“How do you do it?” Alexander asked. “Can it be taught? Could I, for instance, learn it? Your really incredible record of military achievement—”
“Well,” N said modestly, “you have to have a certain talent for it. I do not doubt that you, dear friend, have a spark there that needs a very little nurturing. We shall have our long talks together, never fear. Over there, in Tilsit. But,” and he clasped his hands in tough prayer fulness, “you must build your army on love. Does that word sound strange to you in a context of smoke and slaughter?”
“Oh no. Not really. I think I see what you might—”
“You must learn that there is no greater love than that between a general and his troops. It far surpasses the love of man and woman. It is a mystical bond, heavenly, above the vulgarity of the mere flesh. And it is a good thing for a military leader to have known the ecstasy of a relationship with a woman, but much much more to have known the deceitfulness and treachery of a woman, so that he can the better throw all his hot affections into his relationship with the men he leads.” He briskly unclasped his hands and laid the right one on Alexander’s knee. A bony knee, a boy’s. “Do you see that, my friend, do you? You too, I doubt not, have been deceived by women.”
“I do not think that they will ever love me for my self alone.”
“Exactly.” N pounded Alexander’s leg above the knee as in congratulation on an exquisitely phrased enunciation of a truth not sufficiently commonly acknowledged. “But my men. What do I offer them but death or the glory that they themselves have earned? Such love is, how shall I put it, disinterested. Men and men. Love. Disinterested. Ah, how well you and I understand each other.”
They went out about half an hour later and walked the perimeter of the raft, slapping each other on the back, though N doing more slapping than A, showing teeth to the sun, acknowledging across the wide water the plaudits of multitudes on bank and bank. A meeting of emperors and friends. Europe all set for them like a dainty tea-table, a tête-à-tête between friends. Do have a nice slice of the Adriatic coast. Hm. This Duchy of Magdeburg looks rather tempting. Cheers and cheers and cheers over the water. N had already filed a good week’s load of letters in his skull; they merely now had to be transcribed and delivered. To the Foreign Minister: tomorrow the Czar or Tsar is to present the King of Prussia to me. I have accordingly neutralized Tilsit. Get here as quickly as you can. Guns went off, first on one bank, then on the other. Arrange for one-hundred-gun salute tomorrow when Tsar or Czar lands in Tilsit. Imperial Guard drawn up in two lines three deep from landing stage to my quarters and from thence to Czar or Tsar’s quarters. Seduce the bugger.
The face of that bugger King Frederick William of Prussia was by nature very long, and daily it grew longer. His Queen, on the other hand, Louise, kept hers round and seductive. There was no doubt about it, she was a very dangerous woman and, paradoxically, the only real man in Prussia. She came to the first conference with her jaunty military shako on over her brown curls, her military belted tunic furred and ruched at the collar, a fair expanse of creamy neck promising more when it came to dressing up for dinner. N and Alexander sat as close together as N could decently contrive. N said heartily:
“Madam, what you have seen was only a beginning. We have quite a detailed program of maneuvers. Berthier here has it.”
“Bbb—”
“Good. The Guard infantry tomorrow—four o’clock, a convenient time for all? Good good. Davout’s corps, I see, Berthier, the day after. Ah, two days for Davout. Then the Guard artillery, then the Guard cavalry—”
“Do you not think,” Queen Louise said in pretty French, “you have made it sufficiently clear to us the conquered how strong is the conqueror?” Tears came to her huge blue eyes. N saw that Alexander was ready to be affected and so grasped his right knee under the table. The King said:
“The question is the question is—”
“I know what the question is,” N said brusquely. “Magdeburg. You want to keep Magdeburg. Now what I say to you is this: you wanted the war and I didn’t. You saw what it was going to be like. Anspach and Eylau and so on. As my dear friend here the Emperor of all the Russias has said to me,” though he had said nothing of the sort, “there are no punishments in war, only consequences. And one of the consequences of this war is that you lose Magdeburg.”
“Oh Magdeburg,” she cried. “The cruelty of it. You can have no conception, not being yourself a Prussian.”
“Look, madam,” N said, “I don’t want any of this German mysticism, heard too much of that at Schönbrunn when they tried to kill me, about how nobody but a German, all right Prussian, the same thing, can understand the glory of the German sunrise and the sacred stones of Magdeburg and so on. I tell you now what we’re going to do with you—correct me if I’m wrong, Talleyrand—you have it all down on paper there—we’re going to let you have all of the Duchy of Magdeburg on the right side of the Elbe—”
“Oh,” she said. “Oh,” she breathed.
“But you’re not going to have the fortress of Magdeburg. You can keep Silesia, Brandenburg, East Prussia—”
“Not all of it,” Talleyrand said.
“That’s right, not all of it. And you can have the other place, where the dogs come from.”
“Pomerania,” Talleyrand said.
“This means,” the King said, “this means, does it not, back to the frontier of—”
“1772,” Talleyrand said. “And very generous.”
“Chew all that over,” N said, “and we’ll talk about the rest of it in the next meeting. Berthier here says that we have a band concert laid on for you—”
“Fff—”
“That’s right. Some good loud music. Opera and so on.”
“You have bad things in store for us, I know,” Queen Louise panted. “Why do you torture me like this? Why does he, dear friend?” she said to Alexander. N gripped Alexander’s knee again. Berthier stuttered everybody off to the band concert. N kept Queen Louise behind and gave her eye for big eye. He said:
“Madam, you’re a handsome woman.”
“Such beauty as many were good enough to concede I had,” she faltered, “has been ravaged by this tragedy. I feel for my dear Prussia as other women feel for their children—”
“Very creditable. Have you had a great deal to do with the Tsar or Czar, madam?”
“Our friend, our ally—”
“No, I didn’t mean that. Personal dealings. Have you found him a susceptible man?”
“I do not think, our conqueror though you may be, you have the right to enquire into—”
“Because what I say is that all this swimming-eyed pearly-bosomed stuff is a waste of time as far as he’s concerned. No use in trying to get round me by trying to get round him, so don’t waste everybody’s time doing it.”
“Sir, you are a monster.”
“That’s what they all say,” he said comfortably. “Personally I’m not averse to feminine charm, try as much as you like on me, but it won’t get you the fortress of whatyoucall Magdeburg back. Our dear friend of all the Russias—I know him, I’ve spent time alone with him—he’s not a lady’s man at all. Quite different, if you know what I mean. If you got a little boy to put on some great act about the rape of glorious dear Prussia, then you might get some response. I hope you understand me, madam.”
Her bosom heaved finely. “It is not just that you are a monster,” she panted. “It is that you are low. A Corsican blackguard.”
“Ah,” N went, “you have to be a Corsican blackguard to appreciate the gorgeous Corsican blackguard sun going down over the mystical Corsican blackguard Jewish hills, madam.”
“I do not have to stay to listen to your insolence,” she said, staying. “I can go and leave it all to my husband. Unless, that is, I am your prisoner.”
“Ah, you’d like that, wouldn’t you? A good idea would be for you to insist on riding naked on a white horse before all the ranks, off to a nunnery or somewhere. Drum up pity
for poor little Prussia. As for his majesty your husband, you’ll let him get rid of things that don’t even belong to him if you don’t sit by him all the time. We’re taking Toulouse away from you, your majesty. Toulouse? Toulouse? I didn’t even know Toulouse was ours. Haha. Hahahaha.”
“You are deliberately trying to make me angry now. But it would require a better man than you to make me angry.”
“You’ve had it in for me for a long time, madam. Hatred, that’s what it is. And the horror is that, with all this hatred, you’d use yourself like a whore. That’s what happens when you let women get into politics and statesmanship and so on. Met them already. That Madame de Staël, if you’ve ever heard of her—”
Punctually she swooned, gasping first; “Ich kann nicht—” She lay, having swooned beautifully, on the thick enough carpet of the room in the castle they were using for their conferences. N stood there, smiling. On to all their tricks. “Come on,” he said, “get up. Very impressive, but that will do very well.” She seemed well out, what they called a dead faint. Of course, a woman was without doubt differently constituted. They took things to heart. Pregnant, perhaps? It would not do, of course, to be responsible for the damage of a royal fetus. The shako had fallen from her thick brown curls. “Come on, your majesty,” he said, on his hunkers over her. “Perhaps I went a little too far. Too personal perhaps. Not enough of the graciousness of the true conqueror.” She was dead out, beautiful long lashes on her. “Is there anybody out there?” he called, hands behind him, going to the door. In the corridor there were men with rifles on duty. “You’d better come in. The Queen of Prussia has fainted.”
Two men, having first given N a glance of horror or was it reproach, none of their damned business, picked her up clumsily, like a grain-sack, and put her on a sofa in an anteroom, N first opening the door for them. A damned nuisance. Hard to get the better of a woman. One of the men went looking for her women, ladies-in-waiting they would be called, and found them honking away in German in a sort of cloakroom. They came running in with eyes of reproach for N, crying “Die arme Kônigin” and so on, and he left them and went looking for Alexander, his friend. He hadn’t really come too well out of that.
Still, next day (she didn’t come to the dinner he’d arranged), she behaved like a lady, as if nothing had happened, and they got on with the dismembering of Prussia. “Where’s the map?” he said to Talleyrand, and it was unrolled on the mahogany table. He had just had to take a licorice pellet because of the twinges in his stomach, and he left a brown thumbprint on the margin of the map. Never mind. Corsican blackguard, eh? “West of the Elbe,” he said. “Hesse-Cassel, yes, everything on that side of the river I propose we make into a new kingdom. Something for my brother Jerome, the Kingdom of Westphalia. I think they’ll like him, he has a fine capacity for making himself popular.”
“Oh my God,” the King of Prussia moaned.
“My brother Jerome,” N confided, “is an international man, one of the new kind. Married to an American lady but, of course, all that is being taken care of, there are limits, as the Pope himself has to realize, we are not now living in the eighteenth century. What’s next, Talleyrand? Ah, yes,” looking at the order paper, “my dear friend here, the Emperor Alexander of all the Russias, should, I consider, be given the great and flourishing province of Bialystock.” Nobody seemed to have heard of it, and there was a good deal of head-craning over the map. “There it is,” N said, stabbing his finger vaguely. “All the rest of the Prussian provinces in Poland must merge into a new concept. A new concept for a new age. The Grand Duchy of Warsaw. What do you think of that?” he beamed. He saw Murat at the table, looking strained and eager, what the hell was Murat doing there? Must have had something in mind for him, couldn’t at the moment remember what, to seduce perhaps the Queen of Prussia, quieten her down? “It seems reasonable for the moment to assume that the King of Saxony could take care of this new Polish concept, and I know you will all join with me in saying a heartfelt thank God that the Polish question is for the moment resolved, a thorn in all our sides.” He gunned them all with his eyes, fellows in past tribulation. Everybody seemed stunned, except for Murat, who was flashing brilliant fire from his own eyes in the noon sun. “You have something to say, Murat?”
“It will keep, Sire. A matter of a certain verbal promise respecting the Duchy of Warsaw.”
“Promised you that, did I? Can’t remember, should have made a note of it, I suppose. Plenty more, Murat, where that came from. Don’t worry, my friend.” And then, to Talleyrand: “Have we worked out the terms of the war indemnity?”
“I could, if desired, issue the tentative figures, but I feel that for the moment, Sire—”
“I understand you, Talleyrand, plenty to digest for the moment. Of course, French troops will have to occupy Prussia till full payment is effected, rather a nuisance, I hate to see troops idle, but our brother and sister of Prussia will, I know, cooperate to the full. We may as well deal now with what will be generally recognized as a mere formality, and then we can enjoy ourselves a little. Like myself, you will all be looking forward to the infantry maneuvers at four, and I think our good friend Berthier has arranged another concert of massed regimental bands for you immediately after luncheon. Is that not so, Berthier?”
“Fff—”
“Something vigorous and stirring to shake us all out of ourselves. A mere formality, I said. Ah yes, thank you, Talleyrand, your majesty of Prussia is to make formal recognition of what we, for want of a better term, term the Bonaparte kingdoms—Naples, Holland and of course our new one, brother Jerome’s, Westphalia—and to accept the permanent reality of the Rhine Confederation. And, this goes without saying, you will once more join the Continental System.”
The Queen of Prussia was today wearing something demure, nunlike, form-fitting. “It does no good,” she said, “your Continental System. The English have found new markets in South America. And it is not being taken seriously by your own people. There are French buyers in Manchester and Huddersfield and the other place, Northampton. France cannot clothe her own armies, even. Am I not right, dear friend?” she added to Alexander.
“Lies,” N growled, “is it not all lies, Talleyrand? It is all lies, my dear friend,” he told Alexander, hand nearly crushing his knee.
“Is it lies too,” she said, “of your selling surplus French grain to Great Britain?”
“That was a masterstroke of policy,” Talleyrand said with sudden loyalty. “That was designed to drag gold out of London.”
“Poor Magdeburg,” the King said, to fill the pause that followed. The Queen looked sharply at him but then, loyal too in her way, began to fill her superb eyes with tears. Alexander’s own eyes began to swim. He said:
“Ah yes. War. It is a terrible thing.”
“Ggg-“
“Quite right, Berthier. We need to be taken out of ourselves. Come, all, the massed bands await.”
The entire company, except for N, sat stunned at the final banquet. As for noise, he throve on it: so he told them, beaming, while the eggs and chicken and crayfish were passed round. The King of Prussia, with hand cupped, said:
“Pardon, I did not quite—”
“Noise. Thrive on it.” Her evening dress was stunning, and he quite readily willed himself into being stunned by it. It recalled an earlier period, that of the Directory; it recalled early Josephine. There was no doubt about it, there was no getting the better of a handsome woman. A pair of female breasts was, so to speak, the ultimate and ineluctable dual argument. Well, he would prove himself not ungallant. He had something ready, had had it ready all along. “I take it,” he said, raising a glass of Chambertin and water, “that none here will refuse to drink a toast to the Freedom of the Seas?”
“Of the what?”
“The Seas, dear.”
They all obediently drank it. Drinking it, N felt the Chambertin and water strike his stomach like vinegar. The damned Seas, the accursed woman-element, the immutable bou
ndaries of his Empire. “My dear friend here,” he said, “has great gifts of persuasion.” Alexander looked surprised. “He has, through his charm and his genuine magnanimity, prevailed upon me to grant a concession I would not otherwise have been willing to grant. Danzig,” he cried, “is to be declared a free city.” He swung his glass round, in a beaming invitation to toast Danzig’s free citydom. As they were all still on their feet they had to drink to it. “Of course,” N added, as they sat down again, “it will continue to be blessed with the calmative presence of a French garrison.”
Later he talked to Talleyrand.
“I must be on my way to Kônigsberg,” he said, “and then back to Paris. I think everything went pretty well. You can see that the Tsar or Czar positively worships me.”
“I should not be too sure. Commercial interests in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Reactionary elements in the Kremlin. Beware of the impressionable, since anything is likely to impress them.”
“I hinted to him at the possibility of my divorce. I sounded him on the feasibility of my marrying his sister. He seemed overawed at the prospect.”
Talleyrand looked at him for a few seconds. “Overawed? Are you sure you interpreted his words or gestures or whatever it was aright?”
“He seemed overawed.”
“Was that when you were drinking coffee with him in the corner?”
“Ah, you were watching, were you? You have a good head on your shoulders, Talleyrand.”
“I thought you had just demanded some last-minute concession from Russia. Overawed, I see.”
“Turkey, Talleyrand, this business of Turkey. You’d better let them know in Constantinople that my present policy as regards the Porte is—well, shall we say shaky? But Sébastiani must be expecting something new since the assassination of Sultan whatsisname Selim.”
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