The trophies of arms upon the walls looked dull and rusty, the bronze equestrian statue of the Emperor was covered with a patina of encrusted dirt. The black-and-white squares of the marble pavement were in shrieking need of a broom and soap-and-water. Then, to the tap-tapping of the two ebony-handled crutch-sticks that had succeeded the gold-topped Malacca cane with the silk tassel, came Monsieur the Marshal, heralded by a dropping fire of oaths.
He was much changed and aged since Hector had last seen him, but bravely bewigged and dyed and painted still. He was wrapped in a furred driving-cloak, despite the warmth of the September sunshine; his cheeks were pendulous, his fierce eyes had baggy pouches underneath. And he stumbled as he shuffled over the marble pavement in his cloth boots that were slit with innumerable loopholes for the better ease of his corns.
He stopped short, seeing his son, and the change in him was painfully apparent. He was hurrying down the hill that ends in an open grave. His morals were more deplorable than ever. The cook, a strapping Auvergnate, was his mistress now, in lieu of an opera-girl or nymph of the Palais Royal: and he drank and played cards with his valet and butler: indeed, servants were his masters, and, from the porter’s lodge to the mansard roof-garrets, dirt and disorder marked their unchecked sway.
Mild Smithwick, lying beside the sister who had been a paralytic, in her quiet grave in the Hampstead churchyard, would have turned uneasily upon her pillow stuffed with shavings, had she known of the goings-on of the debauched old idol of her earthly worship, who had long ago forgotten her.
He opened fire directly, quite in the old manner.
“Hey? What the devil?—so you have remembered us, have you? Well? Was I not right in telling you that that affair of the fusillade would end to your advantage? That the Court Martial was a piece of mummery—a farce—nothing more? There you are with promotion, and the patronage and goodwill of Monseigneur at the Élysée! Though for myself I cannot stomach that Bonaparte with the beak and the Flemish snuffle. Had Walewski but been born on the right side of the blanket—there would have been the Emperor for me!”
He trumpeted in a vast Indian silk handkerchief with something of the old vigor, and went on:
“Because all this swearing of fidelity to the Republic will end, as I have prophesied, in a coronation at Notre Dame, and a court at the Tuileries. My Emperor crowned himself without all this lying and posturing. He said to France: ‘You want a master. Well, look at me. I am the man for you....’ Josephine squawked: ‘Oh, M. Bonaparte!’ ‘Go!’ he told her. ‘Order your dresses!’ just as he said to the Senate, ‘Decree me Emperor!’ While this fellow ... sacred name of a pig!”
He tucked one of the crutch-sticks under his arm, got out his snuff-box, and said as he dipped his ringed, yellow old claws into the Spanish mixture:
“His cant about Socialism and Progress and the dignity of Labor gives me the belly-ache. His groveling to the working man, and slobbering over the common soldier, make me want to kill him. His hand in his trousers-pocket and his eye on a plebiscite—there you have him—by the thunder of Heaven! A corporal of infantry said to me: ‘If I showed M. Louis Napoleon Bonaparte my back—he would kneel down and salute it....’ My Napoleon would have said to that man: ‘Lie down in the mud, so that I may walk dryshod upon your body!’ and the man would have obeyed him. But perhaps half an Emperor is better for France than none!”