The Rising Storm

that with the protection they now enjoyed there was a very good chance that de Roubec would throw in his hand, return to Paris and report that the task he had been given was beyond his powers of fulfilment.

In the early afternoon they arrived at a little town called St. Pierre, where they meant to pass the night. The only inn there was the usual miserable place lacking both common rooms and glass windows; but it was one of the penalties of journeying by short stages that travellers who did so were forced to feed in their bedrooms. As Roger knew by experience, in such places single travellers often had to share a room with one or more strangers, the landlord was also usually the cook and the chambermaids, almost invariably ugly, uncouth slatterns. There was never any garden to sit out in, the beds were bug-ridden and the other furniture either of the poorest quality or non-existent. The only point in which they were superior to their English counterparts was that they offered not more, but a greater variety of food.

However, persons of quality who travelled in France took every precaution to minimize such discomforts, carrying with them their own beds, window curtains, and even folding furniture, as though they were proceeding on a military campaign. And Isabella was no exception to the rule. In half an hour the best of the three rooms in the place had been made tolerably comfortable, and Roger installed on his own bedroll to rest after his journey. He still felt weak from his loss of blood, so dozed for most of the rest of the day, while Isabella whiled away the time playing chess with her duenna.

The following day they moved on to Moulins, and found it a sur­prisingly poor, ill-built town for the capital of the rich Bourbonnais and seat of the King's Intendant. The Belle Image, at which they put up, proved a more spacious but scarcely cleaner hostelry than the pigsty in which they had passed the previous night, and on Roger sending out for news-sheets he was surprised to learn that none was available, even in the cafes. As with everywhere else in France, the town was agog with political speculations, but all were based on the wildest rumours and authentic news entirely lacking.

On the 6th they passed through pleasant country again, making a slightly longer stage of thirty miles, to St. Pourcain. They arrived to find the place in a tumult, and it transpired that a foreigner had been arrested on suspicion of most nefarious designs. Further enquiry elicited the fact that he was a German who had been caught pacing out the measurements of some fields just outside the town and making notes of their acreage in a little book. Later, when his papers were examined, it emerged that he was a perfectly honest gentleman with large estates in Pomerania, who, on travelling through the Bour­bonnais, had been struck with the richness of its soil compared with his own semi-sterile lands, and had formed the project of buying a property in the neighbourhood. But it was several hours before the local authori­ties could persuade the angry, ignorant peasantry that he was not an agent of the Queen who had been sent to measure their land with a view to doubling the taxes upon it.

As Roger and Isabella were discussing the matter that evening he asked her: 'Why is it that so many people who have never even seen Madame Marie Antoinette believe her capable of the most abominable immoralities, and regard her as deserving of such universal hatred?'

Isabella sadly shook her head. 'It is a tragedy, and all the more so in that when she first came to France her beauty and graciousness instantly won for her the adoration of those very masses that now curse her. But she has since been the victim of many unfortunate circum­stances over which she had no control.'

'I pray you tell me of them,' Roger said. 'I know most of her story, but since, until quite recently, she has played no part in politics I find this long, gradual decline in her popularity quite inexplicable, and the problem fascinates me.'

Settling herself more comfortably on her cushions, Isabella replied: 'She has been dogged by bad luck from the very moment that she arrived at Versailles as Dauphine. Then, she was a child of fourteen, lacking in all experience of intrigue; yet she found herself at once forced into the position of leader of the set that was striving to bring about the ruin of Madame du Barri. Her mother, the Empress-Queen Maria Theresa, had counselled her to conciliate her father-in-law's powerful mistress; but all her instincts revolted against making a friend of that rapacious, gutter-bred courtesan.

'Instead, she quite naturally showed her liking for the du Barn's enemy, the Due de Choiseul, who, as Prime Minister, had negotiated the Franco-Austrian alliance and her own marriage. He and his friends represented all that was best in France, but for years they had been fighting a losing battle against the greedy libertines with whom the bored, immoral old King surrounded himself; and soon after Madame Marie Antoinette's appearance on the scene the struggle ended in the du Barri's favour. De Choiseul was sent into exile and the du Barn's protege, the unscrupulous Due d'Aiguillon, was made principal Minister in his place. Unfortunately the little Dauphine had already shown her colours too plainly to be forgiven her partisanship, and she had committed the unhappy error of backing the losing side. She could not be dismissed with de Choiseul and his friends, but with their departure she was left almost isolated. Within a few months of her coming to France most of the important places at Court were filled by people who knew that they would not have been there had she had her way, and whom she received only because she had to.'

Roger nodded. 'That was certainly a most unfortunate start for her.'

'It was more than that; it has influenced her whole reign. Four years later when she and her husband came to the throne they swept clean the Augean stable. But it was not only the du Barri who was sent packing. Out of greed a considerable section of the nobility of France had prostituted itself in order to grab the wealth and favours that it had been so easy for the du Barri to bestow. They too found themselves debarred the Court and all prospects of advancement under the new reign. In consequence, scores of powerful families have nurtured a grudge against the Queen ever since.'

'But why the Queen and not the King?'

'Because they count him too lethargic to have bothered to deprive them of their sinecures unless she had pressed him to do so; and it was she, not he, who originally championed de Choiseul against them.'

Isabella ticked off her little finger. 'So you see that is one set of unrelenting enemies who for fifteen years have lost no opportunity of blackening and maligning poor Madame Marie Antoinette. From the beginning too she had to contend against the spiteful animosity of the Royal Aunts, Louis XV's three elderly unmarried sisters. Madame Adelaide was the leading spirit of those stupid, gossiping old women. She both hated the Austrian alliance and resented the fact that a lovely young princess had come to take precedence over her in doing the honours of the Court; so she egged on the other two, and between them they formed a fine breeding-ground for malicious tittle-tattle about their impetuous niece.

'Then,' Isabella ticked off another finger, 'there were her husband's two brothers, the Comte de Provence and the Comte d'Artois; both of whom were much cleverer and wielded considerably more influence at Court than he did. Monsieur de Provence has pretences to learning, but he is a narrow pedantic man and possessed of the most poisonous tongue in the whole Court. From boyhood he has despised and hated his ungifted elder brother and even at times given vent to his rancour that the simple, awkward Louis barred his way to the throne. To a nature so warped by gall and jealousy the Dauphin's acquisition of a lovely wife could only mean the distillation of further venom, and Monsieur de Provence has never yet lost an opportunity of bespattering Madame Marie Antoinette with lies.'

'Well, at least Monsieur d'Artois has proved her friend,' Roger put in.

'In some ways, perhaps,' Isabella shrugged. 'Yet he, too, helped to damage her reputation, even if unintentionally. He is certainly very different from his elder brother, for where Monsieur de Provence is fat and stolid he is slim and elegant; moreover he possesses wit and charm. But he is a shallow man and from his youth has indulged in flagrant immoralities. The Queen made a friend of him only from loneliness, and a young girl's natural craving for a little gaiety. As her brother-in-law she felt that she could go with him to parties that her husband was too mulish to attend, and yet remain untouched by scandal. But in that she proved wrong. 'Tis said that one cannot touch pitch without blackening one's fingers, and it proved true in this case. Her enemies seized upon Monsieur d'Artois's evil reputation to assert that since she was often in his company she must be tarred with the same brush.'

Isabella held up four fingers. 'You see how these things add up; and we have not yet come to the end of the Royal Family. The Queen's ill-luck persisted even to her sisters-in-law. As you may know, both Monsieur de Provence and Monsieur d'Artois married daughters of King Victor Amedee of Sardinia, and the princesses of the House of Savoy have never been famed for their good looks. One can perhaps forgive these two sallow, pimply creatures for being a little jealous of the beautiful golden-haired Dauphine; but, unfortunately, to their ugliness were added narrowness and spite. They hated her from the outset and combined with the Royal Aunts to invent malicious stories about her. Both of them gave birth to children several years before Madame Marie Antoinette was