Napoleon Symphony: A Novel in Four Movements (41 page)

After the baggage train, bloated, gouty, reclaiming his own again rode His Gallic Majesty Louis XVIII (would have preferred Louis Philippe, Duc d’Orléans, really, said Fouché, trusted Head of Police sliding into Talleyrand slot, but there was just no time to bargain), King of the French, restorer to France of whatever had to be restored. Horns and trumpets in hollow hunting harmonies, drums drums drums. All over.

IV

“N
ot all over,” he cried to the squawking seas. “Not in the least all over. I will not have these mad desperate rages.”
Bastille
tuiler massac siviss guaaaaaaar sept massac
. “You, Bertrand, must, I say it with appropriate er er, control your lady wife. I will not have her attempting to leap overboard.”
Nat conven proclam
1st rpblc exec louis 16 reign terror marie antoin 9 thermidooooooor
.

“Marchand, Sire, said something of your intention to—”

“Kill myself, eh? Never take the word of a valet, Bertrand.”
Robes fall pierre end of reign of 13 vendem coup estab directoooooory
. “I merely said that a man should always conduct himself as if every day was his last.”

But he’d tried it. Rather than abdicate.’ The poison didn’t work, though. Got stale or something.

“Gives savor to life. Come, who knows what the future may hold? I am removed from the European scene as a personage but now may enter the world scene as a
principle
. Read the Acts of the Apostles. Not, Bertrand, you understand, that I would commit the blasphemy of—”

“I did not think for one moment, Sire, that you would think—”

But all Judases, the whole lot. Even that Mameluke, pockets bulging with gold and silver.

“Nevertheless, the parallel is intriguing.”
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. “I showed them a resurrection was possible. And now it is the word that counts, Bertrand, the scripture. Besides, I may be called upon. Even England. Their Whigs want me. The people want me, you saw that on the
Bellerophon
, on the quay at Portsmouth or Plymouth or wherever it was.”
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5
cons
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. “And even if I am not called upon, no prison is completely impregnable. As Elba showed. We may spend productive days planning, Bertrand.”
Emperor emperor EMPEROOOOOOOOOR
. “It is by no means all over.”

But this is going to be no Elba. A thousand leagues from nowhere. No prison walls like the sea. The British-held sea.

“Named after a great woman, Bertrand.”
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. “A lady of Britain, not at that time perfidious, mother moreover of a great emperor.”
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t
. “According to the legend, it was she who found the true cross.”

“It is not, all things considered,” the Grand Marshal Bertrand said, “the most hopeful of associations.”

True cross all right. No doubt of that.

“Come, Bertrand, consider instead that what was an engine of shameful execution to the pagan Romans became a symbol of glory. Again I do not wish to seem blasph—”
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penins war Spain portug congr erfurt
.

“Of course not.”

“But you may say that the four extremities represent those victorious allies that are hammering in the nails.”
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. “It is rather intriguing, poetic. But they dare not affix a mocking inscription. INTERFECIMUS NAPOLEONEM REGEM IMPERATOREM. The thought of my martyrdom frightens them.”
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. “I lost one crown.” He chuckled. “Now I have gained another.”
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. He chuckled. “I am, as I say, not being bl—”

“Of course not of course not.”

“The point I would make is that this too can be a conqueror’s crown, Bertrand.”
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fntnbleau exile to
.

“I quite see that.”

Death death death of of. Escape Elba over water 100 days water 100 leau loo. And now.

And now he looked gloomily at that island bouncing on the southern ocean. Volcanic granite, a real rock for Prometheus. And this was, so that Irish doctor had said, a bad climate for livers.

“I know what you’re thinking, Bertrand. Nothing seems to be growing here. Very rocky. Not even a thorn-bush, eh?” In good enough spirits, it seemed, robust despite everything, three months of sea air perhaps helped, he nudged Bertrand, so that Bertrand nearly fell on the deck. “We will make things grow here. We will get the island on our side, make it a tool, a weapon. Look what I did with Elba.”

“You did much. Much.”

Made the soil green with intensive cultivation, cleaned up the shit, bottled the mineral water, built the theater there, made the idle bastards work.

“This may yet be the center of the free world.”

Bertrand looked doubtful. The island, now very close, its unpromising features clear in the sun pompous and bold as British brass, seemed an almost dementedly well-chosen negation of freedom. That British flag flapping there over gloomy cannon was three crosses, not one, one for each nail. T. N looked momentarily doubtful too. But then he began to sing. Tilsit tin-rit. It was as if, after long years of exile, he were at last coming home. Titsil. He sang a song popular during the time of the Directory, all about the charms of someone’s
tétons
. Poor bugger, not one woman willing to stay with him. Well, Rousseau had sanctified masturbation along with the social contract. Residuary reward of the imperial office. But she might have, she, had she not died untimely. Not more than six weeks after his first going into exile. She would have made it an outpost of French civilization, despite Sir this and Milord the other. They would have flocked from everywhere to see the roses.

I. N. R. I.

IMPERA

NAP

REGEM

INTERFEC

I. N. R. I.

TOREM

OLE

ONEM

IAMUS

SINCE SIXT WEEK I LEAVE THE ENGLISH AND Y DO NOT ANY PROGRESS. SO

I. N. R. R. I.

SIXT WEEK DO FOURTY AND TWO DAY. IF MIGHT HAVE LERN FIVTY WORD, FOR DAY, I COULD KNOW IT TWO THOUSANDS AND HUNDRED. SO

I. N. R. R. I.

If he would know what R.R. signifies,

(Not that the rustic to raw rock applies),

Regem Rusticatum
might well do

It rustles, rustic, rings with birdsong too.

Irrelevant that connotative rust:

Nonferrous growls the grim volcanic dust,

Rich, though, the learned gardener assumes,

In potence, in
potentia,
of blooms.

A four-edged bed of agony? Inept!

A four-edged bed for Flora? Ah, accept!

In gardens the four warring elements

Nature and man to peaceable intents

Rein in, reign over, and to work inspire

Inaqueate air embracing terrene fire.

Ah we

Irishmen better than

Napoleoniform

Rusticant Corsican

Imperatores are

Inly equipped to be

Narrative poets of

Raw wounding exile:

Impressive, ah yes.

So let

Irish MacDonald and

Noble Kilmaine and the

Rest of the Celtic

Imperial Marshalate

Indicate now with a

Nod how we sympathize.

Rex Imperator,

In peace requiesce.

I
t was a cool and pleasant garden that he sat in, listening to the song of the birds, strange birds mostly, birds not known in Europe, and now and again looking sadly down at the sea far below. It was the garden of Mr. Bascombe, the East India Company agent of the island, and here, he sometimes fancied, he must find his only small paradise after the dirty inferno of Jamestown and before the eternal emptiness and loneliness of Longwood, still to come. The garden had, when he had first been introduced to it, been made especially pretty by the presence of two little English flowers, Betsy and Jane Bascombe, who had started with terror and then with a kind of joy at the unexpected sight of one whom they had only known previously as an ogre of the cartoons in the English journals. Here he was, strolling and even smiling, in a green uniform and a cocked hat, with one hand placed, just as in the drawings in the journals, inside his coat. The two pretty little romps were delighted to turn him into an uncle, our Uncle Napoleon yet still, and how delightfully, an
ogre
. For it is in the nature of children to be unafraid of evil and even, in their innocence, to wish well to those who practice or have practiced it. Little Jane had once, in church in Jamestown, prayed that Satan be made good and happy. So there he was, and his favorite was Betsy, who knew some French. As for his learning English, he swore that it was an impossible language. “A barren land,” he had once put it, “full of thorn-bushes, and with birds with strange cries flying over it.” And so it was that, this fine afternoon, he sat with Betsy, the two of them talking French together, she naturally not so well as he but, naturally too, improving all the time.

“I was,” he told her, “a military cadet at Brienne. Do you know what that is? Do you know where Brienne is to be found?”

“It is no matter,” said she with impatience. “Tell me the story, uncle.”

“Each of us cadets,” he continued, “was allotted a little square piece of land. In Corsica I had known much about farming and about the skill of growing things. The other boys at the military school cared little and knew little, so they willingly allowed me to annex their little plots of land to my own. I placed a wooden fence all about, and then I planted bushes. Bushes—do you know that word?” It was, of course, the French word he was referring to.

“Like little trees,” said Betsy.

“Very good,” he smiled. “I planted bushes and also vegetables and flowers. It was my own garden and none other’s, and I would sit there peacefully dreaming of home or reading Tasso.”

“What,” asked Betsy, “is Tasso?”

“You ask such a question?” he exclaimed. “Ah, but of course you are English, and you English know nothing of the great Tasso. Know then that Torquato Tasso was a great Italian poet who wrote a very fine tale in verse, and the name of it is
Gerusalemme Liberata
. Many people said that Tasso was mad, but of course he was sane as you or I, if not saner. After all,” he smiled sadly, “he did not have to spend his time on St. Helena.”

“You read this poem in Italian?” exclaimed Betsy. “You must have been very clever.”

“Ah, child, you forget,” said he, “that my first language was Italian. I had to learn French just as you are learning it. Very well, then. In Corsica the soldiers and even the bandits sing verses from
Gerusalemme Liberata
. It is about the Christians fighting the pagans, and there is a magician who is the king of Damascus. He has a niece named Armida who lures—you know the word?—Christian knights into her magic garden.”

“Tell me the story,” says Betsy, as a child will.