The Companions of Jehu by Alexandre Dumas (great novels of all time .TXT) 📖

Comments: 0

Keywords:

Complain

Read Book

Download in Format:

Author: Alexandre Dumas
Performer: -

Book online «The Companions of Jehu by Alexandre Dumas (great novels of all time .TXT) 📖». Author Alexandre Dumas

Go to page:

dirty; I have seen you wear it twenty times”; or, “Why don’t you change your dressmaker; you are dressed like a fright.”

One day he said to the Duchesse de Chevreuse, a charming blonde, whose hair was the admiration of everyone:

“It’s queer how red your hair is!”

“Possibly,” replied the duchess, “but this is the first time any man has told me so.”

Bonaparte did not like cards; when he did happen to play it was always vingt-et-un. For the rest, he had one trait in common with Henry IV., he cheated; but when the game was over he left all the gold and notes he had won on the table, saying:

“You are ninnies! I have cheated all the time we’ve been playing, and you never found out. Those who lost can take their money back.”

Born and bred in the Catholic faith, Bonaparte had no preference for any dogma. When he re-established divine worship it was done as a political act, not as a religious one. He was fond, however, of discussions bearing on the subject; but he defined his own part in advance by saying: “My reason makes me a disbeliever in many things; but the impressions of my childhood and the inspirations of my early youth have flung me back into uncertainty.”

Nevertheless he would never hear of materialism; he cared little what the dogma was, provided that dogma recognized a Creator. One beautiful evening in Messidor, on board his vessel, as it glided along between the twofold azure of the sky and sea, certain mathematicians declared there was no God, only animated matter. Bonaparte looked at the celestial arch, a hundred times more brilliant between Malta and Alexandria than it is in Europe, and, at a moment when they thought him unconscious of the conversation, he exclaimed, pointing to the stars: “You may say what you please, but it was a God who made all that.”

Bonaparte, though very exact in paying his private debts, was just the reverse about public expenses. He was firmly convinced that in all past transactions between ministers and purveyors or contractors, that if the minister who had made the contract was not a dupe, the State at any rate was robbed; for this reason he delayed the period of payment as long as possible; there were literally no evasions, no difficulties he would not make, no bad reasons he would not give. It was a fixed idea with him, an immutable principle, that every contractor was a cheat.

One day a man who had made a bid that was accepted was presented to him.

“What is your name?” he asked, with his accustomed brusqueness.

“Vollant, citizen First Consul.”

“Good name for a contractor.”

“I spell it with two l’s, citizen.”

“To rob the better, sir,” retorted Bonaparte, turning his back on him.

Bonaparte seldom changed his decisions, even when he saw they were unjust. No one ever heard him say: “I was mistaken.” On the contrary, his favorite saying was: “I always believe the worst”—a saying more worthy of Simon than Augustus.

But with all this, one felt that there was more of a desire in Bonaparte’s mind to seem to despise men than actual contempt for them. He was neither malignant nor vindictive. Sometimes, it is true, he relied too much upon necessity, that iron-tipped goddess; but for the rest, take him away from the field of politics and he was kind, sympathetic, accessible to pity, fond of children (great proof of a kind and pitying heart), full of indulgence for human weakness in private life, and sometimes of a good-humored heartiness, like that of Henri IV. playing with his children in the presence of the Spanish ambassador.

If we were writing history we should have many more things to say of Bonaparte without counting those which—after finishing with Bonaparte—we should still have to say of Napoleon. But we are writing a simple narrative, in which Bonaparte plays a part; unfortunately, wherever Bonaparte shows himself, if only for a moment, he becomes, in spite of himself, a principal personage.

The reader must pardon us for having again fallen into digression; that man, who is a world in himself, has, against our will, swept us along in his whirlwind.

Let us return to Roland, and consequently to our legitimate tale.

CHAPTER XXXVII THE AMBASSADOR

We have seen that Roland, on returning to the Luxembourg, asked for the First Consul and was told that he was engaged with Fouché, the minister of police.

Roland was a privileged person; no matter what functionary was with Bonaparte, he was in the habit, on his return from a journey, or merely from an errand, of half opening the door and putting in his head. The First Consul was often so busy that he paid no attention to this head. When that was the case, Roland would say “General!” which meant, in the close intimacy which still existed between the two schoolmates: “General, I am here; do you need me? I’m at your orders.” If the First Consul did not need him, he replied: “Very good.” If on the contrary he did need him, he said, simply: “Come in.” Then Roland would enter, and wait in the recess of a window until the general told him what he wanted.

On this occasion, Roland put his head in as usual, saying: “General!”

“Come in,” replied the First Consul, with visible satisfaction; “come in, come in!”

Roland entered. Bonaparte was, as he had been told, busy with the minister of police. The affair on which the First Consul was engaged, and which seemed to absorb him a great deal, had also its interest for Roland.

It concerned the recent stoppages of diligences by the Companions of Jehu.

On the table lay three procès-verbaux relating the stoppage of one diligence and two mail-coaches. Tribier, the paymaster of the Army of Italy, was in one of the latter. The stoppages had occurred, one on the highroad between Meximieux and Montluel, on that part of the road which crosses the commune of Bellignieux; the second, at the extremity of the lake of Silans, in the direction of Nantua; the third, on the highroad between Saint-Etienne and Bourg, at a spot called Les Carronnières.

A curious fact was connected with these stoppages. A sum of four thousand francs and a case of jewelry had been mixed up by mistake with the money-bags belonging to the government. The owners of the money had thought them lost, when the justice of the peace at Nantua received an unsigned letter telling him the place where these objects had been buried, and requesting him to return them to their rightful owners, as the Companions of Jehu made war upon the government and not against private individuals.

In another case; that of the Carronnières—where the robbers, in order to stop the mail-coach, which had continued on its way with increased speed in spite of the order to stop, were forced to fire at a horse—the Companions of Jehu had felt themselves obliged to make good this loss to the postmaster, who had received five hundred francs for the dead horse. That was exactly what the animal had cost eight days before; and this valuation proved that they were dealing with men who understood horses.

The procès-verbaux sent by the local authorities were accompanied by the affidavits of the travellers.

Bonaparte was singing that mysterious tune of which we have spoken; which showed that he was furious. So, as Roland might be expected to bring him fresh information, he had called him three times to come in.

“Well,” said he, “your part of the country is certainly in revolt against me; just look at that.”

Roland glanced at the papers and understood at once.

“Exactly what I came to speak to you about, general,” said he.

“Then begin at once; but first go ask Bourrienne for my department atlas.”

Roland fetched the atlas, and, guessing what Bonaparte desired to look at, opened it at the department of the Ain.

“That’s it,” said Bonaparte; “show me where these affairs happened.”

Roland laid his finger on the edge of the map, in the neighborhood of Lyons.

“There, general, that’s the exact place of the first attack, near the village of Bellignieux.”

“And the second?”

“Here,” said Roland, pointing to the other side of the department, toward Geneva; “there’s the lake of Nantua, and here’s that of Silans.”

“Now the third?”

Roland laid his finger on the centre of the map.

“General, there’s the exact spot. Les Carronnières are not marked on the map because of their slight importance.”

“What are Les Carronnières?” asked the First Consul.

“General, in our part of the country the manufactories of tiles are called carronnières; they belong to citizen Terrier. That’s the place they ought to be on the map.”

And Roland made a pencil mark on the paper to show the exact spot where the stoppage occurred.

“What!” exclaimed Bonaparte; “why, it happened less than a mile and a half from Bourg!”

“Scarcely that, general; that explains why the wounded horse was taken back to Bourg and died in the stables of the Belle-Alliance.”

“Do you hear all these details, sir!” said Bonaparte, addressing the minister of police.

“Yes, citizen First Consul,” answered the latter.

“You know I want this brigandage to stop?”

“I shall use every effort—”

“It’s not a question of your efforts, but of its being done.”

The minister bowed.

“It is only on that condition,” said Bonaparte, “that I shall admit you are the able man you claim to be.”

“I’ll help you, citizen,” said Roland.

“I did not venture to ask for your assistance,” said the minister.

“Yes, but I offer it; don’t do anything that we have not planned together.”

The minister looked at Bonaparte.

“Quite right,” said Bonaparte; “you can go. Roland will follow you to the ministry.”

Fouché bowed and left the room.

“Now,” continued the First Consul, “your honor depends upon your exterminating these bandits, Roland. In the first place, the thing is being carried on in your department; and next, they seem to have some particular grudge against you and your family.”

“On the contrary,” said Roland, “that’s what makes me so furious; they spare me and my family.”

“Let’s go over it again, Roland. Every detail is of importance; it’s a war of Bedouins over again.”

“Just notice this, general. I spend a night in the Chartreuse of Seillon, because I have been told that it was haunted by ghosts. Sure enough, a ghost appears, but a perfectly inoffensive one. I fire at it twice, and it doesn’t even turn around. My mother is in a diligence that is stopped, and faints away. One of the robbers pays her the most delicate attentions, bathes her temples with vinegar, and gives her smelling-salts. My brother Edouard fights them as best he can; they take him in their arms, kiss him, and make him all sorts of compliments on his courage; a little more and they would have given him sugarplums as a reward for his gallant conduct. Now, just the reverse; my friend Sir John follows my example, goes where I have been; he is treated as a spy and stabbed, as they thought, to death.”

“But he didn’t die.”

“No. On the contrary, he is so well that he wants to marry my sister.”

“Ah ha! Has he asked for her?”

“Officially.”

“And you answered?”

“I answered that the matter depended on two persons.”

“Your mother and you; that’s true.”

“No; my sister herself—and you.”

“Your sister I understand; but I?”

“Didn’t you tell me general, that you would take charge of marrying her?”

Bonaparte walked up and down the room with his arms crossed; then, suddenly stopping before Roland, he said: “What is your Englishman like?”

“You have seen him, general.”