Napoleon's Exile

by Patrick Rambaud

  ‘We are at the helm,’ said the Marquis, in an excellent mood. ‘Baron Plotho, our Prussian friend from this morning, has introduced me to the new Governor of Paris, Sacken, a general who expresses himself in impeccable French, and now I’m his deputy. What do you think of that?’

  ‘Perfect,’ said Sémallé. ‘We’ll have to take care of the press without wasting a moment. Bonaparte has helped us: he banned most of the newspapers, we only have five to work on, those in Paris, which are responsible for public opinion. Appoint Morin Censor General, and let him appoint editors for each of those papers...’

  ‘Michaud for La Gazette de France?’

  ‘As you wish.’

  ‘One other thing,’ said La Grange. ‘The Tsar is staying at the Hôtel Saint-Florentin.’

  ‘Wasn’t he supposed to be staying at the Elysée?’ said Octave.

  ‘Yes, but word reached him that the palace was mined, so he accepted the offer made him by Talleyrand ...’

  ‘... who sent that letter to bring Alexander to his residence, oh, the sly fox!’

  ‘The worst thing is,’ La Grange continued, ‘that Caulaincourt is in the rue Saint-Florentin as we speak.’

  ‘Damn! The Duke of Vincennes!’ This was the name the royalists gave to the Duke of Vicenza, Caulaincourt; they accused him of being involved in the abduction of the Duke of Enghien, who had been murdered at the Château de Vincennes.

  The Count remained thoughtful, his eyes fixed on the patterns in the carpet. Caulaincourt, Grand Equerry to the Emperor, had known the Tsar in St Petersburg when he had been ambassador there, and they had liked one another. Bonaparte had sent him to negotiate, but to negotiate what? His throne? A regency? The Tsar admired Napoleon, he might consent to be swayed, and influence the other sovereigns. That was hardly something the royalists were about to organize.

  ‘How could we find out what Bonaparte has in mind?’ asked Sémallé. We have a spy in Fontainebleau, don’t we?’

  ‘A servant, Chauvin.’

  ‘Has he been struck dumb?’

  ‘He’s worried, he will have to be replaced. In his last message, he said he was ready to take in one of our men. He would pretend the man in question was his cousin, and make sure he was given a job.’

  ‘Who were you thinking of?’

  ‘What about me?’ suggested Octave, jumping at the chance to return to Fontainebleau.

  ‘You?’ the Marquis and Sémallé spoke simultaneously.

  ‘Why not? I have one advantage: no one in the imperial entourage knows me.’

  ‘That much I admit, my dear fellow, but could you really play the part of a servant?’

  ‘As an émigré in London, you know, we survived by practising a thousand and one trades that had little to do with our rank. We became door-to-door salesmen, I even knew one viscount who was an acrobat, and Madame de Montmorency was a water-carrier ...’

  ‘Maybe. It’s not such a bad idea.’

  The Count opened one of his desk drawers and took out a cameo - a Negro’s head on an agate - which he held out to Octave.

  ‘When Chauvin sees this ring, he will understand. Then we need only arrange your departure from Paris and your journey to Fontainebleau. The city has been closed off since this afternoon.’

  ‘I shall see to it,’ said La Grange.

  *

  Monsieur de Sémallé hated wasting time. He was good at waiting, certainly, but when he had made a decision, he could not bear to delay its implementation; Octave did not have time to collect any personal effects from his rooms in the rue Saint-Sauveur, nor the booty of gold coins that he had taken from the luggage of the dead cavalryman whose outfit he had adopted.

  The Count called in his valet and handed Octave over to him, with instructions to transform him into a thoroughly credible servant. To that end, Octave was given a grey morning-coat, a pair of stout travelling boots, and a flat, narrow-brimmed hat to lend him a provincial air, and a barber shaved his chin (but spared his nascent sideburns).

  La Grange witnessed the transformation: ‘I can already imagine you in livery,’ he said. ‘Basically, a livery and a duke’s outfit are worn in similar fashion, wishbone protruding, like a turkey. Did you not notice that La Rochefoucauld has the bearing of a sommelier?’

  Octave repeated the question he had asked the Marquis a few moments before: could they not, even just for a moment, call in at the rue Saint-Sauveur?

  ‘You must leave as quickly as possible,’ said La Grange, ‘to pass through the enemy lines surrounding Paris. But give me your key, I will put your belongings out of harm’s way myself.’

  Octave resigned himself to handing over his key - his gold. This would be a loss to him; since the ill-fated Russian expedition, Napoleon had ceased to pay wages and salaries, or else had paid only very small amounts.

  In the rue Saint-Honoré, La Grange himself opened the door of a dusty coach hitched up with ropes; the Russian coachman, who had a thick beard and was wearing a dark coat, did not bother to turn his head. ‘Forgive the awful state of the vehicle,’ the Marquis said to Octave, ‘it’s the only one the governor will make available to his new deputy ...’

  Inside, one of the Tsar’s officers was waiting for them, his hair emerging in waves from beneath his flat cap and falling to his shoulders. He leaned forward to issue an instruction, and the coach set off.

  ‘Where are we going?’ asked Octave.

  ‘To see General Sacken. While you were being disguised as a valet, Sémallé wrote a pass in your name, or rather, in the name of the servant whose cousin you are to become. Sacken has only to sign it, and then we will consider the manner of your departure.’

  Along the length of the rue Saint-Honoré they saw Germans and Asians, Cossacks with sheepskins and red beards, brick-coloured Tartars with small whips around their necks, blue-uniformed uhlans from Silesia, stiff in their high collars, reining in their horses and leaving trails of dung behind them. They reached the Palais-Royal at nightfall just as lamps and windows were being lit around the gardens. There was a party at the Savoy Café, the royalist hideout where the Imperial police had never officially shown their faces. Beneath the wooden arcades the prostitutes strolled once more, luring the soldiers with a swing of the shoulder and a flash of the eye. Under striped awnings, wine was being served up from the barrel. Smoke from the roast-meat stalls stinging their eyes, Octave and the Marquis progressed through greasy fog that stuck to their clothes, past shops where pretty girls, dressed as sellers of knick-knacks, tried to persuade the passers-by to come inside, behind the screens, and entered a restaurant filled with braying officers in green frock-coats. The porter greeted La Grange, pointing towards the stairs.

  Reaching the first floor, they found General Sacken, with his powdered wig and a strip of leather over one eye, his collar open, sitting at table with his entourage. The drawing-room was decorated in the oriental style; multiplied in the mirrors along all four walls, and engulfed by incense smoke that rose from braziers, the soldiers stabbed forks into the dishes before them, greedily tearing at their partridge casserole, stuffing their gullets with cucumbers and bone-marrow or sautéed white beet with ham - all of which, amid laughter and bellowed exchanges, was amply washed down with thick wines that burned the stomach. Some of the men, drunk already, staggered to the wide-open windows, guffawing between belches, and threw gold coins to the citizens assembled beneath the trees. Coloured lanterns, hanging from the branches, lit the beggars in a red light, making them look like a swarm of devils, as they elbowed each other out of the way, fought one another and held out their hats to collect the money raining down on them.

  Sacken’s chin glistened with sauce, and his eye was cloudy. Waving a drumstick he had been chewing on, he gestured to the colonels on either side of him to give up their seats to the new arrivals: ‘Sit down, Monsieur, and you too, Deputy,’ he said to Octave and the Marquis. ‘Are you hungry?’

  ‘We just need your support,’ La Grange replied as he took his seat.
<
br />   ‘A drink for my guests!’

  A servant turbaned like a pantomime Bedouin immediately charged the glasses.

  ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘Place your signature at the bottom of this pass. We’re sending your comrade to join our provincial partisans.’

  ‘Semanow!’

  The General’s orderly, who had been sitting behind him, stood up with a click of his heels, his chest thrown out to emphasize the garland of the yellow aiguilette on his blue double-breasted spencer. The General requested some writing materials, and as the man disappeared, his master read what Sémallé had written. When Semanow returned with a pen, an inkpot and some dusting powder, Sacken signed.

  ‘There you are, Monsieur Chauvin,’ he said, holding out the document to Octave.

  ‘General?’

  ‘Your name is Chauvin, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course,’ said La Grange. ‘And now, about leaving Paris...’

  ‘Semanow!’

  After a brief exchange in Russian, the General told his guests, ‘Semanow will come and lead you out of the tollgates.’

  The Marquis got to his feet with a word of thanks, and rested one hand on Octave’s shoulder as he put down his glass. ‘Good luck. I’d got used to you.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Octave.

  ‘Aren’t you staying, Marquis?’

  ‘No, General, I am going off to earn my post as Deputy Governor. I have a thousand things to do tonight.’

  Then Octave found himself in the midst of the partygoers. To beguile the time he accepted a plate of fried goujons. Suddenly the ceiling slid open, and a gilded chariot descended majestically between the chandeliers. Inside it, about fifteen nymphs struck poses; they let the transparent veils covering the curves of their shoulders slip, each revealing a pink or brown nipple. At this spectacle, the drunks hammered their heels and clapped, and it seemed as though the shaking floor was about to collapse. The girls, with practised smiles, emerged from the chariot, which had come to rest among the tables; they swayed their hips, darted the tips of their tongues between their painted lips, and sat down simpering on the knees of the most decorated men. One of them put her arms around Octave’s neck and, through the general hubbub, whispered some unexpected words in her suburban accent.

  ‘What’re you doing with these rats?’

  ‘I’m working, Rosine,’ said Octave.

  ‘Like me?’

  ‘Regimes change, but you and I stay the same.’

  ‘Sure!’

  The time for conversation had passed, and Rosine wrapped her arms around Octave so as not to attract the attention of the General, who was himself encumbered by a plump little naiad. Octave asked:

  ‘Can you help me?’

  ‘If you protect me, as you once did from the cops, then sure. Do you want more information about my regulars?’

  ‘I’d like you to take my spare key.’

  ‘And put it where exactly? As you can see, I’m wearing nothing but bracelets.’

  ‘I’ll hide it under this cushion, and you can pick it up once this heap of savages have rolled under the tablecloths. You go to my place before dawn, through the antique shop, through the wardrobe door that you’re familiar with, then open the trunk and take out a brown bag. It’s for you.’

  ‘What’s in it?’

  ‘Gold.’

  ‘For me, you say?’

  ‘I don’t want anyone to steal it from me, I’d rather give it to you. I’ve got to leave tonight, and I won’t be able to go back to the rue Saint-Sauveur, do you understand?’

  ‘I don’t, but why me?’

  ‘Because I’ve met you, Rosine, and I owe you that at least.’

  ‘Is there a lot of it, this gold of yours?’

  ‘Enough for you to set yourself up.’

  ‘Open a dress shop?’

  They were interrupted by Semanow’s return.

  *

  Framed on either side by lancers, like a prisoner, Octave trotted quickly along the quays on a Prussian mare. Semanow led the troop and set its speed. To reach the Versailles road, on the left bank, the horsemen turned at the Pont de la Concorde. The public baths - which offered tubs at 230 sous - were illuminated. The imposing wooden construction floated on the water, with orange-trees in pots arranged around the terrace Silhouettes were outlined against torches, amidst a cacophony of laughter and songs.

  On the other side of the Seine, Semanow’s troop continued on its way, guided by the lights of the allied camps. Too large to be lodged in the central districts, the armies were bivouacked on the edge of the city, spilling out into the countryside. Enterprising soldiers had converted arbours into cosy tents. Some Cossacks had built huts by supporting bales of straw between their crossed lances; elsewhere, men from a Berlin infantry regiment lounged about in the grass around their cauldrons of soup.

  The war had not touched the west of the city, no splintered shutters hung from the windows, no shrubs had been mown down by case shot as they had in Belleville. On the contrary, in every village, farmers and bourgeois mingled with soldiers to celebrate the peace. They had rigged up tables on barrels, sheep-fat crackled on the spits, and young peasant girls danced with hussars. Semanow stopped his men on the edge of a large village and said to Octave, ‘I shall leave you now, but don’t dismount, you’ll be setting off again straight away.’

  He entrusted his companion and his pass to an Austrian officer. Octave changed escorts at every village, from staging-post to staging-post, until he reached the hills of Juvisy and the headquarters of the Count of Pahlen. The 6th Corps of the Army of Bohemia occupied the summit; the enclosures for the horses and the rows of tents were lit by torches tied to flagpoles. Octave was blindfolded before being led across the fields. When an officer untied the blindfold, it was nine o’clock in the morning and Octave recognized the clock-tower of the town of Essonnes.

  As he walked, alone now, on a beaten path, Octave reflected that he was in a curious situation: the royalists were sending him to Fontainebleau to spy on the Emperor, while in Paris he had been spying on the royalists on behalf of the Emperor. An opportunist would take advantage of the chance to spy on both camps, but Octave didn’t feel as though he had a traitor’s soul, and anyway, if the Bourbons did successfully establish themselves, they would still be haunted by the ghost of the Chevalier de Blacé, whose name, showy outfits and life Octave had appropriated. When he met his first French patrol, grenadiers whose greatcoats had faded in the rain, he said in a commanding voice: ‘Take me to Fontainebleau, to the Duke of Bassano.’

  ‘And why would the Duke wish to see you?’

  ‘Tell him that Octave Sénécal has come to deliver his report.’

  Two

  CAGED

  IN THE LONG marble gallery of the Palace of Fontainebleau, a man dressed in black was walking at a measured pace, holding a letter. He had thick eyebrows and a permanent smile on his lips like a rictus, and wore a curly white wig and a high collar to underline his ponderous air. Adjutants, chamberlains in scarlet silk highlighted with silver, quartermasters and various degrees of valet all stopped as he passed and greeted him with a bow. He didn’t reply, he didn’t see them. He was Hugues Bernard Maret, the Duke of Bassano, Secretary of State in charge of civilian affairs, the Emperor’s closest confidant. He alone had permission to enter Napoleon’s ordinary apartment unannounced, and the guard officer, a captain in the voltigueurs, merely held the door open for him. From the antechamber, Maret passed into the study; his master had been bent over his maps since five o’clock in the morning, along with Major General Berthier.

  ‘His Majesty has left, your grace,’ said the first valet, very tall, very respectful, and still wearing his travelling clothes.

  ‘I know, Monsieur Constant. How is he this morning?’

  ‘In fine fettle,’ said the valet before withdrawing.

  Napoleon refused to accept defeat, and Fontainebleau was merely a garrison; he had scorned the big apartments, still
closed, for more military accommodation in a mezzanine on the corner of the palace, at the end of the François I gallery. The study overlooked a gloomy clump of fir trees. The maps were scattered higgledy-piggledy on a bare wooden table set on trestles, and some aloe twigs smoked in the incense-burner like an Egyptian statue. Maret took the unsealed letter he held in his hand and threw it in the fire, then consulted the maps, with all their pencilled scribbles, to try to guess his Emperor’s plans.

  After a frenzied outburst of rage two days previously, because he had arrived at night, four hours too late, on the hills beside the capital, he had questioned General Belliard’s retreating cavalrymen and noticed the thousand fires of the enemy camps. Then the Emperor had regained control of himself, and decided to mass the remaining regiments along a river that ran from the left bank of the Seine to the Orlïans road. He had gone to inspect that natural defence and order the fortification of the towns of Essonnes and Corbeil, with their powder mill and flour warehouses. Maret knew that the Emperor was hoping to attack Paris in four days’ time, when Ney and Macdonald had brought their armies back from Champagne; they were exhausted, barefoot and demoralised, and Napoleon hoped to inspire them with his mere presence.

  Maret’s smile concealed his faith. He endured his master’s dangerous whims and furies without flinching; if he had a doubt or a criticism he voiced it when the two of them were alone, never in a meeting (unlike the more brutal Caulaincourt), and because he appeared never to disown the Emperor he was seen by everyone else as a servile cretin. He didn’t care. He had been skilful enough to manufacture the absolute trust of the Emperor and maintain it both by his attitude and his manoeuvres. He sometimes dictated letters to the pretty Duchess of Bassano, for example, in which she confided in him her jealousy of the Emperor: he was too fond of the Duke, and the Duke was too fond of him. Napoleon, who always read his entourage’s correspondence, was delighted by such devotion – and upon returning from his morning inspection, at which he had received great acclaim, he was therefore neither surprised nor angry to find the Secretary of State sitting in his chair of gilded wood. The Emperor threw his hat on the ground, shook his frock-coat into Constant’s waiting hands, and appeared in the green uniform of the chasseurs of the Guard, the modest garb that his soldiers revered. He opened a snuffbox, stuffed a pinch into his nose and sneezed. Maret held out the letter he had brought.