a propitious moment for his vengeance, the astute Malin, accustomed to turn all events to his own profit, was leading his friend Grevin to a little field in the English garden, a lonely spot in the park, favorable for a secret conference. There, standing in the centre of the grass plot and speaking low, the friends were at too great a distance to be overheard if any one were lurking near enough to listen to them; they were also sure of time to change the conversation if others unwarily approached.
“Why couldn’t we have stayed in a room in the chateau?” asked Grevin.
“Didn’t you take notice of those two men whom the prefect of police has sent here to me?”
Though Fouche made himself in the matter of the Pichegru, Georges, Moreau, and Polignac conspiracy the soul of the Consular cabinet, he did not at this time control the ministry of police, but was merely a councillor of State like Malin.
“Those men,” continued Malin, “are Fouche’s two arms. One, that dandy Corentin, whose face is like a glass of lemonade, vinegar on his lips and verjuice in his eyes, put an end to the insurrection at the West in the year VII. in less than fifteen days. The other is a disciple of Lenoir; he is the only one who preserves the great traditions of the police. I had asked for an agent of no great account, backed by some official personage, and they send me those past-masters of the business! Ah, Grevin, Fouche wants to pry into my game. That’s why I left those fellows dining at the chateau; they may look into everything for all I care; they won’t find Louis XVIII. nor any sign of him.”
“But see here, my dear fellow, what game are you playing?” cried Grevin.
“Ha, my friend, a double game is a dangerous one, but this, taking Fouche into account, is a triple one. He may have nosed the fact that I am in the secrets of the house of Bourbon.”
“You?”
“I,” replied Malin.
“Have you forgotten Favras?”
The words made an impression on the councillor.
“Since when?” asked Grevin, after a pause.
“Since the Consulate for life.”
“I hope there’s no proof of it?”
“Not that!” said Malin, clicking his thumb-nail against his teeth.
In few words the Councillor of State gave a clear and succinct account of the critical position in which Bonaparte was about to hold England, by threatening her with invasion from the camp at Boulogne; he explained to Grevin the bearings of that project, which was unobserved by France and Europe but suspected by Pitt; also the critical position in which England was about to put Bonaparte. A powerful coalition, Prussia, Austria, and Russia, paid by English gold, was pledged to furnish seven hundred thousand men under arms. At the same time a formidable conspiracy was throwing a network over the whole of France, including among its members montagnards, chouans, royalists, and their princes.
“Louis XVIII. held that as long as there were three Consuls anarchy was certain, and that he could at some opportune moment take his revenge for the 13th Vendemiaire and the 18th Fructidor,” said Malin, “but the Consulate for life has unmasked Bonaparte’s intentions – he will soon be emperor. The late sub-lieutenant means to create a dynasty! This time his life is in actual danger; and the plot is far better laid than that of the Rue Saint-Nicaise. Pichegru, Georges, Moreau, the Duc d’Enghien, Polignac and Riviere, the two friends of the Comte d’Artois are in it.”
“What an amalgamation!” cried Grevin.
“France is being silently invaded; no stone is left unturned; the thing will be carried with a rush. A hundred picked men, commanded by Georges, are to attack the Consular guard and the Consul hand to hand.”
“Well then, denounce them.”
“For the last two months the Consul, his minister of police, the prefect and Fouche, hold some of the clues of this vast conspiracy; but they don’t know its full extent, and at this particular moment they are leaving nearly all the conspirators free, so as to discover more about it.”
“As to rights,” said the notary, “the Bourbons have much more right to conceive, plan, and execute a scheme against Bonaparte, than Bonaparte had on the 18th Brumaire against the Republic, whose product he was. He murdered his mother on that occasion, but these royalists only seek to recover what was theirs. I can understand that the princes and their adherents, seeing the lists of the emigres closed, mortgages suppressed, the Catholic faith restored, anti-revolutionary decrees accumulating, should begin to see that their return is becoming difficult, not to say impossible. Bonaparte being the sole obstacle now in their way, they want to get rid of him – nothing simpler. Conspirators if defeated are brigands, if successful, heroes; and your perplexity seems to me very natural.”
“The matter now is,” said Malin, “to make Bonaparte fling the head of the Duc d’Enghien at the Bourbons, just as the Convention flung the head of Louis XVI. at the kings, so as to commit him as fully as we are to the Revolution; or else, we must upset the idol of the French people and their future emperor, and seat the true throne upon his ruins. I am at the mercy of some event, some fortunate pistol-shot, some infernal machine which does its work. Even I don’t know the whole conspiracy; they don’t tell me all; but they have asked me to call the Council of State at the critical moment and direct its action towards the restoration of the Bourbons.”
“Wait,” said the notary.
“Impossible! I am compelled to make my decision at once.”
“Why?”
“Well, the Simeuse brothers are in the conspiracy; they are here in the neighborhood; I must either have them watched, let them compromise themselves, and so be rid of them, or else I must privately protect them. I asked the prefect for underlings and he has sent me lynxes, who came through Troyes and have got the gendarmerie to support them.”
“Gondreville is your real object,” said Grevin, “and this conspiracy your best chance of keeping it. Fouche, Talleyrand, and those two fellows have nothing to do with that. Therefore play fair with them. What nonsense! those who cut Louis XVI.‘s head off are in the government; France is full of men who have bought national property, and yet you talk of bringing back those who would require you to give up Gondreville! If the Bourbons were not imbeciles they would pass a sponge over all we have done. Warn Bonaparte, that’s my advice.”
“A man of my rank can’t denounce,” said Malin, quickly.
“Your rank!” exclaimed Grevin, smiling.
“They have offered to make me Keeper of the Seals.”
“Ah! Now I understand your bewilderment, and it is for me to see clear in this political darkness and find a way out for you. Now, it is quite impossible to foresee what events may happen to bring back the Bourbons when a General Bonaparte is in possession of eighty line of battle ships and four hundred thousand men. The most difficult thing of all in expectant politics is to know when a power that totters will fall; but, my old man, Bonaparte’s power is not tottering, it is in the ascendant. Don’t you think that Fouche may be sounding you so as to get to the bottom of your mind, and then get rid of you?”
“No; I am sure of my go-between. Besides, Fouche would never, under those circumstances, send me such fellows as these; he would know they would make me suspicious.”
“They alarm me,” said Grevin. “If Fouche does not distrust you, and is not seeking to probe you, why does he send
