Читать книгу The Last Cavalier: Being the Adventures of Count Sainte-Hermine in the Age of Napoleon - Александр Дюма, Alexandre Dumas - Страница 26

SIX WEEKS HAD PASSED since the two girls had visited the prophetess living on Rue de Tournon. Mademoiselle de Beauharnais had, in spite of her tears, married Louis Bonaparte, and that very same evening Mademoiselle de Sourdis had been going to sign her marriage contract with the Comte de Sainte-Hermine.

Mademoiselle de Beauharnais’s repugnance for her marriage might lead one to believe that she was repulsed by the First Consul’s brother. That was not the case at all. It was simply that she loved Duroc. Love is blind.

Louis Bonaparte was then about twenty-three or twenty-four years old. He was a handsome young man—in fact, he resembled his sister Caroline—though he appeared to be a little cold. He was well educated and had true literary instincts. Upright, kind, and very honest, he never for a minute presumed that the title of king in any way changed the rules and duties of the human conscience. He is perhaps the only prince who, reigning over a foreign people, elicited at least a bit of gratitude and love in his subjects, just as Desaix had done in upper Egypt. He was a just sultan.

Before we leave that loyal-hearted man and the charming creature he was marrying, let us say that the marriage happened suddenly, for no other reason than for Josephine’s incessant hounding.

“Duroc,” Josephine told Bourrienne, repeatedly, “would give me no support. Duroc owes everything to his friendship with Bonaparte, and he would never dare stand up to his protector’s brothers. On the other hand, Bonaparte has great fondness for Louis, who has not the slightest ambition and never will. For me, Louis will be a counterbalance to Joseph and Lucien.”

As for Bonaparte, he took this position with Bourrienne: “Duroc and Hortense love each other. Whatever my wife might do, they are a good fit and shall marry. As for me, I am fond of Duroc; he comes from a good family. After all, I gave Caroline to Murat and Pauline to Leclerc. So I can surely give Hortense to Duroc, for he’s a fine man, as good as they come. As he is now a major general, there is no reason to oppose this marriage. Besides, I have something else in mind for Louis.”

However, the same day the girls went to consult Mademoiselle Lenormand, Hortense, urged on by her friend, tried to enlist, and ensure, the support of her stepfather one more time. After dinner, finding herself alone with Bonaparte, she knelt down gracefully at his feet, and using all her feminine charms on the First Consul, she told him that the proposed union between her and Louis would mean her eternal unhappiness, and while giving full justice to Louis’s virtues, she repeated that she loved only Duroc and that Duroc alone could make her happy.

Bonaparte made a decision.

“Fine,” he said. “Since you insist on marrying him, marry him you will, but I warn you that I must set some conditions. If Duroc accepts them, then all is well. But if he refuses, then this is the last time I shall go against Josephine’s wishes on this subject, and you will become Louis’s wife.”

Walking briskly, as he did when he had made a decision, in spite of any unpleasantness his decision might provoke, Bonaparte went to Duroc’s office but failed to find him, the eternal idler, at his post. “Where is Duroc?” he asked, visibly upset.

“He has gone out,” Bourrienne answered.

“Where do you think he might be?”

“At the Opera.”

“Tell him, as soon as he returns, that I have promised him to Hortense, that he will marry her. But I want the wedding to take place in two days at the latest. I shall give him five hundred thousand francs. I shall name him commander of the eighth military division. He will leave for Toulon the day after his wedding, and we shall live separately as I do not want a son-in-law in my house. I do want to have this matter settled once and for all, so tell me this evening if he is in agreement.”

“I don’t believe he will be,” said Bourrienne.

“Then she shall marry Louis.”

“Is she willing?”

“She has no choice but to be willing.”

At ten, on Duroc’s return, Bourrienne communicated the First Consul’s intentions. But Duroc shook his head. “The First Consul does me a great honor,” he said, “but I shall never marry a woman under such conditions. I prefer now to take a stroll near Palais-Royal.”

With that, Duroc picked up his hat, and with no apparent concern he left. His attitude, to Bourrienne’s eye, only served to prove that Hortense was mistaken about the intensity of the feelings the First Consul’s aide-de-camp had, or pretended to have, for her.

The wedding of Mademoiselle de Beauharnais and Louis Bonaparte took place in the little house on Rue Chantereine. A priest came to bless their union. At the same time Bonaparte had him bless Madame Murat’s marriage.

Far from occasioning the sad atmosphere that had hung over poor Hortense’s wedding, Mademoiselle de Sourdis’s wedding held every promise of light and joy. The two lovebirds, who were apart only between eleven at night and two in the afternoon, spent all the rest of their time together. The most elegant merchants, the most popular jewelers in Paris, had been ransacked by Hector to produce a collection of wedding presents worthy of his fiancée. The opulent offerings were the talk of Parisian high society; Madame de Sourdis had even received letters from people who wanted to view them in person.

Madame de Sourdis had been expecting no more than a simple agreement from the First Consul and Madame Bonaparte, so she was in a tizzy about the favor he had bestowed upon her by proposing to come and sign the marriage contract himself. It was a favor he granted only to his closest friends, for it was of necessity followed by a gift of money or a present, and the First Consul, not a stingy man but by nature more thrifty than generous, did not spend money like water.

The only person less than pleased with the honor was Hector de Sainte-Hermine. Bonaparte’s show of honoring his fiancée’s family worried him. Younger than his brothers, he had never embraced the Royalist cause as actively as they had, but in spite of his admiration for the First Consul’s genius, Hector had not reached the point where he truly liked him. He could not put out of his mind his brother’s brave but painful death and all the bloody details that accompanied it, or the fact that it was the First Consul who had ordered it and who, in spite of strong pleading, had refused to grant a reprieve or pardon. So every time he met Bonaparte, he felt his face begin to sweat and his knees weaken, and against his own will he would avert his eyes. He feared one thing only, and that was to be forced some day, by his high rank or his great fortune, either to serve in the army or to go into exile. He had warned Claire that he would rather leave France than accept any position in the army or civil service. Claire had said it was totally up to him, that in such an event he should do what he needed to do. All she had demanded of her fiancé was that he would allow her to accompany him wherever he might go. That promise was all her tender, loving heart needed.

Claude-Antoine Régnier, who since then became Duke of Massa, had been named chief judge and prefect of the police. He worked in concert with Junot, now governor of Paris, as well as with Bonaparte himself and his aide-de-camp, Duroc. On the day that Bonaparte was to sign Mademoiselle de Sourdis’s marriage contract, he spent an hour with Régnier, for the news recently had been disturbing. Once again the Vendée and Brittany were in upheaval. It did not appear this time to be civil war; rather, shadowy bands of incendiaries were traveling from farm to farm and from chateau to chateau, where they were forcing farmers and proprietors to give them their money and then torturing them most atrociously. The newspapers were reporting instances of poor souls whose hands and feet had been burned to the bone.

In an order written to Régnier, Bonaparte had asked the prefect to gather all the files relating to this business of burnings. Five such events had been confirmed within the past week: The first, in Berric, where the Sulé River takes its source; the second, in Plescop; the third, in Muzillac; the fourth, in Saint-Nolff; the fifth, at Saint-Jean-de-Brévelay. There appeared to be three leaders at the head of the roving bands, but some superior officer no doubt was in control of them all. And that officer, if one were to believe the police agents, was Cadoudal himself. One could only conclude that he had not kept his word to Bonaparte; that instead of withdrawing to England as he had promised, he was fomenting a new uprising in Brittany.

Bonaparte, who normally was correct in his assumption that he could read a man’s character well, shook his head when the chief judge tried to lay on Cadoudal the despicable crimes they were trying now to solve. How could that be possible? That sharp mind that had discussed with Bonaparte, without giving an inch, the interests of peoples and their kings; that pure conscience content to live in England on his own family’s wealth; that heart without ambition who turned down the position of aide-de-camp to the most important general in Europe; that unselfish soul who refused one hundred thousand francs per year to stand by and watch while lesser men tore each other apart—how could a man like that have lowered himself to such a vile activity as burning, the most cowardly act of banditry of all?

Totally impossible!

And Bonaparte had forcefully said as much to his new prefect of police. He had then given orders for the most skillful agents with broad powers to leave Paris and pursue relentlessly the conscienceless murderers. Régnier promised to send the best of his men to Brittany that very day.

By then, it was already almost ten in the evening, and Bonaparte sent word to Josephine that they would be leaving shortly to visit Madame de Sourdis and the young couple.

The countess’s magnificent hotel was gleaming with light. The day had been warm and sunny, and the first flowers and leaves were beginning to break out of their cottony prisons. The warm spring breezes danced in the flowering lilacs that seemed to forest the garden from the castle windows to the terrace along the quay. Beneath those intriguingly scented canopies, colored lamps were burning, and whiffs of perfume and snatches of song wafted from the open windows, while on the drawn curtains the guests cast moving shadows.

Among the guests were the most elegant people in Paris. There were the government officials, that marvelous staff of generals, the oldest of whom was no more thirty-five: Murat, Marmont, Junot, Duroc, Lannes, Moncey, Davout—already heroes at an age when one is normally only a captain. There were poets: Lemercier, still proud of the recent success of his Agamemnon; Chénier, who had written Timoléon, then given up theater and thrown himself into politics; Chateaubriand, who had just discovered God at Niagara Falls and in the depths of America’s virgin forests. There were famous dancers without whom grand balls could not be held: Trénis, Laffitte, Dupaty, Garat, Vestris. And there were the new century’s splendid stars who had appeared in the East: Madame Récamier, Madame Méchin, Madame de Contades, Madame Regnault de Saint-Jean-d’Angély. Finally, there was the brilliant young crowd, made up of men like Caulaincourt, Narbonne, Longchamp, Matthieu de Montmorency, Eugène de Beauharnais, and Philippe de Ségur.

From the moment the word got out that the First Consul and Madame Bonaparte not only were attending the wedding celebration but also would be signing the marriage contract, all society sought an invitation. Guests filled the ground floor and the first story of Madame de Sourdis’s spacious hotel, and they spread out onto the terraces, there to seek relief from the hot, stuffy rooms in the cool evening air.

At quarter to eleven, a mounted escort was seen leaving the Tuileries gates, with each man carrying a torch. Once they had crossed the bridge, the First Consul’s carriage, rolling at a triple gallop, surrounded by torches, swept by in the thunder of hoofbeats and a whirlwind of sparks before it disappeared into the hotel courtyard.

In the midst of a crowd so dense that it seemed impossible for anyone to penetrate, a passage magically opened and, inside the ballroom, widened into a circle that allowed Madame de Sourdis and Claire to approach the First Consul and Josephine. Hector de Sainte-Hermine walked behind Claire and her mother, and though he paled visibly on seeing Bonaparte, he nonetheless stood nobly before him.

Madame Bonaparte embraced Mademoiselle de Sourdis and placed on her arm a pearl necklace worth fifty thousand francs. Bonaparte greeted the two women, then moved toward Hector. Not suspecting that Bonaparte indeed meant to address him, Hector began to step aside. But Bonaparte stopped to face him.

“Monsieur,” said Bonaparte, “if I had not been afraid you would refuse it, I would have brought a gift for you as well, an appointment to the consular guard. But I understand that some wounds need time to heal.”

“For such cures, General, no one has a more skillful hand than you. However.…” Hector sighed and raised his handkerchief to his eyes. “Excuse me, General,” said the young man, after a pause. “I would like to be more worthy of your kindness.”

“That is what comes from having too much heart, young man,” said Bonaparte. “It is always the heart that suffers.”

Turning again to Madame de Sourdis, the First Consul exchanged a few words with her, and complimented Claire. Then he noticed Vestris.

“Oh, there’s young Vestris,” he said. “He lately did me a kindness for which I shall be eternally grateful. He was coming back to perform at the Opera after a short illness, and the performance happened to fall on a day that I was having a reception at the Tuileries. He changed his performance date so as not to conflict with my reception.… Come, Monsieur Vestris, please demonstrate your inimitable courteousness by asking two of these ladies to dance a gavotte for us.”

“Citizen First Consul,” answered this son to the god of dance in an Italian accent that the family had never been able to eradicate, “we are pleased to have just the dance for you, a gavotte I composed for Mademoiselle de Coigny. Madame Récamier and Mademoiselle de Sourdis dance it like angels. All we need is a harp and a horn,” he said, rolling his “r”s, “if Mademoiselle de Sourdis is willing to play the tambourine as she dances. As for Madame Récamier, you know that she is unbeatable in the shawl dance.”

“Come, my ladies,” said the First Consul. “You surely cannot refuse the request that Monsieur Vestris has made and which I support with all my power.”

Mademoiselle de Sourdis would have been happy to escape the ovation given to her, but once her dancing master Vestris had chosen her, and after the First Consul had added his bidding, she did not wait to be asked again.

She was dressed perfectly for this dance. Her white dress, accented by her dark skin, had two clusters of grapes on the shoulders, while grape leaves in reddish autumn colors ran the length of her gown. She also wore grape leaves in her hair.

Madame Récamier was wearing her customary white dress and her red Indian cashmere shawl. The creator of the shawl dance, which had so successfully been taken from the ballroom to the theater, Madame Récamier performed her invention with no want of modesty yet without a hint of constraint as no theater bayadère or professional actress has demonstrated since. Beneath the undulations of the supple cashmere cloth, she was able to reveal her charms at the same time she was pretending to hide them.

The dance lasted nearly a quarter of an hour and ended in a crescendo of applause, to which the First Consul added his own. At his signal, the entire room exploded in bravos. Amidst the boisterous praise, Vestris seemed to be walking on air as he took full credit for all that poetry of form and movement, of expression and attitude.

Once the gavotte had finished, a servant in livery whispered a few words to the Comtesse de Sourdis, to which she responded, “Open the drawing room.”

Two doors slid open, and in the marvelously elegant drawing room, brightly lit, two men of the law were seated at a table lit by two candelabras, between which the marriage contract was awaiting the signatures with which it would soon be honored. The only people authorized to enter the drawing room were the twenty or so who would be signing the contract, which would first be read aloud for the benefit of the other wedding guests.

As the contract was being read, a second lackey in livery entered. As unobtrusively as he could, he slipped over to the Comte de Sainte-Hermine and in a whisper said, “Monsieur le Chevalier de Mahalin asks to speak to you at this very moment.”

“Have him wait,” said Sainte-Hermine, who was standing attendant in the small study at one side of the drawing room.

“Monsieur le Comte, he says that he must see you at this very instant. Even if you were to have the pen in your hand, he would request that you lay it down on the table and come to see him before you sign … oh, there he is at the door.”

With what looked like a gesture of despair, the count joined the Chevalier outside the drawing room. Few people noticed the discreet exit, and those who did were unaware of its unfortunate significance.

After the contract had been read, Bonaparte, always in a hurry to finish what was under way, as eager to leave the Tuileries when he was there as he was to return when he was out, picked up the pen that was lying on the table. Without wondering whether he should be the first to sign, he hastily placed his signature on the contract, and then, just as four years later he would take the crown from the pope’s hands and place it himself on Josephine’s head, he handed his wife the pen.

Josephine signed, then passed the pen to Mademoiselle de Sourdis, who instinctively looked around worriedly, but in vain, for the Comte de Sainte-Hermine. Filled with anxiety, she signed her name and tried to hide her concern. But it was the Comte’s turn next to sign.

A murmur disturbed the drawing room as heads turned in search of the bridegroom. Soon there was no choice but to call out for him. Only there was no answer.

For a long moment, in surprised silence, the guests looked at each other, all of them, wondering what could have happened to the count at the very moment his presence was indispensable and his absence a complete lapse of etiquette.

Finally someone mentioned that during the reading of the contract, a young well-dressed stranger had appeared in the dorway to the drawing room and had exchanged a few whispered words with the count before leading him off, more like his executioner than his friend.

Still, the count might not have left the house. Madame de Sourdis rang for a servant and ordered him to organize a search for the absent bridegroom. For several minutes, amidst the buzz of six hundred stunned wedding guess, servants could be heard calling out to each other from one floor to the next.

Then one of the servants thought to ask the coachmen out in the courtyard if they had seen two young men. Several of them had, as it happened. They’d noticed that one of the young men had been hatless in spite of the rain. They reported that the two men had rushed down the steps and leaped into a carriage, shouting, “To the stagecoach house!” and the carriage had galloped off. One of the coachmen was certain he had recognized the young man without a hat: It was the Comte de Sainte-Hermine.

The guests looked at each other in stupefaction. Then, out of the silence, they heard a voice shout: “The carriage and escort for the First Consul!” They all respectfully allowed Monsieur and Madame Bonaparte, along with Madame Louis Bonaparte, to pass. And as soon as they had left, pandemonium struck.

Everyone rushed from the elegant rooms of Madame de Sourdis’s grand house as if there were a fire.

Neither Madame de Sourdis nor Claire, however, had any inclination to stop them. Fifteen minutes later they found themselves alone.

Madame de Sourdis, with a painful cry, rushed to her daughter’s side. Claire was trembling, about to faint. “Oh, Mother, Mother!” she cried, bursting into sobs as she collapsed into the countess’s arms, “it is just what the prophetess predicted! My widowhood has begun.”