The Launching of Roger Brook

for your diligence. You will need some new clothes if you are to remain in Paris. Or would you rather return to Brittany and Maitre Leger's office?'

As Roger picked up the bag it flashed upon him that the Marquis was offering to retain him there in his employ. The gift and the offer seemed almost too good to be true. Flushing with pleasure, he exclaimed:

'Why, no, Monseigneur! I would much prefer to continue here in your service. And for this generous present I am most grateful.'

The Marquis waved his thanks aside. 'D'Heury lost his assistant some weeks ago, and I promised I would find him another. Anyone who can write so succinct a report as you have done must be well qualified to fill the post. What salary have you been receiving?'

'Forty louis per annum, Monseigneur.'

'Tell d'Heury that in future I wish you to receive a hundred and twenty. You will find Paris more expensive in every way than Rennes, and at times you will be required to wait upon me with despatches at Versailles. As one of my secretaries I wish you to make a good appearance. Go now, and place yourself at d'Heury's disposal.'

Still overcome by his good luck Roger bowed himself out of the room. D'Heury, who had become quite well disposed towards him in the past few days, received the news with satisfaction and suggested that before settling down to work Roger should take the following day off to equip himself for his new position.

When he awoke next morning Roger thought for a moment that his interview with the Marquis could only have been a dream, but there, under one side of his pillow, was the fat little bag of golden louis to confirm the sudden stroke of fortune that had lifted him from the prospect of being an out-of-work lawyer's clerk to a permanent secretaryship with a rich and powerful noble. Recalling his dream in the previous February about Georgina, he felt now that it had clearly been in the nature of a glimpse into the future. It was true that his object in coming to Paris had been to see Athenais, and he had failed in that, but in the dream there had been no thought of Athenais, only Georgina urging that in completing his work on the Domaine de St. Hilaire lay the road to fortune. He felt that now, at last, he could write a full account of himself to her without shame, and determined to spend the next few evenings doing so.

In addition to his hundred louis bonus he had over thirty louis saved from his time at Becherel; and now he was to receive a salary of ten huts a month—as much as he had been paid a year when he had started with Maitre Leger. He had never before possessed so much money and decided that he could well afford to spend lavishly for his own pleasure, as well as to do the Marquis credit. But he also thought that his old things might still come in useful, so, before going out, he wrote to Aldegonde, asking that his sea-chest should be forwarded to Paris.

That day he ordered three new suits with waistcoats of flowered satin, lace jabots and ruffles, silk stockings, a new hat, a pair of evening shoes, ribbons for his hair, a gilt-topped malacca cane, and a quantity of underclothes. With great impatience he waited until all these garments were delivered, then astonished the Abbe one day by appearing like a butterfly that had just emerged out of a chrysalis. From that time on he developed a sudden taste for dandyism and spent a good part of his salary on self-adornment; so that, with his tall, slim figure and dark good looks, he would, had it not been that he wore no sword, have been taken everywhere for a young noble.

Meanwhile, d'Heury was teaching him the minor duties of a private secretary. These proved, at first, a little disappointing, as the Abbe retained all important matters in his own hands, delegating to Roger only such things as purchasing stationery, affixing seals to letters, reporting on appeals for charity and getting out invitations whenever the Marquis entertained; but soon he was entrusted with interviewing casual visitors and occasional missions which took him to other great houses in Paris and out to the Palace at Versailles.

That spring another drought caused a great shortage of meat. Beef had risen from eleven to sixteen sous a pound and the butchers in the poorer quarters had been forced to close their shops. There was great grumbling about this and Roger could not wonder when, he actually saw something of the unbridled extravagance in which the Court lived.

In order to maintain the standard of splendour first set by Louis XIV hundreds of nobles, thousands of servants, whole regiments of guards and a legion of hangers-on from all classes, fed each day at the King's expense. The dining and mess rooms of the vast palace were never empty, and the food served in each differed only in the degree of culinary art devoted to its preparation; from the highest to the lowest meat, fish, butter, eggs and wine were to be had in unlimited profusion.

As a spectacle the Court never ceased to intrigue him. He had not the entree to the great apartments where the richly-clad host of lords and ladies dined, danced, gambled and flirted each night, but he could watch them arriving and departing at all hours in a never-ending stream of coaches, gaze his fill at them as they made their way up the great marble staircases, and look out upon them from the windows as, more colourful than the flowers, they strolled in little groups about the mile-long formal garden that Le Ndtre bad laid out at the back of the palace.

On the nth of May the King was to inspect the French and Swiss guards, so Roger asked for the day off, and d'Heury gave it to him quite willingly. It was the first time that he had seen Louis XVI and as he had expected, the King did not cut an impressive figure. He was a fat, ungainly man with a large pasty face and, perhaps owing to his bulk, he looked much older than his thirty-two years. The Queen, on the other hand, Roger thought both regal and beautiful. As she drove by in her carriage he was near enough to see that she had blue eyes and an aquiline nose, and he thought that when Athenais reached the age of thirty she would be very like her.

Roger was now getting to know most of the Marquis's principal friends by sight, as he shaped a workroom with d'Heury which served as an ante-chamber to the Marquis's sanctum, and all visitors had to pass through it.

M. Joseph de Rayneval, the premier commis of the Foreign Ministry, was a very frequent caller, and it did not take long for Roger to discover that this high official was working hand-in-glove with the Marquis against the interests of his own master, the Comte de Vergennes. There also came to the house fairly often the Due de Polignac whose beautiful wife was the avowed favourite of the Queen; the energetic Marechal de Castries, Minister for the Navy. M. Berard, head of the French East India Company; the Baron de Breteuil, Minister for Paris; the Due de Coigny, another close friend of the Queen, and her most trusted adviser, the Comte de Mercy-Argenteau, Austrian Ambassador to France.

There were two others who called with some frequency, to one of whom Roger took an instinctive dislike and to the other an instinctive liking.

The first was the Comte de Caylus. He came of an ancient family and possessed estates both in Brittany and in the French West Indies. His revenues from his slave plantations in Martinique and Saint Domingue were said to be immense, but with them he had also inherited a dash of black blood from a mulatto mother. He was in his late forties; a vigorous and powerfully built man with thick lips, a sallow skin and a flattened nose. He treated his inferior with all the arrogance habitual to the great French nobles and, in addition, had a coarseness of manner quite unusual among them. However, M. de Rochambeau always received him with great cordiality, as they had many interests in common; both came from the same province and both were fervid imperialists, it being de Caylus's most cherished ambition to bring the whole of the West Indian archipelago under French domination.

The second was the Abbe de Perigord or, as he was often called, L'Abbe du Cour. He was of middle height, a little over thirty years of age and had a curiously attractive face. His eyes were blue-grey, his nose slightly tip-tilted, his hair fair and his expression piquant. He never dressed as a churchman but in the height of fashion, and whenever he moved he leaned gracefully upon a cane, as he was a permanent cripple, his right leg being shorter than his left.

D'Heury did not care for him, and said that, even in this age, when it was regarded as normal for a rich prelate to keep a mistress, de Perigord's life was a flagrant scandal, since he not only lived openly with the young and beautiful Countess de Flahaut, by whom he had had a son, but he was one of the most dissolute roues in all Paris. Moreover, he was an intriguer of the first water who was clever enough to keep in with the Queen's party on the one hand while being on the best of terms with the Due d'Orleans, the most deadly enemy of the Court, on the other.

Roger, however, took a great liking to the lame Abbe as he thought him, outwardly at least, all that an aristocrat should be. Not only did he, with his delicate hands and gentle smile, look the part, but his manners were a model of easy courtesy and he always had a kind word for everyone. It was not until some time later that Roger learned that de Perigord's first names were Charles Maurice de Talleyrand.

Finding Roger willing and intelligent d'Heury began to entrust him with a certain amount of the Marquis's