The King's Secret

 Paris, May 1920

 It would be a tragedy of immeasurable proportions, to be in Paris and not avail oneself of the couture. No, thought Rose, we wouldn’t want that.

The gown hugged her figure tight to halfway down the thigh before flaring out passed the knee and covering the toe. When she moved, it gave the impression that she was gliding or floating across the floor. Rose was pleased with the effect.

The pattern of black line on a field of white suggested a thicket of dark branches, a forest in winter. A black velvet collar decorated with a small red rose at the side of the neck, provided the colour and completed the ensemble.

The evening light poured through the skylight of the fashion house. Rose had spent most of the day at the Bibliothèque nationale and this indulgence gave her the opportunity to gather her thoughts and review the fruits of the day’s research.

The Comte de Saint Germain. Voltaire had called him “a man who never dies, and who knows everything.”  No doubt, this was Voltaire being witty. What Rose found interesting however was the context of this remark. It was a letter that Voltaire wrote to Frederick of Prussia on April 15th, 1758 wherein Voltaire hints at some sort of political involvement by the Count.

 

With a little digging, Rose found greater detail in the memoirs of Baron de Gleichen, a German diplomat in the service of Denmark. Here she noted that acting as a secret agent of the Louis XV, Saint Germain was provided with a cipher and sent to the Hague to initiate peace negotiations separately from the authorized representatives of state. Louis XV employed a network of such unofficial agents. Known as le secret du roi, these agents often worked independently of official state channels.

 

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The continuation of this enmity and the suspicions of M. de Choiseul (the First Minister of State) developed a few months later. The marshal was constantly intriguing to make himself the author of a special peace with Prussia, and to break the system of alliance between Austria and France, on which the credit of the Duke of Choiseul was based. Louis XV and Madame de Pompadour desired this particular peace. Saint-Germain persuaded them to send him to the Hague to Duke Louis of Brunswick, of whom he claimed to be a close friend, and promised to succeed through this channel in a negotiation of which his eloquence presented the advantages under the most attractive aspect.

The marshal drew up the instructions, the king himself handed them over with a cipher to M. de Saint-Germain, who having arrived in The Hague, believed himself authorized enough to decide for the minister. His indiscretion caused M. d'Affry, then ambassador to Holland, to discover the secret of this mission, and, by a letter he sent, made bitter complaints to M. de Choiseul, because it was exposing an old friend of his father, and the dignity of the character of ambassador, to the insult of having peace negotiated, before his eyes, without instructing him, by an obscure foreigner.

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Understandably, this initiative was not well received by the Duke de Choiseul, and the Comte de Saint Germain had to flee to England. That was June 1760. Two years later, the Count appears in St. Petersburg, where, if the stories are true, he helps Catherine the Great seize the Russian throne from Tsar Peter III, her husband.

As for Louis XV, he ceded almost all French territory in North America to Britain, under the terms of the Treaty of Paris, 1763. This treaty, ending the Seven Year’s War, had been negotiated by the Duke de Choiseul. This treaty shaped the course of history. 

What had been the effect of Saint Germain’s involvement? 

Rose absently reached up and touched the flower at the side of her throat. A blossom of blood. 

The Comte de Saint Germain.  Not just a man who never dies, but a man who never dies playing at politics.

A slow smile came to Rose’s lips. It did not reach her icy blue eyes.

It was time to leave Paris.