The Conversation Read online

  CAMBACÉRÈS

  What about the Army?

  BONAPARTE

  Berthier, Murat, Masséna, Soult, Lannes, Mortier, Ney, Davout—even Bernadotte, whom I do not trust—and several others shall be made marshals of the empire. Some among them will be made princes. Murat—if only to appease Caroline—may climb higher still.

  CAMBACÉRÈS

  The Church?

  BONAPARTE

  The Church will always choose a monarchy over a republic, and with good reason. In a republic it is necessary to please so many and to deceive so many others that the pain exceeds profit. With a monarchy, the only person it needs to charm in order to remain in power is the leader. The Church has only ever revolted against weak princes. I shall not be weak. Moreover, I will pay the clergy well and include them in the honors lists, just as I will give entitlements and honors to anyone who wishes to serve me—and first of all to you, Cambacérès. You will remain the second-most-powerful figure in the empire, just as you have been in the Consulate.

  CAMBACÉRÈS

  You have a response for everything. You are not like other men. In ancient days, like Alexander, you would have been a half-god, a son of the king of the gods.

  BONAPARTE

  I admit that I have done well, and made my way handsomely. My approach is nonetheless quite simple: I stay ahead of events, I immerse myself in the details, and I leave nothing in the shadows. You are sometimes mistaken, Cambacérès, and you lack audacity. But you are also loyal and uncomplicated. While I am with my soldiers on a campaign, you will manage the affairs of state. You will gather the ministers, you will preside over the Senate and the State Council, where you will display your greater talent and your deeper logic, and you will prove worthy of my confidence.

  CAMBACÉRÈS

  I hope I have been worthy of it until this moment. Time is short. We will have to come up with a coat of arms for the empire and the imperial family. Would you take up the escutcheon of your fathers, a golden rake on azure with three fleur-de-lys?

  BONAPARTE

  No, no fleur-de-lys. It is an emblem of a banished House and as hated as the white flag. You do not know the power of men’s memories. Unfurl a white flag with a fleur-de-lys, and half of France will think it means the return of Louis the Eighteenth, to whom today no one gives any thought. I am not the son of Louis the Sixteenth, or even of Louis the Fourteenth. I am starting a new dynasty, a new empire, and it will not be that of Hugues Capet. Instead it will come from me and from antiquity. The things, the words, and the images shall be different. Fleur-de-lys and white flags belong to the Bourbons. I will retain the three colors with which we ran them out. Nothing must separate me from France. We must be exactly the same thing.

  CAMBACÉRÈS

  Would you choose the traditional Gallic rooster? You could set it on a tricolor flag.

  BONAPARTE

  The rooster is reminiscent of the barnyard and not noble enough to incarnate a great nation. What is required a more powerful beast—an elephant, for example, or a lion crouched upon a map of France, one paw extended along the Rhine with the motto: “He who seeks me, beware!”

  CAMBACÉRÈS

  Isn’t the Rhine too limiting for France’s ambitions?

  BONAPARTE

  You are right. We need not put boundaries on either our dreams or our courage. Let us find something better.

  CAMBACÉRÈS

  What would you say to golden bees? They can be found on Chilperic’s tombstone.

  BONAPARTE

  Bees are a good idea. They could figure on wallhangings, carpets, on mantles. But I am an emperor and I trace myself back to the Caesars, so I must have their symbols. I choose the eagle, its wings outspread, bearing lightning in its claws. It will be gold and set upon a field of the noblest color.

  CAMBACÉRÈS

  On a field of red?

  BONAPARTE

  A field of blue. My livery shall be green, because the Bourbons used blue livery and the heavens are for everyone. The imperial eagle shall be set upon an azure field, the image of the sky in which he rules. The eagle shall be my emblem, and it will be indistinguishable from me. My coronation will take place beneath its sign.

  CAMBACÉRÈS

  And so shall Rheims be returned to its ancient splendor.

  BONAPARTE

  If I may ask, why that city before any other?

  CAMBACÉRÈS

  But general, tradition. . . . An emperor needs to be anointed. Your coronation could only take place at . . .

  BONAPARTE

  My coronation will not take place in Rheims. One could easily choose the cathedral at Aix-laChappelle or Saint Peter’s in Rome to announce to the world that I am succeeding Charlemagne. Still, I have no need of going that far. As the founder of a new empire, I would prefer my coronation to take place in my own capital, and in the ancient and noble cathedral of Notre Dame.

  CAMBACÉRÈS

  What a godsend this will be for Monsigneur de Belloy!

  BONAPARTE

  Yet another mistake, Cambacérès. I will not need the services of the Cardinal of Paris.

  CAMBACÉRÈS

  No need of the cardinal! So to whom will fall the honor of. . .

  BONAPARTE

  It would not be inappropriate for a pope to crown an emperor.

  CAMBACÉRÈS

  Ah, then you’ll go to Rome?

  BONAPARTE

  Rome will come to Paris.

  CAMBACÉRÈS

  Pious the Seventh in Paris? That’s impossible. Recall Cardinal Caprara’s cross.

  BONAPARTE

  Impossible, yes, and yet it will happen. The “impossible” is not French. The pope will come to Paris to crown me. He will come and he will come willingly, because he knows that I could reduce him to Bishop of Rome, and instead I will treat him as if he had two-hundred-thousand men. I will immerse him in so many tokens of respect and honor that he will not hesitate to proclaim me God’s Elected. Woe to him who behaves inappropriately before the supreme pontiff.

  CAMBACÉRÈS

  Will the pope want to come?

  BONAPARTE

  Who could doubt it? We could make the entire College of Cardinals with him leading the way walk to the end of the earth if it pleased us.

  CAMBACÉRÈS

  By instilling fear?

  BONAPARTE

  By appealing to their interests. By dangling before them the riches of the world, which they sometimes seem to prefer over those of heaven. There will be much we can do for religion and the clergy: tracts of land and possessions of every kind restored to them, seats in the Senate, a minister dedicated to their needs, convents re-opened, altars restored, and, beyond that, honors, wealth, credit, and power. Maybe even something greater: my conversion, yours, that of Fouché, the Jacobins, my generals, and my soldiers. The Holy See is a vast, empty reservoir of money and ambition. Filling it would be very hard indeed.

  CAMBACÉRÈS

  And in exchange for this coronation, what will the pope get?

  BONAPARTE

  Hope.

  CAMBACÉRÈS

  I will say it again: you are the most extraordinary of all men, the most extraordinary since the arrival of the Messiah on earth.

  BONAPARTE

  Let us dispense with comparisons to God. I have enough doubts about myself. I sleep more than is rumored. I am a man like others.

  CAMBACÉRÈS

  Like others?

  BONAPARTE

  With a greater spirit, a more reliable memory, a larger capacity to work hard. Imagination rules the world, and it is my most treasured possession. I cannot see the future any more clearly than you or than any common mortal. I rely upon unceasing thought and memories that are both numerous and specific, and I prepare for it with a great deal of care. I always give myself up entirely to what I undertake. I take my ideas and projects by the neck, the rear, the feet, the head, and I do not stop until I have examined every last inch. Hence when I have finished
considering a project in my head I think of it as already in motion. I am less moved by the moment of the realization of my designs than by their conception.

  CAMBACÉRÈS

  You are already emperor because you have resolved to be so. You have already been crowned by the pope, acclaimed by the French, feared and admired throughout Europe.

  BONAPARTE

  I will be, Cambacérès. Have no doubt of that. Things will go as I have planned them, event after event. Our conversation must remain a secret. Act as if it had never taken place. But everything will happen, point by point, just as I have decided.

  CAMBACÉRÈS

  Does nothing unexpected ever happen to you?

  BONAPARTE

  Politics is our modern form of tragedy, replacing the theatre for enacting classical fatality. The future belongs to no man. Still, I am trying to bend it to my will. I have a guiding star, and so long as it does not abandon me I am called to change the face of the world.

  CAMBACÉRÈS

  You have already changed France, and you will change it yet more. You will change Europe.

  BONAPARTE

  I want peace, but if war is forced upon me I will meet it and win battle after battle. I have already taken Milan, Venice, and Cairo. Italy is mine. Spain, Portugal, and Holland will obey me. The pope will be my vassal and I will conquer Sicily and Dalmatia. I will make myself the master of the Mediterranean. I will take Vienna, Berlin, Warsaw, and Moscow. I will invade England.

  CAMBACÉRÈS

  Your eagles will fly across Europe, on which you will leave your mark.

  BONAPARTE

  My dreams go further than the borders of Europe. I will return to the East, marching on Damascaus and Aleppo. I will liberate Syria. I will chase the English from the Levant, and threaten them in India. I will overturn the Turk Empire and take Constantinople and, before returning to France by Adrianople or Vienna, I will level the House of Austria in the Orient and found a great new empire that will secure my place in history.

  CAMBACÉRÈS

  You are a great magician, conquering not merely by military genius but by the power of your words. I listen to you and grow dizzy. You are the author of your own life, set above all other heroes in history.

  BONAPARTE

  I do love grandeur, and I leave nothing to chance. I always do what I say I will do, or die trying. I know how to talk to men.

  CAMBACÉRÈS

  I was ever a believer in a government by assembly. You have converted me to believe in a government of one. I was attached to the Republic and you have rallied me to the empire. This proves that by the power of your words France, which once seemed so great in scale to me, seems small in comparison to Europe, and Europe itself is insignificant in a world dominated by your genius. You are an alchemist who can turn the lower metal of our indecisiveness and uncertainties into pure gold.

  BONAPARTE

  It could not be better phrased, Cambacérès. You have grasped it all, and I congratulate you. The gold will flow in waves upon my dreams and upon on those who serve France in my name.

  CAMBACÉRÈS

  I see a new system rising up out of the ruins of the monarchy and the Republic. I salute you, Emperor of the French.

  BONAPARTE

  Here is the first time that I have been addressed by this title, and I accede to it. I am happy that it comes from you, Jean-Jacques Régis de Cambacérès. I name you, my cousin, Prince Archchancellor of the Empire, Most Serene Highness, and future Duke of Parma.

  CAMBACÉRÈS

  (Bending down on one knee). Sire, permit me to offer at the feet of Your Imperial Majesty the homage of my gratitude and my admiration.