Jean d'Ormesson

The Conversation

Tout arrive par les idées; elles produisent

les faits, qui ne leur servent que d’enveloppe.

Chateaubriand

Mon admiration pour Bonaparte a toujours été

grande et sincère alors même que j’attaquais

Napoléon avec le plus de vivacité.

Chateaubriand

PROLOGUE CROSSING THE RUBICON

There are moments when historical events seem poised to reveal their full significance: Alexander the Great at the head of his army, on the verge of taking on the vast and inexhaustible Persian Empire; Hannibal preparing to cross the Alps with his elephants, to strike at the heart of Rome; Caesar, of course, standing on the banks of the Rubicon; dawn on June 17, 1940, in Bordeaux, that instant before General Charles de Gaulle climbed into General Edward Spears’ plane — bound for London, and for what appeared a hopeless, if glorious, act of resistance.

The moment I will try to capture here involves Napoleon Bonaparte, at the height of his adoration by the French people, whom he has pulled back from the abyss created by years of chaos and misrule. He is on the brink of declaring himself Emperor of France.

We must keep in mind what led up to this moment. In November 1799, the thirty-year-old Bonaparte, just returned from conquering Egypt, triumphed over the Vicompte de Barras, head of the Directory, and, with assistance from his brother, Lucien, and Abbé Sieyès, succeeded in his coup d’état on 18 Brumaire in the Revolutionary Year VIII, ending the Directory’s four-year rule. The five directors (only the first two really counted) — Barras, Sieyès, Louis-Jérôme Gohier, Roger Ducos, and Jean-François Moulin — were replaced by a Consular Committee (commission consulaire), consisting of three members — Sieyès, Ducos, and Bonaparte himself. This would itself soon be replaced, following the terms of a new Constitution, by yet another triumvirate: Bonaparte, who was to be called First Consul; Jean-Jacques Régis de Cambacérès, Second Consul; and Charles-François Lebrun, Third Consul. The First Consul held the true power. The others were mainly advisers.

At the start of the Consulate, France was in a perilous state. Business and industry were a shambles. Industrial output had diminished by 60 percent in Paris, and by 85 percent in Lyon. The ports of Marseille and Bordeaux were effectively closed. The network of roads had been destroyed. Coach service had become completely unreliable. Everywhere, and especially in Provence and in the West, roving bands of brigands operated almost uncontested. The forests and fields were devastated. The currency had been devalued by 99 percent. The state’s coffers were empty; soldiers and government employees complained they were due a year’s-worth of salary. There were no taxes, no budget, no balance sheets. The country had lost its way and become victim to every form of excess and abuse. For four years, from Revolutionary Year VIII until XII, meaning from the end of 1799 until the beginning of 1804, Bonaparte worked tirelessly to get France back on its feet.

In February 1800, three months after the coup of 18 Brumaire, a referendum on the Consulate resulted in more than three-million Frenchmen voicing their support for Bonaparte; a mere 1,500 opposed him. The First Consul moved into the former royal palace in the Tuileries, then into the one in Saint-Cloud. He founded the Banque de France; sealed the borders and declared amnesty for those who had already immigrated; stage-managed the Concordat of 1801, restoring to the Roman Catholic Church its civil status; revamped public education; created the lycée school system and the Légion d’honneur; and minted the first French franc — in his own image. He also crossed the Grand-Saint-Bernard alpine pass and won a victory over the Austrians at the Battle of Marengo; and in 1802 he signed the Treaty of Amiens, establishing diplomatic relations with England, Spain, and Holland. In that same year of 1802, Bonaparte, who had already been elected for another tenyear term, appointed himself First Consul for Life and established a new Constitution, which was duly approved by an overwhelming majority and which further extended his powers.

When did the idea of becoming emperor — of joining the ranks of the Merovingians, the Carolinians, the Capetians, the Valois, and the Bourbons — first take hold in Bonaparte’s mind? It is hard to say. By the early months of 1804, with the execution of Georges Cadoudal, a leader of the Royalist Chouannerie uprising, and the suicide of General Jean-Charles Pichegru, and especially the seizure of German territory and the execution of the Louis Antoine de Bourbon, Duc d’Enghien, the last descendant of the House of Condé, Bonaparte had fulfilled enough pledges of the Revolution — fulfilled in every possible sense of the word — to aspire openly to an imperial throne. I have therefore set the action of this book, a decisive conversation between Bonaparte and Cambacérès, slightly earlier, during the course of the winter of 1803–1804.

Every word of Bonaparte’s part of this conversation, imaginary though it is, was actually said or written by the First Consul at one time or another, and taken from contemporary accounts, reports, and memoirs. Putting words into Bonaparte’s mouth would have been an absurd idea. Even the story of Josephine’s shawl, coveted by her sister-in-law Caroline Murat, appears in documents of the period.

On the other hand I have taken liberties with Cambacérès, the future Duke of Parma. Cambacérès was a far less significant figure and what he has to say therefore carries less weight. I have made most of it up.

Born in Montpelier, a counselor at the cour de comptes — the court of auditors — of that town, president of the criminal tribunal of Hérault, Cambacérès was fifteen years older than Bonaparte at the beginning of 1804. As an elected member of the Convention Nationale, he had voted “with reservation” for the execution of Louis XVI. Minister of Justice under the Directory, he was named Second Consul on the recommendation of Sieyès and Bonaparte. Compared to Lebrun, the more austere Third Consul, Cambacérès, in the eyes of his countrymen, was the very embodiment of the revolutionary tradition. He played an essential role in composing the Code civil, or Napoleonic Code, and, as president of the Senate and of the Conseil d’État, he would act as Bonaparte’s plenipotentiary during the emperor’s absence on military expeditions. His title was “Archchancellor of the Empire” (in addition to Duke of Parma). Cambacérès would later support the Bourbons in their bid to return to power in 1814, then shift his support back to Napoleon during the Hundred Days. He was exiled in 1815, eventually returning to France and dying in Paris in 1824.

I chose Cambacérès as Bonaparte’s interlocutor for several reasons. First, because he was Second Consul to Bonaparte’s First Consul. Each one naturally operated from a very different level of authority, but they were the two most important figures of the Consulate. Moreover, Cambacérès was highly intelligent, loyal, and flexible — perhaps a little too flexible — as well as politically adept — perhaps a little too adept. A republican and regicide (“with reservation”), Cambacérès also seemed to stand for the revolutionary spirit that seemed placed at risk by Bonaparte’s rise to power, a rise that he, Cambacérès, hoped to control. Little wonder that the First Consul would try to circumvent him.

Lastly, I have chosen Cambacérès because Bonaparte was very often surrounded by the generals who were constantly at his side on the field of battle. These sabreurs, as he sometimes called them, were blindly loyal to him and less at home in the world of language and concepts than they were in the theater of war. The future Duke of Parma was perhaps the only civil figure to get close to the Victor of Marengo, the future Victor of Austerlitz, and, with Talleyrand — Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord — one of the few in Napoleon’s immediate entourage who could engage him in discourse over matters of state.

Finally, why Bonaparte? The reasons are quite simple. Because he was a genius. Because he was the successor to Achilles, Caesar, and Alexander the Great. Because he changed the course of history and in the process helped shape the world in which we now live. He failed, but he failed in dazzling fashion, leaving a trail of powder across Europe. And most of all, because his was one of the most extraordinary historic and romantic adventures of all times. Most rulers who left their mark upon their time inherited power, ascending to power upon the death of their fathers, or brothers, or uncles. Napoleon was the child of his own achievements. He gave rise to himself. He was a living myth, a self-created legend, a self-made god. He was that rare element found at the source of greatness, whether in politics, art, literature, or science, for his ambitions were transformed into history, his dreams moved to the point of being realized. That intersection between dream and reality is what I am attempting to capture here, akin though it is to trying to pinpoint the origin of the Iliad, or what would later become the Roman Empire, or Michelangelo’s Moses, or the theory of gravitation.

Nonetheless, it is not impossible, and not even unreasonable, to imagine that this conversation took place as recounted in these pages. The staff has struck the stage three times. The curtain rises.

THE CONVERSATION

(The action takes place in the Tuileries, where Bonaparte took up residence on the day after 18 Brumaire. Sometime around the beginning of the winter of 1803–1804, the First Consul was paid a visit by the Second Consul.)

CAMBACÉRÈS

Citizen First Consul, I believe we have completed our business. With your permission I will now leave you, for I dine this evening with Talleyrand.

BONAPARTE

At his home on the Rue du Bac? Or at the Hôtel Gallifet?

CAMBACÉRÈS

Neither. At my home in the Hôtel Elbeuf.

BONAPARTE

Are you comfortable there, at Elbeuf? I cannot help but notice that it is considerably smaller than the Hôtel Nouilles, where the Third Consul has taken up residence.

CAMBACÉRÈS

You are well informed. Nouilles is located on Rue Saint-Honoré. Elbeuf faces the Carousel, or almost, and mere steps away from the Tuileries. Saints always find it to their advantage to be as close as possible to the object of their veneration.

BONAPARTE

Saint you may be, though I’ve heard that one dines well in your company.

CAMBACÉRÈS

I trust that isn’t a reproach!

BONAPARTE

Merely a statement of fact.

CAMBACÉRÈS

You reassure me.

BONAPARTE

A healthy appetite isn’t your own only flaw, Citizen Second Consul. Merely the one that one can discuss with greatest ease.

CAMBACÉRÈS

Good heavens, you do speak plainly! How are you going to keep your friends if you cannot focus on their good features? I have learned that the dinner table is the best place to influence men. Good politics go hand in hand with good food.

BONAPARTE

At least in your case. I’m told that diplomatic pouches are being used not only for dispatches but for delicacies, often from enemy countries.

CAMBACÉRÈS

I must say that nothing escapes those henchmen Fouché surrounds himself with.

BONAPARTE

I have no need of Fouché to stay abreast of what goes on in Paris and in France. You would do well to consider that your partridges are roasted on one side and grilled on the other.

CAMBACÉRÈS

What do you expect of me? You are the First Consul, I am but the Second. To each his strengths. You bring military victories. I serve memorable meals. A successful dinner party is my Marengo.

BONAPARTE

Have you heard that phrase going around Paris? “If you want to eat badly, dine with Lebrun. If you want to eat well, choose Cambacérès.”

CAMBACÉRÈS

“. . and if you want to eat fast, dine with Bonaparte.” Yes, I’ve heard it.

BONAPARTE

That’s quite true, I do eat quickly. When I win battles it is due to the legs of my soldiers. In politics, where one always has to prepare for an event by means of conversation, I tend to go straight to the point. As for dining, I eat little. My lunch is served at half past nine on a small mahogany server perched on a little pedestal encrusted with mother of pearl and covered with a napkin. This reminds me of the drum I use at war. The fare is quite simple: two fried eggs, a string-bean salad, two or three olives, and a wedge of parmesan soaked in Chambertin. I eat rapidly. When I’m alone, the meal lasts only a few minutes. I have other things to do and I hate wasting time.

CAMBACÉRÈS

And you haven’t. A junior lieutenant at sixteen, a lieutenant at twenty-two. .

BONAPARTE

Six years to go from a junior to a full lieutenant. Yet my enemies accuse me of being a man in a hurry! Without Robespierre and the National Convention, without you, Cambacérès, and without those aligned with you, I would still be but a colonel in some obscure regiment. Perhaps that is where my impatience came into play.

CAMBACÉRÈS

You caught up quickly: captain at twentythree, commander at twenty-four, and general at twenty-five. First Consul of the Republic at thirty. The sun rises more slowly that you do. One would almost say you lacked for time.

BONAPARTE

I always lack for time. Ah, Cambacérès! Where will we be in two years, in ten years, in twelve?

CAMBACÉRÈS

You’re young. I’m growing old. I’m a year older than Talleyrand, six older than Fouché, and sixteen older than you. I have just turned fifty. Like many of those around you — Junot, Duroc, Lannes, who would all die gladly for you — I have more than respect for who you are and something more than admiration for your genius. Something that perhaps resembles love.

BONAPARTE

Love!

CAMBACÉRÈS

Veneration, at least. I am your Second Consul. I have no ambition other than to spend what time I have left as your second-in-command. (He gets up.) I’ve said too much. I should leave you. Permit me the honor of offering you my farewell.

BONAPARTE

Remain with me a little while longer, Citizen Second Consul. I am not against speaking a little more openly with you, and no, not about delicacies such as foie gras, mauviettes de Pithiviers, and pâté de Toulouse.

CAMBACÉRÈS

With great pleasure. My time is yours. What is on your mind?

BONAPARTE

I would like to get your views, my dear colleague, on my current position.

CAMBACÉRÈS

To be honest, Citizen First Consul, you have no reason to be concerned. Fouché, who by dint of his surveillance efforts knows not only everything about me but about all of our fellow citizens, must have informed you before you escaped his clutches. France adores you. The glory brought by the wars in Italy and Egypt have thrilled them and the Peace of Amiens has reassured them. For the first time in years, a sliver of happiness and hope has supplanted anguish. And those outside our borders bend our way — and fear you.

BONAPARTE

Yes, yes, I know all this. The French love panache and have rediscovered a little of their merriment and carefree cheer. They have shown their devotion to me. And foreigners do treat me well. Yet to them nothing about our government seems stable. No one seems to know where they stand with France. I will tell you something. Nor do I.

CAMBACÉRÈS

I’m not accustomed to hearing you sound so uncertain.

BONAPARTE

It is the nations around us that feel uncertain. They are hesitating about allying themselves more closely with me. I sense their reticence. They don’t know what dance-step to take with our odd form of governance.

CAMBACÉRÈS

Truly?

BONAPARTE

Truly. The ambiguities of the Consulate give them pause.

CAMBACÉRÈS

Nonetheless they have no choice but to attest to the order and security that now reign in our country. How different from how things were four years ago, on the eve of Eighteen Brumaire!

BONAPARTE

It was anarchy. Twenty-thousand criminals immersed Paris in fire and blood. And forty thousand Royalist Chouans were in control of the country in the West and intercepting communications between Paris and the sea.

CAMBACÉRÈS

Admiral Bruix told me at the time that it took him a month to reach Brest to take up his command.

BONAPARTE

In thirty of the country’s departments, the Chouannerie was little more than a pretext for thievery. The right bank of the Garonne, Provence, the Languedoc, and the entire Rhone Valley was in the hands of highwaymen. Coaches were attacked, couriers robbed, homes looted. Pillagers were putting peasants’ feet on red-hot grills to make them tell them where their money was stashed.

CAMBACÉRÈS

I know several merchants, even two representatives on official business, who bought passports from these bands just to ensure safe passage from Paris to Marseille or to Aix-en Provence. No one went anywhere without an armed escort.

BONAPARTE

The roads were impassable, public buildings were in shambles. It took Marseilles a full year to do the business it used to do in six months, and its old port was a wreck. In Lyon, there were fifteen-hundred boats instead of the normal eight thousand. In Paris, workshops hired a fraction as many workers as in 1789. It is indisputable that because of me, the present is better than the past. The future is what preoccupies me now.

CAMBACÉRÈS

You have secured the future because you have done away with the past.

BONAPARTE

Do not deceive yourself. I am at one with all of France’s past, from Clovis to this National Convention — of which you were also a part, my dear Cambacérès — and several times have I saved it from foreign threat. I have fought against, and beaten, violence, hatred, excesses, divisions, factions. No more factions. I want them gone.

CAMBACÉRÈS

You have planted the colors, starting the day after Eighteen Brumaire and right up to your arrival here in the Tuileries. You have put your wife in Marie-Antoinette’s bedroom, and you have taken as your bedroom that of Louis the Sixteenth. Yet I understand that you find this a somewhat sad place.

BONAPARTE

Grandeur is always sad.

CAMBACÉRÈS

You found its walls covered in revolutionary graffiti and festooned in decorations dominated by the red cap. You called it “filth” and ordered that it be removed.

BONAPARTE

Enough of the red heel and the red cap! Enough of Jacobins and the Royalists. I recognize no more parties and I see in France only the French. I have had enough of people taking sides. I am on the side of the French people, and I leave nothing to chance — neither the great issues nor the smallest details. I have taken the place of the Bourbons and now embody a sovereign people. I restore order to things, but I do not restore them for others. I restore them for myself. You remember, Cambacérès, the Constitution that Sieyès wanted to fob off on us after Eighteen Brumaire?

CAMBACÉRÈS

Very clearly. At the top of the hierarchy would be the Grand Elector, a king without royal command, installed in Versailles, who would choose two consuls, one to manage exterior matters — the army, the navy, the colonies, war. The other would manage interior matters, meaning the police, justice, finance. Below them were the ministers, the procurators of public service. At their side was a College of Conservators, who would have designated a tribunal, charged with debating matters of law, as well as a legislative body that would have voted upon them.

BONAPARTE

Perhaps you also remember that you were in favor of all that metaphysical nonsense.

CAMBACÉRÈS

In favor? Permit me to say that that’s simplifying it a little. I didn’t hesitate to abandon the spirit of the assembly for the spirit of government and choose you over that metaphysical nonsense, as you put it.

BONAPARTE

As for me, I would have rather have been up to my knees in blood than see all that become reality. When Sieyès proposed that I move into Versailles and assume the ridiculous title of Grand Elector, which translated as “weak-kneed king,” I replied, “How is it, Citizen Sieyès, that you believe that a man of honor would agree to be a pig in the manure inside Versailles?”

CAMBACÉRÈS

That shook everyone up. You rid yourself of Sieyès and of Barras, who seemed all-powerful, and you recruited me, who gave myself to you.

BONAPARTE

I like you, Cambacérès. That’s the reason you are Second Consul. You are wise, pragmatic, and prudent. Perhaps too pragmatic and too prudent. Above all you are an excellent administrator. Military men are excellent at slashing and burning. Administrators determine the success of an enterprise.

CAMBACÉRÈS

I owe you everything. I serve you scrupulously and loyally.

BONAPARTE

You have never disappointed me. So now I will match your loyalty and speak to you with an open heart. In addition to your appetite for food, you have another small fault that would cost you more with someone other than me.

CAMBACÉRÈS

Another small fault?

BONAPARTE

Don’t play dumb, Cambacérès. Not only are you not married. .

CAMBACÉRÈS

You would wish that I were?

BONAPARTE

If it meant being marrying some silly goose like that imbecile Talleyrand has done, assuredly not. But let us look straight at the matter: you don’t like women. The other day when you arrived late to the Counsel of State and kept me waiting, you offered the excuse that a woman had made you late. I put you on notice. “Next time, you will tell this woman to take her cane and hat and be gone.”

CAMBACÉRÈS

Citizen First Consul, no scandal has ever besmirched my private life, and public order was never disturbed on my account. I have never compromised my dignity and most certainly not yours.

BONAPARTE

That is not important. You have been cautious. Your prudence has nonetheless not prevented Talleyrand from grouping all of us consuls in a formula which he amuses Paris by calling, “Hic, Haec, Hoc.”

CAMBACÉRÈS

Monsieur de Talleyrand is perhaps recalling his Church Latin.

BONAPARTE

Hic is the masculine demonstrative and has a certain emphasis. That’s me. Haec, the feminine demonstrative, is vaguely pejorative in tone. That’s you. Hoc, the neutral demonstrative, which is completely insulting, is poor Lebrun. I say this in the spirit of friendship, Cambacérès. Don’t be too Haec.

CAMBACÉRÈS

General, I will speak with the same frankness with which you are showing me. When I was young I visited the girls just as all the boys did, but I took no great pleasure there and never stayed for long. As soon as I was finished, I said, “Adieu, messieurs!” and left.

BONAPARTE

My dear friend, I have as much reason to be cautious about women as you do, and neither Madame de Staël nor Madame Récamier will change my mind about them. But I wish for you to avoid being called “Tante Turlurette” by street urchins.

CAMBACÉRÈS

“Tante Turlurette!” Is that what you think?

BONAPARTE

Well, what do you expect? You run the risk. It’s all the more vexing because as regards the territories, the Concordat, the Code civil, and the Légion d’honneur, you have been extremely useful to me.

CAMBACÉRÈS

If I have served you well, I have fulfilled my destiny.

BONAPARTE

Almost nothing was left after twenty years of mediocrity and ten years of disorder. I want to create great things, things that will endure. I dreamed of a republican knighthood, to recognize exactly the kind of distinction treated disdainfully by the monarchy and dragged through the mud by the Jacobins. That is why I instituted the Légion d’honneur. I wanted a body of laws worthy of Moses, of Solomon, and of Justinian. That is why I imposed the Civil Code, drafted, thanks to you, in a style capable of making poets and novelists pale with envy.

CAMBACÉRÈS

How impatient you were during those interminable debates — on marriage, divorce, succession, natural children, capital punishment. You always wanted to move more quickly. I was always keen for your sake to find the simplest, most brief, and clearest formulation: “All those condemned to death will have their head removed. .”

BONAPARTE

Setting up the Concordat was your finest moment. The role of the Church is a matter of great national importance. You know well, Cambacérès, that for me the religion is not about the mystery of incarnation but a means to social order. No society can function without morality, and there is no morality without religion. Only religion can give the state strong and lasting support. A society without religion is like a ship without a compass. I was a Mohamedan in Egypt and I would be a Buddhist in India. I am a Catholic here because most here are Catholics. I place no faith in metaphysical nonsense, and thumb my nose at holy men, dervishes, and fakirs. Aside from Talleyrand, who is different and who keeps the future in mind, I have never used bishops in my governments. Priests are as chatty as women: no state secret is safe under their robes. Yet religion is still as necessary to the state as are police and the army. Bells and the cannons are the two great voices of men, competing with thunder, that great voice of nature. I made the cannons speak in Egypt, and in Italy I mourned the silence of the bells in our campaigns. Hence I signed the Concordat. I reopened the churches.

CAMBACÉRÈS

What caused me most concern was that great ceremonial cross which the pope’s nuncio, Cardinal Caprara, never parts with. A cardinal and his cross in the streets of Paris in Year IX of the Republic! We had to hide one from the other at the back of a coach.

BONAPARTE

My dear Cambacérès, I could say of you what Voltaire and Robespierre said of the Supreme Being: if you didn’t exist it would be necessary to invent you. The Te Deum at Notre Dame on Easter Sunday did not come out of nowhere. The Jacobins were furious. Even the Army balked.

CAMBACÉRÈS

Indeed they did. General Delmas told me, “This was a pretty procession of monks. All it lacked was the million men who killed each other to destroy what you are bringing back.”

BONAPARTE

Notre Dame had been closed for ten years. My republican colonels, my Jacobin captains, my twenty-year-old lieutenants. None of them had ever been to a mass before. Only Talleyrand, the Bishop of Autun returned by Pious VII to civil life, and Fouché, the former seminary student and regicide who joined the police, could recall what it was all about. You should have seen the two of them. They didn’t bat an eyelash. It is true that Talleyrand’s expression is so impassive that it is impossible to read. If you kicked him in the ass, his face would show nothing.

CAMBACÉRÈS

You have turned the Catholics of France into republicans.

BONAPARTE

I also defended the rights of Protestants and of Jews. Most of all I gave back to the French a Church designed to serve me. I appointed bishops who would obey me and feel honored to dine with the Prefect. Once priests were religious ministers. They became government ministers. The people followed: Sunday once a week is better than a day off every ten.

CAMBACÉRÈS

You were assisted in this by Chateaubriand and his Genius of Christianity, which arrived on the scene at just the right moment — on the eve of that Te Deum in Notre Dame.

BONAPARTE

I repaid Chateaubriand by sending him to Rome with my Uncle Fesch. According to Fontanes, his friend who sleeps with my sister Élisa while I sleep with France, they didn’t get along at all. Chateaubriand has talent but he is impossible.

CAMBACÉRÈS

He’s royalist who supports you. He dedicated Genius of Christianity to you.

BONAPARTE

Successful men of letters think themselves the center of the world. My difficulty with Monsieur de Chateaubriand is not whether to buy him but whether to pay him what he believes he’s worth. He’s offered himself to me twenty times, but always in such a way that would make me bend to his imagination, which leads to falseness, rather than the other way around. I have always ended up refusing his services, meaning to serve him. I’m sorry for this. With Talleyrand, Chateaubriand has the strongest head of our times. I’m sorry for his sake that he does not have a greater sense of his own interests.

CAMBACÉRÈS

There is also Madame de Staël, who is intelligent, enjoys creating trouble, and dangerous. And perhaps a little too virile. Talleyrand argues that he and Chateaubriand both figure in her novel, Delphine, disguised as women. There is also Benjamin Constant, a woman’s man and Madame de Staël’s unfaithful lover. In politics as in love, one never knows which way he will lean.

BONAPARTE

Don’t speak to me of those two! They are hollow, and cast ill upon the entire human species. I admire Corneille, and they are far from his sort. Madame de Staël in particular, daughter of the incompetent Necker, is a bird of bad omen. She always was a sign of trouble. I do not intend to let her stay in France.

CAMBACÉRÈS

There are those who oppose you, Citizen First Consul, and not all of them are writers. The ones to fear are not the royalists or the Jacobins. They are all around you, in the Army, and perhaps in your own family, which is weaving its own dark designs. The day you created the Légion d’honneur, General Moreau awarded an honorary casserole to his cook. General Bernadotte works hard — but not for your interests. And your brother Lucien. .

BONAPARTE

I know that Lucien conspires. Why do you think that I made him ambassador to Spain?

CAMBACÉRÈS

To remove him as Minister of the Interior — and to get him far from Paris. That was well done.

BONAPARTE

Lucien is ambitious and thinks himself self-made. He badly wants to get involved in politics. He plays the republican and pretends to a patriotism that he mocks in private. Joseph, my older brother, has very little ambition, and also not much spirit. Lucien, on the other hand, could easily see himself sharing power with Moreau and Carnot, three equal consuls each taking their turn as president. A revolving presidency! Can you imagine the stupidity of that? Lucien helped me on Eighteen Brumaire, but he has never stopped conspiring against me, and with a clumsiness that does both of us harm. Yet he keeps doing it. And now he wants to get married.

CAMBACÉRÈS

I thought that he already was married.

BONAPARTE

He was. He married the daughter of a Provence innkeeper. She died, which was a good thing. Then he pursued Juliette Récamier, who wanted nothing to do with him and sent her ridiculous letters with openings like, “Romeo writes you, his Juliet. .”

CAMBACÉRÈS

This came to you through Fouché, I imagine.

BONAPARTE

Of course Fouché, thanks to whom, even though he is no longer a minister — though I may reappoint him — I have a functioning police force. Then I learned from Pauline that Lucien had become infatuated with a widow, a kind of stockbroker: Madame Jouberthon. I opposed this relationship, but to no effect. Do you know what he said to me?

CAMBACÉRÈS

I’m afraid I don’t. I’m not as close to Fouché as you are.

BONAPARTE

He said, “At least mine is pretty.”

CAMBACÉRÈS

That is not only vulgar but inaccurate. In any case, I hope he won’t marry her. Let him make her a kept woman. She seems accustomed to that and it’s his fantasy.

BONAPARTE

Too late. He married her. Lucien is as much an idiot in his private life as in his public life. Oh, my dear colleague, the French people think that I am preoccupied only with great thoughts about power and war, and instead I spend my time worrying about matters of the heart.

CAMBACÉRÈS

I find that hard to believe.

BONAPARTE

No, it’s quite true. My youngest brother, Jérôme, is nineteen. While he was on a trip to the United States, he married an American girl.

CAMBACÉRÈS

An American?

BONAPARTE

Yes, an American! The daughter of a merchant from the city of Baltimore by the name of Elizabeth Patterson. So you see, now I am the brother-in-law of Madame Jouberton and Elizabeth Patterson.

CAMBACÉRÈS

You are the Victor of Rivoli and Marengo, you have conquered Venice and Egypt, you have forced the English to accept a peace treaty, and you are First Consul and President of the Italian Republic.

BONAPARTE

I also have brothers and sisters, and they strive to poison my life and dishonor what I have taken such pains to nurture. Only my dear and beautiful Pauline has given me some satisfaction.

CAMBACÉRÈS

At least that’s something.

BONAPARTE

As you say. After the death of poor Leclerc, who was so brutally taken from her before being carried off by yellow fever in Santo Domingo, she has found consolation, first with that thug Sarlovèze, who hated me and whom I got rid of, and then with Eugène de Beauharnais, the son of my Joséphine. Happily, she just married Prince Camille Aldobrandini Borghèse, grand-nephew of two popes, who is both more capable and wealthy than the miserable Bacciochi, husband of my sister Élisa.

CAMBACÉRÈS

My congratulations, Citizen First Consul.

BONAPARTE

Élisa has gone nearly mad with rage and jealousy over it. Her relationship with that journalist Fontanes is not enough to bring her peace. Oh, Cambacérès! You see how it is with family. Mine has made disgraceful marriages and yet dreams of wealth and glory. It owes everything to me and yet wants everything from me — power, money, titles, honors. It makes me wonder sometimes whether we are not all sharing in the legacy of my dead father. Everything they have comes from me and I am exhausting myself counteracting their idiocies and grossness.

CAMBACÉRÈS

You can always count upon your friends — upon me, who thinks only of your greatness. And upon Joséphine.

BONAPARTE

Joséphine! I loved her so very much. Now she’s making problems for me, serious problems, by not giving me an heir. And then meaningless things, with which she harangues me all day long. Have you heard about this business of the shawl?

CAMBACÉRÈS

No. What shawl?

BONAPARTE

It would appear that about two weeks ago an Armenian merchant called upon my sister Caroline with a cashmere shawl, embroidered with red and gold, and covered with enormous flowers. A garish thing, but strange and rather extraordinary and therefore outrageously expensive.

CAMBACÉRÈS

I wonder what price Madame Murat would consider “outrageous.”

BONAPARTE

Fifteen-thousand francs.

CAMBACÉRÈS

Ah. That is a hefty price.

BONAPARTE

That’s what Caroline thought. She told the Armenian, “That’s too costly. I won’t buy it.” Then she added almost immediately, “My god but it is handsome. I would offer you ten thousand.” To which the Armenian replied, “Fifteen thousand and not a sou less.” This angered Caroline, who told him he was out of his mind and to leave immediately.

CAMBACÉRÈS

To her very great credit.

BONAPARTE

It didn’t end there. It wasn’t the Armenian but Caroline who was out of her mind. She dreamed of the shawl. She happened to run into my stepdaughter Hortense and went on and on about it. Hortense immediately went to Joséphine, her mother, and told her about this Wonder of the East. Joséphine was immediately seized with the desire to possess it. She moved heaven and earth to find the Armenian merchant and first offered him twelve thousand, then thirteen, and finally bought the shawl for fifteen-thousand francs.

CAMBACÉRÈS

Did you reproach her?

BONAPARTE

I reproach her nothing. But the story still isn’t finished. A few days later my sister Élisa went to have dinner with my wife. The minute Élisa arrived she saw that her sister-in-law was wearing the famous shawl. She had never seen it herself but Caroline had described it with such emotion in her voice that she recognized it immediately. The very next day she had nothing better to do than to hurry over and inform her sister that she had lost the shawl forever. Caroline was furious. She told her husband Murat that Joséphine had only bought it to spite her and that she would never speak to her again.

CAMBACÉRÈS

Good heavens. I can see how painful this would be for any family, but for yours. .

BONAPARTE

My mother and Joseph’s wife, who is a good person, went to Joséphine and asked whether she would be willing to give the shawl to Caroline, putting an end to this discord. Joséphine replied that it was hers and that she intended to keep it. Voices were raised. Tears flowed. Caroline demanded that her sister-in-law give her the shawl for what she paid for it. My wife replied that she would burn it first. My mother, Murat, my brother Joseph, Élisa, and Hortense were involved in the battle. The Tuileries became a hell.

CAMBACÉRÈS

Where did you come down on it all?

BONAPARTE

Weary of all the fuss and tears and pouting, I decided that Joséphine could keep the shawl but that she could not wear it. And I gave Caroline a very fine string of pearls.

CAMBACÉRÈS

A decision worthy of Solomon.

BONAPARTE

One that took more painful effort than a two week military campaign or than negotiating for peace with the Austrians or the English.

CAMBACÉRÈS

All families have their squabbles. Dazzled by the greatness that you shine on all corners, yours is more demanding than others. But may I be permitted to offer you a word of advice?

BONAPARTE

Of course, of course.

CAMBACÉRÈS

Don’t let yourself get caught up in them.

BONAPARTE

My heart is no less soft than that of other men. I am generous with my family. But I also respond to their demands and pleas by means of the Eternal Me. Make no mistake. I know perfectly well that I have a destiny, and I will not let myself be distracted from it by squabbles and whining.

CAMBACÉRÈS

Thank heaven for that. That is the leader the Republic needs.

BONAPARTE

I will tell you something I have told no one else. I have never had a master plan for my life. I have always been governed by circumstances. But I have always taken advantage of these circumstances and been their master. Nothing has happened that I did not foresee and seek out, and therefore I am the only one not to be surprised by what I have accomplished. I can even foresee the future and will get to where I plan to go. When my political wagon has begun to move nothing will stop it, and woe to him who falls under its wheels.

CAMBACÉRÈS

And this wagon, which is also the wagon of the French Republic, where is it headed?

BONAPARTE

It’s about that that I wanted to speak with you, my dear colleague. For the first time in ages, power in France is being wielded by a man who understands the country’s needs and who matches what the people want: order, glory, peace, respect for religion, the national good. I am that man. Anyone can see what I have accomplished in Italy, in the East, in France. Do you believe that all this is purely for the glory of gossips and lawyers? Death means nothing. Living without glory means dying each and every day. I am telling you, Cambacérès, I can no longer simply obey. I have tasted command and cannot now give it up.

CAMBACÉRÈS

Three-and-a-half million Frenchman against eight thousand three hundred have chosen to make you Consul for Life, with the right to freely choose your successor. In the Vendée — the Vendée! Counter-Revolutionary capital of France — there were six no’s and seventeen thousand yes’s. All power now resides with you. What more can you hope for?

BONAPARTE

I have not forgotten the role you played in the passage of the vote to make me Consul for Life, and I am grateful to you. You are an invaluable man. Still, what would happen if I disappeared? That is the question.

CAMBACÉRÈS

Why would you disappear? You are thirty-four years old.

BONAPARTE

Yes, of course. The bullet that will kill me has not yet been forged. But there have already been several attempts on my life. There will be others, perpetrated either by the Jacobins or the Royalists. It is rumored that the Count d’Artois maintains sixty assassins in Paris. Enghien is plotting in Baden. And the madmen of the Terror have not been disarmed. In the eyes of many, on either side, I am a kind of dog and whoever gets to me first can bludgeon me with impunity. Three years ago, on Christmas evening, on Rue Saint-Nicaise, just a few steps from your home, I was nearly killed. Had I been killed it would have taken guts to restore order and pick up the reins of power, and you’re a little wobbly in the stirrups. I like you a great deal, Cambacérès, but you know as well as I that everything rides on me. I founded a new era and now I must make it stick. Dramatic change means nothing unless it lasts. Do you not think that we should rise above a regime in which I am only the first magistrate of a republic that is still vulnerable and threatened?

CAMBACÉRÈS

I knew from the beginning of this conversation that behind it was the end of the Republic. Like you, I’ve seen for some time, and with justification, that things are tending toward that.

BONAPARTE

I never doubted it, my dear friend. You are a man of discernment.

CAMBACÉRÈS

The key is to know when the pear is ripe. If it is, you must not hesitate to pick it. The only question I would ask is this: do you think that the French are still attached to the idea of a republic, at least in name?

BONAPARTE

I know the French and their flightiness, the ease with which they can change their minds. The Republic is a chimera with which they are infatuated, but the infatuation will pass, just as others have. I am persuaded that in the country’s heart lies the willingness for a return to the ways of monarchy.

CAMBACÉRÈS

The word still strikes fear.

BONAPARTE

My dear colleague, it would not be reestablished for the benefit of the Bourbons.

CAMBACÉRÈS

Heaven preserve us from a return of the Bourbons, with all of their prejudices, favorites, and their priests. They would immediately make themselves as hated as before.

BONAPARTE

Yet they dream of nothing but returning to their throne. The pretender who sometimes call himself the Count of Lille and sometimes Louis the Eighteenth sent me a letter, begging me to save the French from themselves and returning to them their king, such that future nations would bless my memory.

CAMBACÉRÈS

As if you needed to restore the Bourbon yoke to be celebrated by those who will come after you!

BONAPARTE

My response to him consisted of five lines, essentially informing him that he should not dream of returning to this country. He would first have to walk across a hundred-thousand dead bodies. I will never play the role of Monk. I do not want to play it and I do not want others to play it. None of us has any interest in seeing the Bourbons return.

CAMBACÉRÈS

You especially, Citizen First Consul.

BONAPARTE

Nor you, Citizen Second Consul. You should even be more afraid than me at the thought of their restoration. As I remember you voted in favor of the death of the king.

CAMBACÉRÈS

With reservations. With reservations!

BONAPARTE

Your reservations won’t count for much in their eyes. My poor Cambacérès, I’m afraid it’s abundantly clear that should the Bourbons ever return, it would be the end of you. There would be nothing I could do about it.

CAMBACÉRÈS

Then may they stay where they are! To rid them of any hope of a return — and, since you put it that way, to give me some sense of peace — I am ready to help in the establishment of any royal line other than theirs.

BONAPARTE

I’m going to surprise you, Cambacérès, but I do not want a royalty that the last Bourbons had shrunk to such an extent that now it matches their size. The other day, one of a throng of courtesans addressed me in language designed for a king. I informed him that I was First Consul of the Republic, and that using or acceding to feudal forms of address was a crime.

CAMBACÉRÈS

But if you do not want to be king, what will become of us?

BONAPARTE

I understand you, Cambacérès. No longer is it a matter of saving principles but of saving people. The era of opinions has been replaced by that of interests. You can be sure that I am perfectly able to defend both people and interests.

CAMBACÉRÈS

You have already proved as much.

BONAPARTE

I will prove it again. Nevertheless I will never be content merely to substitute one elite for another. After the monarchic heredity and Jacobin egalitarian leveling, I have found a third way — that of merit. “To each according to his birth and his rank” and “Equality or death” will be replaced by “To each according to his talents.” I don’t repent the Revolution, but I always detested its crimes. I want to complete the Revolution in both senses of the word — both to fulfill it and to bring it to a conclusion.

I erased the memories of January 21, and August 10, and 9 Thermidor. I forbade debauchery and public exposure. I reinstituted Sundays, Carnival, and New Year’s, ladies in waiting, livery, etiquette, breeches, and silk stockings. All the great names — the Périgords, Brissacs, Rochefoucaulds, Montesquious, Maillys, Ségurs, and the Narbonnes — are my equals. But Murat, my brother-in-law, was the son of an innkeeper. Ney is the son of a cooper, Augerau was a mason, Lanne was a stable-boy, Lefebre was a cabinet-maker, and his wife was a washerwoman. I want us all to start on a new footing. I want the world to live in peace. But, and I’m not jesting, I would like people to have fun. I will chase from the Tuileries the first man or woman who feels they can make a scene or simply raise their voice. Those who are displeased by some people and who come here each night to express their displeasure have no business here. I have a republican imagination and a monarchic instinct. I want to establish a republican monarchy. And the Republic that is mine is Roman, military, warrior-like, and all-conquering. My model isn’t Versailles, My model is Rome. My model is not the Bourbons. My model is Caesar.

CAMBACÉRÈS

Caesar! The name has been uttered. Like him you set a term to the Republic. And like him you refuse the royal crown.

BONAPARTE

I refuse the royal crown. Talleyrand wants to make me king. I don’t want to be. I am not refusing all crowns. I have become accustomed to the laurel wreath that the French people gave me after Rivoli, Marengo, and my other victories. They want to return to a monarchy? If they express their desire with enough force behind it, I will assume a title that will strike France and Europe as more solemn, more imposing, more august than that of king. It will be a new title with ancient roots — that of the Roman Empire and the Holy Roman Empire.

CAMBACÉRÈS

Emperor?

BONAPARTE

Why not? The Republic would be confided to an emperor. After all, Monsieur Cambacérès, it is only to royalty that we have all sworn our hatred.

CAMBACÉRÈS

That is true. We have never said a word against the empire.

BONAPARTE

The title of emperor will not shock republicans and fully satisfy those inclined to a monarchy. I believe that it would be the best thing to replace what we currently have. I would renounce without any regret the royalty of Hugues Capet and his successors, and I will reconstitute Charlemagne’s empire. Rather than succeed to Philippe August, or Henry the Fourth, or Louis the Fourteenth, I will succeed Charlemagne. I will reattach myself to the Holy Roman Empire. I would be Caesar lifted above the king, call myself the supreme leader of the Italy of which I am already President. I would have supremacy over the crowned heads and the protectorate over Germany, and I would reassume the rights attached to the Western Empire.

CAMBACÉRÈS

It is an idea with powerful appeal. Yet in adopting the forms of Charlemagne’s empire and that of Rome, what will you do with those forms of the Roman Republic already in place, such as the Senate, the tribunals, the quaestors, and the prefects? I have to be honest and say that I perceive a difficulty and feel a sense of unease.

BONAPARTE

Difficulty? Unease?

CAMBACÉRÈS

France would accord you the title of emperor, I am sure of it, and with the same enthusiasm that I myself feel. But if you become emperor, Citizen First Consul, would you retain the two other consuls, one in charge of finances, meaning Lebrun, and the other running the bureaucracy, meaning, well, me?

BONAPARTE

The real difficulty, and actually the scandal of it all, was the existence of three consuls of which I was without doubt the first but only the first. The title of Consul today is nearly as absurd today as Director was yesterday. It will disappear.

CAMBACÉRÈS

Disappear.

BONAPARTE

Yes, disappear. For you as for me the real glory consists of putting oneself above one’s state. In peace as in war, I was always above my state. By becoming emperor, I would once more put myself above my state. By fulfilling the prediction made once upon a time by a magician in Martinique that she would someday be more than queen, I would put Joséphine above the state. You as well, I would put above yours. I am a soldier who has made it and who will help you make it. I have planned for everything. The title of Prince Archtreasurer would go to Lebrun, and that of Prince Archchancellor of the Empire to you, replacing resoundingly the consul titles.

CAMBACÉRÈS

Archchancellor. Talleyrand will make fun of me.

BONAPARTE

No one will make fun of you. Nor of me. The French will find it charming to have their own emperor surrounded by princes. They may laugh the first day, less so the second, and by the third they will be used to it all. Talleyrand will make a few witty remarks. He will say “Look! the Archchancellor is archriding around his archwagon.” As with Fouché and the others, I will make him a prince or a duke of something, with a hundred-thousand francs per year, and that will take care of it. Let me win a few more battles and I will take care of everything.

CAMBACÉRÈS

Even the Jacobins?

BONAPARTE

What caused the Revolution? Vanity. What will bring it to an end? Vanity again. It is with rattles that one draws men. I would never say that before a tribunal, but between us it can be said. Ten years of revolution have not changed the French. They still want glory, distinctions, and rewards. The Jacobins will be given the titles of barons or counts and go to mass right behind me. Fouché and Talleyrand set an example last year. All of them, even the most rabid among them, will follow suit. There are still twelve or fifteen metaphysicians who need to be tossed into the water, vermin caught up in my clothes, and it has sometimes been necessary to shoot or deport them. I have always known how to rid myself of these. I am not going to allow myself to be attacked like Louis the Sixteenth. I am a soldier, a child of the Revolution, and as I come from the people I will not permit anyone to insult me like a king.

CAMBACÉRÈS

And the royalists?

BONAPARTE

The royalists are my problem. They will throng around this new Caesar, this Charlemagne reborn, only too happy to retain their old privileges and their new allocations. There will be some foot-draggers, some among them who are fearful and ashamed. Sooner or later they will all come around. Many of them are already looking on admiringly, and the distance from admiration to submission is short. The nobility would have been content with the Directory or the Consulate. It is hard to imagine that an empire won’t satisfy them. If they prove skittish and it proves necessary to smite them, good and hard, then so be it. I will smite them. I will always be careful to balance the Jacobins and the royalists.

CAMBACÉRÈS

What about the Army?

BONAPARTE

Berthier, Murat, Masséna, Soult, Lannes, Mortier, Ney, Davout — even Bernadotte, whom I do not trust — and several others shall be made marshals of the empire. Some among them will be made princes. Murat — if only to appease Caroline — may climb higher still.

CAMBACÉRÈS

The Church?

BONAPARTE

The Church will always choose a monarchy over a republic, and with good reason. In a republic it is necessary to please so many and to deceive so many others that the pain exceeds profit. With a monarchy, the only person it needs to charm in order to remain in power is the leader. The Church has only ever revolted against weak princes. I shall not be weak. Moreover, I will pay the clergy well and include them in the honors lists, just as I will give entitlements and honors to anyone who wishes to serve me — and first of all to you, Cambacérès. You will remain the second-most-powerful figure in the empire, just as you have been in the Consulate.

CAMBACÉRÈS

You have a response for everything. You are not like other men. In ancient days, like Alexander, you would have been a half-god, a son of the king of the gods.

BONAPARTE

I admit that I have done well, and made my way handsomely. My approach is nonetheless quite simple: I stay ahead of events, I immerse myself in the details, and I leave nothing in the shadows. You are sometimes mistaken, Cambacérès, and you lack audacity. But you are also loyal and uncomplicated. While I am with my soldiers on a campaign, you will manage the affairs of state. You will gather the ministers, you will preside over the Senate and the State Council, where you will display your greater talent and your deeper logic, and you will prove worthy of my confidence.

CAMBACÉRÈS

I hope I have been worthy of it until this moment. Time is short. We will have to come up with a coat of arms for the empire and the imperial family. Would you take up the escutcheon of your fathers, a golden rake on azure with three fleur-de-lys?

BONAPARTE

No, no fleur-de-lys. It is an emblem of a banished House and as hated as the white flag. You do not know the power of men’s memories. Unfurl a white flag with a fleur-de-lys, and half of France will think it means the return of Louis the Eighteenth, to whom today no one gives any thought. I am not the son of Louis the Sixteenth, or even of Louis the Fourteenth. I am starting a new dynasty, a new empire, and it will not be that of Hugues Capet. Instead it will come from me and from antiquity. The things, the words, and the images shall be different. Fleur-de-lys and white flags belong to the Bourbons. I will retain the three colors with which we ran them out. Nothing must separate me from France. We must be exactly the same thing.

CAMBACÉRÈS

Would you choose the traditional Gallic rooster? You could set it on a tricolor flag.

BONAPARTE

The rooster is reminiscent of the barnyard and not noble enough to incarnate a great nation. What is required a more powerful beast — an elephant, for example, or a lion crouched upon a map of France, one paw extended along the Rhine with the motto: “He who seeks me, beware!”

CAMBACÉRÈS

Isn’t the Rhine too limiting for France’s ambitions?

BONAPARTE

You are right. We need not put boundaries on either our dreams or our courage. Let us find something better.

CAMBACÉRÈS

What would you say to golden bees? They can be found on Chilperic’s tombstone.

BONAPARTE

Bees are a good idea. They could figure on wallhangings, carpets, on mantles. But I am an emperor and I trace myself back to the Caesars, so I must have their symbols. I choose the eagle, its wings outspread, bearing lightning in its claws. It will be gold and set upon a field of the noblest color.

CAMBACÉRÈS

On a field of red?

BONAPARTE

A field of blue. My livery shall be green, because the Bourbons used blue livery and the heavens are for everyone. The imperial eagle shall be set upon an azure field, the image of the sky in which he rules. The eagle shall be my emblem, and it will be indistinguishable from me. My coronation will take place beneath its sign.

CAMBACÉRÈS

And so shall Rheims be returned to its ancient splendor.

BONAPARTE

If I may ask, why that city before any other?

CAMBACÉRÈS

But general, tradition. . An emperor needs to be anointed. Your coronation could only take place at. .

BONAPARTE

My coronation will not take place in Rheims. One could easily choose the cathedral at Aix-laChappelle or Saint Peter’s in Rome to announce to the world that I am succeeding Charlemagne. Still, I have no need of going that far. As the founder of a new empire, I would prefer my coronation to take place in my own capital, and in the ancient and noble cathedral of Notre Dame.

CAMBACÉRÈS

What a godsend this will be for Monsigneur de Belloy!

BONAPARTE

Yet another mistake, Cambacérès. I will not need the services of the Cardinal of Paris.

CAMBACÉRÈS

No need of the cardinal! So to whom will fall the honor of. .

BONAPARTE

It would not be inappropriate for a pope to crown an emperor.

CAMBACÉRÈS

Ah, then you’ll go to Rome?

BONAPARTE

Rome will come to Paris.

CAMBACÉRÈS

Pious the Seventh in Paris? That’s impossible. Recall Cardinal Caprara’s cross.

BONAPARTE

Impossible, yes, and yet it will happen. The “impossible” is not French. The pope will come to Paris to crown me. He will come and he will come willingly, because he knows that I could reduce him to Bishop of Rome, and instead I will treat him as if he had two-hundred-thousand men. I will immerse him in so many tokens of respect and honor that he will not hesitate to proclaim me God’s Elected. Woe to him who behaves inappropriately before the supreme pontiff.

CAMBACÉRÈS

Will the pope want to come?

BONAPARTE

Who could doubt it? We could make the entire College of Cardinals with him leading the way walk to the end of the earth if it pleased us.

CAMBACÉRÈS

By instilling fear?

BONAPARTE

By appealing to their interests. By dangling before them the riches of the world, which they sometimes seem to prefer over those of heaven. There will be much we can do for religion and the clergy: tracts of land and possessions of every kind restored to them, seats in the Senate, a minister dedicated to their needs, convents re-opened, altars restored, and, beyond that, honors, wealth, credit, and power. Maybe even something greater: my conversion, yours, that of Fouché, the Jacobins, my generals, and my soldiers. The Holy See is a vast, empty reservoir of money and ambition. Filling it would be very hard indeed.

CAMBACÉRÈS

And in exchange for this coronation, what will the pope get?

BONAPARTE

Hope.

CAMBACÉRÈS

I will say it again: you are the most extraordinary of all men, the most extraordinary since the arrival of the Messiah on earth.

BONAPARTE

Let us dispense with comparisons to God. I have enough doubts about myself. I sleep more than is rumored. I am a man like others.

CAMBACÉRÈS

Like others?

BONAPARTE

With a greater spirit, a more reliable memory, a larger capacity to work hard. Imagination rules the world, and it is my most treasured possession. I cannot see the future any more clearly than you or than any common mortal. I rely upon unceasing thought and memories that are both numerous and specific, and I prepare for it with a great deal of care. I always give myself up entirely to what I undertake. I take my ideas and projects by the neck, the rear, the feet, the head, and I do not stop until I have examined every last inch. Hence when I have finished considering a project in my head I think of it as already in motion. I am less moved by the moment of the realization of my designs than by their conception.

CAMBACÉRÈS

You are already emperor because you have resolved to be so. You have already been crowned by the pope, acclaimed by the French, feared and admired throughout Europe.

BONAPARTE

I will be, Cambacérès. Have no doubt of that. Things will go as I have planned them, event after event. Our conversation must remain a secret. Act as if it had never taken place. But everything will happen, point by point, just as I have decided.

CAMBACÉRÈS

Does nothing unexpected ever happen to you?

BONAPARTE

Politics is our modern form of tragedy, replacing the theatre for enacting classical fatality. The future belongs to no man. Still, I am trying to bend it to my will. I have a guiding star, and so long as it does not abandon me I am called to change the face of the world.

CAMBACÉRÈS

You have already changed France, and you will change it yet more. You will change Europe.

BONAPARTE

I want peace, but if war is forced upon me I will meet it and win battle after battle. I have already taken Milan, Venice, and Cairo. Italy is mine. Spain, Portugal, and Holland will obey me. The pope will be my vassal and I will conquer Sicily and Dalmatia. I will make myself the master of the Mediterranean. I will take Vienna, Berlin, Warsaw, and Moscow. I will invade England.

CAMBACÉRÈS

Your eagles will fly across Europe, on which you will leave your mark.

BONAPARTE

My dreams go further than the borders of Europe. I will return to the East, marching on Damascaus and Aleppo. I will liberate Syria. I will chase the English from the Levant, and threaten them in India. I will overturn the Turk Empire and take Constantinople and, before returning to France by Adrianople or Vienna, I will level the House of Austria in the Orient and found a great new empire that will secure my place in history.

CAMBACÉRÈS

You are a great magician, conquering not merely by military genius but by the power of your words. I listen to you and grow dizzy. You are the author of your own life, set above all other heroes in history.

BONAPARTE

I do love grandeur, and I leave nothing to chance. I always do what I say I will do, or die trying. I know how to talk to men.

CAMBACÉRÈS

I was ever a believer in a government by assembly. You have converted me to believe in a government of one. I was attached to the Republic and you have rallied me to the empire. This proves that by the power of your words France, which once seemed so great in scale to me, seems small in comparison to Europe, and Europe itself is insignificant in a world dominated by your genius. You are an alchemist who can turn the lower metal of our indecisiveness and uncertainties into pure gold.

BONAPARTE

It could not be better phrased, Cambacérès. You have grasped it all, and I congratulate you. The gold will flow in waves upon my dreams and upon on those who serve France in my name.

CAMBACÉRÈS

I see a new system rising up out of the ruins of the monarchy and the Republic. I salute you, Emperor of the French.

BONAPARTE

Here is the first time that I have been addressed by this title, and I accede to it. I am happy that it comes from you, Jean-Jacques Régis de Cambacérès. I name you, my cousin, Prince Archchancellor of the Empire, Most Serene Highness, and future Duke of Parma.

CAMBACÉRÈS

(Bending down on one knee). Sire, permit me to offer at the feet of Your Imperial Majesty the homage of my gratitude and my admiration.

Content

Jean d'Ormesson
The Conversation

PROLOGUE CROSSING THE RUBICON

THE CONVERSATION