When the prosecutor began to look faintly impatient, Talleyrand finally stated his real purpose. His uncle, the Archbishop of Reims—old Talleyrand—had asked his nephew to convey a message to the prosecutor André: the Archbishop of Reims was willing to use the Catholic Church’s local influence to resolve, by peaceful means, the conflict between the Reims City Hall and the Marne Commune.

  At this, André chuckled. Even now, that oil-rich, fabulously wealthy Archbishop Talleyrand wanted to go on lording it over Reims—without sharing the estates and fortunes he had amassed for decades. Even if a well-fed André were inclined to agree, the wolfish members of the Marne Commune, not to mention the 700 deputies of the Constituent Assembly, would never consent so easily.

  “In that case,” André said bluntly, “let the Church hand over every deed to its landed property; as for the money it misappropriated, call half of it even.” He added, “Besides, His Grace must allow my people to take over Reims without obstruction—and it must be a Reims left whole and undamaged.”

  …

  A few days later, Prieur asked about the matter. “Do you trust the promises of Talleyrand and his archbishop uncle?”

  André burst out laughing. “How could I? Even the cheap harlots of the Palais-Royal show more honesty than they do. Since childhood, when he became lame and lost his inheritance, Talleyrand’s temper turned; he cares nothing for the Talleyrand family’s fate, detests his own parents, and least of all his uncle, the Archbishop of Reims. His ‘talks’ with me were only to wring a side payment from that rich uncle. Still, from our conversation I sensed something about to happen: the bishops of Reims—great and small—are preparing to flee abroad. So that night I sent riders to Chalons to ask Chief Prosecutor Thuriot for an emergency decree.”

  Sure enough, the day after the letter arrived, the Chief Prosecutor of the Marne issued a decree providing that, from 1790-11-01 and for the next three months, all transactions in immovable property within Reims and the surrounding ten leagues (40 km)—including land, houses, mining and prospecting rights, fixtures and accessions inseparable from the land by nature or labor—would be frozen. Violations would be deemed illegal transactions; contracts would be void, and both parties held liable. In addition, the Marne would monitor capital flows in banks and other financial institutions within Reims, to prevent the bishops from dumping or transferring assets.

  By coincidence, Talleyrand also spoke to his mistress about that private meeting in the café with André.

  He said, “That orphan from Reims is an absolute realist—a cool-headed Machiavellian. More shameless and more cunning than I am; but also more capable, and more persuasive. With luck, as the God-Favoured, he may well make new history.”

  …

  On 10-31, the storm André had stirred in the Constituent Assembly was still raging.

  The Paris Circuit Criminal Court moved swiftly: it tried and sentenced the fifty-three rioters who had stormed the tax-farmers’ villa district. Three principal killers were condemned to death by hanging; eight accomplices were sentenced to hard labor in the quarries of the Central Plateau for terms ranging from three to ten years; the rest were acquitted—including the mad cleric Jacques Roux.

  Meanwhile, in early November, acting as the prosecutor of the Special Fiscal Court, André formally filed a class action in the Special Fiscal Court against more than 100 tax-farmers, accusing them of massive theft from France’s fiscal revenues and demanding a total of 50,000,000 livres in damages.

  As 600,000 Parisians watched closely to see how the prosecutor of the Special Fiscal Court would press his advantage and wage a life-and-death struggle against the deeply entrenched tax-farmers, an unexpected result left the onlookers dumbfounded. Before the first hearing, Prosecutor André and the tax-farmers’ legal team submitted a joint written settlement, announcing that both sides had reached a plea-bargain, which the court approved on the spot.

  The 100-plus tax-farmers, by written undertaking, agreed to pay the Treasury 20,000,000 livres in compensation over the next four years, at 25% per year (5,000,000 livres annually). At the same time, the prosecutor announced on behalf of the fiscal court the withdrawal of all previous charges against the tax-farmers.

  André had advised them to pay the entire penalty within two years rather than drag it past 1793, in which case the court could remit a portion. But they all pleaded lack of funds and inability to pay… André could not be bothered to persuade them further. “You are courting your own deaths,” he thought. “Do not blame me later.”

  The prosecutor was not about to work for the state for nothing—least of all when he was about to step down. Under the agreement reached earlier with the Constituent Assembly, 10% of the tax-farmers’ compensation—about 2,000,000 livres—would fund pay and provisioning for the Champagne Composite Regiment. As for the private consideration given to the prosecutor of the Special Fiscal Court by Lavoisier and others, no outsiders knew; rumor put it at not less than 1,000,000 livres.

  Of the sums in this case, the prosecutor’s personal share came to no more than 200,000 livres; the bulk went to smoothing things with the Palais de Justice, colleagues at court, deputies, and other interested parties.

  On the third day after the tax-farmer case was wrapped up, the prosecutor of the Special Fiscal Court formally tendered his resignation to the Palais de Justice. André announced he would accept the invitation of the provincial governor and chief prosecutor of the Marne to serve as Acting Deputy Chief Prosecutor of that province—the “acting” because he had not yet been elected by the secondary electors.

  In October of this year, when Thuriot won election as Chief Prosecutor of the Marne, he proposed adding the former Reims native André Franck as a secondary elector for the Marne. The assembly of secondary electors adopted the measure unanimously. By custom, once André had served in the Marne for a month or two, the word “Acting” could be dropped at any time.

  In Paris, many allies regretted André’s decision; others, relieved of a powerful rival, quietly rejoiced that “the troublesome provincial has finally left Paris.” The notorious ultra-conservative writer “Comte” Rivarol (no true noble—he was the son of an innkeeper) even wrote a satirical verse when he heard the prosecutor of the Special Fiscal Court had resigned:

  “That fellow,

  having ravaged fair Bordeaux,

  returns to Paris;

  he brandishes his blood-stained sabre

  and says to the riff-raff with glee,

  ‘Now watch me despoil gentle Champagne…’”

  At this, André could no longer keep his cool—not only because of “Comte” Rivarol’s abuse, but also because he heard a tale of that counterfeit comte mocking Lafayette. When the Revolution broke out last year, Rivarol had lampooned Lafayette, dubbing the savior of King Louis XVI the “Sleeping General.” After the women of Paris stormed Versailles, Lafayette’s enemies took pleasure in calling him the “Sleeping General,” proclaiming: “So long as the Sleeping General lies abed, the nation’s sins proliferate!”

  From then on, through the long course of Lafayette’s life, the unlovely epithet “Sleeping General” was joined by many others—fool, king of clowns, a posturing simpleton, a clumsy court flunky, a second-rate great man—names more shameful still.

  As for André, he was no Puritan aristocrat like Lafayette, too well-bred to spar with inferiors. He detested such insolent scribblers. Holding to his rule that hatred should not be carried overnight, André ordered Deputy Chief Javert to have patrolmen contact a few street roughs who, for several days running, cornered “Comte” Rivarol on Rue du Temple and thrashed him in public—while no one dared intervene.

  Nor did he stop there. André spent heavily to buy 110 of Paris’s 133 newspapers, instructing them to run, all on the same day, an exposé of the true facts about “Comte” Rivarol: that he was no Italian count at all but the bastard son of a country innkeeper and a prostitute. Rivarol fell from the clouds into the mire, an object of public contempt.

  The affair was not over. An Italian appeared, claiming to be the true descendant of “Comte” Rivarol, preparing a civil-and-criminal suit in the Paris courts to see the imposter jailed. Before André even left Paris, “Comte” Rivarol had fled France and gone into exile.

  This asymmetrical and brutal little war between André and “Comte” Rivarol brought a cudgel down on the heads of those political enemies who were itching to join in. Parisian high society was reminded that André was still the prosecutor you did not trifle with—even if he was about to depart the city.

  It had an unexpected benefit as well: it won Lafayette’s private friendship—for the prosecutor had avenged, on behalf of the “Sleeping General,” an old insult, doing what Lafayette wished to do but could not, and sending “Comte” Rivarol into exile.

  Lafayette once joked to Bailly, “If he could get rid of Danton and Marat and dissolve the Cordeliers Club, the world would be perfect.”

  Bailly smiled inwardly and said nothing. He knew his ally had the will but not the nerve, clinging through life to an outmoded chivalry and indifferent to others’ slurs.

  …

  But wrongdoing brings its downside.

  Thinking only of his private vengeance, André had dealt a heavy blow to an unarmed man—a Parisian polemicist, journalist, and satirist—hardly the act of a gentleman. To repair his standing in high society, André put on another show and resorted to his tried-and-true method of “borrowing.”

  The very next day, several Paris papers carried a prose-poem signed with the name André Franck: “I Have Never Loved This World.”

  I have never loved this world; it has never loved me.

  I never flattered its reek, nor bent the knee

  to worship the idols it sets up.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  I never wore a pasted-on smile, nor shouted praise

  to an echo.

  The many cannot count me as their own;

  standing among them, I am not of them.

  I never crammed my mind into the grave-clothes

  of thoughts that are not theirs, yet are counted as theirs,

  to march in line—and so be tamed into submission.

  I have never loved this world; it has never loved me.

  Even the most exacting critics had to concede that, back in man-of-letters mode, André Franck showed soaring talent. The poem was no love-lament, but a martial song—proud, defiant, refusing the rot of reality, calling for uprising, ringing with rebellious romanticism. Ten times finer, they said, than anything by the bogus “Comte”; as for the vision it expressed, it left his rival twenty streets behind.

  Long reviews declared: the poet’s fierce indictment of all that is corrupt in the world affirmed his refusal to go with the tide or drift with the current—and revealed a childlike candor. He both “loved too much” and “hated what fails to become steel.” In the struggle of love and hate, the poet set forth his relation to the world…

  The refrain “I have never loved this world,” repeated twice, was, they said, spoken in heat. The poet loves what is beautiful in the world, and hates what is dark. Because his love runs deep, his hopes are high; reality burns those hopes to ash; yet he gathers the embers and offers the world his faint expectation…

  Seeing such commentary in the Paris Literary Review, André was dumbfounded; he swore to his friends he had not paid for these notices—though smug satisfaction stole across his face.

  In truth, André had only borrowed the revolutionary, romantic vein of Byron to fend off the censure of Parisian men of letters; yet the bored salon set had read vast social resonance and “contemporary meaning” into it, repainting the age’s worldview, values, and outlook.

  So much the better. At least Parisians were assured that Comrade André still belonged to the revolutionary camp—though the veteran of two lives liked to shout “turn left” while quietly steering right. If English verse could please French taste, he thought, he could always recall more and render it into French in due course.

  …

  At the Tuileries—even in a brief midday nap—Queen Marie Antoinette could start awake screaming, the mere dream recalling what had truly occurred one year earlier at Versailles: ragged men and women surging into the Queen’s apartments with pikes and cleavers, murdering two guards, and swearing to “cut off the Austrian woman’s pretty head.”

  From that day, to placate public opinion, King Louis XVI fixed a tricolor cockade on his hat, emblem of revolt against royal power; and the Queen had to step out on the great terrace and bow deeply to the crowd, so that the crown innate to her brow tumbled down.

  When the court moved back from Versailles to Paris, the Queen knew she would never again see those glittering gates; the happy days were gone; her friends and kin fled abroad—save for one Swedish nobleman who had trailed her for sixteen years and kept silent guard.

  That Swede was Axel von Fersen—tall, handsome, and well-set. Though the Comte de Fersen was taciturn and stolid, he was honest and sincere. The Queen told her confidante, Madame de Polignac, that the Comte de Fersen would be the first—and perhaps the last—man to move her to the core. As for her husband, the fat, coarse, timid King—he could not compare with the elegant, virile count.

  By then the Tuileries had been abandoned for over a century by three French kings (Louis XIV, Louis XV, Louis XVI) and was dilapidated, sunk in darkness by dusk. Windows and doors leaked wind; scarcely a single piece of sound furniture remained. Yet the noble deputies among the Constitutionalists had no wish to humiliate the royal couple. Lest Louis XVI take the Tuileries for a prison, Mirabeau and others pressed Bailly and the Paris City Hall to turn the old palace into a luxurious residence.

  So the full furnishings of Versailles, the obedient servants, and the now-ludicrous court ceremony were transferred to the Tuileries. With architects and craftsmen at work, the ancient palace began to recover the Bourbon splendor.

  Even so, the Tuileries was cramped. Though the City Hall expropriated neighboring streets and houses, it could not match airy Versailles; a Hall of Mirrors-scale ballroom was out of the question. For lack of space—and funds—large court entertainments ceased.

  At the same time, in line with the strong will of the Parisians and the Constituent Assembly, the National Guard under General Lafayette took responsibility for the palace’s outer defenses. After the King’s Guard had been cut or sent away, the 300-odd who remained stayed inside the complex.

  In that sense, the Tuileries was never a comfortable residence. Dark and damp aside, the royals had to fear the National Guardsmen at the gates—lest they betray them again, throw the palace open as at Versailles, and welcome the mob in to slaughter the King and Queen.

  The one advantage of the cramped old palace was that the family could be together at any time; their bonds grew closer than before the Revolution. The King and Queen could take their meals with their two children, with the King’s brother the Comte de Provence, and with his sister Princess élisabeth; they could play billiards, read, or talk together.

  Today, in the King’s great study after tea, the topic for discussion was set by the seventeen-year-old Princess élisabeth (later revered as the Bourbon Lady). As Louis XVI’s sister and the youngest daughter of the late Dauphin Louis Ferdinand, she had been much loved by grandparents, brother, and sisters. Because Louis XIV and Louis XV had such long reigns, it was their grandsons who inherited.

  After Louis XVI came to the throne, he and the Queen cared for élisabeth; she and Queen Marie formed an unusual bond of aunt and niece by marriage. With the Comte d’Artois already fled to Coblenz in the German states, these three were the Bourbons’ staunchest conservatives. In feeling, however, Princess élisabeth was closest to Louis XVI and the Comte de Provence (the future Louis XVIII) and distant from their brother the Comte d’Artois; she preferred to “serve time” with her two brothers at the Tuileries as hostages rather than flee abroad alone.

  Slender and graceful, with bright eyes and lively spirits, she had the servants bring all the day’s Paris papers, arranged them on the King’s great desk, and bent over to flip swiftly through them, seeking a fresh topic for tea.

  Louis XVI idly examined various locks sent by the coppersmith Gamain. A “salamander” lock caught his eye: insert the key and turn it thrice, and water spurted from the salamander’s mouth. The feat brought a broad smile to his face.

  The Queen’s gaze followed her young sister-in-law about the room. In élisabeth’s youthful smile, the Queen saw a reflection of herself in Vienna at Sch?nbrunn, carefree at her parents’ knees before her marriage. From time to time she glanced at the children: twelve-year-old Princess Thérèse, considerate beyond her years, led her six-year-old brother, the Dauphin Louis-Charles, as they quietly played with toys on the carpet.

  Of the three brothers, the Comte de Provence most resembled Louis XVI—fair and plump, always amiable. In intelligence, though, historians say the shrewd Comte de Provence left his brothers far behind. He was resolute; for the Bourbon restoration he would refuse any lure, even as all Europe mocked him as “His Majesty Louis XVIII, who will never wear France’s crown.”

  On the settee, the Comte de Provence glanced up at the gilded multi-arm crystal chandelier overhead—its rosy flames bursting into fleur-de-lis—and at the Gothic gilt mantel clock to his left. A letter had come last night from their brother the Comte d’Artois, asking him to persuade the King to sell some royal effects to aid the émigré nobles in Coblenz, so they could raise a royal army and march on Paris to restore Bourbon rule.

  At some point, the loyal Lieutenant Lefebvre knocked three times on the study door. Those within knew the National Guard would not intrude for the next three hours.

  Queen Marie signaled a lady-in-waiting to take Princess Thérèse and the Dauphin Charles to the Tuileries Garden for two hours. No attendants remained in the study—only the six members of the Bourbon family.

  At first, talk ran between the Queen and the Comte de Provence, soon touching on the Comte d’Artois and the émigrés.

  “Do not give those wastrels another sou,” the Queen warned her brother-in-law. “They have taken over 2,000,000 livres from the court, promising to raise a loyal force at Coblenz. It has been more than half a year; the Austrian ambassador, the Marquis de Mercy, tells me they have not even secured a drummer.” The Comte de Provence remained impassive and silent.

  Formerly the Queen never used coarse words about nobles. But the crisis forced the once-luxury-loving Queen to change, to reclaim her hidden intelligence, to save her family’s lives. Suffering had shaken her, and roused her innate gifts. The idle Austrian princess was gone. Now the diligent Queen worked in the King’s study, conducted foreign contacts in the salon, received ministers in place of her inept husband, discussed affairs of state, read documents. She even mastered five kinds of ciphers to evade the National Assembly’s scrutiny of palace correspondence and keep up intelligence with the Austrian embassy.

  The Comte de Provence disapproved. He complained to Louis XVI: “For God’s sake, make the Queen stop. Her dealings with the enemy will ruin the Bourbons.” Louis XVI turned a deaf ear; he took neither side.

  Earlier this year, the Queen had secretly received the Comte de Mirabeau and won the Constitutionalists’ leader to her service. Yet she did not trust the unlovely fat man; she urged Louis XVI to exclude the Comte de Mirabeau from any new cabinet list and cut back the subsidies she had promised.

  The Queen’s political shortsightedness alarmed the Comte de Provence. In addition to keeping in touch with his émigré brother the Comte d’Artois, and with the King’s authorization, he discreetly contacted General Marquis de Bouillé, Lafayette’s cousin among the conservatives. Bouillé declared that he and his army would always obey King Louis XVI and serve the Bourbons under the fleur-de-lis.

  While the Comte de Provence was musing, his younger sister Princess élisabeth cried out:

  “Ha! I’ve found it. I’ll read this new poem aloud—‘I Have Never Loved This World!’ Why, the author is André Franck.” She hesitated. She knew this prosecutor André was a republican and an opponent of the court.

  She looked to her brother the King and to the Queen for their view.

  “Read,” the Queen said coolly. “At least he once took a blow (an iron spear) for the House of Capet.”

  The King glanced up with a smile for his sister, then bent again over his grown-up toys.

  “I like his ‘If Life Deceives You’ and ‘To Margaret’ best,” the Comte de Provence added. “A month ago I even tried to invite him to the Palais Bourbon.”

  Princess élisabeth’s sweet voice filled the great study:

  “…

  I have never loved this world; it has never loved me.

  Yet though we are at odds, let us part on easy terms.

  Though I do not see it in this life,

  I believe there may be hope that does not lie, words that are true—

  perhaps even some virtue that truly holds a kindly heart

  and sets no traps for those who fail. I think, too,

  when men are sorrowful, some truly grieve—

  one or two who are nearly what they seem.

  I think as well: goodness is not only speech, and happiness is not only a dream.”

  When she finished, gentle applause rose around the room—soft, as if not to break the poem’s spell.

  “I have never loved this world; it has never loved me. Heh—surely that means he loves the world deeply,” the Queen observed. “For André to rise from nameless orphan to famed prosecutor, he must thank this world first.” Her tone and look held little scorn; perhaps, in her heart, Queen Marie too had never loved the “new world” of the revolutionaries.

  Louis XVI smiled again and said nothing. After the God-Favoured André thrice refused to come to the Tuileries, the King gave up inviting him. He might be short on intellect, but he was not a fool: André, born a commoner, and the King were not of one world.

  The Comte de Provence, a man of letters, tried to help his sister grasp the poem’s meaning.

  “This is a protest against the mass—against the political struggle, the struggle of ideas, and the individual versus the collective. The poet, weary and resentful that life has shown him scant warmth, attempts an emotional self-rescue and refuses to give up faith in hope, though it has tormented him long. He believes goodness is not mere talk and happiness not mere dream; through self-redemption one may be reconciled. Most poets in real life are unworldly; the author here has a clearer and more urgent perception than most, and so can cry out the sincerest voice within…”

  “Beautifully said!” Princess élisabeth laughed with delight. “I hope to meet this poet. My dear Comte de Provence, when you invite André, remember to bring your sister.”

  “At your command, my lovely princess,” the Comte de Provence replied with a smile.

  From Mirabeau and others he had learned that André did not oppose monarchy under a constitution; he opposed a feeble King without courage. If Louis XVI could not win André, then he himself might try—even if refused, little harm would be done. A plump man, he had a thick skin.