Napoleon's Exile by Patrick Rambaud Page B

people in white scarves were waving handkerchiefs on the ends of their canes, shouting, ‘Down with the tyrant! Long live the Bourbons!’ In the suburbs they would have been soundly thrashed, but here, in the elegant part of the boulevards, the indifferent crowd simply opened up so they could pass. These excited folk, Octave thought, had never known kings. They didn’t even understand their own slogans, which they were barking out as though issuing commands, inspired by hatred of the Imperial order.
    Behind the youngsters he saw Marquis de Maubreuil - recognizing him by his plum-coloured silk clothes: he had tied his Cross of the Légion d’honneur to the tail of his horse, and was singing in a tenor voice, ‘
Vive le roi!’
    *
    The allied armies had entered Paris by the Pantin tollgate at eleven o’clock. They had passed beneath the Porte Saint-Denis, now cleared of its pitiful barricade. In the suburbs, the people had watched the impeccable squadrons passing by without much of a murmur, but in the capital the National Guard was acting as a police force, its officers holding back those who wanted to spit and curse at the young soldiers in their bright uniforms. There were even some cries of
‘Vive l’Empereur!’
which were barely drowned out by the military fanfares. Then, though, as the armies passed through different districts, the nature of the crowd had changed: from the boulevard des Italiens onwards, the windows were covered with bed-sheets or white towels, elegant ladies waved handkerchiefs, and cheers rose by several tones as the marching men approached the Place de la Concorde.
    â€˜They’re coming!’ said the young Countess of Sémallé at her balcony. Deeply moved, she brushed a tear from her made-up cheek with a fingertip. Heralded by an impressive brass band playing an unfamiliar anthem, the red Cossacks of the Guard came first, followed by cuirassiers with gleaming boots, then the hussars, and the pearl-grey regiments of the King of Prussia.
    â€˜Eleven, twelve . . .’ murmured Octave.
    â€˜How comforting they are!’ remarked the dazzled Countess, beside him.
    â€˜Fourteen, fifteen ...’ said Octave.
    â€˜Fifteen what?’ asked the Countess, clapping her hands.
    â€˜The cavalrymen, madam, fifteen deep.’
    â€˜How handsome they are!’
    â€˜Control yourself, my dear,’ the Count rebuked her.
    â€˜We’ve been waiting so long for this liberation!’
    â€˜Of course we have, Zoé, but a countess doesn’t hop up and down.’
    The Count is right,’ hazarded Octave. ‘All the same, it’s the first time since the Hundred Years War that foreign armies have defiled our capital...’
    â€˜But they aren’t foreigners, Monsieur, they are our European cousins! Isn’t that so, Jean-René?’
    â€˜Yes,’ replied the Count. Then, to Octave: ‘They won’t stay, Blacé, they will restore power to us and then they will go home again. The people of Paris understand that, look at them.’
    Down below, in the boulevard de la Madeleine, the crowd was surging in the direction of the procession, shouting: ‘Long live our liberators!’ Among the keenest of them, Octave thought he recognized the apothecary who had been so patriotic on the Saint-Denis barricade. His neighbour in that potential battle was now raising his hat, mouth open wide, to acclaim the very men whom he would cheerfully have massacred with his hunting rifle the day before. Meanwhile some hysterical women dashed towards the orderly ranks of the marching Russian cavalrymen, grabbing their boots, kissing their gloves and calling them ‘saviours’ and similar extravagant names.
    Octave was not at all surprised to see a population turning in the blink of an eye to kneel before its conqueror. He was accustomed to the fickle feelings of his contemporaries, but one thing still intrigued him: the enemy