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  *

  It had all happened very quickly, starting two weeks earlier, when Monsieur de Sartine had summoned him. In his coach, on the way to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the former Lieutenant General of Police had been silent and lost in thought. The minister, Vergennes, had received them immediately. With his long face, blotchy cheeks and eyes glittering with an amused irony, he had greeted Nicolas formally: they were old acquaintances. Opening the session, Sartine recalled that the commissioner had long been privy to the late King’s secret affairs of State, and repeated what he had told Nicolas the previous autumn. Abbé Georgel, secretary to Prince Louis de Rohan, the ambassador in Vienna, had discovered that secret French correspondence was being intercepted by the Austrians. A mysterious masked intermediary had provided him with striking confirmation of this, in the form of indisputable material proof, thus corroborating what was already known at Versailles about the Austrians’ spying network, which was spreading its web beyond the Habsburgs’ patrimonial States to the innumerable principalities of the empire. Every staging post sheltered agents who were diabolically skilful at penetrating the most ingenious of systems. Unfortunately, the new ambassador in Vienna, the Baron de Breteuil, had been unable to obtain from Abbé Georgel any further information on the masked renegade.

  Vergennes had now taken up the story. ‘I must admit, Monsieur,’ he said, addressing Nicolas, ‘that this damned priest’s logic escapes me. He bombards me with contradictory dispatches, and says he has the trust of Prince von Kaunitz.4 As if trust meant anything in such affairs! Kaunitz is supposedly profuse with his confidences. I know from experience what such outpourings are worth, coming from men in power. It is their way of winning the hearts of the innocent and making coarse grass seem like hay.’

  He had risen and was now pacing about the room with small, nervous steps.

  ‘What can I do? The gentleman’s sensitivity is aroused whenever I demand further clarification of his activities and his secret connections. That’s why, Monsieur, I would be grateful to you if you could provide me with a report on our abbé’s mysterious interlocutor. We can no longer be certain that the correspondence that reaches us is genuine …’ He sighed. ‘Alas, nothing can be taken for granted, for men are corruptible … I’d also like you to put together, with the help of Breteuil, a memorandum on the recent additions to the empire, especially in Moldavia: its limits, the number and nature of the troops stationed there and other details of that kind, for which I would gladly acknowledge your diligence, but which it would have been perfectly within the abbé’s capacity to obtain for himself if he had not considered them irrelevant to his personal glory.’

  Vergennes turned to Sartine.

  ‘It will be up to you to work out the details of all this with the commissioner, who will travel, on this occasion, as the Marquis de Ranreuil. I’ll also leave it to you to tell him what we’ve decided. Unlimited credit is available from my offices. Passports will need to be taken care of …’

  Back in Paris, the two men had set to work without delay. Sartine, who had always been cautious whenever he himself became involved in the details of a case, revealed to Nicolas the pretext that had been agreed on to serve as cover for the mission. The Baron de Breteuil, on taking up his post in Vienna, had been unable to take with him in his diplomatic baggage a Sèvres bust of the Queen intended for her mother, as it had not yet been finished at the factory. Nicolas would be given the task of transporting it and handing it over to its august consignee. To give the mission even more glamour and credibility, an officer would be attached to it, a lieutenant-colonel named the Chevalier de Lastire. They would have a berlin at their disposal, and would take Rabouine with them as groom and bodyguard. Nicolas suggested taking Bourdeau, but Sartine would not hear of it: he had only just found his feet again in the Lieutenancy General while still being required to deal with problems at the Department of the Navy. Inspector Bourdeau’s experience and the total confidence he had in him made him an essential resource when Nicolas was away.

  Nicolas raised the question of language. As English was the only foreign tongue he knew, his investigation could well be severely hampered. Given this, he proposed that Dr Semacgus take part in the expedition.

  An outstanding botanist, Semacgus had often expressed a wish to visit Emperor Francis I’s botanical gardens at Schönbrunn and meet Nikolaus von Jacquin, a pupil of the Jussieus, famed for his travels in the West Indies and Colombia. The plants brought back from this expedition adorned the imperial gardens. With his usual spirit of contradiction, Sartine objected that this journey was not being undertaken in the interests of science, but changed his mind on learning that the former navy surgeon spoke perfect German. Moreover, he knew him to be a man of good counsel, and, if the need arose, a useful helper. Last but not least, Sartine gave Nicolas a large sum in louis and some bills of exchange to be redeemed from a bank in the Austrian capital.

  The following day Nicolas had attended the Queen’s toilet. As usual, Her Majesty was pleased to see him, and clapped her hands with delight on learning that her rider from Compiègne would be taking her bust to her dear mamma. The Austrian ambassador, Mercy-Argenteau, who was present at the interview, assured him of his support, offered his services and promised letters of recommendation, which Nicolas would receive that very evening. He had known the commissioner since the Archduke Maximilian’s visit to France. The Queen scribbled a note for Maria Theresa, which she gave to Nicolas, asking him, with a little laugh, to tell the Empress that it was indeed from her hand. As Nicolas resolved to elucidate this mystery, the ambassador stopped him on the staircase and informed him, breathlessly, that Her Majesty had been trying for some time now to make her handwriting less childish.

  There was much surprise in the Noblecourt household at this new venture, as well as a touch of anxiety. Bourdeau, torn between concern that he would not be accompanying Nicolas and his satisfaction at the knowledge that Sartine considered him indispensable, finally convinced himself that this resounding endorsement was ample compensation for any disappointment. Rabouine jumped for joy and hastened to acquire the livery appropriate to his temporary functions. As for Semacgus, as soon as he heard about the expedition, he turned red and ordered his trunk to be made ready. Nicolas made a quick visit to Versailles to see Mademoiselle d’Arranet, who begged him to take her with him, and he had to reason with her and convince her of the unseemliness of such an idea. The preparations took their course. Nicolas thought about what to take, particularly his clothes, which not only had to be suitable for the journey, but adaptable to the most diverse situations. With the help of Inspector Bourdeau, he also acquired a parallel wardrobe, a judiciously chosen collection of disparate costumes appropriate for disguises. The cooks in Rue Montmartre, Marion and Catherine, joined forces with Semacgus’s cook, Awa, to provide the travellers with an abundance of transportable provisions along with bottles of drink to wash them down. Terrines, pork cuts, various andouilles, biscuits and sweets and a myriad of clay pots containing jellies and jams were carefully placed in a wicker trunk. Rabouine had hired an almost new berlin drawn by six horses, with a coachman and a postilion. The Queen’s bust, neatly wrapped in thick twill, was put inside a solid wooden crate filled with straw.

  *

  Early on the freezing morning of Wednesday 15 February, they all met outside the Noblecourt house. Rabouine, his amaranthine livery with its silver edging half concealed beneath his ratine coat, perched next to the coachman, while the postilion, wearing thick boots, sat astride one of the horses. The Chevalier de Lastire was a man of indeterminate age in a brownish-red cavalry cloak, his hair drawn back and plaited, and immediately gave the impression of being a good companion. Dr Semacgus was wrapped against the cold in a cape with an otterskin collar, his face almost hidden beneath a hat of the same fur. Nicolas was wearing for the first time a creation by his tailor, Master Vachon, an ample cloak with a sable collar endowed with many pockets. He had tied around his neck a cashmere shawl given to
him by Aimée d’Arranet, who had made him promise never to take it off. With delight, he breathed in its delicate scent of verbena.

  The money provided by Vergennes and Sartine would certainly come in useful. There were fifty-nine staging posts between Paris and Strasbourg and, with a carriage of that size, the cost, simply within the borders of the kingdom, would amount to several hundred livres. The usual route went through Chalons, Saint-Dizier, Bar-le-Duc, Nancy, Lunéville, Phalsbourg and Saverne, to name only the most important French stages. The guide produced by the Messageries Royales indicated in addition that if they reached Strasbourg after the gates were closed, they would have to pay the master of the staging post ten sols per horse in addition to the road toll. And when they finally got to Vienna, they would need to hire a carriage locally, in order to move about the congested streets.

  Their conversations regarding the material conditions of the journey broke the ice with the Chevalier de Lastire. He revealed himself to be quite an expert on currencies and distributed to them little handbooks on square pieces of paper detailing rates of exchange. He explained learnedly that an Austrian kronthaler was the equivalent of eighty livres, in other words a louis d’or, that a livre comprised twenty sols, a sol four liards and that consequently a liard was worth one pfennig, and finally that all this resulted in … At this point, he seemed to get lost in his own reasoning, bringing up kreutzers where florins would have been more appropriate. He ended up trying to convert pfennigs into anas from the Indies, and Semacgus, who had sailed the seven seas, had to help him out. The company, joined now by Rabouine, who was frozen to the marrow, grew livelier, and the surgeon took advantage of the mood to extract from under the seat little wooden cases lined with sheet metal and filled with embers. These foot warmers were greeted with much enthusiasm, and the gaiety increased when he displayed a travelling chamber pot, in its morocco-leather casket, with a gilded rim that was unanimously praised. He brought their enthusiasm to a peak by opening a little wooden case from the West Indies, containing glasses and four knives with mother-of-pearl handles and two folding blades, one serving as a fork and the other for cutting. They decided to start immediately on their provisions, and the afternoon was spent in an after-lunch nap.

  The days passed, punctuated by the small incidents of the journey: an unshoed horse, their bracing walks up the slopes to lighten the load on the vehicle, the constant bitter arguments at the staging posts to obtain the best horses, the filthy inns and the nightly invasions of cockroaches. Semacgus had distributed among his companions little pots of fragrant pomade of his own making, in which camphor dominated, among other substances the identity of which he jealously guarded. Dinner followed lunch, and lunch dinner, all more or less acceptable. The most memorable meal was a feast at the Lion d’Or inn in Vitry-le-François. Grilled andouillettes from Troyes, glistening with fat, had whetted their appetites for a rabbit pâté, the pieces of which, the hostess explained, she marinated in red wine and plum brandy for several days. Its fragrant aroma derived from the fact that it was not at all deboned. The whole was cooked for a long time in a pastry casing made of lard, in the centre of which was a navel, as she called it, through which the cooking smells escaped. A pork brawn terrine complemented this treat, followed by a local cheese coated in wood ash and a delightfully cool Champagne wine. The cheese was wonderfully full-bodied, and they tried to discover the secret of its manufacture, but in vain. All that the hostess would tell them was that it was washed thoroughly with a brush before being served, which only made it all the more mysterious.

  To crown the feast, they were brought a plate of roussettes, light and puffy lozenges of fried and sweetened dough. Semacgus declared that they would be the perfect accompaniment to an omelette made by himself. He rushed to the hearth, seized some twenty eggs – a reasonable amount for four healthy appetites, he asserted – and, with a wink, broke them and separated the yolks from the whites. The former were sprinkled with sugar and stirred with a fork, and the latter whisked, then both were put together and poured, extremely carefully, into a huge frying pan sizzling with pale-coloured butter. Under the effect of the heat, and to the astonished eyes of the audience, the eggs thus prepared swelled prodigiously. Semacgus added copious amounts of sugar, then, taking a bottle of old rum from inside his coat, poured most of it into a saucepan to heat it. He slid the omelette onto a dish, and a smell of foaming caramel rose from it. Then he poured the rum over the omelette and set fire to the whole with a lighted twig. Blue flames flared up, illuminating the joyful faces of the guests. The crustiness of the roussettes combined harmoniously with the smoothness of the omelette, a smoothness enhanced by the rum. For a long while, the only sounds were the sighs of pleasure emitted by the four travellers.

  Winter persisted, and the cold clung so determinedly to the buildings, even the most impervious to draughts, that the biggest and most skilfully stoked fire could not warm them. Nicolas noted the grim faces of the peasants they came across at the staging posts. The autumn had been harsh enough, and a prodigious quantity of fine fruits had been lost. Now there was a fear that this severe winter would expose them to the double scourge of starvation and ruin. Frost would remain on the ground until midday, when the sun would make the air milder and melt the snow and black ice. When night came, the north wind would start blowing again, bringing clouds laden with snow, and everything would freeze again until the next day.

  When they reached Strasbourg, Nicolas was surprised by the city’s beauty and wealth, and delighted by the pink cathedral towering over the sloping roofs, which recalled those evenings in the servants’ pantry when Catherine Gauss spoke of her birthplace. They stocked up with salted meat, bacon and smoked shoulders, to which Semacgus added a few pots of horseradish, a particular favourite of his. Nicolas had a surprise in store for them. Having heard Monsieur Lenoir mention the Maréchal de Contades’s pâté de foie gras, he had talked about it with Lenoir’s cook, who had revealed that the secret was jealously guarded by the maréchal’s cook, Close, a Norman like him. This bond had done the job, and now they were able to take delight in this quintessential dish, surrounded by a douillette of finely chopped veal and covered with a thin coating of golden pastry. A smooth Trottacker from Ribeauvillé was the perfect accompaniment, making for a long, merry evening.

  The journey resumed, its monotony made all the worse by fatigue and the lack of exercise. They were rarely even able to look out at the unknown landscapes through which they passed, as these were all too often shrouded in fog and flurries of snow. Fortunately, the Chevalier de Lastire, revealing a new talent every day, enlivened the party with his carefree humour. A frequent guest at Parisian salons, he had adopted many of their pastimes. He would, for example, cut pieces out of sheets of paper to make chains of jumping jacks. He was so good at this, and did it so often, that after a while Semacgus, who had let him use his letter paper, had to stop him, pointing out that the mail was weighed and taxed at a higher rate the further they got from Paris, which made it necessary to use paper sparingly and even to write in as small and cramped a hand as possible. Somewhat put out by this, the chevalier plunged morosely into another pastime popular with men in fashionable circles, and began embroidering his coat of arms on a piece of fabric stretched over a hoop. Once his good mood had returned, he diverted them with accounts of his campaigns. He seemed slightly bitter, and confessed to them that he hoped that this mission to Vienna would bring him the reward for his services for which he had long wished. In his opinion, one ought to be esteemed, above all, for one’s prowess on the battlefield. Alas, the price at which one was valued was all too often based on intrigue and unfounded claims. Favour and privilege dominated in those other battlefields: the Court and – sometimes – the bedroom. All too often, those who had barely heard the sound of cannon fire were the most rewarded. They strove to console this man, already of mature years, who saw honours drifting away from him, and Semacgus opened a bottle to toast his future success.

  Late on the
morning of Wednesday 1 March, after stops in Salzburg and Linz, their carriage, covered in snow and led by two horses that were no more than spectral white shadows, passed through the old perimeter of ramparts, towers and bastions and entered Vienna. Confined within its walls, the city seemed like a small town surrounded by a large sheet of ice on which suburbs were beginning to take shape. Lastire told them that these fortifications had been erected on the ruins left by the last Turkish siege in 1683. Their first impression quickly yielded to admiration at the number and splendour of the palaces, churches and monuments. Luxury and opulence were apparent in the outward aspect of the houses with their carved and decorated façades and in the sumptuousness of the shops. Nevertheless, they could not help seeing this imperial capital through jaded Parisian eyes and judging it somewhat provincial – to such an extent that Semacgus mocked their comments and urged them to avoid this failing, which was common among the French. One had, he said, to change one’s tune when one came to a foreign land and consider it without prejudice and without making comparisons.

  Nicolas, as ever a collector of people, looked out avidly at strange figures whose clothes reflected the diversity of the nations composing the empire and the proximity of its territories to those of the Turks. The Golden Bull, a hotel recommended by the Austrian ambassador, situated in Seilergasse in the very heart of the city, surprised them with its luxury and cleanliness. It seemed to Nicolas that it could rival the best establishments in Paris: the Hôtel du Parc Royal in Rue Colombier and the Hôtel de Luynes in Faubourg Saint-Germain.