Chapter 1 Scaramouche The Kingmaker by Rafael Sabatini
THE TRAVELLERS
It was suspected of him by many that he had no heart.
Repeatedly he allows this suspicion to be perceived in the course of those confessions of his upon which I drew so freely for the story of the first part of his odd life. In the beginning of that story we see him turning his back, at the dictates of affection, upon an assured career in the service of Privilege. At the end of it we see him forsaking the cause of the people in which he had prospered and, again at the dictates of affection, abandoning the great position won.
Of the man who twice within the first twenty-eight years of his life, deliberately, in the service of others, destroys his chances of success, it is foolish to say that he has no heart. But it was the whim of André-Louis Moreau to foster this illusion. His imagination had early been touched by the teaching of Epictetus, and deliberately he sought to assume the characteristics of a Stoic: one who would never permit his reason to be clouded by sentiment, or his head to be governed by his heart.
He was, of course, by temperament an actor. It was as Scaramouche, and as author, player and organizer of the Binet Troupe that he had found his true vocation. Persisting in it his genius might have won him a renown greater than the combined renowns of Beaumarchais and Talma. Desisting from it, however, he had carried his histrionic temperament into such walks of life as he thereafter trod, taking the world for his stage.
Such temperaments are common enough, and commonly they are merely tiresome.
André-Louis Moreau, however, succeeds in winning our interest by the unexpectedness of what he somewhere frankly and fantastically calls his exteriorizations. His gift of laughter is responsible for this. The comic muse is ever at his elbow, though not always obvious. She remained with him to the end, although in this, the second part of his history, his indulgence of the old humour is fraught with a certain bitterness in a measure as the conviction is borne in upon him that in the madness of the world there is more evil than was perceived even by those philosophers who have sought to teach it sanity.
His flight from Paris at a moment when, as a man of State, a great career was opening before him, was a sacrifice dictated by the desire to procure the safety of those he loved: Aline de Kercadiou, whom he hoped to marry; Monsieur de Kercadiou, his godfather; and Madame de Plougastel, whose natural son it had been so lately discovered to him that he was. That flight was effected without adventure. Every barrier was removed by the passport carried by the Representative André-Louis Moreau, which announced that he travelled on the business of the National Assembly, commanded all to lend him such assistance as he might require, and warned all that they hindered him at their peril.
The berline conveying them travelled by way of Rheims but continuing eastward it began to find the roads increasingly encumbered by troops, gun-carriages, service-wagons and commissariat trains and all the unending impedimenta of an army on the march.
So as to make progress, they were constrained to turn north, towards Charleville, and thence east again, crossing the lines of the National Army, still commanded by Luckner and La Fayette, which awaited the enemy who for over a month now had been massing on the banks of the Rhine.
It was this definite movement of invasion which had driven the populace of France to frenzy. The storming of the Tuileries by the mob, and the horrors of the 10th of August gave the answer of the populace to the pompous minatory ill-judged manifesto bearing the signature of the Duke of Brunswick, but whose real authors were Count Fersen and the rash Queen. By its intemperate menaces this manifesto contributed more perhaps than any other cause to the ruin of the King whom it was framed to save, for the Duke of Brunswick's threats to the people of France made the King appear in the guise of a public danger.
This, however, was not the point of view of Monsieur de Kercadiou, Lord of Gavrillac, travelling under the revolutionary aegis of his godson to safety beyond the Rhine. In the uncompromising expressions of the Duke, Quentin de Kercadiou heard the voice of the man who is master of the situation, who promises no more than it is within his power to perform. What resistance could those raw, ill-clad, ill-nourished, ill-equipped, ill-trained, ill-armed troops through whose straggling lines they had passed, offer to the magnificent army of seventy thousand Prussians and fifty thousand Austrians, fortified by twenty-five thousand French émigrés, including the very flower of French chivalry?
The Bréton nobleman's squat figure reclined at greater ease on the cushions of the travelling carriage after his glimpse of the ragged ill-conditioned forces of the Nation. Peace entered his soul, and cast out anxiety. Before the end of the month the allies would be in Paris. The revolutionary carnival was all but at an end. There would follow for those gentlemen of the gutter a period of Lent and penitence. He expressed himself freely in these terms, his glance upon the Citizen-Representative Moreau, as if challenging contradiction.
"If ordnance were all," said André-Louis, "I should agree with you. But battles are won by wits as well as guns and the wits of the man who uttered the Duke's manifesto do not command my respect."
"Ah! And La Fayette, then? Is that a man of genius?" The Lord of Gavrillac sneered.
"We do not know. He has never commanded an army in the field. It may be that he will prove no better than the Duke of Brunswick."
They came to Diekirch, and found themselves in a swarm of Russians, the advance-guard of the Prince of Hohenlohe's division which was to move upon Thionville and Metz, soldiers, these well-equipped, masterful, precisely disciplined, different indeed from those poor straggling ragamuffins who were to dispute their passage.
André-Louis had removed the tricolour sash from his olive-green riding-coat and the tricolour cockade from his conical black hat. His papers, a passport to service in France, but here a passport to the gallows, were bestowed in an inner pocket of his tightly-buttoned waistcoat, and now it was Monsieur de Kercadiou who took the initiative, announcing his name and quality to the allied officers, so as to obtain permission to pass on. It was readily yielded. Challenges were little more than an empty formality. Émigrés were still arriving, although no longer in their former numbers, and, anyway, the allies had nothing to apprehend from anyone passing behind their lines.
The weather had broken, and by sodden roads which almost hourly grew heavier, the horses fetlocks deep in mud, they came by Wittlieb, where they lay a night at a fair inn, and then with clearer skies overhead and a morass underfoot they trailed up the fertile valley of the Moselle by miles of dripping vineyards, whose yield that year gave little promise.
And so, at long length, a full week after setting out, the berline rolled past the Ehrenbreitstein with its gloomy fortress, and rumbled over the bridge of boats into the city of Coblentz.
And now it was Madame de Plougastel's name that proved their real passport for hers was a name well-known in Coblentz. Her husband, Monsieur de Plougastel, was a prominent member of the excessive household by means of which the Princes maintained in exile an ultra-royal state, rendered possible by a loan from Amsterdam bankers and the bounty of the Elector of Treves.
The Lord of Gavrillac pursuing habits which had become instinct alighted his party at the town's best inn, the Three Crowns. True, the National Convention, which was to confiscate the estates of emigrated noblemen, had not yet come into being, but meanwhile those estates and their revenues were inaccessible, and the Lord of Gavrillac's possessions amounted to some twenty louis which chance had left him at the moment of departure. To this might be added the clothes in which he stood and some trinkets upon the person of Aline. The berline itself belonged to Madame de Plougastel, as did the trunks in the boot. Madame practising foresight had brought away a casket containing all her jewels, which at need should realize a handsome sum. André-Louis had left with thirty louis in his purse. But he had borne all the expenses of the journey and these had already consumed a third of that modest sum.
Money, however, had never troubled the easy-going existence of the Lord of Gavrillac. It had never been necessary for him to do more than command whatever he required. So he commanded now the best that the inn could provide in accommodation, food and wine.
Had they arrived in Coblentz a month ago, they must have conceived themselves still in France, for so crowded had the place been with émigrés that hardly any language but French was to be heard in the streets, whilst the suburb of Thal, across the river, had been an armed camp of Frenchmen. Now that the army had at last departed on its errand of extinguishing the revolution and restoring to the monarchy all its violated absolutism, the French population of Coblentz, as of other Rhineland towns, had been reduced by some thousands. Many, however, still remained with the Princes. They were temporarily back at Schönbornlust, the handsome, magnificent Electoral summer residence which Clemens Wenceslaus had placed at the disposal of his royal nephews: the two brothers of the King, the Comte de Provence and the Comte d'Artois, and the King's uncle, the Prince de Conde.
In return the Elector's generosity had been abused and his patience sorely tried.
Each of the three Princes had come accompanied by his mistress, and one by his wife as well, and they had brought into Saxony, together with the elegancies, all the ribaldries, the gallantries and the intriguings of Versailles.
Condé, the only one of any military worth—and his military worth and reputation were considerable—had established himself at Worms and had organized there into an army the twenty-five thousand Frenchmen who had gone to range themselves under his banner for the crusade on behalf of Throne and Altar.
Monsieur and his brother the Comte d'Artois, however, were not only the true representatives of royalty to these exiles, but the enemies of the constitution which the King had accepted, and the champions of all the ancient privileges the abolition of which had been the whole aim of the original revolutionists. It was about these Princes at Coblentz that a Court had assembled itself, maintained at enormous cost at Schönbornlust for his royal nephews by their long-suffering host. Their followers with their wives and families disposed themselves in such lodgings as the town offered and their means afforded. At first money had been comparatively plentiful amongst them, and they had spent it with the prodigality of folk who had never learnt to take thought for the morrow. In that time of waiting they had beguiled their leisure in the carefree occupations that were habitual to them. They had turned the Bonn Road into an image of the Cours la Reine. They rode and walked, gossiped, danced, gambled, made love, intrigued, and even fought duels in despite of the Electoral edicts. Nor was that all the scandal they gave. The license they permitted themselves was so considerable that the kindly old Elector had been driven to complain that the morals of his own people were being corrupted by the unseemly conduct, the insolent bearing, the debauched habits and the religious indifference of the French nobility. He even ventured to suggest to the Princes that, example being so much more powerful than precept, they should set their own houses in order.
With eyebrows raised at an outlook so narrow and provincial, his nephews pointed out to him in turn that the life of a prince is never so orderly as when he has acquired a maîtresse-en-titre. And the gentle, indulgent old archbishop could not find it in his heart to distress his royal nephews by further insistence.
Monsieur de Kercadiou and his party reached Coblentz at noon on the 18th of August. Having dined and made such toilet as was possible to men without change of garments, they re-entered the still bespattered berline, and set out for the Château, a mile away.
The fact that they came straight from Paris, whence there had been no news for the past ten days, ensured them instant audience. By a broad staircase kept by glittering gold-laced officers and a spacious gallery above, where courtiers sauntered, elegant of manner, vivacious of speech, and ready of laughter as in the Oeil de Boeuf at Versailles of old, the newcomers were brought to an ante-chamber by a gentleman usher, who went forward to announce them.
Even now that the majority of men had departed with the army, there still remained here a sufficient throng, made up of the outrageous retinue which these Princes insisted upon maintaining. Prudence in expenditure, the husbanding of their borrowed resources, was not for them.
After all, they still believed that the insubordination of the French masses was but a fire of straw which even now the Duke of Brunswick was marching to extinguish, a fire which could never have been kindled but for the supineness, the incompetence, the jacobinism of the King, to whom in their hearts these émigrés were no longer loyal. Their fealty was to their own order, which within a few weeks now would be restored. The Duke's manifesto told the canaille what to expect. It should be to them as the writing on the wall to the Babylonians.
Our travellers made for a while a little group apart: André-Louis, slight and straight in his olive-green riding-coat with silver buttons, the sword through the pocket, his buckskins and knee-boots, his black hair gathered into a queue that was innocent of any roll; Monsieur de Kercadiou, in black and silver, rather crumpled, squat of figure, and middle-aged with the slightly furtive manner of a man who had never accustomed himself to numerous assemblies; Madame de Plougastel, tall and calm, dressed with a care that set off her fading beauty, her gentle wistful eyes more observant of her natural son André-Louis than of her surroundings; and Aline de Kercadiou, slight, virginal and lovely in a rose brocade, her golden hair dressed high, her blue eyes half-shyly taking stock of her surroundings.
They attracted no attention until a gentleman issuing from the presence chamber, the salon d'honneur, made his way briskly towards them. This gentleman, no longer young, of middle height, inclining to portliness, moved even in his present haste with an air of consequence which left no doubt of the opinion which he held himself. He was resplendent in yellow brocade and glittered at several points.
André-Louis had an intuition of his identity before he reached them, before he was bending formally over the hand of Madame de Plougastel, and announcing in an utterly emotionless voice his satisfaction at beholding her at last in safety.
"It was by no wish of mine, madame, as I think you are aware, that you remained so long in Paris. It would have been better, I think, for both of us had you decided to make the journey sooner. Now it was scarce worth the trouble. For very soon, following in Monsieur's train, I should have come to you. However, I give you welcome. I hope that you are well. I trust that you will have traveled comfortably."
Thus, in stilted, pompous phrases, did the Count of Plougastel receive his Countess. Without pausing for any reply from her, he swung half-aside. "Ah, my dear Gavrillac! Ever the attentive cousin, the faithful cavalier, is it not?"
André-Louis wondered was he sneering, watched him narrowly as he pressed Kercadiou's hand, and found himself there and then moved to a profound dislike for this consequential gentleman with the big head on its short thick neck, the big nose that was Bourbon in shape and the chin too big for strength but not for obstinacy when considered with the stupid mouth.
"And this is your adorable niece," the gentleman was continuing. He had a curiously purring voice and an affected enunciation. "You have grown in beauty and in stature, Mademoiselle Aline, since last we met." He looked at André-Louis, and checked, frowning, as if in question.
"This is my godson," said the Lord of Gavrillac shortly, withholding a name that had become a thought too famous.
"Your godson?" The black eyebrows were raised on that shallow brow. "Ah!"
Then others, having realized Madame de Plougastel's identity, came crowding, chattering about them, with rustle of silken skirts and tapping of red-heeled shoes, until the Count, remembering the august personage awaiting the travellers, rescued them from that frivolous throng, and ushered them into the presence.