The Rape of Venice (61 page)

Nevertheless, his own interests demanded that he should support them against the Clichyans, and early in the summer he had sent his personal Adjutant, the
ci-devant
Count de Lavalette, off to Paris to keep him secretly informed of the situation. Lavalette had reported that unless some drastic step was taken, the Directory was almost certain to be overthrown: but he had advised against Boneparte himself coming to Paris if it could possibly be avoided, because the moderates formed such a high proportion of the population that if he took any direct action against them his own popularity was bound to suffer.

With his usual cunning, he had got round that by making Augereau his cat's-paw. The Army of Italy was rabidly republican and on July 14th it had celebrated the anniversary of the fall of the Bastille with tremendous enthusiasm. Boneparte had issued a stirring proclamation calling on it to demonstrate its adherence to the principles of the Revolution by loyal addresses to the Government. Each Division had done so in no uncertain manner. Augereau's men, the reddest of the reds, had, in referring to the new measures for moderation being advocated in the two Chambers, even gone to the length of including a passage which read:

Tremble, O conspirators! From the Adige and the Rhine to the Seine is but a step. Tremble! Your iniquities are numbered, and the price of them is at the point of our bayonets!'

These were open threats against the legally elected Legislature that should it go too far the troops would march on
Paris and bring about a renewal of the Terror. On the pretext of sending a number of captured enemy flags to Paris, Boneparte had then sent Augereau there with instructions to see to it that the loyal addresses from the Army of Italy were published. He was now sitting back, quietly confident that the fierce swashbuckling General would take any steps necessary to pull his chestnuts out of the fire for him.

Roger gained all this inside information while assisting Bourrienne, mainly in translating documents and writing
précis
of confidential reports. He would have given a great deal to be able to send a report himself to Mr. Pitt, but for the time being he had no means of doing so. He could only wait until an opportunity arose for him to return to Venice and hope to get one through by one of the secret couriers who must, he knew, be keeping Mr. Watson in touch with London.

Meanwhile, as one of the personal entourage, he saw Napoleon and Josephine every day and sometimes was invited to spend the evening with them. The former never tired of hearing more about Egypt and India, and the latter found him an asset to the family's amusements. She loved amateur theatricals, charades and childish games, and in private the great man was by no means averse to looking on or joining in the games, provided always that he was allowed to be the winner.

It was some ten days after Roger's arrival at the Chateau Montebello that chance revealed to him that childish games were by no means the only ones played there by the General-in-Chief. Having woken early one morning, he went down from his attic in a chamber robe and soft slippers to Bourrienne's office to collect some papers with the intention of reading them in bed. As he walked noiselessly along a corridor on the first floor, he passed a door that was not quite closed, and heard someone on the other side of it say:

‘You saw the General come out of her room. Do not deny it.'

He recognised the voice as that of Constant, the General's valet, and, halting in his tracks, he listened intently to catch the rest of the conversation. From it he learned that Boneparte was having an
affaire
with one of Josephine's ladies-in-waiting and going to her room by stealth at night. On this occasion they had fallen asleep so Constant had gone to her door and tapped on it to wake him. Some minutes later, he had hurried back to his own apartments and had caught sight of a housemaid watching him from a window that overlooked the corridor. Believing her to be a spy placed there by his wife, he
had sent Constant to warn her that if she breathed a word she would be instantly dismissed.

Roger had soon discovered that the immorality rampant in the Paris of the Directory had arrived with the dozens of beautiful and fashionable women who now graced the General-in-Chief's court at Montebello, and that nearly all of them had become the mistress of one, if not more, of the gallant blades who trailed their sabres in its splendid
salons.
Several of them had, in fact, made him quite open overtures; but he still wore the rope of Clarissa's golden hair round his neck, and had taken a vow not to kiss another woman until he had revenged her. Yet, in this gilded brothel, Napoleon and Josephine appeared to be a couple apart, and a model of connubial bliss; so he was both surprised and intrigued to find that this was not so.

During the day he made tactful enquiries of several men with whom he had become fairly intimate and soon learned what he would have learned much earlier had his mind not been too occupied with other matters.

The intensity of Boneparte's first passion for Josephine could not be doubted and only the glamour of at last having an army to command had caused him to tear himself away from her within a few days of their marriage. That marriage, to her, had so far been only an episode into which she had been persuaded to secure a promising future for her children; so on his departure she had swiftly slid back into her old way of life.

She was a voluptuous, lazy creature and without being in the least vicious quite naturally accepted the immoral way of life led by her friends. Boneparte had written again and again, covering reams of paper with passionate pleas for her to join him, but she had lingered on for many months in Paris before at last doing so, and he had had ample grounds for believing that during them she was being unfaithful to him.

His love for her had not cooled, but his physical passion could at times be as demanding as his craving for glory; so quite early in their separation he had spent occasional nights with other women.

When she had eventually arrived at Mantua the violence of his passion had again frightened her, and to such a degree that she had become cold towards him. Feeling certain that she had given herself freely to other lovers, this had driven him into a frenzy of fury, and a climax had been reached when he intercepted
a letter to her from Lazare Hoche whom he knew to have paid her marked attention in Paris. As that brilliant young General was his only serious rival to fame, and the letter was decidedly more than affectionate, his rage had known no bounds. He kicked a pug-dog that Hoche had given her to death before her eyes, and the fact that he had later had a memorial erected to it in the garden was small consolation in view of her passionate love of animals.

From that point the urgency of his physical desire for her appeared to have cooled somewhat, but she still inspired in him a strong affection, and he showed great kindness and thoughtfulness towards her. It was this which caused him to exercise caution in his amours, as both of them continued to be jealous where the other was concerned, and he went to great lengths to spare her knowledge of his infidelities.

All this gave Roger much food for thought, and that night a plan evolved in his mind by which he might both serve his country well and bring Malderini to book in a highly suitable manner. He had to bide his time for a further day and a half until chance left him alone with Boneparte in the map-room and the General was not engaged on any matter of importance, Then he said, casually:

‘Mon General.
In view of the great interest you take in all things connected with the East, I have been wondering if it would amuse you to dine,
tête-à-tête,
one night with a very beautiful Indian Princess?'

‘An Indian Princess,' Boneparte repeated. ‘That would certainly be an experience. But surely there is not such a woman here in Milan, or I would have heard of her?'

‘No. She lives in Venice. I thought perhaps when you next go on one of your tours of inspection…'

‘Yes, I could arrange to spend a night there. Tell me more of her. Would she prove readily complaisant?'

‘That I cannot guarantee,' Roger smiled. ‘But I should have thought,
mon General
, that you would have found women as easy to conquer as enemy fortresses. I can only vouch for it that she is in her early twenties, has beauty and a noble carriage, speaks Italian and French fluently, and hates her husband.'

‘Presumably, then, she has had numerous lovers.'

‘I doubt that. Her husband is a Venetian ex-Senator and he keeps her like a bird in a gilded cage. The poor lady has had no more chance to succumb to temptation than if she had continued to live as the inmate of a seraglio in her native India.'

‘Pst!' Boneparte exclaimed with annoyance. ‘That makes her ten times more alluring, yet rules her out for me. Why arouse my interest when you must know well enough that it means the sort of adventure which can so easily end in scandal and that, for the sake of Madame my wife, I am determined to have no scandal attaching to my name.'

‘There will be no scandal if you leave the matter to me.'

‘How can you be sure of that? Husbands have an uncanny knack of returning unexpectedly when a lover has been introduced into the house.'

‘I should get her out of it to sup with you in some place where there was no risk of your being disturbed.'

‘Since she is so jealously guarded, even if she were willing, that savours of abduction. Were it discovered that I had connived at the abduction of an ex-Senator's wife for my pleasure, it would set all Venice by the ears. Policy made it necessary for me to despoil Venice of all her mainland territories, but I have brought freedom to the people of the city, and they bless me for it. They rely upon me now to maintain their independence, and look on me as their protector. To have raped the Serene Republic politically was one thing. To as good as rape the wife of one of its leading citizens is quite another. Did it become known, I would at once lose their esteem and be accounted a villain.'

Roger shrugged. ‘Your fears are needless. I can so arrange matters that there will be no scandal, and am prepared to guarantee that the husband shall be given no grounds for complaint. All you have to do is to give me a chit to Villetard ordering him to carry out my instructions. Only a handful of people need ever know that you have spent the night in Venice and, unless you distrust your personal staff, none of them will afterwards bear word to Madame Boneparte that you supped with the Princess. On that I pledge my head. But, if this little project of mine for providing you with a few hours' interesting relaxation from your immense labours has no real appeal to you, let us say no more about it.'

‘An Indian Princess,' Boneparte muttered, and he began to walk up and down the room with his hands clasped behind his back. ‘An Indian Princess. Yes; well, why not, if you are so certain that the matter can be arranged discreetly? You are prepared to take complete responsibility for that, eh?'

‘I am. I'll answer for it with my head,' Roger repeated.

‘Very well then. When next I go on a journey which will bring me within easy distance of Venice, remind me of it.'

Roger gave a secret sigh of satisfaction. It had required skilful handling to lure the lean, lank-haired panther, even with such an attractive piece of meat. But he had felt that Boneparte's snobbishness would prove a helpful factor; for, despite his passion for Josephine, he had gone to the length of marrying her only because a union with her, as the widow of a nobleman of the
ancien régime
, would lift his own social status, and his rise to greatness was still recent enough for a Princess to have, in his mind, a mystic superiority over ordinary women.
That, combined with the way in which anything to do with the East held a special fascination for him, had done the trick.

In these September days there was an atmosphere of suppressed excitement among the small intimate circle surrounding the General-in-Chief, as they awaited the resolving of the crisis in Paris which could not be long delayed.

It was one of the great weaknesses in the Constitution of the Year III that Ministers, instead of being selected from the Five Hundred and the Ancients, were outside them and appointed or dismissed entirely at the will of the Directors. Recently the majorities in the two Chambers had been pressing hard for a reshuffle, in the hope that men of more moderate views might be put into several of the key posts, but their intrigues to that end had weakened instead of strengthened their position. Rewbell, Larevèllie and Barras had not only retained the men the Moderates wished to oust, but had seized the opportunity to get rid of Cochon, the Minister of Police, and Petiet, the Minister of War, both of whom were devoted to Carnot, and replace them with old revolutionaries.

At this, the resentment of the Moderates, egged on by the Clichyan Royalists, had become definitely threatening, so Barras had sent to Hoche for armed support. Some months before Jourdan, having long failed to maintain the reputation he had achieved as a General during the early wars of the Revolution, had been relieved of his command of the Army of the Sambre and Meuse, and been replaced by Hoche. On the excuse of moving troops towards Brest in preparation for another attempt against Ireland, Hoche had marched some fifteen thousand men to the neighbourhood of Paris, and a body of his cavalry had overrun the limit beyond which troops, other than the Constitutional Guard, were forbidden to approach the capital. The result was a frightful outcry in the two Chambers, and Carnot and Barthèlemy had vigorously protested to their co-Directors; but as they were in the minority no action was taken against Hoche.

In the meantime, definite evidence had come to light that General Pichegru had sold out to the Royalists. On the French entering Venice, they had arrested a royalist agent named Comte d'Entraigues and seized his papers. Among them was an account of Pichegru's treacherous agreement, while commanding the Army of the Rhine, with two other royalist agents, the Comte de Montgailliard and M. Fauche-Borel, who were acting on behalf of the Prince de Condé.