The Ravishing of Lady Mary Ware by Dennis Wheatley Page B

of sleeping with her that night. Vigorous protests were made, because the marriage had not yet taken place; but she had been married by proxy to her uncle beforeleaving Vienna. Declaring that to be good enough for him, Napoleon whisked her up to bed.
    She was quite an attractive girl, with light brown hair, blue eyes and a very fresh complexion, and had a good, somewhat buxom figure; but she was very shy and, not unnaturally, she had been greatly distressed at having to leave her family. When waiting on her one morning in her apartments, Berthier had found her weeping bitterly. She had pointed out to him that everything there was dear to her. There were a tapestry that had been worked by her mother, pictures painted by her uncle Charles, drawings by her sister; and, above all, she was heartbroken at having to leave behind her little pet dog.
    In spite of her sadness and timidity, Napoleon was enchanted with her. He could not do enough to reconcile her to exile and, a few days after they reached Paris—thanks to Berthier’s having hatched a little plot with her father before leaving Vienna—he was able to give her a delightful surprise. Unlocking a door, he pushed her into a room—and there were her tapestry, her paintings, all the other things she treasured, and her little dog.
    To begin with, her shyness caused her to be haughty with the French ladies who formed her Court; but soon she made some good friends, and entertained those with whom she became intimate with the strange trick of being able to wiggle her ears.
    The marriage was celebrated in Notre Dame on April 2nd, with almost unbelievable splendour. Not only were there a galaxy of subject Kings and Princes with their consorts, row upon row of High Dignitaries, Ambassadors, Marshals and Generals, but nearly every family of the old French nobility: de Rohan, de Richelieu, de Chevreuse, de Nemours, de Brissac, de Coigny, de Poligniac, de la Tour d’Auvergne, de Chalais and the rest were represented. For the past six years these émigrés had been welcomed back by Napoleon to add lustre to hisCourt. They were not permitted to use their old titles, but to many of them he had given new ones when he had created thirty-one Dukes, three hundred and eighty eight Counts and one thousand and ninety Barons.
    Now, on this festive occasion he made a new distribution of honours, and Roger found himself elevated to the rank of Count, with which went a pension of thirty thousand francs per annum, as it was Napoleon’s practice to ensure that his nobility had ample funds with which to support their dignity. All the Marshals had been endowed with great estates and a few, like Berthier, had revenues of over a million francs a year.
    In April, a matter that had been giving Napoleon considerable concern for some time boiled up into a major issue. His fat, neurotic brother Louis, whom he had made King of Holland, far from acknowledging to whom he owed his crown, declared that he had been sent to rule over the Dutch by God’s will. On the one hand he taxed his subjects unmercifully to pay for every sort of extravagance; on the other he pleaded their interests as an excuse to thwart Napoleon at every opportunity.
    But, in the present instance, he undoubtedly had a case. After Nelson’s victory at Trafalgar, it had become clear that for a number of years to come the French Fleet would not again have the strength to challenge the Royal Navy. The invasion of England no longer being a possibility, Napoleon had conceived another means by which he hoped to force Britain into suing for peace.
    This was his Continental System, initiated by him in a decree published at Berlin in the summer of 1806. By it every country in which the Emperor’s writ ran was ordered to cease importing goods from England. Commerce was Britain’s strength, as by it she acquired the great sums with which she had financed France’s neighbours to make war on him. Through his