The Twin Lieutenants | Page 4

whom this order had been given.
The Emperor reflected a moment.
"No," said he; "I wish first to see the Minister of Police--only take care
that I am not disturbed until his coming; I wish to sleep."
The usher went out and Napoleon remained alone.
Then turning his eyes to the clock he said:
"Quarter past two; at half after I shall awake."
And throwing himself upon an arm-chair, he extended his left hand
upon the arm of the seat, passed his right band between his waistcoat
and shirt, leaned his head on the mahogany back, closed his eyes,
uttered a faint sigh and slept.
Napoleon possessed, like Caesar, that precious faculty of sleeping when
he would, where he would, and as long as he pleased; when he once
said, "I shall sleep a quarter of an hour," it was rare that the
aide-de-camp, the usher or the secretary to whom the order was given,
and who, at the precise moment, entered to arouse him, found him not
opening his eyes.
Beside, he had another privilege, granted like the first to men of genius;
Napoleon awoke without any transition whatever from deep slumber to
wakefulness; his eyes, on opening seemed immediately illuminated; his
brain was as clear, his ideas as precise a second after his slumber as a
second before.
The door was hardly shut behind the usher, charged to call together the
three men of state, than Napoleon was asleep, and--strange thing!
without one trace of the passions which agitated his mind being
reflected on his face.
A single candle burned in the cabinet.
At the desire expressed by the Emperor to sleep a few minutes, the

usher had taken away the two candelabras, whose too bright a light
might have, striking his eyelids, affected Napoleon's eyes; he had only
left the candle, by the aid of which he had lighted his master and lit the
candelabras.
The entire cabinet swam thus in one of those soft and transparent
half-tints which give to objects so charming and so vaporous a
vagueness. It is in the midst of this luminous obscurity, or this obscure
light as you will, that pass those dreams caused by sleep, or appear
those phantoms which are invoked by remorse.
One would have believed that one of those dreams or one of those
phantoms had waited but for this mysterious light to reign around the
Emperor; for, instantly he had closed his eyes, the tapestry, which fell
before a little door it hid, was upraised, and there appeared a white
form having, thanks to the gauze which wrapped it and its flexibility of
movements, all the fantastic aspect of a shade.
The figure stopped an instant in the door, as in an encasement of
shadows; then with a step so light, so aerial, that the silence was not
broken even by the creak of the floor, she slowly approached Napoleon.
When near him, she held out from a cloud of muslin a charming hand
which she placed upon the back of the chair, near that head which
seemed one of the Roman emperors; she sometime kept her eyes upon
the visage, calm as a medal of Augustus, uttered a half retained sigh,
laid her left hand upon her heart to compress its beatings, bent over,
retaining her breath, kissed the sleeper's brow more with her breath
than with her lips, and feeling at that contact, all light as it was, a
quiver of the muscles of that face, before so immovable that one would
think it a wax mask, she drew herself quickly back.
The motion she had provoked, however, was as imperceptible as
passing; that calm countenance, wrinkled a moment by that breath of
love, as is the lake by the breeze of night, resumed its placid
physiognomy, while, with and still on her heart, the shadowy visitor
approached the bureau, wrote some lines on a half sheet of paper,
returned to the sleeper, slipped the paper into the opening produced

between the shirt and the waistcoat by the introduction of a hand no
less white and delicate than her own; then, as lightly as she came,
smothering the sound of her steps in the carpet's soft thickness,
disappeared by the same door that had given her entrance.
Some seconds after the vanishing of this vision, and as the clock was
about to ring the half after two, the sleeper opened his eyes and
withdrew his hand from his breast.
The half hour sounded.
Napoleon smiled as would have smiled Augustus, at seeing that he was
as much master of himself asleep as awake, and picked up a paper
which had fallen as he took out his hand.
Upon this paper, he distinguished some written words, and bent toward
the only light which lit up the apartment;