Napoleon's Exile

by Patrick Rambaud

  ‘Your worship,’ said the Emperor, making no move to take them, ‘these keys could not be in better hands than yours.’

  Traditi was very annoyed about this, because he didn’t have a free hand to slip into his pocket and pull out the speech he had spent much of the night composing. To his aid came the Vicar-General, Arrighi, a sanguine, gossipy character, a great trencherman who enjoyed a drink, and who had now been taking advantage of his kinship with Napoleon, established the previous day, on the grounds of their shared Corsican background. Arrighi borrowed some words of the Church to glorify the Emperor, who bowed to custom and touched his lips to his pectoral cross. Two children from the choir, urchins in surplices and worn-out shoes, stood on either side of him; one of them swung his censer on the end of its chain as though it were a slingshot, the other had a finger half-way up his nose.

  Meanwhile other boats from the Undaunted had docked. Bertrand climbed out — his face long, sad and sulky - then came plumed little Drouot, Campbell, stiff in his ceremonial apparel, and the treasurer Peyrusse (jovial, curly-haired, a native of Carcassonne who preserved the cheerful tone for which that town is celebrated, even in the most terrible circumstances — it was said that when Moscow was burned, he was surprised not to be able to find anyone to iron his linen); General Dalesme mingled with the quartermasters, the pharmacist and the secretary.

  The cortège could now form, and begin its march to the cathedral. With this in mind, the dais was brought forward. The dais! Held by four ragged villagers, trembling and overwhelmed by the honour, it consisted of wooden handles supporting a piece of decorated fabric, stuck with bits of scarlet cloth and paper cut into motifs and fringes.

  ‘What a farce!’ thought the Emperor. ‘What a lamentable farce!’

  Images of his coronation stirred in his memory in contrast ... It had been both snowy and foggy, the princesses had been wearing very low-cut dresses despite the cold of Notre-Dame, there had been dozens of bishops in attendance, and the Pope had worn his gold cloth cope, the dignitaries had bowed their heads in costumes devised by David and Isabey: puffy, slashed breeches, velvet berets, ostrich feathers, wide-brimmed Renaissance hats; antique drapes, gold, a lot of gold - and Josephine had been so moved. A real dais carried along by canons, the silver-gilt sceptre ... And here he was today, fat-bellied under a rickety parasol ... The gunfire, the music, the bells and the shouting had not subsided; those flies of ill-omen buzzed everywhere as though around carrion.

  The Emperor settled under the dais to escape the scorching sun, and the procession rattled off, both moving and grotesque, drums at the front, three dull blows then three rolls, more funereal than solemn.

  Past the Sea Gate, in the town itself, Dalesme’s infantry supplied reinforcements for the National Guard, who were unable to cope with the event by themselves; with some difficulty they managed to create a path through the middle of the crowd. There were people at the windows, on the balconies draped with silk shawls, crowds filled the stands and there were even people on the roofs. There were ladies in turbans and short jackets, wild-looking girls wearing nothing but flowers, rags and jangling jewellery. Evviva I’lmperatore! Handkerchiefs flew threw the air, rosepetals rained down, men raised their top hats or tricornes. Terrified by the cannon, swallows swirled around in a flock above the crowd, sometimes getting caught in the festoons of paper stretched between the houses, the branches of palm trees, or the rough flags sewn in the night. To add to the cacophony, little tearaways threw fire-crackers, some of which exploded between the Emperor’s legs; Monsignor Arrighi, his face bright red with fury, shook his fist and kicked the boys in the pants. The procession advanced with some difficulty over scattered armfuls of box and bayleaves, and despite the short distance it was almost an hour before it reached the Piazza del Duomo.

  The promised cathedral was nothing but a small, sober church, with white walls and a mosaic façade. The Emperor finally entered, framed on either side by two petrified chamberlains. Disguised in theatrical costumes, they tried to strike a pose.

  *

  ‘Thank you! Well done! Ah, you’ve made a proper fool out of me!’ croaked Octave, shaving his chin over a basin.

  ‘You wanted to see some indigenous people close up,’ Monsieur Pons defended himself with a flash of irony.

  ‘Well, I’ve certainly done that! Savages, they are! Monkeys!’

  ‘You aren’t being very nice about your new compatriots ...’

  ‘I’ve been to slums in Paris, I swear to you, but really, that takes the biscuit!’

  ‘Don’t exaggerate, now, Monsieur Sénécal, and anyway, you’re going to help the Emperor to civilize them.’

  Octave had woken at first light, because Gianna’s family home had no shutters. Looking around him, he’d thought he was still asleep and having a nightmare. In a large rough bed with neither sheets nor blankets, seven or eight people, infant to grandmother, lay sleeping, all completely naked - as indeed Octave was himself. He had leapt up, pushing aside Gianna’s arm and her right leg, which had pinned him to the palliasse (she was buxom, certainly, but so what?), rummaging around for his clothes, which he found among others, on the beaten earth floor. Shaking the dust from them, he had dressed in silence and escaped into the steep deserted streets. He’d had to wait for ages on the steps of the town hall, because it was so early that the door was locked. Finally, however, shutters opened, blinds were raised, activity resumed. Workmen were checking the solidity of the platforms by jumping up and down on them, and men on ladders were hooking up garlands. A cart covered with mauve flowers passed by.

  It was Joseph Hutré, the Deputy Mayor, who opened the town hall to Octave. Hutré, a musician from Toulon, had fled the Republic in an English sloop, chased by Captain Bonaparte’s cannon, but he had compensated for that regrettable episode by marrying a woman from Elba, and he now kept the prestigious salt-works store on the Piazza Gran Bastione. He showed Octave the apartment the council had reserved for the sovereign: four austere rooms where, in the days of the Consulate, a disgraced colonel, Hugo, had lived with his three little boys, their nurse and a fat mistress. Together, Octave and the deputy helped some English soldiers, and Hubert the valet, to unload the first pieces of furniture from the Undaunted. As they worked they saw the mountain people trekking down into the town behind their priests, and massing near the port.

  Early in the afternoon, just as the Emperor was being subjected to an interminable Te Deum in the neighbouring ‘cathedral', Monsieur Pons had surprised Octave in the tiny room where he was doing his best to shave, because if there was one thing His Majesty could not bear it was an untidy chin. They had barely exchanged three rather sour phrases when the Sub-prefect announced: ‘He’s coming!’

  The Emperor was walking beneath the plane trees of the parade ground, through the middle of a crowd, amid ceaseless hubbub, and he had only a few more yards to cover before entering the town hall, where he expected to hold an audience. The official drawing-room had been modified for the purpose. The Mayor’s throne, decorated with gold paper, was perched on the school platform. Some letter ‘N’s cut from cardboard were stuck to the wall, a number of crystal candelabras had been arranged around the place, and a large painting, showing tuna fishermen in the Gulf of Procchio, had been hung in pride of place. Some musicians who had taken refuge in a corner of the room were tuning their instruments - three violins and two harps.

  Octave and Monsieur Pons stayed in the background as Napoleon, by now seated on this fantastic throne, gave an audience to the people of Elba. Handpicked by the Sub-prefect, and channelled along cramped corridors, these privileged folk stepped forward to hear the Emperor. They were curious and deferential, and Napoleon, as much at ease as he would have been in the Tuileries before a panel of princes, spoke to them. So familiar was he with the problems and geography of the island that his listeners were won over. Monsieur Pons, however, knew that the dignitaries had, only that very morning, talked the Emperor through their record books, and he had sim
ply assimilated everything they told him.

  In French or Italian, depending on who he was responding to, Napoleon gave confident and pertinent replies to everyone; he found solutions for the development of the sardine trade in Porto Longone, the exploitation of salt or the growing of wheat, which was sadly restricted to the single canton of Campo; he spoke of the excellent chestnut purée that was a staple on the island, the black lodestone used for magnetizing compasses, the medicinal plants that could be collected nowhere else. He spoke of the Etruscans, and the Romans who had cut the columns of their porticoes from the island’s greenish-grey marble. He told the story of the Lombards, the Vandals, the Genoese, the King of Naples who had given up this rich but arid land to France.

  The whole affair lasted till nightfall.

  Outside, people who had not been invited to the audience set off fireworks and danced at the crossroads. The town was illuminated, but the mountain people were already lighting torches to return in long processions to their provinces.

  Monsieur Pons identified the bigwigs for Octave: the chief justice, surrounded by magistrates like a hen and her chicks, the archpriest, some smiling curés, the garrison officers, the handful of French residents (some of whom had, only a day before, been wearing white cockades and who would be leaving by the first boat), the town councillors, a few shopkeepers. Octave nudged his mentor, having spotted the two Italians Pons had pointed out to him at the Buono Gusto café: they were talking in an undertone to Count Bertrand, unfolding documents and showing them to him. As they were still there when everyone else had gone, Bertrand immediately led them into the drawing-room to speak with the Emperor. Before the door closed on their discussion, Octave caught a phrase: ‘Dite si faccia l’Italia, si l’Italia si fará’ which Monsieur Pons translated for him: ‘Say that Italy should form, and Italy will form.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘That they are patriots, and would like our Emperor to be theirs. After all Napoleon is Italian ...’

  The two Turinese conspirators left the drawing-room a quarter of an hour later, pulled their hats down over their eyes and slipped out without a word. The Emperor followed them thoughtfully, stopping in the corridor and noticing Octave. At once his mood changed.

  ‘Shut that window, Monsieur Sénécal! I have already put up with those dreadful violinists and their wretched ritornellos, but enough’s enough! Can’t we ever have any peace and quiet around here?’

  A girls’ choir was giving a serenade outside the town hall, and Napoleon, aghast, retired with Bertrand and Dalesme to a more soundproofed room. Meanwhile Octave was waiting to show the Emperor his excessively modest apartment. Hubert, the valet, had brought up the camp-bed used on expeditions, and set out some familiar trinkets on the chairs and rustic chests of drawers that had been donated by local families.

  Monsieur Pons saw no point in keeping watch, since it was midnight, and was just preparing to take his leave when the door opened.

  ‘Mr Mining Administrator, will you allow me to lunch with you, at Rio Marina?’

  ‘Yes, sire.’

  ‘At nine o’clock in the morning?’

  ‘Yes, sire.’

  ‘Grand Marshal Bertrand tells me that the mines have not worked for weeks, that you have abandoned your lovely house for a dwelling in Portoferraio, and that my desire cannot be satisfied in such a short time ...’

  ‘On the contrary, it’s very easy.’

  ‘You see, Bertrand, killjoy that you are!’ said the Emperor, then, addressing Pons once more: ‘Tell me frankly if it isn’t too much of a disturbance for you ...’

  ‘It doesn’t disturb me at all, it’s just...’

  ‘Just what?’

  ‘I crave Your Majesty’s indulgence.’

  ‘And I grant it you, but what about Madame Pons? Wouldn’t it be an abuse of her kindness?’

  ‘It will make her very happy.’

  ‘You see, Bertrand!’

  ‘At nine o’clock, Your Majesty will find his table laid.’

  Even more sullen than before, Bertrand left with Monsieur Pons and told him to mobilize a beaming populace to acclaim the Emperor.

  *

  At five o’clock in the morning, when the sky was still black, a group of horsemen entered the tunnel of the Land Gate, at the bottom of the curtain walls of the Forte

  Sant’Ilario, the portcullis of which was reached by a steep path. The vault of the tunnel was wide enough for large berlins to get through, but it was gloomy and cold, lit only very faintly by the glow from a grilled niche containing a statue of the Madonna. Suddenly, though, a flickering light illuminated the walls at the first bend in the tunnel, and the horsemen had to press themselves against the wall to make room for a religious procession. Penitents in pointed hoods carried smoking torches, walking ahead of a bald priest and a coffin carried on a litter decorated with biblical scenes, bringing a Brother of Mercy to the cemetery. Other penitents followed behind them, then women dressed in black, hidden behind floral wreaths. The Emperor removed his hat and whispered to General Dalesme, who was escorting him and his entourage to the Rio mines, where Monsieur Pons awaited them, ‘A funeral? At this time of day?’

  ‘Because of the heat, sire, burials take place before dawn or at nightfall. . .’

  Once the last of the penitents had passed, the horsemen were finally able to leave the smoky tunnel, emerging on to a stony road at the entrance to a valley tinged red by the rising sun. They didn’t have far to travel, but had to stop often to receive the tributes of the peasants at every village, every hamlet. After that the roads were bad, narrow and poorly marked. At the foot of the mountains they rode along the gulf, and then beside ravines, they climbed into wild pine forests, and back down a road lined with aloes. Beyond the fortress of Porto Longone, built on granite blocks, battered by the waves, the land of iron began: no more trees, and not a tuft of grass; instead they saw grey houses, and hillsides left ashen by slag from the mines. The path was pitted by the carts that brought the ore to the barges.

  Evviva l’Imperatore! On the ridges, workers unfurled their new banners, and at Rio Marina, 150 miners, picks shouldered, hailed His Majesty. Boatmen lit the fuses of their antique culverins and local girls, their black hair entwined with ribbons, ran to meet him, throwing flower petals, squealing like mad things and trying to kiss his hands. Pons de l’Hérault, who was quite nervous, and the representatives of the local councils - some of whom had, the previous week, cried Death to Napoleon! and set fire to effigies of him - now welcomed him with open displays of emotion. When Bertrand and Dalesme helped the Emperor from his horse, the ovation rose a notch, but the endlessly repeated cheers of Evviva l’Imperatore were now joined by clear cries of Viva il nostro babbo! - which Napoleon understood perfectly well - directed at Monsieur Pons.

  ‘I get a sense that you’re the King,’ said the Emperor irritably, as the two men walked beneath the inevitable triumphal arch of chestnut and oak leaves.

  ‘Oh no, I’m not their sovereign ...’

  ‘But you are their father, isn’t that what they’re shouting?’

  ‘I am their father, yes...’

  ‘That’s even better.’

  The day had not started well.

  Monsieur Pons kept the ceremonies to a minimum, cut short the compliments that Napoleon had heard twenty times already since his arrival and, after a brief stroll on the rocks, took his visitors to lunch at the mine administration mansion -where he lived under normal circumstances, a sad but spacious mansion by the sea. He had not been idle. He’d galloped to Rio at dead of night, woken his workers with a lantern, asked the gardener to bedeck the front steps with flowers, ordered nets put out at the first light of day. By some miracle his fishermen had caught a twenty-five-pound fish, and others besides; enough to prepare a bouillabaisse every bit as good as the one he had given Captain Bonaparte in Bandol, the first Napoleon had ever eaten. Would he remember?

  None of Monsieur Pons’s efforts were rewarded, however, and were
in fact seen as pure insolence because the gardener, who was a fine man but ignorant of symbols, had arranged white lilies very conspicuously at the bottom of the steps. This was not greatly to the Emperor’s liking.

  ‘This insignium bodes well!’

  Inside, Napoleon asked his host, ‘Isn’t Madame Pons here?’

  ‘She stayed in Portoferraio,’ Pons replied uneasily.

  ‘Couldn’t she receive me?’

  ‘She’s still making flags ...’

  ‘You will thank her for the care she is taking . . .’

  ‘Certainly, monsieur,’ stammered Pons, forgetting the correct form of address.

  His guests passed into the dining-room and poor Monsieur Pons wondered what blunders he was going to commit next, but His Majesty had stopped talking to him, preferring to direct questions about iron extraction at General Dalesme - or that imbecile Taillade, a naval lieutenant without a vessel, who had settled on the island but was so pretentious that the people of Elba simply laughed at him. Now he acted as though he knew everything, and tried to puff himself up by explaining things Napoleon already knew: that the name Elba came from the Etruscan ilva, iron; that the Medici had sent their convicts to the citadel of Porto Longone, and it was from them that the mine-workers were descended.

  Bertrand himself had arranged the seating of the guests, placing Monsieur Pons far away from the Emperor, as though he were being punished. Dalesme, clearly exasperated by the situation, kept an eye on the administrator, gesturing him to be calm. The worst moment was when the Emperor expressed surprise that the ore could not be transformed on the island, for want of wood to feed the kilns. ‘Then we will plant forests,’ he said, adding cheerfully that he felt himself turning into a peasant. When the bouillabaisse was served, he asked what the dish was, and claimed never to have eaten it before — glancing at Monsieur Pons out of the corner of his eye as he did so. Pons could hardly contain himself, and almost left the table several times, but the Emperor then began talking about transforming the island, building real roads, sewers in the towns; he thought it wrong that Elba was unable to produce enough wheat for its own needs, and had to import its grain.