Napoleon's Exile by Patrick Rambaud Page A

l’Echiquier, number 36!’
    *
    'My friends, I have been successful! Morin is in the Hôtel de Ville, in the Prefect’s chair!’
    â€˜Bravo!’
    â€˜I have with me a Prussian general who believes I am a higher authority: he is going to serve as guarantor!’
    â€˜Bravo! Bravo! Bravo!’
    The Committee members still present at Lemercier’s had risen to their feet, and they applauded as one might applaud a resolute deed in a play, La Grange, in a state of boundless jubilation, continued.
    â€˜I am going to the
mairies
of the
arrondissements
with our Prussian friend, to prepare the accommodation of the sovereigns and their retinues. Come with me, let us announce that the allies have recognized Louis XVIII!’
    There were more volunteers than would fit in the carriage (from which the conspirators were to throw handfuls of royalist cockades at passers-by), and Octave seized upon this as an excuse: he would go to the Count of Sémallé and tell him about their dawn raid. La Grange approved; he climbed into the real Prefect’s berlin, pressing against Baron Plotho, and the two set off, escorted by sky-blue dragoons, who were surprised by being thus welcomed into a conquered capital. Octave set off in the other direction, towards the boulevard.
    It was almost ten o’clock, and the smarter districts had very quickly reassumed their normal appearance once the Parisians had learned of the capitulation. They had dreaded the possibility that the city might be put to the torch: over the past few days,
La Gazette de France
and
Les Débats
had recounted so many horrors that, since the worst had failed to materialize, there was a great sense of relief. Yesterday, the walls of the houses had been bare and black with soot; today they were covered with gaudy posters, advertisements for music-halls, for concerts, lotteries, hotels and magic potions, but also with insults against Napoleon, jubilantly scribbled caricatures (one showed the Emperor on all fours, with his buttocks in a broken drum, and a Russian general beating the march with a birch whip). All of a sudden life was reborn, light and muddled. The boulevard once again filled with people. Fear had fled.
    Octave approached a crowd who were laughing delightedly at two bourgeois in threadbare suits being manhandled by members of the National Guard armed with picks. ‘Let me go!’ screeched one of the bourgeois; held firmly by the collar, he was wiggling and waving his arms around, but they were too short to reach the stout, uniformed fellow who was holding him. Octave recognized a conspirator from the royalist Committee, and he remained apart, hidden by the growing crowd. As he watched, one of the guards tore the white cockade from the hat of the other bourgeois, threw it on the ground and stamped on it; as his victim protested, another guard picked up the posters the royalist had been carrying, plunged them into his bucket of glue and smeared the man’s face with them. Octave quietly removed the cockade that Morin had pinned on his hat, and sloped off.
    Over by the Madeleine he noticed a white flag flapping, as predicted, from one of the balconies of Sémallé's house. If the passers-by did happen to look up, no one complained, no one saluted - and it looked as though they were getting away with it. The flags no longer made the Parisians tremble, either with shame or joy; they were waking from an improbable dream, the air was sweet, and they wanted to dance. The shopkeepers imagined that business would pick up, that the invaders would make their fortunes for them by buying huge quantities of fabrics, necklaces and wine; others were convinced they would fill their theatres or their taverns: the foreign officers would distribute gold pieces without counting them, they were so pleased with their victory after such rough treatment throughout the winter.
    Not far from the Count’s house, a group of about twenty young