Napoleon's Exile (8 page)

Reaching the first floor, they found General Sacken, with his powdered wig and a strip of leather over one eye, his collar open, sitting at table with his entourage. The drawing-room was decorated in the oriental style; multiplied in the mirrors along all four walls, and engulfed by incense smoke that rose from braziers, the soldiers stabbed forks into the dishes before them, greedily tearing at their partridge casserole, stuffing their gullets with cucumbers and bone-marrow or sautéed white beet with ham - all of which, amid laughter and bellowed exchanges, was amply washed down with thick wines that burned the stomach. Some of the men, drunk already, staggered to the wide-open windows, guffawing between belches, and threw gold coins to the citizens assembled beneath the trees. Coloured lanterns, hanging from the branches, lit the beggars in a red light, making them look like a swarm of devils, as they elbowed each other out of the way, fought one another and held out their hats to collect the money raining down on them.

Sacken's chin glistened with sauce, and his eye was cloudy. Waving a drumstick he had been chewing on, he gestured to the colonels on either side of him to give up their seats to the new arrivals: ‘Sit down, Monsieur, and you too, Deputy,' he said to Octave and the Marquis. ‘Are you hungry?'

‘We just need your support,' La Grange replied as he took his seat.

‘A drink for my guests!'

A servant turbaned like a pantomime Bedouin immediately charged the glasses.

‘What can I do for you?'

‘Place your signature at the bottom of this pass. We're sending your comrade to join our provincial partisans.'

‘Semanow!'

The General's orderly, who had been sitting behind him, stood up with a click of his heels, his chest thrown out to emphasize the garland of the yellow aiguilette on his blue double-breasted spencer. The General requested some writing materials, and as the man disappeared, his master read what Sémallé had written. When Semanow returned with a pen, an inkpot and some dusting powder, Sacken signed.

‘There you are, Monsieur Chauvin,' he said, holding out the document to Octave.

‘General?'

‘Your name is Chauvin, isn't it?'

‘Yes, yes, of course,' said La Grange. ‘And now, about leaving Paris...'

‘Semanow!'

After a brief exchange in Russian, the General told his guests, ‘Semanow will come and lead you out of the tollgates.'

The Marquis got to his feet with a word of thanks, and rested one hand on Octave's shoulder as he put down his glass. ‘Good luck. I'd got used to you.'

‘Me too,' said Octave.

‘Aren't you staying, Marquis?'

‘No, General, I am going off to earn my post as Deputy Governor. I have a thousand things to do tonight.'

Then Octave found himself in the midst of the partygoers. To beguile the time he accepted a plate of fried goujons. Suddenly the ceiling slid open, and a gilded chariot descended majestically between the chandeliers. Inside it, about fifteen nymphs struck poses; they let the transparent veils covering the curves of their shoulders slip, each revealing a pink or brown nipple. At this spectacle, the drunks hammered their heels and clapped, and it seemed as though the shaking floor was about to collapse. The girls, with practised smiles, emerged from the chariot, which had come to rest among the tables; they swayed their hips, darted the tips of their tongues between their painted lips, and sat down simpering on the knees of the most decorated men. One of them put her arms around Octave's neck and, through the general hubbub, whispered some unexpected words in her suburban accent.

‘What're you doing with these rats?'

‘I'm working, Rosine,' said Octave.

‘Like me?'

‘Regimes change, but you and I stay the same.'

‘Sure!'

The time for conversation had passed, and Rosine wrapped her arms around Octave so as not to attract the attention of the General, who was himself encumbered by a plump little naiad. Octave asked:

‘Can you help me?'

‘If you protect me, as you once did from the cops, then sure. Do you want more information about my regulars?'

‘I'd like you to take my spare key.'

‘And put it where exactly? As you can see, I'm wearing nothing but bracelets.'

‘I'll hide it under this cushion, and you can pick it up once this heap of savages have rolled under the tablecloths. You go to my place before dawn, through the antique shop, through the wardrobe door that you're familiar with, then open the trunk and take out a brown bag. It's for you.'

‘What's in it?'

‘Gold.'

‘For me, you say?'

‘I don't want anyone to steal it from me, I'd rather give it to you. I've got to leave tonight, and I won't be able to go back to the rue Saint-Sauveur, do you understand?'

‘I don't, but why me?'

‘Because I've met you, Rosine, and I owe you that at least.'

‘Is there a lot of it, this gold of yours?'

‘Enough for you to set yourself up.'

‘Open a dress shop?'

They were interrupted by Semanow's return.

*

Framed on either side by lancers, like a prisoner, Octave trotted quickly along the quays on a Prussian mare. Semanow led the troop and set its speed. To reach the Versailles road, on the left bank, the horsemen turned at the Pont de la Concorde. The public baths - which offered tubs at 230 sous - were illuminated. The imposing wooden construction floated on the water, with orange-trees in pots arranged around the terrace Silhouettes were outlined against torches, amidst a cacophony of laughter and songs.

On the other side of the Seine, Semanow's troop continued on its way, guided by the lights of the allied camps. Too large to be lodged in the central districts, the armies were bivouacked on the edge of the city, spilling out into the countryside. Enterprising soldiers had converted arbours into cosy tents. Some Cossacks had built huts by supporting bales of straw between their crossed lances; elsewhere, men from a Berlin infantry regiment lounged about in the grass around their cauldrons of soup.

The war had not touched the west of the city, no splintered shutters hung from the windows, no shrubs had been mown down by case shot as they had in Belleville. On the contrary, in every village, farmers and bourgeois mingled with soldiers to celebrate the peace. They had rigged up tables on barrels, sheep-fat crackled on the spits, and young peasant girls danced with hussars. Semanow stopped his men on the edge of a large village and said to Octave, ‘I shall leave you now, but don't dismount, you'll be setting off again straight away.'

He entrusted his companion and his pass to an Austrian officer. Octave changed escorts at every village, from staging-post to staging-post, until he reached the hills of Juvisy and the headquarters of the Count of Pahlen. The 6th Corps of the Army of Bohemia occupied the summit; the enclosures for the horses and the rows of tents were lit by torches tied to flagpoles. Octave was blindfolded before being led across the fields. When an officer untied the blindfold, it was nine o'clock in the morning and Octave recognized the clock-tower of the town of Essonnes.

As he walked, alone now, on a beaten path, Octave reflected that he was in a curious situation: the royalists were sending him to Fontainebleau to spy on the Emperor, while in Paris he had been spying on the royalists on behalf of the Emperor. An opportunist would take advantage of the chance to spy on both camps, but Octave didn't feel as though he had a traitor's soul, and anyway, if the Bourbons did successfully establish themselves, they would still be haunted by the ghost of the Chevalier de Blacé, whose name, showy outfits and life Octave had appropriated. When he met his first French patrol, grenadiers whose greatcoats had faded in the rain, he said in a commanding voice: ‘Take me to Fontainebleau, to the Duke of Bassano.'

‘And why would the Duke wish to see you?'

‘Tell him that Octave Sénécal has come to deliver his report.'

I
N THE LONG
marble gallery of the Palace of Fontainebleau, a man dressed in black was walking at a measured pace, holding a letter. He had thick eyebrows and a permanent smile on his lips like a rictus, and wore a curly white wig and a high collar to underline his ponderous air. Adjutants, chamberlains in scarlet silk highlighted with silver, quartermasters and various degrees of valet all stopped as he passed and greeted him with a bow. He didn't reply, he didn't see them. He was Hugues Bernard Maret, the Duke of Bassano, Secretary of State in charge of civilian affairs, the Emperor's closest confidant. He alone had permission to enter Napoleon's ordinary apartment unannounced, and the guard officer, a captain in the voltigueurs, merely held the door open for him. From the antechamber, Maret passed into the study; his master had been bent over his maps since five o'clock in the morning, along with Major General Berthier.

‘His Majesty has left, your grace,' said the first valet, very tall, very respectful, and still wearing his travelling clothes.

‘I know, Monsieur Constant. How is he this morning?'

‘In fine fettle,' said the valet before withdrawing.

Napoleon refused to accept defeat, and Fontainebleau was merely a garrison; he had scorned the big apartments, still closed, for more military accommodation in a mezzanine on the corner of the palace, at the end of the François I gallery. The study overlooked a gloomy clump of fir trees. The maps were scattered higgledy-piggledy on a bare wooden table set on trestles, and some aloe twigs smoked in the incense-burner like an Egyptian statue. Maret took the unsealed letter he held in his hand and threw it in the fire, then consulted the maps, with all their pencilled scribbles, to try to guess his Emperor's plans.

After a frenzied outburst of rage two days previously, because he had arrived at night, four hours too late, on the hills beside the capital, he had questioned General Belliard's retreating cavalrymen and noticed the thousand fires of the enemy camps. Then the Emperor had regained control of himself, and decided to mass the remaining regiments along a river that ran from the left bank of the Seine to the Orlïans road. He had gone to inspect that natural defence and order the fortification of the towns of Essonnes and Corbeil, with their powder mill and flour warehouses. Maret knew that the Emperor was hoping to attack Paris in four days' time, when Ney and Macdonald had brought their armies back from Champagne; they were exhausted, barefoot and demoralised, and Napoleon hoped to inspire them with his mere presence.

Maret's smile concealed his faith. He endured his master's dangerous whims and furies without flinching; if he had a doubt or a criticism he voiced it when the two of them were alone, never in a meeting (unlike the more brutal Caulaincourt), and because he appeared never to disown the Emperor he was seen by everyone else as a servile cretin. He didn't care. He had been skilful enough to manufacture the absolute trust of the Emperor and maintain it both by his attitude and his manoeuvres. He sometimes dictated letters to the pretty Duchess of Bassano, for example, in which she confided in him her jealousy of the Emperor: he was too fond of the Duke, and the Duke was too fond of him. Napoleon, who always read his entourage's correspondence, was delighted by such devotion – and upon returning from his morning inspection, at which he had received great acclaim, he was therefore neither surprised nor angry to find the Secretary of State sitting in his chair of gilded wood. The Emperor threw his hat on the ground, shook his frock-coat into Constant's waiting hands, and appeared in the green uniform of the chasseurs of the Guard, the modest garb that his soldiers revered. He opened a snuffbox, stuffed a pinch into his nose and sneezed. Maret held out the letter he had brought.

‘Sire, we have just received a dispatch from the Duke of Vicenza.'

‘What does he say?'

‘He has had difficulties meeting the Tsar.'

‘But he got there?'

‘Yes.'

‘Go on.'

‘The allies refuse to negotiate with Your Majesty.'

‘Go on.'

‘The Senate has confirmed a provisional government around Talleyrand ...'

‘The Senate! A government! Has Caulaincourt given us the names of these pygmies?'

‘Beurnonville, Jaucourt, Dalberg, the Abbé de Montesquiou ...'

‘Coglioni!'

‘The Prefect of Police is said to have joined them . . .'

‘Him too? Already?'

‘But Pasquier owes his job to me; you will recall that he allowed me to win at billiards to support his nomination from your Majesty.'

‘Pass on a message to him, ask him for some details, and his reply may enlighten us.'

‘The Duke of Vicenza adds: “I am rejected, I have not seen a friendly face.”'

Appalled and concerned, the Emperor took out his lorgnette, picked up the piece of paper that Maret was holding and skimmed it quickly, before crumpling it into a ball and dropping it on the floor. He paced back and forth with his hands behind his back, deliberately tipped over his snuffbox and went and stood by a window to gaze out at the motionless fir trees.

‘A blow struck at Paris could have a terrific effect.'

‘Sire?'

‘Can you imagine those traitors, oozing hatred, if I were to return to the Tuileries?'

For a moment the Emperor enjoyed the exaggerated sense of panic, and then pursued a train of thought that he had begun with Berthier at dawn.

‘The Tsar and the King of Prussia are wondering what I've got up my sleeve. They suspect me, and they are right to do so. They have just lost more than ten thousand men in the ditches of Paris. They're tired now, and basking in a false sense of security. Their generals are pampering themselves, they've taken over our town-houses, and their marauders are getting lost in our streets, which they know no better than they know our language. How many of them are there, inside and outside, and where are they? How are the Parisians reacting? Who's taking charge of this chaos?'