The Rising Storm

capital since she was quite a young girl, and there must be many of her relatives . . .'

For several moments longer the Condesa rattled on, but Roger was listening to her with only half an ear. His hands had gone clammy at the awful thought of Isabella in the agony of childbirth and he was wishing desperately that he could be near her at the time to give her at least the comfort of his love during her ordeal.

Automatically he continued to make polite conversation until the ladies left the table. When they had gone the dozen footmen, one of whom had waited behind each chair during the meal, the two wine butlers and the major-domo, silently withdrew. As the doors closed behind the last of the servants the Ambassador beckoned Roger up to a vacant place near the head of the table, and only then did he manage to thrust Isabella out of his mind.

The conversation of the six men at once turned to politics and, in particular, the situation of the Queen. Roger felt certain now that he had been asked only because de Mercy-Argenteau knew of his journeys and felt that he was entirely to be trusted, as they began to talk with complete frankness of ways and means to save her should another emergency arise in which her life was threatened.

It struck Roger as interesting that the old Abbe was the only Frenchman present; but it occurred to him that, since so many French­men were now being torn between two loyalties, it might have been decided that it was wiser to keep them out of it, and that an exception had been made in the Abbe's case only because, in the role of a father confessor, he would never be denied access to the Queen, however closely she might be guarded. Roger hazarded a guess, too, that de Mercy-Argenteau's reluctance to take Frenchmen into his counsels was probably the reason why, on de la Marck's recommendation, he should have been singled out for the honour of inclusion in such a company.

It soon emerged that although Count Axel Fersen held no official diplomatic status, he had come to France as the secret representative of King Gustavus III, charged to do everything in his power to aid the Queen. The Spanish Ambassador had also been instructed by his King to take all possible steps to succour and protect the French Royal Family. Both were of the opinion that while the prisoners of the Tuileries still had some degree of liberty they should leave the capital on the pretext of a Royal Hunt, and when the carriages were well out in the open country order them to be driven to Compiegne, Rheims or

Metz, at any one of which they could swiftly surround themselves with the Army.

Roger had naturally refrained from putting any view forward during the early part of the discussion; but now he said: 'Such a scheme would be well enough if you could rely upon the loyalty of the Army. But can you do so? From all I hear the rate of desertion has been appallingly high in the past few months, and in many of the regiments the men who remain will no longer take orders from their officers.'

'That is true in many areas,' agreed Count Hans. 'But the Army of the East is still mainly loyal. General de Bouille' has some good troops under him, and I can vouch for my own regiment. It was in order to make certain of its dependability for just such an emergency that I spent so much time with it this summer and autumn.'

'Messieurs, I too should be in favour of such a plan, did I not know it to be impractical,' announced de Mercy-Argenteau. He spoke with the German accent that he had never quite lost, and went on heavily: 'To do as you suggest would mean civil war, and we shall never bring the King to face that. Quite apart from his morbid horror of bloodshed, he is obsessed with the example of the Great Rebellion in England, and he maintains that the unhappy Charles I would never have lost his head had he not taken up arms against his subjects.'

'There may be some truth in that,' remarked the Spaniard. 'In any case there appears to be little danger of Louis XVI losing his head as long as he remains in Paris.'

'I agree, Excellency,' the Austrian nodded. 'For the King's life we fortunately have no reason to concern ourselves. It is for the life of the little Arch-Duchess who was entrusted to me as a child that I am so gravely perturbed. The hand of God has already saved her from more than one attempt upon her life, and it is known to me that others are maturing. Her enemies are well aware that it is her courage alone that stands between them and the achievement of their evil designs, and they are seeking to poison her. She now dare eat nothing but the plainest food prepared for her by her own attendants, and the sugar she keeps in her bedroom to make eau sucre at night has twice been tampered with, so that Madame Campan now has to keep a secret supply for her.'

'Then,' said Fersen, with an anxious frown, 'we must get Her Majesty away. And with the minimum possible delay.'

The Abbe Vermond sadly shook his head. 'Alas, Monsieur, she will not leave the King, I am convinced of that.'

'Somehow, we must find means to persuade her. She would perhaps if we could bring her to believe that the Dauphin's life was in danger, and that it was essential that she should escape with him.'

De Mercy-Argenteau gave a swift glance under his grey eyebrows at Roger; then, as Roger remained silent, he said: 'Her Majesty made a plan some time ago to send the Dauphin to Naples, but the King refused his consent to the project. She then had no thought of going with her son, and even if the King changes his mind I greatly doubt if she could be persuaded to do so.'

'I am certain that she could not, Excellency,' declared the Abb6. 'She is a convinced fatalist, and with superb courage has already made up her mind to face some tragic end that she believes Fate has in store for her. She is a religious woman as we all know, but even her accept­ance of the fundamental goodness of God is insufficient to overcome her conviction that destiny has marked her down. And one cannot deny that there have been portents enough in her life to give her reason for that black thought.'

The Abb6 paused for a moment, then went on: 'We have but to recall the terrible tempest that raged upon the night of her marriage. A wind so great that the park at Versailles was devastated; mighty oaks rent in twain by lightning; the windows of her bridal chamber blown in, their shutters battered to matchwood, and the gale howling in the room so that the very coverlets were blown from the bed. Then a fortnight later the public celebrations for her marriage in Paris. I shall never forget how we set out from Versailles to witness the great display of fireworks that had been arranged. That beautiful child, so gay, so happy, so excited; and when we arrived the vast sea of people who had assem­bled to do her homage, cheering and throwing flowers as she smiled and blew kisses to them standing up in her carriage.

'Then the rocket accidentally igniting the pile of wood, the flames reaching the powder barrels before the firemen could get to them; the terrible explosion, the crowd stampeding, the cheers turning to screams of agony, the hundreds of people trampled to death, and the number of injured so great that it was beyond the capacity of the hospitals to take them.'

Again the Abb? paused, then he looked up at de Mercy-Argenteau. 'And above all, Your Excellency, you and I are old enough to remem­ber the day she was born. November the 2nd, 1755. On it there was the most frightful disaster that has afflicted Europe for centuries: the Lisbon earthquake. No Princess has ever had a more inauspicious omen at her birth; so can one wonder that she has always felt the hand of Fate to be upon her?'

Roger was twelve years younger than Madame Marie Antoinette, but he remembered the stories of the earthquake that had still been current in his childhood. The shock had been so terrific that it had been felt at places as far distant as the Baltic, the West Indies, Canada and Algiers. The greater part of Lisbon had been thrown to the ground. The great marble quay sank down with hundreds of people on it; every ship in the harbour was engulfed, and neither wreckage nor bodies ever came to the surface. In six minutes 40,000 people had perished.

For a moment there was silence, then the Conde Fernanunez spoke. 'If she is adamant in her determination not to leave, the only course open to us is to endeavour to concert measures to restore some degree of the royal authority.'

'That is my own view, Excellency,' nodded de Mercy-Argenteau. 'And it seems to me that our only hope of doing so lies in winning over to the Court some of the popular leaders.'

'But who?' asked Fersen pessimistically. 'All the honest leaders who incline to support the monarchy no longer carry any weight with the masses. For the rest, the Assembly is made up of little men, who would be useless to us, or rogues.'

'Then let us buy a rogue,' suggested the Spaniard. 'What does it matter, provided that he be a man with great enough prestige to sway the people?'

'I believe there is only one man big enough to do this thing,' put in Roger, 'and that at heart he is by no means a rogue. The Comte de Mirabeau.'

'I agree with you,' said de la Marck quickly. 'He is the very man I have myself long had in mind for such a role.'