Napoleon's Exile Read Free

it,’ announced a pointy-nosed viscount.
    â€˜Nonetheless, we do have some friends.’
    â€˜That’s true, Rochechouart was on the Tsar’s administrative staff.’
    â€˜And Langeron, too!’
    â€˜That didn’t stop their Cossacks disembowelling decent folk who refused to serve them raw herring.’
    â€˜Raw herring? How perfectly frightful!’
    â€˜The Empress will protect us from those savages!’
    Everyone thought the presence of Marie-Louise — Napoleon’s wife by an arranged marriage but daughter of the Emperor of Austria — would be enough to restrain the allied armies if by any misfortune they should take the capital. The Marquis de la Grange firmly shattered these illusions.
    â€˜Alas, your ladyship, the Empress has just left Paris.’
    â€˜Go and tell my husband!’
    â€˜So the Count of Sémallé is back?’
    *
    In point of fact, the Count of Sémallé had just returned from a perilous mission with an Austrian passport that had led him along various byways to a hostelry in Vesoul where he had met up with Louis XVIII’s turbulent brother, ‘Monsieur', the Count of Artois, who had entrusted him with the royalist proclamations printed in Basle and a recommendation written in his own hand:
    Those who see this paper can and may place full trust in everything that Monsieur de Sémallé will tell them on my behalf
    Sémallé had drooping shoulders, a large head, and fair hair parted in the middle; he was wearing a dressing-gown, but with a tie twisted around his neck as though preparing at any moment to throw on a frock-coat to escape the merest hint of danger. For prudence’s sake, he was not living in his town house near the boulevards where his wife still dwelt, but in his old, more modest house at 55 rue de Lille. He was writing and drinking hot chocolate when a valet ushered La Grange and Octave into his office.
    â€˜Empress Marie-Louise has left with her son, Cambacérès, and some members of the government.’
    â€˜That changes nothing, La Grange. The foreign forces will be making their way towards Paris as we speak. Bonaparte is away in the East, the meagre troops of Mortier and Marmont are about to reach the tollgates, but they’re starving, and have no straw or wood. They won’t withstand this terrible advance.’
    â€˜And what if the Parisians rise up?’ asked Octave.
    â€˜Who are you?’ asked Sémallé, who had until that point paid no attention to the Marquis’s companion.
    â€˜The Chevalier de Blacé,’ replied La Grange. ‘On Wednesday he was still living in his house in Baker Street. He comes with Lady Salisbury’s recommendation.’
    â€˜Fine.’ And then, to Octave: ‘How did you get here?’
    â€˜Via Brussels, your grace.’
    â€˜He has a Belgian passport,’ added the Marquis, ‘and he’s registered as a lace trader.’
    â€˜What’s the word in London?’
    â€˜The English are inclined towards the Bourbons, my lord.’
    â€˜I know that, Chevalier, but the Tsar has his eye on the King of Sweden, and the Austrians are looking to the King of Rome. In Rome, we failed to provoke an uprising in our favour. Last week the Prince of Hessen-Homburg, who is in charge of the city, had our partisans arrested for wearing white cockades: he saw it as sedition. In Bordeaux, Wellington is keeping the Duke of Angoulême at arm’s length; he has just joined him in Saint-Jean-de-Luz ... At any rate, the King mustn’t be imposed by the allies, but chosen by the French.’
    â€˜Easier said than done,’ grumbled La Grange, disappointed by the Count’s revelations.
    â€˜Everyone has forgotten the Bourbons,’ Sémallé went on. ‘What do they look like? Where are they? After their twenty years in exile, the people know nothing about them. But I do know one thing and one thing alone:
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