8. Tales of Secret Service (20)
The King Smells a Rat and Avoids the Trap
Fouché’s letter to Major Berthémy, the Staff officer in residence at Valençay, chances to have been preserved. It ordered him to facilitate the entrance into the palace of the bearer of the dispatch, “le sieur Albert”, who must be given some colourable pretext for seeing the Spanish Prince, e.g. he might pretend to be a dealer in works of art or some other sort of tradesman. He must deliver the credentials taken from Baron Kolli, and explain to the Prince that he has a sure method for escape prepared, by English vessels off the Norman coast. If the Prince objects that he is too well watched to be able to slip out of sight, it should be proposed to him that he should be carried off by his partisans, who have a false ministerial order which will deceive the Governor. Should the Prince accept either of these alternatives, “le sieur Albert” will have three confidential men given him, and when they are clear of Valençay the Prince will be taken straight to Vincennes and lodged there. Should the Prince refuse both alternatives, “le sieur Albert” will at least try to get him to answer the letter of George III, which will have been confided to him by this agent.
The wretched traitor Richard actually carried out this disgusting intrigue. It may be said, in passing, that he was called “Albert” in the document in order to implicate the unfortunate Albert de St-B, Kolli’s incapable secretary. But the whole ingenious scheme came to complete wreck on a matter of psychology, which provides some interesting puzzles.
When Richard was duly shuffled into the palace with a collection of objects in ivory—it was known that the King’s uncle Don Antonio was interested in them and worked himself at a lathe in his hours of enforced leisure—he was conducted into a long gallery and laid out his little show. After some trifling talk with the old Prince, whom at first, such was his stupidity, he mistook for his nephew, the King, Richard began to broach his scheme in mysterious language, and to express a desire to see Ferdinand himself, and to show him some documents. Don Antonio went out and did not return. After an unconscionable length of waiting Richard was joined by Major Berthémy, who told him that the game was up. He had just received from King Ferdinand the following hastily written note:
An unknown person has got in here in disguise, and has proposed to Señor Amezaga, my Master of the Horse and Steward, to carry me off from Valençay; he tried to have some papers which he had brought conveyed to my hands. I write immediately to give information of the matter, and take this opportunity of showing anew my inviolable good faith toward the Emperor Napoleon, and the horror that I feel at this infernal project, whose author (I hope) may be chastised according to his deserts.
There was nothing more to be done, as Berthémy observed to Richard, who made some feeble suggestions as to sending in the English letters to the King. So Richard returned to Paris, to receive 12,000 francs and an order to reside in the provinces. And Berthémy duly reported to Fouché that he had captured one Baron Kolli, a spy. The Moniteur proceeded to print an account of Baron Kolli’s fruitless visit to Valençay, and to point out the extreme content of King Ferdinand with the quiet life which he was spending, and his gratitude and affection for the Emperor, so amply proved by his letter, which was given at length.
The language of the letter was certainly disgusting to every Spanish or English reader to whom it penetrated. But was it, as on the face it might appear, a hasty and immediate rejection of an offer that the King believed to be genuine, which would mean the probable death of the bearer? Or had Ferdinand “smelt a rat”, suspected a plot of Fouché’s, and foiled it by expression of hypocritical horror and surprise?
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