The Truth is Dead Read Free Page B

creator, an illustrious predecessor of Foucault’s: Antoine Laurent Lavoisier.

 
    December 1814. The one-time King of Italy, Mediator of the Swiss Confederation, Protector of the Confederation of the Rhine, First Consul of the French Republic, Emperor of the French, Napoleon Bonaparte, stood at the railing of the terrace, his hands clamped to the cold iron balustrade. He stared gloomily down across the grounds of the house, across the town, to where he could, if he stood on tiptoe, catch a glimpse of the bay, a knife of sullen water piercing the coast of Elba.
    He tried to outstare the cold grey eye of the sea for a moment longer, then spun on his heel and stomped inside to his bedroom.
    The sea. The irony was not lost on him. Apart from maybe that early glorious victory at Point L’Eguillete, he’d never been any good with the sea. To think he’d originally sought a naval commission! Thank God he’d studied artillery at the École in the end. Guns were simpler; you knew where you were with a gun: either it was pointed at you, or you were pointing it at someone else. Yes, the sea had dogged him always; it had always been there. Growing up on a small island had fixed that destiny for him, yet he had never understood the sea. And yes, the British fleet was unassailable, as it had been in Egypt, as it had been at Trafalgar. He banished the name as soon as it reared in his head, but he was left with the inevitable self-confession that his failures at sea were not only due to British ships, but the bald fact that he had always been useless at naval matters. He had long ago given up being angry at why, when his encyclopedic knowledge of and skill at warfare on land had secured the imperial title for him, his decisions at sea had always been ineffectual at best, contradictory and suicidal at worst.
    Yes, the sea, the sea. And yet now, with a last twist of fate, it would be the sea that would bring him his salvation. Even now, somewhere out in the Mediterranean, that salvation would be approaching on a small sloop from Sicily.
    It was getting dark; night would come and then there was the long emptiness to be got through. He glared at his bed in the corner of the fine room, the typical French bateau lit: another reminder of the sea. He would lie adrift there again through the small hours, gazing at the ceiling in the half-light, brooding, planning, plotting.
    A tedious image of Mathilde, the slow-witted maid who performed general serving duties, flashed through his mind, and he decided to pour a large glass of Armagnac himself. It was foul weather, cold and damp, though at least it was not raining for once. He swilled the brandy around the glass, closed his eyes and inhaled the distilled sunshine that reminded him of happier days, of the vineyards of Corsica, of his youth, of girls he had caressed, then poured the fire of the drink down his throat, rang the bell to have supper in his room, and steeled himself for the clumsiness of Mathilde and the soup tureen.
    It was a strange exile, he thought as he lay in a warm bath the next morning. Ever since the frozen hell of Moscow two years ago he’d been on the retreat, he could see that now, a series of defeats culminating in that drubbing at Leipzig. From there it had been just six months till the allied forces took Paris and days later forced his abdication. And yet, rather than the guillotine or some jail, he’d been sent to Elba, to rule over the tiny island just as he had once ruled over half the civilized world. Under the ever watchful eye of the British Commissioner, his powers were limited to an extent, but damn them! If they intend to humiliate me, he had thought, they will think again. Alors , I shall rule this Lilliput with pride and skill and I shall make the people love me!
    Even before the Elbans knew he was coming, there’d been riots against French rule. Yet, when he’d stepped onto the quayside in May he’d won the crowd over in under an hour. Six months later