Napoleon's Exile Read Online Free Page B

few scraps of uniform, chalk-whitened shoulder straps over their frock-coats. A notary wore yellow leggings, and a grocer had his trousers tied with string at his ankles. These were the workmen, the property-owners, the shopkeepers ruined by the ceaseless war who had been enlisted to defend the city. They had little idea of the danger that faced them, and came out with a jumble of truth and wild rumour when Sémallé questioned them.
    â€˜They’ve attacked the Bois de Romainville.’
    â€˜There’s only one column there.’
    â€˜What’re you on about? There are whole armies, really there are!’
    â€˜The King of Prussia’s been taken prisoner, I was told by a sergeant on his way back from Belleville, they’re going to parade him through the boulevards.’
    The cannon didn’t fall silent. Men on horseback circulated among the groups, distributing proclamations which they carried in packs on their saddles. La Grange took one and handed it to the Count. Sémallé put on his glasses and read in a loud voice:
    We will be pillaged!
We will be burned!
While the Emperor arrives
    on the arses of the enemy ...
    The appeal called the massive assault by the allies a ‘helping hand', but asked for the barricades to be raised, for trenches to be dug, for loopholes to be cut in the walls, for cobblestones to be carried into the houses to serve as projectiles and for the streets to be blocked by overturned vehicles.
    â€˜A little later,’ smiled the Count.
    â€˜Childish nonsense.’
    â€˜Who’s going to tell us what’s really happening, La Grange?’
    â€˜I only know one place in Paris, Your Lordship, where they know exactly what’s going on.’
    â€˜You’re right, let’s go to the rue Saint-Florentin.’
    This was Talleyrand’s address.
    *
    The first floor of the unfinished Hôtel Saint-Florentin overlooked the rue de Rivoli. There, Monsieur de Talleyrand was at his toilet, following a ritual that no tragedy could alter. As ever, he had spent a large part of the night playing whist, before going to sleep in an almost seated position, wearing fourteen cotton hats for fear of falling on his head. When the clock chimed half-past eleven, he drank his camomile tea by the marble fireplace in his room, surrounded by a
corps de ballet
of valets in grey aprons, who hummed as they pomaded him, curled, combed and powdered his wig, and presented him with the silver bowl in which he dipped his fingers to wash himself. When this was done, he sucked several glasses of luke-warm water through his nostrils. He was sixty years old, with a turned-up nose, soft cheeks, clay-coloured skin and dead eyes; only his mouth was expressive, sometimes indicating irony, sometimes contempt.
    One valet slipped a shirt over the rags and flannels that swaddled him, while another, kneeling, slipped silk stockings over the woollen stockings that already concealed his atrophied legs.
    His entourage witnessed the spectacle.
    A member of the Regency Council, the former Bishop of Autun, Prince of Benevento, and prince of intrigue, Talleyrand surrounded himself with a coterie of unfrocked abbots who hated the Emperor and admitted as much. They included Monsieur de Pradt, a disgraced ambassador who distributed the
Times
and the
Morning Chronicle
which were sent to him by a lady in Brussels; the nonchalant Montesquiou; Jaucourt, Joseph Bonaparte’s chamberlain, who was very well informed about the movement of the troops; Baron Louis, now a banker, who had served mass at the Feast of the Federation during the Revolution - and others of similar stamp.
    Sémallé, emboldened by the sudden impunity conferred upon him by the proximity of the enemy cannon, had entrusted his horses to La Grange and fearlessly entered this den of conspirators. He approached Jaucourt, an acquaintance of his, and whispered in his ear so as not to disturb the ceremony, ‘What are