The Complete Brigadier Gerard Stories

by Doyle, Arthur Conan

  I hammered fresh charges into my pistols after I had turned this over in my head. Then I put them back in the holsters, and I examined my little mare, she jerking her head and cocking her ears the while, as if to tell me that an old soldier like herself did not make a fuss about a scratch of two. The first shot had merely grazed her off shoulder, leaving a skin-mark, as if she had brushed a wall. The second was more serious. It had passed through the muscle of her neck, but already it had ceased to bleed. I reflected that if she weakened I could mount Montluc’s grey, and meanwhile I led him along beside us, for he was a fine horse, worth fifteen hundred francs at the least, and it seemed to me that no one had a better right to him than I.

  Well, I was all impatience now to get back to the others, and I had just given Violette her head, when suddenly I saw something glimmering in a field by the roadside. It was the brasswork upon the chasseur hat which had flown from Montluc’s head; and at the sight of it a thought made me jump in the saddle. How could the hat have flown off? With its weight, would it not have simply dropped? And here it lay, fifteen paces from the roadway! Of course, he must have thrown it off when he had made sure that I would overtake him. And if he threw it off––I did not stop to reason any more, but sprang from the mare with my heart beating the pas-de-charge. Yes, it was all right this time. There, in the crown of the hat was stuffed a roll of papers in a parchment wrapper bound round with yellow ribbon. I pulled it out with the one hand, and holding the hat in the other, I danced for joy in the moonlight. The Emperor would see that he had not made a mistake when he put his affairs into the charge of Etienne Gerard.

  I had a safe pocket on the inside of my tunic just over my heart, where I kept a few little things which were dear to me, and into this I thrust my precious roll. Then I sprang upon Violette, and was pushing forward to see what had become of Tremeau, when I saw a horseman riding across the field in the distance. At the same instant I heard the sound of hoofs approaching me, and there in the moonlight was the Emperor upon his white charger, dressed in his grey overcoat and his three-cornered hat, just as I had seen him so often upon the field of battle.

  ‘Well!’ he cried, in the sharp, sergeant-major way of his. ‘Where are my papers?’

  I spurred forward and presented them without a word. He broke the ribbon and ran his eyes rapidly over them. Then, as we sat our horses head to tail, he threw his left arm across me with his hand upon my shoulder. Yes, my friends, simple as you see me, I have been embraced by my great master.

  ‘Gerard,’ he cried, ‘you are a marvel!’

  I did not wish to contradict him, and it brought a flush of joy upon my cheeks to know that he had done me justice at last.

  ‘Where is the thief, Gerard?’ he asked.

  ‘Dead, sire.’

  ‘You killed him?’

  ‘He wounded my horse, sire, and would have escaped had I not shot him.’

  ‘Did you recognise him?’

  ‘De Montluc is his name, sire−a Colonel of Chasseurs.’

  ‘Tut,’ said the Emperor. ‘We have got the poor pawn, but the hand which plays the game is still out of our reach.’ He sat in silent thought for a little, with his chin sunk upon his chest. ‘Ah, Talleyrand, Talleyrand,’ I heard him mutter. ‘If I had been in your place and you in mine, you would have crushed a viper when you held it under your heel. For five years I have known you for what you are, and yet I have let you live to sting me. Never mind, my brave,’ he continued, turning to me, ‘there will come a day of reckoning for everybody, and when it arrives, I promise you that my friends will be remembered as well as my enemies.’

  ‘Sire,’ said I, for I had had time for thought as well as he, ‘if your plans about these papers have been carried to the ears of your enemies, I trust that you do not think that it was owing to any indiscretion upon the part of myself or of my comrades.’

  ‘It would be hardly reasonable for me to do so,’ he answered, ‘seeing that this plot was hatched in Paris, and that you only had your orders a few hours ago.’

  ‘Then how––?’

  ‘Enough,’ he cried sternly. ‘Youtake an undue advantage of your position.’

  That was always the way with the Emperor. He would chat with you as with a friend and a brother, and then when he had wiled you into forgetting the gulf which lay between you, he would suddenly, with a word or with a look, remind you that it was as impassable as ever. When I have fondled my old hound until he has been encouraged to paw my knees, and I have then thrust him down again, it has made me think of the Emperor and his ways.

  He reined his horse round, and I followed him in silence and with a heavy heart. But when he spoke again his words were enough to drive all thought of myself out of my mind.

  ‘I could not sleep until I knew how you had fared,’ said he. ‘I have paid a price for my papers. There are not so many of my old soldiers left that I can afford to lose two in one night.’

  When he said ‘two’ it turned me cold.

  ‘Colonel Despienne was shot, sire,’ I stammered.

  ‘And Captain Tremeau cut down. Had I been a few minutes earlier I might have saved him. The other escaped across the fields.’

  I remembered that I had seen a horseman a moment before I had met the Emperor. He had taken to the fields to avoid me, but if I had known, and Violette been unwounded, the old soldier would not have gone unavenged. I was thinking sadly of his sword-play, and wondering whether it was his stiffening wrist which had been fatal to him, when Napoleon spoke again.

  ‘Yes, Brigadier,’ said he, ‘you are now the only man who will know where these papers are concealed.’

  It must have been imagination, my friends, but for an instant I may confess that it seemed to me that there was a tone in the Emperor’s voice which was not altogether one of sorrow. But the dark thought had hardly time to form itself in my mind before he let me see that I was doing him an injustice.

  ‘Yes, I have paid a price for my papers,’ he said, and I heard them crackle as he put his hand up to his bosom. ‘No man has ever had more faithful servants−no man since the beginning of the world.’

  As he spoke we came upon the scene of the struggle. Colonel Despienne and the man whom we had shot lay together some distance down the road, while their horses grazed contentedly beneath the poplars. Captain Tremeau lay in front of us upon his back, with his arms and legs stretched out, and his sabre broken short off in his hand. His tunic was open, and a huge blood-clot hung like a dark handkerchief out of a slit in his white shirt. I could see the gleam of his clenched teeth from under his immense moustache.

  The Emperor sprang from his horse and bent down over the dead man.

  ‘He was with me since Rivoli,’ said he, sadly. ‘He was one of my old grumblers in Egypt.’

  And the voice brought the man back from the dead. I saw his eyelids shiver. He twitched his arm, and moved the sword-hilt a few inches. He was trying to raise it in a salute. Then the mouth opened, and the hilt tinkled down on to the ground.

  ‘May we all die as gallantly,’ said the Emperor, as he rose, and from my heart I added ‘Amen.’

  There was a farm within fifty yards of where we were standing, and the farmer, roused from his sleep by the clatter of hoofs and the cracking of pistols, had rushed out to the roadside. We saw him now, dumb with fear and astonishment, staring open-eyed at the Emperor. It was to him that we committed the care of the four dead men and of the horses also. For my own part, I thought it best to leave Violette with him and to take De Montluc’s grey with me, for he could not refuse to give me back my own mare, whilst there might be difficulties about the other. Besides, my little friend’s wound had to be considered, and we had a long return ride before us.

  The Emperor did not at first talk much upon the way. Perhaps the deaths of Despienne and Tremeau still weighed heavily upon his spirits. He was always a reserved man, and in those times, when every hour brought him the news of some success of his enemies or defection of his friends, one could not e
xpect him to be a merry companion. Nevertheless, when I reflected that he was carrying in his bosom those papers which he valued so highly, and which only a few hours ago appeared to be for ever lost, and when I further thought that it was I, Etienne Gerard, who had placed them there, I felt that I had deserved some little consideration. The same idea may have occurred to him, for when we had at last left the Paris high road, and had entered the forest, he began of his own accord to tell me that which I should have most liked to have asked him.

  ‘As to the papers,’ said he, ‘I have already told you that there is no one now, except you and me, who knows where they are to be concealed. My Mameluke carried the spades to the pigeon-house, but I have told him nothing. Our plans, however, for bringing the packet from Paris have been formed since Monday. There were three in the secret, a woman and two men. The woman I would trust with my life; which of the two men has betrayed us I do not know, but I think that I may promise to find out.’

  We were riding in the shadow of the trees at the time, and I could hear him slapping his riding-whip against his boot, and taking pinch after pinch of snuff, as was his way when he was excited.

  ‘You wonder, no doubt,’ said he, after a pause, ‘why these rascals did not stop the carriage at Paris instead of at the entrance to Fontainebleau.’

  In truth, the objection had not occurred to me, but I did not wish to appear to have less wits than he gave me credit for, so I answered that it was indeed surprising.

  ‘Hadtheydoneso they would have made a public scandal, and run a chance of missing their end. Short of taking the berline to pieces, they could not have discovered the hiding-place. He planned it well––he could always plan well––and he chose his agents well also. But mine were the better.’

  It is not for me to repeat to you, my friends, all that was said to me by the Emperor as we walked our horses amid the black shadows and through the moon-silvered glades of the great forest. Every word of it is impressed upon my memory, and before I pass away it is likely that I will place it all upon paper, so that others may read it in the days to come. He spoke freely of his past, and something also of his future; of the devotion of Macdonald, of the treason of Marmont, of the little King of Rome, concerning whom he talked with as much tenderness as any bourgeois father of a single child; and, finally, of his father-in-law, the Emperor of Austria, who would, he thought, stand between his enemies and himself. For myself, I dared not say a word, remembering how I had already brought a rebuke upon myself; but I rode by his side, hardly able to believe that this was indeed the great Emperor, the man whose glance sent a thrill through me, who was now pouring out his thoughts to me in short, eager sentences, the words rattling and racing like the hoofs of a galloping squadron. It is possible that, after the word-splittings and diplomacy of a Court, it was a relief to him to speak his mind to a plain soldier like myself.

  In this way the Emperor and I––even after years it sends a flush of pride into my cheeks to be able to put those words together––the Emperor and I walked our horses through the Forest of Fontainebleau, until we came at last to the Colombier. The three spades were propped against the wall upon the right-hand side of the ruined door, and at the sight of them the tears sprang to my eyes as I thought of the hands for which they were intended. The Emperor seized one and I another.

  ‘Quick!’ said he. ‘The dawn will be upon us before we get back to the palace.’

  We dug the hole, and placing the papers in one of my pistol holsters to screen them from the damp, we laid them at the bottom and covered them up. We then carefully removed all marks of the ground having been disturbed, and we placed a large stone upon the top. I dare say that since the Emperor was a young gunner, and helped to train his pieces against Toulon, he had not worked so hard with his hands. He was mopping his forehead with his silk handkerchief long before we had come to the end of our task.

  The first grey cold light of morning was stealing through the tree trunks when we came out together from the old pigeon-house. The Emperor laid his hand upon my shoulder as I stood ready to help him to mount.

  ‘We have left the papers there,’ said he, solemnly, ‘and I desire that you shall leave all thought of them there also. Let the recollection of them pass entirely from your mind, to be revived only when you receive a direct order under my own hand and seal. From this time onwards you forget all that has passed.’

  ‘I forget it, sire,’ said I.

  We rode together to the edge of town, where he desired that I should separate from him. I had saluted, and was turning my horse, when he called me back.

  ‘It is easy to mistake the points of the compass in the forest,’ said he. ‘Would you not say that it was in the north-eastern corner that we buried them?’

  ‘Buried what, sire?’

  ‘The papers, of course,’ he cried, impatiently.

  ‘What papers, sire?’

  ‘Name of a name! Why, the papers that you have recovered for me.’

  ‘I am really at a loss to know what your Majesty is talking about.’

  He flushed with anger for a moment, and then he burst out laughing.

  ‘Very good, Brigadier!’ he cried. ‘I begin to believe that you are as good a diplomatist as you are a soldier, and I cannot say more than that.’

  So that was my strange adventure in which I found myself the friend and confident agent of the Emperor. When he returned from Elba he refrained from digging up the papers until his position should be secure, and they still remained in the corner of the old pigeon-house after his exile to St Helena. It was at this time that he was desirous of getting them into the hands of his own supporters, and for that purpose he wrote me, as I afterwards learned, three letters, all of which were intercepted by his guardians. Finally, he offered to support himself and his own establishment––which he might very easily have done out of the gigantic sum which belonged to him––if they would only pass one of his letters unopened. This request was refused, and so, up to his death in ’21, the papers still remained where I have told you. How they came to be dug up by Count Bertrand and myself, and who eventually obtained them, is a story which I would tell you, were it not that the end has not yet come.

  Some day you will hear of those papers and you will see how, after he has been so long in his grave, that great man can still set Europe shaking. When that day comes, you will think of Etienne Gerard, and you will tell your children that you have heard the story from the lips of the man who was the only one living of all who took part in that strange history––the man who was tempted by Marshal Berthier, who led that wild pursuit upon the Paris road, who was honoured by the embrace of the Emperor, and who rode with him by moonlight in the Forest of Fontainebleau. The buds are bursting and the birds are calling, my friends. You may find better things to do in the sunlight than listening to the stories of an old, broken soldier. And yet you may well treasure what I say, for the buds will have burst and the birds sung in many seasons before France will see such another ruler as he whose servants we were proud to be.

  How the Brigadier Played for a Kingdom

  First days of March, 1813. Prussia had concluded a Convention with Russia secretly agreeing to alliance against Napoleon in late February, but only declared its intentions openly on 13 March, until which time its quiescence was still a possibility. The twenty-two year-old poet Karl Theodor Körner was at this time journeying from Vienna to Leipzig, in the reverse direction from Gerard, evangelising by song. He was killed fighting the French on 26 August 1813. His father is said to have been Schiller’s closest friend.

  It has sometimes struck me that some of you, when you have heard me tell these little adventures of mine, may have gone away with the impression that I was conceited. There could not be a greater mistake than this, for I have always observed that really fine soldiers are free from this failing. It is true that I have had to depict myself sometimes as brave, sometimes as full of resource, always as interesting; but, then, it really was so, and I had to tak
e the facts as I found them. It would be an unworthy affectation if I were to pretend that my career has been anything but a fine one. The incident which I will tell you to-night, however, is one which you will understand that only a modest man would describe. After all, when one has attained such a position as mine, one can afford to speak of what an ordinary man might be tempted to conceal.

  You must know, then, that after the Russian campaign the remains of our poor army were quartered along the western bank of the Elbe, where they might thaw their frozen blood and try, with the help of the good German beer, to put a little between their skin and their bones. There were some things which we could not hope to regain, for I daresay that three large commissariat fourgons would not have sufficed to carry the fingers and the toes which the army had shed during that retreat. Still, lean and crippled as we were, we had much to be thankful for when we thought of our poor comrades whom we had left behind, and of the snowfields––the horrible, horrible snowfields. To this day, my friends, I do not care to see red and white together. Even my red cap thrown down upon my white counterpane has given me dreams in which I have seen those monstrous plains, the reeling, tortured army, and the crimson smears which glared upon the snow behind them. You will coax no story out of me about that business, for the thought of it is enough to turn my wine to vinegar and my tobacco to straw.