Having expressed his gratitude Roger withdrew, marvelling now at the narrowness of his escape. After he and Pauline had left Arcachon no one could have had any idea whether they had gone north, south or east and France had many cities, but as Savary's police had been on the lookout for them during the past month, they were lucky not to have been identified as Captain and Madame Printemps in one of the towns where they had passed a night on their way up from St. Maxime to Paris. Still luckier, he felt, was the fact that Savary had replaced the astute Fouche as Chief of Police; for the latter, with his unerring instinct for assessing possibilities, would have sent one of his agents straight to St. Maxime, and God alone knew what would have happened when the First Consul learned that his A.D.C. had taken his sister there to live openly as Madame Breuc.
As Roger descended the grand staircase he saw Duroc coming up. After Duroc's mission to Russia he had been transferred as Ambassador to Prussia and was still in Berlin when, some fifteen months earlier, Roger left Paris to go secretly to England. Since then Roger had spent only two days in the capital early in December, during which they had not chanced to run into one another; so this was the first time they had met since they had come face to face in St, Petersburg.
As old friends they exchanged hearty greetings and swapped news of their more recent doings. Duroc, it transpired, was no longer being used as a diplomat and for over a year past had re-occupied his old post as Comptroller of the Palace. After they had talked for some minutes he said;
'You know, Breuc, I would have taken an oath that I saw you in St. Petersburg at a reception given by the new Czar. Those blue eyes, straight nose and firm chin of yours seemed to me unmistakable. The man I took for you turned out to be an Englishman who spoke the most atrocious French; but the two of you were as alike as two peas.'
Roger laughed, 'Yes, Talleyrand told me that you had written to him about the encounter. But at that time I was at my chateau in the south of France, and a week later here in Paris. There's no great mystery to the matter though. It was my Scottish cousin, Robert McElfic, now Lord Kildonan, whom you met. We are much of an age and when young were often taken for twins.'
After another few minutes of lively talk, they agreed on an evening to dine together and parted. As Roger made his way back to La Belle Etoile, he again had good reason to thank his stars that, when Count Muriavieff had introduced Duroc to him, he had addressed him only as 'Monsieur' and omitted to mention his name.
When Roger reported to Berthier next morning they naturally discussed the worsening of Anglo-French relations, and the ugly little Chief-of-Staff was of the opinion that if the First Consul really wanted to keep the peace he was going the wrong way about it. In the autumn he had sent a Colonel Sabastiani on a tour to Algiers, Egypt, Syria and the Ionian Isles. The Colonel had returned to France late in January and, to everyone's amazement, the First Consul had ordered his report to be printed in Le Moniteur on the 30th.
It had been undisguisedly an intelligence appreciation of France's prospects in the Mediterranean and Near East should she again go to war with Britain. The report described the British Army in Egypt as being in a very poor state and that of the Turks as beyond contempt, so that an army of six thousand French should have little difficulty in re-conquering the country. It barely disguised the fact that Sabastiani had gone there for the purpose of contacting Ibrahim Bey and inducing him to lead his Mamelukes in a revolt against the English. It also stated that the people of Corfu would declare themselves for France immediately they received French support.
Naturally the English had been greatly incensed and now flatly declined even to discuss withdrawing their troops from Malta. They had gone further and brought a measure before Parliament for an increase in the armed forces. But the Government was weak, with Pitt still in retirement and Grenville and Dundas now in opposition. Fox, too, had attacked the measure furiously in one of his great orations and this violent dissension in Parliament had led Napoleon to believe that Britain had become so impotent that he could ignore any protests she might make about his doing what he liked on the Continent.
So confident was he of this that on February 18th he had had a violent scene with the British Ambassador, Lord Whitworth, using the old trick of carrying the war into the enemy's camp by declaring that Britain had been guilty of the basest perfidy, while he was doing no more than assist countries adjacent to France in maintaining stable governments.
His assistance to the Swiss had consisted in sending in his two German-speaking Generals, Ney and Rapp, with an army at their backs to make known his wishes about Switzerland and to insist on the Valais being handed over to France. This also had led to heated protests by the British, but he had brushed them contemptuously aside and declared his intention of becoming the sole arbitrator between the Federals and the Unionists who had long been disputing the way in which Switzerland should be governed.
Roger was sufficiently broadminded to appreciate that there were faults on both sides. The British had failed to honour numerous clauses in the miserable treaty they had signed, while Napoleon had ignored the limitations it had set to the aggrandisement of France on the Continent; so there was justification for the re-opening of hostilities by either. Berthier's view was that, recognizing the immense power now at the disposal of France, the British would accede to the First Consul's demands without a fight. But .Roger was not so certain. Although the weakness of Addington's government was deplorable and the nation evidently divided, he knew the streak of obstinacy in his countrymen that had led to their defying the might of Spain and wresting the control of the seas from the Dutch; so that if pressed too far they might yet sink their differences and, weak though they were by comparison, again challenge France.
Among Berthier's activities, Roger learned, was the sending over to Britain of Consuls and Vice-Consuls who were in fact military engineers with orders to make plans of the harbours and coasts; but there was nothing he could do about that.
For the moment he was much more concerned with his private affairs. His eight weeks with Pauline, far from having decreased their desire for one another, had made its satisfaction nearly a necessity. After their first hectic weeks together there had naturally followed a decline in their amorous propensities. But it had not lasted. There had followed a more temperate intimacy that had soon become a habit to which they both looked forward with unflagging delight. Both of them were highly experienced in the art of love and physically each was the perfect counterpart of the other. Pauline had declared frankly that never in a life-time would she find a lover who satisfied her more fully, while Roger remained entranced by the perfection of her beauty and thought himself the luckiest man in the world every time he took her.
Now she was living in Joseph's new house, the splendid Hotel Marbeuf in the Rue du Faubourg St. Honore, and it was impossible for them to continue spending their nights together but, fortunately, they had the willing Aimee as a go-between; so on every afternoon that Pauline had no commitment she changed into clothes belonging to her maid, slipped out from the garden door of her brother's house and came to La Belle Etoile, there to make love with Roger in his bedroom.