Book 11 - The Reverse Of The Medal by Patrick O'Brian

Author:Patrick O'Brian
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780006499268
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2011-09-19T19:32:42+00:00

'Blest paper credit! last and best supply!

That lends corruption lighter wings to fly!

A single leaf shall waft an army o'er

Or ship off senates to a distant shore.

Pregnant with thousands flits the scrap unseen

And silent sells a king, or buys a queen.'

'Pregnant with thousands, yes indeed,' said Stephen. 'The question is, what am I to do with my pregnant scraps?'

'It appears to me that the first thing to do is to make an inventory,' said Sir Joseph. 'Let us put them into some kind of order, and then if you will read out the bare names, dates and figures I will write them down.'

The inventory took some time and at the end of each page they paused for a glass of port. During one of these pauses Sir Joseph remarked 'To begin with, Barrow was positively obsequious to me; then he learnt that I too was the son of a labouring man and he despised me straight away. Wray is well-connected, and I believe it is that, quite as much as his cleverness, which makes Barrow value him.'

'Will I seal it again?' asked Stephen, when the list was finished and the box was full.

'You might as well,' said Sir Joseph. 'I do not believe there is a piece of string in the house; I tried to put up a parcel not long since, but with no success.'

'And is it Barrow I will give it to, or Wray? And will I desire them to give me a receipt?' asked Stephen: a great mental and spiritual fatigue had come over him and all he wanted was to be told what to do.

'You should say you wish to see me, and when they tell you I am not there you should ask for Wray, since it was with him that you were last in contact. As for a receipt . . . No. I think a certain sancta simplicitas is in order here—a placid handing-over of this enormous fortune without any question of quittance or formal acknowledgement. In any event a receipt would be pointless, since if there is bad faith they can always say there was more in the box in the first place, before the seal was broke. It would be as pointless as this inventory, which has no legal force or validity whatsoever. But I do not have to tell you, Maturin, that in intelligence we do not always regard the law very closely.' He passed the wax and held the candle while Stephen sealed the box and went on, 'This war has caused the most enormous pouring-out of public funds, and peculation has kept pace. A great deal of money passes through various hands in the Admiralty and some of them are tolerably retentive. When Mr Croker took over as First Secretary—I believe you were abroad at the time: oh yes, you were a great way off—he instantly looked into the affairs of Roger Horehound, Jolly Roger as we used to call him, and found that he had taken no less than two hundred thousand pounds.

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