After settling matters with the tax-farmers and the bogus “Comte,” André, having stepped down as the prosecutor of the Special Fiscal Court, left Paris. Escorted by the gendarmerie, he returned to the Versailles camp to inspect the Champagne Composite Regiment after another expansion of its strength. “Expansion” first meant the return of Major Senarmont’s artillery company with fifteen guns; second, the formal addition to the regiment of Chief of Staff Lieutenant Colonel Berthier, Second Lieutenant Davout, and others; last came the recruitment from the Versailles area (mainly the National Guard) of 200 infantry and 100 cavalry. This brought the Champagne Composite Regiment to the ceiling set by the Constituent Assembly: 1,500 officers and men.

  Details:

  Regimental Commander: Colonel André Franck.

  Staff: Chief of Staff Lieutenant Colonel Berthier; on staff, Second Lieutenant Suchet and five others.

  Infantry battalion, about 600 men: Major Moncey; Lieutenant Augereau continues as commander of the First Company; Lieutenant Macdonald, Second Lieutenant Masséna, Second Lieutenant Davout, and Second Lieutenant Villed command Companies Two through Five respectively.

  Cavalry squadron (battalion-size), about 400 men: Major Hoche; Lieutenant Nansouty serves as his aide.

  Artillery (in fact two companies), about 300 men: commanded by Major Senarmont (acting rank).

  Gendarmerie company (detachment), about 100 men: commanded by Captain Chassé; Second Lieutenant Penduvas will handle intelligence.

  Captain Petiet serves as quartermaster and continues to oversee the regimental train, also acting over engineering matters, about 100 men.

  Regimental surgeon remains Captain Percy, with Lieutenant Larrey as principal assistant.

  …

  The day André returned to camp happened to be 1790-11-11.

  After hearing the officers’ reports and inspecting the staff and the artillery, Colonel André immediately ordered training cut short for the day so the regiment could rest half a day, and he provided each mess at dinner with one bottle of Burgundy red at the regimental commander’s expense.

  Hearing the ranks shout in unison, “Vive André!”, the man standing just behind the commander—Lieutenant Colonel Berthier, with a slight streak of masochism—again could not help biting at his own finger: the most direct sign of his anxious mood.

  How much would 1,500 bottles of Burgundy cost?

  At market rates, roughly 3,000 livres—equal to seven or eight months of Lieutenant Colonel Berthier’s pay (excluding wartime allowances and officers’ supplements)—and all waved away with a hand, as if only to win a few cries of “Vive!” from the men.

  Soon, however, Berthier noticed that the other officers took it in stride; they were plainly used to Colonel André’s free-handed ways.

  Seeing the chief of staff’s puzzlement, Major Senarmont—his earliest acquaintance among the officers—sidled up and murmured, “Don’t worry. The colonel’s pockets are full of livres. For officers, the higher the pay, the better the perquisites. Ah—when the colonel asks how much you want to borrow, say 30,000 livres.”

  Berthier suddenly recalled that, a week earlier, the Paris tax-farming company had reached a plea-bargain with the Special Fiscal Court. Doubtless, André, as the prosecutor of the Special Fiscal Court, had skimmed off no small profit in the process. As for why he would need to borrow from the colonel, he understood only two weeks later, when the regiment marched toward Reims to restore order.

  While his chief of staff was silently accusing him of graft, André was weighing Berthier’s performance within the Champagne Composite Regiment. Clearly, the officers’ verdict on Lieutenant Colonel Berthier was favorable. Major Moncey summarized:

  “He is experienced and ingenious, quick to lay out every detail of a field exercise—movements by each arm, headcounts, bivouacs, command personnel. His memory is astonishing; he is reliable; he is painstaking and highly adept with maps; he reads terrain with a keen eye and reports the most complex operations in lucid terms… In short, a model staff officer.”

  A secret report from the gendarmerie added: Berthier never thrusts himself forward and avoids political affairs, loyal only to “duty and discipline.” He is not one to seize or exploit chances, yet he keeps admirable self-control and discernment… He never challenges a superior’s absolute authority and is used to serving. If he grows weary, he leaves quietly.

  Of late, Berthier seemed excessively enamored of a lady of the Bourbon household in Paris, so that on weekends he would routinely hurry to the Luxembourg. The lieutenant colonel is fond of grand, sumptuous receptions and masked balls, and of organizing hunts, while his meager pay cannot support such normal aristocratic spending; he must often seek funds from friends and kin.

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  Reading the report, André had flared with anger—not at Berthier, but at the gendarmes’ feeble tradecraft: they did not even know the name of the chief of staff’s clandestine partner—intelligence of the first order. It set André thinking whether to found a military intelligence unit under his own hand.

  Loyal and seasoned in criminal investigation, Deputy Chief Javert was naturally the best fit for such a unit; but Paris could not spare Javert, and André needed a reliable confidant rooted in the mid-to-upper ranks of the Paris Police Prefecture. Since the Prefect’s power was too great, and to prevent dictatorship, the Commune’s latest rule cut the Prefect’s term from two years to one year, with no reappointment. Thus, after stepping down next May, Prefect Legoff would return to the Ardennes to seek election as that province’s governor…

  In the end, it was again Javert who quickly established the lady’s identity: a princess of the Duchy of Savoy, wife of the King’s brother, the Comte de Provence—Maria Giuseppina.

  André had not imagined that the typically taciturn Berthier would become the lover of the Comte de Provence’s wife. He had seen the princess once at the Festival of the Federation: her looks were plain, but her figure decidedly striking—hard to forget.

  Well, the princess’s figure was not the point. The present, crucial question was whether the chief of staff’s infatuation with Louis XVIII’s wife—no, at present still the Comte de Provence’s wife—would bring André and the Champagne Composite Regiment trouble, or opportunity.

  He felt torn; he could not yet tell.

  To speak plainly, André did not necessarily accept a restored Bourbon monarchy. But he greatly admired Louis XVIII’s uncommon courage and iron perseverance through more than 20 years of reversal. Even when Europe’s courts in turn reached accommodations with the French Empire and let the Bourbons go, the stubborn Louis XVIII refused any stipend from Emperor Napoleon—defiant and unafraid. Earlier in life he had shown interest in letters and politics, approved Enlightenment ideas, and disliked privilege. Compared with his unlettered brothers, Louis XVIII held deeper and more complex views.

  Soon André’s unease took concrete form.

  When he next returned to Paris, he received an invitation from the Comte de Provence, asking Acting Deputy Chief Prosecutor André to call at the Palais Bourbon.

  Though André admired and pitied Louis XVIII himself, he would not let feeling and politics mix. Without a moment’s hesitation, he sent the invitation back, stating clearly that, while in Paris, he would have no dealings with any member of the Bourbon family.

  Another invitation he refused came from Louis XVIII’s cousin, the Duc d’Orléans.

  “That insolent Reims upstart—how can he, how dare he, refuse the invitation of his former benefactor!” raged the Duc d’Orléans in his study at the Palais-Royal, venting his anger on the room’s ornaments; the fine porcelains from Lyon shattered into worthless shards amid his shouts.

  His private secretary, Laclos, stood with head bowed at the desk, silent.

  The Duc d’Orléans was far too conceited. That he had helped André—André would not deny in private, but to claim the status of great benefactor and demand the colonel’s humble obedience was a grave mistake. André owed the Duc d’Orléans no favors—nor money.

  Before and after the Babeuf case, following advice from Laclos and others, André had taken the chance to blacken the Duc d’Orléans’s enemy in London, old Dupont, painting him as a public foe who embezzled state funds and sold out the nation—costing him his diplomatic post this year. And in Bordeaux, at the height of his power, André had largely forgiven import and export duties for several merchants linked to the Duc d’Orléans, remissions totaling over a million livres. These two items alone more than repaid the Duc’s so-called benefactions.

  The first quarrel with the Duc d’Orléans sprang from André’s refusal to honor a Palais-Royal request to pardon Second Lieutenant Viaux, a Champagne regiment turncoat; he insisted on a court-martial, and Viaux was shot at the place of execution.

  The second came when, as special delegate of the Paris Commune, André’s thunderous indictment in the Assembly forced several ministers to resign, displeasing the Duc. In anger, he wrote to demand why André had not first consulted the Palais-Royal, since the man forced out of the War Ministry, the Comte de La Tour du Pin, had secretly gone over to the Duc d’Orléans a fortnight earlier.

  Had the Duc approached the matter calmly with André, he might have won a touch of “sorry for the collateral damage,” perhaps even a favor in some future month. But the Duc’s extremely stiff tone offended Colonel André—now greatly strengthened—who thereupon resolved to sever all ties with the Palais-Royal.

  In André’s eyes, the Duc d’Orléans was merely a political skeptic: a noble whose nature craved power and lacked conviction. A prince who preached equality, yet in substance a coarse mediocrity—endowed with the bourgeois knack and practicality, but so full of intrigue as to lack the decisive boldness and high ambition to achieve great deeds.

  While cutting off the Duc d’Orléans, André worked quietly to win over Laclos, urging this fine artillery officer (and gifted ordnance man) not to let himself be drawn into the plots of grandees and end as cannon fodder. If the day came when Laclos chose to leave the Palais-Royal, he was to remember that the Champagne Composite Regiment still counted a friend named André Franck.

  Note:

  Secondary electors were the intermediate-tier voters chosen by local primary assemblies who then met to elect higher officials and representatives on behalf of their districts.