CHAPTER 19
MARGONT was pacing about his room. After the wide open spaces of the desert during the Egyptian campaign and the endless plains of Russia, he was suffocating in his chicken coop. Sometimes the interplay of his vivid imagination and the shadows contrived to change the colours in the small space. The walls took on a slight ochre hue and seemed to close in on him, crushing him, and transporting him back to his monastic cell at Saint-Guilhem-le-Desert. Lefine, stretched out on his straw mattress, seemed to belong to another world. Margont had insisted that he come back with him.
‘Can I go now, Chevalier?’ Lefine now asked sarcastically.
‘No, I need you.’
‘It’s not very nice of you to keep me here.’
‘There’s no more time for being nice. Or rather, we have to be nice in a different way.’
Lefine got up smartly, like a cat bounding to its feet as it scented
danger, and went over to his friend. Margont looked him in the eye.
‘You’re not obliged to agree to the plan I’m about to propose.’
‘I want to refuse already ...’
‘We’re in a race against time because of the military situation, and I fear we are being overtaken.’
‘Of course, Joseph’s limping devil ...’
‘If people realised that the war was at our doors, they would be out buying everything edible and the cost of food would soar! But prices haven’t gone up, not by a sou! All Paris is blind! Almost no one is preparing defences. Our ill-preparedness offers a wide margin of manoeuvre to determined monarchist groups ...’
Lefine reflected that here was a fantastic business opportunity. Perhaps he could buy chickens today and sell them for five times the price in two weeks?
‘What is your new plan that apparently involves me?’
‘As a result of all that they’ve been through, our royalists are adept at protecting themselves. I’m under no illusion - their acceptance of me is only partial. They’re prepared to listen to me, but they won’t reveal anything to me. Everything is partitioned; each member knows something that his neighbour doesn’t and vice versa. The group functions a little like a chest of drawers full of secrets where each person has access only to his own two drawers. Only Louis de Leaume has an overview of all the plans of the group — and I’m not convinced even he knows everything! I’ve been accepted onto the committee, but I haven’t been told a word about the plan to carry out a series of murders to destabilise the defence of Paris. I must admit I had hoped that they would be so keen to enlist my help that they would have told me more. Of course, they’re suspicious of me. But they’re also anxious to act. So, to sum up, the group are working on two plans. The first is to distribute propaganda to rouse part of Parisian society to support the King. The second is their campaign of murders - but fortunately some of their members are not yet in favour of that. But what if they have a third plan?’
‘What makes you think they might?’
‘Louis de Leaume and Jean-Baptiste de Chatel are both men of action and prone to violence, albeit for different reasons. They’re ultras, and the two plans I’ve just mentioned are probably not extreme enough for them.’
‘Isn’t killing people enough proof of the group’s intransigence?’ ‘No. Not for fanatics like them.’ Margont added, ‘I feel I understand those two, you know, because I share one of their defining characteristics - idealism! Of course, our ideals are not the same. Which means I feel both close to them and repelled by them. Nothing is more beautiful than idealism. But there is nothing worse either. If you consider history, idealism has resulted in great progress, in leaps forward and improvements ... but it has also brought untold carnage and other abominations. For these two men the two plans are not enough to quench their thirst for action.’
Lefine tried to gather his thoughts. Half an hour ago he had had a clear picture of the situation. Now he was confused. His mind was like a calm pond into which Margont had just thrown his hypotheses, stirring up mud and silt.
‘But Charles de Varencourt keeps us informed, and he likes his money, that fellow.’
‘Maybe he doesn’t know about it. Or maybe he’s frightened to speak, or else he’s waiting for the best moment to exact the highest price ... Or perhaps he’s playing both sides to make sure he doesn’t lose out, whoever wins.’
‘I don’t always understand what it is that you want me to do ...’ ‘When things aren’t moving fast enough, sometimes you have to administer a kick to the ant hill.’
‘And I suppose I’m the kick.’
‘The group is like a liquid bubbling on the fire of events. If we wait until the flame is big enough to show itself, it will be too late. So I propose to add an ingredient - that’s you! - to create an instability that will force them to lower their guard.’
‘Oh, I see, you want to play the alchemist! But do you know how many of those, by playing with sulphur in the hope of turning lead to gold, blew themselves up with their concotions?’
‘You’re not obliged to accept. If you agree, all you have to do is stay with me. I know that I’m regularly watched, so eventually they will spot you. If you don’t agree, you are free to leave now.’
Lefine was more torn than ever. His instinct for survival was shouting at him to make for the door. But there was another part of him ... He always worried that if confronted with a difficult situation, Margont would not escape without his help. And he did not want to lose his best friend. Because once the Napoleonic dream had been comprehensively shattered, once everything had collapsed and the Revolution was nothing but a distant memory that no one dare evoke, what would be left for him apart from Margont, Saber, Brémond and Piquebois? Whilst Margont thought in the abstract terms of universal ideals, Lefine thought in concrete terms of his own wellbeing. Margont was trying to look as if he were thinking through his hypotheses, but Lefine could see that all he was thinking about was whether or not his friend was going to accept. Although Margont had tried to produce elaborate justification, sometimes he was easy to read, even though he was unaware of it.
‘All right, I agree. But it’s going to cost Joseph dear! They’re going to have to pay my wages for the end of 1812, for 1813 and for the beginning of 1814, with interest on top!’
‘Thank you, Fernand! But then who will have access to the police reports?’
‘That will still be me. I’ll just make sure that it is impossible to follow me when I go to see Natai.’
‘Very good. All you have to do is to be seen with me from time to time and the Swords of the King will soon notice you. Let’s take stock. How far, in fact, have the police got?’
‘I read a copy of the report from the inspectors of the civilian police in charge of investigating Berle’s death. Their inquiry - interrogations of the servants, friends and relatives, verification of his fortune, and reading his correspondence - has revealed nothing. No liaison, debts, no enemies so annoyed with him that they would mutilate him and assassinate him ...’
‘Why do you put it in that order when we know he was burnt after
death? Haven’t the inspectors of the general police discovered that?’
‘No.’
‘Have they finally heard that there was a royalist emblem pinned to the victim?’
‘Not that either.’
‘Joseph has divided the investigation in two, and only we know both parts.’
‘It’s us he’s counting on,’ said Lefine. ‘As we thought, nothing of value was taken. The only things that disappeared were the colonel’s notes on the defence of Paris. The civilian police have ruled out the possibility of a privately motivated crime and have reached the conclusion that the murderer or murderers were royalist partisans. The inspectors have reached the point where we started.’