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PROGRESSIVE ENERGY POLICY
Series Editors: Caroline Kuzemko,
Catherine Mitchell, Andreas Goldthau, Alain Nadaï
and Shunsuke Managi

FEED-IN TARIFFS
IN THE EUROPEAN
UNION
Renewable energy policy, the
internal electricity market and
economic expertise

Béatrice Cointe and


Alain Nadaï
Progressive Energy Policy

Series Editors
Caroline Kuzemko
The University of Warwick
Coventry, UK

Catherine Mitchell
University of Exeter
Penryn, UK

Andreas Goldthau
Royal Holloway University of London
Egham, UK

Alain Nadaï
International Research Centre on Environment and
Development (CIRED-CNRS)
Nogent-sur-Marne, France

Shunsuke Managi
Kyushu University
Fukuoka, Japan
Progressive Energy Policy is a new series that seeks to be pivotal in nature
and improve our understanding of the role of energy policy within pro-
cesses of sustainable, secure and equitable energy transformations. The
series brings together authors from a variety of academic disciplines, as
well as geographic locations, to reveal in greater detail the complexities
and possibilities of governing for change in energy systems. Each title in
this series will communicate to academic as well as policymaking audiences
key research findings designed to develop understandings of energy trans-
formations but also about the role of policy in facilitating and supporting
innovative change. Individual titles will often be theoretically informed
but will always be firmly evidence-based seeking to link theory and policy
to outcomes and changing practices. Progressive Energy Policy is focussed
on whole energy systems not stand alone issues; inter-connections within
and between systems; and on analyses that moves beyond description to
evaluate and unpack energy governance systems and decisions.

More information about this series at


http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15052
Béatrice Cointe • Alain Nadaï

Feed-in tariffs in the


European Union
Renewable energy policy, the internal electricity
market and economic expertise
Béatrice Cointe Alain Nadaï
TIK Centre for Technology, CIRED-CNRS (Centre International
Innovation and Culture, University of de Recherche sur l'Environnement et
Oslo le Développement)
Oslo, Norway Nogent-sur-Marne, France

Progressive Energy Policy


ISBN 978-3-319-76320-0    ISBN 978-3-319-76321-7 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76321-7

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018937514

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018


This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the pub-
lisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the
material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The
publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institu-
tional affiliations.

Cover pattern © Melisa Hasan

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer


International Publishing AG part of Springer Nature
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Acknowledgements

This book started as an enquiry into the origins of feed-in tariffs. This
interest was raised by a study of solar energy policy in France, carried out
in the context of a PhD thesis that was written between 2010 and 2014 at
the Centre for International Research on Environment and Development
(CIRED). The first version of this account was a chapter of the aforemen-
tioned PhD thesis, which has been revised, extended, and updated. This
work benefitted from financial support from the DIM R2DS Ile-de-France
under Grant no. 2010-13 and from the French National Research Agency
(ANR) under Grant no. 2011-SOIN-003-01 (COLLENER Project). The
study has been presented in several contexts over the years, and we are
indebted to comments from colleagues at CIRED, from members of the
PhD panel, and from discussants in conferences. We would like to thank
in particular Fabian Muniesa, Noortje Marres, Peter Karnøe, Thomas
Reverdy, and Philippe Quirion for helpful insights and suggestions at dif-
ferent stages of our research. All remaining errors of course remain entirely
our own.

v
Contents

1 Agencing Feed-in Tariffs in the European Union   1

2 FITs and European Renewable Energy Policy Before 1996:


A Tale of Two Beginnings  25

3 Tariffs, Quotas and the Ideal of Pan-­European


Harmonisation from 1996 to 2001  39

4 2001–2008: European-Scale Experimentation


in Renewable Energy Policy-Making  59

5 Turbulence and Reforms in European Renewable Energy


Policy After 2008  87

6 Conclusion 111

Appendix: List of Documents Analysed 125

Index 137

vii
List of Abbreviations

ANT Actor-Network Theory


DG Competition European Commission Directorate General for
Competition
DG Research European Commission Directorate General for
Research
EC European Communities
EEG Erneuerbare-Energien Gesetz (Renewable Energy
Law)
EU European Union
EU-ETS European Union Emission Trading Scheme
FIP Feed-in Premium
FIT Feed-in Tariff
IPCC Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
NFFO Non-Fossil Fuel Obligation
PURPA Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act
PV Photovoltaics
RE Renewable Energy
RES-E Electricity from Renewable Energy Sources
RET Renewable Energy Technologies
SET Plan Strategic Energy Technologies Plan
SRREN Special Report on Renewable Energy
StrEG Stromeinspeisungsgesetz (Feed-in Law)
STS Science and Technology Studies
TGC Tradable Green Certificate
VDEW Verband der Elektrizitätswirtschaft

ix
List of Tables

Table 1.1 Timeline and key dates 9


Table 1.2 Documents analysed by period and category 11

xi
CHAPTER 1

Agencing Feed-in Tariffs in the


European Union

Abstract The introductory chapter describes the intention of the book


and provides an overview of feed-in tariffs and renewable energy policy in
the European Union (EU). It outlines the perimeter and analytical
approach of the book. Cointe and Nadaï first describe feed-in tariffs and
their origins. They review milestones of European renewable energy policy
and their relations to the diffusion of feed-in tariffs in Member States.
Having provided this background information, Cointe and Nadaï account
for their choice to rely on a combination of documentation from European
institutions, expert sources, and academics. They define socio-technical
agencements and explain what an analysis of feed-in tariffs as agencements
brings to an understanding of renewable energy policy and EU policy.

Keywords Feed-in tariffs • European Union • Agencement •


Performativity • Liberalisation

Throughout Europe, renewable energy production has expanded over the


past decades, boosted by support policies of various kinds. The European
Union (EU) appears as a driving force in the deployment of renewable
energy and renewable energy support policies, especially for electricity
generation. Since the late 1990s, it has encouraged Member States to
develop renewables; adopted directives setting mid-term targets for this

© The Author(s) 2018 1


B. Cointe, A. Nadaï, Feed-in tariffs in the European Union, Progressive
Energy Policy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76321-7_1
2 B. COINTE AND A. NADAÏ

development; and produced regular reports assessing progress and evalu-


ating the merits of the policies introduced in Member States.
The EU’s renewable energy policy emerged and developed along with
the liberalisation of the electricity market, which was officially launched by
the 1996 Directive on the internal electricity market. The process of inte-
grating the European electricity market and the process of integrating
electricity from renewable energy sources in this electricity market
unfolded more or less at the same time, but not necessarily in perfect
tune—especially since Member States’ perspectives and objectives in intro-
ducing support for electricity from renewable energy sources (RES-E)
were not always aligned with those of the European Commission.
Simultaneously, renewable energy policy consolidated as a field of research
and expertise, attracting increasing academic attention. This book investi-
gates this process from the vantage point of the history and evolutions of
one kind of RES-E policy instruments, feed-in tariffs (FITs).
While FITs have been a dominant form of support for RES-E in
European countries, their relationship to the policy principles of the EU
has always been rather ambiguous: the European Commission has gone
back and forth in granting them the label of “market-based instruments”
(which amounts to a validation from its own very market-oriented per-
spective), and has alternated between shunning them and recognising
them as the most effective form of support for RES-E. At any rate, ever
since renewable energy made its entrance within the scope of European
concerns, FITs have been part of the picture, and their vices and virtues
have been debated.
The research that led to this book started from an ambition to under-
stand where FITs came from. In retracing their origins and genealogy, we
soon encountered European institutions and legislation. We also found a
large body of academic and grey literature investigating the characteristics,
design, histories, and effects of FITs, often in comparison with other
instruments. From there emerged the project to retrace the European
career of FITs on the basis of what the EU as well as the literature had said
about them. In this book, we thus follow FITs in some of the countries
that have implemented them and through the political and academic
debates about EU electricity policies and markets, from the late 1970s to
2015. The picture we draw is certainly not exhaustive given the short for-
mat in which it is displayed, but hopefully provides an overview of the
trajectory of FITs and of the various concerns and issues that have been
attached to them over the years.
AGENCING FEED-IN TARIFFS IN THE EUROPEAN UNION 3

This book then tells the story of an instrument of renewable energy pol-
icy, but it also considers this story as a vantage point from which to look into
the wider evolutions, tensions, and frictions at play in European renewable
energy policy. In particular, it gives insights about the objectives of liberalisa-
tion and harmonisation that have been at the heart of the European project
for some decades now, and about the priorities that have guided them in the
case of the electricity sector (Barry 1993; Doganova and Laurent 2016).
The debates that surrounded the evolutions of FITs, and the evolution of
FITs in Member States itself, also interrogate the notion that a balanced,
well-functioning, liberalised market can serve as a device to serve the com-
mon good and solve problems that are not reduced to economic and market
activity (Geiger et al. 2014; Doganova and Laurent 2016). Even if renew-
able energy policy is a small part of the internal electricity market project,
and FITs are only one element of renewable energy policy, we argue that a
close look at FITs can shed light on these issues in several ways.
First, it leads us to look into the Commission’s perspective on liberalisa-
tion and harmonisation: the liberalisation and harmonisation agendas run
through the Commission’s discourses on renewable energy policy. The
ideal model of a smoothly running internal market for electricity largely
shapes the Commission’s conceptions and assessments of RES-E policy
intervention, so in this case we will watch it deploy in relations to a specific
issue. Second, it gives us insight into the actual unfolding of the liberalisa-
tion and harmonisation projects, and into their imperfect realisation. In
our study, we see how actual RES-E policy development in member states
sometimes clashed with the Commission’s ideals and ambitions, and how
such tensions have been resolved.
We look at how these two enactments of European renewable energy
policy—at the EU level and Member States—play out in the design and
management of one particular type of instruments and in the debates it
raised. FITs are a particularly intriguing object in this respect. The
Commission has for a long time considered them to go against the inter-
nal market project; but for a few years, between 2005 and 2011, it dubbed
them as “generally the most efficient and effective support schemes for
promoting renewable energy” (Commission of the European Communities
2008). We thus investigate to what extent different designs and concep-
tion of FITs have contributed to the integration of both RES-E and diverse
national energy policy agendas (partly informed by economic or industrial
interests) within the projected EU internal electricity market, as well as
within the EU’s overarching energy-climate and innovation agendas.
4 B. COINTE AND A. NADAÏ

In retracing the trajectory of FITs, we pay particular attention to two


aspects of it. First, we are interested in the simultaneous production of
guiding policy principles, actual policies, and expertise on these policies
(and on their potential to align to guiding principles). This implies that we
look at the interweaving of theoretical and practical concerns in the evolu-
tion and evaluation of FITs in Europe. Second, we are attentive to the
relative importance of environmental objectives and liberalisation objec-
tives as they have influenced the design and the theorisation of FITs. This
translates into an attention to the extent to which FITs are described, and
constituted, as “market-based” instruments. It also leads us to interrogate
what lies behind the term “market-based”: we follow evolutions in this
conception, noting shifts in focus from competition to investment, which
draw attention to different characteristics of market activities and different
“virtues” of so-called market-based policies.
This first chapter sets the scene for our study. We start by providing
background on feed-in tariffs: How do they work? When did they appear?
How do they relate to EU energy policy? After that, we explain how we
approached them. We describe the material we relied upon and detail our
strategy to explore broader trends and tensions in EU energy policy from
the study of the trajectory of one type of instrument. In so doing, we
relate our study to current sociological work, especially in science and
technology studies (STS) and economic sociology, highlighting how we
can contribute to ongoing debates. The book then follows a chronology
punctuated by key EU directives relevant to RES-E policy. Each period
(1970s–1996; 1996–2000; 2001–2008; 2008–2015) provides an oppor-
tunity to explore different aspects of the making of FITs and of their rela-
tionship with EU policy.

Feed-in Tariffs: An Overview

Defining Features and Brief History


Feed-in tariffs are commonly defined as state-backed incentives to invest
in the generation of electricity from renewable sources. They organise
access to the electricity grid and markets for RES-E, and ensure a stable
return on investment in renewable energy technologies. To do so, they
usually combine three elements: a purchase obligation, implying that
­utilities must purchase electricity produced from renewable sources and
feed it to the grid; a fixed tariff for the purchase of this electricity, the level
AGENCING FEED-IN TARIFFS IN THE EUROPEAN UNION 5

of which is determined by the regulator; and a fixed period over which the
said tariff is guaranteed, usually reflecting the lifetime of an installation
(Jacobs 2010, p. 287; Couture and Gagnon 2010). They usually involve
mechanisms to compensate for the extra costs induced for utilities, often
in the form of a levy on electricity use.
FITs thus rely on a simple principle: by guaranteeing the financial
viability of RES-E generation and organising its integration in the elec-
tricity system, they provide an “almost risk-free contract” from the per-
spective of renewable energy producers (Mitchell et al. 2011, p. 50).
They are meant to be transitory: they should drive and accelerate the
uptake of still expensive energy technologies, up to the point that these
technologies reach market competitiveness and no longer need support.
They are usually classified as “price-based” instruments, in that they set
a required price for renewable electricity, but not a desired quantity—as
opposed to quota systems such as the US Renewable Portfolio Standards
or the Tradable Green Certificates adopted in some European countries
in the 2000s. The actual development of FITs, however, paints a more
complex picture.
In practice, FITs come in multiple forms, and in diverse degrees of
sophistication. As the IPCC Special Report on Renewable Energy stated,
“FITs can be very simple […] or they can be quite complex” (Mitchell et al.
2011, p. 52). Indeed, as each of their features is negotiated politically—
from the definition of what qualifies as electricity from renewable energy
sources to the level of remuneration and the modalities for compensating
utilities, including contract duration and grid-connection procedures—
FITs are shaped by political priorities, country-specific balance of powers in
energy policy, and a range of context-dependent considerations.
FITs find their origin in the late 1970s. In the US, the 1978 Public
Utility Regulatory Policies Act (PURPA) introduced an obligation for
electric utilities to purchase the electricity generated by small-scale pro-
ducers, at prices reflecting avoided costs for utilities (Loiter and Norberg-­
Bohm 1999; Lesser and Su 2008). In Europe, similar mechanisms first
appeared in Denmark and Germany in 1979, in the form of voluntary
agreements between electric utilities and wind power producers, chiefly to
integrate growing wind power capacities into the electricity system. They
were introduced into German and Danish legislations in the early 1990s
(1991 in Germany, 1992 in Denmark), with Spain following a few years
later. However, they only became a widespread instrument for the support
of renewable electricity in the 2000s.
6 B. COINTE AND A. NADAÏ

The German Erneuerbare-Energien Gesetz (EEG), adopted in 2000,


was particularly influential. By setting technology-specific FITs and plan-
ning for the decrease of feed-in rates at a rhythm following expected evo-
lutions in technology costs, the EEG model integrated considerations
about renewable energy technologies and their cost dynamics. It thus
turned FITs into innovation-oriented instruments designed to steer the
deployment of RES-E installations. Its revision in 2004 accentuated this
dimension. FITs were subsequently adopted in a growing number of
countries (among which France, Czech Republic, Italy, Portugal, Greece,
Austria, Belgium, Estonia, Hungary, and later, the UK), to the extent that
“by early 2010, at least 45 countries had FITS at the national level (includ-
ing much of Europe)” (Mitchell et al. 2011, p. 14).
Over the course of their diffusion, FITs were adapted and sophisti-
cated. From country to country, but also in their evolution in one specific
country, they have varied in scope, rationale, design, and effects. They
were tailored to specific technologies and made to incorporate several dis-
tinct objectives, from contributing to greenhouse gas emission reductions
to supporting industries. They also had to be reformed to address issues
triggered by their own effects, with more or less success. FITs often
spurred rapid increases in RES-E capacity, generating high collective costs
as well as difficulties with grid management or electricity spot markets, and
various strategies have been used to address these problems (Karnøe 2013;
Hoppmann et al. 2014; Cointe 2015, 2017).

Why Study FITs in the European Union?


The adoption of FITs in several EU Member States was not directly driven
by the European Union. Indeed, the relationship of FITs with EU policy
principles has always been ambiguous. The European Commission initially
tended to disapprove of such instruments, considering them as state inter-
vention in the operation of markets and as potential distortions to compe-
tition. All the same, the promotion of renewable energy in Member States
was framed by EU directives, and in that sense feed-in tariffs were part of
EU renewable energy policy. Their emergence, diffusion and evolution
also occurred in the context of the liberalisation of the EU electricity mar-
ket. The trajectory of FITs thus needs to be understood in relation to
these two dimensions of EU energy policy (namely, the promotion of
renewable energy and liberalisation), as well as to the interplay between
EU policies and national policies.
AGENCING FEED-IN TARIFFS IN THE EUROPEAN UNION 7

By all accounts, the liberalisation agenda has been a building block of


EU energy policy over the past three decades. The liberalisation of the
energy sector, along with that of telecommunications and financial mar-
kets, was initiated by the European Commission in the late 1980s, in the
hope of reviving European integration and the Internal market programme
(Jabko 2006; Reverdy 2014). This was part of broader institutional trans-
formations oriented by market integration as the backbone of European
integration (Eising 2001). Liberalisation implies a diminution of direct
state intervention in the organisation and regulation of markets, on the
basis of a liberal critique of state action (viewed as prone to capture and
unpredictable, thereby undermining investors’ confidence). Market regu-
lation becomes entrusted to independent regulatory authorities and
guided by economic expertise (Reverdy 2014, p. 55).
As far as electricity is concerned, the liberalisation agenda materialised
in the 1996 Directive on the internal electricity market (European
Parliament and Council 1996). Following extensive debates, the directive
was relatively ambiguous, and left margins for manoeuvre for Member
States: as Reverdy noted, it followed a “logic of experimentation”, insofar
as it did not seek to “set the organisation of the market once and for all,
but to engage in a process of gradual exploration and adjustment”
(Reverdy 2014, p. 60, authors’ translation).
Over the same period, that is from the late 1980s onwards, European
institutions began to take interest in renewable energy, starting with a
Council Recommendation “on developing the exploitation of renewable
energy sources” in 1988 (European Council 1988). The Commission
worked on a strategy for renewable energy throughout the 1990s
(Commission of the European Communities 1996, 1997, 1999). This led
to a first Directive “on the promotion of electricity produced from renew-
able energy sources in the internal electricity market”, which set indicative
targets for the contribution of RES-E to gross electricity consumption in
Member States, with an EU-wide objective of 22% of gross electricity con-
sumption produced from renewable energy sources by 2010 (European
Parliament and Council 2001). In 2008, The Energy-Climate Package
took it further with objectives to 2020, explicitly drawing European
energy and climate policies together. As part of this package, the Directive
“on the promotion of the use of energy from renewable sources” set bind-
ing national targets for Member States (European Parliament and Council
2009). During the preparation of both the 2001 and the 2009 directives,
the harmonisation of renewable energy support schemes throughout the
8 B. COINTE AND A. NADAÏ

EU was on the agenda, with the Commission supporting a European


Tradable Green Certificates (TGC) scheme, but it did not make it through
either directive. The Commission regularly reviewed renewable energy
policies in Member States and published several “renewable energy prog-
ress reports” (Commission of the European Communities 2004; European
Commission 2011, 2013). In 2014, it issued “Guidelines on State aid for
environmental protection and energy”, advocating a gradual phase-out of
FITs and their replacement by either market premiums or tendering
schemes (European Commission 2014). In 2015, the Energy Union
Package was adopted; articulated around five dimensions, it includes an
EU target for the share of renewable energy in energy consumption in
2030, albeit not a very ambitious one (27% of renewable energy in total
energy consumption, to be compared to the 20% by 2020 target)
(European Commission 2015).
The gradual elaboration of an EU strategy for renewable energy policy
constituted a framework and acted as a driver for the setting-up of renew-
able energy policies in individual Member States, even if the choice and
design of support instruments was left to them. All this occurred in the
context of the liberalisation of the electricity sector, and while renewable
energy policy is but a small part of energy policy, it developed in interac-
tion with the gradual setting of the internal electricity market. It also gave
rise to a considerable body of expertise and research on renewable energy
support schemes, their best designs and their effects. It is the interplay
across these four processes—the promotion of electricity from renewable
energy sources in Member States, the deployment of the internal electric-
ity market as the backbone of EU energy policy, the simultaneous elabora-
tion by the Commission of a EU perspective on renewable energy policy,
and the development of expertise specialised on renewable energy pol-
icy—that we seek to explore in this book, as it played out in the evolution
of FITs and of debates around them (Table 1.1).

Approaching Feed-in Tariffs as Socio-Technical


Agencements
How to Retrace a European History of FITs?
FITs, as other RES-E support instruments, have received significant aca-
demic attention, either from the perspective of informing instrument
choice and design (for instance by drawing lessons from empirical cases or
AGENCING FEED-IN TARIFFS IN THE EUROPEAN UNION 9

Table 1.1 Timeline and key dates


Key events in Member States Key events at the EU level

Tariffs for RES-E based on avoided 1979


costs introduced in Germany and
Denmark, on the basis of agreements
between utilities and RES-E producers
1988 European Council Recommendation
on developing the exploitation of
renewable energy sources
Stromeinspeisungsgesetz (Feed-in 1991 Launch of Extern-E (External costs of
Law) in Germany Energy) European Research Network
Legislation on FITs in Denmark 1992
FITs introduced in Spain 1994
1996 Directive 96/92/CE on the internal
electricity market
Green Paper on Renewable energy
sources
1997 White Paper on Renewable energy
sources
TGCs introduced in Denmark 1999
Erneuerbare-Energien Gesetz 2000
(Renewable Energy Law) in Germany
FITs introduced in France
2001 Directive 2001/77/CE on the
promotion of electricity produced from
renewable energy sources in the
internal electricity market
European Court of Justice states that
FITs are not state aided in the Preusen
Elektra v. Schleswag case
Introduction of FITs in the Czech 2002
Republic
2003 Diffusion of results from Extern-E
(External costs of Energy) European
Research Network
Reform of the EEG in Germany 2004
Announcement that FIT will be 2008 Energy-Climate Package
introduced in 2010 in the UK
Drastic cuts of FITs for PV in Spain
Revision of the EEG in Germany 2009 Directive 2009/28/CE on the
promotion of the use of energy from
renewable sources
Renewable energy progress report

(continued)
10 B. COINTE AND A. NADAÏ

Table 1.1 (continued)


Key events in Member States Key events at the EU level

FITs introduced in the UK 2010


Revision of EEG in Germany
Moratorium on FITs for PV in France
Moratorium on FITs in the Czech
Republic
FIT cuts in the UK 2011
Reform of the EEG in Germany 2014 European Commission’s Guidelines on
State-aid for environmental protection
and energy
2015 Energy Union Package

by evaluating instruments in terms of efficiency and effectiveness) (e.g.


Ménanteau et al. 2003; Midttun and Koefoed 2003; Haas et al. 2004,
2011; Sandén and Azar 2005, Frondel et al. 2008, 2010, Schmalensee
2012), or with a view to understanding their politics, that is how they
came to be implemented in different countries and which interests and
compromises shaped them (e.g. Lauber and Mez 2004; Meyer 2004;
Jacobsson and Lauber 2006; Evrard 2010). The literature also includes
analyses at the EU level (Mitchell 2010; Jacobs 2012; Solorio and
Bocquillon 2017).
Here, we incorporate this literature (or, at least, a significant part of it)
into our analysis, as one of the building blocks of our study. One of our
objectives is indeed to understand to what extent it contributed to shaping
FITs as well as how it informed, and also staged, debates about their
design, effects, and place within the EU renewable energy policy arsenal.
Our objective is not only to disentangle the politics of FITs in the European
Union and in European countries, but also to understand how both the
European Commission and experts in renewable energy economics and
policy made sense—each in their own way—of the evolution of FITs and
thereby contributed to shaping it.
For this purpose, we collected and analysed two corpuses of documents
pertaining to the promotion of RES-E in Europe and published between
the late 1980s and the early 2010s (Appendix). The first of these corpuses
comprises EU documents directly related to renewable energy, mostly
originating from the European Commission and the European Council1
and released between 1986 and 2015 (relevant directives, Council resolu-
tions, and Communications from the Commissions). The second corpus
AGENCING FEED-IN TARIFFS IN THE EUROPEAN UNION 11

focuses on expertise, and includes grey literature (such as expert reports)


and academic papers about FITs and renewable energy policy published
between 1996 and 2013.2 These documents were collected using a snow-
ball method, and do not mean to be an exhaustive representation of the
renewable energy policy literature; they are nonetheless diverse enough to
cover the main fields of expertise involved (economics, policy analysis,
innovation studies). We also established a chronology of renewable energy
policy milestones at the EU level and in selected European countries
(chiefly Denmark, Germany, Spain, France), drawing on survey reports
(Mitchell et al. 2011; Jäger-Waldau 2013; REN21 2013) and on academic
accounts (Meyer 2004; Lauber and Mez 2004; Jacobsson and Lauber
2006; Dinica 2008; Evrard 2010; Lauber and Schenner 2011), as well as
on a detailed empirical knowledge of recent French renewable energy pol-
icies. In addition to this written material, we used interviews originally
carried out as part of a study of FITs for photovoltaics in France. In this
book, we refer to interviews with an energy economist, with a senior offi-
cial in a large electric utility, and with two civil servants who worked on
photovoltaic policy in France. These did not constitute the backbone of
the analysis presented here, but they provided valuable inputs on the his-
tory of European energy policy and expertise, as well as a more detailed
perspective on the actual challenges of tariff design.
Upon this basis, we established parallel timelines to trace the evolution
of the issue of RES-E development in national policies, European legisla-
tion and policy principles, grey literature, and academic research. We then
read the documents in the corpus closely so as to unravel, on the one
hand, the European Commission’s discourse on RES-E policy and FITs,
and, on the other hand, the types of expertise mobilised on the subject
and the evolutions in topics of research interest (Table 1.2).
Before explaining what this approach enabled us to do, it is important
to outline what questions it does not address. First, we are not trying to

Table 1.2 Documents analysed by period and category


EU documents Grey literature Academic literature

1978–1995 5 Ø 4
1996–2000 8 Ø 10
2001–2008 10 3 46
2009–2015 11 7 26
Total 34 10 86
12 B. COINTE AND A. NADAÏ

evaluate FITs or provide policy recommendations on instrument design—


something that numerous authors have done, and still do, better than us.
Second, the account we produce gives a panoramic view, meaning that it
does not go in depth into the details of either policy processes or knowl-
edge production. The objective was to extract trends and discourses, bring
them together to pinpoint synergies or tensions, and see how they play out
in the concrete case of FITs. As a result, we do not map out extensively
how expertise was formed and how it travelled, but focus on the identifica-
tion of key themes, questions, and approaches, as well as on explicit refer-
ences (in writing) or relations (in funding or commissioning) to EU policy
processes. Similarly, our purpose is not to analyse the internal workings of
European institutions: we thus do not retrace in detail disagreements, dis-
cussions and negotiations across and within European institutions—which
would no doubt enrich the analysis, but provide too much detail for the
format of a short book. In particular, the differences between different
General Directorates in the Commission are not taken into account, as
we have focused on the “finished products” of EU policy makings that
are Communications from the Commission, Council resolutions, and
Directives. We try to capture principles, guidelines, and an overall dis-
course that have been negotiated so as to reflect a shared EU approach—or
that are presented as such in EU documentation—but in doing so, our
intention is certainly not to convey the picture of the European Commission,
or European institutions together, as a homogeneous, coherent actor: we
only consider what remains when they manage to speak with one voice.

FITs as Agencements
By incorporating both policy documents and academic texts in our analysis,
we approach the conception and evolutions of FITs as the joint p ­ roduct of
political negotiations and policy implementation, on the one hand, and of
economic reasoning and expertise, on the other. This view reflects a specific
articulation of markets, expertise, and policy-making that is part of the lib-
eralisation agenda, as outlined by Reverdy (2014, p. 56): the liberalisation
of the energy sectors entails a recourse to economic expertise as a source of
information and legitimacy for market regulation, embodied by indepen-
dent regulatory authorities. It also resonates with the way the performativ-
ity tradition in economic sociology conceives of market devices (Callon
et al. 2007; MacKenzie et al. 2008). Indeed, crucial to this tradition is the
commitment not to consider theories about the economy as separated
AGENCING FEED-IN TARIFFS IN THE EUROPEAN UNION 13

from the actual engineering and unfolding of economic activities. In par-


ticular, the concept of “socio-technical market agencements” or the notion
of “agencing markets” help operationalise our empirical take on FITs.
Largely influenced by Science and Technology Studies (STS) and
actor-­network theory (ANT), the performativity tradition has sought to
take economic knowledge seriously in sociological studies of markets. It
considers the production of economic knowledge and theories as an inte-
gral part of the shaping of markets (and, more broadly, of economic
activities), but, crucially, not as a description of the economy: the corre-
spondence of economic theories and economic reality is the often-pre-
carious result of materially enacted constructions that involve economic
theories as much as practices (MacKenzie et al. 2008; Çaliskan and
Callon 2009, 2010). This has notably translated into an attention to the
“market devices” (Callon et al. 2007) that enable market transactions
and market regulation, and in particular to the way they “frame” eco-
nomic calculations, agencies and encounters (Callon 1998; Muniesa and
Callon 2007).
Another key aspect emphasised by such studies is the contingency of
market devices and framings: the organisation of economic activities is
continuously being adjusted and renegotiated, because elements that were
not accounted for (or that were “framed out”) may turn out to matter—
for example, externalities such as pollution or innovation (Callon 1998,
2007). This has led Callon to view market design as a process of collective
experimentation in which the problems arising from the operation of mar-
kets are gradually accounted for and addressed through the “joint and
coordinated advancement of knowledge and theoretical models on mar-
kets, on the one hand, and of market materials and institutional devices,
on the other” (Callon 2009, p. 537). Instead of the notion of “experi-
ment”, which implies a degree of control and overseeing, Holm and
Nielsen (2007) used the metaphor of cooking to describe the making of a
market for individual quotas in Norwegian fisheries. They talked of the
market as a “stew”, and wondered if its production could easily be “attrib-
uted to some sort of cook” following a recipe—namely, economic theories
on quotas (Holm and Nielsen 2007, p. 174). Their account provides a
nuanced picture of the performativity of economic theories. They do not
find a “master-plan” and a “cook” overseeing the process, but a rather
messy process in which agencies and market devices (in this case, fishing
quotas) are co-constructed: “a number of different materials went into the
stew and they combined in unexpected and volatile ways” (Holm and
14 B. COINTE AND A. NADAÏ

Nielsen 2007, p. 189). It is thus difficult, they argue, to maintain a “strict


division between agency and devices; between cook and recipe” (Holm
and Nielsen 2007, p. 190).
The notions of socio-technical market agencement (Barry 2001; Callon
2013), or of market agencing (Cochoy et al. 2016) originates in the work
of Foucault and Deleuze, and was introduced in market studies to elabo-
rate upon the notion of “market devices” and to invest it with deeper
conceptual implications. Put briefly, agencements are defined as sets of
elements that are put together in view to perform a specific function, and
have agency precisely as a result of this careful articulation of heteroge-
neous parts. The term emphasises the intertwinement of agencing (arrang-
ing, putting together) and agency, and it also stresses the work required to
put such arrangements together, make sense of them, and keep them
together (thereby echoing ANT’s conception of agency as distributed and
full of surprises). Looking at the agencements that enable specific market
transactions and economic activities then implies a focus on the combina-
tions of institutional arrangements, material objects, and discourses and
theories that organise economic activities. Crucially, theories and dis-
courses about an agencement are part of it, because they inform its design
and contribute to accounting for its working, making sense of it, and
adjusting it.
To provide a thick description of FITs for electricity from renewable
energy sources and of the way they make a difference, it is then not enough
to explain their logic and consider their impact in terms of installed renew-
able electricity generation capacity. Approaching FITs as agencements
outlines the diversity of ways in which they can be effectively set up, and
the range of elements that they require to be put in place, tracked, and
regulated. FITs are made of a combination of institutional arrangements
(e.g. administrative procedures to obtain them, institutions in charge of
their attribution and management, purchase agreements, levy for compen-
sation, objectives for the deployment of renewable energy technologies,
procedures for negotiating design…), of economic theories, methods and
metrics (e.g. experience curves for technologies, definitions of costs and
benefits, definitions of effectiveness and of efficiency, methods for evaluat-
ing investment risk, models of the energy mix, methods for establishing
tariff rates…), and of a definition of RES-E as a tradable product (e.g. defi-
nition of renewable energy sources, technologies for converting them into
electricity, connection to the grid, evaluation of resources…). The mixture
can vary widely, but it always frames the goods that FITs can apply to, the
AGENCING FEED-IN TARIFFS IN THE EUROPEAN UNION 15

modalities to purchase and sell them, the organisation of transactions, and


to an extent the frame of reference against which to evaluate and reform
(Cointe 2014, 2017). Crucially, since FITs are policy instruments, the
mixture is ultimately the product of political objectives, negotiations and
compromises—which does not necessarily downplay the role of economic
expertise and theories, as these can be used as resources “in political strug-
gles to define the rules of markets, property rights, and even the constitu-
tion of the calculative agents that are its participants” and serve as a frame
of reference for market politics (Breslau 2013, p. 831).
This conceptual background appears particularly suited to the study of
markets that are designed from scratch or deliberately amended or re-­
engineered, such as carbon markets (Callon 2009; MacKenzie 2009), fish-
ing quotas (Holm and Nielsen 2007), capacity markets (Breslau 2013), or
the European internal energy market (Reverdy 2014). The promotion of
RES-E does not imply the creation and design of new markets per se, but
it does involve some tinkering with electricity markets.
Our objective here is to take the economic logic of FITs and that of the
EU internal electricity market programme seriously, while not forgetting
that both FITs and the liberalisation agenda are shaped by political prin-
ciples, negotiations and compromises—as Reverdy (2014) has shown lim-
pidly for the construction of the prices for electricity and gas in the
aftermath of liberalisation. With respect to this intention, one of the main
merits of the notion of agencement is that it enables us to study market
devices, but without focusing solely on transactions and markets. When
talking of agencements, we do not have to confine our interest to eco-
nomic activities, or to try and delineate markets and politics. Instead, we
look at the varieties of issues, references and entities that are at stake in
assembling a device—such as FITs—that organises a specific range of
activities—here, investment in renewable electricity generation and the
deployment of renewable energy technologies. Market transactions are
part of the picture, but so are the organisation of the electricity system and
the definition of energy policy objectives and institutions, and there is no
need to draw firm lines between them to understand the history of FITs.
Following Laurent (2015, p. 153), we do not study agencements “for the
sake of the mere description of market exchanges”, but rather “as analyti-
cal lenses for the characterisation of political and economic ordering”.
Agencements allow us to address such big issues precisely because while
they are small, situated and concrete devices, political and economic order-
ings are at stake in their design.
16 B. COINTE AND A. NADAÏ

What Can a History of FITs in the European Union Teach Us?


We approach FITs as agencements whose history and evolution was shaped
in interactions across national renewable energy policies, EU policy, and
economic expertise. As such, they provide an entry point to analyse how
EU and Member States’ renewable energy policies have unfolded in rela-
tion to the figure of the European Single Market and to trace the inter-
weaving of theoretical and practical concerns in the process. Our analysis
thus follows two main threads.
First, retracing the history of FITs as agencements provides a strategy
to account for debates about European renewable energy policy instru-
ments at the interface between environmental objectives and the ambition
of market integration. We thus seek to contribute to the investigation of
the constitution of a European political and economic space as it plays out
in practice: focusing on one concrete type of instrument, we unpack the
articulation of the promotion of renewable energy, on the one hand, with
EU principles and ambition and, on the other hand, with the production
of expertise about renewable energy policies and about their economic
and political effects.
This situated take on the European project is in continuation of Barry’s
early analysis of the Single Market programme and of the project of har-
monisation. Barry analyses these “as a means for developing and regulat-
ing a European economic and social space, and as a project which would
establish Europe as a space which could be acted upon, both by its author-
ities and its subjects” (Barry 1993, p. 316). Our approach is also in con-
tinuation of Barry’s proposition that harmonisation “also increases the
extent to which [objects and persons] can be known about and acted upon
in a European way” (p. 322).
More recently, Reverdy (2014) has produced an extensive analysis of the
constitution of energy markets as a domain of European economic and
political regulation. He has retraced the strategies developed by govern-
mental and industrial actors to accommodate or circumvent it. Laurent
(2015) and Doganova and Laurent (2016) have described the constitution
of a European political and economic ordering to deal with environmental
issues through the building of specific hybrid political and economic
agencements such as the establishment of criteria for the sustainability of
biofuels and the definition of “best available techniques” for limiting pollu-
tion. They argue that such agencements are exemplar of “a European way
of acting on and through markets”. Their study shows how the ­connection
AGENCING FEED-IN TARIFFS IN THE EUROPEAN UNION 17

between environmental policy and market making in Europe plays out in


specific policies. Similarly, when studying FITs in relation to EU renew-
able energy policy, what draws our attention is not just the development
of renewable energy policies. We are as much interested in the issue of
their integration within a European political and economic ordering, and
their making into an object for academic research and for monitoring at
the EU level.
In that sense, our study is an addition to analyses of the articulations of
economic processes to politics and to technological developments, and of
the devices through which such articulations and ordering are constituted.
Energy appears as a particularly interesting object for such explorations,
perhaps because technical economic and political consideration are closely
imbricated in the organisation and regulation of such large systems as those
for the provision of energy, as a range of STS works illustrate (e.g. Hecht
1998; Karnøe 2014; Yon 2014; Pallesen 2015; Silvast 2017; Cointe 2017).
We argue that such studies can contribute to a more refined understanding
of the diversity of economic activities, and particularly of their political and
technological components.
This leads us to our second analytical thread. Historically, STS-
informed studies of the economy have mostly focused on market and
financial transactions as well as on consumption. Recently, they have
started to explore other facets of economic activities. Two perspectives
stand out. On the one hand, there has been an interest in what have been
called “concerned markets”, that is markets that are meant to fulfil other
objectives and values than economic ones (Geiger et al. 2014), as well as
on the capacity of markets to raise new issues and concerns (Callon 2007;
Overdevest 2011; Cointe 2015) or to be arranged as tools for govern-
ment (Ansaloni et al. 2017). On the other hand, it is being pointed out
that economic activities cannot be reduced to financial speculation and
market transactions. These dynamics, however relevant and important to
study, may not be enough to account for the organisation of the econ-
omy. Muniesa et al. (2017) have thus suggested a study of the practices
of capitalisation, defined as the part of economic activities that is framed
in terms of investment and capital, and that values things not in terms of
exchange values, but in terms of future returns. Particularly interesting is
Muniesa et al.’s proposition that market valuation is only one kind of
economic valuation and accounting, and that other forms of valuation,
notably in terms of expected future returns, play a crucial role in eco-
nomic activities.
18 B. COINTE AND A. NADAÏ

In line with this recent literature, this book seeks to unpack the diversity
of ways in which so-called “market-based” instruments can embody and
enact diverse conceptions of economic engagement and diverse political
orderings (e.g. who is responsible and what is relevant for regulating what,
for designing instruments, for setting prices…). To this end, we will follow
evolutions in the relative importance of competition and investment in the
frames of references used to evaluate renewable energy policy instruments,
especially FITs. We will also look into evolutions in the references mobilised
to set feed-in tariffs. Reverdy has shown the importance of politics, regula-
tory frames, and to an extent bricolage in the establishment of energy prices
following the liberalisation of the energy sector (Reverdy 2014). Similarly,
we are interested in the debates around and the changes in the definition of
a fair price for renewable electricity, as it relates to conceptions of what can
constitute a “market basis” for policy and to shifts in political priorities, for
example from market integration to climate change mitigation.

Notes
1. EU Parliamentary documents were not analysed in as much detail because
our objective was to trace the official and general EU discourse on renew-
able energy policy and feed-in tariffs that was constituted as an outcome of
EU processes, rather than to analyse the political processes in which it was
discussed, negotiated, and shaped.
2. Empirical work was carried out as part of a PhD that was defended in 2014,
which is why the bulk of the corpus dates back from before 2013.

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weary, and he had earned a right to unbroken slumber. However,
unconsciousness did not come so quickly as he had expected; he
lay for a long while thinking of Mademoiselle de Nançay’s manifest
indifference to his fate, and the ease with which she consigned a
political enemy to a comfortless dungeon. He could not reconcile this
apparent cruelty with the kindness that had given him a token which,
in all probability, had saved his life. He was visited, too, by other
thoughts and with the recollection of Madame Michel’s description of
the manner in which he had been saved, when a helpless infant,
from his father’s enemy. He thought, too, of his visit, when a boy, to
the château with Jacques des Horloges, of his prayer in his dead
mother’s room, of Renée and her bunch of violets on the terrace. As
he lay there on the dungeon floor he fancied that he could hear the
bell of the great jacquemart, which Michel regulated, ringing for
eleven o’clock, and from that his mind went back to the chimes in the
little shop on the Rue de la Ferronnerie and of his childhood and M.
de Turenne. At this his thoughts trailed off into unconsciousness, and
the exhausted musketeer slept the sleep of the tired and the
innocent.
He did not know how long he had slumbered, but it seemed scarcely
an hour, when he was awakened by the opening of the door of his
cell. The bolts were rusty, and they slipped back with a grating sound
which roused him at once. His rushlight had gone out, but the
persons who opened his door bore a taper which served to reveal
them to his startled eyes. He had expected Guerin Neff or one of the
retainers of Nançay, but instead of these he saw two women: one,
short and thick, held the taper which shone in her face—it was
Ninon; the other, smaller and slighter, he recognized with surprise as
Renée de Nançay. At the first sound he had started to his feet, and
he stood now regarding them in much perplexity, but without
uneasiness in regard to his trust; of two women he had no need to
be afraid. Mademoiselle’s treatment of him in the hall had been such
that he gravely waited for her to speak. They came in, however,
without a word, and closed the door behind them; then he saw that
Renée held a sword and a pistol in her hands as well as a mask. All
these things she laid upon the bench before she spoke. She was
evidently surprised at her reception, and her face flushed deeply as
she turned to address him.
“Sieur de Calvisson,” she said haughtily, “yonder are weapons and a
mask: assume them and prepare to follow Ninon, who will let you out
of the château. I would have you know, monsieur, that it was no petty
spirit of revenge which made me send you to this comfortless den. I
chose it because, forsooth, I could the more easily release you.”
“Mademoiselle, you but increase my gratitude,” Péron replied, in a
low voice. “Your trinket saved me, as I believe, upon the road, and
now you are my liberator; your justice to the messenger will
doubtless have its weight with monsignor.”
She turned upon him with sparkling eyes.
“Monsieur,” she said proudly, “I do not care a jot for M. le Cardinal; I
would not move my finger to serve him or his cause, but no man
shall suffer wrong in the Château de Nançay while Renée is mistress
here. I pray you take your weapons and begone, for I cannot
promise protection should my relatives overtake you in your flight.”
“Mademoiselle, I thank you for the warning; but with my sword and
pistol in the open I trust to shift for myself,” he replied, not without
feeling; but he obeyed her, knowing himself to be an unwelcome
guest.
She watched him in silence while he assumed the weapons and his
cloak and mask, and something in the expression of his face
softened her mood. When he was ready she signed to Ninon to open
the door, and then she turned for her last words to him.
“Ninon will guide you, monsieur,” she said, not unkindly, “and you will
find your own horse, saddled and bridled, by the wall on the
highroad. They brought it from Amiens, the better to carry out the
farce they acted at the Rose Couronnée. One of my own trusted
grooms holds the horse now against your coming. Mount him and
make good speed to Paris, for at morning they will be looking for
you. That is all—except, monsieur, beware of the Golden Pigeon at
Poissy; some of the party may be there to-night.”
She lighted her taper at Ninon’s and started as if to leave them; but,
before she could prevent it, Péron knelt on one knee at her feet and
kissed her hand.
“Mademoiselle de Nançay,” he said softly, “believe that I am not
ungrateful—or ignorant of the risk you take to aid me.”
“Monsieur,” she replied, and for the first time her voice faltered, “I
have done nothing but that which my father’s honor demanded.”
She spoke with dignity; but Péron saw the tears shining in her dark
eyes, and moved by an impulse he pressed her hand to his lips
again as he rose to his feet. She drew it away with a deep blush.
“Go, monsieur,” she said shortly; “there is not a moment to lose, it is
nearly two o’clock.” And with these words she left them.
Ninon lost no time in fulfilling her mistress’ instructions. She signed
to Péron to follow her, and in silence they went through the winding
labyrinth of the cellars until they came to a postern, which she
opened cautiously; after looking out to see if all was quiet, she
extinguished her taper and led the way into the rose garden of the
château. The night was intensely dark, and Péron stumbled more
than once in making his way among the thorny bushes; but at last
they came to a terrace, and descending it found themselves by a low
stone wall. As they reached this spot Péron heard a horse neigh and
Ninon paused.
“Climb the wall, monsieur,” she said curtly, “and on the other side is
your horse.—Adieu!”
She left him without waiting to listen to his thanks; and he did not
linger, but vaulting over the low wall found his horse held by a
groom, as Renée had said. In the darkness he could not see the
man’s features, but he was expected.
“From Mademoiselle de Nançay?” asked the servant.
Péron replied in the affirmative and in a moment more was in the
saddle, a free man again with his sword by his side. He took one last
look at the dark outlines of the château, in which one light shone
from the western tower, and then he set his face toward Paris, with a
lighter heart than he had carried in his bosom since he left Brussels.
He made good progress, although he had to make a détour at
Poissy to avoid the Golden Pigeon, and he did not halt until he
reached Ruel, where he stopped only long enough to ascertain that
the cardinal was in Paris. The ride was uneventful; and it was
evident that mademoiselle had deluded his captors, for there were
no signs of pursuit, and he rode down the Rue St. Honoré at last,
with the message from Brussels safe in his bosom.
He did not pause even to arrange his disordered dress, but went at
once to Richelieu to discharge his trust. The cardinal listened to his
account with a grim smile.
“You erred in following—from idle motives—the stranger at St.
Gudule,” he said calmly; “from that probably arose your troubles,
which were a just and legitimate retribution. Otherwise you have
done well and deserve well at my hands. You have to-day placed in
my hands evidence that will convict the enemies of the state, that will
open the eyes of the king to the peril in which we have stood, and
show him whom he can trust. M. de Calvisson, there are two ways
for a man to die: in doing his duty, or for betraying it—always choose
the former.”
Two hours later Péron had again assumed the scarlet uniform of the
cardinal’s musketeers and was making his way to the shop at the
sign of Ste. Geneviève with a light heart, having successfully
executed his commission and conscious that he stood well with
Richelieu, who was ever chary of his praise, though quick to censure
neglect and unforgiving of disobedience.
It was the fête of St. Barnabas, and the shop on the Rue de la
Ferronnerie was empty when Péron entered it, but at the sound of
his footsteps Jacques des Horloges came out of the inner room
followed by Madame Michel. In both their honest, kindly faces Péron
read disappointment and surprise as they saw him in his old uniform;
these simple folk longed to hail him by his proper title, to see him in
his father’s place, and they could not understand what seemed to
them his lack of ambition. However, they greeted him with their
accustomed cordiality and affection, and the shop being vacant, the
three sat down amid the tall clocks and the short clocks, which stood
in the same close tiers as in the days of Péron’s childhood; and as
the cat, a gray one too, came out from behind the jacquemart and
rubbed himself against them, it seemed to the musketeer that the
years had not been, and that he was still the clockmaker’s adopted
child, with his speculations about the mysterious attic and his
legends of the many clocks; and his eyes rested dreamily on the
cross-shaped watch of M. de Guise. He was not permitted to enjoy
this revery; for they had a hundred questions to ask, and he strove to
answer them to their satisfaction, for his heart was warm with
grateful affection for this faithful couple. They heard all that he felt at
liberty to tell them of his journey,—its perils and its happy
termination. Madame listened between tears and smiles, clasping
her hands and murmuring an occasional thanksgiving as she heard
of his narrow escape. Jacques was differently affected. He had been
reared a soldier, and the account of such adventures stirred his
blood; there was a gleam in his eye, a tightening of the lips that told,
more plainly than words, how he wished he had been there to strike
a good blow at the opportune moment. The scene in the old shop
was full of homely interest, the beautiful and quaint clocks forming a
picturesque setting for the three figures,—the stalwart clockmaker
leaning on the counter, his gray head a little bent as he listened,
Madame Michel sitting in a low chair, her hands clasped and her
broad, brown face illumined with affection and amazement under the
white wings of her wide cap, and opposite the graceful figure in its
scarlet uniform and the handsome face of the musketeer, who held
the gray cat on his knee absently caressing it as he talked. When he
told of mademoiselle’s trinket, Jacques immediately showed a new
interest and asked to see it; he held it a moment in his hand, looking
at it attentively, and then he smiled.
“I know this watch well,” he said; “I made it myself.”
“I thought I knew something of watches,” Péron remarked, “and I
took that for one of the Valois period.”
“That shows my skill,” replied the clockmaker, in an amused tone. “It
is a copy of a Valois watch belonging to the queen-mother. I made
twenty of these, though I only dimly divined their purpose, and all
have this secret spring.” As he spoke he pressed the side of the
watch and it opened to reveal a miniature. With a smile he held it out
to Péron, “You know its secret virtue now,” he said.
The miniature, though exceedingly small, was an excellent
representation of the Italian features and round eyes of Marie de’
Medici.
“I should never have made this discovery,” Péron said, “nor do I think
that Guerin Neff opened it.”
“There was no need,” rejoined Jacques, pointing to the cover; “they
all bear that tiny fleur-de-lis upon them, and are all of exactly the
same size and shape.”
The trinket had to be handed to Madame Michel to examine, and
while she was marvelling at her husband’s skill, he went on to speak
of other things.
“M. de Vesson is a half-brother of Pilâtre de Nançay,” he said, “and
like enough to be up to the elbows in the same business. ’Tis
strange that monsignor let that rogue go.”
“What rogue?” asked Péron quickly.
Both Jacques and his wife looked up in surprise.
“Did you not know that M. de Nançay had been set at liberty?” asked
the clockmaker. “I saw him yesterday on the Rue St. Martin with an
escort of gay gentlemen. There was much gossip, so says
Archambault, about the arrest and the release; ’tis thought that
monsignor but baits his trap for larger game.”
Péron was silent, perplexed and uneasy at this turn of events. It was
impossible, however, for any man to probe the cardinal’s purposes; it
was not unusual for him to let a victim apparently escape from his
toils for the sole purpose of more deeply involving him. It might be so
with M. de Nançay; it had been so with Chalais; but Péron could not
understand, and it presented matters in a new light: it bore directly
on his own future.
“I cannot forgive him for letting the rascal go,” Madame Michel
remarked, breaking in on the thread of his meditations; “if a man
ever deserved to lose his head it is Pilâtre de Marsou, sometimes
called Marquis de Nançay. Mère de Dieu! I wonder that his flesh
does not creep at the name, for verily ’twas he who murdered your
father and would have murdered you. Ah, I have not forgotten that
night in the woods, and how I prayed and wept with the poor
fatherless baby in my arms. I know that the bon Dieu will reward him
according to his merits. I recollect how I said over and over the
words of the psalm: ‘Qu’une ruine imprévue accable mon enemi;
qu’il le prenne au piège qu’il a dressé lui-même, et qu’il tombe dans
les embûches qu’il m’a préparées.’ And I believe that it will be so, for
even Père Antoine, who is an angel of forgiveness, says that
retribution comes surely upon the wicked—either at seedtime or
harvest.”
CHAPTER XXIV
THE CARDINAL’S RING

IN the Rue des Bons Enfans, behind the gardens of the Palais
Cardinal, Péron had his lodgings. He had long since outgrown the
proportions of his little room over the clockmaker’s shop; the old
house at the sign of Ste. Geneviève was too small to accommodate
the three grown people and the apprentices, and he had taken up his
quarters near the scene of his daily employment. He had two upper
rooms in a house but a little way from the rear of Archambault’s
pastry shop; his means were limited and his requirements few and
simple, so the apartments were plainly and neatly furnished. He had
left the little room on the Rue de la Ferronnerie untouched; it was to
him full of tender recollections of his childhood, and he knew it was
dear to the motherly heart of good Madame Michel, who looked upon
him almost as her own son.
It was in these rooms on the Rue des Bons Enfans that he made a
discovery which amazed and alarmed him. He had been twenty-four
hours in Paris before he recollected the cardinal’s ring, which he had
hidden in the lining of his coat, and when he went to look for it, to his
surprise, it was not to be found. He remembered that it had escaped
the vigilance of M. de Vesson’s searchers, and he could not account
for the loss. In his anxiety, he cut the lining entirely away from his
coat, but revealed nothing. It was dusk when he made this discovery
of his mishap, and he lighted a taper and kneeled on the floor,
searching with patience and exhaustive scrutiny every corner and
crevice of the room. The furniture was scanty, and the light shone
into the most remote spots, but showed nothing. He was convinced
that the ring was in the coat when he took it off to assume his
uniform, nor could it get out of its own accord. He had dressed
hastily to attend the cardinal to mass at his parish church of St.
Nicholas des Champs, and in his hurry he had forgotten the ring. No
one had entered the rooms in his absence, for the doors were both
secure and the keys in his pocket. Then he recollected the windows.
There were three; the two in the front room overlooked the street and
were inaccessible, but the one in the inner room opened within three
feet of the slanting roof of the adjoining house, which, however,
appeared to be unoccupied. If any one had entered his rooms, it
must have been through that window, but he saw no signs of it. It
was possible for a man to walk along on the roofs of the other
buildings and come down on the roof opposite his quarters, but why
should any one suspect him of carrying the ring, and know where to
find it? If the men of Vesson’s party had seen it, they surely would
not have hesitated to take it. What had become of the circlet? It
could not effect its own escape, that was certain, and he could not
imagine that it had fallen from its place, so securely had he fastened
it. Moreover, he was not alone confronted with anxiety at the loss; he
was liable to be called upon to produce it at any moment by
Richelieu, who had for the time overlooked it, but who never forgot.
His ceaseless vigilance noted all things, small and great, with the
same untiring energy and patience. It was with profound anxiety,
therefore, that Péron continued his search, and it was only when he
was absolutely certain of its fruitlessness that he ceased to look in
every possible spot where the precious ring could have been mislaid.
At last, he was compelled to go on duty again to attend the cardinal
to the Louvre, whither he went like a man in a dream. He was too full
of his own perplexities to observe the gay scenes in the galleries of
the palace, where M. le Grand was at the height of his power and
arrogance, unconscious that Richelieu’s web was already about him.
Père Matthieu had sent from Brussels evidence of M. le Grand’s
correspondence with the Vicomte de Fontrailles, who had already
been selected as the messenger that the conspirators were to send
to Madrid to conclude a treaty in the name of Monsieur. For Péron
had aided in the first steps to expose the plot of Cinq Mars, which
was already partially woven. In the Louvre, too, Péron came face to
face with his old patron, the Prince de Condé, who greeted him
kindly, recalling with a smile the victory over Choin in the tennis court
and saying that monsignor had spoken highly of the musketeer’s
courage and address. The prince’s condescension and his mention
of the cardinal’s commendation suggested to Péron the possibility
that his real station in life was already known among a few, and that
M. de Nançay’s strange liberation had some secret meaning. But all
these thoughts did not allay his anxiety over his loss, which might be
attended with such serious results, the bearer of that ring being able
to gain easy access to the house of the iron cross, and perhaps to
fool even Père Matthieu. Yet a vision rising before him of the stern-
faced, keen-eyed priest afforded him some reassurance, for it would
be difficult indeed to outwit him.
It was midnight when Péron was at last at liberty to return to his
lodgings. He was weary and abstracted, and made his way through
the gardens of the Palais Cardinal to the Rue des Bons Enfans. At
his own door he found a little ragged boy of the street sitting on the
stone step, and thought the child had selected this spot to sleep; but
at his approach the small figure rose. It was too dark for either one of
them to distinguish the features of the other, and only the lantern
which hung above the door revealed the ragged outline of the boy.
He peered through the darkness at Péron as he came up.
“Are you M. de Calvisson?” he asked.
“I am,” replied Péron, surprised at the recognition. “What do you
want of me at this hour, child?”
“I have a letter for you,” he replied, thrusting a note into Péron’s
hands and turning away at once.
“Not so fast,” exclaimed the musketeer, intending to detain the
messenger; but the boy was fleet of foot and had fled away in the
darkness, without pausing to hear what Péron had to say.
Annoyed and amused by the little vagabond’s manner of delivering
missives, Péron had no resource but to enter the house and get a
light by which he could read the letter so strangely sent to him. The
contents startled him more than the manner in which he had
received it. The writing was delicate, like that of a woman, and he
recognized the seal. The note was brief and to the point; it ran:—
“M. de Calvisson,—If you will meet the writer at the stone
bridge by the Cours la Reine, you will receive the ring
which was lately stolen from you. If you come not by nine
o’clock on Thursday morning, you will lose the opportunity
forever—and the ring.
R. de N.”
The seal and the initials were those of Renée de Nançay; yet Péron
was not only perplexed, but doubtful. He had never seen
mademoiselle’s writing, but something in the letter raised his doubts;
he suspected a trap. This was Tuesday; he had therefore one day in
which to endeavor to fathom this mystery, and he resolved to use it.
Of one thing he was no longer uncertain: the ring had been stolen.
As it was already past midnight and he could accomplish nothing for
the next few hours, he wisely spent those in an effort to rest; but he
slept little, for now, in addition to his anxiety in regard to the
cardinal’s ring, was the fresh perplexity of the note, which might and
might not be from mademoiselle. Péron did not misunderstand her;
he knew that what she did was prompted rather by her disgust at the
treachery that she saw about her than from any kindness toward
him, though once or twice he had thought that with all her hauteur
Renée was not wholly indifferent to his fate. He knew that in her
eyes there was a great gulf fixed between them, which not even her
love or his could span. Mademoiselle, the daughter of a marquis,
one of the grand demoiselles of France, could scarcely afford to lose
her heart to the cardinal’s musketeer. Péron, conscious of his own
noble birth, watched the young girl’s proud defiance with a pang at
the thought that the revelation of his rank would but widen the
breach. As for the note, the appointment at the lonely spot was
unlike a woman. On one side of the Cours la Reine, the road to the
king’s hunting-lodge at Versailles divided it from the Seine; on the
other were ditches which ran between the promenade and a barren
plain; and across these ditches was, at one place, a small stone
bridge. A spot more lonely at that hour of the morning could scarcely
be found, and it seemed wholly unsuited to a visit from a young
woman, yet it had the one advantage of being isolated and little
visited by those who would be likely to recognize Mademoiselle de
Nançay. Whichever way Péron regarded the matter, he found it
perplexing, but he never thought of failing to keep the tryst. There
was no risk save to himself, and he was not one to hesitate because
of personal danger. It lent a zest to every adventure, and he would
have lamented its absence.
He devoted some time the following day to a fruitless endeavor to
probe the mystery. It was of course impossible to discover the bearer
of the letter, and he found it equally difficult to obtain any other
information beyond the bare fact that Mademoiselle de Nançay had
been in Paris the previous day, at her father’s house on the Rue St.
Thomas du Louvre. This lent a color of possibility to the incident.
Further than this, Péron was unable to push his investigations, and
at nightfall on Wednesday he knew as little as ever, but he had fully
determined to go to the stone bridge on the following morning, taking
only the precaution to wear his hallecrèt and to go well armed and
prepared for any emergency.
He supped with Madame Michel at the clockmaker’s shop,—a
custom to which he always adhered unless on duty at the Palais
Cardinal,—but he returned early to his rooms on the Rue des Bons
Enfans. He had kept a persistent watch there since the loss of the
ring, having some fancies about the window, which he still suspected
as the way by which his quarters had been entered. It was after
nightfall, and he had lighted his tapers and sat down at his table to
read; for Père Antoine’s early training had cultivated his taste for
books. It was while he was thus quietly engaged that he became
aware of light footsteps on the stairs outside his door, and the rustle
of a woman’s garments. He stopped in surprise and listened, his
eyes upon the door. In a moment he heard a whispered consultation,
and then something brushed against the panels. He said nothing,
waiting to see the sequel or to hear it. Presently there was a timid
knock, followed by the low murmur of voices. He waited no longer,
for his curiosity was fully roused, and undoing the latch he threw
open the door, revealing two cloaked and masked women on the
other side. Without hesitation, the smaller of the two entered the
room, followed by the other, and signed to him to close the door. He
did so in surprise and bewilderment, and was not sure of his
recognition until Mademoiselle de Nançay removed her mask. She
was very pale, but her eyes sparkled with excitement and resolution,
and she scarcely heeded Péron’s salutation.
“M. de Calvisson,” she said, with quiet dignity of manner, “you must
think it strange indeed for me to come here—and in this manner—
but I learned only an hour since of the snare that had been set for
you; that my name had been used for a cruel deception, and I could
not rest until I set it right. Monsieur, you received a note purporting to
come from me and summoning you to keep a tryst at the stone
bridge by the Cours la Reine. That letter was a tissue of falsehood.”
Péron bowed gravely. “Mademoiselle,” he said quietly, “I never
believed that the letter was yours, but I should have kept the
appointment.”
“Mon Dieu!” she cried with sudden emotion, “you would have kept it
to your death—and I should have been the means of it!”
She pressed her hands before her face, shaken by an emotion too
deep to conceal. Péron watched her with a strange confusion of
feeling, his heart beating high with sudden hope.
“Mademoiselle,” he said, too low for any ears but hers, “if my death
would cause you regret, it would be robbed of much bitterness.”
She looked at him with startled eyes, a beautiful blush mounting to
her fair hair, and then she drew back haughtily.
“I came here from a sense of duty, monsieur,” she murmured in a
strange voice. “I could do no less—I know not what you think of me!”
“That you are an angel, mademoiselle,” he replied, “too noble and
too just to let a man’s life be sacrificed by the use of your name.”
She gave him a questioning glance, as though she doubted the
sincerity of his words and feared that he misunderstood her motives.
Her pride was up in arms and she put on her mask, securing it with
trembling fingers.
“There is no more to tell, monsieur,” she said coldly; “if you go to the
Cours la Reine, you will meet your death—and I did not write that
letter—that is all. Come, Ninon, we must away.”
Péron could not delay her, but he picked up his sword.
“Mademoiselle,” he said, “permit me at least to attend you through
the streets.”
She halted at the door, confused; her woman had gone out upon the
stairs, and the two stood face to face.
“You cannot go, monsieur,” she said, with a falter in her voice; “your
attendance upon me would lead to worse trouble for you—and for
me!”
“If it touches you, mademoiselle, I will not stir,” he replied; “otherwise,
I pray you not to deny me the small privilege of attending one who
has thrice saved my life.”
“It would be my peril, Sieur de Calvisson,” she said softly. “Adieu!”
She hesitated on the threshold, her mask hiding her face; then she
held out her hand and he took it in both his.
“Mademoiselle,” he said, very low, “I would cheerfully give my life to
defend yours, and the time may come when I pray you to remember
that I will accept no benefit which shall be to your detriment.”
He thought he saw surprise in her eyes; but he pressed her hand to
his lips, and in a moment she was gone and he heard her light
footfall on the stairs. Flushed with emotion, and with a hundred
conflicting thoughts, he moved to the window to watch her leave the
house; but as he saw her come out on the step below, he heard
some one in the hall, and looking up, saw Ninon on the threshold.
“Mademoiselle dropped her handkerchief, I think,” she said,
pretending to search upon the floor.
Péron took the taper from the table to aid her, and the two stooping
down to look beneath the table came very near together. It was then
that the woman found her opportunity.
“Be wary, monsieur,” she whispered, giving up the pretended search;
“they know who you are—and I do, though mademoiselle does not—
and they mean mischief.”
In a flash the truth burst upon him, the Nançay faction knew whose
son he was.
“Ninon,” he said earnestly, “I pray you not to tell mademoiselle!”
She was at the door again, and she gave him a strange look.
“Do not be a fool, monsieur,” she said with blunt kindness;
“mademoiselle has been betrothed to M. de Bièvre for a
twelvemonth; and her father—ah, M. le Marquis is a devil!”
With these words Ninon hurried from the room and ran down the
stairs after her mistress, leaving Péron standing in the middle of the
room, like a man turned to stone.
CHAPTER XXV
ARCHAMBAULT’S INFORMATION

NINON’S announcement, coming with unexpected force and with


truthfulness, dashed Péron’s new-born hopes to the ground.
Mademoiselle’s flashes of tenderness and emotion were but the
whims of a coquette, who found amusement and flattery even in the
admiration of an inferior. The Renée that he knew, with her varying
moods of anger and disdain interspiced with glimpses of soft-
heartedness, was doubtless very different from the fiancée of M. de
Bièvre. Péron tried to recall what he knew of the man, a cousin, he
thought, of the Prince de Condé, and a man of some wealth and
pretensions,—not an unsuitable match for mademoiselle in family
and rank, but by repute a brainless young courtier and something of
a roué. Yet, after all, that was Renée’s affair, not Péron’s. He thought
that he had seen him once or twice at the Palais Cardinal or the
Louvre, and that he bore a strong likeness in dress and manner to
the younger de Vesson. Doubtless she was accustomed to men of
this stamp and preferred them to a soldier of fortune—a musketeer.
In the half-hour after mademoiselle left, Péron had these thoughts
and many others more bitter, and called himself a fool many times
for having yielded to the charm of a fair face and two bright eyes. He
had known from the first of a barrier between them that should be
impassable, yet he had let a tenderness grow in his heart, and
deserved punishment for his folly. So completely did mademoiselle’s
betrothal fill his mind that he forgot the cardinal’s ring, forgot his
surroundings, the taper burning low on the table, forgot the unbolted
door, until he heard a step on the stairs and rose to fasten his latch.
He was too late; before he reached it the door was opened softly and
the round face of the pastry cook was thrust into the space. Seeing
that Péron was alone, Archambault came in, and shutting the door
behind him with his shoulder, advanced to the table, where he set
down a large frosted cake with an air of satisfaction.
“Pardieu!” he said, rubbing his hands, “I had to have an errand, and I
brought you one of the cakes that you used to love. You would run
all the way from the Rue de la Ferronnerie for one of these when you
were eight years old; ay, when you were a big boy of fourteen and
with M. de Condé, you had still an affection for my cakes.”
“I thank you, Archambault, not only for the present but for the old
times,” Péron replied smiling, though he wondered what had brought
the fat pastry cook up all those steps for so flippant an errand.
“You are welcome enough, M. Jehan,” Archambault said; “but give
me a chair, I am marvellously short of breath of late, and I hurried,
having something of weight to say.”
When he was seated he clasped his fat little hands on his knee and
waited placidly while his host lighted another taper and closed the
shutters on the street. When Péron sat down at last, his guest was
smiling and complacent, the same round little man who for forty
years had catered for and flattered the wealthy coterie of the Marais,
and was one of the most famous cooks of Paris. It was said, in the
next reign, that Vatel learned his trade from him, as he had learned it
of Zamet. His dress was far richer than the young nobleman’s. Péron
wore the uniform of monsignor’s guards; the cook wore a suit of
black velvet with ruffles of Flemish lace, a chain of gold around his
neck, buckles that were gemmed with jewels at his knees and on his
shoes. He cast a glance not unseasoned with pity at the bare room.
“Mon Dieu!” he said, “what a place for a marquis.”
The exclamation was so genuine and involuntary that Péron laughed
outright.
“My tastes are more simple than yours, Archambault,” he said.
The pastry cook shrugged his shoulders.
“It makes my heart ache, M. Jehan,” he replied heartily, “for I
remember who you are and what is your due. But ’tis the vulgar who
gain nowadays; monsignor has no love for the grandees. However,
that is not here nor there; I came for another matter. You have lost a
ring?”
Péron looked at him in amazement.
“By St. Denis!” he said, “there is witchcraft in it. Yes, I have lost a
ring. What more?”
Archambault looked at him placidly, his round eyes showing neither
amazement nor curiosity.
“The ring is in the hands of M. de Nançay,” he said calmly.
Péron rose from his chair with a sharp exclamation.
“I fear I am ruined!” he cried; “tell me all you know, Archambault.”
The pastry cook rubbed his hands together with a certain unctuous
enjoyment of the situation.
“They were at my shop,” he said, with a deliberation that tormented
his auditor; “M. de Nançay, M. de Vesson, and another, a relative, I
take it, of M. de Bouillon. They had a private room, and—” he
stopped, looking a little abashed under Péron’s searching eyes.
“Well, monsieur,” he went on with a shrug, “what would you? I have
found it useful to keep an eye on my guests; I have known many
things. In that same room I heard the challenge discussed of the
famous duel on the Place Royale, for which M. de Bouteville and M.
de Chapelles suffered,—monsignor’s example to enforce his edict. I
—”
“Ciel, Archambault, go on!” cried Péron in despair.
“I am going on,” the pastry cook replied aggrieved. “I have a peep-
hole—un œil-de-bœuf—concealed in the partition, you understand,
M. Jehan, and there I overheard the story of the cardinal’s ring. They
sent a man into your rooms here through some window—” the
narrator stopped again to look for it—“Ah, bah! do you not see that
roof? He found the ring in your coat and they have it. There is
mischief brewing; they would ruin you with the cardinal,—for I think
they suspect your identity,—and they would ruin the cardinal’s
schemes. They start to-morrow with that ring for Brussels; doubtless
you know more of what they can do with it than I do.”
He stopped, gazing at Péron eager for enlightenment, but he
received none. His host was on his feet in a moment looking at
sword and pistols and gathering some necessaries together.
Archambault looked on in aggrieved amazement; he had that natural
love for gossip that belongs to his class and character.
“What will you do, M. Jehan?” he asked blankly.
“If they go to Brussels to-morrow I go to-night,” Péron replied
decisively; “and look you, Archambault, I will give you a letter to Père
Antoine, he must go for me to monsignor; I cannot lose an hour, nay,
not a minute.”
“You cannot go alone!” Archambault cried, with agitation. “Mère de
Dieu! there will be four or six of them—you are mad.”
“So much the better—one can more easily outstrip four or six in a
race for Flanders,” Péron replied, changing his uniform for a dark suit
and a hallecrèt, while he talked.
“Ah, I see, you would be first in Brussels,” Archambault exclaimed;
“but it will not do—one man cannot outwit them.”
He fell into meditation, sitting cross-legged on the high wooden stool;
with all his flippancy and selfish greed, the pastry cook had still
something of manhood left, and no little wit of a low order but keen
enough to serve his ends.
“I have it,” he said, looking up and waving his hands. “Choin is at my
place, a little tipsy, I believe, but in the morning he will be on his feet.
The great hulk was asleep on the kitchen floor, and but for my haste
to come here I would have had him thrown into monsignor’s gardens
to cool; but, parbleu! he is the very man.”
“The man, if sober,” Péron replied, smiling, “but drunk—he is as
useless as the figures on Maître Jacques’s great jacquemart!”
“He will be sober in the morning, and so will Matthieu and Jeannot,”
said the pastry cook; “by your leave, therefore, M. Jehan, I will send
them after you post-haste.”
“A useless trouble, good Archambault,” Péron replied, picking up his
cloak and sword, being now fully equipped for his journey; “they
would scarcely overtake me, and would doubtless get into a drunken
brawl by the way.”
The cook shook his head. “Nay,” he said, “I have noticed that Choin
does not drink when he has work; you used him before, and you may
use him again. I can send him at daybreak, for I will set my fellows to
work upon him with cold water enough to drown the fires out of his
brain and belly.”
Péron was not untouched by the honest man’s anxiety.
“I thank you, friend,” he said, shaking the other’s hand, “but it is
useless; I can make shift with a good horse to outstrip these plotters
on the road, and I am off at once. There is the letter for Père
Antoine; and for the cake—why, keep it against my return.”
“Which road do you take, M. Jehan?” persisted the pastry cook, as
they went down the narrow stairs together.
“By the way of Amiens, though I shall avoid the town,” Péron replied;
“but I shall cross the Somme at the Blanche Tache.”
No more was said; Péron believed that he had discouraged the
cook’s well-meant scheme, and hastened to the stables for his
horse, knowing well that every hour counted and that he must reach
Brussels before the conspirators, or all would be lost. The stable-
boys were asleep and he saddled and bridled his own horse,
thinking once or twice that he heard something stir in the straw in the
next stall, but putting it down to the credit of the rats.
It had been an eventful evening; at nightfall mademoiselle came to
warn him, later Archambault told his story, and at midnight he was
riding along the Rue St. Denis on his way to Flanders. His future,
and perhaps his life, depended upon the four feet of his horse and
his own wit. In spite of the stirring occurrences of the last few weeks,
in spite of his disappointment at the tidings of mademoiselle’s
betrothal, he was calm and alert as he went out on his dangerous
and uncertain errand. He not only wished to save his own honor, but
he believed that there was peril to France in the plotting of these
conspirators. He knew that on a little thing hangs sometimes the fate
of an empire, and he understood something of the web that the

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