Roger thought the priorities somewhat strange but, as he handed the list back, his only comment was, ‘I fear it will be a long time now before we see either the marionettes or the whores.’
Bourrienne gave a wry smile. ‘Yes. This, of course, was sent off before we heard about the destruction of our Fleet. That is a terrible blow to us. When I received the despatch our little man was out in the desert, and I sent it on to him. Temporarily, I think, he was quite shattered, but he has remarkable resilience. In no time, he was going about saying such things as, “This is the moment when characters of a superior order assert themselves. The English have compelled us to do greater things than we expected” and “We must now die in this country or come out of it as great as the Ancients”.’
‘The last sums up our situation in a nut-shell,’ remarked Roger gloomily.
‘But think of the countries we shall see, if we survive. Having secured our rear by conquering Syria, we shall descend the Red Sea, invade and subdue India, turn northwest through Persia, overrun Turkey and arrive home by way of a crushed Austro-Hungary.’
‘Heavens above! Can you mean this?’
‘Not seriously,’ Bourrienne smiled, ‘but at times that is the way our master talks. Personally, I think the duration of our ordeals in the East depends upon events in France. Although he fancies himself in the role of another Alexander, it is upon France that his eyes are really fixed. By leaving the stage there he has given the Directors enough rope to hang themselves, and as soon as they are ripe to swing he will somehow manage to return.’
‘What! And leave us in some damned jungle to be eaten by cannibals?’
Bourrienne laughed. ‘I don’t think he would leave me, but he would have to leave a lot of other people and, perhaps, you would be among them.’
‘Enough!’ Roger cried, standing up. ‘I’ve ample to depress me without listening to prognostications of so black a future.’ And, leaving his friend, he went back to his lodging to superintend the installation of the new furniture he had bought.
During Bonaparte’s absence the gallant Desaix had been left in command in Cairo. Roger, in an attempt to take his mind off the loss of Xanthé, attached himself temporarily to him. As Desaix had his own aides-de-camp, Rapp and Savary, Roger was given no special tasks, but he attended the General on an interesting inspection of the Citadel. There was a magnificent collection of armour in it, taken from the Crusaders. Some of the helmets hung outside one of the great interior gates of the fortress and, although they had been there for six hundred years, owing to the dry climate of Egypt they showed little sign of deterioration.
He also rode out with Desaix and some hundred others to the Pyramids. There they marvelled at those vast monuments formed from great blocks of stone, so perfectly aligned that one could not put even the blade of a dagger between them. With a dozen or so of the younger officers, Savary and Roger climbed to the top of the Great Pyramid. It was a most exhausting exploit; but when they reached the summit they found that the apex of marble casing had been torn away, so there was plenty of room to sit down and enjoy the stupendous view.
Yet these distractions failed to keep Roger’s thoughts for long from Zanthé. Every morning he harried the Provost Marshal with fruitless enquiries for news of ben-Jussif. Whenever he walked the streets he peered at the face of each woman, however poorly dressed, hoping that above her yashmak he might recognise the lovely, tawny eyes that still haunted his daydreams.
After a week’s absence Bonaparte returned. On August 11th he had met and defeated Ibrahim Bey’s force at Salahiyeh and had driven the remnants of it back to the Syrian frontier.
On the 18th the Nile was declared to have risen to the maximum height it could reach that year and Bonaparte, desirous of gaining the goodwill of the people, joined with his Staff in the annual rejoicing. Two days later there fell the great festival of the Birth of the Prophet. The Sheiks and Imams, now anxious to propitiate the weedy little Corsican who had been clever enough to endow them with a semblance of power and before whom they now bowed low, addressing him as ‘The Exalted One’, invited him to attend the celebrations.
Accordingly, accompanied by several Generals and the principal members of his Staff, he went to the house of the Sheik El Bekri. Like the hundred or more Sheiks assembled there, they sat down on carpets, with their legs crossed. The Sheiks then recited many verses from the Koran recording the life of the Prophet and, as they uttered their sing-song litany, swayed their bodies to and fro rhythmically. Afterwards a great supper was served of foods, mostly very highly spiced, and an abundance of sweetmeats. Everyone used his fingers to eat with, which surprised most of the French guests; but Roger, having travelled in the East, was used to this custom.
Through his interpreter, Bonaparte made it clear that he thought more highly of the Mohammedan than the Christian religion; so he was pressed by the Imams to become a convert to their faith. With his usual duplicity he led them on by saying that he would like to do so, but did not feel that he could submit to circumcision or give up wine, which was a necessity to people who had been reared in a cold country.
His objections gave the Imams much to wrangle over during the months that followed. They eventually agreed that circumcision could be dispensed with and that wine might be drunk in proportion to the good works accomplished by the drinker. But by that time Bonaparte had other fish to fry and, in any case, he had never had the least intention of antagonising the millions of convinced Christians in Europe by becoming a Muslim.
The nearest he ever got to that was to have a Turkish costume made for himself and appear in it one morning at breakfast, to amuse his officers; but he soon found it so uncomfortable that, having had his joke, he threw it off.
On August 22nd he founded the Institute of Egypt on the model of the famous Institut de France. It had four Sections—Mathematics, Physics, Political Economy, and Literature and Art. Monge was made President, Bonaparte modestly reserving for himself the Vice-Presidency. Berthollet, Denon and all the other intellectuals who had accompanied him to Egypt made up the membership. Also included was a number of his officers, selected by him in this instance only on their standard of education. Caffarelli — his one-legged, highly gifted Chief Engineer—was among them, and Bourrienne; also Roger, on account of the many languages that he spoke and the fact that his general knowledge far surpassed that of his courageous brother aides-de-camp.
At the very first meeting of the Institute Bonaparte requested its members to deliberate and report on: how to improve the baking ovens of the Army; could any substitute for hops be found for making beer; were there any means of purifying the waters of the Nile; would windmills or water-mills prove more serviceable in Cairo; could saltpetre be found in Egypt, or some other ingredient that would enable gunpowder to be made locally. He also charged the Institute to examine measures for improving the education of the natives and to bring out a newspaper every ten days, in French, to be called ‘Décade Egyptienne’.
The Institute was housed in a palace of one of the Beys. All the machines and technical instruments brought from France were set up in it, a big laboratory for chemical experiments was installed and soon a number of rooms began to be filled with objects of interest dug up by the archaeologists. Some of them measured the Pyramids and the Sphinx, others made drawings of temples, statues and mummies. Others again set themselves the colossal task of translating the hieroglyphics.
Meanwhile Bonaparte set up scores of small factories—a mint, foundries, distilleries, gunsmiths, shoemakers, clothiers, saddlers, ropemakers and others—in which he employed all the tradesmen of his Army. Rarely, if ever, has so much been accomplished with so little by one man in so short a time.
Yet, after a month in Cairo, the Army was seething with discontent. Both officers and men found Egypt far from being, as had been depicted to them, the fabled land of the Ptolemies. Food was short and monotonous. No man might go out alone in the streets at night or wander far from a camp in the desert witho
ut risk of being set upon and killed. They were not even allowed the consolation of robbing the native traders and making free with their women. Wine was unobtainable, and strong liquor far beyond the price they could afford. Above all, they were now cut off from their homes and beginning to fear that they would never see them again.
The resentment of some of the senior officers at Bonaparte having got them into this situation was still more bitter than that of their juniors, for many of them had made fortunes during the Italian campaign and now they saw no prospect of ever getting back to France to enjoy them. Even Generals such as Lannes, Bessières and Murat, who owed everything to Bonaparte, criticised him openly in his presence until, on one occasion, he was stung into rounding on them and snapping at the huge mulatto, Dumas:
‘Enough of your seditious parleys! Take care that I do not perform my duty. Your six feet of stature shall not save you from being shot.’
Very few officers were prepared to stand up for their General-in-Chief, but among them was the faithful Junot, whom he had picked out when a Sergeant at Toulon and made his very first aide-de-camp. Junot heard one of his brother Generals, Lanusse, make some disparaging remarks about their master and promptly joined issue with him. Murat was also present and, wishing to reconcile them, invited them both to dine with him that day. Bessières, Lannes, Lavalette, Leclerc, Roger and several other officers were also invited. After dinner they sat down to cards. Junot was the biggest winner and after a time had a pile of gold pieces in front of him. Lanusse, having lost heavily, asked him for the loan of ten louis, upon which Junot replied, ‘I’ll not lend money to a traitor like you’.
Instantly everyone was on his feet. Lanusse retorted that Junot was a scoundrel. The others endeavoured to pacify them, but it was useless. Although duels were forbidden they insisted on fighting at once, and that it should be a duel to the death.
Lanusse, being the challenged party, had the choice of weapons and chose pistols. It was an insane choice because Junot was the best pistol-shot in the Army and at twenty-five paces could cut a bullet in two on the blade of a knife. With great generosity he refused to fight with pistols and, despite the protests of his friends, insisted that it should be swords.
The palace occupied by Murat had a pleasant garden sloping down to the Nile, and they trooped out there. By then it was nine o’clock and darkness had fallen; so their host tried to stop the duel on the pretext that they could not see well enough for it to be a fair fight. But Lanusse shouted some offensive expressions about Bonaparte, and Lannes cried with an oath, ‘Hold your tongue! You’re going to cut one another’s throats. Isn’t that enough?’
Torches were fetched and by their light the two Generals threw off their coats, then sparks flew from their sabres as each tried to cut down the other. The impetuous Junot delivered a stroke that would have killed Lanusse had he not been wearing his hat. As it was, the hat saved his head and the point of the blade laid open only his cheek. In delivering the blow, Junot had exposed himself and, Lanusse being the better swordsman, brought his sabre round in a back-hander that inflicted a terrible wound eight inches long right across Junot’s stomach.
It fell to Roger, the following morning, to break to his master the news of the affair and that Junot was lying at death’s door. Bonaparte’s first words were, ‘My poor Junot! Wounded for me! But the idiot; why did he not fight with pistols?’ Then, seized by one of his terrible rages, he cried:
‘Why am I cursed with such Generals? Have they not enough to do with the Mamelukes and the Arabs, that they must go into the reeds of the Nile and cut each other’s throats among the crocodiles? For this Junot deserves putting under arrest for a month as soon as he gets well.’
Another General who was constantly whining to get home was Berthier. While in Rome, the ugly little man had fallen in love with the beautiful Madame Visconti. So consumed with passion for her was he that during the campaign his Staff-work had gone all to pieces, and Bourrienne had actually come upon him in his tent, kneeling on the ground and praying before a portrait of his lovely mistress.
Roger could sympathise with him, as his own craving for Zanthé continued unabated. The Provost Marshal’s police had completely failed to trace ben-Jussif; but towards the end of August chance led to Roger’s seeing her again.
Among Bonaparte’s endeavours to render the garrison of Cairo more content had been the organising of the Tivoli Garden. A number of cafés had been opened there, at which officers and men could drink, play cards and discuss the news that came in from the Divisions that were still carrying on a guerilla warfare in the desert. It was also frequented by the few Frenchwomen who had succeeded in smuggling themselves on to the ships of the armada, or had since managed to reach Egypt on other vessels, the wives and daughters of the European merchants established in Cairo and of those wealthy Copts who were not, like the Moslem ladies, confined to harems.
In the cool of the evenings, except that it was graced with palms instead of chestnut trees, it had become more or less a replica of the garden of the Palais Royal in Paris. Zanthé was half French, and Roger had a faint hope that one evening she might come to the garden; so he often frequented it; but it was not there that he was destined to meet her.
Other diversions instituted by Bonaparte were duck-shoots in the early morning in the marshes of the Nile, and boating parties on the river later in the day. One afternoon Roger, Duroc and Lavalette decided to go on a boating expedition, so went down to one of the wharves. Two handsome palanquins had been set down on it. They obviously belonged to someone of importance, for not only were there negro bearers lounging beside them but also an escort of Turkish Janissaries.
While Roger and his fellow aides-de-camp were waiting for a boat, a beautiful gilded barge pulled in to the wharf. Two more Janissaries sprang out of it and proceeded to help ashore half a dozen Muslim ladies. All of them were wrapped in voluminous robes of silk and wore yashmaks which concealed the lower parts of their faces. The first of the group was obviously elderly and, as she passed the French officers, she lowered her eyes to the ground; but the second gave them a quick glance and Roger caught it. He would have known those wonderful tawny eyes anywhere.
‘Zanthé!’ he cried, springing forward.
The startled look in her eyes showed that she had already recognised him but, instantly, she switched her glance away and hurried after the leader of the group towards the more richly decorated of the two palanquins. At Roger’s cry, the Janissaries gave him an angry stare and closed round the ladies. Duroc, meanwhile, had grabbed him by the arm, pulled him back and demanded:
‘What are you about?’
‘That lady …’ Roger stammered. ‘I know her! Let me go! I must speak with her.’
Still gripping his arm, Duroc exclaimed, ‘You cannot! Are you mad? You know the General-in-Chief’s orders. These people are Turks, and of high standing. They are our allies, and he’ll have your head off if you interfere with one of their women.’
‘She’s not a Turk; she’s French! Or half French, anyway,’ Roger protested. But Duroc continued to cling to him, while the six women mounted into the palanquins and were borne away.
For a further few minutes Roger and Duroc wrangled, then, on Roger’s giving his word that he would do nothing rash, Duroc let him go. Hurriedly he set off after his beloved until he came up to within a dozen paces of the rear palanquin, then he followed it at a slower pace. For a quarter of an hour the little cavalcade wound its way through the tortuous streets of the old city, then entered the courtyard of a large palace that Roger instantly recognised. It was that of the Sultan’s Viceroy, who had fled, and it had since been occupied by the Pasha whom he had left behind as his deputy.
Far from being elated at having at last discovered where Zanthé now lived, Roger was cast into further depths of misery. Violent jealousy was now added to the torment of his loss, for it seemed obvious that Zanthé, having lost her husband, had been taken as a concubine by the powerful Pasha. The thought
of her in the arms of that grossly fat, cunning Oriental, whom he had seen on several occasions, nearly drove Roger into a frenzy. Blinded by rage he stalked the streets, heedless of where he was going, and it was over an hour before he had cooled down sufficiently to think clearly.
Returning to the palace, he made a careful reconnaissance. In his fervid imagination he was now visualising himself breaking in and rescuing Zanthé from the horrible fate that he felt certain must have been forced upon her by her family. The entrance to the courtyard was guarded by Janissaries and on either side it was flanked by other palaces; so he walked through several narrow, zigzagging alleys until he judged that he had got behind it. Some minutes elapsed before he was able to make quite certain of his bearings; but at length he satisfied himself that a long, eighteen-foot-high wall, with iron spikes on top and the fronds of palm trees showing above them, must screen from sight the bottom of the spacious garden of the palace.
In the wall there was a single, low doorway of stout wood bound with iron. It was barred on the inside, and one glance at it was sufficient to tell him that it would be difficult to force short of blowing it open with gunpowder. It reminded him of a similar door that he had blown open in India, also with the intention of rescuing a lovely lady from a harem.
But the circumstances had then been very different. He had had British troops to aid him, the girl inside had been English and, in all but name, his wife; for they had planned to marry as soon as they could get home. Now, even if he procured a bag of gunpowder and blew in the door, how could he hope to overcome single-handed the score or more of Janissaries that the Pasha retained as a bodyguard?
A further thought then cooled his ardour. Could he even count on Zanthé being willing to let him carry her off? It was possible that, as an Eastern woman, brought up in the Mohammedan traditions, she had never expected to have a young and handsome husband. As the daughter of an Arab merchant she might even count herself lucky to have become—as her beauty would ensure—the pampered favourite in a wealthy nobleman’s seraglio.
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