Chapter 12 Scaramouche The Kingmaker by Rafael Sabatini
THE VULNERABLE POINT
On the steps of the Bear Inn next morning the Baron de Batz came face to face with Monsieur Moreau. He halted in surprise. "Ah!" said he. "It is our friend the Paladin."
"Ah!" said André-Louis. "It is our Gascon gentleman who is in love with peril."
The Baron laughed on that, and proffered his hand.
"Faith! Not always. I have been through the worst peril that can beset a man: the peril of losing his temper. Does it ever happen to you?"
"Never. I have no illusions."
"You do not believe in fairies, or even in the gratitude of princes?"
"It is possible to believe in fairies," was the gloomy answer. André-Louis was plunged in gloom. It appeared that his journey from Dresden had been in vain. The Regent's opposition to Monsieur de Kercadiou's departure had put an end to indecision. The Regent's assurance, that their return to France was imminent, encouraged Monsieur de Kercadiou to insist that the marriage must wait until they should be back at Gavrillac. Against this, André-Louis had argued in vain. His godfather accounted himself pledged and would not listen.
Yet because Aline was now on the side of André-Louis, her uncle consented to compromise.
"If," he had said, "within a year the path of our return does not lie clearly open, I will submit to whatever you may decide." To hearten them he added, "You will see that you will not have to wait the half of that time."
But André-Louis was not heartened. "Do not deceive yourself, monsieur. In a year from now the only difference will be that we shall be a year older, and sadder by the further extinction of hope."
Because of this, his present meeting with de Batz was to prove critical and bear unexpected fruit.
They moved into the common-room together and sat down to a flagon of the famous Rupertsberger, with a dried sausage to prepare the palate for its benign flavour. Over this the Baron told again, and with greater wealth of detail, the story of his Parisian adventure.
"It was a miracle that you escaped," was André-Louis' final comment, after he had expressed his wonder at so much cool heroism.
De Batz shrugged. "Faith, no miracle at all. All that a man needs is common sense, common prudence and a little courage. You others here abroad judge by the reports that reach you of violence and outrage; and since you hear nothing else you conceive that violence and outrage have become the sole occupation of the Parisians. Thus the man who reads history imagines that the past was nothing but a succession of battles, since the infinitely greater periods of peace and order call for no particular comment. You hear of an aristocrat hunted through the streets, and hanged on a lantern at the end of the chase, or of a dozen others carted to the Place de la Revolution and guillotined, and you conceive that every aristocrat who shows himself in public is either lanterned or beheaded. I have actually heard it so asserted. But it is nonsense. There must be in Paris to-day some forty or fifty thousand royalists of one kind and another, moving freely: a fifth of the total population. Another fifth of it, if not more, is of no particular political colour but ready to submit to whatever government is up.
"Naturally these people do not commit extravagances to attract resentful attention. They do not wave their hats and shout 'Live the King!' at every street corner. They go quietly about their business; for the ordinary business of life goes on, and ordinary, quiet citizens suffer little interference. It is true that there is unrest and general uneasiness, punctuated by violent explosions of popular temper accompanied by violence and bloodshed. But side by side with it the normal life of a great city flows along. Men buy and sell, amuse themselves, marry, get children, and die in their beds, all in the normal manner. If many churches are closed and only constitutional priests are suffered to minister, yet all the theatres flourish and no one concerns himself with the politics of the actors.
"If things were otherwise, if they even approached the conception of them that is held abroad, the revolution would soon come to an end, for it would consume itself. A few days of such utter chaos as is generally pictured, and the means of sustaining life would no longer circulate; the inhabitants of Paris would perish of starvation."
André-Louis nodded. "You make it clear. There must be a great deal of misconception."
"And a great deal that is deliberately manufactured—counter-revolutionary rumours to stir up public feeling abroad. The factory is over there in that wooden chalet, where Monsieur keeps his court and his chancellery. It is diligently circulated by the Regent's agents, who are scattered over Europe, and marshalled by the ingenious Monsieur d'Entragues, the muck-rake in chief."
André-Louis stared at him. "You express yourself like a republican."
"Do not be deceived by it. Look to my actions. It is merely that I permit myself the luxury of despising Monsieur le Comte d'Entragues and his methods. I do not like the man, and he does me the honour not to like me. A mean, jealous creature, with inordinate ambitions. He aims at being the first man in the State when the monarchy is restored, and he is fearful and resentful of any man who might gain influence with the Regent. The man whom he most hates and fears is d'Avaray, and unless the favourite looks well to himself, d'Entragues will ruin him yet with Monsieur. For he burrows craftily underground, leaving little trace upon the surface. He is subtle and insinuating as a serpent."
"To come back," said André-Louis, who cared nothing about Monsieur d'Entragues. "It still remains a miracle that you should have gone about such a task as yours in Paris and maintained the air of pursuing what you call the ordinary business of life."
"I was prudent; of course. I did not often trip.<"/p>
"Not often! But to have tripped once should have broken your neck."
De Batz smiled. "I carried a life-preserver. Monsieur furnished me before I set out with a thousand louis towards the expenses of my campaign. I was able to add to it four times as much, and I could have added as much more as was necessary. You see that I was well supplied with money."
"But how could money have availed you in such extremities?"
"I know of no extremity in which money will not avail a man. For a weapon of defence as of offence, steel cannot begin to compare with gold. With gold I choked the mouths of those who would have denounced me. With gold I annihilated the sense of duty of those who should have hindered me." He laughed into André-Louis' round eyes. "Aura sacra fames! The greed of it is common to mankind; but never have I found that greed so fierce as among Messieurs the sansculottes. That greed, I believe, is at the root of their revolutionary fervour. I surprise you it seems."
"A little, I confess."
"Ah!" The Baron held his glass to the light, and considered the faint opalescence which the wintry sunshine brought into the golden liquid. "Have you ever considered equality, its mainsprings and true significance?"
"Never. Because it is chimerical. It does not exist. Men are not born equally equipped. They are born noble or ignoble, sane or foolish, strong or weak, according to the blend of natures, fortuitous to them, which calls them into existence."
The Baron drank, and set down his glass. He dabbed his lips with a fine handkerchief.
"That is merely metaphysical, and I am being practical. It is possible to postulate a condition of equality. It has, in fact, been postulated by the apostles of that other singular delusion, liberty. The idea of equality is a by-product of the sentiment of envy. Since it must always prove beyond human power to raise the inferior mass to a superior stratum, apostles of equality must ever be inferiors seeking to reduce their betters to their own level. It follows that a nation that once admits this doctrine of equality will be dragged by it to the level, moral, intellectual and political, of its most worthless class. This within practical limitations. Because, after all, such qualities as nobility, intelligence, learning, virtue and strength cannot be stripped from those who possess them, to be cast into a commonwealth and shared by all. The only things of which men can be deprived in that way and to that end are their material possessions.
"Your revolutionaries, these dishonest rogues who delude the ignorant masses with the cant of liberty, equality and fraternity and with promises of a millennium which they know can never be achieved, are well aware of this. They know that there is no power that can lift from the gutter those who have inherited it. The only attainable equality is one which will reduce the remainder of the nation to that gutter, so as to make things still more uncomfortable for the deluded unfortunates who writhe there. But meanwhile, plying their cant, deceiving the masses with their false promises, these men prosper in themselves. That is all their aim: the ease they envied in those they have pulled down, the wealth they coveted which procures this ease. These things they ensure for themselves in unstinted measure."
"But is that possible in the France of to-day? Are the men who made the revolution really deriving material profit from it?"
"What is there in this to astonish you? Is not the Assembly recruited from the gutter, from famished failures in the law, like Desmoulins and Danton, from starveling journalists like Marat and Hébert, and unfrocked capuchins like Chabot. Shall these men who are now in the saddle suddenly repress the envy which inspired them or stifle the covetousness which went hand in hand with that envy? They are all dishonest and corrupt, and if this applies to those in command, shall it apply less to the underlings?" He laughed. "I doubt if there is a man in the whole National Convention whom I could not buy."
André-Louis was very thoughtful. "I understand a great deal that hitherto had not occurred to me," he said slowly. "When this movement first began, when I played my part in it, it was a movement of idealists who sought to correct abuses, to bring to men an equality of opportunity and an equality before the law which in the past had been denied them."
"Nearly all those visionaries have been swept away by the tide from the gutter to which they opened the floodgates. A handful remains perhaps. The men of the Gironde, lawyers all, and men of ability who make a great parade of republican virtue. But even they have shown themselves dishonest. They voted for the death of the King, against their principles, and merely so as to ensure that they might cling to power. Oh, believe me, I wrought no miracle in preserving myself in Paris, and it will require no miracle to safeguard me there again."
"You are returning?"
"Of course. Shall I grow rusty in exile while there's work to be done at home? I may have failed to save the King, thanks to that blundering, jealous fool d'Entragues, who kept me wasting time in Coblentz when I should have been in Paris; but I shall hope to succeed better with the Queen."
"You mean to attempt her rescue?"
"I do not think it offers difficulties that gold and steel will not overcome."
The wine was finished. André-Louis stood up. His dark eyes considered the resolute, carelessly smiling countenance of the Baron.
"Monsieur de Batz," he said, "minimize it as you will, I think you are the bravest man I have ever known."
"You honour me, Monsieur Moreau. Have you the ear of the Regent?"
"I! Indeed, no."
"A pity! You might persuade him of the virtue you discern in me. He has no great opinion of me at present. But I shall hope to improve it. I owe it to myself."
They talked no more that day, but they met again as if by mutual attraction on the morrow. And then it was André-Louis who talked, and the Baron who listened.
"I have been pondering what you told me yesterday, Monsieur de Batz. If you accurately represent the situation, this revolutionary stronghold is vulnerable, it seems to me, at several points. My interest springs from my own aims. That is common enough if not commonly admitted. I am frank, Monsieur le Baron. All my hopes in life have become bound up with the restoration of the monarchy, and I see no ground to expect that the restoration of the Bourbons will ever be brought about as a result of European intervention. If the monarchy is to be restored in France, the restoration must come as a result of a movement from the inside. Almost I perceive—or seem to perceive—from what you told me yesterday how this movement might be given an impetus."
"How?" The Baron was alert.
André-Louis did not immediately answer. He sat in silence, considering, as if passing his ideas in review before giving them utterance. Then he looked round and up at the railed galleries above the common-room. They were quite alone. It was still too early in the day for the inhabitants of Hamm to come there to their beer and cards and dice and backgammon.
He leaned across the narrow yellow table, directly facing the Baron, and there was a glitter in his dark eyes, a faint stir of blood on his prominent cheek-bones.
"You'll say this is a madman's dream."
"I've dreamt a good many of them myself. Take heart."
"Two things that you said yesterday have remained with me to be the seed of thought. One was your exposition of the general dishonesty, the corruptibility of those in power to-day in France. The other was your assertion that if the chaos existed there which abroad it is believed exists, the revolution would burn itself out in a few days."
"Do you doubt either statement?"
"No, Monsieur le Baron. I perceive that power in France has been tossed like a ball from hand to hand until it is now grasped by the lowest men in the nation who can pretend to any governing ability. It can be tossed no farther; that is to say no farther down."
"There are still the Girondins," said de Batz slowly. "They hardly fit your description."
"But it follows, from what else you said, that they will be swept away by the natural processes of the revolution."
"Yes. That seems inevitable."
"The men of the National Convention maintain themselves by the confidence of the populace. The populace trusts them implicitly, believes in their stark honesty. Other governments have been pulled down because the men who formed them were exposed for corrupt self-seekers, plundering the nation to their own personal profit. This corruption the populace believes to be responsible for the squalor of its own lot. Now all is changed. The people believe that those rogues have been cast out, driven from France, guillotined, destroyed; they believe that their places have been filled by these honest, incorruptible men who would open their veins to give drink to the thirsty people rather than misappropriate a part of the national treasury."
"A nice phrase," said the Baron. "Pitched in the right key for the mob."
André-Louis let the interruption pass. "If it could be revealed to the people that these last hopes of theirs are more corrupt than any that have gone before; if the people could be persuaded that by cant, hypocrisy and lies these revolutionaries have imposed themselves upon the nation merely so that they may fatten upon it, what would happen?"
"If that could be proved, it would of course destroy them. But how to prove it?"
"All things that are true are susceptible of proof."
"As a general rule, no doubt. But these fellows are too secure to be assailed in that fashion."
Again André-Louis was sententious. "No man is secure who is dishonest in a position held upon faith in his honesty. Monsieur, as you have said, sits there in his wooden chalet composing reports for consumption in the courts of Europe. Would not his ends be better served by reports for consumption by the populace of France? Is it so difficult to arouse suspicion of men in power even when they are believed to be honest?"
The Baron was stirred. "Name of a name of a name! But now you utter a truth, mon petit. The reputation of a man in power is as delicate as a woman's."
"You see. Let scandal loose against these knaves. Support it by evidence of their dishonesties. Then one of two things must follow: either a reaction in favour of the return of the old governing classes or else chaos, utter anarchy and the complete collapse of all the machinery of State, with the inevitable result of famine and exhaustion. Thus the revolution burns itself out."
"My God!" said de Batz in a voice of awe. He took his head in his hands, and sat brooding there, his eyes veiled. At last he flashed them upon the eager face of the man opposite. "A madman's dream, as you say and yet a dream that might be possible of fulfilment. The conception of a Daemon."
"I make you a gift of it."
But the Baron shook his head. "It would need the mind that conceived it to oversee its execution, to elaborate its details. The task is one for you, Monsieur Moreau."
"Say rather for Scaramouche. It asks his peculiar gifts."
"Regard that as you please. Consider the results to yourself if achievement were to crown the effort, as well it may if boldly made. Yours will be the position of a kingmaker."
"Scaramouche the Kingmaker!"
De Batz disregarded the sneer. "And yours the great rewards that await a kingmaker."
"You believe, then, in the gratitude of princes after all."
"I believe in a kingmaker's ability to enforce payment of his wages."
André-Louts fell into a daydream. It would be a sweet satisfaction to have these men who had treated him so cavalierly owe their restoration to his genius and lie in his debt for it; sweet too, to prevail by his own effort, and rise by it to the eminence which he accounted his natural place in a world of numskulls, an eminence which he need have no hesitation in inviting Aline to share.
The Baron aroused him to realities. 'Well?'' His voice rasped with an eagerness that amounted to anxiety.
André-Louis smiled at him across the table "I will take the risk of it, I think."