I know not if the English Government looked with contempt on these intrigues, or whether they themselves did not acquire information more valuable than that they connived at; for assuredly every secret agent was well known to them, and more than one actually in their pay. Of myself, I can boldly say such was not the case. I traversed the Continent, from Hamburg to Naples; I passed freely across Europe in every direction; and on my return to England I met neither molestation nor hindrance, nor did I attract any more attention than an ordinary traveller. If I owed this immunity to a settled plan I had set down for my guidance, it is equally true that it impeded my promotion, and left me in the rank of those who were less secret agents than mere messengers. My plan was to appear totally ignorant of the countries through which I journeyed, neither remarking the events, nor being able to afford any tidings about them. I was not ignorant of the injury this course of action inflicted on my prospects. I saw myself passed over for others of less capacity; I noticed the class with which I was associated as belonging to the humblest members of the walk; and I even overheard myself quoted as unfit for this, and unequal to that. Shall I own at once that the career was distasteful to me in the highest degree? Conceal it how we could, wear what appellation we might, we were only spies; and any estimation we were held in simply depended on whatever abilities we could display in this odious capacity. It was, then, in a sort of compromise with my pride that I stooped to the lowest grade, rather than win my advancement by the low arts of the eavesdropper.
If I seemed utterly incapable of those efforts which depended on tact and worldly skill, my employers freely acknowledged that, as a messenger, I had no equal. No difficulties could arrest my progress; the most arduous journeys I surmounted with ease; the least-frequented roads were all familiar to me. Three, four, and even five days consecutively have I passed in the saddle; and whether over the rude sierras of Spain, the wild paths of the Apennines, or the hot sands of the desert, no fatigue ever compelled me to halt. The Royalist partisans were scattered over the whole globe. Some of them had taken service in the German armies; some were in the Neapolitan service; some had abjured their religion, and were high in command over the Sultan's troops; and many had emigrated to America, where they settled. Wherever they were, whatever cloth they wore, or the flag they were ranged under, they had but one cause and one hope,—the restoration of the Bourbons; and for this were they ever ready to abandon any eminence they might have gained, or any fame or fortune they had acquired, to rally at a moment beneath the banner of him they regarded as their true and rightful sovereign. I knew them well, for I saw them near. Their littleness, their jealousies, their absurd vanity and egregious pretensions, were all well known to me; but many a time have I felt a sort of contemptuous scorn of them repelled by reflecting over the heroic and chivalrous loyalty which bound them to a cause so all but hopeless. If it be asked why I remained in a career so distasteful to me, and served a cause to which no sympathy bound me, my answer is, that I followed it with an object which had engrossed every ambition and every wish of my heart; and this was to find out “my mother” and Raper. I knew that the secrets of my birth were known to them, and that with them alone, of all the world, lay the clew to my family and kindred. While the Count lived, my mother—I cannot call her by any other name—was fearful of revealing circumstances to me, of which he would not suffer any mention in his presence. This barrier was now removed. Besides, I had grown up to manhood, and had a better pretension to ask for the satisfaction of my curiosity.
This was, then, the stimulus that supported me in many a long and weary journey; this the hope that sustained me through every reverse of fortune, and through what is still harder to bear,—the solitude of my lonely, friendless lot. By degrees, however, it began to fail within me; frequent disappointment at last so chilled my ardor that I almost determined to abandon the pursuit forever, and with it a career which I detested. The slightest accident that foreshadowed a prospect of success was still enough to make me change my resolve; and thus I lived on, vacillating now to this side, now to that, and enduring the protracted tortures of expectation.
It was in one of these moments, when despair was in the ascendant, that I received an order to set out for Reichenau and obtain certain papers which had been left there in the keeping of Monsieur Jost, the property of a certain person whose initial was the letter C. I was given to understand that the documents were of great importance, and the mission one to be executed with promptitude. I had almost decided on abandoning this pursuit. The very note in which I should communicate my resignation was begun on the table, when the Abbé, who generally was the bearer of my instructions, came to convey this order. He was in a mood of unusual gayety and frankness; and after rallying me on my depression, and jestingly pointing out the great rewards which one day or other would be bestowed upon me, he told me that the tidings from France were of the very best kind, that the insolent airs of Bonaparte were detaching from him many of his stanchest adherents, that Pichegru openly, and Bernadotte secretly, had abandoned him; Davoust had ceased to visit at his house; while Lasalle and others of less note were heard to declare that if they were to have a master, at least it should be one who was born to the station that conferred command.
“We knew,” continued he, joyously, “that we had only to leave this man alone, and he would be his own executioner; and the event has only come a little earlier than we looked for. These papers for which you are now despatched contain a secret correspondence between a great personage and some of the most distinguished generals of the Republic.”
He said much more on this theme,—indeed, he sat late, and talked of nothing else; but I paid little attention to the subject. I had over and over again heard the same observation; and at least a dozen eventful crises had occurred when the Republic was declared in its last struggle, and the cause of the king triumphant.
“I perceive,” said he, at last, “you are less sanguine than I am. Is it not so?”
“You mistake me, Monsieur l'Abbé,” said I; “my depression has a selfish origin. I have been long weary of this career of mine, and the note which you see there was the beginning of a formal renunciation of it.”
“It is impossible you could be so insane,” cried he. “You are not one of that vulgar herd that can be scared from a noble duty by a mere name. It is not the word 'spy' that could wound you, enlisted as you are in the noblest cause that ever engaged heroism, and in which the first men of France are your associates.”
“I am no Frenchman, Abbé,” said I; “remember that.”