A Conspiracy of the Carbonari | Page 3

Danube and the throng of
human beings who surrounded him.
Behind him, in gloomy silence, stood his generals--he did not notice
them. His soldiers marched before him--he did not heed them. But they
saw him, and turned from him to the mountains of corpses, to the
moaning wounded men, the pools of blood which everywhere
surrounded them, then gazed once more at him whom they were wont
to hail exultingly as their hero, their earthly god, and whom to-day, for
the first time, they execrated; whom in the fury of their grief they even
ventured to accuse and to scorn.
But he did not hear. He heard naught save the voices in his own breast,
to whose gloomy words the wails and groans of the wounded formed a
horrible chorus.

Suddenly he rose slowly, and turning toward Marshal Bessières, who,
with his wounded arm in a sling, stood nearest to him, Napoleon
pointed to the river.
"To Ebersdorf!" he said, in his firm, imperious voice. "You will
accompany me, marshal. You too, gentlemen," he added, turning to the
captured Austrian General Weber, and the Russian General
Czernitschef, who had arrived at Napoleon's headquarters the day
before the battle on a special mission from the Czar Alexander, and
been a very inopportune witness of his defeat.
The two generals bowed silently and followed the emperor, who went
hastily down to the shore. A boat with four oarsmen lay waiting for him,
and his two valets, Constant and Roustan, stood beside the skiff to help
the emperor enter.
He thrust back their hands with a swift gesture of repulse, and stepped
slowly and proudly down into the swaying, rocking boat which was to
bear the Cæsar and his first misfortune to his headquarters, Castle
Ebersdorf. He darted a long angry glance at the foaming waves roaring
around the skiff, a glance before which the bravest of his marshals
would have trembled, but which the insensible waters, tossing and
surging below, swallowed as they had swallowed that day so many of
his soldiers. Then, sinking slowly down upon the seat which Roustan
had prepared for him of cushions and coverlets, he again propped his
arms on his knees, rested his face in his hands, and gazed into vacancy.
The companions whom he had ordered to attend him, and his two
valets followed, and the boat put off from the shore, and danced,
whirling hither and thither, over the foam-crested waves.
But amid the roar of the river, the plash of the dipping oars, was heard
the piteous wailing of the wounded, the loud oaths and jeers of the
soldiers who had rushed down to the shore, and, with clenched fists,
hurled execrations after the emperor, accusing him, with angry scorn,
of perfidy because he left them in this hour of misfortune.
Napoleon did not hear the infuriated shouts of his soldiery; he was
listening to the tempest, the waves, and the menacing voices in his own

breast.
Once only he raised himself from his bowed posture and again darted
an angry glance at the foaming water as if he wished to lash the hated
element with the look, as Xerxes had done with iron chains.
"The Danube, with its furious surges, and the storm with its mad power,
have conquered me," he cried in a loud, angry voice. "Ay, all Nature
must rise in rebellion and wrath to wrest a victory from me. Nature, not
Archduke Charles, has vanquished me!"
The waves roared and danced recklessly on, wholly unmindful of the
emperor's wrathful exclamation; they sang and thundered a poem of
their might, jeering him: "Beware of offending us, for we can avenge
ourselves; we hold your fate in our power. Beware of offending us, for
we are bearing you on our backs in a fragile boat, and the Cæsar and
his empire weigh no more than the lightest fisherman with his nets.
Beware of offending us, for you are nothing but an ordinary man;
mortal as the poorest beggar, and, if we choose, we will drag you down
to our cold, damp grave. Beware of offending us!" Did he understand
the song of the mocking waves? Was that why so deep a frown of
wrath rested on his brow?
He again sank into his gloomy reverie, which no one ventured to
disturb--no one save the jeering surges.
Yet he seemed to think that some one addressed him, that some one
whom he must answer had spoken.
"Why, yes," he cried, shrugging his shoulders, "yes, it is true, I have
lost a battle! But when one has gained forty victories, it really is not
anything extraordinary if he loses one engagement."[A]
No one ventured to answer this exclamation. The emperor did not seem
to expect it; perhaps he did not even know that any one