And then on the large, open lawn, surrounded on all sides by tall trees, the first consul with his wife, his generals and their young wives, would begin the exhilarating, harmless child’s-play, forgetful of all care, void of all fear, except that he should lose his tree, and that as a penniless individual having to rent a room he would have to stand in the centre before all eyes, just as first consul he stood before all eyes in the centre of France, and struggled for a place the importance and title of which were known only to his silent soul. But in Malmaison, at the game of “room to let,” Bonaparte had no remembrance whatever of the ambitious wishes of the first consul; the whole world seemed to have set, the memories of his youth passed before his eyes in such beauty, saluting him with the gracious looks of childhood, as nearly to make him an enthusiast.
How often, when on Josephine’s arm, surrounded by a laughing, noisy group of friends, and walking through shady paths, on hearing the bells of the neighboring village chime their vespers, would Bonaparte suddenly interrupt the conversation and stand still to hear them! With a motion of the hand he would command silence, while he listened with a smile of grief to sounds which recalled days long gone by. “These bells remind me of the days of my boyhood,” said he to Josephine; “it seems to me, when I hear them, that I am still in Brienne.”
To keep alive the memories of his school-days in Brienne, he sent for one of his teachers, the Abbe Dupuis, who had been remarkably kind to him, and invited him to Malmaison, to arrange there a library, and to take charge of it; he sent also for the porter of Brienne whose wife he had so severely prohibited from entering the theatre, and made him the porter of the chateau.
In bad weather and on rainy days the whole company gathered in the large drawing-room, and found amusement in playing the various games of cards, in which Bonaparte not only took much interest, but in which he so eagerly played, that he often had recourse to apparent bungling, so as to command success. Adjoining the drawing-room, where conversation and amusements took place, was a room where the company sang and practised music, to the delight of Bonaparte, who often, when one of his favorite tunes was played, would chime in vigorously with the melody, nowise disturbed by the fact that he never could catch the right tune, and that he broke out every time into distressing discordance!
But all songs and music subsided, all plays were interrupted, when Bonaparte, excited perhaps by the approaching twilight, or by some awakened memory, began to relate one of those tragic, fearful stories which no one could tell so well as he. Then, with arms folded behind his back, he slowly paced the drawing-room, and with sinister looks, tragic manner, and sepulchral voice, he would begin the solemn introduction of his narrative:
“When death strikes, at a distance, a person whom we love,” said he, one evening, with a voice tremulous with horror, “a certain foreboding nearly always makes us anticipate the event, and the person, touched by the hand of death, appears to us at the moment we lose him on earth.”
“How very sad and mournful that sounds!” sighed Josephine, as she placed both her arms on Bonaparte’s shoulder, as if she would hold him, and chain him to earth, that he might not vanish away with every ghost-like form.
Bonaparte turned to her with a genial smile, and shook his head at her, so as to assure her of his existence and his love. Then he began his story with all the earnestness and tragic power of an improvisator of ancient Rome. He told how once Louis XIV., in the great gallery of Versailles, received the bulletin of the battle of Friedlingen, and how, unfolding it, he read to the assembled court the names of the slain and of the wounded. Quietness reigned in the splendidly-illumined gallery; and the courtiers in their embroidered coats, who, ordinarily, were so full of merriment and so high-spirited, had, all at once, become thoughtful. They gathered in a circle around the monarch, from whose lips slowly, like falling tears, fell one by one the names of the killed. Here and there the cheeks of their relatives turned pale. Suddenly the Count de Beaugre saw appear, at the farther end of the gallery, stately and ghost-like, the blood-stained figure of his son, who, with eyes wide open, stared at his father, and saluted him with a slight motion of the head, and then glided away through the door. “My son is dead!” cried Count de Beaugre—and, at the very same moment, the king uttered his name as one of the slain!” [Footnote: Bourrienne, “Memoires,” vol. iii., p. 225.]
“Ah! may I never see such a ghost-like figure,” murmured Josephine, drawing closer to her husband. “Bonaparte, promise me that you will never go to war again; that you will keep peace with all the world, so that I may have no cause of alarm!”
“And to tremble at my ghost,” exclaimed Bonaparte, laughing. “Look at this selfish woman, she does not wish me a hero’s death, lest I should appear to her here in the shape of a bloody placard!”