The Rising Storm

another mission would mean his leaving Paris to the detriment of his secret work, and this time there would be no adequate excuse for his doing so which he could give to Mr. Pitt.

Nevertheless, he was not at present involved in any particular undertaking of great moment to his country, and he felt that any dis­pleasure he might incur for having temporarily abandoned his post must not be allowed to weigh against the urgent need of this unfortunate but courageous woman. Better men than himself had jeopardized their careers in causes far less deserving, and he knew that if he refused he would feel ashamed at having done so for the rest of his life. So, loath as he was to risk possible dismissal by his own master, after only a moment's hesitation, he said:

'Madame, I will serve you willingly, in any way I can. Pray give me your orders.'

She smiled her thanks, and said with tears in her voice: 'It is my son. How I will bring myself to part with him I cannot think. But I have reached the conclusion that it is my duty to do so. He is France— the France of the future—and it is my belief that if he remains here he will be murdered with the rest of us.'

'No, Madame, no!' Roger protested. 'The situation is now becom­ing more tranquil every day.'

Impatiently, she shook her head. 'Do not be deceived, Mr. Brook. This quiet is but the lull before another and greater storm. Yet I think we may be granted a few months in which to take such measures as we may; and it is my dearest wish that before the tempest breaks the Dauphin should be conveyed to a place of safety. More, if 'tis known that he is beyond the power of our enemies, and in a situation to continue the royal line, that might well prove an additional safeguard to the King, his father.'

Roger nodded. 'There is much in that, Madame, and your personal sacrifice may prove to have been well worth while in the long run.'

'But my problem has been where to send him,' she went on. 'The people will be furious when they learn that he has been sent abroad, and the National Assembly may demand his return; so it must be to some country which would be prepared to reject such a demand, and if need be incur the ill will of France on that account. I had at first thought of my brother, the Emperor Joseph, but he is again too ill, and his dominions in too great disorder, for me to burden him with such an additional care.'

She was crying now, and as she paused to dab her eyes with a handkerchief, Roger threw a quick glance of apprehension at her. The obvious alternative seemed her other brother, Leopold of Tuscany, and Florence was the one city in Europe to which he could not go without exposing himself to very considerable danger.

After a moment she went on: 'The Grand Duke Leopold would, I am sure, take M. le Dauphin at my request; but he needs a mother's care, and I feel that my sister is more to be relied upon to bring him up as I would wish. First, though, she will have to obtain her husband's consent to receiving a guest whose presence may embroil his Kingdom with France. Will you go for me, Mr. Brook, on a mission to Queen Caroline, and bring me back word whether King Ferdinand is willing to give my son asylum at the Court of Naples ?'

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

ON A NIGHT IN NAPLES

IN an instant Roger's whole outlook on fife was changed. For the past five months he had been a misanthrope; bitter, cynical, engaging himself from hour to hour in the first thing that offered, but unable to take a real joy or interest in either pleasure or work. Now, as by the waving of a fairy wand, all his old youth, vigour and enthusiasm flooded back to him.

He had not sought this mission of the Queen. On the contrary, he had agreed to undertake it out of chivalry. And now, accepting this task that had seemed so much against his own interests was to bring him a great reward. The magic word 'Naples' meant that he would see Isabella again.

The thought that she might no longer be there did not even occur to him. The fact that she must now be married cast no shadow on the dawn of his renewed zest for life. Of his own volition he would never have gone to Naples and deliberately risked jeopardizing her relations with her husband; but now, he was being sent there. Fate had relented, and, it seemed clear to him, ordained that they were once more to breathe the same air, watch the stars hand in hand, and listen to one another's happy sighs. For many months his hopeless longing for her had been well-nigh intolerable, and now he had no doubt whatever that it was soon to be satisfied.

As in a dream, he took in the remainder of what the Queen had to say and received from her a locket, containing a miniature of the Dauphin, copied from a recent painting by Madame Vigee le Bran. It was to serve a dual purpose. Firstly, as the frame was set in brilliants in a curious design, and Madame Marie Antoinette had often worn it herself when a child, Queen Caroline would be certain to recognize it; so it would serve as a passport to her and make it unnecessary for Roger to carry any letter of introduction, which might have proved a danger to him. Secondly, the picture it now contained would show Queen Caroline what a charming little boy the nephew was, whom she was being asked to receive and mother.

A dozen times that evening Roger surreptitiously felt the locket, where he had concealed it under the frill of his shirt, to make quite certain that he had not imagined his interview at the Tuileries that afternoon. But there it was, the light but solid and slightly scratchy proof that next day he would be on his way to Isabella. Hardly able to contain himself for joy, he packed his gayest clothes in a valise and dashed off a note to Lord Robert Fitz-Gerald, simply stating that urgent business necessitated his absenting himself from Paris for about a month, and asking for that information to be conveyed to Whitehall.

The only cloud on his horizon was the small but very dark one that when he got to Naples his stay there could be only of very brief duration. Madame Marie Antoinette's letter to the Grand Duke Leopold had been a highly private assessment of the leading figures in French politics, and had called for no reply, so its delivery had not been a matter of any great urgency. But his present task was one of a very different nature. If he delayed in Naples overlong his whole mission might be rendered abortive by some new development in Paris during his absence. In any case poor Madame Marie Antoinette would be on tenterhooks until she received her sister's answer. So it was clearly his duty to get to Naples and return as swiftly as he possibly could.

In consequence, he decided that the only way in which he could square it with his conscience to remain a few days there was to travel with a speed beyond anything that even a fast courier would normally have accomplished. There were post-houses every five miles along the main roads, so by changing horses every time he reached one a courier could make the journey to Marseilles in about six days, but such hard riding demanded a good night's sleep at an inn each night. On the other hand a post-chaise could travel nearly as fast as relays of riding horses and, with changes of postilions as well as animals, it could continue on its way both day and night. Such a mode of travel was expensive, for it cost a shilling a mile; it also entailed great discomfort on the occupant of the post-chaise as, after a day or two, its continuous jolting became almost intolerable, quite apart from the fact that it deprived him of all proper sleep. Nevertheless Roger adopted this course without a moment's hesitation, considering it a small price to pay for a few days in which to do as he would, with a quiet mind, at the other end of his journey.

He ordered the post-chaise to be at La Belle Etoile at four o'clock next morning, and before dawn on November 4th he was out of Paris. There was hardly a stage on his way south that did not bring him vivid memories of Isabella.

By mid-morning he was being driven at a swift trot through the eastern edge of the forest of Fontainebleau, and it was in the forest that he had first met her. Many hours passed and the night was nearly gone when he reached the spot where he had come upon her coach being attacked; but dawn was breaking again as he entered Nevers, and he had a meal at the inn to which she had carried him bleeding from his wounds and sweating with pain; and at which, on a Sunday while the Senora Poeblar and the others were at church, Isabella had persuaded him to accompany her to Marseilles instead of going toFlorence via Chambery and Turin.

It was late that afternoon when, just on the far side of St. Pourcain, he traversed the place where some baggage had nearly fallen on his injured foot, and he and Isabella had first called one another by their Christian names; and it was the middle of the second night when the chaise mounted the hill beyond Lampdes where, in the close, warm semi-darkness of the coach, they had first kissed.

Evening had come again when he pulled up to sup at Orange, where Quetzal had had his encounter with the goat; and it was mid­night when the chaise passed through the silent streets of Avignon, recalling to Roger the Senora's death, her dying plea to him to respect Isabella's chastity and, two days later, the plighting of their troth.

At ten o'clock the following morning the chaise was rattling over the cobbles of Marseilles. He was incredibly tired, had a three days’ beard on his chin and was covered with dust, but he had done the journey in three and a quarter days. He had already ordered his leading postilion to take him straight to the Cafe d'Acajon,