Napoleon Symphony: A Novel in Four Movements Read online

  “Talleyrand,” Bonaparte brooded. “Untrustworthy, slimy. Very much an unfrocked bishop.”

  “I, remember, am an unfrocked abbé. Leave that. Should things in the Tuileries not go quite as planned, should Barras or Moulins, say, give unexpected trouble, then you will leave three hundred of your men in Paris. As I see it, it is all a very simple matter. It is a reasonable matter, this liquidation of a weak executive. I anticipate no trouble at all.”

  “A triumvirate, eh? Very classical.”

  Sieyès pointed his long nose at Bonaparte like a toy gun. “I said nothing about a triumvirate. I mentioned only the formation of a committee of three. That is not the same thing, except in the matter of strict denotation, as a triumvirate.”

  “I quite understand, I see that thoroughly.”

  Augereau watched them march in while the string band played:

  Let extortion and tyranny tremble

  Now the blood-red flag is on high.

  “Look at the bastards,” he said, “in their togas like a lot of stage Romans. Lawyers, that’s all they are. The more impotence the more show. What with the directors and their yard-long feathers nodding in the breeze. Bald-headed men fuck best. Well—so they say.”

  “You should have been with us at Gaza.” Bonaparte was tricolor-sashed, gold-frogged, breeches a ripple of snow silk. They both stamped up and down for the circulation, it was a cold Brumaire they were having, no brume today though.

  “I had enough dirty work to do here. In Paris, that is. That seems to be the lot. All those red togas and red squashy things on their heads and the tongues of the troops hanging out for a smoke and a drop of brandy. Not a pipeful of shag to a platoon. Keep us waiting all morning while they have that stagy rubbish stuck up in there, honor and glory and the Sun-King shining on their napes, take their time marching in, four repeats of the Marseillaise I made it, and now it will be jabber jabber to no end without end.”

  “They’ll be quick, I think.”

  Bourrienne came back with a report picked up from somebody just inside the door of the Apollo Gallery. “They’re going to draw up a list of nominations.”

  “For the committee?”

  “For a new Directory.”

  “For a—You sure you got that right?”

  “Proposed and seconded they do that. Voted on. Nothing else on the agenda.”

  Bonaparte did a brief quarterdeck pace. Then he said to Bourrienne: “You and I are going in there. Berthier too. Get Berthier.”

  Augereau gaped. “You’re going to drop yourself completely in the—”

  “Remember Areola? Think of Areola. That was the real, ha, ordure. Nonsense, Augereau. They’re a lot of stupid disobedient old men.”

  “Disobedient? Disob—”

  The three clank-stamped in, but not before Bonaparte had noticed a ranker whom he insisted he knew. “Don’t tell me, it’s Carné, we were at Toulon together, drove the English out didn’t we eh? Carry on smoking.” Berthier performed a silent stutter at the louisine opulence, gold gold, the many-frescoed sun-god, cream pilasters, gold gold gold, magnificent no doubt about it, the elders like a bunch of women in scarlet toques and skirts, some clapping gently at the sight, unexpected, irregular really, of a frowning victorious general, others drawing their red skirts about them in fright or affront, a bunch of women. Lui wasted no time, he said:

  “Liberty and equality in danger. Volcano’s edge. Allow to speak with blunt soldier’s frankness. I am your sword, defender. Have already sacrificed so much for liberty and er equality. Must be saved.”

  “Am I to understand,” a twisted man in steel spectacles said, “that the general is speaking against the Constitution?”

  “In the name of the Constitution foul conspiracies are already at their deadly work. You, the people’s representatives, are in grave danger. I am a soldier, I know these things.” Over the cries of who and what and the deaf saying what does he say about the people, “I have myself been approached by the directors Barras and Moulins to assist them in the overthrow of the Republic and the reestablishment of the hated monarchy. You, gentlemen, our guardians, wise, just, moderate, have ever upheld our republican principles, loathing Bourbonism and Jacobinism alike. Dangers,” he repeated. They all looked at him. “That is to say, I will protect you.” They all looked at him. “From the dangers that threaten, I mean. Will not one who has founded republics protect the mother of republics? With arms, if need be. Old comrades, I see you standing behind me, bayonets ashine in the sun of victory, that is to say freedom.” They all looked at him, except those who looked for the old comrades, who were not there.

  “For Christ’s sake,” Bourrienne said low.

  “Republics. Let me say this, just this. The god of victory and the goddess of fortune march with me. Let none try, let none attempt. I know I have enemies, some here perhaps, enemies of the state and of republicanism. Let them beware. Lightning, the lightning of drawn steel and the thunder of an army’s anger will will—”

  “General, for God’s sake,” Bourrienne said, “you don’t know what you’re—”

  “The goddess of fortune and the god of victory march with me, remember that—” Then the Elders began to shout, thin arms waving in anger from under togas, the occasional very fat arm jelly-shaking. The General would do well to leave oratory to the orators, how dare a mere soldier, such insolence, such pretentiousness, Monsieur President order him to. “All I wish to say, in all humility, is that the distinguished assembly consider the danger, take steps to obviate it, at once form a committee for the purpose of—” Out out out out. Berthier began to pull him, Bourrienne, with greater diffidence, to push. “That is all I ask.”

  Outside he did not seem too greatly discomfited. “Well, didn’t do too well there, did we? You can blame Sieyès for this, he promised but he didn’t fulfill. Now we’re going to the Orangery.”

  “Ttto the—”

  “Yes yes yes, we’re going to approach the Five Hundred. Bourrienne, would you be good enough—”

  “But the Five Hundred are swearing their loyalty to the Constitution, one by one. That’s what they’re here for. Believe me, you’re courting exceptional danger.”

  “As always, as always. Be good enough to send a message to my wife, say I may be home a little later than I said but that everything is going well. Got that?”

  Fifty thousand in the field, he thought, nothing compared to five hundred close-packed in a grim bare box of a meeting hall. He saw his brother Lucien on the dais, presiding, but no comfort there. Out out out out before he was properly in. Sanctuary of the law profaned, out out at once, no right, OUTSIDE THE LAW. Someone cried dictator and the word was taken up. Lucien was calling, gavel-banging: “My brave brother—his achievements in the field—at least a hearing—” Bonaparte saw the claws and fists looming, heard heavy breath, knew at once and for the first time what his only feared enemy was: the crowd, nails and teeth for weapons. He prepared to faint, recovered, turned to stumble out, found the enemy had blocked retreat, then the claws were onto him, tearing. The salt in his mouth was blood, he put fingers to his right cheek, unbelieving, but there, trickling to the palm, was wet red. Then came the blessed emblem of order—uniforms, strong soldiers shouldering and hitting out, himself thrust into the square of protective order, out, out, hitting out, out.

  “Outside the law,” Bourrienne said. “You know what it means—those were the words they spoke before Robespierre—”

  “What’s happening in there now?” They could hear roars and anger, a faint gavel. He did not wipe away the blood, he knew, sick as he was, the value of blood.

  “You know what’s happening. You know what happened to Robespierre. Your brother’s trying to hold back the vote.” A scribbled note came out with a panting usher. Bonaparte read it; he said:

  “We have ten minutes. We must have Lucien out here. Get my horse. Get an escort for Lucien.”

  Drums, there was nothing so comforting as drums, a daddy-mammy in crescendo,
a roll sustained, frightening the few birds of Brumaire. There were shouting faces at the open Orangery windows. Lucien spoke to the troops:

  “That lawful assembly in there is being threatened—threatened physically, threatened with daggers, threatened with swords—by a handful of mad extremists. The army must rescue that lawful assembly, steel must answer steel.”

  The noise from the windows was confused, but the troops caught the words outside the law. The bloody-faced general spoke:

  “Soldiers, have I not led you to victory again and again? Have I not again and again risked my life for France, our France, a France once again in danger from Frenchmen? I met danger at Toulon, in Italy, in Egypt, on the high seas, I meet worse danger now in a place of cunning assassins. You followed me before, will you not follow me again?”

  Some shouted Long live, many were not sure. Lucien drew his sword and, Corsican luck, the dying sun pounced on it. He thrust it at his brother’s chest, crying: “I swear, I swear that if ever he menaces the liberty of our dear land, I will—” Roars and roars and roars. It was fine drama—dying sun, brothers poised in tableau, a sword, blood. Bonaparte said to Lucien:

  “All right now, I think. We have them now. Go with Leclerc and Murat, lead the way in, we’ll clear that damned hall.”

  “Freedom, freedom, die for freedom!” Some of the Five Hundred were leaping out of the windows, as from a fire.

  “Die, indeed,” Augereau said. “Who the hell wants to kill those bastards?”

  No trouble now about getting that committee.

  “I’d much rather be,” she shivered, “back at Number Six.” They were walking at sunset in the Great Gallery of the Tuileries, big, cold, unhomelike, haunted especially at this hour by kings whose shining light had turned to dried blood. She herself, after all, was an aristocrat, had waited to join the democracy of the headless, shivered now not solely from the huge baroque cold but from the memory of the narrowness of her salvation. The First Consul slapped her rump, starting a chain of echoes, and said heartily:

  “Courage, girl. A little bare now, true, and too many of the wrong ghosts—” He felt them too then, they were both from islands where the dead familiarly walked. “But we’ll soon lay them with statues of the ever-living, men who became great, not puling inheritors of empty purple. A couple of dozen statues here, I think—Demosthenes, Alexander, Brutus and so on. Poor dead Washington, great general, great democrat. Cato, Julius Caesar—”

  “Next to Brutus?”

  “In the shades they are friends again, aware of each other’s destiny. Marlborough, an Englishman but a very considerable, nay a towering, a gigantic—”

  “Are you” she said, “a great democrat?”

  He stopped their walk and looked at her. She looked at him, seeing his red velvet on fire. “Democrat?” It was strange to hear a political term from those languorous lips; perhaps she had, aware of her husband’s new civil greatness, taken to reading A Child’s Guide to Montesquieu or something. “Well, yes. Well, no. The whole process has been democratic, shall I say. A free vote and so on. The electorate knows nothing, God bless it, of constitutions, nor need it, nor should it. I believe in the obscurity of constitutions, but they should be short in order to appear simple.”

  “That sounds Machiavellian.” She had been reading, no doubt about it. She walked on and he had to follow. “Poor Sieyès. I’m sure he had no idea that this would come about.”

  “The triumvirate—do you know that word?—was his idea. The term consul also. He knows all about constitutions but he knows little of rule. It’s a matter of personality, of course. That piping little voice, those varicose veins—”

  “Let me put it another way,” she said. “Do you believe in the people?” He smiled indulgently; she knew that he was ready to say I believe that the people exist if that’s what you mean. “I mean, do you like the people, do you love the people?”

  “You can love only persons,” he said, and put his arm vigorously about her breast. “When I see the people as a mob, and that’s the only occasion when one really sees the people, then I know how I feel about them. They petrify me, like a nightmare. But give them the discipline they need and, at bottom, desire, place them under officers, put guns and not bricks in their paws, and then I don’t fear them, even when they’re marching toward me.

  “But what are you going to do? You and the two others, I mean?”

  “Hic, haec and hoc Talleyrand calls us. Witty and cruel. See that bloodstain on the wall there? That might be from poor Marie Antoinette. Must have it cleaned off. This isn’t a museum. Do, you say, do? Take you to that great gilt bed for a quarter of an hour before dinner, bump a few royal ghosts out of the way.”

  “Be serious.”

  “I was never more. Come. What I’m going to do in the other er bed, a big weedy flower-bed you could call it, needs a gardener, to do is to rule. Stop the people being a mob.” They strolled back, her silk slippers soundless, his boots firm and harsh. “Frederick the Great too. Cicero. Gustavus Adolphus. Hannibal. He crossed the Alps,” he said with regret. A civilian now, ready to grow pot-bellied in his country’s service. The new Constitution said that the First Consul could not command in the field. Well, constitutions could be changed. No immediate hurry. “Scipio Africanus. Those poor devils in Egypt. Kléber and that fool of a general Menou. Became a Muslim, circumcision and all.” He sighed. “There are some with no notion of moderation. Ah well, there’s a lot to do.”

  In the name of Allah the Merciful the Most High. In that year of the Hijrah nothing of note occurred in the lands of the Nile except for the discontinuation of the annual pilgrimage to Mecca.

  Germinal in the Year Seven, and if it is the spring of power it is no longer the spring of love. I would meet you honestly on this. And my seed will not work in you nor, as I now suspect, in any woman. Yet the scent of your body is in my nostrils as I sit here presiding, half-listening to nonsense that I will shatter in due time with a cannon-burst of sense. For my seed would not work in Egypt and it is as though I must seek the way of achievements and monuments and paragraphs in history tomes to secure the continuation of my name. Do we come now to what is called a mature love, nourished on wounds, as the flying life of Egypt was nourished, in which the death of the mad spring must not be regretted? And yet your scent maddens me now at this two-in-the-morning session, all dust and weariness, with some of the councillors dropping off, as it did when it arose from the maps of Piedmont and Tuscany. And with a start I see that I have written, over and over, in total automatism, God how much I love you on the order paper. It is my innermost heart speaking through my sleeping fingers and the innermost heart speaks tr—

  “Citizens,” he called, “for God’s sake let’s try to earn our salaries. It’s only two-thirty-five.” He banged his fist on the small table set on the consular platform. Old heads started awake around the green-baized horseshoe table below. Cambacérès, Second Consul, could doze with his eyes open, a great gift, but now he began to murmur something about truffles. Lebrun, Third and eldest, never slept. For an instant the First Consul saw himself in his ridiculous youth, set about by graybeards. He must cultivate humility, the appearance of being willing to learn.

  “—the principles of the Revolution,” Jodelet said. Somebody, a new councillor, stood up, inflating his chest for oratory. The First Consul said:

  “Down, sir, down. No flourishes here. Impressed as we all must be by Councillor Jodelet’s devotion to the principles of the Revolution, must we not admit that, whether there be a God or not, the widespread belief in a God is not a matter to which we may close our eyes—literally or otherwise, citizens?”

  There were loud words, jumbled: clergy corruption superstition monks.

  “I speak as a soldier,” the First Consul cried. “We cannot have the flower of the army wasted in civil war. I refer to the Vendée. Too many martyrs there. I propose pacification. And if mass may be said there, why not elsewhere?” Too loud, too dictatorial. “I would
be grateful, we would all be grateful for the considered views of the Council. Councillor Cathelineau?”

  Outside, in the raw morning, Cambacérès and Lebrun went off looking for an early breakfast. Cambacérès knew of a small restaurant where they served an exquisite herb omelette. The bread would be smoking fresh about this time too. There was something to be said for staying up all night.

  “What do you think?” Lebrun said.

  “About lui? I think he keeps a damned bad table. I had him to dinner, you know, and he was actually impatient. An exquisite meal, Jean had exerted himself for the First Consul, and he wanted to know how much longer it was going to go on. A bit mannerless, you know. Said he’d be quite happy with a sausage and a swig of watered Chambertin.”

  “Stripped down to function.” Pleased with the phrase, Lebrun tried it again. Pleased with the phrase, he said, “It may be a new kind of man. He’s very young, of course, may change, become more human.”

  “Yes, something in that. He’s not really human. Intellect and animality. A machine on top of an animal. He has a chest like an orangutan, have you seen him breathe in? Of course you have. He dances up and down like a monkey when he’s in a rage. He should control those rages. Swives like a rattlesnake, so they tell me. Animal all right, and the brain isn’t human.”

  They stood by the raw morning river a moment, seeing barges bringing dewy vegetables from the country. “Nice little turnips there. I like them cooked very slowly, for hours you know, to a kind of cream.”

  “But,” Lebrun said, “where will this new kind of mechanical animal take us? Not to anything new. Religion coming back, and centralization, and favors for his friends.”

  Cambacérès looked through his lorgnette at some cabbages. “Very crisp, squeak under your fingers. Well, we’re not his friends. No favoritism there. It’s mad really, I suppose. I’m a regicide and you’re a king’s man, and here we both are, looking at celery together.”

  “I don’t care much for celery. Well, very fresh perhaps with a nut of cheese. I’m not a big eater. What you say is true, and it means the Revolution’s over. Jacobins and Bourbonites are packed together in lavender, memories of old times. It all feels like a new thing, and one can’t define it if one’s in the middle of it. But I’d say, at a venture, that the new thing is lui, Bonaparte. What I mean is, he doesn’t express any separable idea—you understand me? He’s not there to personify some new notion of absolutism or democracy or what you will. He’s there to turn the age into himself.”