As Roger and Georgina had left Schloss Langenstein on the pretext that they were driving into Frankfurt only for the day, he had had to leave all his things behind; while she had with her only two medium sized valises. The Baron's steward had believed that they contained silver articles her husband had asked her to take into Frankfurt to be valued by a goldsmith. Actually, she had packed in them her jewels, toilet things and a few underclothes. The waiter fetched them down, Roger paid his bill and, with Augereau and Laborde, they got into the big coach. At a sharp order from a sergeant, the escort mounted; and, with a clatter and a jingle, they were off, Augereau had told them that he was on his way to
Paris, so their route lay through Trier, Luxembourg, Longwy, Rheims and Chateau Thierry. As the crow flies the distance was only some two hundred and fifty miles, but the roads were far from being direct highways from city to city, and this applied particularly to the road that ran alongside the Moselle. Between Coblenz and Trier, it not only followed over two dozen great bends but, in places, actually ran back for several miles in the direction from which it had come; so, with other divergences they would have to travel close on five hundred miles before they reached Paris.
The events of the morning had forced Roger to abandon his intention of taking Georgina to Pressburg; and, when they got to Paris, having her with him there would raise new and difficult problems. But, in the meantime, Augereau's having given them his protection was a piece of miraculous good fortune.
The road they were traveling could not have been more picturesque. Alternately, as the smooth flowing river curved for mile after mile through the corkscrew valley, on one bank there were lush water meadows where cattle grazed in the autumn sunshine, on the other sleep hills covered with tali vines, among which the colourfully clad peasants were gathering the grapes.
Moreover, Augereau proved a most entertaining companion. As a child he had been a gamin playing in the Paris gutters. He was still a gamin: shrewd, resourceful, contemptuous of the laws of both God and man, full of the lust of life, foul tongued and bawdy minded. Within a quarter of an hour he was telling stories that would have turned the cheeks of most women scarlet and, as he did so, he watched Georgina with cynical amusement. But she listened unabashed, then after a while bested him by remarking quietly:
'Monseigneur le Due, I would find your stories even more amusing if, when telling them, you made your point without using words that are offensive to well bred people.'
Unused to being rebuked, he stared at her with a frown, then he gave a great guffaw of laughter and cried:
'God's boots! You are a woman in a thousand. Madame, for baiting you as I did I freely apologise and for the future, while in your presence, will endeavour to remember to call a spade a garden implement.'
That night they slept at Berncastle, dined and wined off the best and went up to bed tired but cheerful. Before they fell asleep, Roger told Georgina something of their rumbustious protector's extraordinary history.
At a very early age he had got himself a job as junior footman to a Marquis, but had been dismissed for seducing the Marquise's personal maid. His next job had been as a waiter in a gaming house, but he had lost that through seducing a waitress. He had then enlisted in the cavalry, but had been discharged for insubordination. However, a Colonel of Carabinieres had been attracted by his splendid physique and taken him into his regiment. He proved an excellent trooper, a good companion and, before long, had acquired a reputation as the finest swordsman in King Louis XVI's Household Brigade. As, by nature, he was intensely quarrelsome, that had led to his fighting a dozen duels. He had never been worsted and most of these encounters had ended in the death of his opponent.
His days in the old Army had ended abruptly. A young officer had struck him with his cane while on parade. Augereau flicked the cane away. The foolish youth drew his sword. Augereau's blade came out like a streak of lightning and, a second later, six inches of it were sticking out behind the officer's back. Before Augereau could be seized, he was galloping off to Switzerland on a stolen horse.
From Switzerland he made his way to Constantinople as a peddler of watches. Turkey then being at war with Russia, he decided to enlist in the Russian Army, and served under Catherine the Great's famous General, Suvarov. But he found his Russian comrades uncongenial, so he deserted and made his way north through Poland to Prussia. There he was accepted into Frederick the Great's crack regiment, the Prussian Guards, Soon afterwards, to his indignation, in a fit of pique Frederick decreed that no Frenchman in his service should receive reward or promotion; so Augereau again decided to desert.
But to do so from the Prussian Army was a far more risky proceeding than from the Russian. So, for his own protection, he secretly persuaded no fewer than sixty of his comrades to desert with him. Leading this band of desperados, he had fought his way out of Prussia into Saxony.
Having had his fill for a while of military life he then became a dancing master and, in due course, wandered down to Athens. From there he travelled to Lisbon where he was imprisoned for enthusiastically acclaiming the Revolution that was about to sweep the Monarchy away in France. A sea captain secured his release and, at long last, he returned to his own country. There he joined a battalion of Revolutionary Volunteers in the Vendee. He proved such an excellent leader that he was enthusiastically elected chef de bataillon.
That was in '92, and from then on his promotion was rapid. The following year he was commanding a division in the Pyrenees, and in '96 he was one of the three divisional commanders of the Army of Italy when Napoleon arrived from Paris to take it over.
In that amazing campaign he did more than cover himself with glory. During this time there occurred one of the very few occasions on which Napoleon lost his head. The ragged Army of the Republic was greatly outnumbered by Austrians and Sardinians and partially surrounded. Retreat could have proved disastrous, yet to attack the Austrians up on the heights of Castiglione appeared equally dangerous. Napoleon could not make up his mind which to do; so Augereau took charge, stormed the heights and won a great victory.
He was no strategist but a brilliant tactician, and always had his divisions in the right place at the right time. He was utterly fearless and, like Ney, Lannes and Murat, was a frontline commander who always personally led his men into battle. Although he was a strict disciplinarian, he never tired of looking after their welfare, so they adored him.
In spite of the fact that he was now a Duke, with great estates and a huge fortune piled up by wholesale looting in a dozen countries, he was at heart still a revolutionary and atheist; and he lost no opportunity of treading on the toes of the returned émigrés whom in recent years Napoleon had been welcoming to his Court, or showing his contempt for everything connected with religion.
Such was the strange, forceful, unscrupulous, gay, greedy man in whose company Roger and Georgina spent the next five days. On October 1st they arrived in Paris and, with heartfelt thanks for his most timely protection, took leave of the Marshal Duke after drinking a last bottle with him in his great Paris mansion.
From there Roger took Georgina to his old haunt, La Belle Etoile, not far from the Louvre. Long ago, in the days before the Revolution, as a youth and the secretary of a wealthy Marquis, Roger had lived at the hostelry. The patron, Monsieur Blanchard, and his wife were an honest Norman couple. They had sheltered Roger during the Terror and seen him rise in Napoleon's service to fame and honour.