"Let us go to my barn," said the doctor, taking Genestas by the arm,
after saying good-night to the curate and his other guests. "And there,
Captain Bluteau, you will hear about Napoleon. We shall find a few old
cronies who will set Goguelat, the postman, to declaiming about the
people's god. Nicolle, my stable-man, was to put a ladder by which we
can get into the hay-loft through a window, and find a place where we
can see and hear all that goes on. A _veillée_ is worth the trouble,
believe me. Come, it isn't the first time I've hidden in the hay to hear
the tale of a soldier or some peasant yarn. But we must hide; if these
poor people see a stranger they are constrained at once, and are no
longer their natural selves."
"Eh! my dear host," said Genestas, "haven't I often pretended to sleep,
that I might listen to my troopers round a bivouac? I never laughed more
heartily in the Paris theatres than I did at an account of the retreat
from Moscow, told in fun, by an old sergeant to a lot of recruits who
were afraid of war. He declared the French army slept in sheets, and
drank its wine well-iced; that the dead stood still in the roads; Russia
was white, they curried the horses with their teeth; those who liked to
skate had lots of fun, and those who fancied frozen puddings ate their
fill; the women were usually cold, and the only thing that was really
disagreeable was the want of hot water to shave with: in short, he
recounted such absurdities that an old quarter-master, who had had his
nose frozen off and was known by the name Nez-restant, laughed himself."
"Hush," said Benassis, "here we are: I'll go first; follow me."
The pair mounted the ladder and crouched in the hay, without being seen
or heard by the people below, and placed themselves at ease, so that
they could see and hear all that went on. The women were sitting in
groups round the three or four candles that stood on the tables. Some
were sewing, some knitting; several sat idle, their necks stretched out
and their heads and eyes turned to an old peasant who was telling a
story. Most of the men were standing, or lying on bales of hay. These
groups, all perfectly silent, were scarcely visible in the flickering
glimmer of the tallow-candles encircled by glass bowls full of water,
which concentrated the light in rays upon the women at work about the
tables. The size of the barn, whose roof was dark and sombre, still
further obscured the rays of light, which touched the heads with unequal
color, and brought out picturesque effects of light and shade. Here, the
brown forehead and the clear eyes of an eager little peasant-girl shone
forth; there, the rough brows of a few old men were sharply defined by a
luminous band, which made fantastic shapes of their worn and discolored
garments. These various listeners, so diverse in their attitudes, all
expressed on their motionless features the absolute abandonment of their
intelligence to the narrator. It was a curious picture, illustrating the
enormous influence exercised over every class of mind by poetry. In
exacting from a story-teller the marvelous that must still be simple, or
the impossible that is almost believable, the peasant proves himself to
be a true lover of the purest poetry.
"Come, Monsieur Goguelat," said the game-keeper, "tell us about the
Emperor."
"The evening is half over," said the postman, "and I don't like to
shorten the victories."
"Never mind; go on! You've told them so many times we know them all by
heart; but it is always a pleasure to hear them again."
"Yes! tell us about the Emperor," cried many voices together.
"Since you wish it," replied Goguelat. "But you'll see it isn't worth
much when I have to tell it on the double-quick, charge! I'd rather tell
about a battle. Shall I tell about Champ-Aubert, where we used up all
the cartridges and spitted the enemy on our bayonets?"
"No! no! the Emperor! the Emperor!"
The veteran rose from his bale of hay and cast upon the assemblage that
black look laden with miseries, emergencies, and sufferings, which
distinguishes the faces of old soldiers. He seized his jacket by the two
front flaps, raised them as if about to pack the knapsack which formerly
held his clothes, his shoes, and all his fortune; then he threw the
weight of his body on his left leg, advanced the right, and yielded with
a good grace to the demands of the company. After pushing his gray hair
to one side to show his forehead, he raised his head towards heaven that
he might, as it were, put himself on the level of the gigantic history
he was about to relate.
"You see, my friends, Napoleon was born in Corsica, a French island,
warmed by the sun of Italy, where it is like a furnace, and where the
people kill each other, from father to son, all about nothing: that's a
way they have. To begin with the marvel of the thing,--his mother, who
was the handsomest woman of her time, and a knowing one, bethought
herself of dedicating him to God, so that he might escape the dangers of
his childhood and future life; for she had dreamed that the world was
set on fire the day he was born. And indeed it was a prophecy! So she
asked God to protect him, on condition that Napoleon should restore His
holy religion, which was then cast to the ground. Well, that was agreed
upon, and we shall see what came of it.
"Follow me closely, and tell me if what you hear is in the nature of
man.
"Sure and certain it is that none but a man who conceived the idea of
making a compact with God could have passed unhurt through the enemy's
lines, through cannon-balls, and discharges of grape-shot that swept the
rest of us off like flies, and always respected his head. I had a proof
of that--I myself--at Eylau. I see him now, as he rode up a height, took
his field glass, looked at the battle, and said, 'A11 goes well.' One of
those plumed busy-bodies, who plagued him considerably and followed him
everywhere, even to his meals, so they said, thought to play the wag,
and took the Emperor's place as he rode away. Ho! in a twinkling, head
and plume were off! You must understand that Napoleon had promised to
keep the secret of his compact all to himself. That's why all those who
followed him, even his nearest friends, fell like nuts,--Duroc,
Bessières, Lannes,--all strong as steel bars, though _he_ could bend
them as he pleased. Besides,--to prove he was the child of God, and made
to be the father of soldiers,--was he ever known to be lieutenant or
captain? no, no; commander-in-chief from the start. He didn't look to be
more than twenty-four years of age when he was an old general at the
taking of Toulon, where he first began to show the others that they
knew nothing about manoeuvring cannon.
"After that, down came our slip of a general to command the grand army
of Italy, which hadn't bread nor munitions, nor shoes, nor coats,--a
poor army, as naked as a worm. 'My friends,' said he, 'here we are
together. Get it into your pates that fifteen days from now you will be
conquerors,--new clothes, good gaiters, famous shoes, and every man with
a great-coat; but, my children, to get these things you must march to
Milan where they are.' And we marched. France, crushed as flat as a
bedbug, straightened up. We were thirty thousand barefeet against eighty
thousand Austrian bullies, all fine men, well set up. I see 'em now! But
Napoleon--he was then only Bonaparte--he knew how to put the courage
into us! We marched by night, and we marched by day; we slapped their
faces at Montenotte, we thrashed 'em at Rivoli, Lodi, Arcole, Millesimo,
and we never let 'em up. A soldier gets the taste of conquest. So
Napoleon whirled round those Austrian generals, who didn't know where to
poke themselves to get out of his way, and he pelted 'em well,--nipped
off ten thousand men at a blow sometimes, by getting round them with
fifteen hundred Frenchmen, and then he gleaned as he pleased. He took
their cannon, their supplies, their money, their munitions, in short,
all they had that was good to take. He fought them and beat them on the
mountains, he drove them into the rivers and seas, he bit 'em in the
air, he devoured 'em on the ground, and he lashed 'em everywhere. Hey!
the grand army feathered itself well; for, d'ye see, the Emperor, who
was also a wit, called up the inhabitants and told them he was there to
deliver them. So after that the natives lodged and cherished us; the
women too, and very judicious they were. Now here's the end of it. In
Ventose, '96,--in those times that was the month of March of to-day,--we
lay cuddled in a corner of Savoy with the marmots; and yet, before that
campaign was over, we were masters of Italy, just as Napoleon had
predicted; and by the following March--in a single year and two
campaigns--he had brought us within sight of Vienna. 'Twas a clean
sweep. We devoured their armies, one after the other, and made an end of
four Austrian generals. One old fellow, with white hair, was roasted
like a rat in the straw at Mantua. Kings begged for mercy on their
knees! Peace was won.
"Could a _man_ have done that? No; God helped him, to a certainty!
"He divided himself up like the loaves in the Gospel, commanded the
battle by day, planned it by night; going and coming, for the sentinels
saw him,--never eating, never sleeping. So, seeing these prodigies, the
soldiers adopted him for their father. Forward, march! Then those
others, the rulers in Paris, seeing this, said to themselves:--'Here's a
bold one that seems to get his orders from the skies; he's likely to put
his paw on France. We must let him loose on Asia; we will send him to
America, perhaps that will satisfy him.' But 'twas _written above_ for
him, as it was for Jesus Christ. The command went forth that he should
go to Egypt. See again his resemblance to the Son of God. But that's not
all. He called together his best veterans, his fire-eaters, the ones he
had particularly put the devil into, and he said to them like this:--'My
friends, they have given us Egypt to chew up, just to keep us busy, but
we'll swallow it whole in a couple of campaigns, as we did Italy. The
common soldiers shall be princes and have the land for their own.
Forward, march!' 'Forward, march!' cried the sergeants, and there we
were at Toulon, road to Egypt. At that time the English had all their
ships in the sea; but when we embarked Napoleon said, 'They won't see
us. It is just as well that you should know from this time forth that
your general has got his star in the sky, which guides and protects us.'
What was said was done. Passing over the sea, we took Malta like an
orange, just to quench his thirst for victory; for he was a man who
couldn't live and do nothing.
"So here we are in Egypt. Good. Once here, other orders. The Egyptians,
d'ye see, are men who, ever since the earth was, have had giants for
sovereigns, and armies as numerous as ants; for, you must understand,
that's the land of genii and crocodiles, where they've built pyramids as
big as our mountains, and buried their kings under them to keep them
fresh,--an idea that pleased 'em mightily. So then, after we
disembarked, the Little Corporal said to us, 'My children, the country
you are going to conquer has a lot of gods that you must respect;
because Frenchmen ought to be friends with everybody, and fight the
nations without vexing the inhabitants. Get it into your skulls that you
are not to touch anything at first, for it is all going to be yours
soon. Forward, march!' So far, so good. But all those people of Africa,
to whom Napoleon was foretold under the name of Kébir-Bonaberdis,--a
word of their lingo that means 'the sultan fires,'--were afraid as the
devil of him. So the Grand Turk, and Asia, and Africa, had recourse to
magic. They sent us a demon, named the Mahdi, supposed to have descended
from heaven on a white horse, which, like its master, was bullet-proof;
and both of them lived on air, without food to support them. There are
some that say they saw them; but I can't give you any reasons to make
you certain about that. The rulers of Arabia and the Mamelukes tried to
make their troopers believe that the Mahdi could keep them from
perishing in battle; and they pretended he was an angel sent from heaven
to fight Napoleon and get back Solomon's seal. Solomon's seal was part
of their paraphernalia which they vowed our General had stolen. You must
understand that we'd given 'em a good many wry faces, in spite of what
he had said to us.
"Now, tell me how they knew that Napoleon had a pact with God? Was that
natural, d'ye think?
"They held to it in their minds that Napoleon commanded the genii, and
could pass hither and thither in the twinkling of an eye, like a bird.
The fact is, he was everywhere. At last, it came to his carrying off a
queen, beautiful as the dawn, for whom he had offered all his treasure,
and diamonds as big as pigeons' eggs,--a bargain which the Mameluke to
whom she particularly belonged positively refused, although he had
several others. Such matters, when they come to that pass, can't be
settled without a great many battles; and, indeed, there was no scarcity
of battles; there was fighting enough to please everybody. We were in
line at Alexandria, at Gizeh, and before the Pyramids; we marched in the
sun and through the sand, where some, who had the dazzles, saw water
that they couldn't drink, and shade where their flesh was roasted. But
we made short work of the Mamelukes; and everybody else yielded at the
voice of Napoleon, who took possession of Upper and Lower Egypt, Arabia,
and even the capitals of kingdoms that were no more, where there were
thousand of statues and all the plagues of Egypt, more particularly
lizards,--a mammoth of a country where everybody could take his acres of
land for as little as he pleased. Well, while Napoleon was busy with his
affairs inland,--where he had it in his head to do fine things,--the
English burned his fleet at Aboukir; for they were always looking about
them to annoy us. But Napoleon, who had the respect of the East and of
the West, whom the Pope called his son, and the cousin of Mohammed
called 'his dear father,' resolved to punish England, and get hold of
India in exchange for his fleet. He was just about to take us across the
Red Sea into Asia, a country where there are diamonds and gold to pay
the soldiers and palaces for bivouacs, when the Mahdi made a treaty with
the Plague, and sent it down to hinder our victories. Halt! The army to
a man defiled at that parade; and few there were who came back on their
feet. Dying soldiers couldn't take Saint-Jean d'Acre, though they rushed
at it three times with generous and martial obstinacy. The Plague was
the strongest. No saying to that enemy, 'My good friend.' Every soldier
lay ill. Napoleon alone was fresh as a rose, and the whole army saw him
drinking in pestilence without its doing him a bit of harm.
"Ha! my friends! will you tell me that _that's_ in the nature of a mere
man?
"The Mamelukes knowing we were all in the ambulances, thought they could
stop the way; but that sort of joke wouldn't do with Napoleon. So he
said to his demons, his veterans, those that had the toughest hide, 'Go,
clear me the way.' Junot, a sabre of the first cut, and his particular
friend, took a thousand men, no more, and ripped up the army of the
pacha who had had the presumption to put himself in the way. After that,
we came back to headquarters at Cairo. Now, here's another side of the
story. Napoleon absent, France was letting herself be ruined by the
rulers in Paris, who kept back the pay of the soldiers of the other
armies, and their clothing, and their rations; left them to die of
hunger, and expected them to lay down the law to the universe without
taking any trouble to help them. Idiots! who amused themselves by
chattering, instead of putting their own hands in the dough. Well,
that's how it happened that our armies were beaten, and the frontiers of
France were encroached upon: THE MAN was not there. Now observe, I say
_man_ because that's what they called him; but 'twas nonsense, for he
had a star and all its belongings; it was we who were only men. He
taught history to France after his famous battle of Aboukir, where,
without losing more than three hundred men, and with a single division,
he vanquished the grand army of the Turk, seventy-five thousand strong,
and hustled more than half of it into the sea, r-r-rah!
"That was his last thunder-clap in Egypt. He said to himself, seeing
the way things were going in Paris, 'I am the savior of France. I know
it, and I must go.' But, understand me, the army didn't know he was
going, or they'd have kept him by force and made him Emperor of the
East. So now we were sad; for He was gone who was all our joy. He left
the command to Kléber, a big mastiff, who came off duty at Cairo,
assassinated by an Egyptian, whom they put to death by impaling him on a
bayonet; that's the way they guillotine people down there. But it makes
'em suffer so much that a soldier had pity on the criminal and gave him
his canteen; and then, as soon as the Egyptian had drunk his fill, he
gave up the ghost with all the pleasure in life. But that's a trifle we
couldn't laugh at then. Napoleon embarked in a cockleshell, a little
skiff that was nothing at all, though 'twas called 'Fortune'; and in a
twinkling, under the nose of England, who was blockading him with ships
of the line, frigates, and anything that could hoist a sail, he crossed
over, and there he was in France. For he always had the power, mind you,
of crossing the seas at one straddle.
"Was that a human man? Bah!
"So, one minute he is at Fréjus, the next in Paris. There, they all
adore him; but he summons the government. 'What have you done with my
children, the soldiers?' he says to the lawyers. 'You're a mob of
rascally scribblers; you are making France a mess of pottage, and
snapping your fingers at what people think of you. It won't do; and I
speak the opinion of everybody.' So, on that, they wanted to battle with
him and kill him--click! he had 'em locked up in barracks, or flying out
of windows, or drafted among his followers, where they were as mute as
fishes, and as pliable as a quid of tobacco. After that stroke--consul!
And then, as it was not for him to doubt the Supreme Being, he fulfilled
his promise to the good God, who, you see, had kept His word to him. He
gave Him back his churches, and re-established His religion; the bells
rang for God and for him: and lo! everybody was pleased: _primo_, the
priests, whom he saved from being harassed; _secundo_, the bourgeois,
who thought only of their trade, and no longer had to fear the
_rapiamus_ of the law, which had got to be unjust; _tertio_, the nobles,
for he forbade they should be killed, as, unfortunately, the people had
got the habit of doing.
"But he still had the Enemy to wipe out; and he wasn't the man to go to
sleep at a mess-table, because, d'ye see, his eye looked over the whole
earth as if it were no bigger than a man's head. So then he appeared in
Italy, like as though he had stuck his head through the window. One
glance was enough. The Austrians were swallowed up at Marengo like so
many gudgeons by a whale! Ouf! The French eagles sang their paeans so
loud that all the world heard them--and it sufficed! 'We won't play that
game any more,' said the German. 'Enough, enough!' said all the rest.
"To sum up: Europe backed down, England knocked under. General peace;
and the kings and the people made believe kiss each other. That's the
time when the Emperor invented the Legion of Honor--and a fine thing,
too. 'In France'--this is what he said at Boulogne before the whole
army--'every man is brave. So the citizen who does a fine action shall
be sister to the soldier, and the soldier shall be his brother, and the
two shall be one under the flag of honor.'
"We, who were down in Egypt, now came home. All was changed! He left us
general, and hey! in a twinkling we found him EMPEROR. France gave
herself to him, like a fine girl to a lancer. When it was done--to the
satisfaction of all, as you may say--a sacred ceremony took place, the
like of which was never seen under the canopy of the skies. The Pope and
the cardinals, in their red and gold vestments, crossed the Alps
expressly to crown him before the army and the people, who clapped their
hands. There is one thing that I should do very wrong not to tell you.
In Egypt, in the desert close to Syria, the RED MAN came to him on the
Mount of Moses, and said, 'All is well.' Then, at Marengo, the night
before the victory, the same Red Man appeared before him for the second
time, standing erect and saying, 'Thou shalt see the world at thy feet;
thou shalt be Emperor of France, King of Italy, master of Holland,
sovereign of Spain, Portugal, and the Illyrian provinces, protector of
Germany, savior of Poland, first eagle of the Legion of Honor--all.'
This Red Man, you understand, was his genius, his spirit,--a sort of
satellite who served him, as some say, to communicate with his star. I
never really believed that. But the Red Man himself is a true fact.
Napoleon spoke of him, and said he came to him in troubled moments, and
lived in the palace of the Tuileries under the roof. So, on the day of
the coronation, Napoleon saw him for the third time; and they were in
consultation over many things.
"After that, Napoleon went to Milan to be crowned king of Italy, and
there the grand triumph of the soldier began. Every man who could write
was made an officer. Down came pensions; it rained duchies; treasures
poured in for the staff which didn't cost France a penny; and the Legion
of Honor provided incomes for the private soldiers,--of which I receive
mine to this day. So here were the armies maintained as never before on
this earth. But besides that, the Emperor, knowing that he was to be the
emperor of the whole world, bethought him of the bourgeois, and to
please them he built fairy monuments, after their own ideas, in places
where you'd never think to find any. For instance, suppose you were
coming back from Spain and going to Berlin--well, you'd find triumphal
arches along the way, with common soldiers sculptured on the stone,
every bit the same as generals. In two or three years, and without
imposing taxes on any of you, Napoleon filled his vaults with gold,
built palaces, made bridges, roads, scholars, fêtes, laws, vessels,
harbors, and spent millions upon millions,--such enormous sums that he
could, so they tell me, have paved France from end to end with
five-franc pieces, if he had had a mind to.
"Now, when he sat at ease on his throne, and was master of all, so that
Europe waited his permission to do his bidding, he remembered his four
brothers and his three sisters, and he said to us, as it might be in
conversation, in an order of the day, 'My children, is it right that the
blood relations of your Emperor should be begging their bread? No. I
wish to see them in splendor like myself. It becomes, therefore,
absolutely necessary to conquer a kingdom for each of them,--to the end
that Frenchmen may be masters over all lands, that the soldiers of the
Guard shall make the whole earth tremble, that France may spit where she
likes, and that all the nations shall say to her, as it is written on my
copper coins, '_God protects you_!' 'Agreed,' cried the army. 'We'll go
fish for thy kingdoms with our bayonets.' Ha! there was no backing down,
don't you see! If he had taken it into his head to conquer the moon, we
should have made ready, packed knapsacks, and clambered up; happily, he
didn't think of it. The kings of the countries, who liked their
comfortable thrones, were naturally loathe to budge, and had to have
their ears pulled; so then--Forward, march! We did march; we got there;
and the earth once more trembled to its centre. Hey! the men and the
shoes he used up in those days! The enemy dealt us such blows that none
but the grand army could have stood the fatigue of it. But you are not
ignorant that a Frenchman is born a philosopher, and knows that a little
sooner, or a little later, he has got to die. So we were ready to die
without a word, for we liked to see the Emperor doing _that_ on the
geographies."
Here the narrator nimbly described a circle with his foot on the floor
of the barn.
"And Napoleon said, 'There, that's to be a kingdom.' And a kingdom it
was. Ha! the good times! The colonels were generals; the generals,
marshals; and the marshals, kings. There's one of 'em still on his
throne, to prove it to Europe; but he's a Gascon and a traitor to France
for keeping that crown; and he doesn't blush for shame as he ought to
do, because crowns, don't you see, are made of gold. I who am speaking
to you, I have seen, in Paris, eleven kings and a mob of princes
surrounding Napoleon like the rays of the sun. You understand, of
course, that every soldier had the chance to mount a throne, provided
always he had the merit; so a corporal of the Guard was a sight to be
looked at as he walked along, for each man had his share in the victory,
and 'twas plainly set forth in the bulletin. What victories they were!
Austerlitz, where the army manoeuvred as if on parade; Eylau, where we
drowned the Russians in a lake, as though Napoleon had blown them into
it with the breath of his mouth; Wagram, where the army fought for three
days without grumbling. We won as many battles as there are saints in
the calendar. It was proved then beyond a doubt, that Napoleon had the
sword of God in his scabbard. The soldiers were his friends; he made
them his children; he looked after us; he saw that we had shoes, and
shirts, and great-coats, and bread, and cartridges; but he always kept
up his majesty; for, don't you see, 'twas his business to reign. No
matter for that, however; a sergeant, and even a common soldier could
say to him, 'My Emperor,' just as you say to me sometimes, 'My good
friend.' He gave us an answer if we appealed to him; he slept in the
snow like the rest of us; and indeed, he had almost the air of a human
man. I who speak to you, I have seen him with his feet among the
grapeshot, and no more uneasy than you are now,--standing steady,
looking through his field glass, and minding his business. 'Twas that
kept the rest of us quiet. I don't know how he did it, but when he spoke
he made our hearts burn within us; and to show him we were his children,
incapable of balking, didn't we rush at the mouths of the rascally
cannon, that belched and vomited shot and shell without so much as
saying, 'Look out!' Why! the dying must needs raise their heads to
salute him and cry, 'LONG LIVE THE EMPEROR!'
"I ask you, was that natural? would they have done that for a human man?
"Well, after he had settled the world, the Empress Josephine, his wife,
a good woman all the same, managed matters so that she did not bear him
any children, and he was obliged to give her up, though he loved her
considerably. But, you see, he had to have little ones for reasons of
state. Hearing of this, all the sovereigns of Europe quarreled as to
which of them should give him a wife. And he married, so they told us,
an Austrian archduchess, daughter of Caesar, an ancient man about whom
people talk a good deal, and not in France only,--where any one will
tell you what he did,--but in Europe. It is all true, for I myself who
address you at this moment, I have been on the Danube, and have seen the
remains of a bridge built by that man, who, it seems, was a relation of
Napoleon in Rome, and that's how the Emperor got the inheritance of that
city for his son. So after the marriage, which was a fête for the whole
world, and in honor of which he released the people of ten years'
taxes,--which they had to pay all the same, however, because the
assessors didn't take account of what he said,--his wife had a little
one, who was King of Rome. Now, there's a thing that had never been seen
on this earth; never before was a child born a king with his father
living. On that day a balloon went up in Paris to tell the news to Rome,
and that balloon made the journey in one day!
"Now, is there any man among you who will stand up and declare to me
that all that was human? No; it was _written above;_ and may the scurvy
seize them who deny that he was sent by God himself for the triumph
of France!
"Well, here's the Emperor of Russia, that used to be his friend, he gets
angry because Napoleon didn't marry a Russian; so he joins with the
English, our enemies,--to whom our Emperor always wanted to say a couple
of words in their burrows, only he was prevented. Napoleon gets angry
too; an end had to be put to such doings; so he says to us:--'Soldiers!
you have been masters of every capital in Europe, except Moscow, which
is now the ally of England. To conquer England, and India which belongs
to the English, it becomes our peremptory duty to go to Moscow.' Then he
assembled the greatest army that ever trailed its gaiters over the
globe; and so marvelously in hand it was that he reviewed a million of
men in one day. 'Hourra! cried the Russians. Down came all Russia and
those animals of Cossacks in a flock. 'Twas nation against nation, a
general hurly-burly, and beware who could; 'Asia against Europe,' as the
Red Man had foretold to Napoleon. 'Enough,' cried the Emperor, 'I'll
be ready.'
"So now, sure enough, came all the kings, as the Red Man had said, to
lick Napoleon's hand! Austria, Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, Poland, Italy,
every one of them were with us, flattering us; ah, it was fine! The
eagles never cawed so loud as at those parades, perched high above the
banners of all Europe. The Poles were bursting with joy, because
Napoleon was going to release them; and that's why France and Poland are
brothers to this day. 'Russia is ours,' cried the army. We plunged into
it well supplied; we marched and we marched,--no Russians. At last we
found the brutes entrenched on the banks of the Moskova. That's where I
won my cross, and I've got the right to say it was a damnable battle.
This was how it came about. The Emperor was anxious. He had seen the Red
Man, who said to him, 'My son, you are going too fast for your feet; you
will lack men; friends will betray you.' So the Emperor offered peace.
But before signing, 'Let us drub those Russians!' he said to us. 'Done!'
cried the army. 'Forward, march!' said the sergeants. My clothes were in
rags, my shoes worn out, from trudging along those roads, which are very
uncomfortable ones; but no matter! I said to myself, 'As it's the last
of our earthquakings, I'll go into it, tooth and nail!' We were drawn up
in line before the great ravine,--front seats, as 'twere. Signal given;
and seven hundred pieces of artillery began a conversation that would
bring the blood from your ears. Then--must do justice to one's
enemies--the Russians let themselves be killed like Frenchmen; they
wouldn't give way; we couldn't advance. 'Forward,' some one cried, 'here
comes the Emperor!' True enough; he passed at a gallop, waving his hand
to let us know we must take the redoubt. He inspired us; on we ran, I
was the first in the ravine. Ha! my God! how the lieutenants fell, and
the colonels, and the soldiers! No matter! all the more shoes for those
that had none, and epaulets for the clever ones who knew how to read.
'Victory!' cried the whole line; 'Victory!'--and, would you believe it?
a thing never seen before, there lay twenty-five thousand Frenchmen on
the ground. 'Twas like mowing down a wheat-field; only in place of the
ears of wheat put the heads of men! We were sobered by this time,--those
who were left alive. The MAN rode up; we made a circle round him. Ha! he
knew how to cajole his children; he could be amiable when he liked, and
feed 'em with words when their stomachs were ravenous with the hunger of
wolves. Flatterer! he distributed the crosses himself, he uncovered to
the dead, and then he cried to us, 'On! to Moscow!' 'To Moscow!'
answered the army.
"We took Moscow. Would you believe it? the Russians burned their own
city! 'Twas a haystack six miles square, and it blazed for two days. The
buildings crashed like slates, and showers of melted iron and lead
rained down upon us, which was naturally horrible. I may say to you
plainly, it was like a flash of lightning on our disasters. The Emperor
said, 'We have done enough; my soldiers shall rest here.' So we rested
awhile, just to get the breath into our bodies and the flesh on our
bones, for we were really tired. We took possession of the golden cross
that was on the Kremlin; and every soldier brought away with him a small
fortune. But out there the winter sets in a month earlier,--a thing
those fools of science didn't properly explain. So, coming back, the
cold nipped us. No longer an army--do you hear me?--no longer any
generals, no longer any sergeants even. 'Twas the reign of wretchedness
and hunger,--a reign of equality at last. No one thought of anything but
to see France once more; no one stooped to pick up his gun or his money
if he dropped them; each man followed his nose, and went as he pleased
without caring for glory. The weather was so bad the Emperor couldn't
see his star; there was something between him and the skies. Poor man!
it made him ill to see his eagles flying away from victory. Ah! 'twas a
mortal blow, you may believe me.
"Well, we got to the Beresina. My friends, I can affirm to you by all
that is most sacred, by my honor, that since mankind came into the
world, never, never, was there seen such a fricassee of an army--guns,
carriages, artillery wagons--in the midst of such snows, under such
relentless skies! The muzzles of the muskets burned our hands if we
touched them, the iron was so cold. It was there that the army was saved
by the pontoniers, who were firm at their post; and there that
Gondrin--sole survivor of the men who were bold enough to go into the
water and build the bridges by which the army crossed--that Gondrin,
here present, admirably conducted himself, and saved us from the
Russians, who, I must tell you, still respected the grand army,
remembering its victories. And," he added, pointing to Gondrin, who was
gazing at him with the peculiar attention of a deaf man, "Gondrin is a
finished soldier, a soldier who is honor itself, and he merits your
highest esteem."
"I saw the Emperor," he resumed, "standing by the bridge, motionless,
not feeling the cold--was that human? He looked at the destruction of
his treasure, his friends, his old Egyptians. Bah! all that passed him,
women, army wagons, artillery, all were shattered, destroyed, ruined.
The bravest carried the eagles; for the eagles, d'ye see, were France,
the nation, all of you! they were the civil and the military honor that
must be kept pure; could their heads be lowered because of the cold? It
was only near the Emperor that we warmed ourselves, because when he was
in danger we ran, frozen as we were--we, who wouldn't have stretched a
hand to save a friend. They told us he wept at night over his poor
family of soldiers. Ah! none but he and Frenchmen could have got
themselves out of that business.
"We did get out, but with losses, great losses, as I tell you. The
Allies captured our provisions. Men began to betray him, as the Red Man
predicted. Those chatterers in Paris, who had held their tongues after
the Imperial Guard was formed, now thought he was dead; so they
hoodwinked the prefect of police, and hatched a conspiracy to overthrow
the empire. He heard of it; it worried him. He left us, saying: 'Adieu,
my children; guard the outposts; I shall return to you.' Bah! without
him nothing went right; the generals lost their heads; the marshals
talked nonsense and committed follies; but that was not surprising, for
Napoleon, who was kind, had fed 'em on gold; they had got as fat as
lard, and wouldn't stir; some stayed in camp when they ought to have
been warming the backs of the enemy who was between us and France.
"But the Emperor came back, and he brought recruits, famous recruits;
he changed their backbone and made 'em dogs of war, fit to set their
teeth into anything; and he brought a guard of honor, a fine body
indeed!--all bourgeois, who melted away like butter on a gridiron.
"Well, spite of our stern bearing, here's everything going against us;
and yet the army did prodigies of valor. Then came battles on the
mountains, nations against nations,--Dresden, Lutzen, Bautzen. Remember
these days, all of you, for 'twas then that Frenchmen were so
particularly heroic that a good grenadier only lasted six months. We
triumphed always; yet there were those English, in our rear, rousing
revolts against us with their lies! No matter, we cut our way home
through the whole pack of the nations. Wherever the Emperor showed
himself we followed him; for if, by sea or land, he gave us the word
'Go!' we went. At last, we were in France; and many a poor foot-soldier
felt the air of his own country restore his soul to satisfaction, spite
of the wintry weather. I can say for myself that it refreshed my life.
Well, next, our business was to defend France, our country, our
beautiful France, against all Europe, which resented our having laid
down the law to the Russians, and pushed them back into their dens, so
that they couldn't eat us up alive, as northern nations, who are dainty
and like southern flesh, have a habit of doing,--at least, so I've heard
some generals say. Then the Emperor saw his own father-in-law, his
friends whom he had made kings, and the scoundrels to whom he had given
back their thrones, all against him. Even Frenchmen, and allies in our
own ranks, turned against us under secret orders, as at the battle of
Leipsic. Would common soldiers have been capable of such wickedness?
Three times a day men were false to their word,--and they called
themselves princes!
"So, then, France was invaded. Wherever the Emperor showed his lion
face, the enemy retreated; and he did more prodigies in defending France
than ever he had done in conquering Italy, the East, Spain, Europe, and
Russia. He meant to bury every invader under the sod, and teach 'em to
respect the soil of France. So he let them get to Paris, that he might
swallow them at a mouthful, and rise to the height of his genius in a
battle greater than all the rest,--a mother-battle, as 'twere. But
there, there! the Parisians were afraid for their twopenny skins, and
their trumpery shops; they opened the gates. Then the Ragusades
began, and happiness ended. The Empress was fooled, and the white
banner flaunted from the windows. The generals whom he had made
his nearest friends abandoned him for the Bourbons,--a set of
people no one had heard tell of. The Emperor bade us farewell at
Fontainebleau:--'Soldiers!'--I can hear him now; we wept like children;
the flags and the eagles were lowered as if for a funeral: it was, I may
well say it to you, it was the funeral of the Empire; her dapper armies
were nothing now but skeletons. So he said to us, standing there on the
portico of his palace:--'My soldiers! we are vanquished by treachery;
but we shall meet in heaven, the country of the brave. Defend my child,
whom I commit to you. Long live Napoleon II!' He meant to die, that no
man should look upon Napoleon vanquished; he took poison, enough to have
killed a regiment, because, like Jesus Christ before his Passion, he
thought himself abandoned of God and his talisman. But the poison did
not hurt him.
"See again! he found he was immortal.
"Sure of himself, knowing he must ever be THE EMPEROR, he went for a
while to an island to study out the nature of these others, who, you may
be sure, committed follies without end. Whilst he bided his time down
there, the Chinese, and the wild men on the coast of Africa, and the
Barbary States, and others who are not at all accommodating, knew so
well he was more than man that they respected his tent, saying to touch
it would be to offend God. Thus, d'ye see, when these others turned him
from the doors of his own France, he still reigned over the whole world.
Before long he embarked in the same little cockleshell of a boat he had
had in Egypt, sailed round the beard of the English, set foot in France,
and France acclaimed him. The sacred cuckoo flew from spire to spire;
all France cried out with one voice, 'LONG LIVE THE EMPEROR!' In this
region, here, the enthusiasm for that wonder of the ages was, I may say,
solid. Dauphiné behaved well; and I am particularly pleased to know that
her people wept when they saw, once more, the gray overcoat. March first
it was, when Napoleon landed with two hundred men to conquer that
kingdom of France and of Navarre, which on the twentieth of the same
month was again the French Empire. On that day our MAN was in Paris; he
had made a clean sweep, recovered his dear France, and gathered his
veterans together by saying no more than three words, 'I am here.'
"'Twas the greatest miracle God had yet done! Before _him_, did ever
man recover an empire by showing his hat? And these others, who thought
they had subdued France! Not they! At sight of the eagles, a national
army sprang up, and we marched to Waterloo. There, the Guard died at one
blow. Napoleon, in despair, threw himself three times before the cannon
of the enemy without obtaining death. We saw that. The battle was lost.
That night the Emperor called his old soldiers to him; on the field
soaked with our blood he burned his banner and his eagles,--his poor
eagles, ever victorious, who cried 'Forward' in the battles, and had
flown the length and breadth of Europe, _they_ were saved the infamy of
belonging to the enemy: all the treasures of England couldn't get her a
tail-feather of them. No more eagles!--the rest is well known. The Red
Man went over to the Bourbons, like the scoundrel that he is. France is
crushed; the soldier is nothing; they deprive him of his dues; they
discharge him to make room for broken-down nobles--ah, 'tis pitiable!
They seized Napoleon by treachery; the English nailed him on a desert
island in mid-ocean on a rock raised ten thousand feet above the earth;
and there he is, and will be, till the Red Man gives him back his power
for the happiness of France. These others say he's dead. Ha, dead! 'Tis
easy to see they don't know Him. They tell that fib to catch the people,
and feel safe in their hovel of a government. Listen! the truth at the
bottom of it all is that his friends have left him alone on the desert
island to fulfil a prophecy, for I forgot to say that his name,
Napoleon, means 'lion of the desert.' Now this that I tell you is true
as the Gospel. All other tales that you hear about the Emperor are
follies without common-sense; because, d'ye see, God never gave to child
of woman born the right to stamp his name in red as _he_ did, on the
earth, which forever shall remember him! Long live Napoleon, the father
of his people and of the soldier!"
"Long live General Eblé!" cried the pontonier.
"How happened it you were not killed in the ravine at Moskova?" asked a
peasant woman.
"How do I know? We went in a regiment, we came out a hundred
foot-soldiers; none but the lines were capable of taking that redoubt:
the infantry, d'ye see, that's the real army."
"And the cavalry! what of that?" cried Genastas, letting himself roll
from the top of the hay, and appearing to us with a suddenness which
made the bravest utter a cry of terror. "Eh! my old veteran, you forget
the red lancers of Poniatowski, the cuirassiers, the dragoons! they that
shook the earth when Napoleon, impatient that the victory was delayed,
said to Murat, 'Sire, cut them in two.' Ha, we were off! first at a
trot, then at a gallop, 'one, two,' and the enemy's line was cut in
halves like an apple with a knife. A charge of cavalry, my old hero!
why, 'tis a column of cannon balls!"
"How about the pontoniers?" cried Gondrin.
"My children," said Genastas, becoming suddenly quite ashamed of his
sortie when he saw himself in the midst of a silent and bewildered
group, "there are no spies here,--see, take this and drink to the Little
Corporal."
"LONG LIVE THE EMPEROR!" cried all the people present, with one voice.
"Hush, my children!" said the officer, struggling to control his
emotion. "Hush! _he is dead_. He died saying, 'Glory, France, and
battle.' My friends, he had to die, he! but his memory--never!"
Goguelat made a gesture of disbelief; then he said in a low voice to
those nearest, "The officer is still in the service, and he's told to
tell the people the Emperor is dead. We mustn't be angry with him,
because, d'ye see, a soldier has to obey orders."
As Genestas left the barn he heard the Fosseuse say, "That officer is a
friend of the Emperor and of Monsieur Benassis." On that, all the people
rushed to the door to get another sight of him, and by the light of the
moon they saw the doctor take his arm.
"I committed a great folly," said Genestas. "Let us get home quickly.
Those eagles--the cannon--the campaigns! I no longer knew where I was."
"What do you think of my Goguelat?" asked Benassis.
"Monsieur, so long as such tales are told, France will carry in her
entrails the fourteen armies of the Republic, and may at any time renew
the conversation of cannon with all Europe. That's my opinion."