Read Ebook: A Conspiracy of the Carbonari by M Hlbach L Luise Safford Mary J Translator

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Ebook has 526 lines and 31406 words, and 11 pages

addressed him, that some one whom he must answer had spoken.

No one ventured to answer this exclamation. The emperor did not seem to expect it; perhaps he did not even know that any one had heard what he answered the menacing voice in his own soul.

Now the boat touched the shore, where carriages were ready to convey the emperor and his suite to Ebersdorf.

His whole staff, all his marshals and generals, were waiting for him before the door of the castle. With bared heads, in stiff military attitude, they received their lord and master, the august emperor, expecting a gracious greeting. But he passed on without looking at them, without even saluting them by a wave of his hand. They looked after him with wondering, angry eyes, and, like the glittering tail of a comet, followed him into the castle, up the steps, and into the hall.

But as they entered the reception-room where he usually talked with them, Napoleon had already vanished in his private office, whose door swiftly closed behind him.

The marshals and generals, aids and staff officers, still waited. The emperor would surely return, they thought. He still had to give them his commands for the next day, his orders concerning what was to be done on the island of Lobau, what provision should be made for the care of the wounded, the sustenance of the uninjured, the rescue of the remains of his army.

But they waited in vain; Napoleon did not return to them, gave them no orders. After half an hour's futile expectation, Roustan glided through the little door of the private room into the hall, and, with a very important air, whispered to the listening officers that the emperor had gone to bed immediately, and had scarcely touched the pillows ere he sunk into a deep sleep.

Yes, the Emperor Napoleon was sleeping, and his generals glided on tiptoe out of the hall and discussed outside the measures which they must now adopt on their own account to rescue the luckless fragment of the army from the island of Lobau, and make arrangements for building new bridges.

Yes, the Emperor Napoleon was sleeping! He slept all through the night, through the broad light of the next day--slept when his whole staff had gone to Lobau--slept when bodies of his infuriated guards rushed into the castle and, unheeding the emperor's presence, plundered the cellars and storerooms--slept when, in the afternoon of that day, his marshals and generals returned to Castle Ebersdorf, in order at last to receive the emperor's commands.

They would not, could not believe that the commander-in-chief was still sleeping It seemed perfectly impossible that he, the illustrious strong-brained Caesar, could permit himself to be subjugated by the common petty need of human nature in these hours when every second's delay might decide the destiny of many thousands. This sleep could be no natural one; perhaps the emperor, exhausted by fatigue and mental excitement, had fallen into a stupor; perhaps he was sleeping never to wake again. They must see him, they must convince themselves. They called Roustan and asked him to take them to the emperor's couch.

But he was sleeping! It was not stupor, it was not death, it was only sleep which held him captive. His breath came slowly, regularly; his face was slightly flushed, his eyes were calmly closed. The emperor was sleeping! His generals need feel no anxiety; they might return to the drawing-room with relieved hearts. They did so, stealing noiselessly again through the private office into the hall, whose door had been left ajar that the noise might not rouse the sleeper.

Yet, once within the hall, they looked at each other with wondering eyes, astonished faces.

He was really asleep; he could sleep.

He was untroubled, free from care. Yet if the Archduke Charles desired it, the whole army was lost. He need only remain encamped with his troops on the bank of the Danube to expose the entire force to hunger, to destruction.

As they talked angrily, with gloomy faces, they again gazed at each other with questioning eyes, and looked watchfully around the drawing-room. No one was present except the group of marshals, generals and colonels. No one could overhear them, no one could see how one, Colonel Oudet, raised his right hand and made a few strange, mysterious gestures in the air.

Instantly every head bowed reverently, every voice whispered a single word: "Master."

"My brothers," replied Colonel Oudet in a low tone, "important things are being planned, and we must be ready to see them appear in tangible form at any moment."

"We are prepared," murmured all who were present. "We await the commands of our master."

"I have nothing more to say, except that you are to hold yourselves ready; for the great hour of vengeance and deliverance is approaching. The great Society of the Carbonari, whose devoted members you are--"

"Whose great and venerated head you are," replied General Massena, with a low bow.

"The Society of the Carbonari," Colonel Oudet continued, without heeding Massena's words, "the Society of the Carbonari watches its faithless member, the renegade son of the Revolution, the Emperor Napoleon, and will soon have an opportunity to avenge his perfidy. Keep your hands on your swords and be watchful; strive to spread the spirit of our order more and more through the army; initiate more and more soldiers into our league as brothers; be mindful of the great object: we will free France from the Caesarism forced upon her. Look around you in your circles and seek the hand which will be ready to make the renegade son of the society vanish from the world."

"He is the scourge of our native land," said one of the generals. "His restless ambition constantly plunges us into new wars, rouses the hatred of all Europe against France, and this hatred will one day burst into bright flames and plunge France into destruction."

"He is destroying the prosperity of the country for generations," said another; he is robbing wives of their husbands, fathers of their sons, labor of sturdy arms. The fields lie untilled, the workshops are deserted, trade is prostrate, and all this to gratify a single man's desire for war."

"Therefore it is necessary to make this one man harmless," said a third. "If no hand is found to slay him, there are arms strong enough to seize him, bind him, and deliver him to those whose prison doors are always open to receive the hated foe who blockades their harbors denies their goods admittance to France and all the countries he has conquered and everywhere confronts them as their bitter enemy."

"Yes, England is ready and watchful," whispered another. "She promises those who have the courage to dare the great deed, a brilliant reward; she offers a million florins and perpetual concealment of their names, as soon as the Emperor Napoleon is delivered to her."

"Then let us seek men who are bold, ambitious, resolute, and money-loving enough to venture such a deed," said Colonel Oudet. "Form connections with those who hate him; be cautious, deliberate and beware of traitors."

"We will be cautious and deliberate," they all replied submissively; "we will beware of traitors."

"But while determining to free France from the ambitious conqueror who is leading her to destruction," said Colonel Oudet, "we must consider what is to be done when the great work is accomplished, when the tyrant is removed. It is evident to you all that the present condition of affairs ought not to last. France now depends upon a single life; a single person forms her dynasty, and when he sinks into the grave, France will be exposed to caprice, to chance; every door to intrigue will be opened. We must secure France from every peril. We have now seen, for the first time, that the proud emperor is only a mere mortal. Had the bullet which wounded his foot at Regensburg struck his head, France would probably be, at the present moment, in the midst of civil war, and the Legitimists, the Republicans, and the adherents of Napoleon would dispute the victory with each other. We must try to avert the most terrible of all misfortunes, civil war; the emperor is not merely mortal; we do not merely have to consider his death, but we must also know what is to happen in case our plan succeeds and he is placed in captivity. We must have ready the successor, the successor who will at once render the Republic and the return of the Bourbons alike impossible. Do any of you know a successor thus qualified?"

"I know one," replied General Marmont.

"And I! And I! And I!"

"General Marmont," said Oudet, "you spoke first. Will you tell us the name of the person who seems to you worthy to be Napoleon's successor?"

"Then you did not hear me request you to speak," said Oudet, in a tone of stern rebuke. "Speak, Marmont, but it will be better to exercise caution and not let the walls themselves hear what we determine. So form a circle around me, and let one after another put his lips to my ear and whisper the name of him who should be Napoleon's successor."

Marshals and generals obeyed the command and formed a close circle around Oudet, whose tall, slender figure towered above them all, and whose handsome pale face, with its enthusiastic blue eyes, formed a strange contrast to the grave, defiant countenances which encircled him.

"Marmont, do you begin!" said Oudet, in his gentle, solemn tones.

The general bent close to Oudet and whispered something into his ear, then he stepped back and made way for another, who was followed by a third, and a fourth.

"My brothers," said Oudet, after all had spoken, "my brothers, I see with pleasure that the same spirit, the same conviction rules among you. You have all uttered the same name; you have all said that Eugene Beauharnais, the Viceroy of Italy, would be the fitting and desired successor of Napoleon. I rejoice in this unanimity, and, in my position as one of the heads of the great society, I give your choice my approval. The invisible ones--the heads who are above us all, and from whom I, like the other three chiefs of the league, receive my orders--the invisible ones have also chosen Eugene Beauharnais for the future emperor of France. Thereby the succession would be secured, and as soon as, by the emperor's death or imprisonment, the throne of France is free, we will summon Eugene de Beauharnais to be emperor of the French. May God grant His blessing upon our work and permit us soon to find the hands we need to rid France of her tyrant."

At that moment the door opening into the emperor's study, which had remained ajar, was flung open and Napoleon stood on the threshold. His iron face, which his officers had just seen in the repose of sleep, was now again instinct with power and energy; his large eyes were fixed upon his generals with an expression of strange anger, and seemed striving to read the very depths of their hearts; his thin lips were firmly compressed as if to force back an outburst of indignation which the gloomy frown on his brow nevertheless revealed.

But the wrathful, threatening expression soon vanished from the emperor's countenance, and his features resumed their cold, impenetrable expression.

He moved swiftly forward several steps and greeted with a hasty nod the officers who had all bowed respectfully before him, and stood motionless in absolute silence.

After the emperor, standing among his silent generals, had spoken in a voice which rose louder and louder till it finally echoed like menacing thunder through the hall, he nodded a farewell, by a haughty bend of the head, and returned to his office, whose door he now not merely left ajar, but closed with a loud bang.

With his hands behind his back, an angry expression upon his face, and a frowning brow, the emperor paced up and down his room, absorbed in gloomy thought. Sometimes a flash of indignation illumined his face, and he raised his arm with a threatening gesture, as if, like a second Jupiter, to hurl back into the depths the Titans who dared to rise to his throne.

"To appoint a successor," he muttered in a fierce, threatening tone, "they dare to think, to busy themselves with that. The ingrates! It is I who gave them fame, honor, titles, wealth; they are already cogitating about my death--my successor! It is a conspiracy which extends throughout the whole army. I know it. I was warned in Spain against the plots of the Carbonari, and the caution has been repeated here. And I must keep silence. I cannot punish the traitors, for that would consign the majority of my generals to the ax of the executioner. But I will give them all a warning example. I will intimidate them, let them have an intimation that I am aware of their treacherous plans."

He sank down into the armchair which stood before his writing-desk, took a pen-knife and began to mark and cut the arm of the chair with as much zeal and perseverance as if the object in view was to accomplish some useful and urgent task. Then, when the floor was covered with tiny chips, and the black, delicately carved wood of the old-fashioned armchair was marked with white streaks and spots, the emperor hurled the knife down and rose hastily from his seat.

"This Colonel Oudet must die," he said, each word falling slowly and impressively from his lips. "I cannot crush all the limbs, but I will make the head fall, and that will paralyze them. Yes, this Colonel Oudet must die!"

Then, as if the sentence of death which he had just uttered had relieved his soul of an oppressive burden, and lightened his heart, the gloomy expression vanished from his face, which was now almost brightened by a ray of joy.

Seizing the silver hand-bell, he rang it violently twice. Instantly the door leading into his sleeping-room opened and Roustan, gliding in, stood humbly and silently awaiting the emperor's orders.

Napoleon, with a slight nod, beckoned to him to approach, and when Roustan, like a tiger-cat, noiselessly reached his side with two swift bounds, the emperor gazed with a long, searching look into the crafty, smiling face of his Mameluke.

"So you listened to the conversation between the generals?" asked the emperor.

"I don't know, sire," said Roustan, shaking his head eagerly. "I probably did not understand everything, for they spoke in low tones, and sometimes I lost the connection. But I heard them talking about my illustrious emperor and master, so, as your majesty meanwhile had awaked, I thought it advisable to inform you that the generals were having a conversation in the drawing-room, because your majesty might perhaps desire to take part in it."

"You did right, Roustan," said the emperor, with the pleasant smile that won every heart; "yes, you did right, and I will reward you for it. You can go to Bourrienne and have him pay you a hundred gold pieces."

"Oh, sire," cried Roustan, "then I shall be very happy, for I shall have a hundred portraits of my worshiped emperor."

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