The Rape of Venice Read Free

despatched by him have carried many million ducats across the Alps into France. And those ducats will buythe food she needs so badly. Yet worse, there is no reason to suppose that this river of gold will cease to flow until Buonaparte’s victorious advance is halted. Distressed as I am to disabuse you of your hopes, I am convinced that there is not the least foundation for the supposition that France must shortly collapse as the result of an empty Treasury.’
    Mr. Pitt’s grey face had gone a shade greyer. Slowly removing his arm from a stone crenellation on which he had been leaning, he walked over to a painted iron table that had on it a decanter of port and two glasses. Refilling them both he drank from his own, set it down and remarked sourly:
    â€˜I have often found you a disconcerting person with whom to discuss foreign affairs, Mr. Brook; but never more so than this morning.’
    Roger, too, took a swig of port, then murmured, ‘I am truly sorry, Sir, but I would serve you ill did I not give you my opinions with complete frankness.’
    â€˜That is true’; the Prime Minister laid a friendly hand on his elbow; ‘and believe me, far from resenting it, I am grateful to you. Yet, if you are right, and the rejection by the French Government of my overtures implies that you are, it means that we must resign ourselves to another year or more of war. I would to God I could be certain that the nation will stand up to that.’
    â€˜What!’ exclaimed Roger. ‘You cannot mean it! In the last war we stuck it out for twice the time we have been involved in this, and as a nation we still have all those advantages over the French of which you were speaking a while ago.’
    â€˜Alas, there you are quite wrong.’
    â€˜Wrong! How so? The nation is united under a stable government. The Coalition gives you an overwhelming majority in the House. We are still sustained by our Christian faith. The war may again be making heavy in-roads on our resources, but we still adhere to our traditions and are as determined as ever to maintain our rights.’
    â€˜Mr. Brook, having lived for so long abroad it is understandable that you should have remained unaware of the changed feeling in your own country. Last October, on His Majesty’s going to open Parliament his coach was stoned by the mob.’
    â€˜So I heard, Sir, and was most deeply shocked; but I took it to be an isolated act by a small group of fanatics.’
    â€˜It was far from that. Thousands thronged the Mall and booed him. No such demonstration against a British Monarchhas taken place within living memory. That it should do so is clear evidence that the loyalty of the masses has been undermined by the pernicious doctrines of the French. During the past two years they have spread like wildfire, and every town now has its proletarian club at which agitators preach revolution. Were the franchise universal at the next election there would be a real danger of this country becoming a Republic. So you may rid your mind of the idea that the people are still united.’
    Roger finished his glass of port, then said with a frown, ‘I was, of course, aware that hot-heads like Horne Tooke had long been creating trouble, and of the near-treasonable activities of the London Corresponding Society; but I had not a notion that sedition had become so widespread.’
    â€˜Last autumn the Society of which you speak convened a meeting in Islington Fields. It was attended by no less than fifteen thousand persons, and resolutions were passed at it advocating armed rebellion. God knows what might have happened had I not promptly ordered numerous regiments of troops from their stations in the country to the outskirts of London. Norwich, Birmingham, Sheffield, Bristol, and a score of other cities have become hot-beds of revolution. I am at present holding the masses down only by having suspended Habeas Corpus and having put through a