Александр Дюма
The Companions of Jehu
When he walked thus with some one with whom he was familiar, he commonly passed his arm through that or his companion and leaned upon him.
Slender and thin as he was at the period when we place him before our readers’ eyes, he was much concerned by the fear of future corpulence; it was to Bourrienne that he usually confided this singular dread.
“You see, Bourrienne, how slim and abstemious I am. Well, nothing can rid me of the idea that when I am forty I shall be a great eater and very fat. I foresee that my constitution will undergo a change. I take exercise enough, but what will you! – it’s a presentiment; and it won’t fail to happen.”
We all know to what obesity he attained when a prisoner at Saint Helena.
He had a positive passion for baths, which no doubt contributed not a little to make him fat; this passion became an irresistible need. He took one every other day, and stayed in it two hours, during which time the journals and pamphlets of the day were read to him. As the water cooled he would turn the hot-water faucet until he raised the temperature of his bathroom to such a degree that the reader could neither bear it any longer, nor see to read. Not until then would he permit the door to be opened.
It has been said that he was subject to epileptic attacks after his first campaign in Italy. Bourrienne was with him eleven years, and never saw him suffer from an attack of this malady.
Bonaparte, though indefatigable when necessity demanded it, required much sleep, especially during the period of which we are now writing. Bonaparte, general or First Consul, kept others awake, but he slept, and slept well. He retired at midnight, sometimes earlier, as we have said, and when at seven in the morning they entered his room to awaken him he was always asleep. Usually at the first call he would rise; but occasionally, still half asleep, he would mutter: “Bourrienne, I beg of you, let me sleep a little longer.”
Then, if there was nothing urgent, Bourrienne would return at eight o’clock; if it was otherwise, he insisted, and then, with much grumbling, Bonaparte would get up. He slept seven, sometimes eight, hours out of the twenty-four, taking a short nap in the afternoon. He also gave particular instruction for the night.
“At night,” he would say, “come in my room as seldom as possible. Never wake me if you have good news to announce – good news can wait; but if there is bad news, wake me instantly, for then there is not a moment to be lost in facing it.”
As soon as Bonaparte had risen and made his morning ablutions, which were very thorough, his valet entered and brushed his hair and shaved him; while he was being shaved, a secretary or an aide-de-camp read the newspapers aloud, always beginning with the “Moniteur.” He gave no real attention to any but the English and German papers.
“Skip that,” he would say when they read him the French papers; “I know what they say, because they only say what I choose.”
His toilet completed, Bonaparte went down to his study. We have seen above what he did there. At ten o’clock the breakfast as announced, usually by the steward, in these words: “The general is served.” No title, it will be observed, not even that of First Consul.
The repast was a frugal one. Every morning a dish was served which Bonaparte particularly liked – a chicken fried in oil with garlic; the same dish that is now called on the bills of fare at restaurants “Chicken à la Marengo.”
Bonaparte drank little, and then only Bordeaux or Burgundy, preferably the latter. After breakfast, as after dinner, he drank a cup of black coffee; never between meals. When he chanced to work until late at night they brought him, not coffee, but chocolate, and the secretary who worked with him had a cup of the same. Most historians, narrators, and biographers, after saying that Bonaparte drank a great deal of coffee, add that he took snuff to excess.
They are doubly mistaken. From the time he was twenty-four, Bonaparte had contracted the habit of taking snuff: but only enough to keep his brain awake. He took it habitually, not, as biographers have declared, from the pocket of his waistcoat, but from a snuff-box which he changed almost every day for a new one – having in this matter of collecting snuff-boxes a certain resemblance to the great Frederick. If he ever did take snuff from his waistcoat pocket, it was on his battle days, when it would have been difficult, while riding at a gallop under fire, to hold both reins and snuff-box. For those days he had special waistcoats, with the right-hand pocket lined with perfumed leather; and, as the sloping cut of his coat enabled him to insert his thumb and forefinger into this pocket without unbuttoning his coat, he could, under any circumstances and at any gait, take snuff when he pleased.
As general or First Consul, he never wore gloves, contenting himself with holding and crumpling them in his left hand. As Emperor, there was some advance in this propriety; he wore one glove, and as he changed his gloves, not once, but two or three times a day, his valet adopted the habit of giving him alternate gloves; thus making one pair serve as two.
Bonaparte had two great passions which Napoleon inherited – for war and architectural monuments to his fame.
Gay, almost jolly in camp, he was dreamy and sombre in repose. To escape this gloom he had recourse to the electricity of art, and saw visions of those gigantic monumental works of which he undertook many, and completed some. He realized that such works are part of the life of peoples; they are history written in capitals, landmarks of the ages, left standing long after generations are swept away. He knew that Rome lives in her ruins, that Greece speaks by her statues, that Egypt, splendid and mysterious spectre, appeared through her monuments on the threshold of civilized existence.
What he loved above everything, what he hugged in preference to all else, was renown, heroic uproar; hence his need of war, his thirst for glory. He often said:
“A great reputation is a great noise; the louder it is, the further it is heard. Laws, institutions, monuments, nations, all fall; but sound remains and resounds through other generations. Babylon and Alexandria are fallen; Semiramis and Alexander stand erect, greater perhaps through the echo of their renown, waxing and multiplying through the ages, than they were in their lifetimes.” Then he added, connecting these ideas with himself: “My power depends on my fame and on the battles I win. Conquest has made me what I am, and conquest alone can sustain me. A new born government must dazzle, must amaze. The moment it no longer flames, it dies out; once it ceases to grow, it falls.”
He was long a Corsican, impatient under the conquest of his country; but after the 13th Vendemiaire he became a true Frenchman, and ended by loving France with true passion. His dream was to see her great, happy, powerful, at the head of the nations in glory and in art. It is true that, in making France great, he became great with her, and attached his name indissolubly to her grandeur. To him, living eternally in this thought, actuality disappeared in the future; wherever the hurricane of war may have swept him, France, above all things else, above all nations, filled his thoughts. “What will my Athenians think?” said Alexander, after Issus and Arbela. “I hope the French will be content with me,” said Bonaparte, after Rivoli and the Pyramids.
Before battle, this modern Alexander gave little thought to what he should do in case of victory, but much in case of defeat. He, more than any man, was convinced that trifles often decide the greatest events; he was therefore more concerned in foreseeing such events than in producing them. He watched them come to birth, and ripen; then, when the right time came, he appeared, laid his hand on them, mastered and guided them, as an able rider roasters and guides a spirited horse.
His rapid rise in the midst of revolutions and political changes he had brought about, or seen accomplished, the events which he had controlled, had given him a certain contempt for men; moreover, he was not inclined by nature to think well of them. His lips were often heard to utter the grievous maxim – all the more grievous because he personally knew its truth – “There are two levers by which men are moved, fear and self-interest.”
With such opinions Bonaparte did not, in fact, believe in friendship.
“How often,” said Bourrienne, “has he said to me, ‘Friendship is only a word; I love no one, not even my brothers – Joseph a little possibly; but if I love him it is only from habit, and because he is my elder. Duroc, yes, I love him; but why? Because his character pleases me; because he is stern, cold, resolute; besides, Duroc never sheds a tear. But why should I love any one? Do you think I have any true friends? As long as I am what I am, I shall have friends – apparently at least; but when my luck ceases, you’ll see! Trees don’t have leaves in winter. I tell you, Bourrienne, we must leave whimpering to the women, it’s their business; as for me, no feelings. I need a vigorous hand and a stout heart; if not, better let war and government alone.’”
In his familiar intercourse, Bonaparte was what schoolboys call a tease; but his teasings were never spiteful, and seldom unkind. His ill-humor, easily aroused, disappeared like a cloud driven by the wind; it evaporated in words, and disappeared of its own will. Sometimes, however, when matters of public import were concerned, and his lieutenants or ministers were to blame, he gave way to violent anger; his outbursts were then hard and cruel, and often humiliating. He gave blows with a club, under which, willingly or unwillingly, the recipient had to bow his head; witness his scene with Jomini and that with the Duc de Bellune.
Bonaparte had two sets of enemies, the Jacobins and the royalists; he detested the first and feared the second. In speaking of the Jacobins, he invariably called them the murderers of Louis XVI.; as for the royalists, that was another thing; one might almost have thought he foresaw the Restoration. He had about him two men who had voted the death of the king, Fouché and Cambacérès.
He dismissed Fouché, and, if he kept Cambacérès, it was because he wanted the services of that eminent legist; but he could not endure him, and he would often catch his colleague, the Second Consul, by the ear, and say: “My poor Cambacérès, I’m so sorry for you; but your goose is cooked. If ever the Bourbons get back they will hang you.”
One day Cambacérès lost his temper, and with a twist of his head he pulled his ear from the living pincers that held it.
“Come,” he said, “have done with your foolish joking.”
Whenever Bonaparte escaped any danger, a childish habit, a Corsican habit, reappeared; he always made a rapid sign of the cross on his breast with the thumb.
Whenever he met with any annoyance, or was haunted with a disagreeable thought, he hummed – what air? An air of his own that was no air at all, and which nobody ever noticed, he sang so false. Then, still singing, he would sit down before his writing desk, tilting in his chair, tipping it back till he almost fell over, and mutilating, as we have said, its arms with a penknife, which served no other purpose, inasmuch as he never mended a pen himself. His secretaries were charged with that duty, and they mended them in the best manner possible, mindful of the fact that they would have to copy that terrific writing, which, as we know, was not absolutely illegible.
The effect produced on Bonaparte by the ringing of bells is known. It was the only music he understood, and it went straight to his heart. If he was seated when the vibrations began he would hold up his hand for silence, and lean toward the sound. If he was walking, he would stop, bend his head, and listen. As long as the bell rang he remained motionless; when the sound died away in space, he resumed his work, saying to those who asked him to explain this singular liking for the iron voice: “It reminds me of my first years at Brienne; I was happy then!”
At the period of which we are writing, his greatest personal interest was the purchase he had made of the domain of Malmaison. He went there every night like a schoolboy off for his holiday, and spent Sunday and often Monday there. There, work was neglected for walking expeditions, during which he personally superintended the improvements he had ordered. Occasionally, and especially at first, he would wander beyond the limits of the estate; but these excursions were thought dangerous by the police, and given up entirely after the conspiracy of the Aréna and the affair of the infernal machine.
The revenue derived from Malmaison, calculated by Bonaparte himself, on the supposition that he should sell his fruits and vegetables, did not amount to more than six thousand francs.
“That’s not bad,” he said to Bourrienne; “but,” he added with a sigh, “one must have thirty thousand a year to be able to live here.”
Bonaparte introduced a certain poesy in his taste for the country. He liked to see a woman with a tall flexible figure glide through the dusky shrubberies of the park; only that woman must be dressed in white. He hated gowns of a dark color and had a horror of stout women. As for pregnant women, he had such an aversion for them that it was very seldom he invited one to his soirées or his fêtes. For the rest, with little gallantry in his nature, too overbearing to attract, scarcely civil to women, it was rare for him to say, even to the prettiest, a pleasant thing; in fact, he often produced a shudder by the rude remarks he made even to Josephine’s best friends. To one he remarked: “Oh! what red arms you have!” To another, “What an ugly headdress you are wearing!” To a third, “Your gown is dirty; I have seen you wear it twenty times”; or, “Why don’t you change your dressmaker; you are dressed like a fright.”
One day he said to the Duchesse de Chevreuse, a charming blonde, whose hair was the admiration of everyone:
“It’s queer how red your hair is!”
“Possibly,” replied the duchess, “but this is the first time any man has told me so.”
Bonaparte did not like cards; when he did happen to play it was always vingt-et-un. For the rest, he had one trait in common with Henry IV., he cheated; but when the game was over he left all the gold and notes he had won on the table, saying:
“You are ninnies! I have cheated all the time we’ve been playing, and you never found out. Those who lost can take their money back.”
Born and bred in the Catholic faith, Bonaparte had no preference for any dogma. When he re-established divine worship it was done as a political act, not as a religious one. He was fond, however, of discussions bearing on the subject; but he defined his own part in advance by saying: “My reason makes me a disbeliever in many things; but the impressions of my childhood and the inspirations of my early youth have flung me back into uncertainty.”
Nevertheless he would never hear of materialism; he cared little what the dogma was, provided that dogma recognized a Creator. One beautiful evening in Messidor, on board his vessel, as it glided along between the twofold azure of the sky and sea, certain mathematicians declared there was no God, only animated matter. Bonaparte looked at the celestial arch, a hundred times more brilliant between Malta and Alexandria than it is in Europe, and, at a moment when they thought him unconscious of the conversation, he exclaimed, pointing to the stars: “You may say what you please, but it was a God who made all that.”
Bonaparte, though very exact in paying his private debts, was just the reverse about public expenses. He was firmly convinced that in all past transactions between ministers and purveyors or contractors, that if the minister who had made the contract was not a dupe, the State at any rate was robbed; for this reason he delayed the period of payment as long as possible; there were literally no evasions, no difficulties he would not make, no bad reasons he would not give. It was a fixed idea with him, an immutable principle, that every contractor was a cheat.
One day a man who had made a bid that was accepted was presented to him.
“What is your name?” he asked, with his accustomed brusqueness.
“Vollant, citizen First Consul.”
“Good name for a contractor.”
“I spell it with two l’s, citizen.”
“To rob the better, sir,” retorted Bonaparte, turning his back on him.
Bonaparte seldom changed his decisions, even when he saw they were unjust. No one ever heard him say: “I was mistaken.” On the contrary, his favorite saying was: “I always believe the worst” – a saying more worthy of Simon than Augustus.
But with all this, one felt that there was more of a desire in Bonaparte’s mind to seem to despise men than actual contempt for them. He was neither malignant nor vindictive. Sometimes, it is true, he relied too much upon necessity, that iron-tipped goddess; but for the rest, take him away from the field of politics and he was kind, sympathetic, accessible to pity, fond of children (great proof of a kind and pitying heart), full of indulgence for human weakness in private life, and sometimes of a good-humored heartiness, like that of Henri IV. playing with his children in the presence of the Spanish ambassador.
If we were writing history we should have many more things to say of Bonaparte without counting those which – after finishing with Bonaparte – we should still have to say of Napoleon. But we are writing a simple narrative, in which Bonaparte plays a part; unfortunately, wherever Bonaparte shows himself, if only for a moment, he becomes, in spite of himself, a principal personage.
The reader must pardon us for having again fallen into digression; that man, who is a world in himself, has, against our will, swept us along in his whirlwind.
Let us return to Roland, and consequently to our legitimate tale.
CHAPTER XXXVII. THE AMBASSADOR
We have seen that Roland, on returning to the Luxembourg, asked for the First Consul and was told that he was engaged with Fouché, the minister of police.
Roland was a privileged person; no matter what functionary was with Bonaparte, he was in the habit, on his return from a journey, or merely from an errand, of half opening the door and putting in his head. The First Consul was often so busy that he paid no attention to this head. When that was the case, Roland would say “General!” which meant, in the close intimacy which still existed between the two schoolmates: “General, I am here; do you need me? I’m at your orders.” If the First Consul did not need him, he replied: “Very good.” If on the contrary he did need him, he said, simply: “Come in.” Then Roland would enter, and wait in the recess of a window until the general told him what he wanted.
On this occasion, Roland put his head in as usual, saying: “General!”
“Come in,” replied the First Consul, with visible satisfaction; “come in, come in!”
Roland entered. Bonaparte was, as he had been told, busy with the minister of police. The affair on which the First Consul was engaged, and which seemed to absorb him a great deal, had also its interest for Roland.
It concerned the recent stoppages of diligences by the Companions of Jehu.
On the table lay three procès-verbaux relating the stoppage of one diligence and two mail-coaches. Tribier, the paymaster of the Army of Italy, was in one of the latter. The stoppages had occurred, one on the highroad between Meximieux and Montluel, on that part of the road which crosses the commune of Bellignieux; the second, at the extremity of the lake of Silans, in the direction of Nantua; the third, on the highroad between Saint-Etienne and Bourg, at a spot called Les Carronnières.
A curious fact was connected with these stoppages. A sum of four thousand francs and a case of jewelry had been mixed up by mistake with the money-bags belonging to the government. The owners of the money had thought them lost, when the justice of the peace at Nantua received an unsigned letter telling him the place where these objects had been buried, and requesting him to return them to their rightful owners, as the Companions of Jehu made war upon the government and not against private individuals.
In another case; that of the Carronnières – where the robbers, in order to stop the mail-coach, which had continued on its way with increased speed in spite of the order to stop, were forced to fire at a horse – the Companions of Jehu had felt themselves obliged to make good this loss to the postmaster, who had received five hundred francs for the dead horse. That was exactly what the animal had cost eight days before; and this valuation proved that they were dealing with men who understood horses.
The procès-verbaux sent by the local authorities were accompanied by the affidavits of the travellers.
Bonaparte was singing that mysterious tune of which we have spoken; which showed that he was furious. So, as Roland might be expected to bring him fresh information, he had called him three times to come in.
“Well,” said he, “your part of the country is certainly in revolt against me; just look at that.”
Roland glanced at the papers and understood at once.
“Exactly what I came to speak to you about, general,” said he.
“Then begin at once; but first go ask Bourrienne for my department atlas.”
Roland fetched the atlas, and, guessing what Bonaparte desired to look at, opened it at the department of the Ain.
“That’s it,” said Bonaparte; “show me where these affairs happened.”
Roland laid his finger on the edge of the map, in the neighborhood of Lyons.
“There, general, that’s the exact place of the first attack, near the village of Bellignieux.”
“And the second?”
“Here,” said Roland, pointing to the other side of the department, toward Geneva; “there’s the lake of Nantua, and here’s that of Silans.”
“Now the third?”
Roland laid his finger on the centre of the map.
“General, there’s the exact spot. Les Carronnières are not marked on the map because of their slight importance.”
“What are Les Carronnières?” asked the First Consul.
“General, in our part of the country the manufactories of tiles are called carronnières; they belong to citizen Terrier. That’s the place they ought to be on the map.”
And Roland made a pencil mark on the paper to show the exact spot where the stoppage occurred.
“What!” exclaimed Bonaparte; “why, it happened less than a mile and a half from Bourg!”
“Scarcely that, general; that explains why the wounded horse was taken back to Bourg and died in the stables of the Belle-Alliance.”
“Do you hear all these details, sir!” said Bonaparte, addressing the minister of police.
“Yes, citizen First Consul,” answered the latter.
“You know I want this brigandage to stop?”
“I shall use every effort – ”
“It’s not a question of your efforts, but of its being done.”
The minister bowed.
“It is only on that condition,” said Bonaparte, “that I shall admit you are the able man you claim to be.”
“I’ll help you, citizen,” said Roland.
“I did not venture to ask for your assistance,” said the minister.
“Yes, but I offer it; don’t do anything that we have not planned together.”
The minister looked at Bonaparte.
“Quite right,” said Bonaparte; “you can go. Roland will follow you to the ministry.”
Fouché bowed and left the room.
“Now,” continued the First Consul, “your honor depends upon your exterminating these bandits, Roland. In the first place, the thing is being carried on in your department; and next, they seem to have some particular grudge against you and your family.”
“On the contrary,” said Roland, “that’s what makes me so furious; they spare me and my family.”
“Let’s go over it again, Roland. Every detail is of importance; it’s a war of Bedouins over again.”
“Just notice this, general. I spend a night in the Chartreuse of Seillon, because I have been told that it was haunted by ghosts. Sure enough, a ghost appears, but a perfectly inoffensive one. I fire at it twice, and it doesn’t even turn around. My mother is in a diligence that is stopped, and faints away. One of the robbers pays her the most delicate attentions, bathes her temples with vinegar, and gives her smelling-salts. My brother Edouard fights them as best he can; they take him in their arms, kiss him, and make him all sorts of compliments on his courage; a little more and they would have given him sugar-plums as a reward for his gallant conduct. Now, just the reverse; my friend Sir John follows my example, goes where I have been; he is treated as a spy and stabbed, as they thought, to death.”
“But he didn’t die.”
“No. On the contrary, he is so well that he wants to marry my sister.”
“Ah ha! Has he asked for her?”
“Officially.”
“And you answered?”
“I answered that the matter depended on two persons.”
“Your mother and you; that’s true.”
“No; my sister herself – and you.”
“Your sister I understand; but I?”
“Didn’t you tell me general, that you would take charge of marrying her?”
Bonaparte walked up and down the room with his arms crossed; then, suddenly stopping before Roland, he said: “What is your Englishman like?”
“You have seen him, general.”
“I don’t mean physically; all Englishmen are alike – blue eyes, red hair, white skin, long jaws.”
“That’s their th,” said Roland, gravely.
“Their th?”
“Yes. Did you ever learn English, general?”
“Faith! I tried to learn it.”
“Your teacher must have told you that the th was sounded by pressing the tongue against the teeth. Well, by dint of punching their teeth with their tongues the English have ended by getting those elongated jaws, which, as you said just now, is one of the distinctive characteristics of their physiognomy.”
Bonaparte looked at Roland to see if that incorrigible jester were laughing or speaking seriously. Roland was imperturbable.
“Is that your opinion?” said Bonaparte.
“Yes, general, and I think that physiologically it is as good as any other. I have a lot of opinions like it, which I bring to light as the occasion offers.”
“Come back to your Englishman.”
“Certainly, general.”
“I asked you what he was like.”
“Well, he is a gentleman; very brave, very calm, very impassible, very noble, very rich, and, moreover – which may not be a recommendation to you – a nephew of Lord Grenville, prime minister to his Britannic Majesty.”
“What’s that?”
“I said, prime minister to his Britannic Majesty.”
Bonaparte resumed his walk; then, presently returning to Roland, he said: “Can I see your Englishman?”
“You know, general, that you can do anything.”
“Where is he?”
“In Paris.”
“Go find him and bring him here.”
Roland was in the habit of obeying without reply; he took his hat and went toward the door.
“Send Bourrienne to me,” said the First Consul, just as Roland passed into the secretary’s room.
Five minutes later Bourrienne appeared.
“Sit down there, Bourrienne,” said the First Consul, “and write.”
Bourrienne sat down, arranged his paper, dipped his pen in the ink, and waited.
“Ready?” asked the First Consul, sitting down upon the writing table, which was another of his habits; a habit that reduced his secretary to despair, for Bonaparte never ceased swinging himself back and forth all the time he dictated – a motion that shook the table as much as if it had been in the middle of the ocean with a heaving sea.
“I’m ready,” replied Bourrienne, who had ended by forcing himself to endure, with more or less patience, all Bonaparte’s eccentricities.
“Then write.” And he dictated:
Bonaparte, First Consul of the Republic, to his Majesty the King of Great Britain and Ireland. Called by the will of the French nation to the chief magistracy of the Republic, I think it proper to inform your Majesty personally of this fact.
Must the war, which for two years has ravaged the four quarters of the globe, be perpetuated? Is there no means of staying it?
How is it that two nations, the most enlightened of Europe, more powerful and strong than their own safety and independence require; how is it that they sacrifice to their ideas of empty grandeur or bigoted antipathies the welfare of commerce, eternal prosperity, the happiness of families? How is it that they do not recognize that peace is the first of needs and the first of a nation’s glories?
These sentiments cannot be foreign to the heart of a king who governs a free nation with the sole object of rendering it happy.
Your Majesty will see in this overture my sincere desire to contribute efficaciously, for the second time, to a general pacification, by an advance frankly made and free of those formalities which, necessary perhaps to disguise the dependence of feeble states, only disclose in powerful nations a mutual desire to deceive.
France and England can, for a long time yet, by the abuse of their powers, and to the misery of their people, carry on the struggle without exhaustion; but, and I dare say it, the fate of all the civilized nations depends on the conclusion of a war which involves the universe.
Bonaparte paused. “I think that will do,” said he. “Read it over, Bourrienne.”
Bourrienne read the letter he had just written. After each paragraph the First Consul nodded approvingly; and said: “Go on.”
Before the last words were fairly uttered, he took the letter from Bourrienne’s hands and signed it with a new pen. It was a habit of his never to use the same pen twice. Nothing could be more disagreeable to him than a spot of ink on his fingers.
“That’s good,” said he. “Seal it and put on the address: ‘To Lord Grenville.’”
Bourrienne did as he was told. At the same moment the noise of a carriage was heard entering the courtyard of the Luxembourg. A moment later the door opened and Roland appeared.
“Well?” asked Bonaparte.
“Didn’t I tell you you could have anything you wanted, general?”
“Have you brought your Englishman?”
“I met him in the Place de Buci; and, knowing that you don’t like to wait, I caught him just as he was, and made him get into the carriage. Faith! I thought I should have to drive round to the Rue Mazarine, and get a guard to bring him. He’s in boots and a frock-coat.”
