The Orchid Affair

Historical Note

On January 26, 1804, after being taken before a military commission and sentenced to death, Jean-Pierre Querelle broke under police questioning at the Abbaye Prison. He confessed that a plot was afoot to kidnap—or assassinate—the First Consul and restore the Bourbon monarchy. The Royalist arch-agitator, Georges Cadoudal, had landed in France months before and was already in place in Paris, ready to set events in motion.

The plot in which André Jaouen is embroiled was lifted from a genuine intrigue, although I simplified some elements and changed others for the purpose of this novel. Uniforms, like those Laura discovered in the Hôtel de Bac, were prepared so that conspirators, disguised as members of the Consular Guard, could nab Napoleon as he traveled to one of his country estates. The conspirators were in negotiation with a high-ranking member of the military, General Moreau, in the hopes that the army could be brought over to their side. A member of the royal family—either the Comte d’Artois, King Louis XVIII’s younger brother; or the Duc de Berry, Artois’s son—was to be brought to Paris to be placed at the head of the uprising.

In my version, de Berry sneaks into Paris to lead the revolt. In real life, neither de Berry nor Artois ventured across the Channel. In his biography of Joseph Fouché, Hubert Cole opines that “the refusal of either [Artois or de Berry] to venture into France had caused the delay in the scheme and spoiled whatever chance of success it may ever have had.” Elizabeth Sparrow, in her Secret Service: British Agents in France, 1792-1815, reports that Cadoudal went to the coast to meet the expected prince and, upon finding him lacking, reputedly cried, “We are finished!” Without a proper figurehead, the plot rapidly unraveled. The arrest and interrogation of Querelle and his fellow conspirators, Le Bourgeois and Picot, were as I described. Cadoudal’s servant, le petit Picot (not to be confused with the other Picot), was arrested on February 6, when he ventured out to fetch provisions; General Moreau was arrested on February 15; and Cadoudal on March 9, after a dramatic high-speed chase through the streets of Paris. As described, the agitated First Consul took drastic measures. On February 28 (the night of André’s make-believe party), the Governor of Paris ordered the gates of the city closed and all vehicles searched. The Senate, in the general spirit of panic, suspended trial by jury. According to Sparrow, 356 people were eventually questioned and arrested in L’Affaire Georges, Moreau, Pichegru, d’Enghien.

The investigation of the Cadoudal affair was officially in the hands of Louis-Nicolas Dubois, the Prefect of Police. Fouché, formerly Minister of Police, had fallen out of favor with Napoleon in 1802. The First Consul closed the Ministry of Police, although, as a parting gift, he allowed Fouché to retain the 1.2 million francs from the Ministry’s coffers. Fouché used these funds to build an even more elaborate system of informers, setting himself up in direct opposition to the Prefect of Police, André Jaouen’s putative boss. Although Fouché was technically out of power and his Ministry of Police closed, he played a large role in the Cadoudal affair, even though the investigation was technically being run by Dubois at the Prefecture.

I tried to capture the flavor of the Fouché-Dubois rivalry by having André serve under Dubois at the behest of Fouché, working at the Prefecture but reporting to Fouché. To minimize confusion and avoid extra explanation, I retained Fouché in his old position as Minister of Police. Fouché was officially reinstated as Minister of Police later that same year—a role in which he continued for the duration of Napoleon’s ascendancy. For more about Napoleon’s legendary Minister of Police, I recommend Hubert Cole’s Fouché: The Unprincipled Patriot, as well as the relevant chapters on “Fouché’s Police” and “Fouché the Man” in Alan Schom’s Napoleon Bonaparte. Fouché’s contemporaries, such as Josephine’s lady-in-waiting, Mme. de Rémusat, and Bonaparte’s secretary, M. de Bourrienne, had a great deal to say about the Minister of Police in their memoirs from the period. One can read Fouché’s side of the story in his own memoirs, entitled Memoirs of Joseph Fouché, Duke of Otranto, although these, published after the Restoration, ought to be taken with several grains of salt.

Unlike the conspirators, who were, with the exception of André and Daubier, taken from the historical record, my artists and actors were all composite characters, based on a combination of contemporary personages. Jaouen’s wife, Julie Beniet, was inspired by Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun and Marguerite Gérard, among others. For a glimpse into the life of a female painter in Paris, I recommend Gita May’s Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun: The Odyssey of an Artist in an Age of Revolution and Mary D. Sheriff’s The Exceptional Woman: Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun and the Cultural Politics of Art, as well as Vigée-Lebrun’s own memoirs. For artists more generally, I relied upon Thomas Crow’s Painters and Public Life in Eighteenth-Century Paris and Warren Roberts’s Jacques-Louis David, Revolutionary Artist: Art, Politics, and the French Revolution. Moving from artists to actors, fellow devotees of old swashbucklers will have guessed that the escape via Commedia dell’Arte troupe was inspired by Rafael Sabatini’s classic novel of the French Revolution, Scaramouche. I tip my hat—and my keyboard—to him.

Many real places were pressed into service for this novel. The Hôtel de Bac was based on the building that now houses the Musée Carnavalet; Daubier’s studio was modeled on Victor Hugo’s apartments in the Place des Vosges (formerly known as the Place Royale); and the gallery in which Colin’s mother’s party was held can be found just around the corner from the Musée Victor Hugo. The Musée Cognacq-Jay was taken from life, as was the exhibit Artiste en 1789, featuring the work of Marguerite Gérard. I added on an extra “s,” stuck in the (pretend) oeuvre of Julie Beniet, and moved the exhibit from 2009, when I was fortunate enough to view it, to 2004. Beniet’s portrait of her husband was based very closely on Gérard’s Portrait d’Anne-Louis Girodet-Trioson, which leapt out at me as the spitting image of André Jaouen. My understanding of André, in the context of his legal profession and political leanings, was deeply influenced by David A. Bell’s Lawyers and Citizens: The Making of a Political Elite in Old Regime France.

Last but not least, I can attest to the veracity, and the tastiness, of those marzipan pigs. Many were eaten in preparation for this novel.