Napoleon's Exile (26 page)

‘What's sustain?'

‘Have them respected.
“The king must be more sober, more hostile to softness, more exempt from extravagance and arrogance than anyone else. . .”'

‘Are you alluding to our Emperor?'

Pons gave a start. Octave was standing against the door of the cabin, enjoying the lesson.

‘We're studying Fénelon, Monsieur Sénécal.'

‘I've read him. We brought that very same book from Fontainebleau.'

‘I wouldn't have believed it.'

‘Why? Because he speaks of wisdom? The Emperor will confirm as much himself. He awaits you.'

‘You mean I have to go to Portoferraio right now?'

‘No, he's here, on your terrace.'

‘Really! To extort money from me, or put me in prison?'

‘Perhaps to make you hear reason.'

‘Reason? Ah, that lovely word. He had only to accept my resignation.'

The Emperor knew of the friendly relations that existed between Octave and Monsieur Pons, and had on several occasions sent Octave to Rio to soften the character of the mine administrator, but fruitlessly. Today he had made the journey himself and he really was waiting on the terrace, in the blue uniform and white lapels of the Elban National Guard - to show he was the master of this island, its inhabitants and its resources. On the coast road, Monsieur Pons could see Bertrand, Campbell, the treasurer Peyrusse, some lancers, horses and the carts carrying the tents and comestibles required for a lunch; Napoleon also stared towards the Italian coast, but saw a multitude of sails dancing by the port of Piombino. Without looking at Pons, he said: ‘Are you going to let me have those two hundred thousand francs?'

‘No.'

‘Ah! So you've still got them.'

‘But of course ...'

‘I was afraid you might have sent them to Paris.'

‘The chancellor of the Légion d'Honneur is aware of your demand. I wrote to ask his advice.'

‘You will wait a long time, Monsieur Pons.'

‘He's a friend of mine, he'll answer me.'

‘He won't.'

‘We'll see.'

‘It's already sorted out. Your friend Lacépède is no longer chancellor.'

Pons was thrown, and Napoleon took advantage of the fact.

‘The Abbé de Pradt is replacing him. Have you heard of that traitor, who is up to something with Talleyrand? He's wished me dead since I dismissed him from his embassy in Poland. An incompetent! Did you know that he boasted of having hastened the victory of the foreign armies? Do you want to give the money from our mines to the royalists you have always fought against? The
ancien régime
has returned, Monsieur Pons, as though neither of us had ever existed.'

The administrator thoughtfully wiped his glasses.

‘Fetch your horse from the stable and come with me.'

Monsieur Pons obeyed mechanically, joining the outing to the countryside, trotting beside Octave. He was torn in two. Did his principles still apply? The allied sovereigns had formed a league against the Emperor, and given France to the Bourbons, ousting the man they still saw as the representative of the Revolution, the man who had terrified them so. The kings had never treated Napoleon as an equal, but rather as a parvenu, a gaudy representative of the middle classes, the accomplice of regicides. Whom should he serve? The Bourbons? Anything but that. The coaches stopped by the only real forest on the island, where the road narrowed to a path.

‘Give me your cane, Monsieur Sénécal,' said the Emperor. ‘I wish to climb on to that high plateau. Come with me, Pons, you can tell me about the landscape.'

Leaning on Octave's cane, which had broken many a neck and crushed a good few skulls on behalf of his cause, Napoleon was in a state of delight. He identified each variety of tree, he leaned forward to breathe in the scent of the plants whose virtues he listed. At the top, in a jaunty mood, he considered the panorama and then, looking at a pile of carved stones, he observed to Pons, ‘They're the remains of a Roman temple, I was told ...'

‘Whoever told you was exaggerating, sire, it was only a tower built in the Middle Ages by the inhabitants of Rio. It was from here that they watched the Barbary pirates.'

‘Whatever the truth of it, stones wear down as men do, isn't that right? What will remain of us, monsieur? A pile of stones? A legend if we're lucky? Certainly not the reality of what we were. Was Tiberius as monstrous as Suetonius claims? Suetonius was a viper, an aristocrat jealous of power, and there you have it. The image of Tiberius has been fixed for eternity by a jealous man. Whom do we trust? No one, you see, no one is safe from the blows of fate ... Pons?

‘Sire?'

‘What do we see there, on the horizon?'

‘The Gulf of Spezia, and then, following the ridges, you reach Genoa, and here are the Livorno roads, there, at the tip of my finger...'

‘Filled with fishing boats, yes, at least a thousand of them. They look like butterflies. This place is divine, you could plant a garden here.' (Napoleon pointed to a corner of bare ground.) ‘Next to it I would place a tank, in that grove, and a covered path under the trees down to the sea, with little farms down below, and cattle ...' (He sat down on a pile of broken stones.) ‘Ah, Pons! See how busy my mind is, spending money that I haven't got.'

As Pons said nothing, the two men walked towards the clearing where the valets had thrown the tablecloth for their meal. The Emperor grew bucolic and quoted Latin poets, but also spoke of more practical matters such as his farming projects, the fields of wheat on the little island of Pianosa where no one lived now but wild horses, the revival of coral-fishing ... Everyone noticed that he was speaking only to the administrator, who was dazzled by such familiarity. Because of his many acts of disobedience Monsieur Pons had fully expected to see his iron mines confiscated; instead, the Emperor was offering him - and only him - a glass of pink champagne. The Emperor even let him share his own cup of mocha: ‘Let us drink to the health of our island!' Monsieur Pons was oblivious to the fact that the Emperor knew how to woo the most recalcitrant people if his menaces failed. Smiles and acts of kindness had often been more effective than cannon and Monsieur Pons duly succumbed to this offensive. The very next day he gave Peyrusse the 200,000 francs that he had been keeping for the Légion d'honneur.

*

Octave was violently awoken by a series of explosions. Gunfire, he thought immediately, getting up and parting the curtains to see Elbans running in the street. ‘Whassa goin' on?' Gianna asked him, in that groggy voice that people sometimes have when they're dragged prematurely from sleep. ‘Gunfire.' Octave quickly dressed, his face anxious, and when Gianna said to him, ‘You goin'?' his reply was emphatic: ‘Yes, I'm going. I've got to know.' She threw the blanket over her face, bothered by the bright light, and sighed; Octave stroked her hair and left the room, depositing some gold coins on a pedestal table.

Downstairs, he passed through the Buono Gusto café, which the landlord arranged as a dormitory each night for travellers who had not found lodgings elsewhere. Octave stepped over some rolled-up mattresses and over some late sleepers and out into the Via Gran Bastione. The people gathered there were animated but not frenzied, chatting quite cheerfully about a rumour that was going around. Octave was mingling with a group of people, hoping to learn more, when he spotted the deputy mayor.

‘Who were they shooting at?'

‘No one, Monsieur Sénécal.'

‘I'm not deaf!'

‘Some tearaways lit firecrackers.'

‘Why?'

‘To celebrate, I think. An unfiagged brig has dropped anchor in the bay.'

‘So?'

‘The customs men have gone aboard.'

‘As usual.'

‘Not exactly, Monsieur Sénécal.'

‘What have the customs men found that's so unusual?'

‘The Empress and the King of Rome, that's what, and our island is preparing to salute the event. As we speak!'

Octave stood gawping. He couldn't believe it. The previous week, he knew, the Emperor had dispatched one of his Guard captains to Aix-les-Bains. The husband of one of Marie-Louise's ladies-in-waiting, he was to reach the Empress through her, and persuade her to set sail for Elba - but how could he have achieved his goal so quickly, without a hitch? Nonetheless, some customs men had talked to the Neapolitan sailors on the brig: among their passengers were a fair-haired young woman and a little boy of four or five who talked about his ‘Emperor Papa'.

Octave walked beneath the trees to the town hall, passing through clusters of chattering people, each repeating the news and amplifying it with a thousand invented details. Count Bertrand was in his apartment, in his uniform, very alarmed.

‘A plague upon the gossips, and upon this island!'

‘How would one go about stopping them, your grace?'

‘I don't know, and that's what's irritating me.'

‘Can't you deny it?'

‘No.'

‘Because it's true?'

‘Not that either.'

‘But the customs men didn't make it up ...'

‘No.'

‘And it's not about the Empress?'

‘No, no, and thrice no!'

‘Then what is it, your grace?'

‘Madame Walewska.'

Octave had not heard these details before, but Bertrand was obliged to tell him now so he could help him defuse the false news — without revealing the truth. In Fontainebleau, while the Empire was collapsing, only Marie Walewska had come to give Napoleon her support. Shaken by events, he had not received her; she had waited a whole night, on a sofa in a corridor, but that was not the end: in early August, her brother Teodor had come incognito to Elba to prepare the way for another visit. Then, just a few days ago, the Emperor had travelled to the hermitage of the Madonna, above Marciana Alta where he'd found a home for his mother; Portoferraio was blazing hot and airless, and the mountain seemed to provide a milder climate for the old lady. Sheltering behind that excuse, Napoleon was in fact waiting for his young Polish mistress. He had even sent her a letter in his own hand, which ended ‘one hundred tender things'. It had all remained secret. On no account: was anyone to know anything about the journey. The Emperor kept a close eye on the morals of his subjects, fulminated against cohabitation, drove his officers to marry Elban girls and refused to receive unmarried couples at the Mulini Palace. Since that was the case, how could he officially receive his mistress?

‘Do you think we'll be able to quash the rumour?' asked Bertrand.

‘Once a rumour is out, you can't hush it up, your grace ...'

‘Nonetheless, Madame Walewska won't be able to play the part of the Empress!'

‘I can try to put the gossips on the wrong track ...'

‘Do as you wish, Monsieur Sénécal, but sort this matter out! Come and see me in two hours in the Imperial stables.'

On the parade ground, the townspeople were already hanging Chinese lanterns from the branches of the chestnut trees. Octave walked towards the deputy, who was in charge of the operation.

‘These illuminations are premature, Monsieur Hutré.'

‘What? You mean the good news is bad?'

‘Somewhere in between ...'

‘Is it the Empress or is it not?'

‘Yes, it is she, with her son, aboard the Neapolitan ship, but they will not be staying for long.'

‘What?'

‘They're stopping here briefly before going to Parma, or Rome, I can't remember, but anyway, they'll be back this winter when everything is ready to welcome them properly.'

The mayor's deputy, crestfallen, indicated that he understood, but added, ‘How are we going to explain this disappointment to our compatriots?'

‘Simple. You need only take down your lanterns, and when the people ask you why, you will tell them what I have just said to you.'

‘They'll never believe me.'

‘Lower your voice. Say to anyone who asks, “Just don't repeat it.” In an instant, the whole island will know.'

*

A coach and four was waiting in an olive grove, near the hamlet of San Giovanni beside the bay. The coachman and his valets, lying in a heap in the shade of the coach, were drinking warm water from a leather bottle, passing it from hand to hand. Further away, saddled horses and mules were tethered to tree-trunks. On the pebbly beach, meanwhile, Bertrand and Octave stood about kicking their heels.

As dusk fell, Bertrand used his tinderbox to light a wood fire, already prepared on the shore. At that sign, a launch was lowered from the ship that lay a hundred yards off the coast. There was not a breath of wind, and the only sound that could be heard was the oars dipping rhythmically into the calm water. The coachman had sat back on the bench, and the valets were untethering the horses and the mules; Count Bertrand walked beside the waves, holding a lantern. The sailors, meanwhile, had reached the shore, carrying the first of the passengers, lest she wet the hem of her grey faille dress. Her face was hidden by a little veil, but Bertrand recognized her frail figure, her manners and her way of holding her son by the hand - it was Marie. Next came her sister Emilie, then Teodor, her brother, soaked to the knees.

They wasted no time. Once their luggage had been tied on to the back of the mules, they drove along the shore, two grooms pointing the way with their lanterns. Cliffs, valleys and hills, for two hours; a vineyard, lined with cactuses, led down to a creek. The procession passed through the village of Biadola and stopped further along, on the road to Proccio, where a lantern was seen swinging in the darkness. The Emperor, seated on his horse and wearing his ordinary colonel's uniform, handed the light to a lancer escort, before dismounting and opening the door of his berlin. Marie lifted her veil and Napoleon kissed her hand, hugged little Alexandre, their son - who barely stirred from his sleep — and greeted Teodor and young Emilie. The caravan then continued at a trot, trusting to the moon and the pale glow of the lanterns.