Napoleon Symphony: A Novel in Four Movements Read Online Free PDF Page B

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    And from th’ Elysian meadows pluck thy soul,
A greater than Augustus would inspire
    A mightier chord upon the trembling lyre,
    And verbal flames might match that swift reverberant fire.
    “B ut it was terrible,” she said, in his arms in bed in Brescia. “Pushed along like that. Parma, Florence, and that other place. I told him that a battlefield was no place for a woman. I’d told him before.”
    “My precious.” He did not smell so fresh as he had in Paris. Nor perhaps, she thought, did she. They both had gunsmoke in their skin. And he was quicker, more urgent, as though infected by lui . He was no longer the boudoir soldier; he had been mentioned in dispatches.
    “He’s mad,” she said. “He doesn’t love me—he worships me. I tell you, it’s not civilized. Oh God, if only we were back in Paris.”
    “And I worship you too. More than he does, angel.”
    “Don’t say that, for God’s sake. I don’t want to be worshipped. I want everything to be calm and pleasant and sane .”
    “Love isn’t sane. Love’s a madness. Pagan, elemental, dark. Feel that.” It felt like a weapon, something that would go off.
    “Oh Hippolyte, he says these things as though he means them.”
    “I mean them too, my treasure.”
    “No no, as though he means them as he means, you know, the other things. Like taking over all Italy and then marching to Vienna and then invading the English. He writes a battle order about turning flanks and so on and then he writes about stripping the skin off me and possessing me wholly and then he goes back to his dispatches about enveloping the left wing or whatever it is. I’m frightened.”
    “You’ll always have me, precious angel. Always have me to turn to. I don’t frighten you, do I?”
    “His brother knows, I’m sure. Joseph. He has another brother here now on his staff. He’ll have the whole family here soon, if he wins all his battles. And Joseph will talk to his mother and his mother will talk to him and. Corsican jealousy. He’ll have you court-martialed and shot. Me too perhaps. He’s mad enough.”
    “No, precious treasure. Not yet. Mmmmmm.”
    “Oh, don’t joke. I’m serious.”
    “Mmmmmm.”
    “Ious.” The word diversify came, for some reason, into her head. Skirmishes, feints, confusing the enemy. Then everything became confused, transfused, fused.
    At last, adorable, adorable, behold me reborn. Death no longer in my eyes, glory and victory in my heart. We defeated the enemy at Areola, six thousand killed, five hundred prisoners. Mantua will fall to us in less than a week. Then then then I shall be back in your arms.
    A nd on her lap, a flag in his hand, her arms holding him still, fidgety because Mantua had not yet fallen. Young Antoine Gros, favorite pupil of David, was painting him in the after-breakfast light, hero of the Areola bridge. Bonaparte was saying:
    “An old woman in Ajaccio said it. She said that the earth would be my friend and the water my enemy. It was, I confess, a very unpleasant experience—all that swampy mud right up to my shoulders. And my poor shot horse screaming and writhing. No, I must not descend to pity for animals. A horse is an instrument, no more.”
    “Do keep still,” she said.
    “I’ve finished the passage,” Gros said. “It will be you, madame,” smiling, “who needs the rest.”
    “He’s not heavy.” And he wasn’t, all skin and bone, pared down with fever. Bonaparte jumped up and walked round to the canvas.
    “Hm. Who am I to say whether it is a good likeness? It is more like some character out of myth. Perhaps the face of Ossian?” He gave Gros an acutely painful pinch of affection on the lobe. “You have some good young men about you,” he said to her. “Collect more, we need good young men. Like that young Charles of yours, a very promising soldier.”
    She tried not to show the change in her breathing.
    “How would you,” he said to Gros, “like to take over the art commission? I know what