Napoleon's Exile Read Online Free PDF

light that he was able to lift it with one hand.
    â€˜But sir ...’
    â€˜Silence, rascal, or I’ll tell them to throw you into the street for damaging the Prince of Benevento’s luggage ...’
    â€˜Not that...’
    â€˜Then keep your trap shut!’
    The Marquis pressed the catch, half-opened the suitcase and glanced inside, then returned to Sémallé and the horses.
    â€˜The cases are empty.’
    *
    During wars, as during revolutions, when everything else is closed in the city, the cafés stay open; rakes and braggarts strut about the terraces exchanging their views on the way of the world. On this particular afternoon, a clutch of writers and out-of-work actors were getting drunk on words and punch in the Café des Variétés on the boulevard Montmartre. The establishment was next door to the new Passage des Panoramas, and the rotunda of the same name, a stone’s throw from their theatre with its Greek temple façade. Preparing to interpret a tragedy of Racine bowdlerized by the censors, they ignored the sound of the cannon and the throng of concerned or curious people milling around them, in small groups that quickly formed and then dissolved again, heading off suddenly in different directions. Commandeered fiacres pushed their way through these crowds; marked with black flags that could be seen from a long distance away, they were lugging piles of blood-drenched soldiers to the hospitals.
    The thespians, meanwhile, whose number included both gentlemen and several young ladies in furbelows, saw the situation as an opportunity. Their work had been badly treated by a government mistrustful of the theatre, which it considered too popular and thus too dangerous. If the Empire were to fall today, they could finally put on an unexpurgated
Britannicus.
    â€˜What can you see?’ one of them asked his neighbour, a thin tow-headed man who was directing his telescope towards the hills.
    â€˜I see troops mounting an assault on the windmills of Montmartre, coming up through the vines.’
    â€˜Bad luck on the vines, but it’s all undrinkable anyway!’ thundered a fat man whose face was a mass of broken veins.
    â€˜Russians?’ ventured an ingénue in a feathered hat.
    â€˜Blue jackets, fur hats ...’
    â€˜Mounted grenadiers à cheval of the Guard, probably General Belliard’s men,’ said Octave, who was listening at the next table.
    â€˜Come and join us, Mr Know-it-all,’ suggested the red-faced man, pointing to a free chair.
    â€˜You don’t look awfully military,’ said the ingénue.
    â€˜I’m not, but I’ve learned to identify the different armies,’ replied Octave, sitting down among the actors, glass in hand.
    He had donned Blacé's wig and tapered frock-coat, but kept his own cane. He turned to the thin man. ‘May I borrow your opera-glasses?’
    â€˜Of course, and then you can give us a commentary on the battle.’
    Putting his eye to the opera-glasses, Octave could make out the seven cannons of Belleville being used by the artillery of the Guard. Some troopers were in fact climbing the hill, stumbling over the vine shoots, to liberate the gunners from a flood of Russians who were coming up from the opposite direction amid white smoke and exploding shells.
    â€˜Well?’
    â€˜You’d have to be there,’ said Octave, folding up the opera-glasses, which he stuffed in his pocket.
    He got up, gave a slight bow and was about to disappear into the agitated crowd when the thin actor tried to hold him back by the sleeve.
    â€˜My opera-glasses!’
    â€˜I’m confiscating them; they’re of no use to you.’
    â€˜Thief!’
    â€˜Spy!’ added the red-faced man.
    â€˜Fink!’ cried the ingénue.
    Octave swept the table with his cane, knocking scalding punch over their knees. They yelled, but amid all the commotion no one paid the slightest attention. Once