Napoleon Symphony: A Novel in Four Movements (17 page)

“But will the Pope come?”

“Of course. Since the Concordat he can hardly say no. He sincerely loves France, he says.”

There were a number of murmurs against the Pope. A slow-witted councillor who was a confirmed atheist said:

“Does this mean then that the contract will be signed
in a church
?”

“A solemn oath, not a contract. Of course a church. Where else? In the Opera House? On the Field of Mars? And not a church either but a cathedral. Incense, music, massed choirs and trumpets, a Te Deum, a pontifical high mass, everything. We must beat these monarchies at their own game.”

The older councillors chewed over their excited bewilderment, remembering when naked women representing Reason or some such reasonable abstraction had pranced (naked) in Notre Dame and people with crowns on had been decapitated. Well, new thrills now. Call it progress. The world had to move on.

T
he consort of the Permanent First Consul pleaded a headache at the prospect of a dinner with the Bonaparte family, or such members of it as were willing to come. But the headache was genuine and even fierce: they had had a quarrel about his acceptance of the ultimate honor, she saying that he was wrong and he replying that she only spoke thus because she feared he would divorce her, going up in the world and taking a woman who had not been various men’s mistress and perhaps having a son by her, well she need not fear divorce (giving her a couple of most painful loving tweaks on the lobes, dislodging an earring she could not later find, and then a pair of husky smacks on the buttocks, ha ha), he would stick with her, though he was now a great man, since he had an ordinary man’s decent feelings, let us spend five minutes together on the bed. She pleaded a headache.

He did not wait for the coffee and cognac before getting down to business with the family. He was no Cambacérès, making a dinner into a sacred silent rite, and besides no cognac was served. They were an impatient and fairly mannerless family anyway, and the wrangle about the succession began with the soup (all too clear, like salty warm water). Most of the family, especially the males, were growing plump, the First Consul noticed with distaste. Waiting for the next course, they wolfed all the bread that was on the table.

“I’ll tell you why not you,” he said to Joseph, pointing at him with a fork. “Because all you have is a couple of daughters and I’m not having the empire ruled by a girl.”

“You talk as if I’m going to die. You talk as if I’m not going to father any more children.”

“If you do father more, they’ll be girls. It’s a matter of the stronger element, as has been scientifically proved. Madame Julie will see that you have daughters.”

“You seem to forget I am the head of the family.”

The First Consul beamed at that, lolling back in his chair an instant. “That won’t stop you having daughters.”

“What I mean is my rights.”

“Rights?
Rights
? Under what law or system or contract or covenant do you have rights? Is there some old Corse tradition in which says that if your younger brother is made emperor of the French you then—by
rights
—become his heir?”

Joseph looked thunder at that and Lucien grinned. The First Consul said:

“Oh, I know that you, Lucien, think yourself to be a very great man since Brumaire, but you know what I think about you and your so-called marriage and your so-called wife who is not here.”

“My marriage is my own business.”

“Oh is it? I’m not having these irregular relationships, I tell you. I had my own ideas on marriage for you, as you know perfectly well.”

“With respect, sire, or whatever it is you’re to be called, if our mother raised no objection—”

“This has nothing to do with mother, mother is not the emperor-designate of the French.”

“You would not talk of her like that,” Joseph said, “if she were sitting here now.”

“Mother will toe the line like everybody else,” shouting. He did not moderate his tone before the servants who had now brought in the main dish.

“Ergh, what is it?” Elisa made a child’s vomity face. It was chicken sauteed in oil with crayfish and fried eggs bedded on croutons. “A horrible mixture, some soldier’s sort of muck.”

“That,” the First Consul said with horrible sweetness, “was served at the battle of Marengo. That is already a great historical dish.
Eat it
,” he cried. Lucien said:

“Well, for my part, I have little appetite. I beg to be excused.”

“Stay where you are, sir, I haven’t finished with you yet.”

“Let me say this,” Lucien said, “before I have finished with you, your majesty or whatever you are. Love is not a thing to be dictated. You have no right to tell a man where to place the affections of his heart. You denounced Jerome’s marriage. Is it a crime to love?”

“Oh, very tenderly put, sir. Very Rousseau and so on. Sentimental horse-dung. See here, puppy, I will not have your insolence.”

“I will not be called puppy.”

“Very well, not puppy then. Sit down, eat your dinner. But I will not have your insolence.”

“You shall not have my presence, then. There is one member of the family that does not feel obliged to attend your sickening masquerade. We fought to eliminate the monarchy, not to bring it back in a debased and hypocritical form.” Being on his feet, he was ready to sail into a wide sound of oratory. The First Consul gaveled loudly with his knife-handle.

“You did not do much fighting, sir. Retract what you said or get out instanter.”

“It is my intention to get out if the mangy yappers you call your secret police will let me.”

“Ah, over the border, eh? Join the plotters, eh? Well, let me tell you—” There were hard words while Joseph and Louis ate their chicken sadly and the ladies picked at it with tentative forks.
Manigoldo
—
farabutto
—
mascalzone
—
ingrato
—
vigliacco
—Lucien knocked one of the heavy dining chairs over as he blazed out.

“Come back, sir! Pick up that chair, damn you!”

But the double doors closed behind him and all eyes kept to the plates before them. Joseph’s plate was empty. To Louis the First Consul said:

“Well, I have nothing to say against your marriage, brother. I could not be happier. I am glad, though, our sweet Hortense is not here. She is a sensitive girl. That was not an outburst I should have cared for her to—she knows some Italian, of course.”

Louis waited dumbly, a sliver of egg-white on his fork.

“It is, as you may have guessed, upon your dear son that I place my hopes. Scion of the two families most dear to me.” Caroline sniffed at that. “You, dear Louis, are, as we all know, not very well.”

“I am well enough.”

“No no, you are not at all well. You have these fainting fits, you stagger sometimes, it would hardly be seemly—Besides, to be brutal about it—”

“
Brutal
, I would say, is the word.”

“Oh, the whole of life is brutal.” He glowed with health and ate some chicken. “The point is, brutal or not, that you must be passed over. You will all, of course, be made princes or dukes or something. Don’t worry about that. But I have made up my mind that, in default of a legitimate child of my loins—” Julie, Joseph’s wife, made a sour though ladylike face at that
legitimate
. “I mean, is it not logical?”

“I will not be passed over,” Louis said, looking very pale. “It is as good as to advertise to the world that I am a dying man. Well, I am
not
a dying man.”

“At the moment, no. But we have to look to the future.”

“This is intolerable.” And Louis began to cough into his napkin.

“You see what I mean,” his brother said kindly.

“You mentioned princes,” Elisa said. “You have said nothing about princesses.”

“Well, naturally,” he said with great kindness and reasonableness, “Hortense and Julie here, as consorts of my brothers, must bear the honorific of
highness
. As for our mother, she will just be Madame the Mother of the Emperor or something. She has no ambition in that line. It is money she is chiefly after, showing her usual good sense.”

“Why shouldn’t Elisa and I be princesses?” Caroline said.

“Well, why should you?” he asked, ready to be stormy again. “Since when has a woman had a title conferred direct on her? Use your common sense, read your history.”

“Look,” Louis said, having finished coughing, “I will not be passed over.”

“Ah yes, you will.”

“You cannot compel me to hand my son over to you as heir-presumptive or whatever the term is.”

“You will do what I say.”

“Ah no I will not.”

“Caroline and I demand to be made princesses,” Elisa said.

“Listen,” he hissed, “little sisters. My own dear wife, who is prostrate at this moment with a headache—”

“With whom?” Caroline said pertly. The First Consul gave her a long glare and wondered whether to get up, go round, slap her. He decided instead to ignore her stupidity, saying:

“My own dear wife, alone among all others, has no desire for this imperial honor to be conferred on me. Bless her sweet heart, she is totally without ambition. She does not go around trying out terms like
your majesty
and
Empress of France
.”

“I regard the whole business as an intolerable affront,” Louis was saying.

“Well, she is to be Empress of France, and she is to be crowned by my own hand in Notre Dame. Will you be quiet,” he shouted at his brother, “about intolerable affronts? Very well, then, I will have no heir, do you hear me, no heir? As for you,” he turned back to his sisters, “you shall be princesses, for all the good it will do you. And my dear Hortense will teach you how to behave like princesses, and the four of you will carry the Empress’s train. There, will that satisfy you?”

“You mean,” Julie said, a fat purse-lipped homekeeping little body, “that I am to help carry the, your wife’s train?”

“You have to have an heir,” Louis said. “That is what the whole thing is about, what they call the hereditary principle.”

“Well,” he shouted, “I will think about it, do you hear me, think about it at leisure when I do not have a family of pouting sulking ingrates baying about me. But it won’t be you, sir, or you, sir, so get that into your thick skulls.”

“I shall find it somewhat painful,” Julie said. “I mean, I have always been a virtuous woman. To carry the train. Well.”

The First Consul bayed to the ceiling.

“A
h yes,” Pius said. “A thoughtful touch, my son. It is as if I had not left the Quirinal at all. Why, when I woke this morning I was quite bewildered. I remembered a journey to France but could remember no journey back to Rome.” He laughed somewhat sillily, a decent holy sort of cleric. “Every detail of the room exactly the same. Even some of the books. Though I noticed the
Zadig
of Voltaire there. Perhaps that was an oversight. My dear daughter,” he said vaguely to the First Consul’s consort.

“I am delighted Your Holiness is pleased,” the First Consul said. There were a lot of cardinals about the luncheon table and they were disposed, in the Roman manner, to linger over their meal, asking for refills of the various monkish liqueurs that had been provided. One or two grumbled about the quality of the coffee. “I take it Your Holiness had time to look over the order of the service.”

“It is a very mixed sort of service. I have, of course, taken advice. I have no lack of advisers.” The First Consul nodded kindly. There were about a hundred of these advisers crawling over the Tuileries. “It is so strange a fusion of new and old, of religious and secular, my dear son. Strictly, I cannot be expected to crown an emperor who then proceeds to swear to maintain what is called, ha, freedom of worship.”

“Oh, you don’t have to worry about the crowning, Holy Father. I’ll do that myself. First me and then her,” pointing with his thumb towards his consort.

“No no no, my point was, is—”

“Yes, I see your point so well. How do you think I feel,” and he opened up large sincere eyes on to Pius, “as a son of the True Church, forced, yes forced, by this rabble of deists and so on to allow tin chapels and wooden tabernacles and, yes, synagogues to subsist along with our traditional faith and the temples of our faith?”

“It means, in effect, that you swear to uphold the right to atheism.”

“Yes, that too, unfortunately. I am not in your position, Holy Father. I am a mere man, a very ordinary and sinful one, charged with the thankless task of holding together a ramshackle empire. As for atheism, it has been presented to me as a sincere species of negative faith.”

“Of neg of neg.”

“It requires a certain devoutness, a kind of theological toughness, to hold, unseduced by the siren voices of doubt, to a belief that God does not exist. For my part—” He lowered his eyes in modesty, and Pius felt that the sun had been temporarily clouded. “—I see it as a divinely bestowed state of utter emptiness, a sort of dark night of the soul, into which the ultimate effulgence will rush unaware, and the unfaith become faith. I see it so, so I see it. Therefore, I consider in all humility, Holy Father, that it would be on your part an act of holy import if you would—”

But wary hard-eyed cardinals were quick to thrust themselves in. They feared that this Bonaparte would talk His Holiness into giving a coronation sermon on the virtues of tolerance, the advantages of Protestantism, the essential holiness of atheism. When Bonaparte later was heard discoursing to Pius in the Tuileries gardens on the aspective approach to the Trinity, they knew that, given time, Pius would innocently declare himself a Sabellian. Popes, they sighed, so rarely became popes because of their eminence in theology.

“Well,” the First Consul smiled, at dinner on the eve of the coronation, “we are ready.”

“Yes yes, ready,” Pius said doubtfully.

“Nothing that has to be done has been left undone.”

The wary cardinals nodded over their pasta. Pius said to the First Consul’s consort:

“Are you nervous, my dear daughter?”

“I have a little headache, nothing more.” She smiled sweetly in the ingenious way she had: hiding all her teeth but leaving the smiled-on with an after-image of a warm pearly flash.