Uncle Bernac Part 16

I thought of the helpless, gentle, pompous Louis whom my father had once taken me to visit, and I understood that France, after her convulsions and her sufferings, did indeed require another and a stronger head.

'Do you not think so, Monsieur de Laval?' asked the Emperor. He had halted for a moment by the fire, and was grinding his dainty gold-buckled shoe into one of the burning logs.

'You have come to a very wise decision,' said he when I had answered his question. 'But you have always been of this way of thinking, have you not? Is it not true that you once defended me when some young Englishman was drinking toasts to my downfall at an inn in this village in which you lived?'

I remembered the incident, although I could not imagine how it had reached his ears.

'Why should you have done this?'

'I did it on impulse, Sire.'

'On impulse!' he cried, in a tone of contempt. 'I do not know what people mean when they say that they do things upon impulse.

In Charenton things are doubtless done upon impulse, but not amongst sane people. Why should you risk your life over there in defending me when at the time you had nothing to hope for from me?'

'It was because I felt that you stood for France, Sire.'

During this conversation he had still walked up and down the room, twisting his right arm about, and occasionally looking at one or other of us with his eyegla.s.s, for his sight was so weak that he always needed a single gla.s.s indoors and binoculars outside. Sometimes he stopped and helped himself to great pinches of snuff from a tortoise-sh.e.l.l box, but I observed that none of it ever reached his nose, for he dropped it all from between his fingers on to his waistcoat and the floor. My answer seemed to please him, for he suddenly seized my ear and pulled it with considerable violence.

'You are quite right, my friend,' said he. 'I stand for France just as Frederic the Second stood for Prussia. I will make her the great Power of the world, so that every monarch in Europe will find it necessary to keep a palace in Paris, and they will all come to hold the train at the coronation of my descendants--' a spasm of pain pa.s.sed suddenly over his face. 'My G.o.d! for whom am I building? Who will be my descendants?'

I heard him mutter, and he pa.s.sed his hand over his forehead.

'Do they seem frightened in England about my approaching invasion?' he asked suddenly. 'Have you heard them express fears lest I get across the Channel?'

I was forced in truth to say that the only fears which I had ever heard expressed were lest he should not get across.

'The soldiers are very jealous that the sailors should always have the honour,' said I.

'But they have a very small army.'

'Nearly every man is a volunteer, Sire.'

'Pooh, conscripts!' he cried, and made a motion with his hands as if to sweep them from before him. I will land with a hundred thousand men in Kent or in Suss.e.x. I will fight a great battle which I will win with a loss of ten thousand men. On the third day I shall be in London.

I will seize the statesmen, the bankers, the merchants, the newspaper men. I will impose an indemnity of a hundred millions of their pounds.

I will favour the poor at the expense of the rich, and so I shall have a party. I will detach Scotland and Ireland by giving them const.i.tutions which will put them in a superior condition to England. Thus I will sow dissensions everywhere. Then as a price for leaving the island I will claim their fleet and their colonies. In this way I shall secure the command of the world to France for at least a century to come.'

In this short sketch I could perceive the quality which I have since heard remarked in Napoleon, that his mind could both conceive a large scheme, and at the same time evolve those practical details which would seem to bring it within the bounds of possibility. One instant it would be a wild dream of overrunning the East. The next it was a schedule of the s.h.i.+ps, the ports, the stores, the troops, which would be needed to turn dream into fact. He gripped the heart of a question with the same decision which made him strike straight for an enemy's capital.

The soul of a poet, and the mind of a man of business of the first order, that is the combination which may make a man dangerous to the world.

I think that it may have been his purpose--for he never did anything without a purpose--to give me an object-lesson of his own capacity for governing, with the idea, perhaps, that I might in turn influence others of the Emigres by what I told them. At any rate he left me there to stand and to watch the curious succession of points upon which he had to give an opinion during a few hours. Nothing seemed to be either too large or too small for that extraordinary mind. At one instant it was the arrangements for the winter cantonments of two hundred thousand men, at the next he was discussing with de Caulaincourt the curtailing of the expenses of the household, and the possibility of suppressing some of the carriages.

'It is my desire to be economical at home so as to make a good show abroad,' said he. 'For myself, when I had the honour to be a sub-lieutenant I found that I could live very well upon 1,200 francs a year, and it would be no hards.h.i.+p to me to go back to it. This extravagance of the palace must be stopped. For example, I see upon your accounts that 155 cups of coffee are drunk a day, which with sugar at 4 francs and coffee at 5 francs a pound come to 20 sous a cup.

It would be better to make an allowance for coffee. The stable bills are also too high. At the present price of fodder seven or eight francs a week should be enough for each horse in a stable of two hundred.

I will not have any waste at the Tuileries.'

Thus within a few minutes he would pa.s.s from a question of milliards to a question of sous, and from the management of a empire to that of a stable. From time to time I could observe that he threw a little oblique glance at me as if to ask what I thought of it all, and at the time I wondered very much why my approval should be of any consequence to him. But now, when I look back and see that my following his fortunes brought over so many others of the young n.o.bility, I understand that he saw very much further than I did.

'Well, Monsieur de Laval,' said he suddenly, 'you have seen something of my methods. Are you prepared to enter my service?'

'a.s.suredly, Sire,' I answered.

'I can be a very hard master when I like,' said he smiling. 'You were there when I spoke to Admiral Bruix. We have all our duty to do, and discipline is as necessary in the highest as in the lowest ranks.

But anger with me never rises above here,' and he drew his hand across his throat. 'I never permit it to cloud my brain. Dr. Corvisart here would tell you that I have the slowest pulse of all his patients.'

'And that you are the fastest eater, Sire,' said a large-faced, benevolent-looking person who had been whispering to Marshal Berthier.

'Ohe, you rascal, you rake that up against me, do you? The Doctor will not forgive me because I tell him when I am unwell that I had rather die of the disease than of the remedies. If I eat too fast it is the fault of the State, which does not allow me more than a few minutes for my meals. Which reminds me that it must be rather after my dinner hour, Constant?'

'It is four hours after it, Sire.'

'Serve it up then at once.'

'Yes, Sire. Monsieur Isabey is outside, Sire, with his dolls.'

'Ah, we shall see them at once. Show him in.'

A man entered who had evidently just arrived from a long journey. Under his arm he carried a large flat wickerwork basket.

'It is two days since I sent for you, Monsieur Isabey.'

'The courier arrived yesterday, Sire. I have been travelling from Paris ever since.'

'Have you the models there?'

'Yes, Sire.'

'Then you may lay them out on that table.'

I could not at first imagine what it meant when I saw, upon Isabey opening his basket, that it was crammed with little puppets about a foot high, all of them dressed in the most gorgeous silk and velvet costumes, with tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs of ermine and hangings of gold lace. But presently, as the designer took them out one by one and placed them on the table, I understood that the Emperor, with his extraordinary pa.s.sion for detail and for directly controlling everything in his Court, had had these dolls dressed in order to judge the effect of the gorgeous costumes which had been ordered for his grand functionaries upon State occasions.

'What is this?' he asked, holding up a little lady in hunting costume of amaranth and gold with a toque and plume of white feathers.

'That is for the Empress's hunt, Sire.'

'You should have the waist rather lower,' said Napoleon, who had very definite opinions about ladies' dresses. 'These cursed fas.h.i.+ons seem to be the only thing in my dominions which I cannot regulate. My tailor, d.u.c.h.esne, takes three inches from my coat-tails, and all the armies and fleets of France cannot prevent him. Who is this?'

He had picked up a very gorgeous figure in a green coat.

'That is the grand master of the hunt, Sire.'

'Then it is you, Berthier. How do you like your new costume? And this in red?'

'That is the Arch-Chancellor.'

'And the violet?'

'That is the Grand Chamberlain.'

The Emperor was as much amused as a child with a new toy. He formed little groups of the figures upon the table, so that he might have an idea of how the dignitaries would look when they chatted together.

Then he threw them all back into the basket.