'Your masterl How is he?'
'Bad, Monsieur!' cried Jacques, reining in his horse. 'Yet 'tis hoped the wound will not prove fatal. 'Twas over quickly but mighty desperate while it lasted. They fought for but two minutes, then M. de Caylus ran in upon my master and delivered a tricky thrust in the old style, from above. His sword pierced M. le Vicomte under the collar bone and, 'tis thought, passed through the top of his lung. He wished to continue, but his seconds would not permit it. He is being brought back in M. de Broglie's coach, and I go now to warn them at our lodging.'
Wheeling his horse about the man cantered off and, sadly downcast, Roger re-entered the Hotel. His hopes of the past night had proved only wishful thinking and his beloved Athenais was still chained by her father's given word to the millionaire quadroon.
That afternoon he went to see the Vicomte and, to his relief, learned that his lung was not affected; but the sword had passed right through the upper part of his body, and the doctors said that it would be two months or so before he would be well enough to get about again.
The story of the duel soon ran round Paris and, in spite of the Vicomte's precautions, Athenais's name was freely mentioned as its cause, owing to his having so openly sought her favour. But, as neither of the combatants had been killed, and both were highly placed, the King took no action in the matter.
In the middle of the month Athenais returned to Paris, and Roger saw her within a few hours of her arrival. She said that her fiance now waited on her every morning and that, in Madame Marie-Ange's company, she was compelled to endure his conversation for an hour or more. He was, she admitted, both clever and forceful; but personally, she found him odious and she had come to dread the speculative smile with which he always regarded her.
He had pressed for the marriage contract to be signed in mid-August, but she had protested that she could not possibly have her trousseau ready until well on in September, and her father had compromised by settling the date as Wednesday, the 30th of August.
As there were still seven weeks to go Roger begged her not to take any drastic step as yet, urging that something might occur to prevent the marriage; although M. de la Tour d'Auvergne's attempt to kill de Caylus having failed, neither of them could think of any event likely to do so.
Athenais asked him to express to the Vicomte her deep appreciation of the courage and devotion he had shown, and sent him many kind messages; then they embraced and, encouraging one another to hope for a miracle, parted.
Towards the end of July and in early August the Dutch Ambassador Mynheer Van Brantzen and his colleague Mynheer Van Berkenroode, paid a number of visits to the Marquis. They did not represent the Stadtholder, as he was not in the true sense a Monarch, but their High Mightinesses the States-General, and both were strong Republicans. Their visits led to a long correspondence between the Marquis and M. de Segur, the Minister of War, by which arrangements were made for numerous consignments of French arms to be smuggled over the Dutch frontier. Then, these secret negotiations with the Dutch Emissaries were concluded one night by their arriving accompanied by a strongly armed escort, and removing in two coaches a very considerable sum in gold that the Marquis paid over to them.
It was this which at last gave Roger, as he thought, the clue to M. de Rochambeau's deep-laid scheme. The Marquis had no intention of plunging France into a war which must have proved her final financial ruin. He was, instead, seeking to make French influence paramount in the United Provinces, once and for all, by not only encouraging but actually financing a revolution.
Roger had heard enough of the conversations before the money was handed over to realise that it was to be used to pay the Republican free-corps that had been raised in most of the Dutch cities, since these careful burghers, anxious as they were to abolish their hereditary
Chief Magistrate, would not leave their businesses to take up arms against him unless their expenses were first guaranteed.
That the Marquis and his friends were evidently not, after all, plotting to bring about a general war greatly relieved Roger's anxieties. Civil war was a very different matter and he did not feel that this could bring his country into jeopardy, or seriously weaken her position. British prestige in the United Provinces was already so low that it could hardly be lower. Britain's friend, the weak and inept Stadtholder had for many months past exercised little more than a tenuous authority over a small minority of his cities, so it did not appear that it could materially affect the situation if he were swept away altogether. The thing that did matter and was of vital concern, was that the Dutch ports should not fall into the hands of France, but they certainly could not do so without an outbreak of hostilities between the nations, and of that there now seemed little likelihood.
The King's troubles had by no means been ended by his dissolution of the Assembly of Notables. On the 12th of July certain members of the Parliament of Paris had, for the first time, proposed that, since the Notables had failed, the Estates-General, which had not sat for one hundred and seventy-three years, should be summoned; and declared that they alone had the right to impose fresh taxation. On the 19th the Parliament followed this by flatly refusing to register the Royal edict imposing the new taxes. They were, in fact, little more than a judicial body and had no power to make laws themselves; but they at least possessed a type of negative veto, since no measure ordained by the King actually became law until they had registered it.
The Archbishop of Toulouse, the King's new adviser, proved quite incapable of dealing with the situation and the Monarch, anxious as ever to do the right thing but hesitating between half a dozen different policies, was at length persuaded by his more robust councillors to hold a Bed of Justice. Recourse had not been had to this for many years; it consisted of a formal ceremony at which all the Great Officers of State were present, and, addressing them from the throne, the King spoke his will, such orders as he might give them being considered as imperative.
On the 9th of August the Bed of Justice was held at Versailles, and the King formally ordered the Parliament to register the Edicts. Parliament still refused and demanded the convening of the States-General. Such a situation had never arisen before and on the 16th the King, at his wits.' end, exiled the Parliament to Troyes, hoping that this exceptional measure would break down their resistance.
A week in exile having no effect and the exchequer being near empty, on the 23rd the King sent his two brothers to forcibly register the Edicts concerning the Stamp Duty and Land Tax at the
Roger heard from day to day about all -these things. Had he given them serious thought he might have realised that so many crises following swiftly on each other, and culminating in mob violence against the retinue of a Royal Prince, could be no less than the first mutterings of the Revolution which had been foreshadowed by so many of his friends. But his whole mind was now given to the thing which engaged his heart—the grim and horrible future which, unless something could be done to avert it, was soon to engulf his beloved Athenais.
He dealt automatically with the dispatches which continued to arrive from Holland, but took scant notice of their contents or of any of the conferences that the Marquis frequently held with regard to them. A summer camp for the crack regiments of the French army had been formed, as planned earlier in the year, in Flanders; and the command of this small but efficient force given to the Marquis's brother, M. le Comte de Rochambeau, who was a highly qualified General and had commanded the last French expeditionary force to be sent to America to aid the Colonists against Britain in their war of Independence. M. de Castries, too, had given secret orders for the finest ships of the French fleet to assemble at Brest and to hold themselves in readiness to sail at twelve hours' notice.
Roger had duly sent all such purely military information to Mr. Gilbert Maxwell, but he was a Uttle afraid that it might prove misleading to the British Government, since he was now personally convinced that all these measures were no more than bluff. Standing as he did at M. de Rochambeau's elbow, it seemed perfectly clear to him that the Marquis meant at all costs to avoid war, and the one thing of which he was frightened was that Prussia should intervene in the affairs of the United Provinces by giving military aid to the Stadtholder before the Republicans could pull off their
Frederick-Wilhelm II was becoming slightly more bellicose and had moved a certain number of troops down to the Dutch frontier, but the Marquis was convinced that he did not wish to fight, and evidently considered that the best way of preventing him from actually sending troops over the border was for France to show equal readiness
