It was the old Brigadier who was talking in the cafe.
I have seen a great many cities, my friends. I would not dare to tell
you how many I have entered as a conqueror with eight hundred of my
little fighting devils clanking and jingling behind me. The cavalry were
in front of the Grande Armee, and the Hussars of Conflans were in front
of the cavalry, and I was in front of the Hussars. But of all the cities
which we visited Venice is the most ill-built and ridiculous. I cannot
imagine how the people who laid it out thought that the cavalry could
manoeuvre. It would puzzle Murat or Lassalle to bring a squadron into
that square of theirs. For this reason we left Kellermann's heavy
brigade and also my own Hussars at Padua on the mainland. But
Suchet with the infantry held the town, and he had chosen me as his
aide-de-camp for that winter, because he was pleased about the affair
of the Italian fencing-master at Milan. The fellow was a good swordsman,
and it was fortunate for the credit of French arms that it was I who was
opposed to him. Besides, he deserved a lesson, for if one does not like
a prima donna's singing one can always be silent, but it is intolerable
that a public affront should be put upon a pretty woman. So the sympathy
was all with me, and after the affair had blown over and the man's widow
had been pensioned Suchet chose me as his own galloper, and I followed
him to Venice, where I had the strange adventure which I am about to
tell you.
You have not been to Venice? No, for it is seldom that the French
travel. We were great travellers in those days. From Moscow to Cairo
we had travelled everywhere, but we went in larger parties than were
convenient to those whom we visited, and we carried our passports in
our limbers. It will be a bad day for Europe when the French start
travelling again, for they are slow to leave their homes, but when they
have done so no one can say how far they will go if they have a guide
like our little man to point out the way. But the great days are gone
and the great men are dead, and here am I, the last of them, drinking
wine of Suresnes and telling old tales in a cafe.
But it is of Venice that I would speak. The folk there live like
water-rats upon a mud-bank, but the houses are very fine, and the
churches, especially that of St. Mark, are as great as any I have seen.
But above all they are proud of their statues and their pictures, which
are the most famous in Europe. There are many soldiers who think that
because one's trade is to make war one should never have a thought above
fighting and plunder. There was old Bouvet, for example--the one who was
killed by the Prussians on the day that I won the Emperor's medal; if
you took him away from the camp and the canteen, and spoke to him of
books or of art, he would sit and stare at you. But the highest soldier
is a man like myself who can understand the things of the mind and the
soul. It is true that I was very young when I joined the army, and that
the quarter-master was my only teacher, but if you go about the world
with your eyes open you cannot help learning a great deal.
Thus I was able to admire the pictures in Venice, and to know the names
of the great men, Michael Titiens, and Angelus, and the others, who had
painted them. No one can say that Napoleon did not admire them also, for
the very first thing which he did when he captured the town was to send
the best of them to Paris. We all took what we could get, and I had two
pictures for my share.
One of them, called “Nymphs Surprised,” I kept for myself, and the
other, “Saint Barbara,” I sent as a present for my mother.
It must be confessed, however, that some of our men behaved very badly
in this matter of the statues and the pictures. The people at Venice
were very much attached to them, and as to the four bronze horses which
stood over the gate of their great church, they loved them as dearly as
if they had been their children. I have always been a judge of a horse,
and I had a good look at these ones, but I could not see that there was
much to be said for them. They were too coarse-limbed for light cavalry
charges and they had not the weight for the gun-teams.
However, they were the only four horses, alive or dead, in the whole
town, so it was not to be expected that the people would know any
better. They wept bitterly when they were sent away, and ten French
soldiers were found floating in the canals that night. As a punishment
for these murders a great many more of their pictures were sent away,
and the soldiers took to breaking the statues and firing their muskets
at the stained-glass windows.
This made the people furious, and there was very bad feeling in the
town. Many officers and men disappeared during that winter, and even
their bodies were never found.
For myself I had plenty to do, and I never found the time heavy on
my hands. In every country it has been my custom to try to learn the
language. For this reason I always look round for some lady who will be
kind enough to teach it to me, and then we practise it together. This
is the most interesting way of picking it up, and before I was thirty I
could speak nearly every tongue in Europe; but it must be confessed that
what you learn is not of much use for the ordinary purposes of life. My
business, for example, has usually been with soldiers and peasants, and
what advantage is it to be able to say to them that I love only them,
and that I will come back when the wars are over?
Never have I had so sweet a teacher as in Venice. Lucia was her first
name, and her second--but a gentleman forgets second names. I can say
this with all discretion, that she was of one of the senatorial families
of Venice and that her grandfather had been Doge of the town.
She was of an exquisite beauty--and when I, Etienne Gerard, use such a
word as “exquisite,” my friends, it has a meaning. I have judgment, I
have memories, I have the means of comparison. Of all the women who have
loved me there are not twenty to whom I could apply such a term as that.
But I say again that Lucia was exquisite.
Of the dark type I do not recall her equal unless it were Dolores of
Toledo. There was a little brunette whom I loved at Santarem when I was
soldiering under Massena in Portugal--her name has escaped me. She was
of a perfect beauty, but she had not the figure nor the grace of Lucia.
There was Agnes also. I could not put one before the other, but I do
none an injustice when I say that Lucia was the equal of the best.
It was over this matter of pictures that I had first met her, for her
father owned a palace on the farther side of the Rialto Bridge upon the
Grand Canal, and it was so packed with wall-paintings that Suchet sent a
party of sappers to cut some of them out and send them to Paris.
I had gone down with them, and after I had seen Lucia in tears it
appeared to me that the plaster would crack if it were taken from the
support of the wall. I said so, and the sappers were withdrawn. After
that I was the friend of the family, and many a flask of Chianti have
I cracked with the father and many a sweet lesson have I had from the
daughter. Some of our French officers married in Venice that winter,
and I might have done the same, for I loved her with all my heart; but
Etienne Gerard has his sword, his horse, his regiment, his mother, his
Emperor, and his career. A debonair Hussar has room in his life for
love, but none for a wife. So I thought then, my friends, but I did not
see the lonely days when I should long to clasp those vanished hands,
and turn my head away when I saw old comrades with their tall children
standing round their chairs. This love which I had thought was a joke
and a plaything--it is only now that I understand that it is the moulder
of one's life, the most solemn and sacred of all things--Thank you, my
friend, thank you! It is a good wine, and a second bottle cannot hurt.
And now I will tell you how my love for Lucia was the cause of one
of the most terrible of all the wonderful adventures which have ever
befallen me, and how it was that I came to lose the top of my right ear.
You have often asked me why it was missing. To-night for the first time
I will tell you.
Suchet's head-quarters at that time was the old palace of the Doge
Dandolo, which stands on the lagoon not far from the place of San Marco.
It was near the end of the winter, and I had returned one night from the
Theatre Goldini, when I found a note from Lucia and a gondola waiting.
She prayed me to come to her at once as she was in trouble. To a
Frenchman and a soldier there was but one answer to such a note. In an
instant I was in the boat and the gondolier was pushing out into the
dark lagoon.
I remember that as I took my seat in the boat I was struck by the man's
great size. He was not tall, but he was one of the broadest men that
I have ever seen in my life. But the gondoliers of Venice are a strong
breed, and powerful men are common enough among them. The fellow took
his place behind me and began to row.
A good soldier in an enemy's country should everywhere and at all times
be on the alert. It has been one of the rules of my life, and if I have
lived to wear grey hairs it is because I have observed it. And yet upon
that night I was as careless as a foolish young recruit who fears lest
he should be thought to be afraid. My pistols I had left behind in my
hurry. My sword was at my belt, but it is not always the most convenient
of weapons. I lay back in my seat in the gondola, lulled by the gentle
swish of the water and the steady creaking of the oar. Our way lay
through a network of narrow canals with high houses towering on either
side and a thin slit of star-spangled sky above us. Here and there, on
the bridges which spanned the canal, there was the dim glimmer of an oil
lamp, and sometimes there came a gleam from some niche where a candle
burned before the image of a saint. But save for this it was all black,
and one could only see the water by the white fringe which curled round
the long black nose of our boat. It was a place and a time for dreaming.
I thought of my own past life, of all the great deeds in which I had
been concerned, of the horses that I had handled, and of the women that
I had loved. Then I thought also of my dear mother, and I fancied her
joy when she heard the folk in the village talking about the fame of her
son. Of the Emperor also I thought, and of France, the dear fatherland,
the sunny France, mother of beautiful daughters and of gallant sons. My
heart glowed within me as I thought of how we had brought her colours
so many hundred leagues beyond her borders. To her greatness I would
dedicate my life. I placed my hand upon my heart as I swore it, and at
that instant the gondolier fell upon me from behind.
When I say that he fell upon me I do not mean merely that he attacked
me, but that he really did tumble upon me with all his weight. The
fellow stands behind you and above you as he rows, so that you can
neither see him nor can you in any way guard against such an assault.
One moment I had sat with my mind filled with sublime resolutions, the
next I was flattened out upon the bottom of the boat, the breath dashed
out of my body, and this monster pinning me down. I felt the fierce
pants of his hot breath upon the back of my neck. In an instant he had
torn away my sword, had slipped a sack over my head, and had tied a rope
firmly round the outside of it.
There I was at the bottom of the gondola as helpless as a trussed fowl.
I could not shout, I could not move; I was a mere bundle. An instant
later I heard once more the swishing of the water and the creaking of
the oar.
This fellow had done his work and had resumed his journey as quietly and
unconcernedly as if he were accustomed to clap a sack over a colonel of
Hussars every day of the week.
I cannot tell you the humiliation and also the fury which filled my mind
as I lay there like a helpless sheep being carried to the butcher's. I,
Etienne Gerard, the champion of the six brigades of light cavalry and
the first swordsman of the Grand Army, to be overpowered by a single
unarmed man in such a fashion! Yet I lay quiet, for there is a time
to resist and there is a time to save one's strength. I had felt the
fellow's grip upon my arms, and I knew that I would be a child in his
hands. I waited quietly, therefore, with a heart which burned with rage,
until my opportunity should come.
How long I lay there at the bottom of the boat I can not tell; but it
seemed to me to be a long time, and always there were the hiss of the
waters and the steady creaking of the oar. Several times we turned
corners, for I heard the long, sad cry which these gondoliers give when
they wish to warn their fellows that they are coming. At last, after a
considerable journey, I felt the side of the boat scrape up against a
landing-place. The fellow knocked three times with his oar upon wood,
and in answer to his summons I heard the rasping of bars and the turning
of keys. A great door creaked back upon its hinges.
“Have you got him?” asked a voice, in Italian.
My monster gave a laugh and kicked the sack in which I lay.
“Here he is,” said he.
“They are waiting.” He added something which I could not understand.
“Take him, then,” said my captor. He raised me in his arms, ascended
some steps, and I was thrown down upon a hard floor. A moment later the
bars creaked and the key whined once more. I was a prisoner inside a
house.
From the voices and the steps there seemed now to be several people
round me. I understand Italian a great deal better than I speak it, and
I could make out very well what they were saying.
“You have not killed him, Matteo?”
“What matter if I have?”
“My faith, you will have to answer for it to the tribunal.”
“They will kill him, will they not?”
“Yes, but it is not for you or me to take it out of their hands.”
“Tut! I have not killed him. Dead men do not bite, and his cursed teeth
met in my thumb as I pulled the sack over his head.”
“He lies very quiet.”
“Tumble him out and you will find that he is lively enough.”
The cord which bound me was undone and the sack drawn from over my head.
With my eyes closed I lay motionless upon the floor.
“By the saints, Matteo, I tell you that you have broken his neck.”
“Not I. He has only fainted. The better for him if he never came out of
it again.”