Through the windows of the villa might be seen servants passing and repassing in haste, arranging the preparations for a magnificent déjeûné—for on that morning the generals of division and the principal military men in Paris were invited to breakfast with one of their most distinguished companions—General Buonaparte.
Since his return from Egypt, Buonaparte had been living a life of apparent privacy and estrangement from all public affairs. The circumstances under which he had quitted the army under his command—the unauthorised mode of his entry into France, without recall, without even permission—had caused his friends considerable uneasiness on his behalf, and nothing short of the unobtrusive and simple habits he maintained had probably saved him from being called on to account for his conduct.
They, however, who themselves were pursuing the career of ambition, were better satisfied to see him thus, than hazard any thing by so bold an expedient. They believed that he was only great at the head of his legions; and they felt a triumphant pleasure at the obscurity into which the victor of Lodi and the Pyramids had fallen when measured with themselves. They witnessed, then, with sincere satisfaction, the seeming indolence of his present life. They watched him in those soirées which Madame Buonaparte gave, enjoying his repose with such thorough delight—those delightful evenings, the most brilliant for all that wit, intellect, and beauty can bestow; which Talleyrand and Sieyes, Fouché, Carnot, Lemercier, and a host of others frequented; and they dreamed that his hour of ambition was over, and that he had fallen into the inglorious indolence of the retired soldier.
While the greater number of the guests strolled listlessly through the little park, a small group sat in the vestibule of the villa, whose looks of impatience were ever turned towards the door from which their host was expected to enter. One of those was a tall, slight man, with a high but narrow forehead, dark eyes, deeply buried in his head, and overshadowed by long, heavy lashes; his face was pale, and evinced evident signs of uneasiness, as he listened, without ever speaking, to those about him. This was General Moreau. He was dressed in the uniform of a General of the day: the broad-skirted embroidered coat, the half-boot, the embroidered tricolour scarf, and a chapeau with a deep feather trimming—a simple, but a handsome costume, and which well became his well-formed figure. Beside him sat a large, powerfully-built man, whose long black hair, descending in loose curls on his neck and back, as well as the jet-black brilliancy of his eye and deep olive complexion, bespoke a native of the South. Though his dress was like Moreau’s, there was a careless jauntiness in his air, and a reckless “abandon” in his manner, that gave the costume a character totally different. The very negligence of his scarf-knot was a type of himself; and his thickly-uttered French, interspersed here and there with Italian phrases, shewed that Murat cared little to cull his words. At his left was a hard-featured, stern-looking man, in the uniform of the Dragoons—this was Andreossy; and opposite, and leaning on a sofa, was General Lannes. He was pale and sickly; he had risen from a bed of illness to be present, and lay with half-closed lids, neither noticing nor taking interest in what went on about him.
At the window stood Marmont, conversing with a slight but handsome youth, in the uniform of the Chasseurs. Eugène Beauharnois was then but twenty-two, but even at that early age displayed the soldier-like ardour which so eminently distinguished him in after-life.
At length the door of the salon opened, and Buonaparte, dressed in the style of the period, appeared; his cheeks were sunk and thin; his hair, long, flat, and silky, hung straight down at either side of his pale and handsome face, in which now one faint tinge of colour marked either cheek. He saluted the rest with a warm shake of the hand, and then stooping down, said to Murat:—
“But Bernadotte—where is he?”
“Yonder,” said Murat, carelessly pointing to a group outside the terrace, where a tall, fine-looking man, dressed in plain clothes, and without any indication of the soldier in his costume, stood in the midst of a knot of officers.
“Ha! General,” said Napoleon, advancing towards him; “you are not in uniform. How comes this?”
“I am not on service,” was the cold reply.