The cadet glanced down at Napoleon’s hand with a brief expression of distaste at the unwonted familiarity of the artillery officer and then recomposed his expression and nodded. ‘Thank you, sir.’
Standing next to them, Alexander could not help but be amused by the contrast between them. His friend Napoleon was short and skinny, with long dark hair tied back to reveal a wide brow. His eyes were clear and sensual and his lips had a faint pout. This cadet, on the other hand, was tall and fair-complexioned with light brown hair, piercing blue eyes, a long nose and thin, expressionless lips. His skin had an unhealthy pallor. And yet there was a sense of bearing in both men that indicated a fierce pride.
The Englishman indicated some seats arranged either side of the nearest window. ‘Shall we?’
They sat down and Wesley turned his attention back to the two artillery officers. ‘I’m curious about the nature of your disagreement about our fencing classes.’
Alexander flashed a quick look of warning at his friend, but Napoleon ignored him, his concentration wholly focused on the cadet sitting opposite. He leaned forward a little. ‘Tell me, what is the value of fencing lessons? In your opinion.’
The young Englishman looked down into the courtyard and pursed his lips thoughtfully before he replied, ‘It teaches swift reflexes, poise and concentration. And in affairs of honour it might just save your life.’
‘And there’s no more to it than that?’
‘Of course there is, sir!’ Wesley answered at once. ‘It’s an essential part of the training to become a gentleman and an officer.’
Napoleon smiled. ‘In that order?’
‘Sir?’
‘You said, “a gentleman and an officer”.’
‘Yes,’ Wesley admitted. ‘I meant, of course, an officer and a gentleman. In that order.’
Napoleon raised a hand. ‘No. You were right the first time. That’s the problem. Officers should spend their time learning the science of war and how to apply it in the field. There’s no place on the battlefield for duellists.’
‘Or gentlemen?’ Wesley replied.
Napoleon shrugged. ‘War is not a gentlemanly business.’
Wesley shook his head. ‘On the contrary, sir, war is necessarily a gentlemanly business, or else it is mere barbarism. Without the leadership and example of gentlemen, the common soldiery is little more than an armed mob. As such it would constitute a threat to civilised order. Depend upon it, the aristocracy is the only guarantee of order on the battlefield, and off it.’
‘Oh, really? Tell me, Cadet, why do you think they possess this exclusivity of talent?’
‘Because they are born and bred to be leaders, sir. That’s obvious. It’s in our blood. It’s been in our blood for centuries.You can train a monkey to be a soldier, sir, but only an aristocrat is born with the qualities needed to lead the common herd.’
Alexander breathed in sharply and waited for his friend to explode, but Napoleon was still for a moment, before an icy smile twisted his lips. ‘An interesting thesis, sir. But I think you will find that there is a wealth of talent and ability amongst those who live beyond the walls of this academy. None of whom have one drop of aristocratic blood in their veins. They demand recognition. They demand change. You sense it in the streets of every city. I suspect they will have their day, and that day will come soon enough.’
Wesley stared back fixedly as he responded, ‘When it comes, then that will be the beginning of the end of the civilised world, sir. Such men will be the leaders of the mob. They have little appreciation of order and the value of tradition. All they do have is naked ambition.’
‘And ability. Let’s not forget that. I’d sooner live in a world ruled by men who have won their leadership on merit, than a world where assumption of leadership rests upon which bed you were born in.’
His words were greeted with a frigid silence and Alexander feared that the confrontation might well spoil the atmosphere for the rest of the day unless he acted quickly. People were already looking in their direction. It would be quite intolerable if these two fools soured relations between the artillery officers and the cadets. A thought struck him.
‘Surely you are arguing the same thing.’
Napoleon and Wesley turned to look at him with surprised expressions and Alexander’s mind raced ahead as he framed an argument that might yet placate them both.
‘It seems to me that you both accept the need for some form of leadership over the common people. Whether it’s determined by birth and breeding, or by some measure of innate ability, it’s an aristocracy either way. The lot of the common people will never change in the long run, Napoleon, even if your meritocrats replace the aristocrats. If they feel their time has come, they will only wrest control through violence, and the masses will die in the service of both sides before the matter is settled.Then all is as before …’
Napoleon frowned. ‘So?’
‘So the only course between the two positions is to accommodate each other. For the sake of the people.’
‘I see. So those who nature has endowed with superior qualities are to feed off the scraps from the table of men that blind fate has placed in power?’ Napoleon shook his head in contempt, while Wesley nodded his agreement.
‘By all means reward them,’ said the Englishman, ‘as long as they know their place, and don’t attempt to change things. My God! Can you imagine a nation run by a crowd of intellectuals?’
Napoleon gave him an arch look. ‘I take it you were never an outstanding scholar?’
‘Well, sir,’ Wesley flushed, ‘no. But there are far more important measures of a man.’
‘Indeed,’ Napoleon replied. ‘And nothing quite so irrelevant as the matter of his origins.’
Wesley sat forward in his chair, drawing his feet back in preparation to stand. At that moment Fitzroy’s voice boomed out from the far side of the room.
‘Gentlemen! Please be upstanding for the director and his wife.’
Chapter 33
The artillery officers and the cadets leaped up and stood to attention as the director of the academy entered the room, with his wife on one arm. Madame de Pignerolle was now wearing a crimson silk dress embroidered with silver and had powdered her face and put on a wig. From a distance Napoleon saw that she appeared half the age she was when she had shown them into the room. Her husband wore full dress uniform of a colonel, his last rank in the army before taking up the directorship of the academy. They strode to the centre of the room like royalty and then the director waved a hand at the young men he had invited.
‘Please be at ease, gentlemen.’
His guests relaxed their posture but kept their silence as they waited for the director to continue speaking. Napoleon saw that he was an old man, with a wrinkled face and glasses below his neat powdered wig. Nevertheless, under his uniform he was powerfully built and moved with a lithe self-confidence that was born of good health, fitness and breeding. He drew a breath and began.
‘I trust our guests from the Artillery Regiment have been well looked after?’
Napoleon and the others nodded politely.
‘Good! It is always a pleasure for my wife and me to invite professionals to the small gatherings we hold here from time to time. I’m sure, despite your age and junior rank, you will already have some useful experience to pass on to our young gentlemen. In return I trust that you will welcome the chance to be acquainted with men who will soon be returning to their own countries to take up military careers. You all share a noble profession, and while its ultimate goal is proficiency in battle, today we meet as friends, an international fellowship of gentlemen. I trust that the amity that is established here will in some small way guarantee peace between all our nations in the future. Now,’ the director smiled,‘I am sure that you have no wish to hear an old man prattle on interminably for the rest of the day …’
Laughter rippled through the cadets’ ranks, and the artillery officers, unsure of the permissible degree of levity, smiled politely, before Monsieur de Pignerolle continued, ‘If you would be so kind as to follow me through to the dining room …’
The director led them towards a pair of double doors at one end of the room. They were frameless and might have been mistaken for part of the wall but for a set of discreet handles, and the two footmen who had quietly moved over to the doors and now stood to attention on either side. At the director’s approach they gently pulled the doors open. Beyond, Napoleon could see another room, smaller and with a wooden floor inlaid with ornate marquetry. A long table, laid for a banquet, stretched the length of the room and a dozen waiters lined one wall.The director handed his wife to a seat at one of the tables before striding its length to be seated at the far end. To one side of the room stood a pianoforte.
Napoleon and the other young men searched for their name places and then stood behind their chairs. The director waited until everyone was in position.
‘Please be seated.’
There was a ragged cacophony of chairs scraping across the floor as his guests sat down. Immediately the waiters moved forward, plucked the napkins off the table and arranged them on the laps of the young men. Glancing at the place-names to each side of him Napoleon saw that he was seated between a Prussian and one of the English cadets. Directly opposite him was another Englishman and the other artillery officers had been distributed round the table in such a way as to make conversation with them impossible. The isolation from his comrades made Napoleon feel anxious and as the meal began he found that he had completely lost his appetite, and pushed much of his food to one side of his plate. The Prussian’s French was almost incomprehensible and all that Napoleon could make out was that he was a firm advocate of the sabre as a duelling weapon. The rest was an unintelligible torrent of garbled vowels and consonants. The Englishmen paid Napoleon almost no attention and chattered away in their own tongue. So he was able to watch his fellow diners surreptitiously, and found his gaze wandering back to Wesley. The Englishman was seated at the right hand of Madame de Pignerolle and was evidently one of her favourites. She laughed gaily at his jokes and looked deeply attentive when Wesley launched into deeper discussion.
As darkness fell outside the long windows the meal came to an end. The waiters cleared the table and, using long tapers, they lit the candles in the chandeliers that hung over the table.Then they set up decanters of brandy and fine cut-glass goblets on the table and withdrew to the side of the room once again. Once everyone’s glass was filled Madame de Pignerolle rose from her seat.
‘Gentlemen, if I may ask for your attention …’
The chatter died away quickly.
‘Thank you. I hope you will indulge me with your kind attention for the start of the evening’s entertainment.’
She made her way over to the pianoforte and sat down. The sheet music was already set up in front of her and after a moment’s adjustment of her feet on the pedals she looked back towards the table.
‘Arthur, will you join me?’
Wesley smiled, rose at once from his chair and strode over. He bent down behind the pianoforte and emerged with a violin. Napoleon realised that this was all carefully prearranged between his hostess and her favourite. The cadet tucked the violin under his chin, raised its neck and held the bow poised just in front of the bridge. Madame de Pignerolle nodded her head three times and they began to play a minuet.
At once Napoleon was mesmerised. All his earlier hostility to the Englishman faded in an instant.The range of sound that came from the violin and the purity of the notes was sublime. Music had always been a distant pleasure for Napoleon, who could appreciate its quasi-mathematical order and the swirling patterns and variations of theme and melody. Most of the music he had heard before had been played by those with technical competence, and occasionally some feeling. But this cadet played his instrument as if he had been born to it. Indeed, from the ecstatic expression on his face it appeared that life had no greater joy for Wesley than when he was playing his violin. Glancing round the table Napoleon saw that everyone was caught up in the virtuoso display of talent, and watching and listening in rapt silence. And so it went on for more than an hour, each piece of music performed to near perfection, and even Napoleon found himself uncommonly moved by the final performance, played solo, a mournful piece that slowly faded in intensity until there was a last note that Wesley seemed to hold for an impossibly long time, before it diminished, leaving just silence. For a moment the audience was still. Then a chair scraped.
‘Bravo!’ The director clapped his hands together. ‘Bravo Wesley!’
The rest of the guests joined in and the cadet blushed with pleasure and bowed before returning to his seat.
Later, when the dinner party was breaking up, Fitzroy began to collect the artillery officers together to take them to the bedrooms that had been prepared for them.
‘Just a minute,’ Napoleon raised his hand. He walked over to Wesley and, slightly shame-faced, he smiled. ‘I must apologise for what I said to you before the meal. I did not intend to offend you.’
‘No offence taken, sir.’
‘Good. Might I ask where you learned to play the violin so admirably?’
‘I was taught by the best. My father, Garrett Wesley, amongst others.’
‘And that last piece. I’ve never heard it before. What is it?’
‘A composition of a friend. I gather he based it on a folk song, popular amongst some of our people in Meath. He wrote it shortly before he died.’
Napoleon mentally flinched at the reference to ‘our people’.‘It was beautiful. Quite beautiful. And finely performed.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ Wesley bowed his head. ‘It’s my favourite piece.’
Napoleon smiled, and raised his hand. ‘We’re leaving at first light. So I’ll say goodbye now.’
With the slightest hesitation the Englishman shook his hand and then returned the smile. Napoleon turned to go, walked a step and then paused and turned round.