Napoleon's Exile (25 page)

*

With much to do, the Emperor forgot his grief. The following day he wanted to climb the Monte Giove, dedicated to Jupiter, from which he would look down on both his island and the Tyrrhenian Sea. For that, however, he needed a local horse, one that knew where to set its hoofs among the stones along the edges of the ravines. Octave was at his wits' end: how could he ensure the Emperor's safety in a land of dense forests? Assassins could so easily ambush him and disappear. The Emperor didn't care; his need of pure air, of mountain-tops, was too great, and up there, if the chestnut trees were bushy, so much the better, as it meant there would be shade and wind (for summer in Portoferraio was stifling). Nonetheless, Napoleon did not refuse the escort of the Polish lancers; they would abandon their usual mounts to ride, as he did, those safe animals, accustomed to the scrubland and its many hazards.

The troop galloped for a long time along stone-battered hairpin roads, not stopping until they reached Marciana Alta. This was a village perched half-way up the slope, the kind often seen in Corsica, where severe-looking houses push their way into poorly cobbled, rocky streets. There the horses had to be abandoned to the care of the lancers, who watered them from a spring that flowed among the lichen.

‘Could you make yourself useful, Campbell?' asked the Emperor.

‘Certainly.' Campbell had insisted on accompanying Napoleon on this trek, and had been granted permission to do so.

‘Give me your arm.'

Campbell, his back aching from hours of riding, began the climb, limping slightly as he struggled to keep up with His Majesty. Napoleon was not tired in the slightest, and was taking comfort from terrain like that of his childhood.

Clutching sticks carved from branches, the two men climbed a path lined with low walls, at intervals drinking water from their leather beakers, scooped from springs that bubbled among the rocks; treading on moss and bracken, they entered a primitive forest and, after walking for some time, they finally reached a chapel dedicated to the Madonna, daubed with naïve frescoes and framed by knotty hundred-year-old chestnut trees whose roots pierced the ground and re-emerged like snakes. Next to the chapel stood a hermitage, the home of the sanctuary's guardian. He indicated the path and pointed out the peak, a hundred yards higher, at the end of a pile of fallen earth. Napoleon and Campbell clambered up there with one last effort, panting, their legs heavy. From the ridge they could see Corsica to the west, and the lacy peaks of the Monte d'Oro. The Emperor sat down on a rock, and Campbell threw himself on the ground.

‘Do you know this perfume, Master Campbell?' asked the Emperor, taking in a big breath through his nostrils.

‘Perfume, sire? What perfume?'

‘Breathe in, for heaven's sake! You northerners have your noses blocked! You can't smell anything but mud from the top of the white cliffs of Dover! Even with my eyes closed, I can recognize Corsica by its perfume. Why go anywhere else, Campbell? I've come home to take root.'

‘I understand . . .'

‘Pfft! No, no, you can't understand. Your moors are odourless! My scrubland is filled with the smell of wild thyme and the essences of paradise.'

The Emperor got to his feet, resting an arm on the shoulder of his breathless companion, who, red as a well-cooked lobster, was sponging himself with his sodden handkerchief. Napoleon returned to the rock he had used as a seat, and gazed across at Corsica. He came from that land of mountain folk, rough and ready, families ready to murder each other at the first hint of a slight, taking refuge behind the loopholes of their farms. He remembered his nurse Illaria, telling him about the baby-eating vampire, and the
uspirdo
, the bird that announced death by descending with the fog. To protect him against bad luck, she used to place a dish of water on his head and pour three drops of olive oil into it, chanting as she did so. In her language, a mixture of Tuscan and Berber, she told him that Satan had struck the peak of Tafonato with a hammer, that the cemetery of the Île Sainte-Marie, in the pool of Diana, was cursed. The barren land beyond the valley of Lozari was the revenge of a three-headed monster. She also told him that curé Gabrielli had summoned up the devil to save the members of his clan who'd been besieged by a rival family, and that the devil had turned the rivals into grey sheep; and that some witches had taken possession of the cemetery above Cuttoli, that the twisted, flickering flames seen on some nights in the hamlet of Busso,
i fochi di u Busso
, were the souls of the damned. These fables were a mixture of Greek myths, Islam and Christian martyrology, because over the centuries Corsica, like its neighbour Elba, had passed through the hands of the Spanish, the Greek, the Etruscans, the Saracens, the Romans; Seneca, who had been exiled there, had worried about the dark forests where the elves danced. Napoleon recalled a group of shepherds, great stout fellows with pointed hats who slept on bracken and were thought to be soothsayers. He'd seen them throwing the keys of a chapel into the midst of their flock to cure sick animals, and they had told him that two months before his birth, near the point of Parata, above the Bloody Islands, a comet had been sighted.

When he returned to the hermitage, deliberately placing all his weight on Campbell's shoulder, Napoleon seemed happy. Rather than losing himself in nostalgia, he regained his strength, and chivvied the colonel into the guardian's cottage. He wanted to live there, he wanted to escape Portoferraio and the phoney palace that was being renovated in the countryside, isolated on a peak, but far from trees and exposed to the sun.

‘Remember, Colonel, that we will have to install a kitchen in this shed, at the back, and build a stable under a canopy.'

‘I haven't brought anything to write with,' said Campbell.

‘Then engrave it on your brain! Look, there are three shutters missing. Allow for three lanterns, and a torch, outside. And some curtains, the rails are up already. And then shovels and tongs for the fires in the hearth.'

‘Fires?' queried the Englishman, dazed by the heat.

‘Up in the mountains it gets cold in the evenings, Monsieur, as cold as it is in your hovels in London.'

*

‘Monday, 25 August. I barely have the strength to keep this diary on a regular basis. For weeks, the summer has been exhausting me. A scorching wind from the south-east is bringing us a heat-wave from the African deserts. At night, it often rains, and the drops are hot. I was even caught in one of those sudden heavy showers: water poured and streamed, becoming a raging torrent whose current dragged me several yards. I went down to Gianna s, on Via del Gran Bastione; she's playing at being a lady with dresses brought on boats from Naples. I'd bought skirts and stockings from some sailors who were selling them at auction in the port, and was looking forward to watching her try them on, but I wasn't the only one, and Gianna didn't open the door to me; she was too busy with a lieutenant-commander. I had to take shelter for part of the night, not far away, in the shed that's used for the Imperial coaches, with my soaking silk laces, drenched to the bone.'

In his notebooks, Octave stuck strictly to the facts. No one reading them would learn anything of his thoughts. He recorded events, never appraising them or delivering a judgement, so that his scribblings, were they to be seen by malevolent eyes, could never be used against him or against the Emperor. Octave reported, for example, that His Majesty was ordering books from Venice or Genoa, that he was having them rebound in Livorno; or that in his unfinished villa in San Martino, which was being built out of a farm and a barn, he was arranging souvenirs of Marie-Louise, knick-knacks and portraits, that he had torn the engravings from a book about Egypt to mount them on the walls too, that one of the rooms was decorated with hieroglyphics and painted palm groves. It wasn't very interesting, perhaps, but it was innocent.

Octave also recorded the movements of the staff. Hubert had gone back to France, to be by his wife's bedside, and Monsieur Marchand had come to replace him. Marchand had given Napoleon news of the Empress, facts gleaned from his mother, who was a governess to the King of Rome. Marie-Louise's doctor, he said, claimed that the air of Elba would be harmful to her, and that the Austrians had even refused to let her travel to Parma, which was too close. And what about the King of Rome? The Emperor of Austria had apparently scooped him up in his arms, at Rambouillet, but the boy had said, ‘He isn't handsome, grandpapa!' - a piece of gossip that had delighted Napoleon, even while he understood his chances of seeing his son and the Empress again were rapidly fading away.

In a few lines, Octave had also recorded news of Princess Pauline, who had visited Portoferraio. She had stayed for only one night before embarking for Naples where, it was said, she had gone to negotiate an alliance with Murat, in an attempt to reconcile her brother and his impetuous brother-in-law. Octave contented himself with repeating the rumour, although without giving it the slightest foundation. Did he know any more than that? He had seen the Princess Pauline giving her brother a handful of diamonds, but had no idea whether their purpose was to finance the model farm in San Marino, or whether Napoleon was hoping to grow wheat on the island's stony ground. The Emperor dispersed his secrets. What he said to Drouot he didn't repeat to Bertrand, Cambronne was kept in the dark about his confidences to Bertrand, and so on. Each man collected discrete confidences that he was never able to link up with anything else. In his writings, Octave sorted, refined, held things back. His horror or his criticisms were left to the imagination. The installation of Madame Mére on the island in a house rented from Monsieur Vantini, a hundred yards down from the Mulini Palace, seemed to leave him cold, and he recorded not a word of the Emperor's outpourings on the subject. Octave did not greatly care for the crabby old lady in black, who expressed herself only in Italian, ate Italian food, surrounded herself with Italian servants and wanted to install Corsicans in the best positions in the kingdom, even going so far as to squander on them part of the million and a half francs that she kept in a little box - until the Emperor became angry because he needed the money himself. Madame Mère grew resigned, and Octave wrote this about her:
‘She rarely leaves her house, she spends her days with music and embroidery, goes up to the Mulini Palace on Sundays for dinner, and often in the evenings to play revers with her son - and lose small sums, because he cheats.'

These insignificant details could only have excited a historian, but Octave left out the main thing: boredom. They were all idle, that devoted little colony from France, who were given miniature tasks to do. They passed the time, they withered away and yawned - apart from the treasurer, Peyrusse, who kept his accounts with exasperating equanimity. The daily walks and the inspection of the building-sites became as monotonous as the soirées held by the Emperor, to which he invited the dignitaries and their wives so that he could demonstrate to them the importance of the breeding of silkworms, or boast of the exploits of his guards, who were reluctantly widening the roads and planting vegetables. When the clock struck nine, the Emperor would dismiss his guests by approaching the piano and, with the tip of his index finger, playing notes that were always the same: CC GG AA G, FF EE DD C. At this signal the guests would rise and rustle out into the night.

Napoleon appeared content with this routine, even imposing his own timetable upon himself, a typical day unfolding thus: rising at three o'clock in the morning, he read in his library (works of geography and Pluto's life of Galba, which began with a warning to princes:
undisciplined troops are dangerous —
perhaps recalling his grenadiers who had been left behind in France, ill-treated by the new powers, certainly prepared to mutiny if the opportunity presented itself); after that, imagining Louis XVIII suffering the same terrible fate as Romanus, who was slaughtered by his own legionaries, Napoleon would go for a walk, smiling at his kitchen garden, plucking a tomato or worrying about the size of his courgettes. He would retire to bed again at about eight o'clock, and sleep until lunch - usually served in the countryside on a table-cloth thrown on the grass - before a quick siesta under an apricot tree or one of the fig trees whose branches hung down to the ground. It was during one of these trips that the Emperor and Monsieur Pons de l'Hérault were reconciled.

*

At the bottom of his blossoming garden in Rio Marina, Monsieur Pons had a small shed where he often meditated on republican or moralistic tracts. He read to his two young daughters, Hermine and Pauline: in this instance, the text in question was a passage from Fénelon's book
Télémaque
, in which the author set out the nature of the ideal king in the simplest possible terms. Accustomed to his sermons, for he took charge of their education, the children listened to their father without moving from their stools, fanning themselves in the heat.

‘Telemachus and his guide, on a Syrian ship ...'

‘What's Syrian?'

‘Syria is a country in the East. So, they're on their way to Crete, a happy island where King Minos, famed for the wisdom of his laws, reigned long ago. The guide, who already knows this island, tells Telemachus what happens if you have a good government. I shall read:
“There is never any call for the repression of excess and flabbiness, for they are unknown in Crete. Everyone works there, and no one thinks of enriching himself. . .”'

‘So it isn't like the island of Elba, then, Papa?'

‘You are right, Hermine, it isn't at all like the island of Elba. I shall continue:
“Everyone things that he receives enough pay for his work in a sweet and ordered life, where peace is enjoyed, and an abundance of all that is truly necessary for life. . .”'

He read until he reached the passage in which Fénelon expatiates upon the virtues of a king:
‘“He must have nothing more than anyone else, beyond that which is necessary, or to help him to perform his painful duties, or to win the people's respect for the one who must sustain the laws” ...'