Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) (640 page)

Cosmo, raising suddenly his eyes from his plate, caught his companion examining him keenly. The doctor burst into a loud laugh till Cosmo’s grave face recalled him to himself.

“I beg your pardon. I remembered suddenly a very funny thing that happened to me last night. I am afraid you think me very impolite. It was extremely funny.”

“Won’t you tell me of it?” asked Cosmo coldly.

“No, my dear sir. You are not in the mood. I prefer to apologize. There is a secret in it which is not mine. But as to the girls I was perfectly serious. If you seek female beauty you must look to the people for it and in Genoa you will not look in vain. The women of the upper classes are alike everywhere. You must have remarked that.”

“I have hardly had time to look about me as yet,” said Cosmo. He was no longer annoyed with the doctor, not even after he heard him say:

“Surely yesterday evening you must have had an opportunity. You came home late.”

“I wonder who takes the trouble to watch my move* ments?” remarked Cosmo carelessly.

“Town-police spies, of course,” said the doctor grimly; “and perhaps one or two of the most enterprising thieves. You must make up your mind to that. After all, why should you care?”

“Yes, why should I?” repeated Cosmo nonchalantly. “Do they report to you?”

The doctor laughed again. “I see you haven’t forgiven me my untimely merriment; but I will answer your question. No doubt I could hear a lot if I wanted to, both from the police and the thieves. But as a matter of fact it was my courier who told me. He was talking with some friends outside this inn when you came home. You know, you are a noticeable figure.”

“Oh, your courier. I suppose he hasn’t got much else to do!”

“I see you are bent on quarrelling, Mr. Latham,” said the other, while two unexpected dimples appeared on his round cheeks. “All right. Only hadn’t we better wait for some other opportunity? Don’t you allow your man to talk while he is assisting you to dress? I must confess I let my fellow run on while he is shaving me in the morning. But then I am an easy-going sort of tramp. For I am just a tramp. I have no Latham Hall to go back to.”

He pushed his chair away from the table, stretched his legs, plunged his hands in his pockets complacently. How long was it he had been a tramp? he mused aloud. Twenty years? Or a little more. From one end of Europe to the other. From Madrid to Moscow, as one might say. Exactly like that Corsican fellow. Only he hadn’t dragged a tail of two hundred thousand men behind him, and had done no more blood-letting than his lancet was equal to.

He looked up at Cosmo suddenly.

“The lancet’s my weapon, you know. Not bayonet or sabre. Cold steel anyhow. Of course I found occasion to fire off my pistols more than once, in the course of my travels, and I must say for myself that whenever I fired them it settled the business. One evening, I remember, in Transylvania, stepping out of a wretched inn to take a look round, I ran against a coalition of three powerful Haiduks in tarry breeches, with moustaches a foot long. The moonlight was bright as day. I took in the situation at a glance and I assure you two of them never made a sound as they fell, while the third just grunted once. I fancy they had designs on my poor horse. He was inside the inn, you know. A custom of the country. Men and animals under the same roof. I used to be sorry for the animals. When I came in again the Jew had just finished frying the eggs. He had been very surly before but when he served me I noticed that he was shaking like a leaf. He tried to propitiate me by the offer of a sausage. I was simply ravenous. It made me ill for two days. That’s why I haven’t forgotten the occurrence. He nearly managed to avenge those bandits. Luckily I had the right kind of drugs in my valise, and my iron constitution helped me to pull through. But I should like to have seen Bonaparte in that predicament. He wouldn’t have known what to do. And, anyhow, the sausage would have finished him. His constitution is not like mine. He’s unhealthy, sir, unhealthy.”

“You had occasion to observe him often?” asked Cosmo, simply because he was reluctant to go back to his writing.

“Our paths seldom crossed,” stated the other simply. “But some time after the abdication I was passing through Valence — it’s a tramp’s business, you know, to keep moving — and I just had a good look at him outside the post-house. You may take it from me, he won’t reach the term of the Psalmist. Well, Mr. Latham, when I take a survey of the past, here we are, the Corsi-can and I, within, say, a hundred miles of each other, at the end of twenty years of tramping, and, frankly, which of us is the better off when all’s said and done?”

“That’s a point of view,” murmured Cosmo wearily. He added, however, that there were various ways of appreciating the careers of the world’s great men.

“There are,” assented the other. “For instance, you would say that nothing short of the whole of Europe was needed to crush that fellow. But Pozzo di Borgo thinks that he has done it all by himself.”

At the name of the Emperor’s Corsican enemy Cosmo raised his head. He had caught sight in Paris of that personage at one or other of those great receptions from which he used to come away disgusted with the world and dissatisfied with himself. The doctor seemed inwardly amused by his recollection of Pozzo di Borgo.

“He said to me,” he continued, “cAh! If Bonaparte had had the sense not to quarrel with me he wouldn’t be in Elba now.’ What do you think of that, Mr. Latham? Is that a point of view?”

“I should call it mad egotism.”

“Yes. But the most amusing thing is that there is some truth in it. The private enmity of one man may be more dangerous and more effective than the hatred of millions on public grounds. Pozzo has the ear of the Russian Emperor. The fate of the Bourbons hung on a hair. Alexander’s word was law — and who knows!”

Cosmo, plunged in abstraction, was repeating to himself mechanically, “The fate of the Bourbons hung on a hair — the fate of the Bourbons.” . . . Those words seemed meaningless. He tried to rouse himself. “Yes, Alexander,” he murmured vaguely. The doctor raised his voice suddenly in a peevish tone.

“I am not talking of Alexander of Macedon, Mr. Latham.” His vanity had been hurt by Cosmo’s attitude. The young man’s faint smile placated him, and the incongruous dimples reappeared on the doctor’s cheeks while he continued: “Here you are. For Pozzo, Napoleon has always been a starveling squireen. For the Prince, he has been principally the born enemy of good taste. . . .”

“The Prince?” repeated Cosmo, struggling to keep his head above the black waters of melancholia which seemed to lap about his very lips. “You have said the Prince, haven’t you? What Prince?”

“Why, ‘lalleyrand, of course. He did once tell him so, too. Pretty audacious! What? . . . Well, I don’t know. Suppose you were master of the world, and somebody were to tell you something of the sort to your face — what could you do? Nothing. You would have to gulp it, feeling pretty small. A private gentleman of good position could resent such a remark from an equal, but a master of the world couldn’t. A master of the world, Mr. Latham, is very small potatoes; and I will tell you why: it’s because he is alone of his kind, stuck up like a thief in the pillory, for dead cats and cabbage stalks to be thrown at him. A devil of a position to be in unless for a moment. But no man born of woman is a monster. There never was such a thing. A man who would really be a monster would arouse nothing but loathing and hatred. But this man has been loved by an army, by a people. For years his soldiers died for him with joy. Now, didn’t they?”

Cosmo perceived that he had managed to forget himself. “Yes,” he said, “that cannot be denied.”

“No,” continued the doctor. “And now, within twenty yards of us, on the other side of the wall there are millions of people who still love him. Hey! Cantelucci!” he called across the now empty length of the room. “Come here.”

The innkeeper, who had been noiselessly busy about a distant sideboard, approached with deference, in his shirt-sleeves, girt with a long apron of which one corner was turned up, and with a white cap on his head. Being asked whether it was true that Italians loved Napoleon, he answered by a bow and “Excellency.”

“You think yourself that he is a great man, don’t you?” pursued the doctor, and obtained another bow and another murmured “Excellency.”

The doctor turned to Cosmo triumphantly. “You see! And Bonaparte has been stealing from them all he could lay his hands on for years. All their works of art. I am surprised he didn’t take away the wall on which The Last Supper is painted. It makes my blood boil. I love Italy, you know.” He addressed again the motionless Cantelucci.

“But what is it that makes you people love this man?”

This time Cantelucci did not bow. He seemed to make an effort: “Signore, it is the idea.”

The doctor directed his eyes again to Cosmo in silence. At last the innkeeper stepped back three paces before turning away from his English clients. The dimples had vanished from the doctor’s full cheeks. There was something contemptuous in the peevishness of his thin lips and the extreme hardness of his eyes. They softened somewhat before he addressed Cosmo.

“Here is another point of view for you. Devil only knows what that idea is, but I suspect it’s vague enough to include every illusion that ever fooled mankind.

There must be some charm in that gray coat and that old three-cornered hat of his, for the man himself has betrayed every hatred and every hope that have helped him on his way.”

“What I am wondering at,” Cosmo said at last, “is whether you have ever talked like this to anybody before.”

The doctor seemed taken aback a little.

“Oh. You mean about Bonaparte,” he said. “If you had gone to that other inn, Pollegrini’s, more suitable to your nationality and social position, you would have heard nothing of that kind. I am not very communicative really, but to sit at meals like two mutes would have been impossible. WTiat could we have conversed about? One must have some subject other than the weather and, frankly, what other subject would we have had here in Genoa, or for that matter in any other spot of the civilized world? I know there are amongst us in England a good many young men who call themselves revolutionists and even republicans. Charming young men, generous and all that. Friends of Boney. You might be one of them.”

As he paused markedly Cosmo murmured that he was hardly prepared to state what he was. That other inn, the Pollegrini, was full when he arrived.

“Well, there had been three departures this morning,” the doctor informed him. “You can have your things packed up this afternoon and carried across the Place. You know, by staying here you make yourself conspicuous to the spies, not to speak of the thieves; they ask themselves: ‘What sort of inferior Englishman is that?’ With me it is different. I am known for a man who has his own work to do. People are curious. And as my work is confidential I prefer to keep out of the way rather than have to be rude. But for you it would be more amusing to live over there. New faces all the time; endless gossip about all sorts of people.”

“I do not think it is worth while to change now,” said Cosmo coldly.

“Of course not, if you are not going to prolong your stay. If you project a visit to Elba, Livorno is the port for that. And if you are anxious to hear about Napoleon you will hear plenty of gossip about him there. Here you have nothing but my talk.”

“I have found it very interesting,” said Cosmo, rising to go away. The doctor smiled without amiability. He was determined never to let Cosmo guess that he knew of his acquaintance with the people occupying the palace guarded by the symbolic griffins. Of that fact he had been made aware by the Count de Montevesso who, once he had got the doctor into Clelia’s room, decided to take him into his confidence — on the ground that one must be frank with a medical man. The real reason was, however, that knowing Doctor Martel to be employed on secret political work by the statesmen of the Alliance, and having a very great idea of his occult influences in all sorts of spheres, he hoped to get from him another sort of assistance. His last words were, “You see yourself the state the child is in. I want that popinjay moved out of Genoa.”

The only answer of the doctor to this, and the last sound during that professional visit that Count de Montevesso heard from him, was a short wooden laugh. That man of political intrigues, confidential missions (often he had more than one at a time on his hands), inordinately vain of his backstairs importance, was not mercenary. He had always preserved a most independent attitude towards his employers. To him the Count de Montevesso was but a common stupid soldier of fortune of no importance and of no position except as the son-in-law of the Marquis d’Armand. He had never seen him before, but his marital life was known to him as it was known to the rest of the world. To be waylaid by a strange priest just as he was leaving the Marquis’s room was annoying enough, but he could not very well refuse the request since it seemed to be a case of sudden illness. He was soon enlightened as to its nature by Clelia, who had treated him and the Count to another of her indescribable performances. Characteristically enough the doctor had never been for a moment irritated with the girl. He behaved by her tempestuous bedside like a man of science, calm, attentive, impenetrable. But it was afterwards, when he had been drawn aside by the Count for a confidential talk, that he had asked himself whether he were dreaming or awake. His scorn for the man helped him to preserve his self-command, and to the end the Count was not intelligent enough to perceive its character.

The doctor left the Palazzo about an hour after Cosmo (but not by the same staircase) and on his way to his inn gave rein to his indignation. Did the stupid brute imagine that he had any sort of claim on his services? Ah, he wanted that popinjay removed from Genoa! Indeed! And what the devil did he care for it? Was he expected to arrange a neat little assassination to please that solemn wooden imbecile? The doctor’s sense of self-importance was grievously hurt. Even in the morning after a good night’s rest he had not shaken off the impression. However, he was reasonable enough not to make Cosmo in any way responsible for what he defined to himself as the most incredibly offensive experience of his life. He only looked at him when he came to lunch with a sort of acid amusement as the being who had had the power to arouse a passion of love in the primitive soul of that curious little savage.