De Mirabeau was wholeheartedly with him, but said at last: "All these things should be done, and many more. I am impatiently awaiting an opportunity, myself, to introduce a bill for the abolition of slavery in our West Indian islands. The trouble is, as you know well enough, that nine-tenths of the Assembly's time is wasted by the windy verbiage of our colleagues. Hardly a man among them can make the simplest statement without employing twice as long in telling us all what mighty fine fellows we 'restorers of French liberty' are, and urging us to fresh efforts, instead of sitting down and letting us get to practical reforms such as you suggest. Could he but know it Jean-Jacques Rousseau served the cause he had so much at heart ill, instead of well, by his writings; for not a day goes past but an hour or more that should be devoted to business is frittered away by nonentities declaiming long passages from his Contrat Social"
"How right you are!" exclaimed de Perigord. "And, heretical as it may sound, I would to God that Saint of the Revolution had never been born. 'Tis positively tragic that the Assembly should have taken his sentimental, impractical nonsense for their Bible. At the moment it threatens to force upon us the worst possible solution for some of the most important clauses in the Constitution."
"You refer to the status of Ministers of the Crown?" said de Mirabeau.
"I do. The English system by which they are chosen from the members of the National Assembly, sit with it, debate with it and are responsible to it, is so obviously the right one. Any other is sheer madness; for, if the Ministers are to remain outside it, as at present, they are debarred all opportunity to assess the feeling of the Assembly, and reduced to no more than ill-informed private advisers to the King. Yet an overwhelming majority of the deputies are so hypnotized by the dogmatic doctrines of Montesquieu and Rousseau—that the separation of the executive and legislative powers is a first essential for the maintenance of liberty—that I greatly fear we shall have to submit to that farcical form of Government."
"We will fight it, though!" declared de Mirabeau truculently; and, although his black eyes were dimmed by ophthalmia from overwork, they flashed as he spoke. "I regard it as imperative that the King's Ministers should be drawn from the Chamber yet retain their seats in it. Where else can he find men capable of governing France? Necker, Montmorin, and the rest of his present crew are all men of straw. In fact the Queen is the only man the King has about him."
He paused for a moment, then went on to describe in glowing phrases the type of Minister he thought the King should have; naively enumerating one after another all his own qualities. De Perigord caught Roger's eye, waited until de Mirabeau had done, then remarked with gentle irony:
"Mon ami. You forgot one thing. Such a man should also be marked with the small-pox."
De Mirabeau took the jest in good part, roared with laughter, and said: "Well, the King might do worse. If he would only give me the chance I would save the monarchy for him."
All too soon for Roger, the coach he had ordered, to fetch him was announced; but true to his engagement with de Perigord he excused himself and left the two great men together.
Having had his true business guessed by de Perigord had shaken him badly, and for most of the way back to Paris he took serious thought about the possibility of other people unmasking him. On the whole it seemed unlikely, as not only was the Bishop a man of exceptional shrewdness but he also had had information about "Monsieur le Chevalier de Breuc's antecedents that no one else in Paris possessed. The disquieting episode had, however, served to call Roger's attention to an important development he had overlooked.
Up to the preceding August it had been good enough cover to pose as a young Englishman of means who was travelling for pleasure and liked to spend a good part of his time in Paris, as there had been many such; but it was so no longer. The riots culminating in the fall of the Bastille, the "Great Fear", and finally the removal of the Court from Versailles, had driven the rich English milor's to take their pleasures in the German and Italian cities. Most of their friends among the French nobility had fled, and, as the gay Duke of Dorset had gone home, this winter there were not even any elegant this-dansant to attend at the British Embassy.
After some thought, Roger decided to adopt a new line. He would gradually put it about that he was staying on in Paris because he had taken up journalism, and was now writing a weekly news-letter. For the paper in which these mythical articles were to be published he chose the Morning Chronicle, as that was the most important Whig organ of the day and would sound well with the majority of his French acquaintances, as most of them were men of Liberal opinions.
However, in spite of that unnerving moment when de Perigord had blandly charged him with being an agent of Mr. Pitt, he felt that he had had an extremely fortunate day; as not only did his secret alliance with the Bishop hold great possibilities for the future, but de Mirabeau had promised to introduce him to a Club called the Jacobins, which was beginning to assume considerable importance on the political stage.
Three nights later Roger dined in very different company. He had continued to see the Comte de la Marck occasionally when visiting the Tuileries or about the city, and in the previous week the young Austrian had asked him to dine at his Embassy, where he was still living.
During the past six months fashions in Paris had undergone a greater alteration than in the whole of the preceding sixty years. Silk coats, satin breeches, gold lace and feathers were now regarded as the outward symbols of an inward desire to arrest the march of Liberty; so few men any longer wore them in the streets or had their hair powdered before going out in the evening. But, realizing that the Embassy was Austrian soil, and that few changes were likely to have occurred there, Roger had his hair powdered for the first time since leaving Naples, put a patch on his chin, and went out to dine clad in his best satins and laces.
When he arrived he was pleased to find that he had done the right thing, as the party consisted of a dozen people and it was being conducted with all the courtly formality that only such a little time ago had been the fashion, yet in Paris already seemed of a bygone age. Even for this small gathering, hundreds of candles lit the great chandeliers in the hall and above the staircase; a string band played softly behind a screen of palms; black-clad major-domos, with silver chains about their necks, and a line of rigid footmen stood ready on either side of the entrance doors to take the wraps of the guests.
The Ambassador, Count Florimond de Mercy-Argenteau, was himself receiving. Roger knew him well by sight but had never before spoken to him, so he was pleasurably surprised when the elderly diplomat returned his bow with the words: "Monsieur le Chevalier, I know you to be a friend of the Queen; so I hope you will permit me to make you one of mine, and to assure you that you will always find a very warm welcome here."
As Roger thanked him and turned to greet de la Marck, he wondered if the Queen had told Mercy-Argenteau of his journeys on her behalf to Florence and Naples, and thought it highly probable that she had. The Ambassador had represented Austria at the Court of Versailles for over twenty years; so from Madame Marie Antoinette's arrival there as a child-bride of fourteen he had been her counsellor and champion, and had come to be regarded by her almost as though he was a favourite uncle.