Fouchй, though, Fourchette considered; he owed his life to the continued good health and firm grip on power of his master, Napoleon Bonaparte. Fouchй was his man… for as long as it looked like Bonaparte held sway. After that, perhaps he would jump ship and espouse another leader, but… for now, Fouchй would go to any lengths to protect the fellow. Too devotedly, too slavishly, Fourchette thought him. A cool head was needed here.
"This gars Lewrie wishes to present captured swords? Let us ask for them to be held by the Ministry of Marine 'til the levee," he breezily advised his chief. "Before the presentation, call the fellow aside and check him for weapons. What can he do after that, leap and try to strangle the First Consul, hein? In the meantime, I will keep him under the strictest surveillance, and look into anyone that Lewrie speaks to… for any connexion to reactionary elements, n'est-ce pas?"
"One to keep watch on will be his former lover, the owner of a parfumerie in the Place Victor, a woman… "
"Well, I should hope so," Fourchette japed, "though so many Englishmen prefer boys."
"This is no laughing matter, Fourchette," Fouchй cautioned him. "A Citoyenne Phoebe Aretino. She fled Toulon aboard his ship as our army re-took the city, fled good Republicans with aristos. In fact, assign one of your men to look into her, no matter whether this fumier contacts her or not."
"I will do so, Citoyen Fouchй," Fourchette vowed, and, departed, after stubbing his cigarro out on the fireplace surround. And wondering, if the woman had been Lewrie's lover, would she be entertaining enough and pretty enough to interview himself?
BOOK III
Their hearts battered by this din.
Were torn in two and much afraid.
Flightby land, said one…
The sea is better, said another.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Napoleon Bonaparte, all-conquering general and the First Consul of France, always rose at dawn, when the brain was keenest. After one cup of tea in his bedroom, he spent an hour in the marble bath tub, in water kept so hot that Constant, his valet who read the morning papers to him, sometimes had to open a door and duck out into the hallway to escape the thick, foggy steam.
"… at the levee this afternoon, the First Consul will receive an embassy from Great Britain, represented by chargй d'affaires Sir Anthony Paisley-Templeton, escorting Capitaine de Vaisseau Alan Lewrie of His Britannic Majesty's Navy, and his lady…," Constant intoned.
"A prissy, primping pйdй" Bonaparte grumbled. "A shit in silk stockings. They send me titled boy-fuckers, not a real ambassador… and how long has it been since the peace was ratified? Even though my man, Andrйossy, has been named to them for months? This salaud's old sword had been found?"
"It has, First Consul," Constant told him. "Rustam has it."
"Well, let me see the damned thing," Bonaparte snapped. Usually his steaming bath relaxed him immensely and eased his constant problem of needing to pee, yet being unable for long, impatient minutes. But today, it was one vexation after another.
Rustam, his Mameluke servant brought back from his Egyptian Campaign, stepped closer, dressed in magnificent native garb, holding out a scabbarded sword. "Cleaned and polished, General," Rustam assured.
A hanger-sword, no grander than the sabre-briquet a Grenadier of the Guard might carry on his hip: royal blue scabbard with sterling silver fittings, its only decorative touches being a hand-guard shaped like a sea-shell, silver wire wound round its blue shark-skin grip, and a matching sea-shell catch on the throat to fit it into a baldric, or a sword belt. The pommel was the usual lion's head, also in silver.
"And where the Devil did I get it? Remind me, Constant," Napoleon demanded. Young General Bonaparte had always awed his troops with a steel-trap memory for names, ranks, faces, and past heroic deeds… Unknown to them was his preparation, and prompting by officers on his staff to provide those names, ranks, and deeds.
"Toulon, towards the end of our siege, First Consul," Constant read from notes made in Napoleon's own hand in the inventory of his personal armory. "The British officer was in command of a commandeered French two-decker, lowered by one deck and converted to a mortar ship. She was shelling Fort Le Garde, quite successfully, until you gathered General La Poype's heavy artillery and shelled her in return, scoring a direct hit and blowing her up."
"Ah, oui… now I remember." Napoleon brightened up, enjoying the memory. "The survivors swam ashore, and we rode down to take them prisoner. The officer…?"
"Lewrie, General," Constant provided. "Your note says that despite your offer of parole, he preferred to surrender his sword and go with his men."
"He looked like a drowned rat… but he had hair on his ass." Bonaparte hooted with glee. "Oui, just after I took his sword, those 'yellow-jackets,' Spanish cavalry, approached from Fort Sainte-Marguerite, and we had to scramble for our lives, hawn hawn! It was quite a day, Constant… quite a day. Doesn't look all that valuable, though, to me. Not enough sterling silver to make a tea-pot, really. The blade is more valuable. Unsheathe it, Rustam, aha! Made by Gills's. Even better than Sheffield or Wilkinson, or a German's Kligenthal. Now I see why that Anglais fumier wants it back."
When Napoleon Bonaparte shaved himself (not using a servant to do it), he secretly preferred pearl-handled razor sets smuggled in from Birmingham, England, since French steel could not take so fine an edge.
"Put it where we remember it, Rustam," Bonaparte ordered. "Any more interesting items, Constant?"
"Indeed, First Consul. Shall I continue?"
"Red velvet suit today, General?" Rustam asked.
"Non," Bonaparte decided. "If that preening fop Talleyrand is desirous of a theatric with the Anglais, then I must dress for my part… and I do not wish to portray the smiling, peaceful dunce. No one pulls my strings like a puppet! The British lie, stall, and delay… with such wonderful smiles. They play the same game they did with the Amйricains after they lost the Revolution over there. They keep hold of French, Spanish, and Dutch colonies the same way they kept New York and New England, the settlements on the upper Missouri and Mississippi… on the Amйricain side of the Great Lakes. Do the British even say when they will evacuate Malta, for instance? Pah, they do not!
"Today, Rustam," Napoleon Bonaparte instructed, wiping his face free of sweat with a fresh, dry hand towel, "I will appear more martial… as a sign of my displeasure. Lay out my Colonel of Chasseurs uniform."
Though it was but a short distance from their lodgings in Rue Honorй to the main entrance to the Tuileries Palace, a coach-and-four was de rigueur, laid on by the embassy and Sir Anthony Paisley-Templeton.
"Oh, lovely suitings, Captain Lewrie," Sir Anthony gushed once they'd gotten aboard. "You used my tailor? But, of course you did… and Mistress Lewrie, enchanted Your humble servant, Mar'm, and allow me to tender my regrets that we have not, 'til this instance, met. I beg your pardons, but I must also express how lovely you look today, as well. Congratulations. My, won't it be fine, though, as I said to Captain Lewrie, for you to be presented to the First Consul? A day to remember the rest of your lives, aha!"