The Complete Brigadier Gerard Stories (22 page)

My word, their hubbub soon died away when we opened our ranks, and showed whom we had got in the midst of us! There was silence for a few seconds, and then such a howl of rage and grief! I could see some of them dancing like madmen upon the wall. He must have been a singular person, this prisoner of ours, to have gained the affection of such a gang.

I had brought a rope from the inn, and we slung it over the lower bough of the tree.

‘You will permit me, monsieur, to undo your collar,’ said Papilette, with mock politeness.

‘If your hands are perfectly clean,’ answered our prisoner, and set the whole half-squadron laughing.

There was another yell from the wall, followed by a profound hush as the noose was tightened round Marshal Millefleurs’ neck. Then came a shriek from a bugle, the Abbey gates flew open, and three men rushed out waving white cloths in their hands. Ah, how my heart bounded with joy at the sight of them. And yet I would not advance an inch to meet them, so that all the eagerness might seem to be upon their side. I allowed my trumpeter, however, to wave a handkerchief in reply, upon which the three envoys came running towards us. The Marshal, still pinioned, and with the rope round his neck, sat his horse with a half smile, as one who is slightly bored and yet strives out of courtesy not to show it. If I were in such a situation I could not wish to carry myself better, and surely I can say no more than that.

They were a singular trio, these ambassadors. The one was a Portuguese caçadore in his dark uniform, the second a French chasseur in the lightest green, and the third a big English artilleryman in blue and gold. They saluted, all three, and the Frenchman did the talking.

‘We have thirty-seven English dragoons in our hands,’ said he. ‘We give you our most solemn oath that they shall all hang from the Abbey wall within five minutes of the death of our Marshal.’

‘Thirty-seven!’ I cried. ‘You have fifty-one.’

‘Fourteen were cut down before they could be secured.’

‘And the officer?’

‘He would not surrender his sword save with his life. It was not our fault. We would have saved him if we could.’

Alas for my poor Bart! I had met him but twice, and yet he was a man very much after my heart. I have always had a regard for the English for the sake of that one friend. A braver man and a worse swordsman I have never met.

I did not, as you may think, take these rascals’ word for anything. Papilette was dispatched with one of them, and
returned to say that it was too true. I had now to think of the living.

‘You will release the thirty-seven dragoons if I free your leader?’

‘We will give you ten of them.’

‘Up with him!’ I cried.

‘Twenty,’ shouted the chasseur.

‘No more words,’ said I. ‘Pull on the rope!’

‘All of them,’ cried the envoy, as the cord tightened round the Marshal’s neck.

‘With horses and arms?’

They could see that I was not a man to jest with.

‘All complete,’ said the chasseur, sulkily.

‘And the Countess of La Ronda as well?’ said I.

But here I met with firmer opposition. No threats of mine could induce them to give up the Countess. We tightened the cord. We moved the horse. We did all but leave the Marshal suspended. If once I broke his neck the dragoons were dead men. It was as precious to me as to them.

‘Allow me to remark,’ said the Marshal, blandly, ‘that you are exposing me to a risk of quinsy. Do you not think, since there is a difference of opinion upon this point, that it would be an excellent idea to consult the lady herself? We would neither of us, I am sure, wish to over-ride her own inclinations.’

Nothing could be more satisfactory. You can imagine how quickly I grasped at so simple a solution. In ten minutes she was before us, a most stately dame, with her grey curls peeping out from under her mantilla. Her face was as yellow as though it reflected the countless doubloons of her treasury.

‘This gentleman,’ said the Marshal, ‘is exceedingly anxious to convey you to a place where you will never see us more. It is for you to decide whether you would wish to go with him, or whether you prefer to remain with me.’

She was at his horse’s side in an instant. ‘My own Alexis,’ she cried, ‘nothing can ever part us.’

He looked at me with a sneer upon his handsome face.

‘By the way, you made a small slip of the tongue, my dear Colonel,’ said he. ‘Except by courtesy, no such person exists as the Dowager Countess of La Ronda. The lady whom I
have the honour to present to you is my very dear wife, Mrs Alexis Morgan−or shall I say Madame la Marèchale Millefleurs?’

It was at this moment that I came to the conclusion that I was dealing with the cleverest, and also the most unscrupulous, man whom I had ever met. As I looked upon this unfortunate old woman my soul was filled with wonder and disgust. As for her, her eyes were raised to his face with such a look as a young recruit might give to the Emperor.

‘So be it,’ said I, at last; ‘give me the dragoons and let me go.’

They were brought out with their horses and weapons, and the rope was taken from the Marshal’s neck.

‘Good-bye, my dear Colonel,’ said he. ‘I am afraid that you will have rather a lame account to give of your mission, when you find your way back to Massena, though, from all I hear, he will probably be too busy to think of you. I am free to confess that you have extricated yourself from your difficulties with greater ability than I had given you credit for. I presume that there is nothing which I can do for you before you go?’

‘There is one thing.’

‘And that is?’

‘To give fitting burial to this young officer and his men.’

‘I pledge my word to it.’

‘And there is one other.’

‘Name it.’

‘To give me five minutes in the open with a sword in your hand and a horse between your legs.’

‘Tut, tut!’ said he. ‘I should either have to cut short your promising career, or else to bid adieu to my own bonny bride. It is unreasonable to ask such a request of a man in the first joys of matrimony.’

I gathered my horsemen together and wheeled them into column.

‘Au revoir,’ I cried, shaking my sword at him. ‘The next time you may not escape so easily.’

‘Au revoir,’ he answered. ‘When you are weary of the Emperor, you will always find a commission waiting for you in the service of the Marshal Millefleurs.’

The spring is at hand, my friends. I can see the little green spearheads breaking out once more upon the chestnut trees, and the café tables have all been moved into the sunshine. It is more pleasant to sit there, and yet I do not wish to tell my little stories to the whole town. You have heard my doings as a lieutenant, as a squadron officer, as a colonel, as the chief of a brigade. But now I suddenly become something higher and more important. I become history.

If you have read of those closing years of the life of the Emperor which were spent in the Island of St Helena, you will remember that, again and again, he implored permission to send out one single letter which should be unopened by those who held him. Many times he made this request, and even went so far as to promise that he would provide for his own wants and cease to be an expense to the British Government if it were granted to him. But his guardians knew that he was a terrible man, this pale, fat gentleman in the straw hat, and they dared not grant him what he asked. Many have wondered who it was to whom he could have had anything so secret to say. Some have supposed that it was to
his wife, and some that it was to his father-in-law; some that it was to the Emperor Alexander, and some to Marshal Soult. What will you think of me, my friends, when I tell you it was tome––to me, the Brigadier Gerard––that the Emperor wished to write! Yes, humble as you see me, with only my 100 francs a month of half-pay between me and hunger, it is none the less true that I was always in the Emperor’s mind, and that he would have given his left hand for five minutes’ talk with me. I will tell you to-night how this came about.

It was after the Battle of Fére-Champenoise, where the conscripts in their blouses and their sabots made such a fine stand, that we, the more long-headed of us, began to understand that it was all over with us. Our reserve ammunition had been taken in the battle, and we were left with silent guns and empty caissons. Our cavalry, too, was in a deplorable condition, and my own brigade had been destroyed in the great charge at Craonne. Then came the news that the enemy had taken Paris, that the citizens had mounted the white cockade; and finally, most terrible of all, that Marmont and his corps had gone over to the Bourbons. We looked at each other and asked how many more of our generals were going to turn against us. Already there were Jourdan, Marmont, Murat, Bernadotte, and Jomini––though nobody minded much about Jomini, for his pen was always sharper than his sword. We had been ready to fight Europe, but it looked now as though we were to fight Europe and half of France as well.

We had come to Fontainebleau by a long, forced march, and there we were assembled, the poor remnants of us, the corps of Ney, the corps of my cousin Gerard, and the corps of Macdonald: twenty-five thousand in all, with seven thousand of the guard. But we had our prestige, which was worth fifty thousand, and our Emperor, who was worth fifty thousand more. He was always among us, serene, smiling, confident, taking his snuff and playing with his little riding-whip. Never in the days of his greatest victories have I admired him as much as I did during the Campaign of France.

One evening I was with a few of my officers drinking a glass of wine of Suresnes. I mention that it was wine of
Suresnes just to show you that times were not very good with us. Suddenly I was disturbed by a message from Berthier that he wished to see me. When I speak of my old comrades-in-arms, I will, with your permission, leave out all the fine foreign titles which they had picked up during the wars. They are excellent for a Court, but you never heard them in the camp, for we could not afford to do away with our Ney, our Rapp, or our Soult––names which were as stirring to our ears as the blare of our trumpets blowing the reveille. It was Berthier, then, who sent to say that he wished to see me.

He had a suite of rooms at the end of the gallery of Francis the First, not very far from those of the Emperor. In the ante-chamber were waiting two men whom I knew well: Colonel Despienne, of the 57th of the line, and Captian Tremeau, of the Voltigeurs. They were both old soldiers––Tremeau had carried a musket in Egypt–– and they were also both famous in the army for their courage and their skill with weapons. Tremeau had become a little stiff in the wrist, but Despienne was capable at his best of making me exert myself. He was a tiny fellow, about three inches short of the proper height for a man––he was exactly three inches shorter than myself––but both with the sabre and with the small-sword he had several times almost held his own against me when we used to exhibit at Verron’s Hall of Arms in the Palais Royal. You may think that it made us sniff something in the wind when we found three such men called together into one room. You cannot see the lettuce and the dressing without suspecting a salad.

‘Name of a pipe!’ said Tremeau, in his barrack-room fashion. ‘Are we then expecting three champions of the Bourbons?’

To all of us the idea appeared not improbable. Certainly in the whole army we were the very three who might have been chosen to meet them.

‘The Prince of Neufchâtel desires to speak with the Brigadier Gerard,’ said a footman, appearing at the door.

In I went, leaving my two companions consumed with impatience behind me. It was a small room, but very gorgeously furnished. Berthier was seated opposite to me
at a little table, with a pen in his hand and a note-book open before him. He was looking weary and slovenly – very different from that Berthier who used to give the fashion to the army, and who had so often set us poorer officers tearing our hair by trimming his pelisse with fur, one campaign, and with grey astrakhan the next. On his clean-shaven, comely face there was an expression of trouble, and he looked at me as I entered his chamber in a way which had in it something furtive and displeasing.

‘Chief of Brigade Gerard!’ said he.

‘At your service, your Highness!’ I answered.

‘I must ask you, before I go further, to promise me, upon your honour as a gentleman and a soldier, that what is about to pass between us shall never be mentioned to any third person.’

My word, this was a fine beginning! I had no choice but to give the promise required.

‘You must know, then, that it is all over with the Emperor,’ said he, looking down at the table and speaking very slowly, as if he had a hard task in getting out the words. ‘Jourdan at Rouen and Marmont at Paris have both mounted the white cockade, and it is rumoured that Talleyrand has talked Ney into doing the same. It is evident that further resistance is useless, and that it can only bring misery upon our country. I wish to ask you, therefore, whether you are prepared to join me in laying hands upon the Emperor’s person, and bringing the war to a conclusion by delivering him over to the allies.’

I assure you that when I heard this infamous proposition put forward by the man who had been the earliest friend of the Emperor, and who had received greater favours from him than any of his followers, I could only stand and stare at him in amazement. For his part he tapped his pen-handle against his teeth, and looked at me with a slanting head.

‘Well?’ he asked.

‘I am a little deaf upon one side,’ said I, coldly. ‘There are some things which I cannot hear. I beg that you will permit me to return to my duties.’

‘Nay, but you must not be headstrong,’ said he, rising up and laying his hand upon my shoulder. ‘You are aware
that the Senate has declared against Napoleon, and that the Emperor Alexander refuses to treat with him.’

‘Sir,’ I cried, with passion, ‘I would have you know that I do not care the dregs of a wine-glass for the Senate or for the Emperor Alexander either.’

‘Then for what do you care?’

‘For my own honour and for the service of my glorious master, the Emperor Napoleon.’

‘That is all very well,’ said Berthier, peevishly, shrugging his shoulders. ‘Facts are facts, and as men of the world, we must look them in the face. Are we to stand against the will of the nation? Are we to have civil war on the top of all our misfortunes? And, besides, we are thinning away. Every hour comes the news of fresh desertions. We have still time to make our peace, and, indeed, to earn the highest reward, by giving up the Emperor.’

I shook so with passion that my sabre clattered against my thigh.

‘Sir,’ I cried, ‘I never thought to have seen the day when a Marshal of France would have so far degraded himself as to put forward such a proposal. I leave you to your own conscience; but as for me, until I have the Emperor’s own order, there shall always be the sword of Etienne Gerard between his enemies and himself.’

I was so moved by my own words and by the fine position which I had taken up, that my voice broke, and I could hardly refrain from tears. I should have liked the whole army to have seen me as I stood with my head so proudly erect and my hand upon my heart proclaiming my devotion to the Emperor in his adversity. It was one of the supreme moments of my life.

‘Very good,’ said Berthier, ringing a bell for the lackey. ‘You will show the Chief of Brigade Gerard into the salon.’

The footman led me into an inner room, where he desired me to be seated. For my own part, my only desire was to get away, and I could not understand why they should wish to detain me. When one has had no change of uniform during a whole winter’s campaign, one does not feel at home in a palace.

I had been there about a quarter of an hour when the
footman opened the door again, and in came Colonel Despienne. Good heavens, what a sight he was! His face was as white as a guardsman’s gaiters, his eyes projecting, the veins swollen upon his forehead, and every hair of his moustache bristling like those of an angry cat. He was too angry to speak, and could only shake his hands at the ceiling and make a gurgling in his throat. ‘Parricide! Viper!’ those were the words that I could catch as he stamped up and down the room.

Of course it was evident to me that he had been subjected to the same infamous proposals as I had, and that he had received them in the same spirit. His lips were sealed to me, as mine were to him, by the promise which we had taken, but I contented myself with muttering ‘Atrocious! Unspeakable!’––so that he might know that I was in agreement with him.

Well, we were still there, he striding furiously up and down, and I seated in the corner, when suddenly a most extraordinary uproar broke out in the room which we had just quitted. There was a snarling, worrying growl, like that of a fierce dog which has got his grip. Then came a crash and a voice calling for help. In we rushed, the two of us, and, my faith, we were none too soon.

Old Tremeau and Berthier were rolling together upon the floor, with the table upon the top of them. The Captain had one of his great, skinny, yellow hands upon the Marshal’s throat, and already his face was lead-coloured, and his eyes were starting from their sockets. As to Tremeau, he was beside himself, with foam upon the corners of his lips, and such a frantic expression upon him that I am convinced, had we not loosened his iron grip, finger by finger, that it would never have relaxed while the Marshal lived. His nails were white with the power of his grasp.

‘I have been tempted by the devil!’ he cried, as he staggered to his feet. ‘Yes, I have been tempted by the devil!’

As to Berthier, he could only lean against the wall, and pant for a couple of minutes, putting his hands up to his throat and rolling his head about. Then, with an angry gesture, he turned to the heavy blue curtain which hung behind his chair.

‘There, sire!’ he cried, furiously, ‘I told you exactly what would come of it.’

The curtain was torn to one side and the Emperor stepped out into the room. We sprang to the salute, we three old soldiers, but it was all like a scene in a dream to us, and our eyes were as far out as Berthier’s had been. Napoleon was dressed in his green coated chasseur uniform, and he held his little silver-headed switch in his hand. He looked at us each in turn, with a smile upon his face––that frightful smile in which neither eyes nor brow joined––and each in turn had, I believe, a pringling on his skin, for that was the effect which the Emperor’s gaze had upon most of us. Then he walked across to Berthier and put his hand upon his shoulder.

‘You must not quarrel with blows, my dear Prince,’ said he; ‘they are your title to nobility.’ He spoke in that soft, caressing manner which he could assume. There was no one who could make the French tongue sound so pretty as the Emperor, and no one who could make it more harsh and terrible.

‘I believe he would have killed me,’ cried Berthier, still rolling his head about.

‘Tut, tut! I should have come to your help had these officers not heard your cries. But I trust that you are not really hurt!’ He spoke with earnestness, for he was in truth very fond of Berthier––more so than of any man, unless it were of poor Duroc.

Berthier laughed, though not with a very good grace.

‘It is new for me to receive my injuries from French hands,’ said he.

‘And yet it was in the cause of France,’ returned the Emperor. Then, turning to us, he took old Tremeau by the ear. ‘Ah, old grumbler,’ said he, ‘you were one of my Egyptian grenadiers, were you not, and had your musket of honour at Marengo. I remember you very well, my good friend. So the old fires are not yet extinguished! They still burn up when you think that your Emperor is wronged. And you, Colonel Despienne, you would not even listen to the tempter. And you, Gerard, your faithful sword is ever to be between me and my enemies. Well, well, I have had
some traitors about me, but now at last we are beginning to see who are the true men.’