NAPOLEON (turning on her suddenly). My despatches: come! (He puts out his hand for them.)
LADY. General! (She involuntarily puts her hands on her fichu as if to protect something there.)
NAPOLEON. You tricked that blockhead out of them. You disguised yourself as a man. I want my despatches. They are there in the bosom of your dress, under your hands.
LADY (quickly removing her hands). Oh, how unkindly you are speaking to me! (She takes her handkerchief from her fichu.) You frighten me. (She touches her eyes as if to wipe away a tear.)
NAPOLEON. I see you don"t know me madam, or you would save yourself the trouble of pretending to cry.
LADY (producing an effect of smiling through her tears). Yes, I do know you. You are the famous General Buonaparte. (She gives the name a marked Italian p.r.o.nunciation Bwaw-na-parr-te.)
NAPOLEON (angrily, with the French p.r.o.nunciation). Bonaparte, madame, Bonaparte. The papers, if you please.
LADY. But I a.s.sure you-- (He s.n.a.t.c.hes the handkerchief rudely from her.) General! (Indignantly.)
NAPOLEON (taking the other handkerchief from his breast). You were good enough to lend one of your handkerchiefs to my lieutenant when you robbed him. (He looks at the two handkerchiefs.) They match one another. (He smells them.) The same scent. (He flings them down on the table.) I am waiting for the despatches. I shall take them, if necessary, with as little ceremony as the handkerchief. (This historical incident was used eighty years later, by M. Victorien Sardou, in his drama ent.i.tled "Dora.")
LADY (in dignified reproof). General: do you threaten women?
NAPOLEON (bluntly). Yes.
LADY (disconcerted, trying to gain time). But I don"t understand. I--
NAPOLEON. You understand perfectly. You came here because your Austrian employers calculated that I was six leagues away. I am always to be found where my enemies don"t expect me. You have walked into the lion"s den. Come: you are a brave woman. Be a sensible one: I have no time to waste. The papers. (He advances a step ominously).
LADY (breaking down in the childish rage of impotence, and throwing herself in tears on the chair left beside the table by the lieutenant).
I brave! How little you know! I have spent the day in an agony of fear.
I have a pain here from the tightening of my heart at every suspicious look, every threatening movement. Do you think every one is as brave as you? Oh, why will not you brave people do the brave things? Why do you leave them to us, who have no courage at all? I"m not brave: I shrink from violence: danger makes me miserable.
NAPOLEON (interested). Then why have you thrust yourself into danger?
LADY. Because there is no other way: I can trust n.o.body else. And now it is all useless--all because of you, who have no fear, because you have no heart, no feeling, no-- (She breaks off, and throws herself on her knees.) Ah, General, let me go: let me go without asking any questions. You shall have your despatches and letters: I swear it.
NAPOLEON (holding out his hand). Yes: I am waiting for them. (She gasps, daunted by his ruthless prompt.i.tude into despair of moving him by cajolery; but as she looks up perplexedly at him, it is plain that she is racking her brains for some device to outwit him. He meets her regard inflexibly.)
LADY (rising at last with a quiet little sigh). I will get them for you. They are in my room. (She turns to the door.)
NAPOLEON. I shall accompany you, madame.
LADY (drawing herself up with a n.o.ble air of offended delicacy).I cannot permit you, General, to enter my chamber.
NAPOLEON. Then you shall stay here, madame, whilst I have your chamber searched for my papers.
LADY (spitefully, openly giving up her plan). You may save yourself the trouble. They are not there.
NAPOLEON. No: I have already told you where they are. (Pointing to her breast.)
LADY (with pretty piteousness). General: I only want to keep one little private letter. Only one. Let me have it.
NAPOLEON (cold and stern). Is that a reasonable demand, madam?
LADY (encouraged by his not refusing point blank). No; but that is why you must grant it. Are your own demands reasonable? thousands of lives for the sake of your victories, your ambitions, your destiny! And what I ask is such a little thing. And I am only a weak woman, and you a brave man. (She looks at him with her eyes full of tender pleading and is about to kneel to him again.)
NAPOLEON (brusquely). Get up, get up. (He turns moodily away and takes a turn across the room, pausing for a moment to say, over his shoulder) You"re talking nonsense; and you know it. (She gets up and sits down in almost listless despair on the couch. When he turns and sees her there, he feels that his victory is complete, and that he may now indulge in a little play with his victim. He comes back and sits beside her. She looks alarmed and moves a little away from him; but a ray of rallying hope beams from her eye. He begins like a man enjoying some secret joke.) How do you know I am a brave man?
LADY (amazed). You! General Buonaparte. (Italian p.r.o.nunciation.)
NAPOLEON. Yes, I, General Bonaparte (emphasizing the French p.r.o.nunciation).
LADY. Oh, how can you ask such a question? you! who stood only two days ago at the bridge at Lodi, with the air full of death, fighting a duel with cannons across the river! (Shuddering.) Oh, you DO brave things.
NAPOLEON. So do you.
LADY. I! (With a sudden odd thought.) Oh! Are you a coward?
NAPOLEON (laughing grimly and pinching her cheek). That is the one question you must never ask a soldier. The sergeant asks after the recruit"s height, his age, his wind, his limb, but never after his courage. (He gets up and walks about with his hands behind him and his head bowed, chuckling to himself.)
LADY (as if she had found it no laughing matter). Ah, you can laugh at fear. Then you don"t know what fear is.
NAPOLEON (coming behind the couch). Tell me this. Suppose you could have got that letter by coming to me over the bridge at Lodi the day before yesterday! Suppose there had been no other way, and that this was a sure way--if only you escaped the cannon! (She shudders and covers her eyes for a moment with her hands.) Would you have been afraid?
LADY. Oh, horribly afraid, agonizingly afraid. (She presses her hands on her heart.) It hurts only to imagine it.
NAPOLEON (inflexibly). Would you have come for the despatches?
LADY (overcome by the imagined horror). Don"t ask me. I must have come.
NAPOLEON. Why?
LADY. Because I must. Because there would have been no other way.
NAPOLEON (with conviction). Because you would have wanted my letter enough to bear your fear. There is only one universal pa.s.sion: fear. Of all the thousand qualities a man may have, the only one you will find as certainly in the youngest drummer boy in my army as in me, is fear.
It is fear that makes men fight: it is indifference that makes them run away: fear is the mainspring of war. Fear! I know fear well, better than you, better than any woman. I once saw a regiment of good Swiss soldiers ma.s.sacred by a mob in Paris because I was afraid to interfere: I felt myself a coward to the tips of my toes as I looked on at it.
Seven months ago I revenged my shame by pounding that mob to death with cannon b.a.l.l.s. Well, what of that? Has fear ever held a man back from anything he really wanted--or a woman either? Never. Come with me; and I will show you twenty thousand cowards who will risk death every day for the price of a gla.s.s of brandy. And do you think there are no women in the army, braver than the men, because their lives are worth less?
Psha! I think nothing of your fear or your bravery. If you had had to come across to me at Lodi, you would not have been afraid: once on the bridge, every other feeling would have gone down before the necessity--the necessity--for making your way to my side and getting what you wanted.
And now, suppose you had done all this--suppose you had come safely out with that letter in your hand, knowing that when the hour came, your fear had tightened, not your heart, but your grip of your own purpose--that it had ceased to be fear, and had become strength, penetration, vigilance, iron resolution--how would you answer then if you were asked whether you were a coward?
LADY (rising). Ah, you are a hero, a real hero.
NAPOLEON. Pooh! there"s no such thing as a real hero. (He strolls down the room, making light of her enthusiasm, but by no means displeased with himself for having evoked it.)
LADY. Ah, yes, there is. There is a difference between what you call my bravery and yours. You wanted to win the battle of Lodi for yourself and not for anyone else, didn"t you?
NAPOLEON. Of course. (Suddenly recollecting himself.) Stop: no. (He pulls himself piously together, and says, like a man conducting a religious service) I am only the servant of the French republic, following humbly in the footsteps of the heroes of cla.s.sical antiquity.
I win battles for humanity--for my country, not for myself.
LADY (disappointed). Oh, then you are only a womanish hero, after all.