“I have been bent double for two nights and a day,” he writes to his friend on September 1, 1794, “without being able to change my position. It takes four persons to move this great body of mine. I am a little more free from pain at present, and I take up my pen at the earliest possible moment to send you this explanation of my silence.”
It is at this moment that Louis de Frotté, who has been a little in the background, comes again to the front of the stage. Since his arrival in London, the young officer, without neglecting the society of the Royalist Committee, has been spending most of his time in the offices of the English Government, endeavouring to impress upon Windham “the desirability of carrying out his ideas, and the ease with which they may be brought to fruit, as he has made up his mind to devote himself to them.” One project he has specially at heart, that of receiving some kind of official mission from the Government which will enable him to land in Normandy with adequate powers and to give new life there to the Royalist insurrection. Should he succeed, the help he “would thus obtain would lead to the execution of our cherished plans,” he writes to Lady Atkyns, and she will reap at last “all the honour that will be due to the generous sacrifices that she has made.”
But in his interview with the Minister he does not think it necessary to speak of their relations with the Temple. This secret is too important for him to confide it to any one. “Too many people know it already.” These words, hinting a delicate reproach, are meant, perhaps, to put his fair friend upon her guard. Perhaps they mean more than that. Read in the light of subsequent letters from the young émigré, they serve as a key to his private feelings—to his dislike at having to share her confidence with so many others, and to his jealousy later of the man who has so large a place in her heart. These feelings, still slight, soon become more marked, and presently we find that they are reciprocated.
For the time being, however, both Frotté and Cormier worked with the same ardour at their allotted tasks. Frotté, proceeding with his negotiation with Windham, counted now upon support from Puisaye, his famous compatriot recently come to England. Cormier writes to her to report that, despite apparent dilatoriness, their agents have not been inactive.
“I have received letters through the captain,” he tells her on October 1, 1794, “which satisfy me, brief as they are. Here is what they have to tell me: ‘Be at ease in your mind; they imagine they are working for themselves, and really they are working for us, and we shall have the profit. Be patient and don’t lose trust.’ The captain had orders to return at once to-day, but he will not start until to-night or to-morrow morning, and we have news by the packet-boats meanwhile that order reigns in Paris.”
Day after day passed by, bringing new reports, none of them positive, of the death of the little Dauphin. Lady Atkyns knew not what to make of the situation. Presently—eight days after the last—there came another letter from Cormier, to reassure her.
“I have great faith in your judgment,” he declares, “and your presentiments are almost always right, but I really do not think that you have ground for disquiet now. Three agents of ours at the Temple are either at work silently or else they are in hiding. All we know for certain is that they have not been guillotined, as they have not been mentioned in any of the lists.”
His wife was still unfortunately detained, but there was prospect of her being shortly at liberty, and then she would write to him. If the agents had taken it upon themselves to modify their project—the one thing that was to be feared—they could not possibly have succeeded in sending particulars yet of this. But an explanation of the mystery was soon to be forthcoming.
“The Dauphin is not to be got out by main force or in a balloon,” Cormier had once written. Any attempt at carrying him off under the very nose of his warders and of the delegates of the Commune would have been madness. All idea of such a rescue had long been put aside. How, then, was the matter to be dealt with? By such means as circumstances might dictate—by finding a substitute for the young prisoner, a mute who should play the rôle until an occasion should offer for smuggling away the real Dauphin, concealed meanwhile somewhere in the upper chambers of the Tower. Mme. Atkyns did not herself approve of this plan.
“I was strongly opposed to it,” she notes at the foot of a letter from Cormier dated June 3, 1795, “as I pointed out to my friends that it might have an undesirable result, and that those who were being entrusted with the carrying off of the Dauphin, after getting the money, might declare afterwards that he had not been got out of the Temple.”