For three full days, André locked himself in the attic. He opened the door only to eat, drink, and relieve himself. Beyond that, he spoke to no one.
"What's wrong with André? Didn't we win—didn't he win everything?" Meldar asked, perplexed.
Hoche said nothing. Legendre, ever the optimist, declined to explain. Javert, the inspector, simply cast a fierce glare at the Polish boy. The housekeeper, Anna, quickly ushered her nephew off to the kitchen.
The three men stared at one another in silence for some time, until footsteps echoed from the staircase.
"Hey, gentlemen," André called with a bright smile as he descended. "Did you gather just to wait for me to have supper?"
"That's right," said Legendre, nodding eagerly.
André glanced at his pocket watch, smirked, and said, "It's not even three o'clock. Afternoon tea, then."
Legendre leaned over the stairwell and shouted toward the kitchen: "Anna! Tea time!"
As they settled into the dining room, André noticed the other tenants of 156 Rue Saint-Jacques were nowhere to be seen. Legendre explained: he had paid off the two families occupying the upper floors to vacate early. The entire building now belonged to André and his circle.
At the same time, André agreed to move into the large suite on the second floor, with two bedrooms, a study, and a salon—more fitting for a man about to become a state prosecutor. Hoche would have his own room downstairs.
André took a sip of champagne, but his brow furrowed. "Terrible quality this year."
Javert nodded. "Blight hit the vineyards across Champagne. Bad taste. Yields down a third." His sister had written to him with the news.
In 1790, Parisians at teatime didn't drink tea. They preferred wine or coffee. The table overflowed with delicacies: madeleines, opera cake, mille-feuille, ham, cheese, candied orange, and more.
After a bite of cake, André suddenly remembered something. He pulled a cheque from between the pages of his notebook and handed it to Legendre.
"Cash this for me," he said. "Send ten thousand livres to the orphanage in Reims. The rest you'll manage. Anyone in our circle can draw from it as needed. If it's under two thousand, no need for my signature."
"Ten—ten thousand livres?" Legendre gasped, eyes wide as he saw the sum. It was five years of income for his family. Enough to buy a house in this quarter of the city.
André had no intention of buying property in central Paris just yet. The filth was intolerable—even Londoners found Paris disgusting. The British ambassador had complained more than once: Paris is the dirtiest city in Europe—bar none.
Hoche and Javert, listening silently, felt a surge of gratitude. They lacked Legendre's family wealth. This stipend meant their loved ones could live with dignity—without fear of hunger or cold.
To bind men, to create a brotherhood, André knew, one needed gold first. Ten thousand livres would satisfy a few days' ambition. After that, he would need more—much more—for the grand design of the one who came from another world.
"We could invest," Legendre suggested. "Thirty thousand into securities, fifty thousand into government bonds, ten thousand to the orphanage, and ten thousand for your household expenses."
André shook his head. "No more government bonds—not a single one. That Swiss banker Necker won't last long as finance minister. He'll be gone by the end of the year, at the latest."
His revised allocation was precise: ten thousand to the orphanage, ten thousand kept as liquid cash, fifty thousand directed into insurance funds, and thirty thousand earmarked for purchasing bonds from the Paris Waterworks Company, owned by the Piat brothers.
Relations with Britain were warming. Paris's investment funds, once tied to Rotterdam, now looked to London. The British Empire's industrial boom and global reach made it a solid bet. At least until 1793, when war might come.
As for the Paris Waterworks—it was more complicated.
"The Piat brothers?" Legendre frowned. "You mean the company in Chaillot that keeps trying to imitate British steam engines? Everyone says it's worthless. Their monopoly expires in two years."
A shady broker had once tried to sell Legendre those bonds. He'd walked away without a second thought.
"Worthless?" André chuckled to himself. That's a future tech stock. Straight to NASDAQ.
He knew the company's value wasn't in profits, but in the workforce: a hundred trained technicians, and more importantly, a cadre of mechanical engineers. Once the time came, a single push would turn this sleepy waterworks into the epicentre of an industrial revolution.
No explanation was needed. He simply told Legendre to follow the plan.
"Fine," the landlord relented. "I'll pass the orders to a broker I trust—Uffral. Honest fellow. He'll manage it."
André turned to Hoche. "You're already registered at the École Militaire. In two or three months, you'll begin the artillery fast-track."
Unlike other programs, the École's correspondence course had little allure—officers had to be noblemen. Even after reforms, only one in four commoners could hope to rise through the ranks. But if Hoche passed, he'd qualify as a junior officer.
As prosecutor, André would command a mounted tax patrol to investigate fiscal crimes. He planned for Lieutenant Hoche to lead it.
"I'd rather learn cavalry," Hoche grumbled, twisting a sweet orange in his hand. "And my math's terrible. I can't even calculate a basic arc trajectory."
André laughed. "A commander must master artillery first. Cavalry can come later. As for math—I've already arranged for a tutor."
"War in this age," he added, "is decided by numbers. By mathematics."
Napoleon had won 95% of his battles not by chance, but calculation—measuring the enemy's stride to judge their morale and their discipline; computing the time it would take his own bullets to collapse their line.
Hoche wasn't a genius—not by a long shot—but he was diligent and obedient. That was enough. André didn't need another insolent prodigy. A proper staff could compensate for brilliance.
Then he called to the boy in the kitchen. "Meldar, come sit down."
From now on, he said, he would have no time to teach the boy French—but Hoche would. Math too. In a year, he could apply to the Sorbonne.
Meldar nodded quickly. Javert's stern presence beside him ensured no defiance.
As André spoke to the boy, Hoche hesitated, face troubled.
At last, he confessed: "Yesterday, I visited the Tuileries. I saw Lieutenant Lefebvre. He asked me to congratulate you on your victory."
André grunted noncommittally.
"He also hoped to meet with you again," Hoche continued. "He wants to introduce a friend."
Lefebvre was too loyal to Louis XVI. André had already resolved to keep his distance.
"No," he said flatly. But seeing Hoche's disappointment, he softened. "I'm about to take public office. I can't be too close to the court. Change the venue."
He thought a moment. "There's a place south of Place Louis XV—La Méditerranée. We'll meet there. One month from now, on Pentecost."
At the Tuileries Palace, in the spacious and opulent office of the Finance Minister, the elegant and perpetually affable Monsieur Necker had just dismissed his final visitor. He instructed his secretary not to allow any interruptions for the next hour—he needed rest.
Instead of the austere walnut ministerial chair, he reclined on a velvet-cushioned settee. Sleep, of course, was out of the question. The weight of state affairs hung too heavily on his mind. And the latest of these burdens was a particularly vexing one, handed to him by an old friend: Condorcet.
The matter at hand? Whether to shield the fermiers généraux—the tax farmers.
As a banker, Necker knew full well the power the tax-farming system had once wielded in France. Prior to 1789, its central administration employed over 700 individuals spread across secretariats, customs bureaus, salt tax departments, tariff offices, and legal committees with ten lawyers and a dedicated proxy. They served the 128 official tax farmers of France—including the colonies.
The power of the tax-farming system lay in its grip over residual claim rights—it incentivized institutional innovation and produced efficient results. Its output regularly surpassed that of the bloated royal bureaucracy. But its very success was its undoing: the greed of the tax farmers became unbearable, and the system degenerated into an obstructionist parasite despised by the people.
By the time the Revolution erupted, the tax offices had been pillaged by furious mobs. One was even burned to the ground, forcing the remaining staff to flee to the outskirts of the city. In reality, the entire institution was in collapse. Now, a hundred tax farmers—citing chaos, fire, and safety—either refused or delayed their payments to the Treasury.
From the national perspective, Necker understood what needed to be done. If the new tax prosecutor—this rising star named André—were allowed to pursue judicial actions against the tax farmers, perhaps a hundred million livres could be recovered to patch up France's collapsing finances.
But from a personal standpoint, Necker felt torn. He and the tax farmers were cut from the same cloth—strange children born of the same financial bloodline. His own rise to prominence had been inextricably linked with them.
As Condorcet had said, "To condemn the tax farmers outright is to erase all the work we did before 1789."
If prosecutors could tear apart the old tax elite today, what would stop them from targeting the bankers tomorrow? What would stop them from airing Necker's own secrets—buried beneath years of careful discretion?
No. He had to stand with the tax farmers. At least, this time.
He made up his mind.
Calling for his secretary, he gave a brief instruction: go next door to the riding school—that is, the National Constituent Assembly—and schedule an appointment with an old adversary, and sometimes, an old ally: the indomitable Comte de Mirabeau.
The message was simple: The Finance Minister Necker would like to invite you for tea.