Respecting the causes of his fall there were many vague and
contradictory rumours. He had starved to death a prisoner of war and forced
his widow into a marriage with himself. He had sold State secrets to the
French. He had been over to Elba in disguise, and had there held
treasonable intercourse with the exiled Emperor, before his return to
France in 1815. He had attempted to murder, or caused to be murdered, the
witnesses of his treachery. He had forged the King's signature. He had
tampered with the King's servants. He had been guilty, in short, of every
crime, social and political, that could be laid to the charge of a fallen
favourite.
Knowing what we knew, it was not difficult to disentangle a thread of truth
here and there, or to detect under the most extravagant of these fictions,
a substratum of fact. Among other significant circumstances, my father,
chancing one day to see a portrait of the late minister in a shop-window at
Cologne, discovered that his former visitor, the Count von Rettel, and the
Baron von Bulow were one and the same person. He then understood why the
King had questioned him so minutely with regard to this man's appearance,
and shuddered to think how deadly that enmity must have been which could
bring him in person upon so infamous an errand.
Pages:
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109