Napoleon's Exile (17 page)

Loyal Captain Montagnac rounded up his feeble detachment of guards. They were wearing clogs, held rusty old guns and had dented swords wedged in their belts. Most of them were yawning or rubbing their eyes - they had taken part in the celebrations that had been turning Avignon upside down ever since the newspapers from Paris had confirmed the Restoration.

The Emperor’s sleeping car and two accompanying carriages arrived at six o’clock in the morning, and waited behind those of Campbell and the administrators. By that time fresh horses had already been prepared. Farriers quickly harnessed them beneath the concerned but vigilant eye of Captain Montagnac. How would he contain the drunk and excited people who were now crowding around the travellers, very interested and much too close? They became furious at the sight of the imperial coat of arms, pushing back the guards who showed barely any resistance, looking for the tyrant to tear him limb from limb - and thought they had glimpsed him in the depths of the Austrian general’s barouche. One bystander put his hand on the door-handle, but Octave held him back by the shoulder, and was just raising his cane to knock him out, when Montagnac moved him aside.

‘You rascal! Stop that this minute!’

‘Calm yourself, Monsieur Sénécal,’ advised the Emperor through the open window.

‘Let the carriage set off!’ the Captain ordered his guards. ‘And you,’ he said to the coachman, ‘go at a gallop!’

‘Thank you, Captain,’ the Emperor said. ‘I will remember you.’

‘For God’s sake, go!’

As soon as the horses were harnessed, the procession of six carriages hurried forward, dust rising, volleys of stones flying in their wake. Mounting his horse, Octave noticed Count Bertrand, impassive and alone in Napoleon’s carriage. The window was broken. With his glove he was brushing splinters of glass from his sleeve.

*

Napoleon had examined the administrators’ map of the region, crossing out those towns that were too large, and from which only violence could be expected. But he had circled the name of Orgon: he planned to lunch in that village, which reminded him of an episode from his youth as a soldier. It wasn’t a girl, not that, but a punitive expedition against recalcitrant aristocrats. With the help of their peasants they were ruthlessly murdering the soldiers who came and went from the Italian army stationed on the outskirts of Nice. The situation had barely changed despite the passing years, as Napoleon learned when one of the messengers who had gone on ahead halted the convoy before they reached the town.

‘The villagers are waiting for us in the square, I didn’t dare get too close, but it looks as though some hotheads are stirring things up.’

‘Is there any other way to get to Aix?’ asked Bertrand, with his nose to the door.

‘Sadly no, your grace, you’d have to head back towards Avignon.’

‘Oh, no!’

The Emperor had climbed out of General Roller’s barouche, and was walking along the road to the first carriage.

‘In that case,’ said the messenger, ‘you’ll just have to head into the crowd as quickly as you can and hope for the best...’

‘What’s your name?’ asked the Emperor.

‘Antoine Loisellier, sire.’

‘Undress, Monsieur Loisellier.’

‘Sire?’

‘Do as I say, you wretched ass! I will take your place and you will take mine.’

‘Me?’

‘Well, yes, you idiot! Is your life worth more than mine?’

‘I didn’t say that, but...’

‘No buts!’

Loisellier, poor Loisellier, dismounted and obeyed. Napoleon dismounted too, and held his cocked hat out to Bertrand, followed by his grey frock-coat and his colonel’s uniform; he took off his riding boots and even removed his waistcoat and his white breeches. Then he dressed in the clothes he had asked for, ordering the messenger to get into the sleeping-carriage next to Count Bertrand.

First, however, Napoleon wanted to inspect his stand-in. ‘Let’s take a look at you,’ the Emperor said. ‘Yes ... That should do it, I hope, but my clothes are huge on you, and I can barely breathe in yours...’ With one final flourish, the Emperor donned the blue greatcoat and the round hat with the white cockade. He climbed on to the nag with the help of Bertrand and a coachman.

‘Sire,’ said the Count, ‘are you sure this is wise?’

The disguised Emperor spurred the beast on without replying, and launched into a gallop.

‘Monsieur Sénécal!’ cried Bertrand. ‘Go with His Majesty and don’t let him out of your sight!’ Octave immediately followed the Emperor, amid whip-cracks and the sound of the postilions’ bugles.

Two kilometres further on, the horsemen slowed to a trot. They saw the first buildings of Orgon, low and long, whitewashed and with pink roofs, surrounded by little dry stone walls beneath the parasols of a grove of pines. Some noisy activity in front of the post-house disturbed this peaceful vision: as soon as they spotted the procession, the villagers had congregated, brandishing their pitchforks and old rapiers, bludgeons and butchers’ knives. A mannequin made of cloth and straw and drenched in ox-blood dangled from a tree. It bore a piece of cardboard with the word
Bonaparte
scrawled upon it. Napoleon and Octave waited until most of the cortège had forced its way through, then filed in behind, the Emperor instinctively tugging on the reins to let Octave catch up with him: to crash into this crowd at a gallop would be to risk getting a pitchfork full in the chest.

‘What scum!’ Napoleon said to Octave in a trembling voice. ‘I can’t bear the mob, Monsieur Sénécal, I have never been able to bear the mob; the mob is idiotic and monstrous, it frightens me. You should never see it from too close up, unless you have cannon ...’

They were now advancing at the same pace as the berlins, which acted as a shield; the people of Orgon seemed to be devoting their entire attention to the carriages they thought contained Napoleon, whom they wanted to get their hands on. There he is! The raging crowd rushed towards the sleeping-carriage at the front of the procession. Some tall fellows grabbed the horses by the bit to immobilize them; the animals foamed and whinnied, shied, striking the dusty ground with their hoofs and shaking their harnesses, making the couplings jolt. The postilions lashed out with their whips to beat back the peasants who were assaulting them from all sides. Hurling curses and death-threats in a patois that needed no translation, so distorted were their sun-bronzed faces, they pounced on Bertrand’s sleeping-carriage, sticks raised. They threw large, sharp stones that dented the bodywork and broke the last remaining windows, while the Emperor and Octave trotted on ahead, because the savages of Orgon let the two supposed scouts - with their white cockades - continue on their way unmolested. Octave turned on his saddle: a group of shrieking harpies had dragged out the hapless Loisellier in his enormous uniform, mistaking him for the Emperor. They clutched him by the collar, screamed in his face, tore the medals from his clothes and threw his cocked hat in the air like a ball. Octave could see Colonel Campbell, waving and shouting sharply at the shrewish women, then he dug his spurs into the side of his mount to join the Emperor; the two rode along the road to Aix in the blazing sunshine.

*

The mistral rose. It blew sideways at the horsemen as they plunged into swirls of dust. Their noses deep in the wind-stirred manes of their horses, Octave and the Emperor passed pine forests, rock-piles, isolated farms in a stony desert without seeing any of them. They picked their way up and down steep mountain tracks, and a hundred times risked breaking their necks. The road narrowed. In single file, they trekked through the gorge that opens up in the Roc de Valbonette, they rode through Lambesc, and skirted meadows and groves of grey olive trees. They had to change horses in Saint-Canat, but they didn’t linger there, leaving on empty stomachs, riding hell for leather. No hills now, the road was flat and straight, hamlets came and went, then vines, clusters of almond-trees and chalk quarries. They were hungry and thirsty, and they were exhausted, finally allowing themselves a halt at about one o’clock in the afternoon, in an inn identified by a sign nailed to a post as La Calade.

With some difficulty, the Emperor managed to get his leg over the saddle. Octave jumped down from his horse and helped him dismount because he didn’t have his usual ladder.

‘Sire,’ said Octave, holding both bridles, ‘I’ll lead our horses to the stable, you go in and find a seat.’

‘You’re going to let me go into that den of cut-throats alone and unarmed?’

‘Sire ...’

‘Stop calling me that! Enough of this madness, Monsieur Sénécal! Call me Loiseau, like the real messenger!’

‘Loisellier.’

‘As you wish, but forget my rank! So you don’t want to lose me?’

‘No, monsieur.’

‘Not even
monsieur
, you idiot three times over! I’m wearing fancy dress, fine, but what if someone were to recognize me?

‘No chance, rigged out like that.’

‘You can be polite, all the same!’

The Emperor shook the dust from his greatcoat. His tight trousers refused to button up beneath his imposing belly, and he’d had to tie them with a piece of string - but such a ludicrous arrangement, so unworthy of a sovereign, deflected suspicion. Nonetheless, Napoleon continued to look distrustfully around him, and followed Octave to the stable, sticking to him like a leech.

They returned together to the courtyard, which was dominated by a gigantic poplar, and entered the inn. On a spit, some fat capons were turning, being basted with stock by a fat woman.

There were no other customers, and the landlady pointed to a table with her ladle.

‘Wait a bit over a carafe, you two. My birds ain’t cooked yet. You all right?’

‘Oh yes, madam,’ said Octave, offering a chair to the Emperor, who muttered between clenched teeth: ‘No stupid deference, Sénécal, you’ll get us noticed.’

Napoleon sat himself down, angry but anxious, with his elbows on the table and without taking off his round hat. The old woman drew a jug of wine from the barrel, and set it down abruptly on the table with two glasses.

‘Have you come from Aix?’ she asked.

‘No, madam,’ said Octave, pouring himself some red wine. We’ve been galloping through the wind from Avignon.’

‘If you’re coming from the north, did you see Bonaparte? He’s supposed to be passing this way.’

‘Haven’t seen him.’

The Emperor lowered his head over his glass, which he didn’t fill. The woman, returning to her task of basting the capons, picked up a long carving knife and sharpened it on a stone beside the stove on which some beans were boiling. She worked herself into a fury.

‘I tell you, that ogre isn’t going to make it to that bloody island of his! He’ll be thrown in the sea on the way! If he doesn’t get killed first, he’ll be back before three months are up, you’ll see, and he’ll start bleeding us dry all over again!’

She turned towards the table and pointed her knife towards Napoleon.

‘Touch the tip of that, mate.’

The Emperor was obliged to run his finger along the blade.

‘If someone wants to slit the pig’s throat, there’s the tool to do it with!’

‘What has Bonaparte done to you?’ asked Octave, who could see the Emperor changing colour.

‘He killed my son, the monster! And my nephew, and so many young people! There’s no one left in these parts but old people and widows.’

Frozen, the Emperor hid his face in his hands.

‘Your friend looks exhausted,’ the hostess remarked to Octave.

‘Small wonder! We’ve been riding since dawn.’

‘S’pose,’ she agreed, waddling towards the fireplace to see how the cooking was getting on, ‘and fat blokes tire quicker ...’

*

The mistral had started gusting again, tilting the poplar in the courtyard, rattling the windows, and blowing gravel, sand and leaves into the inn. Just then the door opened with a clatter to a group of warmly wrapped-up men, their hair and wigs sticking out in all directions. The tallest of them removed his grey cape - it was Campbell - then asked for a rag to wipe his polished boots because he couldn’t bear to look untidy. The landlady, a little alarmed at first by this sudden entrance, was impressed by Campbell’s red uniform, and her initial fear subsided when the Englishman spoke to her in a very respectful, almost flirtatious tone, with that hint of an accent that had, in its day, seduced French baronesses and prostitutes alike; she duly brought him a rag. He thanked her and asked, ‘Do you have anything for us to eat?’

‘I’ll set on enough chickens for you all, Milord,’ said the woman, wiping her hands on her apron.

The other commissioners and Count Bertrand took off their coats and laid them across a table while the valets, the pharmacist and the coachmen who arrived in their turn seated themselves at different tables. Octave had risen to his feet. His eyes met those of Count Bertrand, who had been the first to notice the prostrate Emperor and who now came to sit opposite him. Napoleon took his hands away from his face. It was drenched with tears. He sniffed and closed his eyes. The landlady reappeared from the farmyard and her husband followed her, bent, perhaps even hunchbacked, and wearing wooden clogs. He held some chickens by their feet, cackling and complaining.

In the inn, no one spoke; they had all seen the Emperor, and they joined in his silence to the surprise of the landlord and landlady, who were accustomed to more unruly gatherings. The husband threw the chickens into a cage where they fought and pecked one another, while he dragged them out one by one, wrung their necks and handed them to his wife. Sitting on a stool, she plucked the birds over a large sack. The two cooks from the Imperial retinue went to work, setting full carafes and slices of ham down on the tables. Bertrand had just served the Emperor when the latter knocked his glass over with the back of his hand.

‘Bertrand ...’

‘Sire?’

‘Fetch me my Chambertin from your carriage. They’re going to poison me here, I’m sure of it.’

‘Monsieur Hubert,’ cried Bertrand in ringing tones, ‘bring His Majesty’s Chambertin!’

The innkeepers stood and gaped, having just worked out that the fat fellow with the white cockade was the monster whose death they so devoutly wished for. The woman had said too much a moment before, and now she hesitated between fear and disgust. She looked Napoleon up and down as she gutted the chickens, pulling out heart, liver and gizzard with a single crisp gesture, her fingers red with blood - and she saw the hated figure, gnawing on an end of bread, give a start when her husband dropped a dead chicken on to the block and chopped its head off with a dull thud. The rest of the room drank in silence, waited patiently and ate ham and bread; the old woman turned the spits and stared at the fallen sovereign; the chickens cooked and time passed.