CHAPTER XLV. THE CABINET OF A CHEF DE POLICE
Whatever opinion may be formed of the character of the celebrated conspiracy of Georges and Pichegru, the mode of its discovery, and the secret rules by which its plans were detected, are among the great triumphs of police skill. From the hour when the conspirators first met together in London, to that last fatal moment when they expired in the Temple, the agents of Fouché never ceased to track them.
Their individual tastes and ambitions were studied; their habits carefully investigated; everything that could give a clue to their turn of thought or mind well weighed; so that the Consular Government was not only in possession of all their names and rank, but knew thoroughly the exact amount of complicity attaching to each, and could distinguish between the reckless violence of Georges and the more tempered, but higher ambition of Moreau. It was a long while doubtful whether the great general would be implicated in the scheme. His habitual reserve—a habit less of caution than of constitutional delicacy—had led him to few intimacies, and nothing like even one close friendship; he moved little in society; he corresponded with none, save on the duties of the service. Fouché‘s well-known boast of, ‘Give me, two words of a man’s writing and I’ll hang him,’ were then scarcely applicable here.
To attack such a man unsuccessfully, to arraign him on a weak indictment, would have been ruin; and yet Bonaparte’s jealousy of his great rival pushed him even to this peril, rather than risk the growing popularity of his name with the army.
Fouché, and, it is said also, Talleyrand, did all they could to dissuade the First Consul from this attempt, but he was fixed and immutable in his resolve, and the Police Minister at once addressed himself to his task with all his accustomed cleverness.
High play was one of the great vices of the day. It was a time of wild and varied excitement, and men sought even in their dissipations, the whirlwind passions that stirred them in active life. Moreau, however, was no gambler; it was said that he never could succeed in learning a game. He, whose mind could comprehend the most complicated question of strategy, was obliged to confess himself conquered by écarté! So much for the vaunted intellectuality of the play-table! Neither was he addicted to wine. All his habits were temperate, even to the extent of unsociality.
A man who spoke little, and wrote less, who indulged in no dissipations, nor seemed to have taste for any, was a difficult subject to treat; and so Fouché found, as, day after day, his spies reported to him the utter failure of all their schemes to entrap him. Lajolais, the friend of Pichegru, and the man who betrayed him, was the chief instrument the Police Minister used to obtain secret information. Being well born, and possessed of singularly pleasing manners, he had the entrée of the best society of Paris, where his gay, easy humour made him a great favourite. Lajolais, however, could never penetrate into the quiet domesticity of Moreau’s life, nor make any greater inroad on his intimacy than a courteous salutation as they passed each other in the garden of the Luxembourg. At the humble restaurant where he dined each day for two francs, the ‘General,’ as he was distinctively called, never spoke to any one. Unobtrusive and quiet, he occupied a little table in a recess of the window, and arose the moment he finished his humble meal After this he was to be seen in the garden of the Luxembourg, with a cigar and a book, or sometimes without either, seated pensively under a tree for hours together.
If he had been conscious of the espionage established over all his actions, he could scarcely have adopted a more guarded or more tantalising policy. To the verbal communications of Pichegru and Armand Polignac, he returned vague replies; their letters he never answered at all; and Lajolais had to confess that, after two months of close pursuit, the game was as far from him as ever!
‘You have come to repeat the old song to me, Monsieur Lajolais,’ said Fouché one evening, as his wily subordinate entered the room; ‘you have nothing to tell me, eh?’
‘Very little, Monsieur le Ministre, but still something. I have at last found out where Moreau spends all his evenings. I told you that about half-past nine o’clock every night all lights were extinguished in his quarters, and, from the unbroken stillness, it was conjectured that he had retired to bed. Now it seems that about an hour later, he is accustomed to leave his house, and, crossing the Place de l’Odéon, to enter the little street called the “Allée du Caire,” where, in a small house next but one to the corner, resides a certain officer, en retraite—a Colonel Mahon of the Cuirassiers.’
‘A Royalist?’
‘This is suspected, but not known. His polities, however, are not in question here; the attraction is of a different order.’
‘Ha! I perceive; he has a wife or a daughter.’
‘Better still, a mistress. You may have heard of the famous Caroline de Stassart, that married a Dutchman named D’Aersohot.’
‘Madame Laure, as they called her.’ said Fouché, laughing.
‘The same. She has lived as Mahon’s wife for some years, and was as such introduced into society; in fact, there is no reason, seeing what society is in these days, that she should not participate in all its pleasures.’
‘No matter for that,’ broke in Fouché; ‘Bonaparte will not have it so. He wishes that matters should go back to the old footing, and wisely remarks, that it is only in savage life that people or vices go without clothing.’
‘Be it so, monsieur. In the present case no such step is necessary. I know her maid, and from her I have heard that her mistress is heartily tired of her protector. It was originally a sudden fancy, taken when she knew nothing of life—had neither seen anything, nor been herself seen. By the most wasteful habits she has dissipated all, or nearly all, her own large fortune, and involved Mahon heavily in debt; and they are thus reduced to a life of obscurity and poverty—the very things the least endurable to all her notions.’
‘Well, does she care for Moreau?’ asked Fouché quickly; for all stories to his ear only resolved themselves into some question of utility or gain.
‘No, but he does for her. About a year back she did take a liking to him. He was returning from his great German campaign, covered with honours and rich in fame; but as her imagination is captivated by splendour, while her heart remains perfectly cold and intact, Moreau’s simple, unpretending habits quickly effaced the memory of his hard-won glory, and now she is quite indifferent to him.’
‘And who is her idol now, for, of course, she has one?’ asked Fouché.
‘You would scarcely guess,’ said Lajolais. ‘Parbleu! I hope it is not myself,’ said Fouché, laughing.
‘No, Monsieur le Ministre, her admiration is not so well placed. The man who has captivated her present fancy is neither good-looking nor well-mannered; he is short and abrupt of speech, careless in dress, utterly indifferent to woman’s society, and almost rude to them.’
‘You have drawn the very picture of a man to be adored by them,’ said Fouché, with a dry laugh.
‘I suppose so,’ said the other, with a sigh; ‘or General Ney would not have made this conquest.’
‘Ah! it is Ney, then. And he, what of him?’
‘It is hard to say. As long as she lived in a grand house of the Rue St. Georges, where he could dine four days a week, and, in his dirty boots and unbrushed frock, mix with all the fashion and elegance of the capital; while he could stretch full length on a Persian ottoman, and brush the cinders from his cigar against a statuette by Canova, or a gold embroidered hanging; while in the midst of the most voluptuous decorations he alone could be dirty and uncared for, I really believe that he did care for her, at least, so far as ministering to his own enjoyments; but in a miserable lodging of the “Allée du Caire,” without equipage, lackeys, liveried footmen——’
‘To be sure,’ interrupted Fouché, ‘one might as well pretend to be fascinated by the beauty of a landscape the day after it has been desolated by an earthquake. Ney is right! Well, now, Monsieur Lajolais, where does all this bring us to?’
‘Very near to the end of our journey, Monsieur le Ministre. Madame, or mademoiselle, is most anxious to regain her former position; she longs for all the luxurious splendour she used to live in. Let us but show her this rich reward, and she will be our own!’
‘In my trade, Monsieur Lajolais, generalities are worth nothing. Give me details; let me know how you would proceed.’
‘Easily enough, sir: Mahon must first of all be disposed of, and perhaps the best way will be to have him arrested for debt. This will not be difficult, for his bills are everywhere. Once in the Temple, she will never think more of him. It must then be her task to obtain the most complete influence over Moreau. She must affect the deepest interest in the Royalist cause—I’ll furnish her with all the watchwords of the party—and Moreau, who never trusts a man, will open all his confidence to a woman.’
‘Very good; go on!’ cried Fouché, gathering fresh interest as the plot began to reveal itself before him.
He hates writing; she will be his secretary, embodying all his thoughts and suggestions, and, now and then, for her own guidance, obtaining little scraps in his hand. If he be too cautious here, I will advise her to remove to Geneva for change of air; he likes Switzerland, and will follow her immediately.
‘This will do; at least it looks practicable,’ said Fouché thoughtfully. ‘Is she equal to the part you would assign her?’
‘Ay, sir, and to a higher one, too! She has considerable ability, and great ambition. Her present narrow fortune has irritated and disgusted her; the moment is most favourable for us.’
‘If she should play us false,’ said Fouché, half aloud.
‘From all I can learn, there is no risk of this; there is a headlong determination in her, when once she has conceived a plan, from which nothing turns her; overlooking all but her object, she will brave anything, do anything, to attain it.’
‘Bonaparte was right in what he said of Necker’s daughter,’ said Fouché musingly, ‘and there is no doubt it adds wonderfully to a woman’s head that she has no heart. And now, the price, Monsieur Lajolais? Remember that our treasury received some deadly wounds lately—what is to be the price?’
‘It may be a smart one; she is not likely to be a cheap purchase.’
‘In the event of success—I mean of such proof as may enable us to arrest Moreau, and commit him to prison——’
He stopped as he got thus far, and paused for some seconds—’ Bethink you, then, Lajolais,’ said he, ‘what a grand step this would be, and how terrible the consequences if undertaken on rash or insufficient grounds. Moreau’s popularity with the army is only second to one man’s! His unambitious character has made him many friends; he has few, very few, enemies.’
‘But you need not push matters to the last—an implied, but not a proven guilt, would be enough; and you can pardon him!’
‘Ay, Lajolais, but who would pardon us?’ cried Fouché, carried beyond all the bounds of his prudence by the thought of a danger so imminent. ‘Well, well, let us come back; the price—will that do?’ And taking up a pen he scratched some figures on a piece of paper.
Lajolais smiled dubiously, and added a unit to the left of the sum.
‘What! a hundred and fifty thousand francs!’ cried Fouché.
‘And a cheap bargain, too,’ said the other; ‘for, after all, it is only the price of a ticket in the lottery, of which the great prize is General Ney!’
‘You say truly,’ said the Minister; ‘be it so.’
‘Write your name there, then,’ said Lajolais, ‘beneath those figures; that will be warranty sufficient for my negotiation, and leave the rest to me.’
‘Nature evidently meant you for a chef de police, Master Lajolais.’
‘Or a cardinal, Monsieur le Ministre,’ said the other, as he folded up the paper—a little insignificant slip, scrawled over with a few figures and an almost illegible word, and yet pregnant with infamy to one, banishment to another, ruin and insanity to a third.
This sad record need not be carried further. It is far from a pleasant task to tell of baseness unredeemed by one trait of virtue—of treachery, unrepented even by regret. History records Moreau’s unhappy destiny; the pages of private memoir tell of Ney’s disastrous connection; our own humble reminiscences speak of poor Mahon’s fate, the least known of all, but the most sorrowful victim of a woman’s treachery!