Roger shrugged, 'You will admit that when faced with an unexpected situation you are apt to be hasty in your judgments?'
'What of it?'
'Well; when Pauline and I returned from our little, er—journey, we thought it wiser not to spring it upon you, but to ask your consent to our marriage and go through another ceremony later here in Paris.'
'Another ceremony 1' Napoleon gasped, having gone white to the lips.
'Yes. Of course we were commendably discreet and purposely selected the Mayor of a tiny Commune to marry us, so that news of it should not get about.'
'I... I don't believe it.'
Again Roger shrugged. 'You have only to tell that idiot Savary, whom you have made Chief of Police, to send one of his agents down to St. Maxime. He will then report to you that for a month Pauline lived with mc openly at my chateau as Madame Breuc. Somewhat to our embarrassment the villagers, headed by the Mayor and Cure, came to present us with an address of welcome. Of course they did not know Pauline was whom she was; but they soon will if you start to stir up trouble.’
'But... but this means that Pauline's marriage to Prince Borghese is null and void. She has committed bigamy.'
Now really beginning to enjoy himself, Roger nodded, 'I fear that is the case. Unfortunately Pauline is not gifted with your brains. Greatly as I adore her one must admit that she takes life very lightly. Owing to your machinations she thought that I had gone out of her life for good, and I had great difficulty last night in convincing her that by her hasty marriage to Borghese she had committed a form of crime. Of course, in the bad old days of the Revolution it would not have been of much consequence and you could somehow have wriggled her out of it. But I fear you have cooked your own goose by arranging the Concordat with Rome. The Pope would have given you a dispensation for her before she married again, but he cannot do that afterwards. So if I claim my wife publicly, as I now feel inclined to, there seems little that you can do about it, and poor Pauline will have to pay for her stupidity by burying herself with me somewhere in the country.'
'You ... you devil!' Napoleon stormed, froth beginning to appear on his lips. 'But there is a remedy for this. I'll have you taken in a closed carriage to Vincennes and thrown into a dungeon. There you may talk as you will; the gaolers will suppose you only to be a madman.'
'And what of the glorious Revolution?' Roger gave a bitter laugh. 'Do I see in you another Louis XV about to sign a lettre de cachet? How unfortunate for you that the mob pulled down the Bastille in '89; so that you cannot follow tradition fully and send me to it.'
'Vincenncs will serve well enough,' gasped Napoleon.
'To hold me prisoner,' Roger sneered, 'but not to ensure your peace of mind. How can you suppose that I did not resent the treatment meted out to me at Bruges on your orders? I spent this morning writing letters to men, several of whom are your worst enemies, telling the truth about myself and Pauline. I have made arrangements that should I not be reinstated on your personal staff within a week, those letters are to be despatched to their destinations, which include the Russian, Prussian and Austrian Ambassadors, and His Holiness the Pope. Now, arrest me if you dare!'
The froth from Napoleon's mouth dribbled down his chin. His eyes bulged, he gulped for air. Suddenly he lurched forward.
He would have measured his length on the floor had not Roger caught him just in time. Lifting his rigid body into a chair, Roger stepped back a pace and stared at him in near panic. He felt sure that his master's intense rage had resulted in an epileptic fit. The clenched teeth, open, turned-up eyes and purple face were all evidence of it. But what to do?
His immediate impulse was to call for help. But that would bring the crowd in the anteroom streaming in, and all France getting to know that the First Consul was an epileptic. On the other hand, to remain there alone with him could have appalling consequences. If, in the next few moments, he died Roger would be held responsible for his death. The quarrel between them was certain to come to light, then public indignation would demand a trial and an execution. But to prevent his weakness from becoming generally known would be a sure way to earn his gratitude. Taking one of the biggest gambles of his life, Roger sloshed some water from a carafe into a glass and threw it in Napoleon's face, then slapped him hard.
After a few moments Napoleon's limbs began to jerk, his features lost their rigidity and he struggled into a sitting position in the chair. Regarding him anxiously, Roger asked, 'Shall I send for your doctor?'
Feebly the stricken man shook his head, 'No, no! You... you did right to restore me yourself. No one must know that I... I occasionally suffer from these fits.'
For a full minute they remained silent, then Napoleon drew a long breath and said, 'Breuc, I have treated you ill. I admit it. For me to give you Pauline was too much to ask. But... but you have proved that you can be a terrible enemy as well as a good friend. That we have been at loggerheads is as much your fault as mine. You should have told me of this secret marriage. I love my sister, so I would go to great lengths to protect her from the results of her folly. For her to be adjudged a bigamist would be a terrible thing. Can I rely on you to keep this secret?'
Roger nodded, 'Yes, mon General. For I love her too. And what is done is done. There'd be no sense in bringing grief to all of us on account of it.'
'Then you may resume your place here as one of my A.D.Cs and, well... I'll think of some way of compensating you for what you went through at Bruges.’
'It has done me no harm and I have learned now what your soldiers suffer when on a campaign; so I need no compensation other than one thing.' 'What is it?'
'That you will not allow your police to interfere between myself and Pauline. We love one another, and we have already arranged a way in which we can assuage our desire to be together without Borghese coming to know of it.'
'Very well then. I gather that in spite of the Prince's fine appearance he is little good to a woman; so it's certain that if it were not you Pauline would soon take some other lover. Since you have proved yourself to be discreet, I'd as lief it was you than some new fancy of hers who might prove boastful and make trouble between her and her husband.'
For the first time during their interview Roger smiled with real pleasure. He had lied like a trooper about his having married Pauline; but their having lived at St. Maximc for a month as man and wife provided a sound basis for his story. He intended to tell Pauline that, should Napoleon question her about her marriage, she was to tell him that she had forgotten the name of the little Commune in which the ceremony was supposed to have taken place; so he thought it most unlikely that his lie would ever be found out.
Napoleon came unsteadily to his feet, extended his hand and said, 'Then let us regard bygones as bygones.'
Roger took it and replied, 'Mon General, I thank you. You know well that at any time I would cheerfully die for you.'
Returning his smile, Napoleon lifted his hand in the familiar gesture as though to pull Roger's ear; then it dropped to his side and he said wearily, 'Yes. I believe you would. Go now. I do not feel equal to receiving anyone else this morning. Tell all those people outside that I have just received a despatch that needs my immediate consideration, and get rid of them.'
As Roger was not in uniform he did not salute. Drawing himself up, he cried, 'Mon General, to hear is to obey.' Then, swinging on his heel, he marched triumphant from the room.
That evening he thanked Talleyrand for his brilliant intervention, and when he had told the whole story they laughed together over the way Napoleon had been fooled and blackmailed.
Soon after midnight Roger was outside the gate in the wall of the garden behind the Borghese mansion. Aimee let him in and took him up to her mistress.
After they had been nearly eating one another with voracious kisses he told Pauline about his interview with her terrible brother. At first she was horrified that he should have been told that she had committed bigamy. But Roger pointed out that she could be certa
in that he would never mention it to anyone; so the lie would go no further. She then held him away from her at arm's length, smiled at him, gave a sigh and said:
‘Roje, what a man you are! What other would have dared first to defy him, then have so skilfully brought him to heel? And he'll not now seek to interfere between us. What a triumph. Oh, I am so proud of you.'
Next day, once more wearing his Colonel's uniform, Roger reported at the Tuileries. Napoleon showed no signs at all of the epileptic fit that had struck him down the day before, and was as usual displaying his dynamic energy in dealing with innumerable problems.
The following week Roger accompanied him on a tour of inspection of several of the seven Army Corps that had been assembled for the invasion of England. They did not go as far north as Hanover, where Bernadotte commanded the First Corps, or Utrecht, where Marmont had the Second, or as far south as Brest, where Augereau was stationed with the Seventh. But at the Headquarters of the Third at Bruges, Roger had the satisfaction of enquiring politely of the sour Davoust whether he had had any deserters shot lately. At Boulogne, Soult had the Fourth Corps and, being a great devotee of music, entertained them to a fine concert. The many times wounded but apparently unkillable Lannes had, the previous year, been packed off as Ambassador to Lisbon, because of the intense irritation he had caused Napoleon by continuing to 'thee' and 'thou' him familiarly—a habit now forbidden to even the oldest friends of the First Consul. But he was too fine a soldier to be left out of the invasion plans, so had been recalled to take command of the Fifth Corps at Calais, where they found him as bluff and foul-mouthed as ever. Red-headed Ney had the Sixth at Montreuil, Murat the Cavalry Corps and Bessieres the Consular Guard.
They also toured long stretches of the Scheldt, Somme and Seine, for in every town and village along their banks—and those of the rivers Elbe and Weser as well—shipwrights brought from all parts of France were labouring night and day building the vast fleet of invasion barges that was to carry the 'Army of the Coast of the Ocean' across the Channel.
On their return to Paris there were other matters to be gone into that had already been put in train earlier that autumn. An American inventor named Fulton, a man of undoubted genius but uncertain sympathies—at one time he claimed that he would 'Deliver France and the world from British oppression' and a little later that Napoleon was 'A wild beast who ought to be hunted down'—had been busying himself on two projects. One was an adaptation of the steam vessel with which Henry Bell had filled all beholders with wonder and terror on the Clyde in 1800. The other was a forerunner of the modern submarine.
Fulton's first paddle steamer had been so ill constructed that during a gale it rid itself of the weight of its engine by breaking in half, but he had since made another that astonished the scientists of the Institute by chugging very slowly down the Seine. The submarine, or 'plunging boat' as it was termed, suffered the disability that, being a sailing vessel, as soon as it disappeared under water it lost all power to move forward. Admittedly it succeeded in discharging a form of torpedo into another small vessel and sinking it, but it certainly would have been blown to pieces before it could have done so had its victim been armed with a cannon.
Napoleon, like most wise military commanders, was extremely chary of changing any main type of armament while his country was at war because, although the new type might be an improvement on the old, the change-over involved great organisational difficulties and the troops had to be trained in handling it before it could be used effectively. So he could not be brought even to consider building a fleet of Fulton's steamboats for the invasion.
By that time his building programme of flat-bottomed barges was well advanced, and during the autumn Roger saw a letter of his to Admiral Gantheaume in which he said that he would soon have one thousand three hundred barges on the northern coast capable of carrying over one hundred thousand men, and another flotilla based on the Dutch ports that would transport a follow-up of a further sixty thousand.
The menace of an invading army of such a size would have made Roger tremble for the safety of his country had he believed that any great part of it would succeed in getting ashore. But Napoleon and his generals knew nothing of the tides, cross-currents and uncertainties of the English Channel, whereas Roger had spent countless days of his boyhood sailing from Lymington on yachts large and small up and down the coast; so he knew a great deal. It was, therefore, his firm opinion that even a moderate choppiness of the sea would make most of the troops in the cumbersome barges terribly seasick, that many of the barges would sink and all be extremely vulnerable to both the guns of the Royal Navy and those of the shore batteries.
During the autumn, whenever Roger was not on duty with his master, or being despatched on brief missions by him, he continued his delightful liaison with the unfailingly amorous Pauline, to the great pleasure and satisfaction of them both.
On several occasions he encountered her husband, Camillo Borghese, when attending receptions at the Tuilerics, the Hotel de Charost and other private mansions, and soon knew all about the Prince. He was twenty-eight and an attractive man with large dark eyes. His estates in Italy were vast, but his education left much to be desired. He spoke French with a heavy accent and was incapable of writing even his own language correctly. Five years earlier, with the enthusiasm of youth for new ideas, he had espoused the Republican cause in Rome. Accepting the doctrine of 'Liberty, Equality and Fraternity' without reserve he had, with other like-minded young nobles, thrown his coat of arms into a public bonfire, wherein Cardinals' hats were already blazing, and danced round it.
These antics had since been discreetly overlooked, and older members of his family had seen to it that he retained his vast possessions. His courtship of Pauline had been warmly approved by her mother, whose natural language and sympathies were Italian; and it was Madame Letizia who had pushed Napoleon into agreeing that Pauline should be allowed to marry Borghese before her twelve months of mourning had expired.
When in society Roger tactfully refrained from paying more attention to Pauline than to the other Bonaparte ladies and, secure in her passionate attachment to him, he could afford to make himself pleasant to the Prince. Meanwhile a furious strife was raging among the members of the Bonaparte family.
The idea had long been canvassed that to protect himself from assassination Napoleon should become an hereditary monarch and thus, having appointed a successor, ensure that his death would not lead to rival factions plunging France into civil war. As Napoleon had no son, all the Bonapartes were already at loggerheads over their claims to become his heir. Joseph, as the eldest, naturally asserted it to be his right. Lucicn, the ex-Robespicrreist, was now more eager to become an heir apparent than any of them and argued that, had it not been for the part he had played during the coup-d'etat of Brumaire, Napoleon would never have become consul at all. The two younger brothers, Louis and Jerome, both put in bids. Then there were the children. Eliza had only a daughter, but both the ambitious Caroline and Pauline had sons. Louis, too, had a boy and Josephine did her utmost to persuade Napoleon to adopt him, because he was her grandson by Hortcnse. Last but not least there was her own son, Eugene dc Beauharnais, who could not altogether be ignored owing to his having become a good soldier and because Napoleon was fonder of him than he was of any of his own brothers.
During the autumn, however, two of the claimants ruled themselves out. Jerome, now aged nineteen, had been put into the Navy and sailed to the West Indies. France, since the Louisiana settlement, having most friendly relations with the United States, young Jerome had had himself landed there and, as the First Consul's brother, been most handsomely received. In Baltimore he had met and married a Miss Elizabeth Patterson.
When Napoleon had learned of this he had become berserk with rage. Pauline having married a Prince had impressed upon him the heights to which he could raise his family now that, in all but title, he was a monarch; so he had intended that Jerome's wife should be nothing less than a Pri
ncess, and the wretched boy had spoilt this gratifying prospect by getting himself tied up to the daughter of an American merchant.
The case of Lucien, by far the cleverest but also the most pig-headed and troublesome of Napoleon's brothers, was even more deplorable. An habitual lecher, while Ambassador in Madrid, he had tried but failed to seduce a Spanish Infanta, and had then acquired the beautiful Marquesa de Santa Cruz as his mistress. On his return from Spain, to the fury of his sister Eliza who, after the death of his first wife, had enormously enjoyed acting as hostess for him, he had brought the Marquesa back with him and installed her as chatelaine in a chateau that he had taken just outside Paris.
Napoleon, regarding this as a temporary affaire, made no objection to it and, ever forgiving of the ungrateful way in which his family abused his generosity, endeavoured to make friends again with Lucien, then evolved a fine plan to further his fortunes. The young and incredibly stupid King of the newly created Kingdom of Etruria had died the previous May; why should not Lucien marry the widowed Queen and so become the son-in-law of the King of Spain, which would bind Spain still more firmly to the interests of France?
Meanwhile Lucien had got rid of the Marquesa and acquired a mistress with a most dubious reputation, named Alexandrine Jouberton, the wife of a defaulting stock-jobber, and had installed her in a house in the Rue du Palais Bourbon. Then, at the end of October, when Napoleon approached him about marrying the Queen of Etruria he had calmly revealed that he had already been married for six months to Alexandrine; giving, of all things for such a man, as his reason that he had felt in honour bound to marry her because he had put her in the family way.
Napoleon's anger knew no bounds and he declared that as Jouberton was still alive the marriage could not be legal; but fate was against liim because the defaulting broker had fled to San Domingo and, soon afterwards, it was learned that he had died there of yellow fever. Pleas and threats alike failed to induce Lucien to divorce the undesirable wife he had acquired and, supported by his mother, who always took his side, he declared that he would -have no more to do with his autocratic brother and departed with his wife to live in Italy.
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