The Last Cavalier: Being the Adventures of Count Sainte-Hermine in the Age of Napoleon. Alexandre Dumas

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      Bonaparte

      “So,” asked George, “was that indeed your final word?”

      “My final word.”

      “And yet history provided a precedent.…”

      “The history of England, not our own history, monsieur,” Bonaparte interrupted. “Me playing the role of Monck? Oh no! If I had to choose and if I wanted to imitate an Englishman, I would prefer Washington. Monck lived in a century when the prejudices that we fought against and overturned in 1789 were still strong. Even if Monck had tried to become king, he would not have been able to. A dictator perhaps, but nothing more. To do more, he would have needed Cromwell’s genius. A quality lacking in Richard, Cromwell’s son, who was not able to retain power—of course he was an idiot, the typical son of a great man. And then, some fine result, the restoration of Charles II! Replacing a puritan court with a libertine court! Following his father’s example, he dissolved three or four parliaments and tried to govern alone, then set up a cabinet of lackeys that attended more to matters of royal debauchery than to the business of the court. He was greedy for pleasure and stopped at nothing when money was at stake. He sold Dunkirk to Louis XIV—Dunkirk, which was England’s key possession in France. And he had Algernon Sidney executed, on the pretext that he was party to some nonexistent conspiracy, when, in fact, Sidney had refused not only to attend the commission that sentenced Charles I to death but also, adamantly, to sign the act ordering the royal execution.

      “Cromwell died in 1658, when he was fifty-nine years old. During the ten years he was in power, he had the time to undertake many changes but to complete only a few. In fact, he was trying to accomplish complete reform: political reform by replacing a monarchy with a republican government, and religious reform by abolishing Catholicism in favor of Protestantism. Well, if you assume I shall live as long as Cromwell, to the age of fifty-nine—it’s not very long, is it?—I have about thirty more years: three times as many as Cromwell had. And you see that I’m not trying to change things. I’m content to continue things the way they are. I’m not overthrowing things, but rather raising them back up.”

      Cadoudal laughed. “What about the Directory?”

      “The Directory was not a government,” replied Bonaparte. “Is it possible to establish power on a rotten foundation like the Directory’s? If I had not returned from Egypt, the Directory would have collapsed under its own corrupt weight. All I had to do was nudge it a little. France wanted nothing to do with the Directory. And for proof of that, look at how France welcomed me back. What had the Directory done with the country in my absence? When I returned I found poor France threatened on every side by an enemy that already had a foothold inside three of its borders. I had left the country in peace; I found it now at war. I had left with victories behind me; I returned to defeats. I had left the country’s coffers with millions from Italy; on my return I found misery and spoliatory laws everywhere. What has become of those one hundred thousand soldiers, my companions in glory, men whom I knew by name? They are dead. While I was taking Malta, Alexandria, Cairo; while I was engraving with the point of our bayonets the name of France on pylons in Thebes and on obelisks in Karnak; while I was avenging the defeat of the last king of Jerusalem at the base of Mount Thabor—what was the Directory doing with my best generals? They allowed Humbert to be taken in Ireland; they arrested and tried to dishonor Championnet in Naples. Schérer retreated, thus obliterating the victorious path I had laid out in Italy. They let the English invade the coast of Holland; they got Raimbault killed in Turin, David at Alkmaar, and Joubert at Novi. And when I asked for reinforcements to keep Egypt, munitions to defend it, wheat to plant for its future, they sent me congratulatory letters and decrees stating that the Army of the Orient was meritorious and the pride of France.”

      “They thought you could find all you needed in Acre, General.”

      “That is my only failure, George,” said Bonaparte, “and if I had succeeded, I swear, I would have surprised all of Europe! If I had succeeded! I’ll tell you what I would have done then. I would have found the pasha’s treasures in Acre and enough weapons to arm three hundred thousand men. I would have roused and armed all of Syria, where everyone decried Djazzar’s cruelty; I would have marched on Damascus and Aleppo. My army would have grown larger and larger as I advanced, and I would have announced to the people the abolition of all servitude and of the pasha’s tyrannical government. I would have marched to Constantinople and overthrown the Turkish Empire. I would have founded a great new empire in the Orient that would have guaranteed my place in history. And then I would have come back to Paris through Adrianople or Vienna—after wiping out the house of Austria!”

      “That’s like Caesar’s plan when he declared war on the Parthians,” Cadoudal answered coldly.

      “Ah, I was sure we would come back to Caesar,” said Bonaparte with a laugh, his teeth clenched. “Well, as you see, I’m willing to accept discussion on whatever grounds you choose. Suppose that when he was twenty-nine years old, as I am now, Caesar, instead of leading a patrician life of debauchery in Rome and accumulating the greatest debts known in his time, suppose that he had been instead the Citizen First Consul. Suppose that at twenty-nine his campaign in Gaul had already been finished, his Egyptian campaign completed, and his Spanish campaign successfully ended. Suppose, I repeat, that he was twenty-nine instead of fifty years old—the age at which Victory, who loves only the young, begins to abandon bald brows—do you think he would not then have been both Caesar and Augustus?”

      “Yes,” Cadoudal replied brusquely, “unless he had happened first to find Brutus, Cassius, and Casca in his path with their daggers.”

      “So,” said Bonaparte with sadness, “my enemies are counting on assassination! In that case, it’ll be easy for them, and especially for you, since you are my enemy. What is preventing you at this very moment, if you have the same convictions as Brutus, from striking me down as he struck Caesar? We are alone, the doors are closed. You have your saber. You could surely be upon me before my guards could stop you.”

      “No,” said George. “No, we are not counting on assassination. I believe it would require grave circumstances for one of us to decide to become an assassin. But the chances of war remain. One simple rebellion could cost you all your prestige, a cannonball could take off your head the way it did Marshal Berwick’s, or a bullet could strike you like Joubert and Desaix. And then what will become of France? You have no children, and your brothers.…”

      Bonaparte stared hard at Cadoudal, who completed his thoughts with a shrug. Bonaparte clenched his fists. George had found the chink in his armor.

      “I admit,” said Bonaparte, “that from that point of view you are right. I risk my life daily, and daily my life could be taken. But even if you do not believe in Providence, I do. I believe that nothing happens by chance. I believe that when Providence, on August 13, 1769, exactly one day after Louis XV had rendered the edict uniting Corsica to France, allowed a child to be born in Ajaccio, a child who would carry out the 13th Vendémiaire and the 18th Brumaire, it had great designs and supreme plans in store for him. I was that child, and Providence has always kept me safe in the midst of great dangers. Since I have a mission, I fear nothing. Because my mission is my armor. If I am mistaken; if, instead of living the twenty-five or thirty years I think are necessary to accomplish my goals, I am struck twenty-two times with a dagger like Caesar, or my head is blown off by a cannonball like Berwick’s, or a bullet hits me in the chest like Joubert or Desaix—then that is because Providence has its own good reasons for allowing such things to happen, and Providence will then provide what France needs. Believe me, George, Providence never fails great nations.

      “A moment ago we were talking about Caesar, and you evoked for me the image of him collapsing at the feet of Pompey’s statue after he’d been СКАЧАТЬ