The Man of Destiny | Page 7

for her; but no lady could resist you, General.
NAPOLEON (sourly, resuming his march). Hm! You will never be hanged. There is no satisfaction in hanging a man who does not object to it.
GIUSEPPE (sympathetically). Not the least in the world, excellency: is there? (Napoleon again looks at his watch, evidently growing anxious.) Ah, one can see that you are a great man, General: you know how to wait. If it were a corporal now, or a sub-lieutenant, at the end of three minutes he would be swearing, fuming, threatening, pulling the house about our ears.
NAPOLEON. Giuseppe: your flatteries are insufferable. Go and talk outside. (He sits down again at the table, with his jaws in his hands, and his elbows propped on the map, poring over it with a troubled expression.)
GIUSEPPE. Willingly, your excellency. You shall not be disturbed. (He takes up the tray and prepares to withdraw.)
NAPOLEON. The moment he comes back, send him to me.
GIUSEPPE. Instantaneously, your excellency.
A LADY'S VOICE (calling from some distant part of the inn). Giusep-pe! (The voice is very musical, and the two final notes make an ascending interval.)
NAPOLEON (startled). What's that? What's that?
GIUSEPPE (resting the end of his tray on the table and leaning over to speak the more confidentially). The lady, excellency.
NAPOLEON (absently). Yes. What lady? Whose lady?
GIUSEPPE. The strange lady, excellency.
NAPOLEON. What strange lady?
GIUSEPPE (with a shrug). Who knows? She arrived here half an hour before you in a hired carriage belonging to the Golden Eagle at Borghetto. Actually by herself, excellency. No servants. A dressing bag and a trunk: that is all. The postillion says she left a horse--a charger, with military trappings, at the Golden Eagle.
NAPOLEON. A woman with a charger! That's extraordinary.
THE LADY'S VOICE (the two final notes now making a peremptory descending interval). Giuseppe!
NAPOLEON (rising to listen). That's an interesting voice.
GIUSEPPE. She is an interesting lady, excellency. (Calling.) Coming, lady, coming. (He makes for the inner door.)
NAPOLEON (arresting him with a strong hand on his shoulder). Stop. Let her come.
VOICE. Giuseppe!! (Impatiently.)
GIUSEPPE (pleadingly). Let me go, excellency. It is my point of honor as an innkeeper to come when I am called. I appeal to you as a soldier.
A MAN's VOICE (outside, at the inn door, shouting). Here, someone. Hello! Landlord. Where are you? (Somebody raps vigorously with a whip handle on a bench in the passage.)
NAPOLEON (suddenly becoming the commanding officer again and throwing Giuseppe off). There he is at last. (Pointing to the inner door.) Go. Attend to your business: the lady is calling you. (He goes to the fireplace and stands with his back to it with a determined military air.)
GIUSEPPE (with bated breath, snatching up his tray). Certainly, excellency. (He hurries out by the inner door.)
THE MAN's VOICE (impatiently). Are you all asleep here? (The door opposite the fireplace is kicked rudely open; and a dusty sub-lieutenant bursts into the room. He is a chuckle-headed young man of 24, with the fair, delicate, clear skin of a man of rank, and a self-assurance on that ground which the French Revolution has failed to shake in the smallest degree. He has a thick silly lip, an eager credulous eye, an obstinate nose, and a loud confident voice. A young man without fear, without reverence, without imagination, without sense, hopelessly insusceptible to the Napoleonic or any other idea, stupendously egotistical, eminently qualified to rush in where angels fear to tread, yet of a vigorous babbling vitality which bustles him into the thick of things. He is just now boiling with vexation, attributable by a superficial observer to his impatience at not being promptly attended to by the staff of the inn, but in which a more discerning eye can perceive a certain moral depth, indicating a more permanent and momentous grievance. On seeing Napoleon, he is sufficiently taken aback to check himself and salute; but he does not betray by his manner any of that prophetic consciousness of Marengo and Austerlitz, Waterloo and St. Helena, or the Napoleonic pictures of Delaroche and Meissonier, which modern culture will instinctively expect from him.)
NAPOLEON (sharply). Well, sir, here you are at last. Your instructions were that I should arrive here at six, and that I was to find you waiting for me with my mail from Paris and with despatches. It is now twenty minutes to eight. You were sent on this service as a hard rider with the fastest horse in the camp. You arrive a hundred minutes late, on foot. Where is your horse!
THE LIEUTENANT (moodily pulling off his gloves and dashing them with his cap and whip on the table). Ah! where indeed? That's just what I should like to know, General. (With emotion.) You don't know how fond I was of that horse.
NAPOLEON (angrily sarcastic). Indeed! (With sudden misgiving.) Where are the letters and