'And what date does it bear?'
'May 30th, if I remember. Anyhow he had been in St. Petersburg for some days when he wrote it.'
Roger had never felt less like laughing, but he managed a chuckle, 'Then Your Excellency will admit that it could not possibly have been I he saw. I returned to Paris from the South on June 8th, and you may recall that I attended a reception that you gave that evening. I could not have made the journey from Russia in some ten days unless I'd had a magic carpet. His despatch, you may remark, took nearly six weeks.'
'About that there can be no argument. But, mon cher Colonel, what I should like to know is how you could possibly have been aware that he had written reporting to me his belief that he had seen you in St. Petersburg?'
Had Roger been confronting anyone other than Talleyrand, or Fouche, he could, in his role of Colonel Breuc, have said that he had heard that his cousin, Roger Brook, had been sent to St. Petersburg and it must have been he that Duroc had seen. But both Talleyrand and Fouche knew that both were one and the same. Now, with a flash of inspiration Roger recalled that, although he rarely used it, he had a third identity.
'You must forgive me,' he gave another smile, 'but I must have been woolgathering when you first addressed me, and answered spontaneously impelled by a subconscious memory of a conversation I had some weeks ago with Senhor Pedro Zarolo of the Portuguese Embassy. As Your Excellency may know, before being transferred here early this year he was en poste in London. He mentioned that he had met my cousin Robert McElfic who not long since succeeded his father as Earl of Kildonan, and that he was about to set out on a tour of the northern capitals. McElfic and I are the same age, and said to be as like as two peas. When I last saw him he affected a short curly brown beard, but he may have since shaved it off. However that may be, the moment you said the word "twins", it flashed into my mind that Duroc must have run into my cousin.'
Actually Roger had no idea where Scnhor Zarolo had been en poste before being sent to Paris, but as he was only a junior diplomat it was unlikely that Talleyrand would know either. And one thing Roger did know was that, as Bonaparte had pushed Spain into declaring war on Portugal, the Portuguese Embassy had recently been withdrawn from Paris: so there was no danger of the congenitally curious Talleyrand checking up on his story.
' 'Tis strange indeed that Duroc, knowing you so well, should have mistaken him for you,' Talleyrand remarked. 'But that is the only possible explanation.'
His masterly piece of invention having gone over. Roger breathed again. But it had been a most unpleasant episode. After a moment he asked lightly, 'And what news does the good Duroc send out of Russia?'
'None that bodes well for us,' the Foreign Minister replied. 'The young Czar is proving a very different fish from his father. He has lent his ear readily to Pahlen, Panin, Vorontzoff and others of the pro-English party. Russia has already withdrawn from the Northern League and there is even talk of her entering into an alliance with England.'
Roger hid his satisfaction by putting on his glummest face and making a suitable comment. Then they parted.
The Concordat with Rome being well under way, the tireless First Consul soon turned his mind to another major undertaking. Before the Revolution the law had differed greatly in the various Governments of France. In Provence and much of the south, Roman law had, in the main, been adhered to, while in Brittany the old laws of that one-time independent Duchy maintained and in the northern governments the laws were still based on ancient tribal customs.
Throughout the Revolution hundreds of these old laws had been annulled, and hundreds of new ones made, cither to bring about equality between all classes or, later, to penalise and persecute the nobility, clergy and rich !w-"eoisie.
During the twenty months that Bonaparte had been First Consul he had caused the most vicious measures to be repealed, restabilized the security of property and put an end to the general lawlessness that had become chronic during the Terror and under the Directory. But the laws concerning business contracts, marriages, inheritance and many other matters remained in an appalling hotchpotch. Bonaparte had determined to reduce this chaos to order and establish a system that would be uniform wherever French writ ran.
On August 12th he formed a committee of the ablest lawyers in France and set about his greatest work for posterity. For many weeks he attended a high proportion of the committee's sittings, guiding their deliberations and personally debating points of law with its most learned members. In due course this immense task was completed and the results promulgated as the 'Code Napoleon,' a greater monument to Bonaparte's genius than all his battles.
Yet during the late summer and autumn these labours did not deter him from making a number of visits to the Channel coast. Measures for the invasion of England had been initiated there over a year earlier but only in a very half-hearted fashion. Now they were gradually taking shape. Roger was of the opinion that they still constituted no serious threat but, with England as France's only active enemy, ample forces were available to build them up until they would.
The British Government was well aware of this and of how serious the odds against England had become. The population of Britain was less than eleven million against a manpower controlled by France of forty million. The greater part of the French Army was stationed in countries that France had conquered and their people had to pay for the upkeep of these occupying forces; whereas for the British Army the British people had to foot the whole bill. The cost of the eight years of war had been enormous, so that the British National Debt now amounted to over five hundred million sterling, and the annual expenditure of the nation had risen from nineteen to sixty-one millions; whereas a great part of France's budget was still being found by indemnities, confiscations and forced loans from the countries she now controlled.
Worst of all perhaps, Bonaparte's policy, which was later to develop into his 'Continental System', was having a disastrous effect on British trade. By bullying and skilful diplomacy he had succeeded in closing every port from Norway down to Cadiz, and in the western Mediterranean, to British shipping. The great wave of prosperity, brought about by the Industrial Revolution, had been halted and was now receding owing to this loss of all European markets for the sale of British goods.
In consequence, Roger was not at all surprised when he learned that overtures from Lord Hawkesbury had led to negotiations for a peace; and that Lord Cornwallis, assisted by Mr. Anthony Merry of the Foreign Office, had entered into conversations with Joseph Bonaparte, behind whom stood Talleyrand.
On October 1st preliminaries for a Peace were signed in London. Roger knew no details of them, as most of the talks had taken place in Amiens, but he assumed that their basis would be similar to those he had taken to London in the last week of '99, although somewhat less favourable to Britain owing to Bonaparte's having since so greatly strengthened his position.
Early in December, winter having set in and the weather become most inclement, he decided that he could now use that as an excuse to take a holiday, and carry out a promise he had made Georgina to spend Christmas again at Still-waters. Owing to the good progress being made with the peace negotiations Bonaparte had allowed the preparations in the Channel ports to come almost to a standstill; so when Roger told him that his weak lungs were again troubling him, his master made no objection to his request for indefinite leave to spend the worst months in the south of France.
That settled, he took his usual precautions for obscuring his departure from Paris, changed out of uniform into civilian clothes and made his way to a village near Dieppe, from where one of his old smuggler friends, for a good round sum in gold, put him safely across one dark night to Dungeness.