Complete Works of Ford Madox Ford, page 649
The Emperor said: “No, no! I will do nothing to bring that hornet’s nest about my ears. The English are extraordinarily jealous as to the liberties of their subjects abroad. You had evidence of that after the Treaty of Amiens. Their ministry till then was so detested that, we had evidence, a revolution was contemplated rather than vote the expenses of a new war. But, on news that I had imprisoned a few civilians and travellers, that died away and all that their government asked for was granted. I have made mistakes in my time. I have frequently confessed to you, my chickens, that my whole policy in Spain was faulty in that it brought those insupportable islanders to an undislodgable position on my back. My mistakes I am always ready to acknowledge, but repeat them I never will.”
“Well, some stratagem can doubtless be found!” the Princess Pauline said, and came to get the benefit of the fire, leaning on the mantel beside her brother and dropping petals from a red flower at her waist into the brands. Then she said: “Ah!” and, to Napoleon:
“Your Majesty lately signed a decree, and not before it was needed if any of your quarrelsome army was to remain whole....”
She looked down upon the Baronne, who in her earnestness to have her will with the Emperor was upon her knees... the dark Princess looked down with her oval eyes and said:
“Little one, your presence is unnecessary here. Go and show your young friend the new jewel your husband has given you for the dance tonight! I wish I had such a husband!”
Hélène had protested that she would not rise from her knees until the Emperor granted her permission to warn her foster-brother of the perils in which she considered him to stand. The Emperor leaned forward to pat her cheek and said:
“Why, do as you will, Madame la Baronne. It is no great matter. Rome will not fall for lack of a little cornet of cavalry. Still, I hope you will not succeed. Nor do I believe you will be listened to!” He had fallen back in his chair exhausted by this discussion, which followed on a long morning over papers that had begun at dawn and lasted until a half-hour ago.
The Colonel-Count dei Gatti di Vivario, she told the young man — as he very well knew had always been a sort of Orson-fetch-and-carry for herself and the Princess — a shaggy, faithful, spirited Highland retainer such as you might read of in the works of the Wizard of the North. So it was natural for her to give him for delivery the note that he had carried to George Feilding. She might have spared herself temporary anxiety if she had not, for led on by melodramatic snorts, starts, rollings of the black eyes and grunts, she pressed that amiable scoundrel until he admitted that the Princess Pauline had directed him to challenge the young man to a duel so that he might be kept under parole at any rate until the Emperor reached Paris.
The stratagem was not without its ingenuity. The claims of an affair of honour were the only tie that the young man would be totally unable to ignore; the law against duelling in the case of so small a force as was at the Emperor’s disposal was perfectly reasonable and at the same time circumstances of hurry such as surrounded at that time the Emperor and his superior officers might very legitimately be advanced as a reason for not trying the young man and his opponent until the whole Expedition found itself at leisure in the Capital. The young man if questioned as to his loyalty could perfectly truthfully assert that he could not avoid fighting a duel without such stain on his honour as officers of His Majesty’s Army could not endure; the Emperor’s ministers if accused of kidnapping a British officer, or if it were asserted that the kidnapping of a British officer was a casus belli, could perfectly truthfully assert that no state could endure the careless ignoring of a statute that was absolutely necessary to the very existence of its armed forces. The army of Elba did not contain more than ten field officers and that the life of one of their most important organizers could with impunity be threatened was not to be imagined. At the same time, so anxious was the King that the affair should have no hole-and-corner appearance that he was unwilling that the trial for a serious offence should take place in an obscure town at the confines of the world; he preferred to give it the full publicity of a city where the offender could be certain of justice and the assistance of the most skilful lawyers....
So there the duel had been, very carefully explained, accounted for and discounted, to the satisfaction of his Majesty and, as the Princess Pauline imagined, to the satisfaction of all reasonable beings. Or so said the Count.
But, in this matter Madame de Frèjus had to acknowledge herself outside the ranks of reasonable beings....
And, walking up and down in a space of twenty yards or so, on the cobbles near the Inconstant, on a mild, sunny February afternoon, whilst, not so far away, small cubes of troops, to the sounds of trumpets and commands, threw themselves about the harbour around the hustings on which stood their lord and his Marshals, that beautiful young woman confessed that she had made the Colonel-Count a very nice little scene the night before. She had tried imploring, commanding, cajoling; she had tried with every feminine wile, getting on his soft side. For he had of course a soft side for her — only it did not go far enough in this particular instance.
She had called him into the little room behind the Throne whilst the dancing had been going on because, send what messengers she would to the young man during the day, he had not been to be found. As a matter of fact he had gone shooting partridges in the Valley of the Lion during the afternoon and, hearing at nightfall that Mr. Assheton Smith’s yacht had come into the harbour, had had himself pulled out to her to call on her master. But Assheton Smith had gone to call on Sir Neil Campbell.
At any rate it had not been until the late evening and on the dais that she had seen the young man against the wall. She had then at once gone into the little anteroom where paper and pens were kept and had written him that note, calling to her the devoted Colonel-Count to deliver it for her. That faithful hero, too, it appeared, had been seeking the young man throughout the afternoon and evening and, as he was shortsighted except sword in hand, it is possible that he might otherwise not have found him and the duel might not have taken place.
“Why,” the young man said, “it is fortunate that you were the occasion of his finding me, for it has all fallen out very well!”
But: “No, no, no!” she cried. “It is not as I had wished it or wish it!”
“Nevertheless,” he objected reasonably, “I have worsted this fencing-master under the eyes of Europe. If you are interested in me, tell me what could be more to the credit of any man than to have worsted a fencing-master under the eyes of Mr. Assheton Smith, which is the same as under those of Europe?”
She said, with some vexation:
“Well, you vanquished a man who was tied to my petticoat strings. For, on my going on my knees to him to spare you, he consented not to pink you in the forearm, that having been his earlier intention!”
He stood suddenly still, his cheeks became scarlet, he tapped with his boot-toe on the stones.
“I had rather you had let me be hanged,” he said, controlling his words. “If it is gratitude to my father’s son that lets him be a laughing stock... it is a strange tenderness.”
“It is my woman’s business to see that you are neither hanged nor yet pinked,” she said.
“It is my man’s business,” he answered, “to see that my father’s name is differently honoured. Did my opponent say that I did not fight with spirit?”
She put her hand on his fore-arm.
“Do not shake it off,” she said. “It is at times a woman’s duty to wound, by her precautions, those she loves.... He spoke very praisingly of you.... He praised your courage, your endurance, your enormous strength.... Well, he must, that, for his own credit.... He could not mightily laud your skill with the sabre. How could he? He said you had the creditable tricks of the British heavy cavalry!”
The young man grumbled between his teeth:
“Ask him how many of their damned cuirassiers’ helmets we split in half at Ciudad Vimignione? Bid him ask Ney if himself was not there? It is not him they call Le Beau Sabreur who will mock at us Heavies.... Besides, Ney is a traitor to that King of yours. I have heard him say so many times!”
She began to say: “Brother, you mistake...” But they found that they were gazing into each other’s eyes as if at the sudden sound of a great natural happening. Hitherto their voices had had to go now up, now down, or had had to wait altogether for the cessation of sound. But he was aware that his late outburst of rage had been to the sound of deep cheering from the crowd that was backed on the house-fronts. Now the one word: “Soldiers!” in the voice of their master seemed to fly between their faces. There had been no trumpet half so clear. You would have said those tones echoed from the very horizon as a brazen ball might rebound from a steel bowl-rim.
They had to hold their breaths — for a pause that seemed to last a whole age. The word presaged the conquering of the world; so one single thunder clap will foretell an all-overwhelming hurricane. Their private affairs must wait; their hearts must stand still. It is not every day that you will hear the Master of the World give out a new chapter-heading to the volume labelled History!
Napoleon stood, a little, still figure in an immense hat, waiting unimpressedly whilst the last ripples of enthusiasm died out of the ranks of his men and the serried disorder of the crowd. He appeared above a hedge of bearskins and long steel, motionless, all-seeing with his expressionless, as if resentful, eyes of the eagle. For the moment he was before all things the military master of men and it was a singular revelation for those young people who had known him hitherto rather as the gentlish, slightly somnolent head of an exiled family or the kindly father of a tiny country of olive trees and iron mines. There he stood with a voice that shook the heart in its beat and with a glance that threatened death for a man that moved inopportunely. You felt the soldiery say: We deliver our lives: you will waste none!
“Soldiers!... Friends!... Old Comrades.... Here are your familiar eagles....”
And the eagles — the standards of so many regiments, each topped with a golden bird and held by a grenadier — the gay, scarlet, blue and white tints, made a fence behind him.
The inevitable brou-ha-ha of voices in applause swept away his words: they were a good fifty yards from him. The young man said to the young woman, his cheeks scarlet, his eyes flashing:
“You imagine he can fail.... Our Old Nosey says he alone is worth thirty thousand men. And he inspires each of his men to be worth a hundred! You have a hundred thousand men before you. I know troops....” The young woman’s breath caught; her brown eyes sparkled, her cheeks were flushing. She exclaimed: “Yes! No! He can’t fail.... Hush!.... He cannot fail. But the solid globe can fall away and betray his feet.... Hush!”
The strong southern tones of the voice swept over them like a caress in a pause of the shouting. They found that they were holding hands; squeezing each their fingers tight at the ends of phrases.
“These are the eagles that, flying from church-tower to church-tower of your countrysides, shall victoriously alight on the topless spires of Notre Dame of Paris....”
“Glorious! That’s glorious!” the boy said. “The touch sublime!”
“Oh, is it not?” she asked. “Too sublime for this low world.”
“In the peace that shall lie where falls the shadow of their wings and surrounded by the hedge of your swords, the husbandman shall repose beneath his vines.” A tremendous burst of cheering, coming from the civilians aligned against the house-fronts, accompanied an eruption of hats and fans that they cast above their heads. “And upon the surrounding nations, emulous of your conditions, shall descend the blessings of peace, freedom and democracy!”
The young man asked: “Why should you cry? Your eyes are full of tears!”
She said: “I always cry over the softer emotions. They are so distant, so far from realization!”
“Soldiers of the Grand Army!” the King of Elba cried on, “a million foreign troops wrested from you your standards, a deluge of foreign gold, a tempest of treachery set on the throne of your free choice the lethargic tyranny beneath which your fair land groans in its chains. But, behold, like the phoenix from amidst the fire of Arabian spices, your standards have again arisen. Soldiers of the Grand Army of France come, resume your eagles which your Emperor salutes with his lips!”
They had come insensibly nearer and could plainly see the pallor of his face, the sphinx’s smile that attended on his closed eyes whilst he took the standard from an ancient grenadier and set the eagle to his unsmiling lips.
“What does he think?” the young man asked. “What can a man think at a moment so glorious!”
“Come away,” she said. “It is perhaps not safe for you here at this moment!”
A young, rigid ensign, in the bearskin of the Imperial Guard, had climbed the steps of the hustings. The King, in the deep silence, handed him his regiment’s flag. When he dropped the point in a stiff salute to his right the bright tricolour draped the front of that platform, the silk rustling audibly.
“You shall die, but that you shall never surrender!” Napoleon said.
“Never, my Emperor,” the boy said clearly. “Never while we have blood in our veins!”
The discipline of the lines which that consecration of bright-coloured silk had reduced to a silence like a holiness, broke then. They cried: “Vive L’Empereur! Vivent les aigles! Vive la Garde!” and their bearskins and tricornes and shakos waved, like enormous black flowers, on their bayonet points above all the heads of the square. The civilians too broke the cordon and came rushing and cheering and hat-throwing down over the cobbles. The cries were a continual undertone of sound; as each standard was delivered, wavering over their heads, great bursts like volleys of musketry followed. The doves of the town circled in great flights, madly round above their heads; the innumerable sea-gulls of the harbour discordantly screamed their misgivings.
She had got him to a distance, beside the Inconstant again, for she truly feared that, if not the soldiery, then at least some of the townsfolk might mob him in that moment of delirium. The English with their mournful and bitter persistence had been responsible for His downfall. How were they to know, being ignorant people, that once Napoleon had again erected his warlike eagles, they would not be truly serving him by making an end of one of those Islanders? They would only see that there would be one enemy the less.
“But they shall soon be undeceived!” the boy said. “It would be an unthinkable, an unspeakable thing if my country, after what I shall tell them...”
“Oh, George,” she said. “What shall you tell them? Who will listen to you?”
He began to bubble, intending to tell her that he was the son of Squire Feilding of such and such a place with six pocket boroughs at his disposal, and the friend of Mr. Assheton Smith of Penrhyn who had sixteen, and that, if he could not be listened to.... But before he could get a word out, she had exclaimed, with a hand on his arm:
“George, do you know Lord Liverpool? He has the soul of a flunkey and was Mr. Jenkinson! Or Lord Castlereagh? A soul that was wicked and damned at its birth! Or the Prince Regent? Who is wicked and cruel and vain! A fat, great, potato-souled, chestnut-wigged lard-bladder....”
“And you?” he asked. “Do you know all these?”
She said: “Yes. My husband has banked for them as now he banks for the King of Elba!”
He exclaimed: “Banked! Banked! What is that?”
“It is,” she said, “that they lick your boots, or, when dancing with your wife, praise the shade of her eyes.”
“They have praised the colour of your eyes?” he asked with despair.
“Every one of those three, for from ten to sixty thousand pounds apiece. There was Mr. Perceval, the Prime Minister, that Captain Bellingham shot in the House of Commons.... He owed my husband several thousand pounds with interest and principal. His admiration for my jewels was more than you could believe. Had he lived the world might have been different. But as a sign of the discontent that seethes in your country, they shot him.... So Mr. Jenkinson, the power behind the throne —— a horrible man, Lord Liverpool! — is your Prime Minister.... And he is of another interest.... He is of the gang, with the Prince Regent that pulls the strings of Lord Cochrane....”
“Why,” the boy said, “you shall say nothing against Lord Cochrane.”
“He is in the Tower for swindling with the funds!” the young woman said, “or was, by the latest advices.”
“That is a calumny,” the young man cried. “He is the most gallant frigate-commander that we have. The Cochranes — the Earl of Dundonald — and my mother’s family are sib and rib!”
“He is a most gallant frigate commander,” she answered. “But he should not have had so fast a yacht else he and Cochrane Johnston, who is his uncle and, I think, your mother’s cousin, and Butt the stockbroker and Alexander McRae, the spirit merchant — or perhaps it is John Random that is the spirit merchant... But, if they had not had so fast a yacht they could not have come in before the government packet and so they had not rigged the market...
“I do not know how you know these things,” the boy grumbled. “You appear, I swear, to be the gay soul of purity. But if you have danced with the Prince Regent and who knows whom... For me, I only know that when Cochrane was in this Mediterranean with his frigates the French dared not breathe on the waters!”
“You do not exact that I should love him the better for that,” Madame de Frèjus said, a little dryly. “I am after all a Frenchwoman!”
He exclaimed hotly:
“No, no! You are no Froggy! It is true that you have the lightness of foot and the je ne sais quoi... But you were born in Kensington of the ancien régime.... Your heart and your love and honour are English...
“George,” she said. “My brother! My love is engaged to the King of this Island and his kin; my honour should engage me, as well you know, to the King of France that now is, and no doubt to his Allies.... My heart... I do not know. It is yet to be engaged.... But my gratitude goes in duty to your father and to my husband...
