Post by PAUL CHAUVELIN on Aug 30, 2015 20:20:05 GMT
Chauvelin
THE PAST
I was born to the nobility in Paris, the last of three children, the very night my father was taken by an apoplexy at the King's own gaming table. I was the last child and soon the only, as the grippe claimed my older brother and sister before the year was out. Heartbroken and weary of court excess and intrigue, my mother took me to live at the Loire estate of an old family friend, Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, Comte de Rochambeau.
My childhood there was a happy one, but solitary. Though we were bourgeoise, both Le Comte and my mother were passionate believers in the Enlightenment, and I grew up in the library with the writings of Voltaire, Rousseau, Locke, and a score of other forward thinkers. When I wasn't there, I was sketching in the woods or exploring the caves beneath the chateau.
The Comte was the closest thing to a father I'd ever known and I idolized him as a child, all the more so when he returned in triumph from aiding the English colonists in the New World to throw off the yoke of King George. As soon as I was old enough, I followed him into the army and he took me under his wing. Those were heady times, the beginning of just one of many ends, though I didn't know it then. Le Comte disapproved of the the political clubs springing up among the officers, but I was young and still dreamed of change.
My mother passed away that year and I found myself in Paris, fallen in with a group of reformers just as young and blind as myself. One of them was Herminie -- beautiful and completely uninhibited, and swiftly to become my wife. It was the eve of the revolution, and we wanted a man in Versailles, but they were proletarians and I? I was the Marquis de Chauvelin. My name was my entre, and I was welcomed into the court of Louis XVI. He was a weak man, foolish for all his scholarship, and he trusted me. To the end, he never realized who betrayed his attempted escape to Varennes. In truth, only two did know, but those two stood high in the National Convention, and they saw to it that I was well rewarded. 'Citizen Chauvelin' was named special assistant to the ambassador to the Court of St. James, Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord.
Cunning, charming, and utterly without scruples, Talleyrand became my mentor. No matter what form the government took or who was at its head, he survived and flourished. He navigated the treacherous currents of the seas of power with deceptive ease, spotting approaching storms and tacking before them. He taught me that, how to ferret out and interpret information, and how to maneuver and manipulate. Though events back in France caused us to be ordered out of the English court less than a year later, I returned home far better equipped for what was to become my life.
Over the next forty years, I put Charles' teaching and advice to use on a daily basis. When de Rochambeau was arrested by a revolutionary court, I arranged his freedom. I saw the failure of the first revolution coming in time to get Herminie and our daughter Fleur out of the country, though I couldn't save my wife from the yellow fever that took her a few years later. I created a network of spies and informants that grew throughout France and into England and the other nations of Europe. I moved seamlessly from decadent monarchies to rabid republics, coming out on the winning side of revolutions, coups, counter-coups, and pogroms. Through it all, I kept a low profile, eschewing honors and public praise, though I managed to collect a respectable fortune and a scattering of properties outside my hereditary lands.
Now, as I enter my sixtieth year, I find I've come full circle. Once again, power has overreached. Once again, revolution is in the air. Once again, there will be blood.
THE PRESENT
I am many things. I have been a courtier and a soldier. I am both Marquis and Citizen. I have fathered children and made orphans, and I am as much ambassador as assassin. But above and beyond all of these things, I am a survivor. In my six decades on this earth, I have served Empires, Republics, and Kingdoms; seen Courts, Conventions, Committees, Directories, and Consulates rise and fall. They are ephemera. They come and they go, but Chauvelin remains. Chauvelin endures. I do not want for wealth or property, and yet I have no wife and no family I dare admit to. I have only France.
I have no dream. I did once, back when I was young and sure of all the answers, of France where all were free and equal, where there was no hunger or injustice. But I quickly learned that people -- no matter what their station -- are ignorant, weak, selfish, stupid, and cowardly, and that's all any society they build will be. These children in the street think men like me don't understand them, but we do all too well, we've just learned better. It's men like me who deal with the damage their illusions wreak on the real world.
Women. I know a thousand secrets, I can unravel a tangled international plot in the time it takes to pour a glass of wine, and yet women remain mysteries to me. Exciting, alluring, exquisitely pleasurable mysteries, but mysteries nonetheless. I've enjoyed the favors of many and loved more than my share. They've been as different as the fiercely sensual Herminie and the sweetly innocent Lisette, but I've loved them nonetheless. Now there's Marguerite, with her intelligence and will, so vividly alive. What she sees in that bloodless fop Blakeney I don't know. Even many years her senior, I'm far more a match for her.
I'm old by some measures. Certainly older than that pup Blakeney, and by the lights of the young fools marching in the streets, I'm positively ancient. And it's true, there's grey now in the dark curls Herminie once so admired, and my stocky strength has thickened at my chest and waist. I admit -- grudgingly -- that time might even have claimed some of my youthful speed and grace. Yet women still seek my company, and I flatter myself that I remain a passably handsome man, age having given me a more distinguished appearance.
THE FUTURE
I see the storm, and I know it will be worse than any of the upheavals which have gone before. Most don't want to believe that. They didn't live through that first revolution as I did, it's just a tale to them. They see only spoiled students throwing tantrums. They dismiss the Jacobins and Girondists as harmless debating societies and Le Père Duchesne as merely a newspaper. They believe men such as Robespierre to be isolated extremists. They are wrong. Terribly -- and ultimately fatally for many of them -- wrong.
RP SAMPLE
"Seigneur Valentin," he whispered. "Valentin Gauthier."
It was a lie, of course, though the bourgeoise part was true enough. The best deceptions were like that, strung with glittering beads of reality to draw the eye away from the dark thread within. Though, seeing the girl's innocent face and wide eyes in the light of the torch she held aloft, Paul-Francois Chauvelin doubted much of his considerable skill in deceit would be necessary. She was barely half his forty years, if even that, her hair and dress that of a country maid.
Still, the fact that she was here in the caves beneath Rochambeau meant there was more to her than she appeared. The people of Thore and the neighboring countryside were simple, superstitious folk, and believed the caverns to be haunted. In fear of their souls, they would never have ventured in, especially not a woman, and especially not after sundown. And underestimating people -- especially women -- could be dangerous, as his own presence here, wounded and in hiding, demonstrated. He'd begun the evening hunting Bonapartist holdouts, and an hour and a smiling tavern maid later he'd been fighting clear of an ambush.
This girl was no tavern maid, though, and she wasn't smiling. Instead she bit her lip with concern as she knelt beside him, wedging the torch into a wide seam in the rock near his head. Her hands fluttered uncertainly. Clearly she could see the blood soaking through his shirt, but just as clearly she was aware of being alone with a strange man.
Chauvelin smiled reassuringly, forgoing sophisticated charm for vulnerability. "Have no fear," he said. "I wouldn't hurt you even if I could. Please … help me."
Your Alias:
Age:
Gender:
Time Zone:
