Discreet Enquiries

Amongst Herr Stechung's charges as Waldreck's Consul-General in Monte Cristo was responsibility for gathering intelligence of activities likely to affect Waldreck's prestige and trade in Monte Cristo. The sensational news of the abrupt and bloody end to the Tavora Affair in the kingdom of the Portugee had only arrived in the past week, and still resounded throughout salons and quays of the Presipality. Herr Stechung had in his brief particular orders to report on the attitudes of the gentry of the Presipality towards the Jesuit Order and other secret societies, so he made extensive enquiries into the opinions of his associates into the likely prospects of the imprisoned Fr. Malagrida during his attendance at the following days' levers and salons.

On the very next day, a courier arrived from Arles, bearing precise instructions from Chancellor Baron de Montglace for Herr Stechung to initiate enquiries with the Procurator's Office of the Presipality to determine the history of the process against one Cardinal Maximilian von Roskilde, who was known to have passed through the Presipality some months earlier, but who had been detained for violation of the Presipality's remarkable sumptuary laws when he disembarked in the habit of his office and attempted to travel to the Chancery of the Presipality to present his Papal credentials. Uncertain of the significance, but sensing a connexion between the resolution of the process against the Cardinal and the trial of Fr. Malagrida, Herr Stechung donned his court dress, called for his caleche, and prepared his demarche.