'Why, to be frank, it seems eminently reconcilable with our interests.'

'I see.' The representative got to his feet. His tone was bitter. 'And so, you, Citizen Lallemant, the accredited representative here of the French Government, are proposing to take your orders from the General in the field! Really, sir, it seems that I arrive no more than in time.'

Lallemant made no attempt to vent his irritation. 'I don't see why I should not act upon orders which I judge to accord with the best interests of France.'

'I say again that I arrive no more than in time. An alliance, sir, sets up obligations, which are not in honour or even in decency afterwards to be evaded. France has very definite views on the subject of Venice. Venice is to be delivered from her oligarchic government. It is our sacred mission to carry the torch of liberty and of reason into her territories. Are we to enter into an alliance with a government which it is our object to destroy? It is our business—the precise business on which I am here—to see that Venice is kept rigidly to her unarmed neutrality until it is time to strike this oligarchy into the dust. Understand that clearly, citizen-ambassador.'

Lallemant looked up at him without affection. Then he shrugged with a plain and careless display of ill-humour.

'Since the Directory has sent you here to meddle, my responsibility is at an end. But will you tell me what I am to say to General Bonaparte?'

'Say to him that you have referred the matter to me. I will deal with him.'

'You will deal with him! Ha! I wonder do you know what manner of man he is.'

'I know what manner of position he holds. If he is in danger of getting above it, I shall know how to repress him.'

'One sees that you are of a sanguine temperament. The man who with the ragged army under his command could win the battles he has won in the last two months, against well-disciplined, well-equipped forces twice as numerous as his own, is not easily repressed.'

The representative was supercilious. 'I have no wish to detract from the merit of which he has given proof as a soldier. But we will preserve, if you please, a sense of proportion where this young man is concerned.'

Lallemant smiled broadly. 'Shall I tell you something about him? Something that I had from Berthier himself. When this little Corsican went to Nice to take up the command which Barras had procured for him, the generals of division of the Army of Italy were enraged that a boy of twenty-seven should be placed over them; a parvenu as they called him; a general off the streets; the man contemptuously known in Paris as the mitrailleur, since the only action known to his credit was to have swept away a mob with grapeshot. It was even said of him—I am merely repeating the words of others—that he was given his command as the price of having made an honest woman of one of Barras' mistresses. Those generals prepared to give him a reception that should make him think twice about remaining with the Army of Italy. Augereau, masterful and violent, was loudest in how he would put the upstart down. Bonaparte arrived. You know what he looks like. A starveling wisp of a fellow, frail and pallid as a consumptive. He walked in amongst them, and whilst buckling on his belt issued his orders, curt and sharply, without a wasted word. Then he walked out again, leaving them speechless, stunned by a force within him which they could not define, but in the presence of which not one of them had retained the courage to make good his boast.

'That is Bonaparte. Since then he has won a dozen battles, and smashed the Austrian might at Lodi. Conceive if he will have become easier to deal with. If you can dominate him, citizen, there should be a great future for you.'

But the representative remained unimpressed. 'It is not I who will dominate him. It is the authority of which I am the mouthpiece. And, anyway, as to these proposals of his, you will understand that the matter is now in my hands, and need concern you no further.'

'Oh, but gladly, citizen-representative. It is a responsibility of which I am very ready to be relieved.'

There was sarcasm in his tone, and it was met by sarcasm in the reply.

'So that you perceive at last a purpose in my presence here in Venice.' He sat down again, crossed his legs, and, descending a little from his loftiness of manner, came to matters which Lallemant found even more startling than anything that had gone before.

He announced that in the furtherance of the purpose responsible for his presence, and so as to study Venetian intentions at first hand, he proposed to go into the enemy's camp, representing himself as a secret agent of the British. He asserted that it was a part he was well-equipped to play before any audience, even at need an English one.

Nevertheless, Lallemant's amazement was only partly allayed.

'Do you know what will happen if they unmask you?'

'I count upon so disposing that there will be no unmasking.'

'Name of God! You must be a very brave man.'

'I may or may not be brave. I am certainly intelligent. At the outset I shall inform them that I am in relations with you . . .'

'What?'

'That I have imposed myself upon you by pretending to be a French agent. I shall establish my good faith by dealing with them precisely as you deal with this spy of theirs who has been installed in your house. I shall give them some scraps of information about the French, which, whilst worthless and perhaps even quite false, shall have all the appearance of being valuable and true.'

'And you imagine that this will impose upon them?' Lallemant was scornful.

'But why not? Surely it is no new thing for a secret agent to appear to be working on both sides. In fact, no secret agent ever succeeded either in serving his side or keeping his life who did not take the pay of both parties. A government so experienced in espionage will recognize this without explanations. I incur one serious danger. At a whisper that I am Camille Lebel, a secret agent of the Directory, and the stiletto and the canal to which I have alluded will probably close a career of some distinction and great utility to France.' He paused there, to cast a glance through the open door at the empty room beyond. Then he added with peculiar emphasis: 'It follows, therefore, that the secret of my identity, which lies at present between you and me, Lallemant, is not to be shared with any other single soul. You understand? Not even your wife is to suspect that I am Lebel.'

Lallemant again betrayed that suspicion of strained patience. 'Oh, very well. As you please.'

'I mean it to be as I please. We touch upon a matter of life and death. My life and my death, pray observe. They are matters about which you will admit my pre-eminent right to dispose.'

'My dear Citizen Lebel . . .'

'Forget that name.' The representative rose, suddenly dramatic. 'It is not to be used again. Not even in private. If we are really private in a house in which spies of the Council of Ten are at large. Here in Venice I am Mr. Melville, a flaneur, an English idler. Mr. Melville. Is that clear?'

'Certainly, Mr. Melville. But if you should get into difficulties . . .'

'If I get into difficulties I shall be beyond any man's assistance. So see that you create none for me by any indiscretion.' His clear eyes were sternly upon the ambassador, who, utterly browbeaten, inclined his large head in submission. 'That, I think, is all at the moment.'

Lallemant was instantly on his feet. 'You'll stay to dine. We shall be alone; just Madame Lallemant and my boy and my secretary Jacob.'

Mr. Melville shook his impeccably dressed head. 'I thank you for the courtesy. But I could not wish to embarrass you. Some other day, perhaps.'

Not even the anxiety to conciliate could lend reality to Lallemant's air of disappointment. His expressions of regret rang so hollow that they almost betrayed his satisfaction in being rid of this overbearing fellow.

Mr. Melville delayed yet a moment to inquire into the progress being made by the French agents charged with Jacobin proselytizing.

'I have nothing,' he was answered, 'to add to my last report to the Citizen Barras. We are well served, especially by the Vicomtesse. She is very diligent, and constantly widening the sphere of her activities. Her latest conquest is that barnabotto patrician Vendramin.'

'Ah!' Mr. Melville was languid. 'He is important, is he?'

The ambassador looked at him in astonishment. 'Do you ask me that?'

Instantly conscious of having taken a false step, Mr. Melville carried it off without a flicker of hesitation.

'Well—do you know?—I sometimes doubt his consequence.'

'After what I have written about him?'

'It is only the Pope who is infallible.'

'It does not need the Pope to know the extent of Vendramin's influence. And the Vicomtesse has all but made him fast. It is only a question of time.' He laughed cynically. 'The Citizen Barras has a great gift of disposing of his discarded mistresses to the nation's profit as well as to his own.'

'I'll not stay to hear scandal.' Mr. Melville took up his hat from the table. 'You shall know what progress I make. Meanwhile, if you want me, I am lodged for the moment at the Inn of the Swords.'

On that he took his leave, and went his ways, wondering who might be the Vicomtesse, and who this Vendramin who was a barnabotto.

CHAPTER V

THE AMBASSADOR OF BRITAIN

If the manners of Mr. Melville had ruffled the feelings of the ambassador of the French Republic, One and Indivisible, they were almost as severely to ruffle those of the ambassador of His Britannic Majesty, upon whom he waited that same afternoon. There was, however, a difference. Whilst the overbearing tone assumed with Lallemant had been purely histrionic, convincingly to colour the rôle assumed, that which he employed with Sir Richard Worthington was a genuine expression of his feelings.

Sir Richard, a stocky, sandy, pompous man, hung out those inevitable banners of a poor intellect: self-sufficiency and suspicion. Prone to assume the worst, he was of those who build suspicions into convictions without analyzing their own mental processes. It is a common enough type, readily identified; and within five minutes of being in the ambassador's presence Mr. Melville was aware in dismay that he conformed with it.

He presented to the ambassador a letter from Mr. Pitt which had travelled with him from England in the lining of his boot.

Seated at his writing-table, Sir Richard left his visitor standing, whilst with the aid of a glass he slowly perused the letter.

He looked up at last and his greenish eyes narrowed in scrutiny of the slim straight figure before him.

'You are the person designated here?' he asked in a high-pitched voice that went well with his receding chin and sloping brow.

'That would seem to follow, would it not?'

Sir Richard opened his eyes a little wider at the tone.

'I did not ask you what would seem to follow. I like direct answers. However . . . Mr. Pitt says here that you will state your business.'

'And he requests you, I think, to afford me every assistance in the discharge of it.'

Sir Richard opened his greenish eyes to their utmost. He set the letter down, and sat back in his tall chair. There was an edge to his thin tone. 'What is this business, sir?'

Mr. Melville stated it briefly and calmly. Sir Richard raised his sandy brows. A flush was creeping up to his cheek-bones.

'His Majesty is already quite adequately represented here. I fail to perceive the necessity for such a mission.'

It was Mr. Melville's turn to be annoyed. The man was a pompous idiot. 'That observation is not for me; but for Mr. Pitt. At the same time you may tell him of something else that you fail to perceive.'

'If you please?'

'Something that suggested to him that he should supplement you. Representations of the kind that expediency now suggests should be made to the rulers of the Most Serene Republic, to be effective are not to be made in public.'

'Naturally.' The ambassador was sharp and frosty. 'You will not have travelled all the way from England to state the obvious.'

'It seems that I have. Since the laws of Venice rigidly forbid all private intercourse between any member of the government and the ambassador of a foreign power, you are debarred by your office from steps possible only to an individual visiting Venice in an ostensibly private capacity.'