When Roland returned to the Luxembourg, the clock of the palace marked
one hour and a quarter after mid-day.
The First Consul was working with Bourrienne.
If we were merely writing a novel, we should hasten to its close, and in
order to get there more expeditiously we should neglect certain details,
which, we are told, historical figures can do without. That is not our
opinion. From the day we first put pen to paper--now some thirty years
ago--whether our thought were concentrated on a drama, or whether it
spread itself into a novel, we have had a double end--to instruct and to
amuse.
And we say instruct first, for amusement has never been to our mind
anything but a mask for instruction. Have we succeeded? We think so.
Before long we shall have covered with our narratives an enormous
period of time; between the “Comtesse de Salisbury” and the “Comte de
Monte-Cristo” five centuries and a half are comprised. Well, we assert
that we have taught France as much history about those five centuries
and a half as any historian.
More than that; although our opinions are well known; although, under
the Bourbons of the elder branch as under the Bourbons of the younger
branch, under the Republic as under the present government, we have
always proclaimed them loudly, we do not believe that that opinion has
been unduly manifested in our books and dramas.
We admire the Marquis de Posa in Schiller’s “Don Carlos”; but, in his
stead, we should not have anticipated the spirit of that age to the
point of placing a philosopher of the eighteenth century among the
heroes of the sixteenth, an encyclopedist at the court of Philippe II.
Therefore, just as we have been--in literary parlance--monarchical
under the Monarchy, republican under the Republic, we are to-day
reconstructionists under the Consulate.
That does not prevent our thought from hovering above men, above their
epoch, and giving to each the share of good and evil they do. Now that
share no one, except God, has the right to award from his individual
point of view. The kings of Egypt who, at the moment they passed into
the unknown, were judged upon the threshold of their tombs, were not
judged by a man, but by a people. That is why it is said: “The judgment
of a people is the judgment of God.”
Historian, novelist, poet, dramatic author, we are nothing more than the
foreman of a jury who impartially sums up the arguments and leaves the
jury to give their verdict. The book is the summing up; the readers are
the jury.
That is why, having to paint one of the most gigantic figures, not only
of modern times but of all times; having to paint the period of his
transition, that is to say the moment when Bonaparte transformed himself
into Napoleon, the general into an emperor--that is why we say, in
the fear of becoming unjust, we abandon interpretations and substitute
facts.
We are not of those who say with Voltaire that, “no one is a hero to his
valet.”
It may be that the valet is near-sighted or envious--two infirmities
that resemble each other more closely than people think. We maintain
that a hero may become a kind man, but a hero, for being kind, is none
the less a hero.
What is a hero in the eyes of the public? A man whose genius is
momentarily greater than his heart. What is a hero in private life? A
man whose heart is momentarily greater than his genius.
Historians, judge the genius!
People, judge the heart!
Who judged Charlemagne? The historians. Who judged Henri IV.? The
people. Which, in your opinion, was the most righteously judged?
Well, in order to render just judgment, and compel the court of
appeals, which is none other than posterity, to confirm contemporaneous
judgments, it is essential not to light up one side only of the figure
we depict, but to walk around it, and wherever the sunlight does not
reach, to hold a torch, or even a candle.
Now, let us return to Bonaparte.
He was working, as we said, with Bourrienne. Let us inquire into the
usual division of the First Consul’s time.
He rose at seven or eight in the morning, and immediately called one of
his secretaries, preferably Bourrienne, and worked with him until ten.
At ten, breakfast was announced; Josephine, Hortense and Eugène
either waited or sat down to table with the family, that is with the
aides-de-camp on duty and Bourrienne. After breakfast he talked with
the usual party, or the invited guests, if there were any; one hour was
devoted to this intercourse, which was generally shared by the
First Consul’s two brothers, Lucien and Joseph, Regnault de
Saint-Jean-d’Angely, Boulay (de la Meurthe), Monge, Berthollet,
Laplace and Arnault. Toward noon Cambacérès arrived. As a general thing
Bonaparte devoted half an hour to his chancellor; then suddenly, without
warning, he would rise and say: “Au revoir, Josephine! au revoir,
Hortense! Come, Bourrienne, let us go to work.”
This speech, which recurred almost regularly in the same words, was no
sooner uttered than Bonaparte left the salon and returned to his study.
There, no system of work was adopted; it might be some urgent matter or
merely a caprice. Either Bonaparte dictated or Bourrienne read, after
which the First Consul went to the council.
In the earlier months of the Consulate, he was obliged to cross the
courtyard of the little Luxembourg to reach the council-chamber, which,
if the weather were rainy, put him in bad humor; but toward the end
of December he had the courtyard covered; and from that time he almost
always returned to his study singing. Bonaparte sang almost as false as
Louis XV.
As soon as he was back he examined the work he had ordered done, signed
his letters, and stretched himself out in his armchair, the arms of
which he stabbed with his penknife as he talked. If he was not inclined
to talk, he reread the letters of the day before, or the pamphlets of
the day, laughing at intervals with the hearty laugh of a great child.
Then suddenly, as one awakening from a dream, he would spring to his
feet and cry out: “Write, Bourrienne!”
Then he would sketch out the plan for some building to be erected, or
dictate some one of those vast projects which have amazed--let us say
rather, terrified the world.
At five o’clock he dined; after dinner the First Consul ascended to
Josephine’s apartments, where he usually received the visits of the
ministers, and particularly that of the minister of foreign affairs, M.
de Talleyrand. At midnight, sometimes earlier, but never later, he gave
the signal for retiring by saying, brusquely: “Let us go to bed.”
The next day, at seven in the morning, the same life began over again,
varied only by unforeseen incidents.
After these details of the personal habits of the great genius we are
trying to depict under his first aspect, his personal portrait ought, we
think, to come.
Bonaparte, First Consul, has left fewer indications of his personal
appearance than Napoleon, Emperor. Now, as nothing less resembles the
Emperor of 1812 than the First Consul of 1800; let us endeavor, if
possible, to sketch with a pen those features which the brush has never
fully portrayed, that countenance which neither bronze nor marble has
been able to render. Most of the painters and sculptors who flourished
during this illustrious period of art--Gros, David, Prud’hon, Girodet
and Bosio--have endeavored to transmit to posterity the features of
the Man of Destiny, at the different epochs when the vast providential
vistas which beckoned him first revealed themselves. Thus, we have
portraits of Bonaparte, commander-in-chief, Bonaparte, First Consul, and
Napoleon, Emperor; and although some painters and sculptors have caught
more or less successfully the type of his face, it may be said that
there does not exist, either of the general, the First Consul, or the
emperor, a single portrait or bust which perfectly resembles him.
It was not within the power of even genius to triumph over an
impossibility. During the first part of Bonaparte’s life it was possible
to paint or chisel Bonaparte’s protuberant skull, his brow furrowed
by the sublime line of thought, his pale elongated face, his granite
complexion, and the meditative character of his countenance. During
the second part of his life it was possible to paint or to chisel his
broadened forehead, his admirably defined eyebrows, his straight nose,
his close-pressed lips, his chin modelled with rare perfection, his
whole face, in short, like a coin of Augustus. But that which neither
his bust nor his portrait could render, which was utterly beyond the
domain of imitation, was the mobility of his look; that look which is to
man what the lightning is to God, namely, the proof of his divinity.
In Bonaparte, that look obeyed his will with the rapidity of lightning;
in one and the same minute it dared from beneath his eyelids, now keen
and piercing as the blade of a dagger violently unsheathed, now soft as
a sun ray or a kiss, now stern as a challenge, or terrible as a threat.
Bonaparte had a look for every thought that stirred his soul. In
Napoleon, this look, except in the momentous circumstances of his life,
ceased to be mobile and became fixed, but even so it was none the less
impossible to render; it was a drill sounding the heart of whosoever he
looked upon, the deepest, the most secret thought of which he meant to
sound. Marble or painting might render the fixedness of that look, but
neither the one nor the other could portray its life--that is to say,
its penetrating and magnetic action. Troubled hearts have veiled eyes.
Bonaparte, even in the days of his leanness, had beautiful hands, and
he displayed them with a certain coquetry. As he grew stouter his hands
became superb; he took the utmost care of them, and looked at them when
talking, with much complacency. He felt the same satisfaction in his
teeth, which were handsome, though not with the splendor of his hands.
When he walked, either alone or with some one, whether in a room or in
a garden, he always bent a little forward, as though his head were heavy
to carry, and crossed his hands behind his back. He frequently made an
involuntary movement with the right shoulder, as if a nervous shudder
had passed through it, and at the same time his mouth made a curious
movement from right to left, which seemed to result from the other.
These movements, however, had nothing convulsive about them, whatever
may have been said notwithstanding; they were a simple trick indicative
of great preoccupation, a sort of congestion of the mind. It was chiefly
manifested when the general, the First Consul, or the Emperor, was
maturing vast plans. It was after such promenades, accompanied by this
twofold movement of the shoulders and lips, that he dictated his most
important notes. On a campaign, with the army, on horseback, he was
indefatigable; he was almost as much so in ordinary life, and would
often walk five or six hours in succession without perceiving it.
When he walked thus with some one with whom he was familiar, he commonly
passed his arm through that or his companion and leaned upon him.
Slender and thin as he was at the period when we place him before our
readers’ eyes, he was much concerned by the fear of future corpulence;
it was to Bourrienne that he usually confided this singular dread.
“You see, Bourrienne, how slim and abstemious I am. Well, nothing can
rid me of the idea that when I am forty I shall be a great eater and
very fat. I foresee that my constitution will undergo a change. I take
exercise enough, but what will you!--it’s a presentiment; and it won’t
fail to happen.”
We all know to what obesity he attained when a prisoner at Saint Helena.
He had a positive passion for baths, which no doubt contributed not a
little to make him fat; this passion became an irresistible need. He
took one every other day, and stayed in it two hours, during which time
the journals and pamphlets of the day were read to him. As the
water cooled he would turn the hot-water faucet until he raised the
temperature of his bathroom to such a degree that the reader could
neither bear it any longer, nor see to read. Not until then would he
permit the door to be opened.
It has been said that he was subject to epileptic attacks after his
first campaign in Italy. Bourrienne was with him eleven years, and never
saw him suffer from an attack of this malady.
Bonaparte, though indefatigable when necessity demanded it, required
much sleep, especially during the period of which we are now writing.
Bonaparte, general or First Consul, kept others awake, but he slept, and
slept well. He retired at midnight, sometimes earlier, as we have said,
and when at seven in the morning they entered his room to awaken him
he was always asleep. Usually at the first call he would rise; but
occasionally, still half asleep, he would mutter: “Bourrienne, I beg of
you, let me sleep a little longer.”
Then, if there was nothing urgent, Bourrienne would return at eight
o’clock; if it was otherwise, he insisted, and then, with much
grumbling, Bonaparte would get up. He slept seven, sometimes eight,
hours out of the twenty-four, taking a short nap in the afternoon. He
also gave particular instruction for the night.
“At night,” he would say, “come in my room as seldom as possible. Never
wake me if you have good news to announce--good news can wait; but if
there is bad news, wake me instantly, for then there is not a moment to
be lost in facing it.”
As soon as Bonaparte had risen and made his morning ablutions, which
were very thorough, his valet entered and brushed his hair and shaved
him; while he was being shaved, a secretary or an aide-de-camp read the
newspapers aloud, always beginning with the “Moniteur.” He gave no real
attention to any but the English and German papers.
“Skip that,” he would say when they read him the French papers; “_I know
what they say, because they only say what I choose._”
His toilet completed, Bonaparte went down to his study. We have seen
above what he did there. At ten o’clock the breakfast as announced,
usually by the steward, in these words: “The general is served.” No
title, it will be observed, not even that of First Consul.
The repast was a frugal one. Every morning a dish was served which
Bonaparte particularly liked--a chicken fried in oil with garlic;
the same dish that is now called on the bills of fare at restaurants
“Chicken à la Marengo.”
Bonaparte drank little, and then only Bordeaux or Burgundy, preferably
the latter. After breakfast, as after dinner, he drank a cup of black
coffee; never between meals. When he chanced to work until late at
night they brought him, not coffee, but chocolate, and the secretary who
worked with him had a cup of the same. Most historians, narrators, and
biographers, after saying that Bonaparte drank a great deal of coffee,
add that he took snuff to excess.
They are doubly mistaken. From the time he was twenty-four, Bonaparte
had contracted the habit of taking snuff: but only enough to keep his
brain awake. He took it habitually, not, as biographers have declared,
from the pocket of his waistcoat, but from a snuff-box which he changed
almost every day for a new one--having in this matter of collecting
snuff-boxes a certain resemblance to the great Frederick. If he ever did
take snuff from his waistcoat pocket, it was on his battle days, when it
would have been difficult, while riding at a gallop under fire, to hold
both reins and snuff-box. For those days he had special waistcoats, with
the right-hand pocket lined with perfumed leather; and, as the sloping
cut of his coat enabled him to insert his thumb and forefinger into this
pocket without unbuttoning his coat, he could, under any circumstances
and at any gait, take snuff when he pleased.
As general or First Consul, he never wore gloves, contenting himself
with holding and crumpling them in his left hand. As Emperor, there was
some advance in this propriety; he wore one glove, and as he changed his
gloves, not once, but two or three times a day, his valet adopted the
habit of giving him alternate gloves; thus making one pair serve as two.
Bonaparte had two great passions which Napoleon inherited--for war and
architectural monuments to his fame.
Gay, almost jolly in camp, he was dreamy and sombre in repose. To escape
this gloom he had recourse to the electricity of art, and saw visions
of those gigantic monumental works of which he undertook many, and
completed some. He realized that such works are part of the life of
peoples; they are history written in capitals, landmarks of the ages,
left standing long after generations are swept away. He knew that Rome
lives in her ruins, that Greece speaks by her statues, that Egypt,
splendid and mysterious spectre, appeared through her monuments on the
threshold of civilized existence.
What he loved above everything, what he hugged in preference to all
else, was renown, heroic uproar; hence his need of war, his thirst for
glory. He often said:
“A great reputation is a great noise; the louder it is, the further it
is heard. Laws, institutions, monuments, nations, all fall; but sound
remains and resounds through other generations. Babylon and Alexandria
are fallen; Semiramis and Alexander stand erect, greater perhaps through
the echo of their renown, waxing and multiplying through the ages, than
they were in their lifetimes.” Then he added, connecting these ideas
with himself: “My power depends on my fame and on the battles I win.
Conquest has made me what I am, and conquest alone can sustain me. A new
born government must dazzle, must amaze. The moment it no longer flames,
it dies out; once it ceases to grow, it falls.”
He was long a Corsican, impatient under the conquest of his country;
but after the 13th Vendemiaire he became a true Frenchman, and ended by
loving France with true passion. His dream was to see her great, happy,
powerful, at the head of the nations in glory and in art. It is true
that, in making France great, he became great with her, and attached
his name indissolubly to her grandeur. To him, living eternally in this
thought, actuality disappeared in the future; wherever the hurricane
of war may have swept him, France, above all things else, above all
nations, filled his thoughts. “What will my Athenians think?” said
Alexander, after Issus and Arbela. “I hope the French will be content
with me,” said Bonaparte, after Rivoli and the Pyramids.
Before battle, this modern Alexander gave little thought to what he
should do in case of victory, but much in case of defeat. He, more than
any man, was convinced that trifles often decide the greatest events; he
was therefore more concerned in foreseeing such events than in producing
them. He watched them come to birth, and ripen; then, when the right
time came, he appeared, laid his hand on them, mastered and guided them,
as an able rider roasters and guides a spirited horse.
His rapid rise in the midst of revolutions and political changes he had
brought about, or seen accomplished, the events which he had controlled,
had given him a certain contempt for men; moreover, he was not inclined
by nature to think well of them. His lips were often heard to utter the
grievous maxim--all the more grievous because he personally knew
its truth--“There are two levers by which men are moved, fear and
self-interest.”
With such opinions Bonaparte did not, in fact, believe in friendship.
“How often,” said Bourrienne, “has he said to me, ‘Friendship is only a
word; I love no one, not even my brothers--Joseph a little possibly; but
if I love him it is only from habit, and because he is my elder. Duroc,
yes, I love him; but why? Because his character pleases me; because he
is stern, cold, resolute; besides, Duroc never sheds a tear. But why
should I love any one? Do you think I have any true friends? As long as
I am what I am, I shall have friends--apparently at least; but when my
luck ceases, you’ll see! Trees don’t have leaves in winter. I tell you,
Bourrienne, we must leave whimpering to the women, it’s their business;
as for me, no feelings. I need a vigorous hand and a stout heart; if
not, better let war and government alone.’”
In his familiar intercourse, Bonaparte was what schoolboys call a tease;
but his teasings were never spiteful, and seldom unkind. His ill-humor,
easily aroused, disappeared like a cloud driven by the wind; it
evaporated in words, and disappeared of its own will. Sometimes,
however, when matters of public import were concerned, and his
lieutenants or ministers were to blame, he gave way to violent anger;
his outbursts were then hard and cruel, and often humiliating. He gave
blows with a club, under which, willingly or unwillingly, the recipient
had to bow his head; witness his scene with Jomini and that with the Duc
de Bellune.
Bonaparte had two sets of enemies, the Jacobins and the royalists; he
detested the first and feared the second. In speaking of the Jacobins,
he invariably called them the murderers of Louis XVI.; as for the
royalists, that was another thing; one might almost have thought he
foresaw the Restoration. He had about him two men who had voted the
death of the king, Fouché and Cambacérès.
He dismissed Fouché, and, if he kept Cambacérès, it was because he
wanted the services of that eminent legist; but he could not endure him,
and he would often catch his colleague, the Second Consul, by the ear,
and say: “My poor Cambacérès, I’m so sorry for you; but your goose is
cooked. If ever the Bourbons get back they will hang you.”
One day Cambacérès lost his temper, and with a twist of his head he
pulled his ear from the living pincers that held it.
“Come,” he said, “have done with your foolish joking.”
Whenever Bonaparte escaped any danger, a childish habit, a Corsican
habit, reappeared; he always made a rapid sign of the cross on his
breast with the thumb.
Whenever he met with any annoyance, or was haunted with a disagreeable
thought, he hummed--what air? An air of his own that was no air at all,
and which nobody ever noticed, he sang so false. Then, still singing, he
would sit down before his writing desk, tilting in his chair, tipping it
back till he almost fell over, and mutilating, as we have said, its arms
with a penknife, which served no other purpose, inasmuch as he never
mended a pen himself. His secretaries were charged with that duty, and
they mended them in the best manner possible, mindful of the fact that
they would have to copy that terrific writing, which, as we know, was
not absolutely illegible.
The effect produced on Bonaparte by the ringing of bells is known. It
was the only music he understood, and it went straight to his heart. If
he was seated when the vibrations began he would hold up his hand for
silence, and lean toward the sound. If he was walking, he would
stop, bend his head, and listen. As long as the bell rang he remained
motionless; when the sound died away in space, he resumed his work,
saying to those who asked him to explain this singular liking for the
iron voice: “It reminds me of my first years at Brienne; I was happy
then!”
At the period of which we are writing, his greatest personal interest
was the purchase he had made of the domain of Malmaison. He went there
every night like a schoolboy off for his holiday, and spent Sunday and
often Monday there. There, work was neglected for walking expeditions,
during which he personally superintended the improvements he had
ordered. Occasionally, and especially at first, he would wander beyond
the limits of the estate; but these excursions were thought dangerous by
the police, and given up entirely after the conspiracy of the Aréna and
the affair of the infernal machine.
The revenue derived from Malmaison, calculated by Bonaparte himself, on
the supposition that he should sell his fruits and vegetables, did not
amount to more than six thousand francs.
“That’s not bad,” he said to Bourrienne; “but,” he added with a sigh,
“one must have thirty thousand a year to be able to live here.”
Bonaparte introduced a certain poesy in his taste for the country. He
liked to see a woman with a tall flexible figure glide through the dusky
shrubberies of the park; only that woman must be dressed in white. He
hated gowns of a dark color and had a horror of stout women. As for
pregnant women, he had such an aversion for them that it was very seldom
he invited one to his soirées or his fêtes. For the rest, with little
gallantry in his nature, too overbearing to attract, scarcely civil to
women, it was rare for him to say, even to the prettiest, a pleasant
thing; in fact, he often produced a shudder by the rude remarks he made
even to Josephine’s best friends. To one he remarked: “Oh! what red arms
you have!” To another, “What an ugly headdress you are wearing!” To a
third, “Your gown is dirty; I have seen you wear it twenty times”; or,
“Why don’t you change your dressmaker; you are dressed like a fright.”
One day he said to the Duchesse de Chevreuse, a charming blonde, whose
hair was the admiration of everyone:
“It’s queer how red your hair is!”
“Possibly,” replied the duchess, “but this is the first time any man has
told me so.”
Bonaparte did not like cards; when he did happen to play it was always
vingt-et-un. For the rest, he had one trait in common with Henry IV.,
he cheated; but when the game was over he left all the gold and notes he
had won on the table, saying:
“You are ninnies! I have cheated all the time we’ve been playing, and
you never found out. Those who lost can take their money back.”
Born and bred in the Catholic faith, Bonaparte had no preference for any
dogma. When he re-established divine worship it was done as a political
act, not as a religious one. He was fond, however, of discussions
bearing on the subject; but he defined his own part in advance by
saying: “My reason makes me a disbeliever in many things; but the
impressions of my childhood and the inspirations of my early youth have
flung me back into uncertainty.”
Nevertheless he would never hear of materialism; he cared little what
the dogma was, provided that dogma recognized a Creator. One beautiful
evening in Messidor, on board his vessel, as it glided along between the
twofold azure of the sky and sea, certain mathematicians declared there
was no God, only animated matter. Bonaparte looked at the celestial
arch, a hundred times more brilliant between Malta and Alexandria than
it is in Europe, and, at a moment when they thought him unconscious of
the conversation, he exclaimed, pointing to the stars: “You may say what
you please, but it was a God who made all that.”
Bonaparte, though very exact in paying his private debts, was just the
reverse about public expenses. He was firmly convinced that in all past
transactions between ministers and purveyors or contractors, that if the
minister who had made the contract was not a dupe, the State at any rate
was robbed; for this reason he delayed the period of payment as long as
possible; there were literally no evasions, no difficulties he would not
make, no bad reasons he would not give. It was a fixed idea with him, an
immutable principle, that every contractor was a cheat.
One day a man who had made a bid that was accepted was presented to him.
“What is your name?” he asked, with his accustomed brusqueness.
“Vollant, citizen First Consul.”
“Good name for a contractor.”
“I spell it with two l’s, citizen.”
“To rob the better, sir,” retorted Bonaparte, turning his back on him.
Bonaparte seldom changed his decisions, even when he saw they were
unjust. No one ever heard him say: “I was mistaken.” On the contrary,
his favorite saying was: “I always believe the worst”--a saying more
worthy of Simon than Augustus.
But with all this, one felt that there was more of a desire in
Bonaparte’s mind to seem to despise men than actual contempt for them.
He was neither malignant nor vindictive. Sometimes, it is true, he
relied too much upon necessity, that iron-tipped goddess; but for
the rest, take him away from the field of politics and he was kind,
sympathetic, accessible to pity, fond of children (great proof of a kind
and pitying heart), full of indulgence for human weakness in private
life, and sometimes of a good-humored heartiness, like that of Henri IV.
playing with his children in the presence of the Spanish ambassador.
If we were writing history we should have many more things to say
of Bonaparte without counting those which--after finishing with
Bonaparte--we should still have to say of Napoleon. But we are writing
a simple narrative, in which Bonaparte plays a part; unfortunately,
wherever Bonaparte shows himself, if only for a moment, he becomes, in
spite of himself, a principal personage.
The reader must pardon us for having again fallen into digression; that
man, who is a world in himself, has, against our will, swept us along in
his whirlwind.
Let us return to Roland, and consequently to our legitimate tale.