Marianne and the Crown of Fire

'You have said it! Old, dead, worn-out, finished! What is it about my crown that irks you? Are you one of those who would have had me seek the foolish glory of a Monk? Who want to see the decrepit line of the Bourbons restored to the throne?'

'No!'

That one, emphatic cry left Marianne if anything more bewildered than before. What was happening? Was Gauthier de Chazay, secret agent of the Comte de Provence, who called himself Louis XVIII, now denying his master? She had not long to wonder.

'No,' the cardinal said again. 'I do not deny that I wished it once. That I do so no longer is a matter for myself alone. I might even have come to accept you. But you have ceased to do your country good. You think only of your conquests and if you were allowed to do so would unpeople France for the glory of doing as Alexander the Great and reaching for the Indies to place the crown of Akbar on your head! No! It is enough! Go! Go, while there is yet time! Before God wearies of you!'

'Leave God out of it! I have heard enough! You are a mad old man. Get out before I have you put under guard!'

'Arrest me if you will. You will not arrest the wrath of God. Look, all of you!'

Such was the passion that inhabited the frail body that all those present turned, automatically, and followed the direction of his pointing hand.

'See! The fire from heaven is upon you. Unless you quit this city by tonight there will be no stone left upon another and you will all be buried in the ruins! Truly, I say unto you—'

'Enough!'

Napoleon, white-faced, bore down on his antagonist with clenched fists.

'Your impudence is equalled only by your folly. Who sent you here? What is your purpose?'

'No one sent me – no one but God! And I have spoken for your good—'

'Indeed? Who do you expect will believe that tale? You were with Rostopchin, were you not? You must know a great deal more than you have told. And you thought, you and those who paid you, that you had only to come here and pour your curses into my ears and I would pick up my skirts and run, like some foolish old woman, and make myself a laughing-stock for you? Well, abbé, I am not an old woman and the terrors you may rouse in simple souls in the darkness of your confessionals cannot touch me. I am not going. I have conquered Moscow and I mean to keep it.'

'Then you will lose your Empire. And your son, the son you fathered, sacrilegiously, upon that unhappy princess who thinks herself your wife but who is nothing but your concubine, will never reign. And so much the better, for if he ever reigned it would be over a desert.'

'Duroc!'

The stunned and obscurely frightened onlookers gave way automatically to allow the Grand Marshal of the Palace to approach.

'Sire?'

'Arrest this man! Lock him up well! He is a spy in Russian pay. Let him be locked up to await my orders. He shall die before I leave this palace.'

'No!'

Marianne's cry of anguish was lost in the general hubbub. Immediately, the cardinal was surrounded by guards and his hands tied behind his back. He was led away, still shouting.

'You are on the edge of an abyss, Napoleon Bonaparte! Fly before it opens under your feet and drags you down, you and all those with you!'

Napoleon, cursing furiously, made for his own apartments, accompanied by various members of his suite expressing shock and indignation at what had passed. Marianne hurried after them and caught up with the Emperor just as he was entering his bedchamber. She slipped in after him before the door closed on them both.

'Sire,' she cried, 'I must speak to you!'

Half-way across the room, he swung round and Marianne found herself shivering at the blackness of the look he bent on her.

'I have heard a great deal of speech this morning, Madame. A deal too much, indeed! I had thought my command to you was to go back to your bed. Do as I bid you and leave me in peace.'

She half knelt, as if she would have thrown herself at his feet, and clasped her hands in an instinctive gesture of supplication.

'Sire! I beseech you! Do as the priest bade you and begone from here!'

'Ha! Not you too? Will no one give me any peace? I wish to be alone, do you hear me? Alone!'

Seizing the first object which came to hand, which happened to be a Chinese vase, he hurled it violently across the room. As ill luck would have it, Marianne was just that instant rising. The vase caught her on the temple and with a little moan she subsided on to the carpet.

The bitter reek of sal volatile and a shattering headache were Marianne's first indications of returning consciousness. They were followed almost immediately by the voice of the invaluable Constant, speaking in soft and deferential reassurance.

'Ah, we are coming round. May I inquire how your Serene Highness feels now?'

'Dreadfully ill – and not very serene, I am afraid, Constant. Very far from it, in fact.' Then, as recollection flooded back, she added: 'The Emperor? Who would have thought that he—Was he trying to kill me?'

'No indeed, your Highness! But you were most imprudent. When his Majesty's temper has been tried to such an extent, it is unwise to attempt to approach him, much less to reason with him, and after what had just passed—'

'I know, Constant, I know… but it is so desperately serious! What the – the priest said sounded insane, but there was truth in it. You know that as well as I do.'

'His Majesty's personal attendant cannot indulge in private opinions,' Constant said wryly. 'I will say, however, that on seeing your Highness fall insensibly at his feet, the Emperor appeared somewhat alarmed and – er – distressed. He sent for me at once and commanded me to do my utmost for his – victim.'

'That word I am very sure he did not use. He probably said presumptuous wretch or ninny or something of that kind.'

'Poor lunatic was the expression, if your Highness will forgive me,' the valet corrected her with the shadow of a smile. 'To some extent the exercise of violence has calmed the Emperor. His temper is somewhat improved.'

'I am delighted to hear it. It is gratifying to have been of use. And – the man – the spy, do you know what was done with him?'

'The Grand Marshal has just reported that, for want of a better place, he has been incarcerated in one of the outlying towers, the one known as the Secret Tower. You may see it from the window.'

Disregarding the agonizing pain in her head, Marianne got up from the day-bed on which she had been laid and, driven by an irresistible impulse, hastened to the window, followed by Constant's protesting adjurations to her to take care.

The windows commanded a view of the whole area of the Kremlin. The tainitskie Bachnia, the Tower of the Secret, was the oldest, going back to the fifteenth century, and also the nearest of the towers, a menacing pile of brickwork, black with age, its squat shape like the figure of a crouching man blocking the way to the river. But from the tower, Marianne's eyes travelled on to the city and she gave a gasp of fear. The fire was gaining ground.

Beyond the slender ribbon of the Moskva was a sea of fire advancing like an irresistible tide and sweeping nearer with every minute. Whole regiments of troops were at work along the river banks, forming long human chains to carry buckets of water from the river to the fire. The buckets were no more use than thimbles and the men were like Lilliputians striving with their tiny casks to slake the thirst of a giant Gulliver. More men were standing on the roofs of houses not yet invaded by the fire, trying with the help of brooms and wet cloths to deal with the continual shower of flaming debris that fell from above, while one by one they were engulfed in the billowing black smoke that, driven before the high wind was gradually blotting out the whole landscape.