Александр Дюма
The Companions of Jehu
“Never!” exclaimed Roland.
“Excuse me, Monsieur de Montrevel,” said Branche-d’Or, “but that is not loyal!”
“What!” shrieked Roland, in a fury, “not loyal! You insult me, villain, because you know I can’t defend myself or punish you.”
“I am not a villain, and I didn’t insult you, Monsieur de Montrevel; but I do say that by not giving your word, you deprive the general of nine men, who might be useful to him and who are obliged to stay here to guard you. That’s not the way the Big Round Head acted toward you. He had two hundred men more than you, and he sent them away. Now we are only eighty-nine against one hundred.”
A flame crossed Roland’s face; then almost as suddenly he turned pale as death.
“You are right, Branche-d’Or,” he replied. “Succor or no succor, I surrender. You and your men can go and fight with your comrades.”
The Chouans gave a cry of joy, let go their hold of Roland, and rushed toward the Republicans, brandishing their hats and muskets, and shouting: “Vive le roi!”
Roland, freed from their grip, but disarmed physically by his fall, morally by his parole, went to the little eminence, still covered by the cloak which had served as a tablecloth for their breakfast, and sat down. From there he could see the whole combat; not a detail was lost upon him.
Cadoudal sat erect upon his horse amid fire and smoke, like the Demon of War, invulnerable and implacable.
Here and there the bodies of a dozen or more Chouans lay stretched upon the sod. But it was evident that the Republicans, still massed together, had lost double that number. Wounded men dragged themselves across the open space, meeting, rearing their bodies like mangled snakes, to fight, the Republicans with their bayonets, and the Chouans with their knives. Those of the wounded Chouans who were too far off to fight their wounded enemies hand to hand, reloaded their guns, and, struggling to their knees, fired and fell again.
On either side the struggle was pitiless, incessant, furious; civil war – that is war without mercy or compassion – waved its torch above the battlefield.
Cadoudal rode his horse around these living breastworks, firing at twenty paces, sometimes his pistols, sometimes a musket, which he discharged, cast aside, and picked up again reloaded. At each discharge a man fell. The third time he made this round General Hatry honored him with a fusillade. He disappeared in the flame and smoke, and Roland saw him go down, he and his horse, as if annihilated. Ten or a dozen Republicans sprang from the ranks and met as many Chouans; the struggle was terrible, hand to hand, body to body, but the Chouans, with their knives, were sure of the advantage.
Suddenly Cadoudal appeared, erect, a pistol in each hand; it was the death of two men; two men fell. Then through the gap left by these ten or twelve he flung himself forward with thirty men. He had picked up an army musket, and, using it like a club, he brought down a man with each blow. He broke his way through the battalion, and reappeared at the other side. Then, like a boar which returns upon the huntsman he has ripped up and trampled, he rushed back through the gaping wound and widened it. From that moment all was over.
General Hatry rallied a score of men, and, with bayonets down, they fell upon the circle that enveloped them. He marched at the head of his soldiers on foot; his horse had been killed. Ten men had fallen before the circle was broken, but at last he was beyond it. The Chouans wanted to pursue them, but Cadoudal, in a voice of thunder, called them back.
“You should not have allowed him to pass,” he cried, “but having passed he is free to retreat.”
The Chouans obeyed with the religious faith they placed in the words of their chief.
“And now,” said Cadoudal, “cease firing; no more dead; make prisoners.”
The Chouans drew together and surrounded the heaps of dead, and the few living men, more or less wounded, who lay among the dead.
Surrendering was still fighting in this fatal war, where on both sides the prisoners were shot – on the one side, because Chouans and Vendéans were considered brigands; on the other, because they knew not where to put the captives.
The Republicans threw their guns away, that they might not be forced to surrender them. When their captors approached them every cartridge-box was open; every man had fired his last shot.
Cadoudal walked back to Roland.
During the whole of this desperate struggle the young man had remained on the mound. With his eyes fixed on the battle, his hair damp with sweat, his breast heaving, he waited for the result. Then, when he saw the day was lost, his head fell upon his hands, and he still sat on, his forehead bowed to the earth.
Cadoudal reached him before he seemed to hear the sound of footsteps. He touched the young man’s shoulder. Roland raised his head slowly without attempting to hide the two great tears that were rolling down his cheeks.
“General,” said Roland, “do with me what you will. I am your prisoner.”
“I can’t make the First Consul’s ambassador a prisoner,” replied Cadoudal, laughing, “but I can ask him to do me a service.”
“Command me, general.”
“I need a hospital for the wounded, and a prison for prisoners; will you take the Republican soldiers, wounded and prisoners, back to Vannes.”
“What do you mean, general?” exclaimed Roland.
“I give them, or rather I confide them to you. I regret that your horse was killed; so is mine. But there is still that of Brise-Bleu; accept it.”
The young man made a motion of rejection.
“Until you can obtain another, of course,” added Cadoudal, bowing.
Roland felt that he must put himself, at least in simplicity, on a level with the man with whom he was dealing.
“Shall I see you again, general?” he asked, rising.
“I doubt it, sir. My operations call me to the coast near Port-Louis; your duty recalls you to the Luxembourg.”
“What shall I tell the First Consul, general?”
“What you have seen, sir. He must judge between the Abbé Bernier’s diplomacy and that of Georges Cadoudal.”
“After what I have seen, sir, I doubt if you ever have need of me,” said Roland; “but in any case remember that you have a friend near the First Consul.”
And he held out his hand to Cadoudal. The royalist took it with the same frankness and freedom he had shown before the battle.
“Farewell, Monsieur de Montrevel,” said he, “I need not ask you to justify General Hatry. A defeat like that is fully as glorious as a victory.”
During this time Brise-Bleu’s horse had been led up for the Republican colonel.
He sprang into the saddle.
“By the bye,” said Cadoudal, “as you go through La Roche-Bernard, just inquire what has happened to citizen Thomas Millière.”
“He is dead,” said a voice.
Coeur-de-Roi and his four men, covered with mud and sweat, had just arrived, but too late for the battle.
Roland cast a last glance at the battlefield, sighed, and, waving a last farewell to Cadoudal, started at a gallop across the fields to await, on the road to Vannes, the wagon-load of wounded and the prisoners he was asked to deliver to General Hatry.
Cadoudal had given a crown of six sous to each man.
Roland could not help reflecting that the gift was made with the money of the Directory sent to the West by Morgan and the Companions of Jehu.
CHAPTER XXXV. A PROPOSAL OF MARRIAGE
Roland’s first visit on arriving in Paris was to the First Consul. He brought him the twofold news of the pacification of the Vendée, and the increasingly bitter insurrection in Brittany.
Bonaparte knew Roland; consequently the triple narrative of Thomas Millière’s murder, the execution of Bishop Audrein, and the fight at Grandchamp, produced a deep impression upon him. There was, moreover, in the young man’s manner a sombre despair in which he could not be mistaken.
Roland was miserable over this lost opportunity to get himself killed. An unknown power seemed to watch over him, carrying him safe and sound through dangers which resulted fatally to others. Sir John had found twelve judges and a death-warrant, where he had seen but a phantom, invulnerable, it is true, but inoffensive.
He blamed himself bitterly for singling out Cadoudal in the fight, thus exposing himself to a pre-arranged plan of capture, instead of flinging himself into the fray and killing or being killed.
The First Consul watched him anxiously as he talked; the longing for death still lingered in his mind, a longing he hoped to cure by this return to his native land and the endearments of his family.
He praised and defended General Hatry, but, just and impartial as a soldier should be, he gave full credit to Cadoudal for the courage and generosity the royalist general had displayed.
Bonaparte listened gravely, almost sadly; ardent as he was for foreign war with its glorious halo, his soul revolted at the internecine strife which drained the life-blood of the nation and rent its bowels. It was a case in which, to his thinking, negotiation should be substituted for war. But how negotiate with a man like Cadoudal?
Bonaparte was not unaware of his own personal seductions when he chose to exercise them. He resolved to see Cadoudal, and without saying anything on the subject to Roland, he intended to make use of him for the interview when the time came. In the meantime he wanted to see if Brune, in whose talent he had great confidence, would be more successful than his predecessors.
He dismissed Roland, after telling him of his mother’s arrival and her installation in the little house in the Rue de la Victoire.
Roland sprang into a coach and was driven there at once. He found Madame de Montrevel as happy and as proud as a woman and a mother could be. Edouard had gone, the day before, to the Prytanée Français, and she herself was preparing to return to Amélie, whose health continued to give her much anxiety.
As for Sir John, he was not only out of danger, but almost well again. He was in Paris, had called upon Madame de Montrevel, and, finding that she had gone with Edouard to the Prytanée, he had left his card. It bore his address, Hôtel Mirabeau, Rue de Richelieu.
It was eleven o’clock, Sir John’s breakfast hour, and Roland had every chance of finding him at that hour. He got back into his carriage, and ordered the coachman to stop at the Hôtel Mirabeau.
He found Sir John sitting before an English breakfast, a thing rarely seen in those days, drinking large cups of tea and eating bloody chops.
As soon as the Englishman saw Roland he gave a cry of joy and ran to meet him. Roland himself had acquired a deep affection for that exceptional nature, where the noblest qualities of the heart seemed striving to hide themselves beneath national eccentricities.
Sir John was pale and thin, but in other respects he was well. His wound had completely healed, and except for a slight oppression, which was diminishing daily and would soon disappear altogether, he had almost recovered his former health. He now welcomed Roland with a tenderness scarcely to be expected from that reserved nature, declaring that the joy he felt in seeing him again was all he wanted for his complete recovery.
He begged Roland to share the meal, telling him to order his own breakfast, a la Française. Roland accepted. Like all soldiers who had fought the hard wars of the Revolution, when bread was often lacking, Roland cared little for what he ate; he had acquired the habit of eating whatever was put before him as a precaution against the days when there might be nothing at all. Sir John’s attention in asking him to make a French breakfast was scarcely noticed by him at all.
But what Roland did notice was Sir John’s preoccupation of mind. It was evident that Sir John had something on his lips which he hesitated to utter. Roland thought he had better help him.
So, when breakfast was nearly over, Roland, with his usual frankness, which almost bordered upon brutality at times, leaned his elbows on the table, settled his chin in his hands, and said: “Well, my dear Sir John, you have something to say to your friend Roland that you don’t dare put into words.”
Sir John started, and, from pale as he was, turned crimson.
“Confound it!” continued Roland, “it must be hard to get out; but, Sir John, if you have many things to ask me, I know but few that I have the right to refuse you. So, go on; I am listening.”
And Roland closed his eyes as if to concentrate all his attention on what Sir John was about to say. But the matter was evidently, from Sir John’s point of view, so extremely difficult to make known, that at the end of a dozen seconds, finding that Sir John was still silent, Roland opened his eyes.
The Englishman was pale again; but this time he was paler than before. Roland held out his hand to him.
“Why,” he said, “I see you want to make some compliment about the way you were treated at the Château des Noires-Fontaines.”
“Precisely, my friend; for the happiness or misery of my life will date from my sojourn at the château.”
Roland looked fixedly at Sir John. “The deuce!” he exclaimed, “can I be so fortunate – ” Then he stopped, remembering that what he was about to say was most unconventional from the social point of view.
“Oh!” exclaimed Sir John, “my dear Roland, finish what you were saying.”
“You wish it?”
“I implore you.”
“But if I am mistaken; if I should say something nonsensical.”
“My friend, my friend, go on.”
“Well, as I was saying, my lord, can I be so fortunate as to find your lordship in love with my sister?”
Sir John gave a cry of joy, and with a rapid movement, of which so phlegmatic a man might have been thought incapable, he threw himself in Roland’s arms.
“Your sister is an angel, my dear Roland,” he exclaimed, “and I love her with all my heart.”
“Are you entirely free to do so, my lord?”
“Entirely. For the last twelve years, as I told you, I have had my fortune under my own control; it amounts to twenty-five thousand pounds sterling a year.”
“Too much, my dear fellow, for a woman who can only bring you fifty thousand francs.”
“Oh!” said the Englishman, with that national accent that returned to him occasionally in moments of strong excitement, “if I must get rid of a part of it, I can do so.”
“No,” replied Roland, laughing, “that’s not necessary. You’re rich; it’s unfortunate, but what’s to be done? – No, that’s not the question. Do you love my sister?”
“I adore her.”
“And she,” resumed Roland, “does she love you?”
“Of course you understand,” returned Sir John, “that I have not asked her. I was bound, my dear Roland, to speak to you first, and if the matter were agreeable, to beg you to plead my cause with your mother. After I have obtained the consent of both, I shall make my offer. Or rather, you will make it for me, for I should never dare.”
“Then I am the first to receive your confidence?”
“You are my best friend, and it ought to be so.”
“Well, my dear friend, as far as I am concerned, your suit is won – naturally.”
“Your mother and sister remain.”
“They will be one. You understand that my mother will leave Amélie free to make her own choice; and I need not tell you that if it falls upon you she will be delighted. But there is a person whom you have forgotten.”
“Who is that?” said Sir John, in the tone of a man who, having weighed all chances for and against, believes he knows them all, and is met by an obstacle he has never thought of.
“The First Consul,” said Roland.
“God – ” ejaculated the Englishman, swallowing the last words of the national oath.
“He spoke to me just before I left for the Vendée of my sister’s marriage,” continued Roland; “saying that it no longer concerned my mother and myself, for he would take charge of it.”
“Then,” said Sir John, “I am lost.”
“Why so?”
“The First Consul does not like the English.”
“Say rather that the English do not like the First Consul.”
“But who will present my wishes to the First Consul?”
“I will.”
“And will you speak of them as agreeable to yourself?”
“I’ll turn you into a dove of peace between the two nations,” said Roland, rising.
“Oh! thank you,” cried Sir john, seizing the young man’s hand. Then he added, regretfully, “Must you leave me?”
“My friend, I have only a few hours’ leave. I have given one to my mother, two to you, and I owe one to your friend Edouard. I want to kiss him and ask his masters to let him scuffle as he likes with his comrades. Then I must get back to the Luxembourg.”
“Well, take him my compliments, and tell him I have ordered another pair of pistols for him, so that the next time he is attacked by bandits he needn’t use the conductor’s.”
Roland looked at Sir John.
“Now, what is it?” he asked.
“What! Don’t you know?”
“No. What is it I don’t know?”
“Something that nearly killed our poor Amélie?”
“What thing?”
“The attack on the diligence.”
“But what diligence?”
“The one which your mother was in.”
“The diligence my mother was in?”
“Yes.”
“The diligence my mother was in was attacked?”
“You have seen Madame de Montrevel, and she didn’t tell you?”
“Not a word about that, anyway.”
“Well, my dear Edouard proved a hero; as no one else defended the coach, he did. He took the conductor’s pistols and fired.”
“Brave boy!” exclaimed Roland.
“Yes, but, unluckily or luckily the conductor had taken the precaution to remove the bullets. Edouard was praised and petted by the Companions of Jehu as the bravest of the brave; but he neither killed nor wounded them.”
“Are you sure of what you are telling me?”
“I tell you your sister almost died of fright.”
“Very good,” said Roland.
“How very good?” exclaimed Sir John.
“I mean, all the more reason why I should see Edouard.”
“What makes you say that.”
“A plan.”
“Tell me what it is.”
“Faith! no. My plans don’t turn out well for you.”
“But you know, my dear Roland, that if there are any reprisals to make – ”
“I shall make them for both. You are in love, my dear fellow; live in your love.”
“You promise me your support?”
“That’s understood! I am most anxious to call you brother.”
“Are you tired of calling me friend?”
“Faith, yes; it is too little.”
“Thanks.”
They pressed each other’s hands and parted.
A quarter of an hour later Roland reached the Prytanée Français, which stood then on the present site of the Lyceum of Louis-le-Grand – that is to say, at the head of the Rue Saint-Jacques, behind the Sorbonne. At the first words of the director, Roland saw that his young brother had been especially recommended to the authorities. The boy was sent for. Edouard flung himself into the arms of his “big brother” with that passionate adoration he had for him.
After the first embraces were over, Roland inquired about the stoppage of the diligence. Madame de Montrevel had been chary of mentioning it; Sir John had been sober in statement, but not so Edouard. It was his Iliad, his very own. He related it with every detail – Jérôme’s connivance with the bandits, the pistols loaded with powder only, his mother’s fainting-fit, the attention paid to her by those who had caused it, his own name known to the bandits, the fall of the mask from the face of the one who was restoring his mother, his certainty that she must have seen the man’s face.
Roland was above all struck with this last particular. Then the boy related their audience with the First Consul, and told how the latter had kissed and petted him, and finally recommended him to the director of the Prytanée Français.
Roland learned from the child all that he wished to know, and as it took but five minutes to go from the Rue Saint Jacques to the Luxembourg, he was at the palace in that time.
CHAPTER XXXVI. SCULPTURE AND PAINTING
When Roland returned to the Luxembourg, the clock of the palace marked one hour and a quarter after mid-day.
The First Consul was working with Bourrienne.
If we were merely writing a novel, we should hasten to its close, and in order to get there more expeditiously we should neglect certain details, which, we are told, historical figures can do without. That is not our opinion. From the day we first put pen to paper – now some thirty years ago – whether our thought were concentrated on a drama, or whether it spread itself into a novel, we have had a double end – to instruct and to amuse.
And we say instruct first, for amusement has never been to our mind anything but a mask for instruction. Have we succeeded? We think so. Before long we shall have covered with our narratives an enormous period of time; between the “Comtesse de Salisbury” and the “Comte de Monte-Cristo” five centuries and a half are comprised. Well, we assert that we have taught France as much history about those five centuries and a half as any historian.
More than that; although our opinions are well known; although, under the Bourbons of the elder branch as under the Bourbons of the younger branch, under the Republic as under the present government, we have always proclaimed them loudly, we do not believe that that opinion has been unduly manifested in our books and dramas.
We admire the Marquis de Posa in Schiller’s “Don Carlos”; but, in his stead, we should not have anticipated the spirit of that age to the point of placing a philosopher of the eighteenth century among the heroes of the sixteenth, an encyclopedist at the court of Philippe II. Therefore, just as we have been – in literary parlance – monarchical under the Monarchy, republican under the Republic, we are to-day reconstructionists under the Consulate.
That does not prevent our thought from hovering above men, above their epoch, and giving to each the share of good and evil they do. Now that share no one, except God, has the right to award from his individual point of view. The kings of Egypt who, at the moment they passed into the unknown, were judged upon the threshold of their tombs, were not judged by a man, but by a people. That is why it is said: “The judgment of a people is the judgment of God.”
Historian, novelist, poet, dramatic author, we are nothing more than the foreman of a jury who impartially sums up the arguments and leaves the jury to give their verdict. The book is the summing up; the readers are the jury.
That is why, having to paint one of the most gigantic figures, not only of modern times but of all times; having to paint the period of his transition, that is to say the moment when Bonaparte transformed himself into Napoleon, the general into an emperor – that is why we say, in the fear of becoming unjust, we abandon interpretations and substitute facts.
We are not of those who say with Voltaire that, “no one is a hero to his valet.”
It may be that the valet is near-sighted or envious – two infirmities that resemble each other more closely than people think. We maintain that a hero may become a kind man, but a hero, for being kind, is none the less a hero.
What is a hero in the eyes of the public? A man whose genius is momentarily greater than his heart. What is a hero in private life? A man whose heart is momentarily greater than his genius.
Historians, judge the genius!
People, judge the heart!
Who judged Charlemagne? The historians. Who judged Henri IV.? The people. Which, in your opinion, was the most righteously judged?
Well, in order to render just judgment, and compel the court of appeals, which is none other than posterity, to confirm contemporaneous judgments, it is essential not to light up one side only of the figure we depict, but to walk around it, and wherever the sunlight does not reach, to hold a torch, or even a candle.
Now, let us return to Bonaparte.
He was working, as we said, with Bourrienne. Let us inquire into the usual division of the First Consul’s time.
He rose at seven or eight in the morning, and immediately called one of his secretaries, preferably Bourrienne, and worked with him until ten. At ten, breakfast was announced; Josephine, Hortense and Eugène either waited or sat down to table with the family, that is with the aides-de-camp on duty and Bourrienne. After breakfast he talked with the usual party, or the invited guests, if there were any; one hour was devoted to this intercourse, which was generally shared by the First Consul’s two brothers, Lucien and Joseph, Regnault de Saint-Jean-d’Angely, Boulay (de la Meurthe), Monge, Berthollet, Laplace and Arnault. Toward noon Cambacérès arrived. As a general thing Bonaparte devoted half an hour to his chancellor; then suddenly, without warning, he would rise and say: “Au revoir, Josephine! au revoir, Hortense! Come, Bourrienne, let us go to work.”
This speech, which recurred almost regularly in the same words, was no sooner uttered than Bonaparte left the salon and returned to his study. There, no system of work was adopted; it might be some urgent matter or merely a caprice. Either Bonaparte dictated or Bourrienne read, after which the First Consul went to the council.
In the earlier months of the Consulate, he was obliged to cross the courtyard of the little Luxembourg to reach the council-chamber, which, if the weather were rainy, put him in bad humor; but toward the end of December he had the courtyard covered; and from that time he almost always returned to his study singing. Bonaparte sang almost as false as Louis XV.
As soon as he was back he examined the work he had ordered done, signed his letters, and stretched himself out in his armchair, the arms of which he stabbed with his penknife as he talked. If he was not inclined to talk, he reread the letters of the day before, or the pamphlets of the day, laughing at intervals with the hearty laugh of a great child. Then suddenly, as one awakening from a dream, he would spring to his feet and cry out: “Write, Bourrienne!”
Then he would sketch out the plan for some building to be erected, or dictate some one of those vast projects which have amazed – let us say rather, terrified the world.
At five o’clock he dined; after dinner the First Consul ascended to Josephine’s apartments, where he usually received the visits of the ministers, and particularly that of the minister of foreign affairs, M. de Talleyrand. At midnight, sometimes earlier, but never later, he gave the signal for retiring by saying, brusquely: “Let us go to bed.”
The next day, at seven in the morning, the same life began over again, varied only by unforeseen incidents.
After these details of the personal habits of the great genius we are trying to depict under his first aspect, his personal portrait ought, we think, to come.
Bonaparte, First Consul, has left fewer indications of his personal appearance than Napoleon, Emperor. Now, as nothing less resembles the Emperor of 1812 than the First Consul of 1800; let us endeavor, if possible, to sketch with a pen those features which the brush has never fully portrayed, that countenance which neither bronze nor marble has been able to render. Most of the painters and sculptors who flourished during this illustrious period of art – Gros, David, Prud’hon, Girodet and Bosio – have endeavored to transmit to posterity the features of the Man of Destiny, at the different epochs when the vast providential vistas which beckoned him first revealed themselves. Thus, we have portraits of Bonaparte, commander-in-chief, Bonaparte, First Consul, and Napoleon, Emperor; and although some painters and sculptors have caught more or less successfully the type of his face, it may be said that there does not exist, either of the general, the First Consul, or the emperor, a single portrait or bust which perfectly resembles him.
It was not within the power of even genius to triumph over an impossibility. During the first part of Bonaparte’s life it was possible to paint or chisel Bonaparte’s protuberant skull, his brow furrowed by the sublime line of thought, his pale elongated face, his granite complexion, and the meditative character of his countenance. During the second part of his life it was possible to paint or to chisel his broadened forehead, his admirably defined eyebrows, his straight nose, his close-pressed lips, his chin modelled with rare perfection, his whole face, in short, like a coin of Augustus. But that which neither his bust nor his portrait could render, which was utterly beyond the domain of imitation, was the mobility of his look; that look which is to man what the lightning is to God, namely, the proof of his divinity.
In Bonaparte, that look obeyed his will with the rapidity of lightning; in one and the same minute it dared from beneath his eyelids, now keen and piercing as the blade of a dagger violently unsheathed, now soft as a sun ray or a kiss, now stern as a challenge, or terrible as a threat.
Bonaparte had a look for every thought that stirred his soul. In Napoleon, this look, except in the momentous circumstances of his life, ceased to be mobile and became fixed, but even so it was none the less impossible to render; it was a drill sounding the heart of whosoever he looked upon, the deepest, the most secret thought of which he meant to sound. Marble or painting might render the fixedness of that look, but neither the one nor the other could portray its life – that is to say, its penetrating and magnetic action. Troubled hearts have veiled eyes.
Bonaparte, even in the days of his leanness, had beautiful hands, and he displayed them with a certain coquetry. As he grew stouter his hands became superb; he took the utmost care of them, and looked at them when talking, with much complacency. He felt the same satisfaction in his teeth, which were handsome, though not with the splendor of his hands.
When he walked, either alone or with some one, whether in a room or in a garden, he always bent a little forward, as though his head were heavy to carry, and crossed his hands behind his back. He frequently made an involuntary movement with the right shoulder, as if a nervous shudder had passed through it, and at the same time his mouth made a curious movement from right to left, which seemed to result from the other. These movements, however, had nothing convulsive about them, whatever may have been said notwithstanding; they were a simple trick indicative of great preoccupation, a sort of congestion of the mind. It was chiefly manifested when the general, the First Consul, or the Emperor, was maturing vast plans. It was after such promenades, accompanied by this twofold movement of the shoulders and lips, that he dictated his most important notes. On a campaign, with the army, on horseback, he was indefatigable; he was almost as much so in ordinary life, and would often walk five or six hours in succession without perceiving it.
