kissed her again and pressed her very tightly in his arms. She smiled up at him, patted his cheek and murmured:

"Don't worry, my lamb. I feel sure God will spare me to you for a -year or two yet. But before I go I would like to see you happily settled, if that be possible. Mind, I would not for the world have my wish over-weigh your own judgment in any case where you feel an inclination, yet have doubts. I mean only that should you find the right girl, I beg you not to hesitate on account of your present lack of employment, or the smallness of your income. A man of your parts cannot fail to climb high, so 'tis but a matter of finding a good ladder; and I can vouch for it that in the meantime your father would see to it that you did not lack for money."

When, a few minutes later, Roger reached his own room, his thoughts turned to Amanda. If he married her, how overjoyed his mother would bel But would Amanda be willing to marry him? In view of their con­versation a fortnight back he thought she probably would. Neither of them had any illusions left about unreasoning passion; both had been burnt by'it too badly. She did not wish to experience that kind of love again; nor did he. Both of them wanted something more gentle but more enduring. Georgina held a special place in his life that no one else could ever fill; but, Georgina apart, he liked Amanda as a person better than any other woman he had ever met. Mentally they had been attracted to one another from the beginning; quite early in their game of make-believe they had toyed with passion just enough to know that each was capable of raising in the other swift desire, and between them, like two sturdy trees, there had grown up trust and genuine affection.

Before he went to sleep, Roger decided that if Amanda felt the same way about him as he did about her, they would have a far better prospect of enjoying many years of happiness together than the great majority of couples that got married. Yet he refrained from committing himself

to any definite course of action. Amanda was due back from Suffolk at the end of the month. He would take an early opportunity to see her again and unostentatiously reclaim his position as one of her beaux. After that he would leave the development of matters on the knees of the gods and to Amanda.

But, as always happened when a fresh line of thought came to him, his mind gripped, exploited and would not let it go; so by the time he arrived in London, on the night of March 20th, he was looking forward to Amanda's return with the utmost eagerness, and was highly con­scious that in the next few weeks life might hold a new excitement and a new meaning for him.

Then, on the morning of the 22nd, a letter was delivered to him at Amesbury House. He saw by the franking that it came from Portugal; next second he recognized the careful, angular writing as Isabella's.

With unsteady hands he opened it, and with his eyes jumping from line to line swiftly took in its contents. The paragraphs were not many but every one of them aroused his deepest emotions.

She loved him more than all the world. She was desperately unhappy. She believed her life to be in danger. Would he endeavour to reach Madrid by mid-April and snatch her from hell to the paradise of his protection?

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

THE KING'S BUSINESS

WITH his heart hammering in his chest, Roger read the letter through again more carefully. It had been written as recently as the 4th of the month, and its swift transit was explained by Isabella having sent it by fast personal courier as far as Lisbon. She added that she had sent a duplicate of it to La Belle Etoile in Paris, with her prayers that one or the other would reach him in time for him to save her.

She and her husband had left Naples at the end of January in order that she might have her baby in the traditional manner at the castle from which he took his title. She expected the event in the latter part of March. She still felt that she had been right in her decision not to elope with Roger from Naples, and that he could not love her less on that account. To have done otherwise would have been shameful. She had intended to resign herself to a life without love except that for her child. But she had discovered that her husband was a monster.

Little Quetzal was one of the very few people who did not shun the village witch, so the old crone doted on the boy. She had told him that Don Diego had bought poison from her, and that from her private reading of his horoscope he intended to use it on his wife. The motive for such a frightful act was, alas, all too plain. Some weeks previously he had conceived one of his uncontrollable passions for an English­woman. She was a beautiful creature, but cold, designing and ambitious.

Like other Spanish noblemen Don Diego never stooped to conceal his infidelities from his wife; and, in one of his black, morbid fits, he had told Isabella frankly that the cause of his distress was that their beautiful visitor would not give in to him or any other man for either love or money; she wanted both a title and a fortune, and her price was marriage. A week later Quetzal's terrible discovery had disclosed the way Don Diego's mind was now working. Since he was in no situation to pay the Englishwoman's price without first getting rid of Isabella, his wild obsession was such that he had determined to take the step which would enable him to pay it.

Isabella felt confident that she would be safe until she had had her child. Afterwards, she meant to exercise the utmost caution and keep to her bed for a fortnight, as there she need eat nothing but food that had been specially prepared for her by Maria. But by mid-April, or possibly earlier, it was certain that the doctor would declare her well enough to leave for Madrid. From then on she would be in extreme danger, but fit to travel. So she begged Roger to hasten to Madrid at the earliest possible moment and carry her off back to England with him.

Roger noted that it did not seem to have even entered her head that since she had refused to leave Naples with him his passion for her might have cooled. It was clear that her love for him had not abated one iota; and obviously she assumed that his love for her had equally sustained no diminution. Now that her letter, with her desperate plea, raised her image so clearly in his mind again it seemed as if for the past four months he had been boxed up in an airtight compartment, and that its walls had suddenly been whipped away like paper in a gale.

Georgina Etheredge was a case apart, and—with the possible exception of his calf-love for Athehais de Rochambeau—he knew that he had never felt so deeply for any woman as he had for Isabella. The idea that her life was in danger made his throat contract; yet he caught himself wondering if he would ever quite recover the wild passion for her that had obsessed him in Naples, and that he had since striven so successfully to kill.

The thought of Amanda gave him pause for a moment. He was not committed to her in any way; yet for these past few days he had been envisaging the seductive possibilities of married life with her. If she felt as he did, everything could be so simple and so suitable. The wedding would be from Walhampton, the ceremony in the old parish church at Lymington, blessings and good wishes would be showered on them by all their friends. They would have only themselves to blame if they were not happy; and his poor, darling mother would be over­joyed in seeing her dearest wish come true.

In contrast to that picture Isabella did not even mention the prospects of an annulment, and he could not possibly expose her to the risk of insult, as his kept woman, in London; neither could he take her to Lymington. During his fit of madness in Naples he had had vague thoughts of taking her down to Hampshire and passing her off as his wife, but he knew that he would never be able to bring himself to do that now. Should some ill-chance reveal such a deception, in his mother's present state the shock and shame involved might prove so great a blow that it would aggravate her illness and send her into a swift decline.

Yet Isabella was asking no more of him than he had asked of her four months ago, and in her case with far greater reason. From the moment he had first skimmed through her letter there had been no real doubt in his mind. He knew that he must go to Spain, if only to save her from becoming the victim of Don Diego's ungovernable passion. As there were no other possible means of doing so than eloping .with her, it followed that Fate had, after all, decreed that their lives were to be permanently united.

It struck him that the blind goddess had behaved with a certain cynicism, in first causing him to wreck his professional career by refusing a journey to Spain that would have led to reopening his nerve-racking affaire and now compelling him to go there at the price of his new prospects of quiet, domestic happiness. But he swiftly upbraided himself for a thought so disloyal to the woman whom only four months before he had loved so desperately. That love would blossom anew once he was with Isabella again and prove a buckler to them against all the difficulties they might meet with when he got her to England.

Fortunately he had ample money to keep them in modest comfort for a long time to come. They could live very quietly somewhere in the country under an assumed name; perhaps in Kent or Sussex, as in both counties there were now many French exiles, so Isabella being a foreigner would not arouse unwelcome interest in either of them. He would give out in London that he had been sent abroad again; and could only pray that the Catholic Church would allow Don Diego to repudiate Isabella so that they could regularize their union while his mother was still able to give them her blessing. There was, too, always just a chance that Fate might intervene again, and give Isabella her freedom through her husband's death.

Swiftly upon these thoughts another came to Roger. Since he was going to Spain, both courtesy and his own interests suggested that he ought to offer himself to Mr. Pitt to carry any despatches that were awaiting transit to Madrid. At least by doing so he could show that he bore no rancour against the Prime Minister, and was still willing to serve him in any way he could. It was possible, too, that by this time Mr. Pitt had had confirmation of de Mirabeau's alliance with the Court, and so took a better view of his ex-agent's last activities in Paris. If so, Roger felt, there was just a chance that he might be forgiven his insub­ordination, and entrusted with a new mission on his return from Spain.

At even this slender prospect of reinstatement his spirits went up with a bound. He had felt all along that no opening he could find would prove so congenial to him as his old work and, with luck, a resumption of it would enable him to live abroad with Isabella as Madame de Breuc, which would solve a multitude of problems for them.

At once he hurried off to Downing Street; but it was a Monday, and he learned that the Prime Minister, having as usual spent Sunday at Holwood, was not expected back until it was time for him to take his place in the House of Commons that evening.

Roger knew it would be useless to leave a note, as Mr. Pitt was too poor to be able to afford a private secretary and very often left his letters lying unopened for weeks.

It was one of the strangest anomalies that by his financial genius Mr. Pitt should have brought Britain, in the space of a few years, from the verge of bankruptcy to a wonderful prosperity, yet be quite incapable of managing his own affairs; and another that, while he was incredibly hardworking and extremely punctilious about the discharge of all business that could be transacted verbally, he was one of the worst correspondents in the world. He was shamefully robbed by his servants and hopelessly in debt; but, maintaining that the nation's affairs must come before his own, he refused to open letters from fear they would be bills, which would distract his attention from more important matters; and he never answered a letter unless he thought it absolutely imperative to do so.

In consequence, Roger, being reluctant to waste a whole day, decided that the best course was to go down to see him in the country. So, returning? to Amesbury House, he had a horse saddled and rode through Southwark, down the Old Kent Road, to Bromley. A few miles beyond the village he came to Mr. Pitt's country home and, having had himself announced, was shown through into the garden.

There he found the tall, lean, worn-looking Prime Minister admiring his crocuses and daffodils. He smiled as Roger approached and asked: "Well, Mr. Brook, am I to take this as a social call?"

Roger bowed. "Nay, sir. I would not be guilty of such boldness. It is that I am about to set out for Spain."

Mr. Pitt raised his eyebrows. "Is it not a little much to assume my forgiveness; and by so bald an announcement take it for granted that although a month has elapsed since we last met, I am still willing to give you my instructions?"

"I made no such assumption, sir; and while I should be delighted to be received back into your good graces, I did not come here to ask forgiveness."

Giving him an amused look, the Prime Minister remarked: "Humil­ity has never been one of your outstanding attributes, Mr. Brook; but as I have little use for that quality myself I do not think the less of you for that. Since we are such a stiff-necked pair, I will for once incline my own head a trifle. Your reports from Paris have turned out con­siderably better than I had any reason to suppose would be the case. Mark you, I still most strongly disapprove of the manner in which you involved yourself with the Queen and her Austrian friends. And I equally disapprove your secret understanding with that rogue de Talleyrand-Perigord. But your information about de Mirabeau was correct, and your general assessment upon numerous other matters shows that you did not allow yourself to be fooled. In view of that, and your having thought better of the pigheadedness you displayed in February, we will let bygones be bygones."

Roger's hopes first thing that morning for such an outcome to this interview had been only slender ones, and the nearer he got to Bromley the more they had tended to decrease; so his reaction was all the greater and, being no more given to hypocrisy than to humility, he expressed his gratitude and pleasure in no uncertain terms.

Waving aside his thanks, Mr. Pitt went on: "Owing to the Don's natural dilatoriness where business is concerned, little has been lost by your delay in setting out. They made their demarche on February 10th, and I sent for you at once to take our reply. Since you failed me, I had it handed to del Campo, the Spanish Ambassador here; but so far no answer to it has arrived. It fits in well, therefore, that I should now follow up my letter by sending you to Madrid as my personal emissary, to protest at their delay and demand full satisfaction."

The Prime Minister's words simultaneously delighted and alarmed Roger. He was still completely in the dark as to the nature of this trouble with the Spaniards, but it was clear that Mr. Pitt meant to send him to Spain with some form of diplomatic status; and that would be not only reinstatement but promotion. On the other hand, Mr. Pitt was obviously under the impression that, however awkwardly he might have put it, he had repented his refusal to go to Spain and had come there in the hope that it might not yet be too late for him to be given this mission. With an effort he brought himself to say:

" 'Tis only proper to inform you, sir, that I am about to proceed to Madrid because my private affairs require my presence there. I came here only to offer my services in case you had despatches that you wished conveyed thither."

"I thank you for your candour, Mr. Brook," came the reply, with a slight frown. "But I trust this does not mean that you are still unwil­ling to serve me in the more important matter?"

Roger's mind hovered with frightful uncertainty for a moment on the horns of a dilemma. If he accepted, he would be tied by his country's interests and might find them come in direct conflict with plans for his elopement with Isabella. As against that, should he refuse this chance of getting back into the old work that meant so much to him he felt certain he would never be given another. Mr. Pitt was far too intolerant of half-hearted, undependable people; and, as though he read Roger's thoughts, he remarked now with some asperity:

"I need hardly stress that should you accept my instructions they must take precedence of all else. You have already, more than once, allowed other interests to distract you from the King's business, and we had best part company for good if that is likely to occur again."

Those words "the King's business" rang a sudden bell in Roger's mind. They recalled to him his mother down at Lymington with, he feared, only a limited time to live, while duty kept his father tied to his flag-ship, far away at sea. It was the King's business that separated them and, of necessity, called for sacrifices in thousands of other people's lives. For the first time he acknowledged to himself that Mr. Pitt had been justified in censuring him for devoting so much of his energies to Madame Marie Antoinette's affairs, and that during the past year he had, all too frequently, allowed influences that touched his sentiments to interfere with strict concentration on his duties.

With swift contrition he said: "I am truly sorry, sir, that in my last mission I did not give you full satisfaction; but if you will entrust me with this affair in Spain I give you my word that I will not allow the private business that takes me to Madrid to interfere with its execution."

Mr. Pitt nodded approval, and his thin face broke into a smile. He felt that Roger had had his lesson and would prove more conscientious in future. "Let us go into the house, then," he said; and as they walked towards it across the lawn he added: "You will, no doubt, have seen the reference in His Majesty's speech on opening Parliament to this difference of ours with Spain?"

"No, sir. I have this past fortnight been in the country with my mother at Lymington, so I fear I am somewhat out of touch with affairs."

"It has aroused little comment as yet, owing to public interest being concentrated on events in Austria and Belgium; but unless we can curb the Don's pretensions promptly, it may well lead to a dangerous situation."

As they entered the house by a pair of french windows and settled themselves in the Prime Minister's library, he went on: "This then is the issue. As a result of their early explorations the Spaniards have long claimed suzerainty over the whole of the North American Pacific coast right up to Alaska; but they have never troubled to establish trad­ing posts much further north than San Francisco. However, in '74 one of their Captains discovered an exceptionally fine natural harbour in the neighbourhood of the island of Vancouver, and adopted the local Indian name for the place: Nootka Sound.

"Four years later Captain Cook also came upon it, and used it for some months as a base during one of his voyages of discovery. His report upon it as a valuable anchorage was duly filed, and when the cessation of the American War enabled commerce to expand again some of our traders began to use it Apparently the Indian trappers bring their skins there to a market at certain seasons of the year, and the Chinese pay very high prices for rare furs, so a new trade in such commodities arose across the North Pacific, between Nootka Sound and China.

"In '88 several merchants of the British East India Company decided to form an Association of their own for the development of this profitable business; so they sent out one John Mears, an ex-lieutenant of the Royal Navy, with orders to establish a permanent trading post at Nootka. Mears bought a piece of land from the Indian Chief, Macquiila, and the exclusive right to trade with his subjects; then he built a small settlement on the land he had acquired, fortified it and hoisted the British flag.

"Last summer it seems that Flores, the Viceroy of Mexico, became alarmed at rumours that the Russians were establishing themselves on the North American seaboard, so he sent two warships under the command of a Captain Martinez north to investigate. To his surprise Martinez found Nootka occupied by the British. He destroyed the settlement, seized two ships that we had there, and carried Mears and his men back as prisoners to Mexico.

"We have had no Ambassador in Madrid since the recall of Mr. William Eden, last June; and Mr. Anthony Merry, our Consul, whom you will meet there, has since been acting as Charge' d'Affaires. I had the first rumours of this matter from Mr. Merry in the latter part of January. Then, on February 10th, the Conde del Campo, who is the Spanish Ambassador at the Court of St. James, presented a formal note upon it.

"The note stated that out of His Most Catholic Majesty's con­sideration for His Britannic Majesty, the prisoners have since been liberated; but it asserted the right of Spain to absolute sovereignty in those districts 'which have been occupied and frequented by Spaniards for so many years'. Further, it called upon us to punish those responsible for the undertaking and to prohibit future ones of a similar nature.

"The statement that the Spaniards have occupied these districts for many years is entirely without foundation, and I will never submit to such unprovoked insult to the British flag. Having no Ambassador in Madrid to instruct, I took the matter in hand myself. After consultation with the Cabinet I replied to del Campo through His Grace of Leeds that an act of violence having been committed made it necessary to suspend all discussion on the pretensions set forth in his note until just and adequate satisfaction should have been made for a proceeding so injurious to Great Britain."

Mr. Pitt stood up, and, walking over to a big globe map of the world that occupied a corner of the room, added: "There the matter rests. But I wish you to see what this strangely named harbour on a far-distant shore may mean to us in the future."

With his long, sensitive forefinger he pointed first to the United States. "See, here are England's first Colonies in the Americas. A hundred years ago they were no more than a number of small widely scattered settlements; today they form an independent nation whose wealth, population and power already exceeds that of many States in Europe."

His finger moved north. "And here are our Canadian territories, with their flourishing communities at Quebec, Three Rivers, Montreal and Williamsburg. In another two generations those towns may be fine cities having populations as large as Boston, New York and Philadelphia have today; and in the same area hundreds of smaller towns and villages may have sprung up."

Roger nodded. "You mean, sir, that now the hatchet has been buried between the Canadian-French and our own settlers, the popula­tion will increase much faster from both enjoying greater security to develop their properties and rear families on them ?"

"I do indeed; but it is not that alone I have in mind. For many centuries the land of England has sufficed to support her population, but the time is fast approaching when it will do so no longer. Only last summer, when the famine in France was nearing its worst, Monsieur Necker wrote to me begging that I would help avert the crisis by allowing a large quantity of grain to be sent from Britain; yet, to my regret, I had to refuse him; for the safety margin here was so narrow that to have done so would have meant acute shortage among our own people.

"With the great increase of factories in our towns a new age is dawning and I foresee a not-far-distant time when we shall have both to import large quantities of grain ourselves and also encourage the most hardy and adventurous among our people to emigrate. Therefore, both through natural causes and a great influx of new settlers, we are justified in anticipating a very large increase in the inhabitants of Canada. Should that come to pass, as it must short of some unforeseen catastrophe, in another few decades the Canadians will be a great people, and they will require a far larger domain than they have at present on which to support themselves."

Once more Mr. Pitt put his finger on the globe, and its tip rested in the centre of the big blank space, eight times as wide as Canada was then, between the eastern end of Lake Ontario and the Pacific coast.

"Look, now, at that vast unknown territory east of Lake Simco and Fort Toronto. 'Tis into its endless miles of forest, plains and rivers that the Canadians must spread, and from them draw their future sustenance. But look again at its far extremity; there are Vancouver Island and Nootka Sound. If we allow the Spaniards to maintain their title to Nootka they will spread westward from it, and in a few years claim the half of this splendid northern Empire for their own. That I will not suffer. I want it all. Our Canadians will find a good use for it in the future, and I will fight Spain now if need be so that they may have it when we are dead and gone. I will make no compromise, but am determined to have every square mile of it; so that in course of time Canada may become the mighty child of Britain that I would have her be."

For a moment Roger remained looking at his great master in silent admiration, then he said: "What think you, sir, are the chances that we shall have to fight the Dons, in order to make possible this splendid vision of yours?"

Mr. Pitt turned and walked back to his desk. "I think everything hangs upon our forcing them to take a prompt decision in the matter. As I see it our present case is very similar to that with which we were faced in '61. The late Don Carlos had then been but two years on the throne of Spain. As a young Prince, while Duke of Parma, he had conquered Naples and afterwards reigned there for twenty-five years, doing much to improve the condition of that country. But on his succeeding his father as King of Spain he found his own country ill prepared for war. Even so, his ambitions led him to enter into a secret pact with France, in which it was agreed that he should make certain demands of us and, if we failed to satisfy them, join France in the war she was then waging against us.

"My father was then Prime Minister. He saw at once the danger of the situation, and that the only way to meet it was to employ high­handed measures. He urged very strongly that His Most Catholic Majesty should be told that either he must withdraw his demands forthwith or we would instantly declare war upon him. Don Carlos' navy and army were then in no state to commence hostilities, moreover his money chest was near empty and he was dependent for paying his forces upon the arrival of a great treasure fleet that had not yet set sail from Peru. Therefore, had my father's advice been taken, the Spaniards would either have been forced to climb down and war with them been averted, or we should have caught them at a grave disadvantage.1

"Unfortunately King George III was then very young, and had only the previous year ascended the throne. He placed more reliance on my Lord Bute, who had been his tutor, than he did upon my father, with the result that my father resigned the seals of office. In his place my Lord Bute was appointed principal Minister. He proceeded to tem­porize with the Spaniards and a long exchange of notes ensued, which achieved nothing. Don Carlos was given time to organize his forces and get his treasure fleet safely across the Atlantic, instead of its being sunk or captured. When he was ready he declared war upon us, and although we defeated him in the end, he inflicted grave damage on us before we succeeded in doing so."

Roger smiled. "That certainly is a lesson, sir. Am I to take it, then, that Spain is again unprepared today?"

"Not to the extent she was in '61. The new King, Carlos IV, is, I believe, a weak and inept ruler; but he still enjoys the benefit of his father's endeavours to raise Spain to her former greatness. After his apprenticeship of a quarter of a century as King of Naples, Carlos III reigned for nearly thirty years in Spain. He was therefore no novice in the art of Kingship, and being a hard-working, intelligent, conscien­tious man—in fact the best King that Spain has had for many genera­tions—he did a great deal for his country. Moreover, in the Counts d'Aranda and Florida Blanca he had two great Prime Ministers to assist him. The latter is still in office, and in the event of war will undoubtedly follow a policy which would have been approved by his late master. Therefore, if we have to fight it will not be against the weak Spain of Carlos IV but the relatively strong Spain created by Carlos III."

Mr. Pitt stood up, walked over to a side table, poured out two glasses of Port, handed one to Roger, took a drink himself, and went on: "In spite of what I have just said, in the event of war with Spain —with Spain alone, mark you—I have no fears whatever regarding its outcome. We can beat the Dons with ease. But this is where the lesson of my father's policy towards them comes in. They know that they dare not fight us single-handed, so they are now endeavouring to postpone further discussion on this matter until they have made certain of securing an ally. The ally they hope to win is, of course, France."

"You mean, sir, that they will invoke the Family Compact ?" Roger murmured.

"Precisely. As you must know, King Carlos III fought us a second time during his reign. He was then most reluctant to do so, but in '79 the French called on him to honour his treaty with them, and at great cost to himself he did so. Now it is France's turn to help Spain, and it is difficult to see how she can refuse to pay her debt. But in view of her recent internal troubles it is certain that she will procrastinate, and urge the Dons to settle their dispute with us without resorting to war. That should give us the time we need. If we can force them into a corner while they are still uncertain whether they can place definite reliance on French support, I feel convinced that they will climb down."

"You are then, sir, prepared to threaten them with war?"

"I am. If their stomachs are so high that they feel compelled to accept our challenge, that will be regrettable, but by no means catastro­phic; for if they go to war with us on their own 'tis as good as certain that France will refuse to honour her obligations, on the plea that hostilities were entered into without sufficient consultation with her. War with Spain presents no serious danger to us, so 'tis far wiser to risk it than the possibility that we may later be called on to fight Spain and France together. Your task, therefore, is to browbeat the Spaniards into a settlement before they have time to shame their ally into a definite undertaking to fight beside them."

Roger could hardly believe his ears, but a few moments later he had the evidence of his eyes to support them. The Prime Minister had drawn a sheet of notepaper towards him and was writing on it. When he had done he sanded it carefully then handed it across. It was a Letter of Marque consisting of a single potent sentence:

Mr. Roger Brook knows my mind upon the matter of Nootka Sound, and is commissioned by me to speak upon it.

William Pitt.

As Roger folded it and tucked it into his inner pocket, Mr. Pitt said: "I shall be seeing His Grace of Leeds tonight and also my brother, Chatham. If you will wait upon the former at the Foreign Office tomor­row morning he will furnish you with such funds as you may require, and papers ensuring that all diplomatic facilities will be afforded to you. When you have finished with His Grace go to the Admiralty and send your name up to the First Lord. I will ask my brother this evening to give orders for a frigate to carry you to Lisbon, and when you see him tomorrow he will inform you of the name and port of sailing of the ship selected. Now; are there any questions you would like to ask me?"

"Yes, sir. In the event of the Dons climbing down, have you any instructions for me with regard to terms? I do not infer the giving way by a hair's-breadth over Nootka; but they are a proud people, and did you see your way to offer them something to salve their pride it might make the difference between peace and war."

The Prime Minister smiled. "Mr. Brook, I approve your language. 'Tis a pleasure to see how readily you slip into the role of a budding Ambassador; but I think we must leave the discussion of terms to a fully accredited envoy. Mr. Alleyne Fitzherbert has been sent his recall from the Court of The Hague, and should peace continue I have it in mind to send him out to fill the vacant post of Ambassador in Madrid; but another month or more must elapse before he would be ready to proceed there. When he arrives in London His Grace of Leeds and I will discuss with him how far we are prepared to meet the Dons should your own mission prove successful. They have long complained of infringements by our adventurous merchants of their rights in South American waters and of British smuggling activities between our islands in the West Indies and the Spanish Main. We could, if we would, give a formal undertaking to check these interferences with their commerce; but it will be time enough to go into details about such matters if your report of their attitude proves favourable."

"My function then, sir, is solely to threaten war?"

"Yes. You will not, of course, actually declare it, but are to make it plain that we mean war unless the Spaniards are willing to give us full satisfaction without further delay. If they consent to do so, you may indicate that they would find me not unwilling to give favourable con­sideration to steps for removing their commercial grievances against us. But before I am prepared to talk at all, I must have their assurance that the North American Pacific coast from parallel forty-five degrees north­ward to Alaska, and all its hinterland as far east as the St. Lawrence river, will be recognized in a formal treaty as part of His Britannic Majesty's dominions."

As Roger rode back to London he could still hardly believe it true that he had been entrusted with such a weighty matter. But as he thought it over he saw that his mission was actually a very straight­forward one. He was being sent to Madrid as a herald to throw down the gauntlet, and the possible results of his action had been well weighed beforehand. If the Spaniards failed to pick it up, that would stop a war, but even if they accepted the challenge, that should prevent a war of much greater magnitude with real menace to the security of Britain.

Nevertheless, having been given such a task showed that Mr. Pitt could not think too ill of him, in spite of the recent differences that had occurred between them, and his reinstatement in the great man's service filled him with elation. He was still somewhat perturbed at the thought of Isabella, as he realized very plainly that he was now no longer in a position simply to go out to Madrid and abduct her. But, as an offset to that, now that a frigate was to carry him to Lisbon he would reach Madrid considerably earlier than he could otherwise have done; and once there he felt confident that he would find some means of protecting her. The whole essence of his mission was to obtain a plain answer swiftly, so it could not detain him in the Spanish capital for long. If Isabella was really in imminent danger she could run away from her husband and somehow he would arrange for her to hide in the city until he was ready to leave it.

Next day he waited upon the Duke of Leeds at the Foreign Office. His handsome Grace proved as charming and friendly as ever. He con­gratulated Roger on his reinstatement, and further increased his elation by saying that he had found much valuable information in his reports from Paris, which.were now proving to have contained more accurate forecasts on some aspects of the situation than those sent by the British Embassy.

He added that, in his view, Roger had been right to go to Florence and Naples on behalf of Madame Marie Antoinette, as they had plenty of people who could collect information about the deputies, but no other who was now so well placed as himself to inform them of the intentions of the Queen; and that he knew Mr. Pitt's strictures on the matter to have been governed, not by disapproval of Roger's initiative, but by his strong feeling that no servant of the British Crown should involve himself in anything which might weaken the new democratic Government of France.

Much heartened to find he had such a champion in His Grace, Roger received from him bills of exchange on Lisbon and Madrid, a diplomatic passport, and a letter of introduction to Mr. Anthony Merry instructing the Consul to render all possible assistance. He then walked on up Whitehall to the Admiralty.

After a wait of an hour he was shown in to the First Lord. It was the first time that Roger had met Mr. Pitt's elder brother, so he had been looking forward to the interview with interest. The second Earl of Chatham was then thirty-three, so some two and a half years older than the Prime Minister. He had started life as an Army officer and had served both at the siege of Gibraltar and in the American War. It was said that his appointment to the Admiralty, eighteen months earlier, had not been altogether due to nepotism, as he was held in high personal regard by the King; but he was far from generally popular and entirely lacked both the wit and energy of the brilliant Billy. He was of heavier build, lethargic by nature, and affected with the same nervous frigidity in the presence of strangers.

As Lord Chatham expressed no interest whatever in his visitor, the interview was limited to a formal exchange of compliments and the handing over of a letter; so within a minute Roger was out of the First Lord's room, and prepared to agree with the general opinion that he was cold, ponderous and haughty.

Roger had already noted that the letter was addressed to "Captain G. B. Harcourt, H.M.S. Amazon, Lying in Portsmouth Roads"; so he walked over to Charing Cross and booked a seat in the night coach for Portsmouth. He then returned to Amesbury House, wrote to his mother, finished his packing and spent his last few hours in London in the company of the amiable Droopy Ned. By eight o'clock the following morning he was on Portsmouth Hard.

A bumboat took him off to H.M.S. Amazon', and when introducing himself to her Captain he mentioned that it was in her that his father had returned to England on being recalled from the West Indian Squadron in the summer of '83. As that was nearly seven years ago Roger was surprised to hear that Captain Harcourt had had the Amazon then, and well remembered carrying his father home with despatches.

The Captain remarked that as he was a long way down the list, far from expecting promotion to the command of a ship-of-the-line, "he was very lucky to have retained a ship at all in times of peace, as after the late war scores of fighting vessels had been scrapped. When serving in the West Indies he had known a dozen promising junior Captains who had since been high and dry for years. For instance, one youngster of extraordinary dash and brilliance named Nelson; but he had been on the beach for a long time past, and it was now doubtful if he would ever get another ship unless Britain again went to war.

Roger naturally said nothing of the business that was carrying him to Lisbon; but he wondered if it would result in Captain Nelson, and those other frustrated young sea-dogs, being recalled from their quiet farms to once more pace a quarter-deck and order their ships to close upon the enemy. He sincerely hoped not; for if shaking a-fist in the face of the Spaniards could prevent it, the fault would not lie with him if Britain had to draw the sword again.

H.M.S. Amazon was that month the duty frigate which was always kept in readiness for special service, so within an hour of Roger coming aboard she put to sea. Off Ushant they struck bad weather, but in spite of that, owing to good handling the ship put in to Lisbon on the afternoon of Sunday; March 28th.

On landing Roger went straight to the Embassy, where Mr. Robert Walpole, who had been British Minister to Portugal for nearly eighteen years, gave him an excellent dinner, put him up for the night and made arrangements for him to proceed on his journey to Madrid the following morning.

Only then did Roger's troubles begin. The Portuguese roads proved abominable and those in Spain, if possible, worse. Mr. Walpole had provided him with a Portuguese courier who spoke enough French to act as interpreter, but neither bribes nor threats delivered through him seemed to hurry the personnel that accompanied Roger's coach. It was drawn by eight mules, while an additional team of six ambled along behind, as a reserve which could be hooked on in front of the others to help pull the coach up hills, or out of boggy patches, when it got stuck—which seemed to happen with maddening regularity every three-quarters of an hour. The muleteers proved more mulish than the mules; and the six armed guards, which Mr. Walpole had insisted on his hiring to protect him from bandits, apparently hoped that the journey would last a month, as they refused to lift a finger to help even when the coach had to be dragged across the worst of the stony water­courses that severed the road at the bottom of every valley.

The inns in France that Roger had regarded as such miserable places were, he now found, mansions by comparison with those in the Peninsula. Most of them consisted only of a single bare room, with a lean-to behind it in which the innkeeper and his family huddled in appalling squalor. Few of them could even boast a chimney stack, so that the smoke that failed to find its way out through a hole in the roof filled the soot-blackened common room where occasional travellers both ate and slept. Every one of them was so alive with bugs that he was soon red from head to foot with bites, and in an endeavour to escape further torment took to sleeping in his coach. Such food as he could get was brought to him half raw, half cold and smothered in garlic; so that he was near sick every time he forced himself to swallow a mouthful. And the journey seemed never-ending.