Whose, he wondered, was that deep voice now resounding in the room? Not, certainly, that of M. de Saxe himself, nor of M. de Ségent, the commissaire des guerres, who was said to be closeted with him there. It sounded more like that of M. Bart, the commandant of the port of Dunkirk.
“. . . hard at work from six o’clock yesterday morning, Monseigneur, furnishing different captains with such things as anchors and cables, and necessities for the unfortunate troops who have suffered so much. I could not undertake——”
“Monsieur Bart,” interrupted the voice which the Vicomte de Lancize knew best, clear, rapid and forceful, “I will relieve your anxieties. There is no need for you to undertake anything further. I cannot interpret M. d’Argenson’s letter to me as anything but a formal order to abandon the expedition entirely and without further delay.”
If Marie-Cyprien de Lancize had had the faculty of moving his ears he would certainly have pricked them forward at this. Yet he did not advance his person a step nearer.
“To abandon it entirely!” exclaimed another voice—presumably M. de Ségent’s.
“In truth,” growled out M. Bart, “I am glad to hear it—even though hostility with England comes natural to a man of my name. But—with a second tempest! Is it permitted to ask for M. d’Argenson’s reasons? The bad weather, I presume.”
“Here is the actual letter from the Minister of War,” said the Comte de Saxe. M. de Lancize heard the rustle of paper, and a moment later the deep voice began to read something over. Alert though he was and straining every nerve to hear, the listening aide-de-camp could not catch every word.
“ ‘. . . bad weather . . . Admiral Norris . . . precautions which the English have had time . . . lack of news . . . promised to support . . . reasons more than sufficient . . . meet with more success . . . led His Majesty to order me’ (here the voice became louder) ‘to send you instructions that on receipt of my letter you should give the necessary orders for the disembarkation of our troops’—Ah! this, then, Monseigneur, is the real reason of the orders to that effect which you have already given! But I myself received a letter from M. de Maurepas informing me that though the troops were to disembark the vessels were to remain where they were!”
“Not the first time, perhaps,” said the voice of M. de Ségent, with some acridity, “that the Minister of Marine and the Minister of War have not understood their orders in quite the same sense!”
“It’s a pity, though,” said the commandant of the port as though to himself. “All those men embarked, all those preparations——”
“It is clear that the winds are not Jacobite,” observed Maurice de Saxe. “Count Alberoni learnt the same thing in 1719. And at court I think the weathervane has been turned in a fresh direction by some breeze or other of intrigue. The expedition, as you know, has always had its enemies. One good purpose, however, will be served by these two storms. They make it much easier for me to convince that poor prince without a kingdom of the impossibility of setting out. I wrote to him three days ago to tell him that M. de Roquefeuil had not succeeded in blockading Admiral Norris in Portsmouth, and that the latter had slipped away into the Downs.—Girardot, is that door by any chance open? There is a damnable cold air from somewhere!”
In all history no door was probably more swiftly and silently closed than was then M. de Saxe’s in the Intendance de la Marine at Dunkirk. And the closer knew that it must have been well and truly shut by the time that M. Girardot, the Comte’s secretary, got round the screen, otherwise he would certainly have made investigations.
So, quite definitely, the great expedition was knocked on the head! M. de Lancize was not really surprised. But those poor, disappointed devils of Jacobites—and the Prince Charles Edouard himself! Well, in his situation he had probably learnt philosophy by now.
Standing there, cut off from hearing any more interesting and as yet unpublished news, yawning, rather tired, Marie-Cyprien de Lancize invoked philosophy to his own assistance. He did not know when he was likely to be dismissed; not for hours, perhaps, and his desires were just now turning strongly to a certain wine-shop on the quays, though indeed it was not for the sake of the less than passable Bordeaux to be had there that he proposed, if he could, to fight his way to the sign of the Trois Navires. It was he who had discovered the fillette . . . that fair Flemish type, when it was not too heavy, possessed its attractions . . . he had always inclined to fair hair in a woman. But the Trois Navires might have been blown down in the night for all he knew.
After all, he was not to go to England! Well, more glory was probably to be won by following the Comte de Saxe to the Low Countries and Germany—for it was believed that he was to command the army of the Moselle. He, Marie-Cyprien de Lancize, would be able to fight against the English in some pitched battle, which would really be preferable to scrambling encounters on beaches after a seasick voyage across the Channel in some craft not much bigger than a herring-boat. All was for the best.
All was certainly for the best! The door was opening already. Girardot looked out, saw him standing there at attention and beckoned to him. He was going to get his orders sooner than he had hoped—perhaps his dismissal for the night also. He went past the leather screen, saluted and stood waiting.
Behind the vast, shabby table, whose mother-of-pearl inlay was stained with ink from the labours of many intendants, the son of Augustus of Saxony and Poland and of Aurora von Königsmarck sat writing. Tall and imposing, the victor of Prague (who was not yet the victor of Fontenoy and Raucoux) was now in his forty-eighth year; his eyes under his beetling brows were very blue, but his complexion was swarthy and his hair dark; he seldom wore powder. Fate, in denying Maurice de Saxe his great ambition, a territory to rule (since the ducal throne of Courland to which, at thirty, he was elected, remained his for only nine months), and in allowing him only an intermittent display of his brilliant military gifts, had driven him, always impatient of inactivity, to occupations much less austere. Adrienne Lecouvreur had now been dead for fourteen years, but upon how many ladies of the stage or the opera had he not fixed his fancy since then? Prospects of dazzling marriages had not been wanting in his younger days; he was semi-royal and very attractive. There had been question of two princesses of Peter the Great’s family, each of whom afterwards ascended the imperial throne of Russia in her own right. One of them reigned there at this moment. But he had not married either, and his Lutheranism, purely nominal though it was, debarred him from being created a marshal of France, for all that he had rendered his adopted country such signal services. To Marie-Cyprien de Lancize, who admired him enormously, this seemed a crying scandal—since he could not know that in less than a month the coveted baton was nevertheless to be placed in that strong and elegant hand.
The young man stood respectfully waiting, his eyes upon his commander, yet not unaware that Monsieur François Cornil Bart, looking as a man would look who bore that name of which Dunkirk was so proud—and indeed the famous corsair Jean Bart was no other than his father—was standing with his back turned on the commissaire des guerres. He seemed to be studying the painting of the furious naval battle over the hearth, wherein the sea was scarcely visible for the quantity of floating spars and drowning but attitudinising sailors which it contained. Perhaps, as a naval officer of distinction, he was thinking resentfully of that uneatable bread of M. de Ségent’s providing.
At last the Comte de Saxe dusted over his letter, whose recipient would probably have difficulty with his fantastically bad spelling, folded, sealed and addressed it. Then the blue