Napoleon Symphony: A Novel in Four Movements Read Free Page B

victory and I must go on to others. I see Austrian banners in French hands and whole blocks of white now as still as snow-patches. Prisoners are always a nuisance.
    “W hat does he say?”
    “I can’t read his writing.” And she threw the letter like a bone to the pug Fortuné, who sniffed at it and then began to chew it.
    “But it’s important to know when he’ll be back. My angel. Mmmmmm.” Lieutenant Hippolyte Charles, First Regiment of Hussars, at present in undress, munched at her right, or left, nipple.
    “Paul Barras is excited. About victories. Can you read those names there?”
    He tussled with the dog a moment. The dog let go Millesimo, Ceva and Dego, though with an ill grace. “It’s a lot of marching,” he said. “All those foothills. That’s why it’s called Piedmont.”
    “I never thought of that.”
    “And why should you, you little bundle of deliciousness? Mmmmmm.” He munched lower. “Does he ever do that to you?”
    “He tried. He’s always in such a hurry about everything. Oh, sweetheart, what are we going to do?”
    “Now? I’ll show you. Get that damned dog off the bed. I’ll have no toes left.”
    “Stays here, don’t oo, precious? Mummy’s little messenger when horrid men kept mummy in prison and were going to cut mummy’s head off.”
    “Don’t look too far ahead is what I say. He’s a long way to go. There’s Milan and Vienna and Venice. Lots of time. It would be nice to be in Venice.”
    “He’s always so quick about everything. Do that again. Keep on doing it. Oh, sweetheart, I’m so unhappy. Oh, that’s lovely.”
    “Y ou’re too moderate,” Saliceti said. Bonaparte, half-dressed and unshaven in the cool spring dawn of Cherasco, looked with no liking on the Government Commissioner of the Army of the Alps. All that red white and blue, including red white and blue plumage a mile high. And yet a sort of magpie really, ready to peck at anything bright and stow it.
    “Look,” Bonaparte said, “Citizen Commissioner, or whatever you like to be called. I know precisely what’s in your mind. Loot loot loot.”
    “They need money in Paris. This is partly—not wholly, I never said that—but partly what this war is about. To finance the new order. Look at this damned palazzo, for a start. Whose is it?”
    “Count Salmatori’s. You want to finance the new order out of that bit of porcelain there and those damask curtains? That silver Neptune would fetch a few hundred francs. You, citizen, would like a little loot for the palazzo Saliceti that is to be, and I’m not going to have any looting. We’re here to make friends and respect property. I know what the Directors want to do with Italy—ransack it and then exchange it for the Rhine frontier. Have you ever considered that it might be a sort of duty to bring the Revolution here? Or is that too naive a notion?”
    Saliceti felt the coffee pot and found it cold. “Send for some more, will you? Victor Amadeus is the enemy still. He’s priest-ridden, tyrannical, bigoted. He’s also father-in-law of the Count of Provence. The man they call Louis the Eighteenth. He’s got to be thwacked and punched and throttled, which means he has to vomit up gold and silver till it hurts.”
    “Oh, that will happen. But it will all happen officially and legitimately, with papers signed and countersigned and damned great seals on them. But if I catch you, sir, citizen, encouraging the acquisition of loot, then I come down with the chopper.”
    “Do you realize that I represent the Government in Paris? Do you realize that you’re a mere salaried employee whose task is to win battles for your masters? Do you realize that the chopper can come down for you on the squeak of a pen?”
    “Oh, Christophe, if I may still call you that—We used to be friends before you got this liking for feathers—Oh, don’t you see that times are changing? Those old Representatives to the Armies—all of two years old—where have they gone to?