War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [509]
Napoleon noticed at once what they were doing and realized that they were not ready yet. He did not wish to deprive them of the pleasure of giving him a surprise. He pretended he did not see Mr. Beausset, and called Fabvier over to him. Napoleon listened, frowning sternly and saying nothing, to what Fabvier was telling him about the bravery and loyalty of his troops who fought at Salamanca,28 at the other end of Europe, and who had only one thought—to be worthy of their emperor, and only one fear—to displease him. The result of the battle was lamentable. During Fabvier’s account, Napoleon kept making ironic comments, as if he had never supposed that things could go otherwise in his absence.
“I must make up for that in Moscow,” said Napoleon. “À tantôt,”‡472 he added and called for de Beausset, who meanwhile had had time to prepare the surprise, having set something on chairs and covered that something with a cloth.29
De Beausset bowed low with a French courtly bow, such as only old servitors of the Bourbons knew how to bow, and approached, holding out an envelope.
Napoleon turned to him cheerfully and pulled his ear.
“You were quick about it, I’m very glad. Well, what is Paris saying?” he said, suddenly changing his previously stern expression to a most benign one.
“Sire, tout Paris regrette votre absence,”§473 replied de Beausset, as he ought. But though Napoleon knew that Beausset had to say that or something like it, though in his moments of clarity he knew that it was not true, he was pleased to hear it from de Beausset. He again honored him by touching his ear.
“Je suis fâché de vous avoir fait faire tant de chemin,”#474 he said.
“Sire! Je ne m’attendais pas à moins qu’à vous trouver aux portes de Moscou,”*475 said Beausset.
Napoleon smiled and, raising his head distractedly, glanced to the right. The adjutant glided up to him with a gold snuffbox and held it out. Napoleon took it.
“Yes, it’s a good chance for you,” he said, putting the open snuffbox to his nose, “you like to travel. In three days you will see Moscow. You probably never expected to see an Asian capital. You’ll have a pleasant journey.”
Beausset bowed in gratitude for this attention to his (hitherto unknown to him) inclination for travel.
“Ah! What’s this?” said Napoleon, noticing that the courtiers were all looking at something covered by a cloth. Beausset, with courtly adroitness, not showing his back, half turned and withdrew two steps, at the same time snatching off the cover, and said:
“A present for Your Majesty from the empress.”
It was a portrait painted in bright colors by Gérard of the boy born to Napoleon and the daughter of the Austrian emperor, whom everyone for some reason called the king of Rome.
A quite handsome curly-headed boy with a gaze resembling the gaze of Christ in the Sistine Madonna was depicted playing bilboquet.30 The ball represented the terrestrial globe and the stick in his other hand a scepter.
It was not entirely clear precisely what the painter meant to express by presenting the so-called king of Rome skewering the terrestrial globe with a stick, but the allegory, to all those who had seen the picture in Paris, and to Napoleon himself, obviously seemed clear and quite pleasing.
“Le roi de Rome,”†476 he said, pointing to the portrait with a graceful gesture of the hand. “Admirable!” With a typically Italian capacity for changing facial expression at will, he went up to the portrait and assumed a look of thoughtful tenderness. He felt that what he said and did now—was history. And it seemed to him that the best thing he could do now—he with his grandeur, owing to which his son played bilboquet with the terrestrial globe—was to show, in contrast to that grandeur, the most simple fatherly tenderness. His eyes grew dim, he moved, glanced at a chair (the chair leaped under him), and sat down on it facing the portrait. One gesture from him—and everyone went out