'A mutual interest, eh?' mumbled Dungarth through the smoke. 'Yes. He is well and has undertaken a number of tasks for Vorontzoff who is much impressed by his horsemanship and writes that he is invaluable in the matter of selecting English Arabs.' Drinkwater nodded, relieved. His brother Edward, in whose escape from the noose Drinkwater had taken an active part, had a habit of falling upon his feet. 'I do not think you need concern yourself about him further.'

'No.' In the service of a powerful Russian nobleman Edward would doubtless do very well. He could never return to his native country, but he might repay some of his debt by acting as a courier, as was implied by Dungarth. Vorontzoff, a former ambassador to the Court of St James, was an anglophile and source of information to the British government.

'I am sorry you were not made post, Nathaniel. It should have happened years ago but,' Dungarth shrugged, 'things do not always take the turn we would wish.' He lapsed into silence and Drinkwater was reminded of the macabre events that had turned this once liberal man into the implacable foe of the French Republic. Returning through France from Italy where his lovely young wife had died of a puerperal fever, the mob, learning that he was an aristocrat, had desecrated her coffin and spilled the corpse upon the roadway where it had been defiled. Dungarth sighed.

'This will be a long war, Nathaniel, for France is filled with a restless energy and now that she has worked herself free of the fervour of Republican zeal we are faced with a nationalism unlikely to remain within the frontiers of France, "natural" or imposed.

'Now we have the genius of Bonaparte rising like a star out of the turmoil, different from other French leaders in that he alone seems to possess the power to unite. To inspire devotion in an army of starving men and secure the compliance of those swine in Paris is genius, Nathaniel. Who but a fated man with the devil's luck could have escaped our blockade of Egypt and returned from the humiliation of defeat to retake Italy and seize power in France, eh?'