"L'espionne" by Ernest Daudet is a historical novel written in the early 20th century. Set amid émigré politics at the close of the 18th century, it follows the alluring and calculating Comtesse de Bonneuil—an unofficial agent for Fouché—and her innocent niece Marguerite as they navigate espionage, loyalty, and manipulation. The plot pivots on a mission to delay the dashing Duc de Maligny, intertwining seduction, statecraft, and moral risk.
The opening of the novel paints bustling Hamburg in 1799, crowded with émigrés, diplomats, couriers, and spies, while a café debate over Bonaparte frames the tension. The Comtesse de Bonneuil and her niece arrive at the Hôtel de Saint-Pétersbourg, observed by a quiet onlooker who slips across to meet them: Rivarennes, an agent of Fouché. He urges Bonneuil to keep the Duc de Maligny in Hamburg so he cannot promptly deliver a royal command that would halt an assassination plot; the police mean to let the conspirators proceed into France and arrest them at the border. Bonneuil hesitates, wary of the means and of jeopardizing her Russian patronage, while Rivarennes presses and hints at “any extremity.” Interwoven is Marguerite’s backstory—an orphaned émigrée raised briefly in Augsburg, then swept into her aunt’s luxurious yet suspect world in Madrid, Paris, and St. Petersburg—leaving her virtuous and quietly appalled. Back in the hotel, she overhears her aunt bargaining for Marguerite’s removal from the émigré list and a dowry as payment. The section ends with the sudden arrival of a snow-covered chaise bearing the Duc de Maligny and a French actress, setting the trap in motion. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
