Marianne and the Crown of Fire

'It's impossible!' Napoleon repeated several times. 'Impossible!' But his voice was losing some of its assurance. It was as if the repetition was intended, above all, to convince himself.

'Sire,' Marianne intervened quietly, 'these men would rather destroy Moscow than see you enjoy it. That may be a primitive emotion, but it is a facet of love. You yourself, if Paris were in question—'

'Paris? Burn Paris if the enemy took it? Now indeed you have run mad! I am not one to bury myself in the ruins. A primitive emotion, say you? These people may be Scythians but they have no right to sacrifice the work of many generations to the pride of one. And what is more—'

But Marianne had ceased to listen to him. Instead, she was staring in horrified fascination at two men standing, deep in argument, at the entrance to the gallery. One was the court's master of ceremonies, the Comte de Ségur. The other was a diminutive priest in a black soutane whom she recognized without difficulty but with great uneasiness. What was Cardinal de Chazay doing here, in the presence of the man he had consistently opposed? What was his business? Why did he want to see the Emperor, for his arrival at the Kremlin in the middle of the night could have no other meaning?

Before she could so much as hazard a guess, Ségur and his companion had joined the group. Napoleon was already giving out fresh orders, saying that he wanted patrols sent out to every district where the fires had not yet struck and a thorough house-to-house search for more men of the same kind as those still standing sheepishly before him.

'What is to be done with these?' Durosnel asked.

The sentence was quick and merciless.

'We cannot take prisoners. Hang them or shoot them, as you will. They are felons in any case.'

'But Sire, they are mere tools—'

'A spy is likewise a tool and yet he can look for no mercy. There is nothing to prevent you from running Rostopchin to earth and hanging him too. Away!'

Their departure left the way open for the master of ceremonies and his companion. Ségur advanced to meet the Emperor.

'Sire,' he said, 'here is the Abbé Gauthier, a French priest, who is most anxious to speak to you regarding the present disturbances. He claims to possess reliable information.'

For no ascertainable reason, Marianne's heart missed a beat and she felt as if an iron hand had suddenly clamped down on her windpipe. While Ségur was speaking, she had caught her godfather's eye and read in it such a hardness of purpose that it sent a chill up her spine. Never before had she seen in him this icy calm, this authority, wordlessly forbidding her to interfere in what might come. But it was only for a moment. Then the priest was bowing with the assumed awkwardness of one unused to consorting with the great ones of the world.

Napoleon, meanwhile, was observing him closely.

'You are a Frenchman, Monsieur l'Abbé? An émigré perhaps?'

'No, Sire. A humble priest but, owing to my knowledge of latin, I was engaged some years since to tutor the children of Count Rostopchin in that noble language, and also in French.'

'A language no less noble, Monsieur l'Abbé. So you were a member of the household of one who, I am told, although I cannot believe it, is an incendiary?'

'And yet you must believe it, Sire. I am in a position to assure your Majesty that those were indeed the governor's orders. The city was to be razed to the ground, and the Kremlin also.'

'But this is absurd! It is pure madness!'

'No, Sire. It is the Russian way. There is only one way for your Majesty to save this ancient and renowned city.'

'And what is that?'

'Leave it. Withdraw from it immediately. There is still time. Abandon your intention to remain here and go back to France, and then the fires will stop.'

'How can you be sure of this?'

'I heard the Count give his orders. He has left certain trusted men who know where to find the fire engines. It could all be over in an hour… if your Majesty were to announce your immediate withdrawal.'

Clasping her hands tightly together, Marianne listened breathlessly to this exchange which, to her, was totally incomprehensible. She could not imagine why her godfather should be trying to save the imperial army on pretence of saving Moscow. At the same time something which the Duc de Richelieu had said in Odessa recurred unbidden to her mind: 'He is going to Moscow where a great task awaits him, should the wretched Corsican ever get so far…'

The Corsican was here. And here, facing him, the man whose secret power he could not know, a man sworn to a great task, and a man who had vowed to bring about his ruin. And now it was the cardinal's calm, quiet voice that filled Marianne with foreboding, far more than the Emperor's curt, incisive tones, although it was he who was speaking now, and with a note of menace.

'My immediate withdrawal? Announce it to whom?'

'To the night, Sire. A simple command or two from the Kremlin walls would be enough. It would be understood.'

The silence that followed was so absolute that it seemed to Marianne that her own heartbeats must be heard by everyone.

'Monsieur l'Abbé, you seem to me to be remarkably well-informed for a humble priest. You are a Frenchman, surrounded by Frenchmen. We have conquered and you should be proud. Yet you talk shamefully of flight.'

'There is no shame in a flight from the elements, Sire, even for a conqueror. I am a Frenchman, yes, but I am also a man of God and I am thinking of how many men of yours will perish if you persist in opposing God.'

'Are you going to tell me God is a Russian?'

'God is the God of all nations. You have defeated the armies of this one but there are still the people, and the people reject you with all their might, even to destroying themselves with you. Believe me and go!'

The last word rang out so imperiously that Marianne trembled. Gauthier de Chazay must have taken leave of his senses to address the Emperor of the French in such a tone, nor could she imagine what he hoped to achieve by it. Did he really believe that Napoleon would abandon Moscow just because he told him to? One look at that pale face, with its pinched nostrils and hard jaw-line, was enough to show that the situation was becoming dangerous.

Sure enough, Napoleon jerked up his chin and spoke suddenly, with great vehemence.

'I respect your cloth, Monsieur, but you are mad! Get out of my sight before I lose patience with you.'

'No. I will not go. Not until I have made you understand, for once in your life, before your pride leads you into the abyss, and all your followers with you. Once, in time past, you took France, soiled and bleeding from the excesses of the Revolution, eaten away by the leprosy of jobbery and profiteering under the Directorate, and you stood her on her feet, swept and garnished, and you grew in stature with her. Yes, even I, who was never of your faction, I tell you you were great.'

'And am I so no longer?' the Emperor asked haughtily.

'You ceased to be so on the day you ceased to serve France and made her serve you. You had yourself made by a crime and since then to establish your sacrilegious power on a firmer footing you have taken from her, year by year, the best of her children and sent them to perish on every battlefield in Europe.'

'It is to Europe, Monsieur, that you should address your complaint. It is Europe who could never bear to see France become France again, but greater and more powerful than before.'

'Europe would have borne it had France remained France as you say. But you have swollen her belly with a host of kingdoms and annexations she had no need of. But you had to have thrones for your brothers, did you not, and fortunes for those who followed you? And to set up these paper kings you have ruined and destroyed the oldest families in Europe.'