André had barely stepped out of the council chamber when Second Lieutenant Lozère came striding up. He fell in behind his superior and climbed into a light open carriage.

Peltier Lozère, now twenty-five, had first been a mathematics teacher at a church school in Reims. An anaemia in his boyhood had left him pale-faced, with an ordinary look that rarely fixed itself in anyone’s memory.

Yet Lozère possessed a near-photographic memory, and he was patient to the point of austerity. The monotony of monastery schooling had not broken his will or taught him to drift through life; rather, it drove the young teacher to study all the harder. While André and his officers were pondering how to encircle the brigands of the Ardennes Forest, Lozère—on the recommendation of his friend Father Marey—went alone into the brigands’ lair. He not only succeeded in turning one of their leaders, Captain François, but thereafter worked with Major MacDonald to persuade the remaining bandits still in the forest nest to lay down their arms.

When rewards were later discussed, André personally asked Lozère what he wanted. The young church teacher replied that he wished to remain at the side of the Deputy Prosecutor and serve. André burst out laughing, at once granted him the rank of Second Lieutenant, and later threw him into the Military Intelligence Office for intelligence training. A few days ago, when André returned to Reims, Penduvas had given Lozère a high appraisal: loyal, experienced, exceptionally capable, and tight-lipped.

Thus, yesterday, André formally appointed Second Lieutenant Lozère as his deputy intelligence aide.

The open carriage soon rolled out of the provincial council building. Only after they turned into the second street did André ask the intelligence aide beside him, “Have you identified who they are?”

By “they” he meant the saboteurs in the chamber who had mocked André in silence.

Lozère nodded. “There are thirteen men in all. The leader is Simon Chabert, the Mayor of Châlons, and Chabert’s right hand is Savary Lecques, the local Prosecutor of Châlons. The other eleven re-elected delegates mostly come from the Aumê and Suippe constituencies. They are Chabert and Lecques’s political dependents—opportunists who turn with the wind.

“The reason these men have fallen out with you, sir, is nothing more than this: the cotton-spinning mill of the United Investment Company has infringed upon their established commercial interests. As for Prosecutor Lecques, he failed last year in his bid to become Chief Provincial Prosecutor; he envies Thuriot’s standing and, by extension, dislikes everything connected to you. And Mayor Simon Chabert—he sympathises with the émigré nobles and belongs to the Royalist Party. Several times at the regular meetings of the provincial commune, he has publicly questioned what you have done in Reims; he merely lacked enough votes to turn that doubt into an impeachment motion within the commune.”

Listening to Lozère’s careful analysis, André was satisfied. To slip into the crowd for little more than ten minutes and already grasp the outlines of the situation—plainly, Lozère’s abilities were sufficient for the post of intelligence aide.

Those eleven wind-vanes were of no consequence; offer them a little commercial sweetness, or strike them with a hint of menace, and they would wag their tails like lapdogs and show him their bellies of their own accord. Prosecutor Lecques could be dealt with by his immediate superior, Prosecutor Thuriot; André had no need to intervene. But Mayor Simon Chabert was another matter: he had to be removed as soon as possible. André did not like a committed Royalist standing next to Reims.

Now that Reims and Épernay had become André’s sphere, Châlons, Aumê, Suippe, and the rest would soon be placed on the agenda as well, for André required control of the whole département of the Marne—and, beyond that, the northern Ardennes, and the entire Champagne region.

Lozère continued, “Sir, is it time to take certain necessary measures against Chabert and Lecques?” From a Second Lieutenant of intelligence, “certain measures” could mean slander, planting evidence, or even outright elimination.

André immediately rejected the suggestion. He instructed the Military Intelligence Office to do no more than keep the opposition under close surveillance. The reason was simple: a major event soon to break would give those above the leisure to reshuffle Châlons’s political board at one stroke. If history had not changed too much, it would happen within the next three weeks.

…

Compared with Prieur, who was of common birth, Thuriot—the son of an impoverished noble family—seemed to understand pleasure better, rather than living for work alone. During his time in Châlons-en-Champagne, Prosecutor Thuriot had already purchased several manorial estates in the city. As to where the money came from, half of it was connected to André, his student and assistant.

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At seven in the evening, when André arrived for Thuriot’s family dinner, night had already fallen and the lamps were being lit.

The food laid along the long table was abundant, yet there was only one guest—André—besides Monsieur and Madame Thuriot and their two children: a daughter of five and a son of three. A middle-aged butler stood to one side of the dining room, directing the kitchen servants to pour wine and carry dishes, attending to the honoured guest and the master’s family.

Midway through the meal, Madame Thuriot—wearing a distinctive corsage and a black evening gown embroidered with vine and moss motifs—rose to apologise to André. It was late; she needed to take the children upstairs to bed. At the same time, at the master’s signal, the butler led the servants away, soundless as shadows.

And so the spacious dining room was left with only the Chief Provincial Prosecutor and the Deputy Prosecutor of the Marne.

“Try this,” Thuriot said, pushing a large platter of almond macarons—a famous French sweet—toward André. Even by the middle of the nineteenth century, macarons remained aristocratic fare, a symbol of luxury.

After thanking him, André took one and bit gently. First came a thin but crisp shell, then a soft, dense interior. Unlike the texture of cream, the almond biscuit’s spring held the filling up, adding chew to what would otherwise have been merely rich.

“Mmm—delicious. I must say, Julie’s skills are getting better and better,” André praised sincerely, and he took a second one and slipped it into his mouth. Julie was Madame Thuriot’s given name; like Thuriot, she had been born into a minor noble family, the youngest daughter of a rural Baron.

Thuriot shook his head and pointed to the macarons. “No. The portion you’re eating was delivered personally at noon today by Madame la Marquis de Demoë.”

At that, André froze. The small sweet he had put in his mouth seized the chance to slide out and drop onto the table. He picked up a napkin, dabbed at the corner of his lips, and said nothing.

Madame Thuriot and Madame la Marquis de Demoë had been close friends for twenty years. When André had served as a tutor in the household of the Marquis de Demoë, it had been Madame Thuriot—at her husband’s request—who strongly recommended him to her friend. Later, the ill-fated entanglement between André and the Marquis’s sister had made Madame Thuriot loathe André for a long time. Only after he rose to prominence in Paris, and at her husband’s urging, did she put away the old resentment.

André knew perfectly well why Madame la Marquis de Demoë was reaching out. Since early May, André—acting as Deputy Prosecutor of the Marne—had refused the Demoë couple’s request to sell off their estates. The Reims prohibition on property sales, which had taken effect last year, had been extended by André through mid-June.

They wished to sell because they intended to flee, with their twins, to the United Provinces, to escape the threat André posed at such close range. André understood that as well. Before April, he might have allowed the Marquis’s family to leave freely. But now, the gendarmerie and the intelligence bureau, acting on André’s instructions, had laid out a carefully designed larger plan, and one link in the chain required that the Marquis de Demoë be held in place until after 18 June.

“You mean to confiscate the Marquis de Demoë’s several estates near the Reims hills?” Thuriot asked without conviction. It was an errand his wife had pressed on him again and again: he had to get clarity before he went upstairs.

Without changing expression, André pushed the plate of sweets slightly away. His fingers tapped lightly on the tabletop, and he said with a faint, ironic smile, “I am not so greedy, nor do I snap at any morsel to bully the Demoë family. If I wished, I would have sent the Marquis de Demoë to the gallows long ago on any number of pretexts. The truth is, I have already told the Marquis de Demoë that the property-sale ban lasts until the early hours of 18 June. And under the law, I cannot extend it a second time.”

Thuriot, hearing this, finally felt at ease. At least André was not targeting the Demoë family deliberately—it was merely a wait of two more weeks. He did not press further, and he shifted the conversation to lighter, happier matters.

At around eight that evening, André, fed and well wined, took his leave of his teacher and rode back by carriage to the United Investment Company’s headquarters in Châlons-en-Champagne. Thuriot returned to his bedchamber and reported to his wife what André had said.

“You are his teacher and his superior—why didn’t you demand, as an order, that André lift the ban?” Madame Thuriot asked. Plainly she was not pleased with her husband’s approach.

Thuriot glanced at his wife and gave a bitter smile. “Do you truly think it was I who appointed André as Deputy Prosecutor? No, my dear Julie—you are mistaken. It was André who made me Chief Provincial Prosecutor of the Marne. Without his financial help last year, I might still be in the local court at Reims, a justice of the peace on a salary of only 2,000 livres a year. In truth, without my arrangements, André could just as well have remained in Paris in the higher and more powerful post of the prosecutor of the Special Fiscal Court; and without André’s support, I would be forced to struggle for every step, and might at any moment face impeachment from the commune’s General Council. It is discouraging to say so, but it is the truth.”

“And the Marquis de Demoë?” Madame Thuriot pressed, still anxious for her old friend’s family.

The Prosecutor sighed. “Put your mind at rest. André is merely venting his anger. When the Marquis de Demoë believed André had caused his sister’s death, André in turn accused the Marquis of bearing responsibility for the death of his wife, Marguerite. But whatever the quarrel, for Marguerite’s sake and for the twins’ sake, this disturbance will amount to nothing more than a fright.”

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep