The Twin Lieutenants | Page 8

keeps me from doing it."
Then addressing the others, he added:
"Ah, I know how it is; you wish to return to Paris, to resume your habits and your mistresses. Well, I will keep you under arms twenty-four years!"
And he threw the gun back to the grenadier, who let it fall from grief.
In this moment of exasperation, he perceived General Legendre, one of the signers of the capitulation of Baylen.
He went right up to him with a threatening eye.
The general stopped as if his feet had taken root in the ground.
"Your hand, general," said he.
The general held out his hand with hesitation.
"This hand," said the Emperor, regarding it, "how is it that it has not withered by signing the capitulation of Baylen!"
And he threw it from him as he would have done that of a traitor.
The general who, in signing, had only obeyed superior orders, remained thunderstruck.
Then Napoleon, mounting his horse, with flaming visage, had returned to Valladolid from whence, as we have said, he started the following day for France.
He was still in this frame of mind when the usher, again opening the door, announced:
"His Excellency the Minister of Police."
And Fouche's pale face, more pallid from fear, appeared hesitatingly upon the door-sill.
"Yes, sire," said Napoleon, "I can understand why you hesitate to present yourself to me."
Fouche was one of those characters which recede before the unknown danger, but who march to it, or await it, when it has taken a form.
"I, sire?" said he raising his head with its yellow hair, livid tint, sleepy blue eyes and large mouth; "I, the former iron monger of Lyons, why should I hesitate to present myself before your Majesty?"
"Because I am not a Louis XVI. !"
"Your Majesty makes allusion--and it is not the first time--to my vote of the 19th January--"
"What if I do make allusion to that?"
"I answer then that, as deputy to the National Convention, I swore an oath to the nation and not to the king; I kept my oath to the nation."
"And to whom did you make oath on the 13th Thermidor, the year VII.? Was it to me?"
"No, sire."
"Why did you then serve me so well on the 18th Brumaire?"
"Does your Majesty recollect the saying of Louis XIV.: 'The State, it is I?'"
"Yes, sir."
"Well, sire, on the 18th Brumaire, the nation was you; that is why I served you."
"That did not prevent me, in 1803, from taking away the portfolio from you."
"Your Majesty hoped to find a Minister of Police, if not more faithful, at least more skilful, than I--He returned me my portfolio in 1804."
Napoleon made a few paces before the mantel, his head bowed upon his breast, crushing in his hand the paper on which Josephine had written some words.
"Who authorized you," demanded he, suddenly stopping, uplifting his bead and fixing his falcon eye, as Dante says, upon his Minister of Police, "who authorized you to speak of divorce to the Empress?"
If Fouche had not been too far from the light, one could have seen a more livid tint than the first pass over his countenance.
"Sire," responded he, "I thought I knew that your Majesty ardently desires divorce."
"Have I confided that desire to you?"
"I said I thought I knew, and I also thought it would be agreeable to your Majesty to prepare the Empress for the sacrifice."
"Yes, brutally, according to your habit."
"Sire, one never changes his nature; I commenced by being perfect among the Oratorians and by commanding unruly children: there has always remained to me some of my youth's impatience, I am a tree without fruit, ask no flowers of me."
"Monsieur Fouche, your friend" (Napoleon designedly emphasized these two words), "your friend M. de Talleyrand makes but one recommendation to his servants; 'Not too much zeal.'"
"I will borrow his axiom to apply it to you; you had too much zeal, that time; I wish no one to precede me in affairs of state or affairs of family."
Fouche kept silence.
"And, apropos of M. de Talleyrand," said the Emperor, "how comes it that, having left you mortal enemies, I find you intimate friends? During ten years of reciprocal hate and disparagement, I have heard you treat him as a frivolous diplomatist, and have heard him treat you as a rude intriguer; you, scorning a diplomacy which goes alone, you pretend, while aided by victory; he, railing the vain display of a police which the general submission renders easy and even useless. Is the situation so serious that, sacrificing yourself to the nation, as you say, you mutually forget your disagreements? Reproached by officials, you are publicly reconciled, and publicly visit; you say in a low tone that I may meet in Spain the knife of a fanatic or in Austria a cannon-ball; is that what you say?"
"Sire," rejoined Fouche, "Spanish knives have known great kings: witness Henry IV.