The dawn's chill before daylight slowly turned rose-red.
Georgiana looked out the window. Before the Treaty of Amiens was signed, there had been a kidnapping. At the time, the papal envoy Caprara had been abducted by a group of people. They were not bandits, nor had they demanded ransom. They merely wanted him to carry a message to the Pope, hoping the Church would continue supporting their armed activities in the west.
To a certain extent, the Church and royal power helped one another. Yet they had failed to understand one thing: continuing to support them meant continuing the civil war.
Not all Royalists were like that. The Orleans branch, for instance, was comparatively moderate, and Madame de Genlis belonged to that faction. The "Legitimists," meanwhile, could roughly be divided into three groups. The first were the left-wing Legitimists, who hoped to restore the monarchy through the lawful means of a popular referendum. Another was the parliamentary faction, whose leader Bailly was an eloquent speaker. He believed the monarchy should be restored through Parliament, winning the support of the majority through elections. Then there were the planners of these secret operations. They did not merely want to bring the fleur-de-lis, symbol of the royal family, back to Paris—they wanted to restore absolute royal authority.
"What are you thinking about?"
"Peter Colbert, the printer from Leuven," she said insincerely. "He was executed in 1799 for printing materials condemning the tyranny of the people of France."
Bonaparte said nothing. Perhaps because he was in a better mood now, he was not as furious discussing the subject as he had been earlier. She truly feared that he would give an order to arrest the workers involved in printing those newspapers, ultimately igniting public outrage.
"You're not like those people either. This is a