Authors: Patrick Rambaud
Two figures were outlined against the metal base of a torchère. The first was furtively throwing his luggage into a cabriolet; smaller and rounder, the second followed him with a coat-rack.
‘By the size and shoulders of the first one,’ said Bertrand, ‘I recognize Monsieur Constant.’
‘So he’s creeping off as well...’
‘And the other?’
‘I think it’s Roustan, but how can we be sure, when he isn’t wearing his Mameluke’s outfit?’
‘I thought he’d come back from Paris?’
‘Then he’s setting off again, your lordship, this time for good.’
‘The rats! There won’t be many of us serving His Majesty in the new place.’
*
There were not many of them the following morning, in fact, in the Courtyard of the White Horse. By nine o’clock, only thirteen coaches were lined up for an imminent departure. Most of the privileged or devoted people who were to accompany the Emperor had already taken their places in the queue of berlins: the pharmacist, the two cooks, the farrier - about twenty people at the most who had been selected to recreate the household of the exiled sovereign. On General Petit’s orders, the First Regiment of the Grenadiers à pied lined up; the trumpeters awaited the order to play ‘Pour l’empereur', the drummers held their sticks poised above the instruments they wore on sholder-straps, standards hung like fringed and gilded rags at the end of poles whose eagles held their beaks lowered. No sound, no wind. Serious faces, smoke-dried by the bivouacs and the gunfire, expressed nothing but a void; it was the end of an adventure.
Octave was daydreaming, boots in his stirrups on a post-horse. He thought of his past as a penpusher and a paid informer (complementary activities since in each case the task was to give an account of what one knew or wished to understand). He was just reflecting that the fall of a great man was a blessing to its immediate witnesses, and that he had, thanks to his gifts as a writer, a subject that would surely bring him to prominence, when a voice dragged him from his ambiguous thoughts.
‘Monsieur Sénécal, can you tell His Majesty that everything is ready?’ Count Bertrand was sharing the six-horse sleeping-carriage that was to take the Emperor away. He had opened the door and called to Octave, who quickly dismounted.
‘Straight away . . .’ Clutching his cane and hat like a master of ceremonies, Octave walked along the line of grenadiers at ease, climbed the horseshoe steps and walked mechanically along the route that brought him to the mezzanine apartments, through the long vestibule where aides-de-camp and starchy servants were waiting impatiently, although they didn’t show it, stirred by the idea of joining their families, getting back to Paris and working for new masters.
The Emperor stood in the middle of an antechamber gesticulating, stamping his heels and, for the umpteenth time, throwing his cocked beaver hat (duly picked up by Bassano) on the floor.
‘I’m not going!’
‘Sire ...’
‘Sire! Sire! Sire! Oh, fine, you treat me with such concern, as though I were already in my grave, Master Campbell!’
In front of the other foreign commissioners Sir Neil Campbell, a colonel of Scottish origin sent by London, stood impassively in his blood-red uniform. He had the milky complexion of the British and a pattern of broken veins on his nose and cheeks; the lobes of his large ears protruded from beneath his rolled wig, which was fixed at his collar by a velvet band. The Emperor knew nothing of the Russian, hated the Prussian and despised the Austrian, speaking only to Campbell.
‘Your King George is mad, he climbs the curtains, he babbles baby-talk, he crawls on his belly along the carpets of Buckingham Palace like a grass-snake; his son, who is going to replace him on a vacant throne, is no better, he’s a hedonist, a whoremonger, a softy at the mercy of his entourage of shopkeepers! And as for me, Campbell, who do you take me for?’
‘You have signed the treaty...’
‘A dischcloth that I can denounce if the terms are not respected!’
‘How are the allies failing to respect the treaty?’
‘They are stopping the Empress from joining me!’
‘It was her decision ...’
‘No!’
‘The provisional government...’
‘I don’t give a damn about the provisional government! It breaks its promises!’
Campbell had come to the palace four days earlier, to present the document that required his current commander to hand the island of Elba over to Napoleon. Those orders stipulated that the forts were to be disarmed and gunpowder supplies were to be repatriated. The Emperor irritably returned to that clause.
‘And those cannon that they want to take from me! Without artillery, how could I defend myself against Algerine corsairs? Do they want me to be captured? Who would pay the ransom? Do they want me to be disembowelled? Why don’t I just go along nicely and retire to England, Campbell? All I need is a bed and a corporal’s wages!’
Mingling with the impatient onlookers, Octave listened to His Majesty’s recriminations as he passed lightly from one theme to another, listing his grievances, until his fury subsided and he lowered his voice to augment its effect.
‘The people are unhappy, I’m told. I can hear it from here and I know it. I have thirty thousand men, I can get a hundred thousand more. Without foreign troops, what are your Bourbons? How long will they hold out?’
‘The provisional government is French, sire.’
‘Come now! Talleyrand sold me the Directory, now he’s selling me to the Bourbons, but are you sure that tomorrow he won’t sell me Louis XVIII and his whole family? What’s next?’
Napoleon had just noticed Octave, and repeated, staring him evilly in the eyes: ‘What’s next, Monsieur Sénécal?’
‘Count Bertrand . . .’
‘... wants to tell me everything is ready?’
‘Yes, sire.’
‘I will leave when I want, and if I want.’
Octave mounted his horse again near the gates leading out of the grand courtyard - beside some young couriers whose task it was to run ahead before each staging-post to ensure the Emperor would be given the best possible welcome. He saw the officers of the Guard pacing up and down in front of a silent regiment. He saw General Drouot, the commander-in-chief of the artillery, climb aboard the berlin at the head of the procession and draw the curtains to block everything out. The foreign commissioners did the same, skirting; the troops at the foot of the buildings to avoid, by their conspicuous presence, turning sad faces into furious ones. The morning was interminable.
At last!
At noon the Emperor came out: on to the steps. Bassano and Belliard surrounded him amid a cluster of aides-decamp and barons. A clamour rose up like sea-swell. Napoleon took off his hat to salute the soldiers, who raised their heads towards him, then he quickly descended the horseshoe steps and advanced towards the troops who stood to attention even though no order had been given. Some grognards had tears in their eyes, others sniffed. The Emperor raised his arm, but the usual delirious acclamation in response was not forthcoming; a terrible silence fell. He began to speak; only the officers massed in front of him could really hear his words. They repeated them, as they came, to the ranks behind, and the phrases ran in scraps from mouth to mouth, strengthened by their simplicity: ‘I ...
am leaving ... You, my friends, continue to serve France ... I will write about the great things we have done together ... Goodbye, my children!’
The drums began to beat a ruffle, a steady, raging roll that drowned the sound of sobbing. Fists pressed to the pommel of his saddle, Octave raised himself up for a better glimpse of the Emperor among the rows of caps and shakos and plumed cocked hats: Napoleon was delivering an accolade to a white-haired general. Hiding his face behind a hand, a grenadier lowered his flag towards him; the Emperor kissed the fabric - on which tremendous victories were inscribed in letters of gold - before swiftly turning on his heels to be swallowed up by the carriage where Bertrand had been waiting for him for several hours. At that signal the procession immediately set off, trumpets playing a military march.
Octave trotted at the front, among the chasseurs who were led by the lieutenant he had mistaken for Maubreuil the other night. Octave had told him of his concern about Maubreuil and, now riding at a full trot, they both kept a close eye on the verges of the road. When they advanced into the forest, having sent some scouts ahead, they knew that beyond the chaotic rocks, the sandy ravines, the dense curtains of oaks and pines, lay the Seine; the Cossacks occupied the right bank, and it would be easy for Maubreuil to recruit from among their number; but no murderous mob burst suddenly from the undergrowth.
The procession sped up as it passed through Nemours and Montargis, stopping only at the obligatory relays; they spent a long time at each, because they had to change sixty horses every time. In the main square of Briare, General Cambronne and his battalion of grognards presented arms. They had left the palace two days previously, and were preparing to travel through the whole of France before setting sail for Elba. This was the whole of the Emperor’s army: the allies had allowed 300, but there were twice as many as that. The Emperor reviewed them with visible emotion, wishing them a pleasant journey. Cambronne had drawn his sabre from its scabbard to salute him, and his master thanked him for his extreme loyalty before going to dine at the Hôtel de la Poste. It was eight o’clock in the evening.
*
In the sovereign’s service, Octave learned how to waste time. It all hung on a word, a whim. He was not as used to this as other members of the reduced staff that was following the Emperor into his exile, for whom lazing around had become a full-time occupation. So Octave sat in a chair all morning, bored, distracted only for a moment by a plump serving-girl whom he wouldn’t be inviting up to his garret, wink as she might. Octave felt as though he was bound hand and foot. Previously, he had been in charge of his own timetable and his own movements, he had led a life both secret and active in his pursuit of information, a life that took him to slums and housing offices, always tailing someone, his eyes as multi-faceted as a fly’s. He had acquired the instinct of danger, a special flair that he could scarcely exercise on a morning such as this. When he got up, the Emperor appeared as though he were still in the Tuileries, resolute and authoritarian. He refused to wolf down his lunch, inspected his convoy, and talked to the coachmen and cavalrymen who were escorting him. At midday he gave the order to leave. Even the foreign commissioners complied with his wishes: for one last time they let him have the illusion that he was governing men.
But in Cosne, in La Charité-sur-Loire, the villagers lining the main road hailed Napoleon, identifying him by his famous hat as he passed, while he held his hand open through the carriage window. It was as though he were visiting his provinces, accepting the normal submission of his subjects and giving them his blessing.
In the evening, Octave was riding with the lieutenant of the chasseurs when he spotted the spire of the Cathedral of Saint-Cyr on the horizon, with the old town of Nevers rising up the hill to meet it. The day had been tiring and monotonous, but this staging-post promised to be a little more active: the closer he came to it the more clearly he saw the people crowding into the middle of the road, barring the gates of the town.
‘What do you think, Lieutenant?’
‘I think we might finally have some work to do ...’
‘What are they shouting?’
‘I haven’t a clue, but they’re certainly shouting!’
‘I’d like to go on ahead ...’
‘As you wish. Hugonnet! Fournier! Ride on with Monsieur Sénécal!’
Octave and the two chasseurs of the Guard galloped off towards the town. Half-way, they stopped abruptly. A horseman was coming out of Nevers, one of the convoy’s messengers who had been dispatched as a scout two hours before. He was breathless, red-faced and sweating. With a smile on his lips he told them: ‘They’re like devils.’
‘What are these excitable characters yelling?’
‘Vive l’Empereur!’
‘Go and tell the Lieutenant, we’ll go to Nevers.’
The people of the town had come down into the streets, and processions were coming to the gates to welcome the convoy. When the two chasseurs arrived in front of that tightly packed crowd, the sight of their uniforms prompted a further eruption of cheers. Their horses waded through the dense tide of men and women, children sitting on their parents’ shoulders, who raised their hats, their umbrellas and their canes. Trooper Hugonnet noticed a bourgeois who had come out of curiosity and was now looking rather alarmed; he reached down and tore the white cockade from the man’s top hat to cheering and applause.
‘Clear the way! Clear the way!’ yelled Octave, although no one paid any attention. It took the arrival of the whole of the escort to contain the enthusiasts and force the thirteen carriages through the crowd. They slowly climbed the sloping streets, rattling their way up the hill to the old palace of the Dukes of Cleves. At the risk of being trampled, some excited townspeople slipped under the horses’ bellies, and managed to touch the emblazoned door of the Imperial carriage, the palms of their hands flattened against the glass. They had to be pushed away, not too harshly, but firmly nonetheless, and shoes were crushed beneath hoofs, dresses were crumpled, people were jostled and shoved at random. Fortunately, a battalion of the line had emerged from their barracks, and forced their way through to the cavalrymen by swinging the butts of their guns.
The Emperor, protected from these people who missed him so, left his carriage behind a stout cordon of soldiers. He climbed the steps that led beneath a Renaissance tower and into the palace, ordering the officer of the local detachment to ‘Call the Chief of Police and the Mayor, bring me the newspapers, and let’s get a fire going!’
‘Sire, you were to be lodged in a hostelry very close by..;
‘I want some fire in this damned fireplace!’
Octave and the lieutenant joined the Emperor and his retinue in a vast, unfurnished — and cold — room. As the evening light passed faintly through grilled, ogival windows, the garrison soldiers quickly set to work with the Emperor’s valets, lighting torches, organizing lamps, getting a flame going and bringing in various bits of furniture from elsewhere in the building to form a sort of drawing-room. They were going to camp that night, and Napoleon was growing impatient: where on earth was the Mayor? And the Police Chief? They’d had to part the crowd, and arrived now looking very dishevelled, their ties crooked, their faces deferential, as they withstood the Emperor’s rapid flow of questions.