Chapter 4 Venetian Masque by Rafael Sabatini
THE AMBASSADOR OF FRANCE
Marc-Antoine first beheld that loveliest and strangest of the cities of the world in all the golden glory of a May morning. He came by boat from Mestre, where he had lain the night, and from afar as they approached the Canareggio it seemed to him that there floated before his gaze not indeed a city, but some vast fantastic jewel, compounded of marble and gold, of coral, porphyry and ivory, set in a vaster jewel of sapphire lagoon and sky. His black gondola swung from the Canareggio into the Grand Canal and glided between splendours of palaces blending the arts of East and West in a voluptuous beauty startling to his Northern eyes. He leaned forward under the canopy to feast his wonder on the Romanesque marvel of the Ca' d' Oro and the great arch of the Rialto Bridge with its burden of shops all glitter and movement of colour and of life.
The gondola gliding like a black swan through the water-traffic, threaded its way across the canal, past the Erberia, where all was noise and bustle of men and women about the piled stalls of fruit and flowers and about an unloading barge. It slipped into the quieter, narrow waters of the Rio delle Beccherie, to bring up at last at the water-lapped steps of the Osteria delle Spade, the Inn of the Swords, as the crossed blades of its sign announced.
Marc-Antoine landed and consigned his person and luggage into the care of the rubicund little landlord Battista, who welcomed him volubly in the Venetian dialect, which to Marc-Antoine sounded like a mixture of bad French and bad Italian.
He was lodged on the piano nobile in an ample salon, sparsely furnished and cool with a stone floor and clumsily frescoed ceiling where cupids of unparallelled obesity rioted in an incredibly gaudy vegetable kingdom. A bedroom with a vast canopied bed, and a powder-cupboard adjoining, completed his lodging.
He installed himself, unpacked, and sent for a hairdresser.
He had travelled straight from Turin, and he had accomplished the journey in two days. In this he had been extremely fortunate, for the movements of the battered Austrian troops about the country east of the Mincio might easily have hindered and delayed him. As it was he had missed them, although the ugly signs of their passage were not wanting. He had reached Mestre unchallenged, and now in the ease and peace and dignity of Venice it seemed difficult to believe that the hideous stress of war could be anywhere within a thousand miles of them. Gay laughter-laden voices floated up to his windows from the canal below, and more than once whilst his hair was being dressed there came, to the accompaniment of the swish of oars and the gurgle of water under an iron-headed prow, snatches of song as if to stress how carefree were the people of the Lagoons.
The assumption, upon which he had decided, of the rôle of the dead Lebel, imposed upon him the necessity of journeying at once to Milan where Bonaparte had made his triumphal entry and had just established his headquarters. But he had shirked a course that was fraught with so much risk, and had contented himself with writing to the French commander. Thus he created with Barras the impression of having represented the wishes of the Directory to Bonaparte, and he could leave Barras to suppose that this had been done orally.
It would be some three hours after his arrival, when having made a careful toilet and with his glossy black hair carefully dressed and tied, but free from powder, he went below, and called for a gondola to carry him to the French Legation.
Reclining in the shade of the felza he was borne westwards up the Grand Canal, where with the approach of noon the water-traffic was becoming brisk, and then, by a network of lesser channels that lay in shadow between tall dark palaces, to the Fondamenta of the Madonna dell' Orto in the north. Alighting on the quay, he came by a narrow alley into the Corte del Cavallo, a little square scarcely larger than a courtyard. On the corner stood the residence of the ambassador of France, the Palazzo della Vecchia, a roomy but comparatively modest house for a city of such splendours.
The Citizen-Ambassador Lallemant was at work in the spacious room on the first floor which he made his office. He was interrupted by Jacob, the middle-aged, rustily clad, alert Semitic secretary, who could never forget that during the interregnum three years ago he had been for a season chargè d'affaires.
Jacob brought the ambassador a folded note, which he said had been given to him by the door-keeper Philippe.
Lallemant looked up from his papers. He was a man in middle life of a comfortable habit of body and a full, kindly, rather pallid face that like a pear was wider at the base than at the summit. The lethargy of his double chin was belied by the keen shrewdness of full dark eyes, set prominently on his face.
He unfolded the note and read: 'Camille Lebel, representative on mission, requests audience.'
He frowned in silence for a moment. Then he shrugged. 'Bring this man in.'
In the representative when he was introduced Lallemant beheld a man above the middle height, prepossessing of countenance, slimly built but with a good width of shoulder, elegantly dressed in a long black coat above spotless buckskins and boots with reversed tops. He wore a very full white neckcloth, carried a bicorne hat tucked under his arm, and bore himself with an air of consequence and authority.
The ambassador scrutinized him searchingly as he rose to greet him.
'You are welcome, Citizen Lebel. We have been looking for your arrival since the last letters from the Citizen-Director Barras.'
The newcomer frowned. 'We?' he echoed. 'Do you say "we?" May one know whom you include in that pronoun?'
Lallemant was taken aback by the hard tone and the cold, hard glance of those light eyes in which he read displeasure and reproof. Resentment was to succeed his momentary confusion. But it was in this confusion that he answered.
'The pronoun? Oh! I but use it officially. A form of speech. So far no one shares with me the secret either that you were expected or that you have arrived.'
'You had better see that no one does,' was the dry injunction. 'I do not propose to be found one morning floating in one of these picturesque canals with a stiletto in my back.'
'I am sure you have no cause to be afraid of that.'
'I am not afraid of anything, citizen-ambassador. It is simply that the thing is not among my intentions.' He looked round for a chair, found one, thrust it nearer to the ambassador's writing-table, and sat down. 'Don't let me keep you standing,' he said, tone and manner plainly conveying that he accounted himself the master here. 'If you will look at this you will learn our exact relationship.'
He placed Barras' letter on the table before the ambassador.
That letter made abundantly clear the formidable authority with which Lebel was vested by the Directory. But it did not suffice to conquer the annoyance aroused in Lallemant by his visitor's hectoring manner.
'To be frank, citizen, I do not quite perceive what you are come to do that I could not have done. If you...'
He was interrupted by the abrupt opening of the door. A florid young man bounded impetuously into the room, speaking as he came.
'Citizen-ambassador, I am wondering whether you would like me to...' He broke off, perceiving the stranger, and presented every appearance of confusion. 'Oh, but my apologies! I thought you were alone. I...If...Perhaps... Oh, I will return later.'
Nevertheless, he did not depart. He remained swaying there, undecided, and all the while his eyes were very busy upon the visitor.
'Since you are here, what is it that you want, Domenico?'
'I should never have intruded if I had dreamed...'
'Yes, yes. You've said so. What do you want?'
'I was wondering whether you would allow me to take Jean with me as far as San Zuane. I am going to the...'
Lallemant cut him short. 'Of course you may take him. There was no need to break in on me for that.'
'Ah, but then you see, Madame Lallemant herself is not at home, and...'
'Oh, yes, yes. I've said that you may take him. To the devil with your explanations. You see that I am engaged. Be off.'
Mumbling excuses the young man backed away; and all the time his eyes continued to play over the visitor, from his fine boots to his sedulously dressed head.
When at last the door had closed upon him, Lallemant's lips were compressed into a little scornful smile. He glanced over his shoulder at an open doorway and a small room beyond.
'Before that interruption I was about to trouble you to accompany me in there. You were a little hasty in accommodating yourself, my friend.' He moved from the table, and waved a hand in the direction of that doorway, a tinge of sarcasm in his manner. 'If you please.'
Mystified, the visitor complied.
Lallemant left the communicating door open, so that from the inner room he commanded a view of the larger outer chamber. He advanced a chair, and explained himself.
'In here we shall be safe from eavesdroppers. It was not my intention that anything of importance should be said out there. That pleasant young man, so innocently concerned to take my son for a walk, is a spy placed in my house by the Council of Ten. By tonight the circumstance of your visit and a description of you will be in the hands of the inquisitors of state.'
'And you tolerate his presence? You leave him free of your house?'
'He has his uses. He runs messages for me. He helps to entertain my son. He makes himself pleasant to my wife, and frequently acts as an escort for her when she goes abroad. Also, since I am aware of his real trade, I take him into my confidence now and then, and disclose to him as political secrets just those matters which it suits me that the inquisitors of state should believe.'
'I see,' said Marc-Antoine, readjusting his ideas concerning this phlegmatic-looking ambassador. 'I see.'
'I thought you would. Believe me, he learns nothing here that can profit his employers.' Lallemant sat down. 'And now, citizen-representative, I am at your service.'
The false Lebel proceeded to disclose his mission. He began by congratulating himself and all Frenchmen upon the glorious victories which were attending French valour and French arms in Italy; victories which in themselves simplified the task upon which he came. However, the end was not yet reached. Austria disposed of vast resources, and none could doubt but that she would employ them freely and endeavour to re-establish herself in Lombardy. The odds against France were heavy enough already, and it was his business to see that they were rendered no heavier. Venice must at all costs be held strictly to her unarmed neutrality.
'Unless, of course,' Lallemant interrupted him, 'she could be brought into alliance with us against the Empire.'
The cold eyes stared at him. 'That is unthinkable.'
'Not to General Bonaparte.'
'General Bonaparte? What has General Bonaparte to do with it?'
Lallemant's thin smile made its reappearance. 'Only this: he has sent me just such a proposal to place before the College.'
The representative became haughty. 'And since when have such matters concerned the military? I was under the impression that General Bonaparte was in command of the forces in the field. Let me ask you, citizen-ambassador, how you propose to deal with his proposal?'
'Why, to be frank, it seems eminently reconcilable with our interests.'
'I see.' The representative got to his feet. His tone was bitter. 'And so, you, Citizen Lallemant, the accredited representative here of the French Government, are proposing to take your orders from the General in the field! Really, sir, it seems that I arrive no more than in time.'
Lallemant made no attempt to vent his irritation. 'I don't see why I should not act upon orders which I judge to accord with the best interests of France.'
'I say again that I arrive no more than in time. An alliance, sir, sets up obligations, which are not in honour or even in decency afterwards to be evaded. France has very definite views on the subject of Venice. Venice is to be delivered from her oligarchic government. It is our sacred mission to carry the torch of liberty and of reason into her territories. Are we to enter into an alliance with a government which it is our object to destroy? It is our business—the precise business on which I am here—to see that Venice is kept rigidly to her unarmed neutrality until it is time to strike this oligarchy into the dust. Understand that clearly, citizen-ambassador.'
Lallemant looked up at him without affection. Then he shrugged with a plain and careless display of ill-humour.
'Since the Directory has sent you here to meddle, my responsibility is at an end. But will you tell me what I am to say to General Bonaparte?'
'Say to him that you have referred the matter to me. I will deal with him.'
'You will deal with him! Ha! I wonder do you know what manner of man he is.'
'I know what manner of position he holds. If he is in danger of getting above it, I shall know how to repress him.'
'One sees that you are of a sanguine temperament. The man who with the ragged army under his command could win the battles he has won in the last two months, against well-disciplined, well-equipped forces twice as numerous as his own, is not easily repressed.'
The representative was supercilious. 'I have no wish to detract from the merit of which he has given proof as a soldier. But we will preserve, if you please, a sense of proportion where this young man is concerned.'
Lallemant smiled broadly. 'Shall I tell you something about him? Something that I had from Berthier himself. When this little Corsican went to Nice to take up the command which Barras had procured for him, the generals of division of the Army of Italy were enraged that a boy of twenty-seven should be placed over them; a parvenu as they called him; a general off the streets; the man contemptuously known in Paris as the mitrailleur, since the only action known to his credit was to have swept away a mob with grapeshot. It was even said of him—I am merely repeating the words of others—that he was given his command as the price of having made an honest woman of one of Barras' mistresses. Those generals prepared to give him a reception that should make him think twice about remaining with the Army of Italy. Augereau, masterful and violent, was loudest in how he would put the upstart down. Bonaparte arrived. You know what he looks like. A starveling wisp of a fellow, frail and pallid as a consumptive. He walked in amongst them, and whilst buckling on his belt issued his orders, curt and sharply, without a wasted word. Then he walked out again, leaving them speechless, stunned by a force within him which they could not define, but in the presence of which not one of them had retained the courage to make good his boast.
'That is Bonaparte. Since then he has won a dozen battles, and smashed the Austrian might at Lodi. Conceive if he will have become easier to deal with. If you can dominate him, citizen, there should be a great future for you.'
But the representative remained unimpressed. 'It is not I who will dominate him. It is the authority of which I am the mouthpiece. And, anyway, as to these proposals of his, you will understand that the matter is now in my hands, and need concern you no further.'
'Oh, but gladly, citizen-representative. It is a responsibility of which I am very ready to be relieved.'
There was sarcasm in his tone, and it was met by sarcasm in the reply.
'So that you perceive at last a purpose in my presence here in Venice.' He sat down again, crossed his legs, and, descending a little from his loftiness of manner, came to matters which Lallemant found even more startling than anything that had gone before.
He announced that in the furtherance of the purpose responsible for his presence, and so as to study Venetian intentions at first hand, he proposed to go into the enemy's camp, representing himself as a secret agent of the British. He asserted that it was a part he was well-equipped to play before any audience, even at need an English one.
Nevertheless, Lallemant's amazement was only partly allayed.
'Do you know what will happen if they unmask you?'
'I count upon so disposing that there will be no unmasking.'
'Name of God! You must be a very brave man.'
'I may or may not be brave. I am certainly intelligent. At the outset I shall inform them that I am in relations with you...'
'What?'
'That I have imposed myself upon you by pretending to be a French agent. I shall establish my good faith by dealing with them precisely as you deal with this spy of theirs who has been installed in your house. I shall give them some scraps of information about the French, which, whilst worthless and perhaps even quite false, shall have all the appearance of being valuable and true.'
'And you imagine that this will impose upon them?' Lallemant was scornful.
'But why not? Surely it is no new thing for a secret agent to appear to be working on both sides. In fact, no secret agent ever succeeded either in serving his side or keeping his life who did not take the pay of both parties. A government so experienced in espionage will recognize this without explanations. I incur one serious danger. At a whisper that I am Camille Lebel, a secret agent of the Directory, and the stiletto and the canal to which I have alluded will probably close a career of some distinction and great utility to France.' He paused there, to cast a glance through the open door at the empty room beyond. Then he added with peculiar emphasis: 'It follows, therefore, that the secret of my identity, which lies at present between you and me, Lallemant, is not to be shared with any other single soul. You understand? Not even your wife is to suspect that I am Lebel.'
Lallemant again betrayed that suspicion of strained patience. 'Oh, very well. As you please.'
'I mean it to be as I please. We touch upon a matter of life and death. My life and my death, pray observe. They are matters about which you will admit my pre-eminent right to dispose.'
'My dear Citizen Lebel...'
'Forget that name.' The representative rose, suddenly dramatic. 'It is not to be used again. Not even in private. If we are really private in a house in which spies of the Council of Ten are at large. Here in Venice I am Mr. Melville, a flaneur, an English idler. Mr. Melville. Is that clear?'
'Certainly, Mr. Melville. But if you should get into difficulties...'
'If I get into difficulties I shall be beyond any man's assistance. So see that you create none for me by any indiscretion.' His clear eyes were sternly upon the ambassador, who, utterly browbeaten, inclined his large head in submission. 'That, I think, is all at the moment.'
Lallemant was instantly on his feet. 'You'll stay to dine. We shall be alone; just Madame Lallemant and my boy and my secretary Jacob.'
Mr. Melville shook his impeccably dressed head. 'I thank you for the courtesy. But I could not wish to embarrass you. Some other day, perhaps.'
Not even the anxiety to conciliate could lend reality to Lallemant's air of disappointment. His expressions of regret rang so hollow that they almost betrayed his satisfaction in being rid of this overbearing fellow.
Mr. Melville delayed yet a moment to inquire into the progress being made by the French agents charged with Jacobin proselytizing.
'I have nothing,' he was answered, 'to add to my last report to the Citizen Barras. We are well served, especially by the Vicomtesse. She is very diligent, and constantly widening the sphere of her activities. Her latest conquest is that barnabotto patrician Vendramin.'
'Ah!' Mr. Melville was languid. 'He is important, is he?'
The ambassador looked at him in astonishment. 'Do you ask me that?'
Instantly conscious of having taken a false step, Mr. Melville carried it off without a flicker of hesitation.
'Well—do you know?—I sometimes doubt his consequence.'
'After what I have written about him?'
'It is only the Pope who is infallible.'
'It does not need the Pope to know the extent of Vendramin's influence. And the Vicomtesse has all but made him fast. It is only a question of time.' He laughed cynically. 'The Citizen Barras has a great gift of disposing of his discarded mistresses to the nation's profit as well as to his own.'
'I'll not stay to hear scandal.' Mr. Melville took up his hat from the table. 'You shall know what progress I make. Meanwhile, if you want me, I am lodged for the moment at the Inn of the Swords.'
On that he took his leave, and went his ways, wondering who might be the Vicomtesse, and who this Vendramin who was a barnabotto.