Authors: Patrick Rambaud
‘I see.’
‘You should also understand that Bruslart has sent an emissary to Algiers to have a word with the pirates there, I have it from a good source ...’
‘Pirates? What for?’
‘Bonaparte sometimes goes sailing. If he disappeared,
in one way or another
, we could always blame the Algerine corsairs.’
‘The Emperor hardly ever strays far from the coast.’
‘But he does go to Pianosa. Tell me when he next goes to inspect the island.’
‘So that you can tell the pirates?’
‘No! We know he never sleeps on land, but always aboard the
Inconstant.’
‘That’s true.’
‘And that’s where everything becomes possible.’
At that moment some launches drew up alongside the mole with their passengers, including Lieutenant Taillade, who was commanding the brig only because no one else could be found. (It was said that this braggart went and hid in his cabin with the most terrible sea-sickness at the first hint of a squall.) As the oil merchant moved to greet the captain, things began to fall into place for Octave: the two men had an agreement. So His Majesty was no longer safe aboard his own ship? Apparently Taillade, the little squirt, was easily bribed. The crew? Hard to tell: some sailors might be persuaded to betray the Emperor - those press-ganged in the ports along the coast, in the taverns of Genoa or the dives of Capraia, badly paid, alert to the sound of gold coins. In addition, Octave couldn’t help thinking about the damaging proximity of Bruslart: the oil merchant was a spy, but the
chouan
was a man of action. Octave knew him very well. The police had been after him for years, and even at the age of sixty his reputation had not diminished in the slightest. He was small, stocky, hairy as a black bear, and the police imagined they saw him all over the place, but hadn’t been able find him anywhere. He drove the Prefects to distraction: sightings of him had been reported, always too late in each case, at the Auberge de la Poste, in Caen, and then in a
traiterie
in Bayeux, in Jersey, in Scotland, at the Palais-Royal. He was known to have spent the night with the languid and red-headed Madame de Vaubadon, or with one Demoiselle Banvelle, or with Mademoiselle Berruyer, who was believed to be his wife. He played hide and seek, he teased the cops, he made
beignets
with acacia-flower water for his lovely lodgers, and moved from manor-house to chateau under multiple identities. One day he was Petit, a Belgian merchant, the next, who knows ...
Some grenadiers were unloading mail for the Mulini Palace from one of the
Inconstant’
s boats, along with sacks of grain and seed, but Octave made them pile the packages on to their carts and stand near the customs office, at the entrance to the Sea Gate. There he routinely kept an eye on the day’s arrivals - often a good hundred of them, standing in a line - who would be directed towards the Forte Stella, where Cambronne’s department would examine their passports. Some of the visitors would head for the town hall and request an audience with the Emperor.
That morning, to Octave’s eyes, everyone looked like a possible criminal in the pay of the Chouan. Did that chap in his bourgeois clothes carry a stiletto in his waxed boot? Did that woman not hide a blade in the handle of her umbrella? Octave tried to detect any detail that did not match the person; a distinguished-looking sailor immediately aroused suspicion - and why was that fat man sweating? Was he apprehensive, as he prepared to commit his crime? Octave listened to the customs official who was now interviewing the man. Were there forests near Genoa? Did he have an accent? An NCO approached Octave.
‘Everything’s been loaded, Monsieur Sénécal.’
‘Then let’s get moving.’
Almost regretfully, Octave abandoned these tourists, who seemed to him as dangerous as vipers, to their own devices. As he left the mole, however, he noticed the oil merchant and Lieutenant Taillade laughing - which reinforced his fears - as they entered the Buono Gusto. To reassure himself, he gripped his cane more tightly, like a cudgel.
*
The Emperor’s face was powdered, his mouth adorned with lipstick, and he wore a gaudy circus costume cut from garish coloured paper. Blindfold, he ran breathlessly among the tamarinds and oleanders in the garden. Pauline’s pretty friends, her readers and dressers disguised as sylphs or columbines, darted away from him, uttering amused little cries. He caught one by the arm and drew her towards him; while she pretended to struggle and protested, with a little giggle. The Emperor tried to kiss her, and she twisted her head in all directions as he smeared her lips with his comical big mouth, exclaiming, ‘It’s Charlotte! I’m sure it’s Charlotte!’ Finally the Emperor let go of his prey and pulled off his blindfold.
‘I win!’
‘Bravo, sire! Bravo!’ laughed the girls of his harem, dressed in gauze and yellow cardboard wings. Campbell had been observing this scene, and now Octave appeared at the edge of the lawn, and came to join the Colonel. Campbell’s face was serious, and he said with consternation, ‘The man who won the Battle of Austerlitz is playing Blind Man’s Buff.’
‘Aren’t you going to join in?’
‘The very idea!’
‘But why are they all got up like trollops?’ asked Octave.
‘It’s an idea that Princess Pauline came up with for her Thursday masked ball.’
‘What are you coming as, Colonel?’
‘Monsieur Sénécal, please!’
‘You can’t be serious all the time.’
‘Don’t you find this spectacle appalling?’
‘His Majesty must be allowed to relax.’
‘There are a thousand other ways, all the same!’
‘Don’t you like my new uniform, Campbell?’ asked the Emperor, coming to stand in front of them, while the belles fled up the hidden staircase behind the pots of myrtle and geraniums in the kitchen, to Pauline’s bathroom. The Englishman sighed, stammered an incomprehensible phrase that delighted the Emperor, saluted, and withdrew.
‘Doesn’t he like innocent games?’
‘He thinks you’re reverting to childhood, sire.’
‘Excellent. I’m reverting to childhood. Excellent! The people must be told, Monsieur Sénécal. Do you bring mail? News? Both? Come to my study.’
The Emperor fell into an armchair. His make-up was running because he had been exerting himself. He looked like a ham actor at the end of his career. With his harlequin sleeve, he wiped away the sweat pearling on his forehead.
‘All this slap and tickle is exhausting!’
‘As regards that girl Charlotte ...’
‘I guessed right, did you see that?’
‘Sire, we know she has affiliations with Police Headquarters in Paris.’
‘You told me that last week. That’s fine! That proves we still have some loyal people in this house, and they keep us informed. The girl is very appealing, though, so why shouldn’t we let her earn her livelihood with a bit of half-cocked spying. And anyway, I caught her on purpose - I had a hole in my blindfold - and now she’ll write a report, she’ll say I’m a great big child with the lecherous tastes of an old man. A pretty portrait that will reassure Louis XVIII.’
Octave mentioned Bruslart. At the name, the Emperor struck out at his roll-top desk and then tore up his paper tabard. He took a deep breath, closed his black-rimmed eyes tight and regained control of himself.
‘Let’s go through our mail.’
Two grenadiers had set the sack down nearby, on the tiles; Octave untied and opened it, pulling out armfuls of letters and brochures which he deposited on a trestle-table pushed against the wall. As in the Tuileries or at Saint-Cloud, as in the days of the
cabinet noir
, the censors’ office run by Monsieur de Lavalette, his Majesty greedily read the correspondence of his entourage before they did. The difference was that in Portoferraio if he broke the seals, there was no need to stick them back together to put people off the scent: the recipients would simply blame the French or the Austrian police. Gloating as he discovered the love affairs of a general or the moods of a baron, Napoleon momentarily forgot Bruslart in Corsica, forgot the threat that he posed. Octave, meanwhile, sorted the newspapers into two packages: for and against. (While Campbell brought the English newspapers, Bertrand had subscribed under fantastic names to the main journals of France, Germany and Austria, which were sent to an address in Naples. A dispatch rider then brought them to Piombino, and from there they set off for Elba, in the packet boat or aboard the
Inconstant.)
‘Help me, Monsieur Sénécal,’ said the Emperor, pushing a pile of unopened letters in front of Octave. ‘Find me something spicy.’
Octave opened a letter that had come from Verdun - the mother of a garrison soldier replying to her son. After reading a few lines, Octave began to laugh gently.
‘What foolishness have you discovered, Monsieur Sénécal, that amuses you so?’
‘Some news from France, sire. It’s hardly academic, but you might like it...’
‘I’m listening.’
‘It’s a good peasant woman, sire. She’s writing to Sergeant Paradis, her son. I will decipher her words for you:
I love you all the more for knowin as how your near our Loyle empror. Thats what Good people do. I can ashure you that their comin from the fore corners of the town to read your Letter, and that Evryone says your an honrable Man. The bourbons arent finished and we do not like these People. Marmont was kild in a Dual by one of ours, and France has divorced him. Ive nothing to tell you just that I Pray to God and make your Sister pray for the emprar and King.
The Emperor asked for the letter to be read three times, but did not laugh, he was touched. After a silence, he said to Octave: ‘See to it that Cambronne gives ten gold coins to that soldier.’
‘Why, sire?’
‘Because of that letter, for heaven’s sake!’
‘You aren’t supposed to have read it...’
‘Ah, yes. Let’s wait for the soldier to read it to his comrades to give them a sense of what’s going on in the country. The others will talk about it, we’ll pretend to catch wind of it, and then we’ll be able to reward him quite naturally ...’
*
Twice a year on Elba, tuna-fishing provided an opportunity for a party. Monsieur Seno, the orderly, was still the owner of a major fish-pound and had invited the Emperor and most of the worthies of Portoferraio to participate in his autumn fishing expedition. At daybreak, a multitude of boats crossed the roads in all directions - and in apparent confusion - but the men, hammering the water with the flat of their oars, were in fact driving the fish into a vast system of nets stretched on stakes they had secured in the sea bed. Caught in this meshy labyrinth, fish could not escape to the open sea, and so were forced towards the coast, where fishermen, up to their waists in the waves, were watching for them, harpoons at the ready. The moment the fishermen spotted the armour plating of large, steely blue scales in the clear water, they struck, grazing or wounding the fish; in a sea red with blood, the tuna thrashed with pain, twisted away and surged back, trapped; they writhed, collided with the stakes, got tangled up in the nets, squirmed and struggled until they were exhausted, and let themselves drift, half-dead, to the weapons that finally pierced them through. Then the fishermen had only to catch them by the tail or the gills to throw them on to the sand where they wriggled and opened their mouths for one final gasp. Other men then bundled the bodies on to carts that took them to the fisheries, long single-storey buildings that looked like sheds; there the fish would be scaled, cut up and marinaded in the olive oil bought from Signor Forli - who was doubtless already rubbing his hands with glee.
Standing on the shore in the shade of parasols, Monsieur Seno explained this practice to the Emperor and the guests, most of whom were unfamiliar with the manner in which tuna were caught in the Mediterranean. Words were not enough for Napoleon, however: he wanted to join in. A boy brought him a harpoon, which the Emperor brandished like a lance. He strode into the water - with his boots still on - and, clutching the weapon in both hands, as though charging an Austrian division all by himself, jabbed the waves at random as soon as he spotted a gleaming shape, guffawing each time he plunged the weapon between the fins and felt the tuna resisting or getting away. He yelled, ‘I’ll get you! I’ll get you and I’ll eat you raw!’ When he did succeed in stabbing a fish, he rejoiced at his catch, blood and water drenching his National Guard uniform. He returned, soaked, bloody and breathless, to the parasols.
‘Doesn’t that make you feel like having a go, Bertrand?’
‘Far from it, sire.’
‘Nonsense! You don’t get nearly enough exercise! It would do you a power of good.’
Count Bertrand only came to the Villa now if the Emperor invited him; he seldom accompanied him on his walks around the island, and hid instead in his apartments in the town hall with Fanny, his wife. The couple’s youngest son had suffocated in his cradle at the age of three weeks, and since that tragedy Bertrand was a sorry sight. He had never been a cheerful person, but now his face was growing longer and longer with this recent misery. Nonetheless, the Emperor went needling, ‘For his own good,’ he said; but every day Napoleon visited Fanny to console her.
Monsieur Seno suggested a visit to his fishery, which was very close by. On the hills, lancers could be seen cordoning off the site with the help of gendarmes. Inside the main fishery, the Emperor went into ecstasies over the dexterity with which the Elban women filleted the tuna; he distributed gold coins, and the women knelt before him to kiss his hands, and shower him with scales. As Monsieur Seno described the various tasks, the Emperor bent down, took a handful of fresh sardines from a tub and slipped them into Count Bertrand’s pocket. The Count, listening to Monsieur Seno’s disquisition along with everyone else, failed to notice a thing. Shortly afterwards, as they came out into the daylight, the Emperor sneezed: ‘My word, I’ve caught a cold in the water! Lend me your handkerchief, Bertrand.’
Bertrand put his hand in his pocket — and removed it quickly at the slimy, wriggling touch of the sardines; the Emperor fell to the ground in a fit of wild laughter that left him breathless. No one else seemed amused, and many people, particularly Campbell and Signor Forli, wondered at this childish joke. Meanwhile Bertrand had taken off his frock-coat and emptied the contents of his pocket out on the white, wet, fishy sand.