Martin Gaudin, recently minted French Minister of Finance under the Consulate, looked the part of an unsuccessful banker.
His watch chain and pince-nez were the only things about him that reflected light. Everything else was black or gray or brown, and in need of attention. He was chronically untidy. His trousers could no more contain his shirttail than a bedroom with an outside trellis could restrain a rebellious child. He cut his own hair and it showed.
He was a young man for his profession, but in Bonaparte’s cabinet, youth was the prevailing feature and no longer a subject for conversation. The First Consul, for whom the phrase enfant terrible had been coined, loathed to surround himself with crepuscular remnants of the Ancien Regime. He violated this policy only in cases such as Joseph Fouché’s; the Police Minister’s capacity for deception could come only from decades of practice.
Gaudin was a wise choice. Unruly as he was in his grooming, he was meticulous in his professional responsibilities. He had proposed the establishment of the Bank of France, and within months the franc stabilized for the first time since the fall of the monarchy: “Sound as a gold Louis” was the old phrase, reckless now to employ; but true enough at the core.
Fouché received the nervous little man in his office. He noted that upon this visit Gaudin was more than usually clumsy; he lost count of how many times the fellow dropped and retrieved scribbled sheets of foolscap from the shabby portfolio he hugged to his chest, his spectacles springing free of his nose and swaying at the end of their ribbon.
“To what do I owe this honor, monsieur? Our jurisdictions do not often cross.”
“To the First Consul, Citizen. He referred me to you.”
The Police Minister allowed himself one of his rare tight smiles. He knew it brought no comfort to the observer; his gaunt yellow face was scant repository for any display of amusement.
“Amateur acrobatics in the books? I’ve suggested to his excellency that the government rotate financial personnel regularly. So much contact with bank notes and gold and silver coins leads to carelessness and chicanery. I maintain faith in the faithlessness of my fellow man.”
“My people are above reproach.” Spots of color stained Gaudin’s gray cheeks, then withdrew like crocus in a frost. “You know this, as your officers watch them day and night.”
And not just them, thought the other. He knew a bit about the Finance Minister’s habits, including how often he visited his mistress in the Rue Saint-Jeanne. A cow; but there was no accounting for taste. Bonaparte had the inestimable Josephine, yet had salted the Continent with his bastards. The Police Minister was a bit of a prude. Adultery was the one Commandment he’d never broken and he cupped his hands around it like the last ember.
“The object of my visit isn’t domestic,” said Gaudin. “It has to do with financial adventures across the Channel.”
Fouché was suddenly alert. Anything that involved England involved him inevitably. He’d made Great Britain a personal area of interest since 4 Nivose, like a suspect under close watch. “Continue.”
“Officials with the Bank of England routinely report large transfers involving holdings on the Continent. It’s a courtesy that benefits all countries, to prevent an international panic.”
The Police Minister waited with an elaborate show of patience while the banker retrieved his papers once again and shuffled them into order. Quel désastre!
“Lord Chesterfield has sold his estate in Spain for the sum of two hundred thousand pounds. A similar sale went through in Belgium at the same time for the Duke of York, who transferred ownership of his hunting lodge and two hundred acres to a Monsieur Corbeil in Brussels for the sum of a hundred thousand.”
“Nothing so unnatural in that.” But Fouché was interested. Both men were outspoken opponents of the French Republic.
“I’m not finished, Citizen. A Mr. Edward Southern, a textile manufacturer in America, has bought for the sum of half a million pounds a manufactory belonging to Sir Humphrey Welden in Scotland. All of these transactions took place the first two decadi of Ventose.”
The second half of February. The Republican calendar irritated the Police Minister: Wind, Flowers, Heat, Snow, Rain: how appropriate to the minds of the imbeciles who set the Revolution in motion with no clear course. He especially disliked having only one day of leisure with his family in ten, leaving five days extra to flap loose, as if a 365-day year could be forced into a decimal system. They were an excuse for an extended bacchanal. If the English were ever to steel themselves for a direct attack, that would be the time.
Sir Humphrey Welden had refused to do business with France since—well, Year One, by the infernal calendar. He saw a pattern.
“What else?”
Gaudin managed to separate a ten-day-old copy of the Times of London without spilling the rest of his papers and spread it on Fouché’s desk. A bitten-nailed finger directed his attention to an item on an inside page, headed A COLLECTOR OUTRAGED.
A titled accumulator of antiquities had objected to the Earl of Rexborough’s decision to sell his late father’s ancient Greek statuary in one lot to the British Museum, destroying the market and reducing the value of the collector’s own artifacts by forty percent.
Lord Rexborough [wrote the reporter] responded:
“I cannot see why there should be so much row over a
few pieces of broken pottery.”
Fouché’s English was spotty, but he could make out the particulars well enough. As an enthusiastic amasser of canvases, statuary, fine furniture, and china, he found himself in sympathy with the complainant; but the advantage of the intelligence to his office was unmistakable. To avoid alarming the Finance Minister, he dissembled his excitement.
For months, Rexborough had been harboring Georges Cadoudal, the mastermind behind the incident in the Rue Saint-Nicaise; that was old news to Fouché’s army of spies. He found it ironic that this fresh morsel should come his way by means of the popular press—and the British press, at that. Negotiations between the earl and the museum were speculated to fall between fifty and seventy-five thousand pounds. In his head, the Police Minister totaled the sums that Gaudin had reported.
“Eight hundred seventy-five thousand pounds. Nearly two million francs.”
“One million, seven hundred fifty on the current exchange, give or take fifty thousand,” corrected Gaudin.
“The margin is as wide as that?”
“We stride ahead on the strength of Citizen Bonaparte’s victories; but at present we are at peace.” He sounded disapproving.
Fouché smiled within himself. There were, after all, men more evil than he. A thousand men dead on some distant field meant less to this walking abacus than a thousand francs extra in the treasury.
“Thank you for bringing this to my attention, Gaudin. You were right to do so.”
“It was the First Consul’s wish, Citizen. I shall, of course, continue to monitor the situation and report.”
“Please do.”
Keep the fellow busy. It hardly mattered how much more these nobles raised. Another big wind was getting ready to blow from the west.
“It’s probably nothing,” Fouché said. “A fluctuation in the price of Australian wool will throw wealthy men into a lather. For the time being, let’s not bother the First Consul again. He has enough to occupy him with the Civil Code and whatnot without fretting over the cost of bric-a-brac. Come straight to me. Tell no one else.”
“Of course.” Gaudin stiffened at this assault on his discretion.
The company had become tiresome. “Forgive me if I offend. I’m taking every precaution against an international panic.”
Fouché’s choice of words carried the moment. Two mentions of “panic” in one conversation made the banker’s face pallid to the point of transparency.
After the man left, Fouché arranged the financial documents on his blotter and studied them the way Bonaparte pored over his campaign maps. Enjoying himself quite as much.
The Royalists were planning something, and were raising cash from both hemispheres the way Bonaparte assembled his armies from throughout Europe. That the something required pockets even deeper than the usual meant a great undertaking; and the greater it was, the more likely its details would soon be the property of the Police Ministry.
Plotters were easy to predict, even if their plots weren’t. They were cautious to the point of absurdity, but inevitably they became bored with inaction. Men who ordinarily kept to themselves out of self-preservation began suddenly to convene, first in pairs, then in groups. They never met in the same place twice, a prudent maneuver—to their thinking. But merely by moving around they increased the risk of being observed and reported upon.
In this, the third year in his post, Fouché himself could not be sure whether the man who sold roasted chestnuts on a windy corner of the Quai Desaix was one of his own or just a man with wares for sale. He routinely replaced his household staff, in the suspicion they were spying upon him for the spies he’d hired himself. The fellow who’d filched wine from his cabinet had overstayed his welcome, and paid with his life. It wouldn’t happen twice.
Secrecy was not a team sport. Fear and greed turned men into informants; aggressive interrogation had reached perfection under the Terror, and a healthy part of the Ministry’s annual budget was set aside for bribery. Discretionary spending, for the bookkeepers. If some of the money went astray, who was to track it?
But the plunder was purely collateral. Joseph Fouché loved his work. Give him a conspiracy in the making and he took it apart, put it back together, and disassembled it again like a watchmaker on holiday.
He locked Gaudin’s documents in a drawer and dribbled a bit of sealing wax on the lock to make sure it wasn’t tampered with, then drafted a letter to be sent in code to all the operatives in charge of his intelligence network, beginning with all the provinces on the Channel:
Georges Cadoudal (description follows) to be
detained immediately upon his appearance in France.
In addition, strangers of every description are to be
kept watch upon and their movements reported. In
cases of suspicious activity, do not apprehend these
individuals.
But do not lose sight of them.
He gave it to his secretary, a dull fellow who at least had the manners to keep his hands off his master’s property. He read it.
“Shall I send a copy to the Paris Prefecture?”
“No.”
No reason to burden Dubois with Fouché’s little hobby. A city policeman broke up drunken brawls and domestic disputes in public places. It would be asking too much for a supernumerary who put together parts of dead cart horses to make room under his ridiculous hat for international intrigue.
And the less Dubois knew of this latest cabal, the less dependent the First Consul would be on his company. Everyone benefited.