The Linguist and the Emperor

by Daniel Meyerson

The kindness is uncharacteristic of David. The politically astute David had managed to become not only a member of Robespierre’s Committee of Public Safety but, for two weeks, its president. During this time he feverishly condemns everyone: fellow artists and former patrons alike. Over four hundred death sentences bearing David’s signature survive, perhaps most tragically, one for the gifted young poet Andrea Chénier, who goes to the scaffold cursing the cruel artist.

  It is a mystery then why David—the creator of severe, neoclassical paintings such as The Lictors Bringing Brutus the Bodies of His Sons and The Oath of the Horatti, examples of Roman courage meant to inspire the revolutionary youth—would stoop to save an artist such as Denon. A dilettante still working in the frivolous prerevolutionary fashion, Denon’s ideals were Cupid Stealing a Nightgown from a Sleeping Maiden and The Swing, a painting in which a husband pushes his wife on a swing while her lover, hidden in the bushes, peeks up her skirts.

  With a few cruel strokes of his pen, David is able to capture Marie Antoinette on the way to the guillotine: hands tied behind her, back straight, features ugly with suffering as she stares ahead with unseeing pride. The sketch is characteristic of David. If Denon had drawn it, it would have been his nature to choose the trivial moment just before Antoinette enters the executioner’s tumbrel: to draw her as she calls for her favorite plum-colored shoes and squats to pee next to a wall. Such is the difference between the two artists.

  For whatever reason, David saves Denon, having his name taken off the list of the expatriates, a euphemism for the condemned, and putting the artistic ex-lover of Madame Pompadour to work designing uniforms for the revolutionary guard.

  This is done with Denon’s usual verve and style. He has talent, though not genius. He never created great epic canvasses for Napoleon like David’s, never achieved the daring of David’s The Death of Marat or the intensity of David’s self-portraits. Denon’s self-portrait, though irresistible for its joie de vivre, is all surface. A lesser artist but a better man than David, Denon’s achievement will be of a different kind.

  During his stay in Egypt he will tirelessly, heroically produce thousands of accurate sketches under the most difficult circumstances, drawing unknown temples and forgotten ruins, recording wall after wall of hieroglyphs. These will be of crucial importance for the new discipline being born.

  Accompanying the army six hundred miles into southern Egypt, he endures thirst, hunger, scorching heat, and the fatigue of forced marches—hardships which overcome many a younger man.

  Undeterred by danger, time and again he will remain behind after his comrades leave to finish a drawing, sometimes escaping death by the skin of his teeth. The unevenness of one sketch, he explained, was due to a shoot-out with a marauder who had suddenly appeared in the desert. Another time, during one of the innumerable desert skirmishes, he risks his life to save that of a black child, mutilated and left to die on the steps of an ancient temple. He will adopt this boy and eventually bring him back to France.

  Denon has courage and a devil-may-care attitude. The insouciance that brings him to Egypt in the first place then gets him into a hundred-and-one scrapes . . . starting from the very beginning, from that hot bright day in July (laundry day in the army) when, hearing that his ship, the Juno, is anchored offshore, he decides to row out and retrieve a change of clothes and his belongings.

  Since soundings of the harbor have not yet been taken, a process requiring some two weeks, no one knows whether the water is deep enough to accommodate the heavy ships, so the fleet lies exposed at Abukir Bay, some twenty miles to the east. Denon sets out in search of the skiff or rowboat that he’ll need, and perhaps a companion to go with him, first stopping off at headquarters to see what can be found.

  All is chaos here. Napoleon, despite his phenomenal energy, is strained to the utmost. Not only is he organizing the occupation, but he is in the midst of preparing for his next step as well.

  There will be a four-pronged march through the desert, the immediate occupation of Cairo as the goal. Eighteen thousand soldiers are to be set in motion before the end of the day. The last time the French were in Egypt, during the crusades, under Louis the Saint, the king waited before taking action, spending nine days immersed in prayer while he and his entire army were surrounded and taken captive. Napoleon—whose only prayers are a stream of curses—will not repeat Louis the Saint’s mistake.

  All arrangements for the march must be made immediately. Inconceivable speed is one of Napoleon’s main strategic weapons. Where another commander would have taken basic precautions, collecting water for the march or sending out scouts, Napoleon saves time by calculating how many of the men will die of thirst and hunger, factoring into his calculations that a certain number will not have the strength to complete the march. What matters most is to get the army to Cairo before anyone could have thought it possible, to catch his enemies off guard, to surprise, to dismay—and then to crush them.

  Denon stands at the edge of the whirlwind Napoleon has created, watching the constant coming and going. A mob has descended on headquarters, each man arguing that his mission is more urgent, his request more pressing than any other’s.

  In charge of the engineers, Monge is disputing with chief of staff Berthier over how the city’s defenses should be strengthened. Desgennetes, in charge of the medical team, is insisting on decent arrangements for the wounded to anyone who will listen. Officers clamor for provisions for their hungry men. And local guides offer their services for the impending march through the desert, each giving conflicting accounts of the terrain which must be covered. The French do not yet have a single accurate and detailed map.

  Sailors arrive with reports from Admiral Brueys who is worried about the safety of his ships. And aides-de-camp hurry to post the latest decrees throughout the city: the food prices Napoleon has fixed.

  In the midst of everything else, Bonaparte has taken time to issue orders regarding how much Alexandria’s merchants can charge for a pound of lentils or a fat goose. These prices the merchants will ignore, however, ironically asking for much less. For, they reason, when the Mamelukes cut the foreigners to bits—as everyone is sure they will—what will be the good of French coin? Instead of French money—the possession of which will be evidence of collaboration, after all—they want to be able to prove how many Frenchmen they have killed, to be able to boast of their loyalty and courage when their masters return. And so they charge the soldiers the brass buttons from their uniforms—so-and-so many for a pound of lentils, and so many for a goose . . .

  But what are these gloomy predictions, this whispering of the marketplace to Napoleon? He has spoken! He has decided what the price of lentils and geese, fat and lean, will be. The printing presses are unloaded from the ships right away—even before the medicine or dry biscuit. The price lists—the first words ever printed in Egypt—are plastered on walls and doorways . . . not far from the heroic dead who still lie where they fell, stripped of uniforms and gnawed by stray dogs.

  Napoleon’s idea of mummifying some for a future military museum is shouted down by the savants. In good time, they will be buried. But first Bonaparte must deal with imams and officials and shipowners and, perhaps most important of all, the Bedouin sheiks who have come to sell him desperately needed camels and horses. These devious men spend so much time haggling and disputing terms, it is as if they actually intend to deliver the animals they now promise.

  In the midst of all this clamor and confusion, Denon sketches: the wizened, intriguing features of the Egyptian governor, who, ever since sighting the warships outside the harbor, spends all his time in attendance upon Bonaparte; the French engineers arguing over their plans; a soldier carrying dispatches, his jacket already missing some buttons.

  By chance, the artist encounters a friend, a fellow savant. It is the young poet Perceval-Grandmaison who has just been put in charge of some requisitioned donkeys. Donkeys! Grandmaison seethes. Would they have put Shakespeare or Dante or Virgil in charge
of donkeys? In the urgent press of affairs, Napoleon’s imported savants have been called from their exalted speculations to perform whatever tasks are needed: running errands or compiling inventories or caring for the wounded—what’s more, doing so on a private’s meager rations.

  Denon explains he is on his way to the Juno where Grandmaison has left his belongings as well. Abandoning the poor, uninspiring donkeys, the two wander together toward an outlying part of town as they look for a skiff to take them to their ship.

  They never reach the Juno. Hours later, as the moon rises over Alexandria, the two Frenchman are lost, climbing over embankments, wading through water—still without fresh clothes or their belongings. They are pursued by what Denon in his memoirs calls “the 6th plague of Egypt”: packs of wild, hungry dogs who snarl at the poet and painter. Finally Denon, ex-lover of Madame Pompadour and future director of the Louvre, is reduced to hurling rocks at them and cursing. Grandmaison has fallen into a ditch and twisted his ankle, making it difficult for him to walk.

  Denon is a good friend of Grandmaison’s. The two argued and talked throughout the entire crossing on the Juno. Now, however, stranded on menacing, dark shores, he is somehow less interested in meter and rhyme.

  Sounds of gunshots and sporadic fighting can be heard throughout the night. The population is still hostile. No one believes that Napoleon has come to free Egypt, to liberate her from Mameluke oppression. His propaganda and proclamations are scoffed at, while the pronouncements of Al-Azhar’s sheiks—who have also been busy with propaganda—command respect. They stir up bands of vigilantes who roam the countryside, attacking any French they meet while giving refuge to the Mamelukes who had so cruelly ruled over them.

  For the Mamelukes are believers. Cruel or not, foreign or not, speakers of Turkish or Albanian or some other tongue, blue-eyed and blond from the Caucasus or black from Nubia, the Mamelukes acknowledge God and his prophet Mohammed.

  True, they have no heirs and so each regime change is fraught with quarrels and bloodshed. Yet the exquisite tombs and mosques and caravanserais they build—with their delicate arabesques and plays of light and shadow and masterpieces of carved calligraphy—are the pride of the land.

  And these Frenchmen? Godless, shameless, uncircumcised, they are drinkers of whiskey and wine. Unsatisfied with boys, they make love to respectable, veiled women.

  In a word: infidels.

  And in another: dogs.

  Thus Denon and Grandmaison pass half the night in danger of their lives, sitting talking by the seashore and hoping that a French patrol will come by—as one eventually does—to lead them to safety.

  Chapter Eight

  * Coptic. From a second-century AD papyrus scroll. The word cried out by a possessed man, hung up in church.

  Meaning unknown.

  1806 Summer. France.

  Vif—in the mountains outside the village.

  IT IS IMPOSSIBLE to see the sun set in Grenoble. It sinks behind the snow-capped mountains surrounding the city. Suddenly, it is night.

  But on the mountains, high up over a lonely valley, every shade of the fading day is as distinct as a note of music. Here a swarthy, foreign-looking youth—Jean François—stands alone, watching eagles soar and circle overhead.

  Shadows fall over the pine and beech tree forest where he has spent the day wandering. Soon the naked crags and peaks are plunged into darkness along with the winding paths that lead up to them—narrow paths used only by goatherds and smugglers and, on that summer’s day, by a young man with a thousand ancient words running in his head. They echo more loudly than the locusts chirring in the valley below.

  It has been a strenuous day, but Jean François needs to climb and climb and forget the petty humiliations of his schoolmasters and the frustrations of the past year, his last in the lycée. Scrambling over fallen trees and huge boulders, he comes to a woodcutter’s shack where he spends the night. Jotting down all he has seen and thought, he composes enthusiastic, though not very good, poetry inspired by youth and first love.

  For Jean François is in love; and, moreover, with a woman who speaks only French! Some six years older than he, she has something of the pallor and ethereal look of a consumptive.

  Her name is Pauline Berriat. Her sister Zoé has just married his brother Jacques. The two are thrown together, Pauline and Jean François—still shy with women—not only in Grenoble but during the long, idyllic summer in the mountains where he is staying with his brother and where Pauline comes to visit.

  As a match it is impossible. Pauline Berriat is the daughter of a prosperous lawyer, and he has only slowly, reluctantly, become reconciled to the idea of one daughter marrying a scholar—though a scholar “with prospects” as Jacques is said to have. Monsieur Berriat has no intention of allowing his second daughter to become involved with another scholar—who has none.

  After all, Jacques has been admitted to the learned society of Grenoble, the Académie delphinale: a great honor for anyone and an unprecedented tribute for someone like Jacques, who has no degrees or formal training. In addition, Jacques has supporters, influential men in the Académie who are bent on helping him survive. They see to it that he is made Grenoble’s librarian and then secure an appointment for him in the university.

  But more is involved in Berriat’s decision than such objective facts. What is decisive, what distinguishes Jacques from Jean François in the prudent lawyer’s eyes are trifles: a gesture, a tone of voice, what is not said more than what is said. It is nothing, really: but everything, all the imponderables which make up a first and never-to-be-effaced impression.

  For Jean François is an enthusiast with an abrupt, nervous manner who listens to Pauline’s father without really listening, who “comes to life” in a drawing room only when the most preposterous (to Berriat’s mind) questions are discussed, who sometimes bites his lips till they bleed when an idea strikes him and who is given to fainting.

  No, these are more decisive factors than objective prospects. What wins Jacques his bride is the way that (unlike Jean François) he can deal with many different kinds of people. Jacques is discreet, political, sober, worldly wise.

  It is one thing to be able to endure poverty (as Jean François will). It is quite another to perform a clerk’s duties for five years running as Jacques has (and as Jean François never could): patiently taking care of business details while acquiring a breadth of learning that will win him the admiration of the Académie delphinale.

  Jean François, no matter what he argues, what he promises to achieve, stands no chance with Berriat. Zoé tries to explain this to her new brother-in-law, consoling Jean François with a combination of sympathy, bourgeois indignation, and teasing banter.

  A clever woman, she is a good wife to Jacques, kind to Jean François from their first meeting when she draws him out with intelligent questions about his studies. Hearing how much he loves Arabic, she has him translate his nickname, Cadet, into Arabic: Seghir. This becomes the name Jean Francois’ friends and family use for him from this time on and how he signs his letters. Seghir, Cadet: “younger brother”—like the name he will use in his publications later, Champollion jeune, Champollion the younger.

  It is not only a mark of his deference for Jacques, of his deep respect for his brother, but a sign of how he sees himself. Jacques’ faith in him will always be the source of Jean François’ own belief in himself. If the world is indifferent, hostile, and mocking, Jacques’ support for his impulsive, tempestuous younger brother is unwavering. And more: Jacques has demonstrated, by his example, what toil and determination can achieve.

  But though Jacques’ presence is a vital and almost an overwhelming one for his brother, Jean François’ beloved, Pauline, remains a cipher, a mere shadow. She walks by Jean François’ side in the mountains; meets him secretly in Grenoble; or sees him at her sister’s house, where she plays the piano or recites poetry for him in her languid way. Of her interest in his work, or of a willingness to defy her father, w
e know not a word. Yet she remains loyal and faithful to Jean François even after he leaves Grenoble to study in Paris.

  Time goes by, a year, then another. His letters to her dwindle in number. Pauline is forgotten and Jean François lives in a small room in Paris alone with the hieroglyphs: his real mistress, the beautiful, inscrutable writing. And if his passion for her is like a disease, it is a disease that gives his life meaning.

  IT SEEMS AS if Jean François passes from childhood to manhood in an instant. There are all the recognizable, universal moments of youth . . .

  There is first love, perhaps felt all the more intensely given his passionate nature.

  There is the friend: a fellow student named Joachim Wangehis who stands up for Jean François in the lycée. This makes the school authorities separate them. Writes Jean François to Jacques, “I am supposed to be a ‘bad influence’! They warned him to stay away from me and he did not! He paid no attention to them. And so they have changed his schedule of classes. I will no longer see him. That’s how they do things here!”

  And there is the crime—a trip with Wangehis to see a forbidden “show”—images of the newly excavated ruins of Pompei projected in the Laterna Magica. Light is made to shine through scenes painted on glass and alternated quickly, one after the other, the illusion of motion accompanied by thunder and explosions from a “sound machine.”

  Innocent images, when all is said and done: a mother clutching her child, a beggar with his arm around a dog, priests buried under their toppled gods. There is not much to account for the scandal the display has caused except, perhaps, for the Roman lady caught in the gladiators’ barracks when the volcano erupts, “sketched from life”—as the advertisement states, or rather “from death”—the woman in her gold bracelets and jewels preserved perfectly in the volcanic ash, two manacled gladiators at her side.