NAPOLEON. Yes, I, General Bonaparte (emphasizing the French
pronunciation).
LADY. Oh, how can you ask such a question? you! who stood only two days
ago at the bridge at Lodi, with the air full of death, fighting a duel
with cannons across the river! (Shuddering.) Oh, you DO brave things.
NAPOLEON. So do you.
LADY. I! (With a sudden odd thought.) Oh! Are you a coward?
NAPOLEON (laughing grimly and pinching her cheek). That is the one
question you must never ask a soldier. The sergeant asks after the
recruit's height, his age, his wind, his limb, but never after his
courage. (He gets up and walks about with his hands behind him and his
head bowed, chuckling to himself.)
LADY (as if she had found it no laughing matter). Ah, you can laugh at
fear. Then you don't know what fear is.
NAPOLEON (coming behind the couch). Tell me this. Suppose you could
have got that letter by coming to me over the bridge at Lodi the day
before yesterday! Suppose there had been no other way, and that this
was a sure way--if only you escaped the cannon! (She shudders and
covers her eyes for a moment with her hands.) Would you have been
afraid?
LADY. Oh, horribly afraid, agonizingly afraid. (She presses her hands
on her heart.) It hurts only to imagine it.
NAPOLEON (inflexibly). Would you have come for the despatches?
LADY (overcome by the imagined horror). Don't ask me. I must have come.
NAPOLEON. Why?
LADY. Because I must. Because there would have been no other way.
NAPOLEON (with conviction). Because you would have wanted my letter
enough to bear your fear. There is only one universal passion: fear. Of
all the thousand qualities a man may have, the only one you will find
as certainly in the youngest drummer boy in my army as in me, is fear.
It is fear that makes men fight: it is indifference that makes them run
away: fear is the mainspring of war. Fear! I know fear well, better
than you, better than any woman. I once saw a regiment of good Swiss
soldiers massacred by a mob in Paris because I was afraid to interfere:
I felt myself a coward to the tips of my toes as I looked on at it.
Seven months ago I revenged my shame by pounding that mob to death with
cannon balls. Well, what of that? Has fear ever held a man back from
anything he really wanted--or a woman either? Never. Come with me; and
I will show you twenty thousand cowards who will risk death every day
for the price of a glass of brandy. And do you think there are no women
in the army, braver than the men, because their lives are worth less?
Psha! I think nothing of your fear or your bravery. If you had had to
come across to me at Lodi, you would not have been afraid: once on the
bridge, every other feeling would have gone down before the
necessity--the necessity--for making your way to my side and getting
what you wanted.
And now, suppose you had done all this--suppose you had come safely out
with that letter in your hand, knowing that when the hour came, your
fear had tightened, not your heart, but your grip of your own
purpose--that it had ceased to be fear, and had become strength,
penetration, vigilance, iron resolution--how would you answer then if
you were asked whether you were a coward?
LADY (rising). Ah, you are a hero, a real hero.
NAPOLEON. Pooh! there's no such thing as a real hero. (He strolls down
the room, making light of her enthusiasm, but by no means displeased
with himself for having evoked it.)
LADY. Ah, yes, there is. There is a difference between what you call my
bravery and yours. You wanted to win the battle of Lodi for yourself
and not for anyone else, didn't you?
NAPOLEON. Of course. (Suddenly recollecting himself.) Stop: no. (He
pulls himself piously together, and says, like a man conducting a
religious service) I am only the servant of the French republic,
following humbly in the footsteps of the heroes of classical antiquity.
I win battles for humanity--for my country, not for myself.
LADY (disappointed). Oh, then you are only a womanish hero, after all.
(She sits down again, all her enthusiasm gone, her elbow on the end of
the couch, and her cheek propped on her hand.)
NAPOLEON (greatly astonished). Womanish!
LADY (listlessly). Yes, like me. (With deep melancholy.) Do you think
that if I only wanted those despatches for myself, I dare venture into
a battle for them? No: if that were all, I should not have the courage
to ask to see you at your hotel, even. My courage is mere slavishness:
it is of no use to me for my own purposes. It is only through love,
through pity, through the instinct to save and protect someone else,
that I can do the things that terrify me.