Free Frankenstein's Legions by John Whitbourn Page B

again as a ‘New-Citizen’—or Lazaran as enemy nations disparaged them. With permanent semblance of a red ribbon round his neck, he would take his place amongst myriad others, whether it be as a foot-soldier or undead ploughboy.
    Let the Church and other reactionaries protest as they will,  The Minister could not see anything wrong in it. Nature recycled all that it created, and the Convention sensibly emulated Nature. It was both virtuous and instructive that former enemies of the State might make good for their life’s misdeeds in the only after-life the State believed in.
    More thorough-going than his masters, Minister of Police Joseph Fouché believed in nothing: not a single thing. Through a varied past as priest, then politician, then revolutionary, terrorist, Bonapartist, Royalist and now servant of the Convention, no cobweb of belief had ever bound him. He loved his wife and children and thought that quite enough idealism for one lifetime.
    Being blessed with such remarkable freedom of action proved the launch-pad of a glittering career. Fouché saw but didn’t share the strings controlling those afflicted with ‘values.’  That enabled him to make them dance to his tune.
    Like here, for instance. If this condemned wretch were not a believer, indeed, a fanatic, he would be beyond recall. The blade that would part him from life was being oiled for action even as they spoke. He had nothing left to lose and more torture would only spoil him as a spectacle for the Place de la Guillotine mob. So, in one—highly technical—sense he should be safe from harm.
    Yet that same fanatic spirit which had made him suitable to be sent to England en mission meant he was still reachable. Though facing the just penalty for having failed, binding ties to an earthly cause meant use could be made of him yet.
    The man was thinking. Not of matters more fitting to his predicament, but of ephemeral things, sole concerns of the world he was about to leave behind. Light returned to his eyes. Fouché leant low.
    ‘There may be one thing...,’ said the prisoner, dredging deep for one last reprise of his life-role as elite soldier of the State.
    ‘Good, good...,’ anticipated Fouché, taking out a dainty gold-clad notepad. He twisted its matching pencil till lead appeared and stood poised to record.
    ‘It was when we were reconnoitring. A man-servant told me an alehouse tale. He was bitter; angry: loyal to an aristo family displaced from their château. Yes!  I recall: it seemed just black bile at the time, but not I’m not so sure. It was he who also gave me the drugged wine and dead-boys plot—and that all came true, didn’t it...’
    ‘Permit me to be the judge of that...,’ Fouché whispered into his ear, scribbling away at the same time. He was more aroused than the marital bed ever made him.
    The prisoner obediently trotted back from interpretation to reportage.
    ‘This English lackey said the Arch-Traitor was distracted for days. ‘Smooth as a plate, normally, but not no more’: those were his actual words, I swear. He was a serf, a lickspittle of counter-revolution, and so I did not attach weight to his views. Was I at fault?  ‘Facts yes, opinion no’: that is what we were taught at the ecole privé ...’
    The Republic-wide chain of state schools for France’s teeming war orphans raised dependable but inflexible products: a combination that could be both strength and weakness. The Convention’s best minds had wrestled with that conundrum in vain.
    ‘Nevertheless,’ Fouché hushed him, ‘on this occasion, I should like to hear the vile wretch’s opinion.’
    The prisoner revisited recent days: from miraculous survival and escape, to return to inevitable death. He recounted from memory:
    ‘The man overheard the Arch-Traitor talking to himself, when he believed himself alone.’
    ‘And... and...?’  Fouché’s anticipation was almost erotic.
    ‘I do not have the precise words, but apparently the