A small brass plaque bears the name of its creator, an illustrious predecessor of Foucault’s: Antoine Laurent Lavoisier.
December 1814. The one-time King of Italy, Mediator of the Swiss Confederation, Protector of the Confederation of the Rhine, First Consul of the French Republic, Emperor of the French, Napoleon Bonaparte, stood at the railing of the terrace, his hands clamped to the cold iron balustrade. He stared gloomily down across the grounds of the house, across the town, to where he could, if he stood on tiptoe, catch a glimpse of the bay, a knife of sullen water piercing the coast of Elba.
He tried to outstare the cold grey eye of the sea for a moment longer, then spun on his heel and stomped inside to his bedroom.
The sea. The irony was not lost on him. Apart from maybe that early glorious victory at Point L’Eguillete, he’d never been any good with the sea. To think he’d originally sought a naval commission! Thank God he’d studied artillery at the École in the end. Guns were simpler; you knew where you were with a gun: either it was pointed at you, or you were pointing it at someone else. Yes, the sea had dogged him always; it had always been there. Growing up on a small island had fixed that destiny for him, yet he had never understood the sea. And yes, the British fleet was unassailable, as it had been in Egypt, as it had been at Trafalgar. He banished the name as soon as it reared in his head, but he was left with the inevitable self-confession that his failures at sea were not only due to British ships, but the bald fact that he had always been useless at naval matters. He had long ago given up being angry at why, when his encyclopedic knowledge of and skill at warfare on land had secured the imperial title for him, his decisions at sea had always been ineffectual at best, contradictory and suicidal at worst.
Yes, the sea, the sea. And yet now, with a last twist of fate, it would be the sea that would bring him his salvation. Even now, somewhere out in the Mediterranean, that salvation would be approaching on a small sloop from Sicily.
It was getting dark; night would come and then there was the long emptiness to be got through. He glared at his bed in the corner of the fine room, the typical French bateau lit: another reminder of the sea. He would lie adrift there again through the small hours, gazing at the ceiling in the half-light, brooding, planning, plotting.
A tedious image of Mathilde, the slow-witted maid who performed general serving duties, flashed through his mind, and he decided to pour a large glass of Armagnac himself. It was foul weather, cold and damp, though at least it was not raining for once. He swilled the brandy around the glass, closed his eyes and inhaled the distilled sunshine that reminded him of happier days, of the vineyards of Corsica, of his youth, of girls he had caressed, then poured the fire of the drink down his throat, rang the bell to have supper in his room, and steeled himself for the clumsiness of Mathilde and the soup tureen.
It was a strange exile, he thought as he lay in a warm bath the next morning. Ever since the frozen hell of Moscow two years ago he’d been on the retreat, he could see that now, a series of defeats culminating in that drubbing at Leipzig. From there it had been just six months till the allied forces took Paris and days later forced his abdication. And yet, rather than the guillotine or some jail, he’d been sent to Elba, to rule over the tiny island just as he had once ruled over half the civilized world. Under the ever watchful eye of the British Commissioner, his powers were limited to an extent, but damn them! If they intend to humiliate me, he had thought, they will think again. Alors, I shall rule this Lilliput with pride and skill and I shall make the people love me!
Even before the Elbans knew he was coming, there’d been riots against French rule. Yet, when he’d stepped onto the quayside in May he’d won the crowd over in under an hour. Six months later and they loved him, yet even in this success there was danger, and Napoleon knew from his spies that his ultimate jailers, the allied powers, were planning a more permanent solution for him. There was some talk of exile to some remote British rock in the South Atlantic, while other informers whispered over a drink that his fate lay in a short drop with a rope around his neck.
Napoleon had laughed at that, and his spy had choked on his drink. “If they can’t give me the honour of the guillotine,” he said, “I won’t give them the satisfaction of dangling for them.” He fished inside his tunic and pulled out a small black taffeta bag held on a thin gold chain about his neck. “I’ve always had this with me, and if the time comes to use it, then use it I shall.”
The spy had gawped at the bag, his thoughts racing at exactly what hideous poison lay within.
No, thought Napoleon, it was not exactly imprisonment to rule over twenty thousand peasants from a well-appointed house, with a stipend of two million francs, and with a court containing, among others, a treasurer, four chamberlains, a military governor, a doctor, a chemist, a butler, eight chefs, two valets, two equerries, twenty-seven stable hands, a director of music, two rather pretty singers, two washerwomen, a porter, footmen, and various young servants, even if one of them was the dreadful Mathilde. It was not jail, he knew that, for he had experienced true imprisonment: two weeks in the Chateau d’Antibes in the wake of Robespierre’s downfall.
Thoughts of Robespierre begat memories of the days of blood, and his mind drifted back to the revolution. The revolution had given him everything. With the old order swept away, a man like him, with a decisive, military mind, had risen to the top so very easily. He took the revolution for what it was; he neither loved it nor hated it: he had used it.
And yet, as fortunes unwound and people’s stars rose and fell, he had tasted the best of it and the worst. There had been so much death, so many men sent to the guillotine, and for what? For ideals? For noble causes? No! For treachery and fear. He saw things like no one else did, that many executions were so very pointless, but in those days, before he became First Consul, there was nothing he could do, except watch with the crowd as men made their way up the short flight of steps to the high, hanging blade. Men like the King himself, Louis; poets and writers like Chénier and de Gouges; men like Saint-Just and Robespierre and Danton, who had started the thing in the first place; and truly great men, like the genius scientist Lavoisier. Napoleon remembered what Lagrange, the mathematician, had said: “It took them only an instant to cut off that head, but France may not produce another like it in a century.”
Too bad. There were many headless corpses in the cemeteries of Paris.
Napoleon Bonaparte rose from his steaming hot bath, an addiction he still fed, and pulled the bell rope. It would take at least five minutes for either of his ageing valets to make it from the servants’ quarters up to his rooms, and he contemplated his naked self in the full-length mirror in his dressing room. It was not a superb sight, and the corners of his mouth turned down ever so slightly. It was true he had lost some weight recently, and for what he had in mind for his future, that was just as well. If he was to command loyalty and passion in his men once again, he would need to cut a dashing figure; and with his lack of height the last thing he could afford was to be overweight. Still, there was a way to go yet: a few months, perhaps; he would have to speak to the chef. He would need to spend more time riding. Then maybe he’d recapture the looks of his youth.
But, oh God, his hair was thinner than ever. Once, it had been long and flowing; now the remaining strands clung to his head like thin black cotton. He reached for the small green bottle of hair tonic and began to massage a good dollop into his scalp.