Had the visitor noticed the start that Napoleon had not been able to suppress when he heard his name? The doctor kept looking at him; his eyelids were strangely bereft of lashes, giving his eyes an unpleasantly fixed stare.
Napoleon made a superhuman effort to control the fury that was boiling inside him, and to act naturally as he moved about under the gaze of this disturbing, solemn, frog-like creature. First he tried fulsome politeness, but the exaggerated suavity of his words sounded so false that he himself was immediately alarmed by it. He felt trapped: whatever he did now, everything would be evidence against him; an angry outburst would certainly be the end of him; but on the other hand, hypocritical urbanity and the calculated weighing of words, far from allaying suspicion, would only tend to justify an even more alarming diagnosis. Finding himself in an extremely perilous situation, he finally chose the tactic that would give least away: burying his hands in his waistcoat to hide their trembling, he lapsed into an apathetic silence.
Quinton, who was no less taciturn, continued observing him with an air of morose satisfaction.
The Ostrich kept moving aimlessly around them, rummaging about among the pots and pans, shifting chairs from one place to another.
The ordeal seemed to last forever; they had to drink an aperitif, eat a meal, have coffee, sip liqueurs, smoke a cigar.
And still the silence continued.
Napoleon felt dizzy, he began seeing things. Instead of the brown overcoat opposite him, he sometimes thought he saw a long dustcoat and a cloth skull cap; and from the food the Ostrich had prepared, delicious though it was, there suddenly rose the stale refectory odor that he had smelled one evening deep inside a walled garden. It made him feel sick. He forced himself to take a copious second helping to overcome the feeling, but it was such a struggle to keep control of himself that, although his eating habits were normally very frugal and discreet, he suddenly began to devour his food in the most repulsive manner, chewing like a hyena. The Ostrich, who was astonished and appalled by this noisy, messy feeding frenzy, was by now close to tears. As for Quinton, he observed his subject shrewdly, nodding his head with the knowing expression of an expert.
AFTER QUINTON LEFT, Napoleon made a dreadful scene. He could almost have beaten the Ostrich. He smashed a china coffeepot and two vases. The Ostrich wept floods of tears. Moans arose here and there from children crouched in corners. Everyone was frightfully unhappy; they seemed to feel that it was the end of an era that would never return.
In the days and weeks that followed, they nonetheless tried to go on with their lives as though nothing had happened. The Ostrich swore to him that she would never, never again take it upon herself to call a doctor. And Napoleon, for his part, resolved once more never to try to include the poor woman in a secret that was obviously too much for her to cope with. No further word about the whole affair was exchanged between them, and on the surface their life went on as before — but only on the surface. Previously, during the long hours they spent alone together in the evenings, silence had wrapped them round in a warm feeling of security, whereas now it became unbearable, loaded with permanent menace.
The Ostrich watched over him incessantly with pathetic tender concern, and whenever he suddenly raised his head and saw the anxious questioning of that gaze which was always upon him, she turned her head away with a start, trying to hold back the tears that were always on the point of overflowing.
Silence frightened her, but she was even more afraid when he did occasionally speak. She always feared the threat of some double meaning behind the most banal expressions, and lived in dread of suddenly discovering in the most harmless remarks that the nightmare was lying in wait and ready to return.
The poor woman zealously did her best to keep up the pretense of a calm, happy life; then suddenly she would have to escape to the kitchen and cry until she could cry no more.
This make-believe was no less trying for Napoleon. In spite of all the pity he felt for her, he was quite lucid in his assessment of the dreadful danger he was in because of that innocent creature. And so, although it would grieve him to have to do it, he now had to consider breaking an attachment that could prove disastrous for him. Obviously, of all the strange ordeals that had crossed the path of his return to power, this separation would be by no means the least painful, but he could certainly draw many lessons from it which would be of benefit to him in the future.
He began to perceive more clearly that greatness should always be on its guard against the snares of happiness. The most brilliant achievements of his past career had been but a dream from which he was awakening at last. It was only now that his genius was coming to maturity. The epic of his past was no more than a confused and aimless burst of youthful energy compared with what he would be able to achieve, now that there would be no emotions, no attachments to stand between his creative intelligence and his will to act. He was reaching a higher plane of existence, and on these heights he breathed deeply of an air so pure that it would have burned the lungs of ordinary men.
From that moment on, victory seemed assured. It was only a matter of organization. He therefore coldly and methodically once more set about drawing up his plans.
First of all, he had to forge his weapons. He began by compiling a series of dossiers on the leading ministers, high bureaucrats, and military personnel who had served under the Empire and who had succeeded in gaining a position of influence in the present regime. It should be possible, if not by appealing to their loyalty, at least by having recourse to blackmail — and that was an essential part of these dossiers, based on his prodigious memory and on his knowledge of the political, civil, and criminal affairs of the Empire — progressively to persuade a certain number of these authorities to put secretly at his disposal forces that they already partially controlled in ministries, the government services, the Chamber of Deputies, the Senate, and, above all, in the army and the police. In that way, a clandestine power would grow little by little within the official power structure, replicating its functions and sapping its energies, until the day when, sure of its hidden network, with one stroke the former could take over from the latter, which would now be obsolete.
The organization chart of this secret power structure was beginning to take shape on paper, but its theoretical development still needed considerable research. He often had to go to libraries, where he sometimes spent whole afternoons consulting newspapers from the time of the Empire, old collections of the Moniteur, and a variety of other archival material.
However, this meant that he neglected the business, which began to suffer. The Ostrich became more and more alarmed about it, but dared not say anything. Napoleon now went out in the evenings more often than not. As it was impossible to work on his dossiers when the Ostrich was there, he installed himself in some café, and there, sitting next to pensioners playing dominoes, he patiently continued planning the huge insidious process which would soon undermine the whole of France.
He came home very late at night. The Ostrich waited for him, keeping one of the innumerable fortifying foods, of which she alone had the secret, on the corner of the stove: chicken livers marinated in port, braised pigs’ brains with chestnuts, steamed cod roe, etc. This took up several hours of her day, and had become a sort of release for her anxiety.
A whole summer went by in this manner. Autumn came. Napoleon’s work progressed steadily. His business came closer and closer to collapsing. Soon the moment would come for him to fly off again. He was sincerely sorry when he thought of the pain that his departure would cause the Ostrich, and he regretted not being able to leave the business in a healthier state. But what could he do? Sometime in the future a day would come when he could offer her a fair and honorable reward for her devotion.