The Greatest Historical Novels. Rafael Sabatini
gentlemen who are starving in exile. What have you done with this gold?'
The Baron audibly caught his breath. His intrepid countenance had turned pale under its healthy tan. 'I can assure your Highness that I have not used a louis of it to my own advantage.'
'I do not ask you what you have not done with it. But what you have done.'
'Your Highness requires accounts of me?'
'Is not that the purpose of your return? To render your accounts?'
The Baron shifted his position, so that by a half-turn of his head he could survey every man in the room. His glittering eyes looked at the pallid d'Avaray, still leaning on the window-sill. The favourite's face was a mask. The Gascon's glance travelled on. Flachslanden and Plougastel were rigidly glum. Kercadiou showed a countenance of gentle sympathy. D'Entragues was sneering, and de Batz remembered how from the outset d'Entragues—jealous of any secret-agent work of which he was not himself the instigator and guide—had opposed the undertaking, had stigmatized it as crack-brained and impossible, and had argued against the supply of means for it.
At the end of that moment's utter silence, the Baron spoke very quietly.
'I have kept no accounts in detail. I had not thought that it would be required of me. I am not a trader to keep ledgers, Monseigneur; and this is not an affair of trade. But from memory, I will do my best to prepare a statement. Meanwhile, I can assure you, Monseigneur, that the sums expended amount to more than twice those which I had from your Highness.'
'What do you tell me, sir? Is this another Gasconnade? Whence could you have procured the money?'
'If I say that I procured it, it must follow that I did. For although a Gascon, I have found no one yet of a temerity to doubt my honour or to assume that I might soil myself by falsehood. I spent the gold in corrupting some of the easily corruptible canaille that has charge of the administration in France today. Every man who could be of service to me, who could assist me in my design, I bribed to neglect his duty.
'For the rest, Monseigneur, my failure is to be attributed to two factors which I did not take into account when I entered upon this difficult and hazardous undertaking. The first of these is the fact that the King was already a closely guarded prisoner when I reached Paris. I arrived some few days too late for the plan which I had in mind. And for that delay, if you will do me the justice, Monseigneur, to carry your mind back to Coblentz, when first I laid my plans before you, the blame attaches to Monsieur d'Entragues.'
D'Entragues started in surprise to exclaim angrily:
'To me, sir? To me?'
'To you, sir,' snapped de Batz, glad at last to fasten his teeth in someone who was not shielded by rank. 'Had you not contemned my design, argued against it with his Highness, described it as a reckless gamble of means that could not be spared, I should have started three weeks earlier. I should have been in Paris while the King was still at large in the Luxembourg, a full fortnight before he was conveyed a prisoner to the Temple; and my task would have been easy.'
'We have your word for that,' said d'Entragues, with a curling lip and a sidelong glance at Monsieur.
'You have, and you will be wise not to doubt it,' said the Baron sharply, so sharply that the Regent rapped the table to remind them of his presence and the deference due to him.
'The second cause of your failure, Monsieur de Batz?' he asked, to keep him to the point.
'This lay in a danger of which I was always aware, but the risk of which I must accept. Finding my original intentions frustrated by his Majesty's captivity, I was under the necessity of formulating another plan of campaign. A choice of alternatives presented itself. Rightly or wrongly, I decided that an eleventh-hour rescue was the one that offered the best chances. I am still persuaded that I made a wise choice and that but for betrayal I should have succeeded. The organization of this attempt called for infinite labour, infinite caution, infinite patience. All these I was able to supply. I got together a little band of royalists, entrusting to each of them the enlisting of others. Soon we were five hundred strong, and in constant touch with one another. These five hundred I instructed, equipped, and armed there in Paris under the nose of the Convention and its Office of Surveillance. I spent money freely to accomplish it. When it was clear that his Majesty would be brought to trial and that the sentence was foregone, I completed my plan of action. It was plain to all that, whilst the more abandoned of the rabble would look with satisfaction upon the execution of the King, the main body of the people would regard it with fear and horror. This main body was dominated by the noisy aggressiveness of a minority; but a bold call at the right moment would arouse it from its paralysis. There is a glamour about the person of a consecrated King. He is less a human being than a symbol, the incarnation of an idea; and to all men of any imagination or sensibility there is a repugnance to see violence done to him. I founded my hopes upon this. I would post my five hundred at a convenient point, which the King must pass on his way to execution. When he reached it, I would give the signal. My five hundred would raise the cry of "Live the King!" and hurl themselves upon the guards.'
He paused for a moment. The seven men in the room, caught in the spell of his exposition, seemed scarcely to breathe. All eyes were upon him.
'Can your Highness doubt—can anyone doubt—what must have followed? My five hundred would have supplied the nucleus for a massed rising to rescue his Majesty. They would have supplied the cutting edge to an axe that would have derived its weight of metal from those who would instantly have flocked to join them. The paralysis of the majority would have been broken.' He sighed. 'Hélas! Could any of you have been there, as I was, at the appointed place, at the corner of the Rue de la Lune, under the bastion of the Bonne Nouvelle, could you have seen, as I saw, the awe in the ranks of those who waited to see the royal carriage pass on its way to the Place de la Révolution, as they now call the Place Louis XV, could you have observed the scared silence of those thousands, you would not have doubted what must follow upon my rallying cry and the dash of my five hundred.
'Standing there, waiting in the crowd, I was not only confident of success for the immediate design, but I had more than a hope to start a conflagration in which the revolution would have been consumed. Given such a rallying-point as we should have provided for the thousands who mistrust the new régime and view with horror the spread of anarchy and confusion, but who stand spell-bound for lack of resolute leadership, we might have brought about such a rising as would have carried the King back to his throne and swept away forever the Convention and its supporting rabble.'
He paused again, and smiled wryly upon their intentness.
'But I was Gasconnading, as you would say, Monseigneur. Of what use to continue? I failed. Let that alone be remembered. The intelligence to plot, the skill to combine, the energy and courage that were ready to execute, of what account are these when the goal is missed? When the narrow line that sometimes lies between success and failure has not been crossed?'
His sarcasm stung them. Yet his Highness overlooked it in the breathless interest de Batz had aroused.
'But how came you to fail? How?'
A shadow crossed the Baron's face. 'I have already told you. The plan was betrayed by one of those—I know not which—in whom I was compelled to trust.'
'That was inevitable with so many in the secret,' rasped d'Entragues. 'It should have been foreseen.'
'It was foreseen. I am not quite a fool, Monsieur d'Entragues. But to foresee is not always to be able to forestall. A man caught in a burning house will foresee that if he jumps from a window he may break his neck. But that should not prevent him from jumping, since if he remains he will be burned alive. I perceived the risk, and I did what was humanly possible to guard against it. I had no choice but to accept it. There was no other way.'
'What happened, then?' his Highness demanded. 'You have not told us that.'
'The details?' De Batz shrugged again. 'Oh, if they interest you, Monseigneur ...' And he resumed: 'I repeat that Paris as a body did not desire the death of the King; that the Parisians were appalled, awe-stricken in the face of a deed which savoured of sacrilege, and from which they instinctively