Alfred Boyer felt very happy that afternoon over the printer's proofs that the mail had just brought him. He could not take his eyes off the page containing the title:
"Mémoires du Maréchal Frédet Prince d'Augsbourg, Duc d'Ivrea, with notes and introduction by Alfred Boyer, former student of the École de Chartres." The work to which he had devoted himself during the last two years was nearing completion. His name was going to be associated for ever with that of "Catinat of the Grande Armée," who had begun as volunteer in 1792, and had died of a broken heart after Waterloo.
Need one recall Frédet's heroism in the wars in the North—then too, in the first campaign in Italy, just under the walls of Ivrea, and his brilliant services in Egypt and Germany; how after Ulm, he had surrounded and taken prisoner ten thousand of the enemy at the gates of Augsbourg, with a handful of hussars? Austerlitz, Iéna, Eylau, Wagram, and Spain in turn saw this indefatigable soldier maneuvre his troops with the skill to which the "Mémoires" bore testimony. "I sent Frédet to Catalonia," said the Emperor, "with twenty thousand men. It was like sending fifty thousand. He alone made up the difference."
A very severe wound prevented his joining Napoleon in Russia, he achieved wonders at Dresden, though scarcely reestablished in health, and at Leipzig, where he saved the retreat by checking during several hours, the main body of the Austrian cavalry. Like Ney, and like the Emperor himself, he was one of those who sought death at Waterloo, and whom death would not accept, in spite of prodigies of valor, exalted almost to madness by the despair of the defeat.
When peace was concluded, the veteran shut himself up at Combronde, near Riom, on a small estate that he had acquired in Auvergne, where he had been born. It was there where he commenced to write or rather to dictate his mémoires in a haphazard fashion, following his exalted fancy, accumulating a pile of rather incoherent notes, which had slept in their portfolios for eighty years—from 1821, at which date the old soldier died, until 1900 when his grandson, the present Prince of Augsbourg, had at last decided to publish those papers, a little influenced, it must be admitted, by his need of money. Having a scanty fortune and a very large family—five marriageable daughters—he had been tempted by the success of "Marbot's Mémoires." He summoned from Paris to his little Château of Combes, where the meagreness of his income and his misanthropy kept him prisoner the year round, a young man who was to put in order that mass of documents mostly without shape. That is how Alfred Boyer found himself with a task that developed into a passion. Whatever may be the political value accorded to the Napoleonic legend, its heroic character casts a magic spell that few historians of that fantastic epoch have been able to overthrow. That magic spell had acted so much the more on the young compiler, because the moral figure of Frédet was fully in accord with his military bearing. Among the portraits of those marshals, all equally brilliant, but not equally attractive, his was one of the most pure and exalted. The heroism of the Prince of Augsbourg retained to the last that antique charm that one imagines would have adorned Desaix had he lived long enough. It seems that Frédet never had any ambition for these dignities which his master delighted to shower upon him. When did he have a chance to enjoy them? Bonaparte, who knew men and their value, never ceased for a moment to keep him employed, in peace as well as in war. When he was not fighting, Frédet was an administrator. His proverbial integrity, his gentleness, and—a quality extremely rare in that army sprung from the Revolution—his religious fervor, gave to his countenance the look of a paladin. While he lived it was impossible to come in contact with him without loving him. He disarmed the envy of Marmont, the sour humor of Soult, and warmed the coldness of Macdonald. The writings of these three rivals in glory, give ample proof of it. Dead, his rare personality had just performed a similar miracle of seduction in his memorialist, who gazed as if hypnotized at the first page of the mémoires, and the bulky package of proofs. At that very minute he was living over again the two years of his arduous labor. He saw himself once more, after his thesis had been approved, hesitating between accepting a poorly paid post as librarian in an obscure corner of some province, and the offer that one of his professors had made him, to work on the mémoires of the famous marshal. It was food and lodging assured for some time, a means of becoming known, and of laying aside a few thousand francs with which he could support himself until he could obtain appointment to some good post. Beyond this, Boyer did not know anything about the soldier whose papers he had to classify.
In that old house at Combes, which had remained unchanged during three-quarters of a century, he had commenced to give himself up to that retrospective semi-hallucination known only to those who have a scholarly disposition. Taine has pictured it in that eloquent page, where he describes himself at the archives, following over the yellowed paper the old writings of the men of the Revolution. "I was," he says, "tempted to speak aloud to them." In that poor mansion where the old hero had sheltered himself in his last few days, the walls were covered with relics of his glorious adventures, brought together in confusion; here, swords of honor hung on the wall, next to them some engravings representing feats of arms; there, portraits of the marshal himself, the first Consul, the Emperor, Frédet's chosen companions, among others that of Ney, who had been one of the witnesses to his marriage. Frédet's wife was there, frail and delicate in her rich costume of a court lady, painted by Gérard, in an attitude identical with that of the Duchess of Rovigo, on the edge of a park leaning on a small column ornamented with helmets and cuirasses in high relief. She had survived her husband forty years, and to her piety was due the preservation of the home to which the eldest son of the family had not returned until 1875, after having served in the army and resigned while simple lieutenant-colonel, when another had—unjustly as he maintained—been promoted over him. His carelessness produced at least this advantage, that the species of family museum brought together through the sorrow of the grandmother had remained undisturbed.
In the mean while, that is to say, under the monarchy of July and the Second Empire, the Frédets had lived in Paris; the second Prince of Augsbourg as a peer of France, and then as Senator; the third, the present Prince, as an officer of the staff of Napoleon the Third. Physically the colonel was the living image of his illustrious grandfather. He had the leonine face, the calm and powerful mien, the grave eyes, the serious mouth, and also the athlete's muscles, broad shoulders and powerful neck. There the resemblance stopped. Was it lack of education or opportunity? Did he take morally after some ancestor on the mother's side? His father had married a girl of noble birth, but of that country nobility with whom hunting is the sole hereditary occupation. In his old age it was the only pleasure that seemed to survive in this heir to an illustrious name, the first ambition of a disappointed career.
Alfred Boyer recalled his strange impression during the first weeks of his sojourn when he saw the Prince start out in the early morning, with his gamekeeper and his dogs and not return until nightfall, covered with dust or mud, sunburned or else soaked in rain, according to the weather, his gun on his shoulder, and his game bag bulging with the pheasants hunted during the day. To his five daughters, left at home under the charge of an old aunt, who managed the household for him, this taciturn hunter seemed to give no thought.
They were pretty and refined girls, and if the memorialist had not been a poor pale-faced student, his presence in this isolation with these five young unmarried girls might not have been without danger. But Alfred belonged to that class of timid, intellectual men who have no need of disenchanting experiences to put in practise the advice the fair Venetian gave so amusingly to Rousseau: "Avoid women and study mathematics." Being of a sickly nature, knowing himself awkward and homely, he had early turned into intellectual channels the feverish ardor that young men of his age usually spend in sentimental adventures. His only pleasures were the discoveries of unpublished texts, of ingenious hypotheses on obscure historical points, and the patient conquest of a chair in the Institute by force of erudite publications. The marshal's papers fell in well with this program, and with something more—the poetry of the extraordinary imperial exploit incarnate in one of the most magnificent workers. Thus it was that after having engaged in the work as compiler of records, Alfred Boyer continued as enthusiast, identifying himself with his hero in each episode of his brilliant career, collating the smallest anecdotes about him, claiming for him the first place in all the events in which he had taken part, putting himself at infinite pains to make this great man greater still; possessed by one of those retrospective idolatries at which we can not smile, so disinterested and pathetic are they when their object is a name sunk in misfortune and oblivion, like that of this soldier who had died of the defeat of his master and of France. What a work it was to decipher the piles of notes and documents he had left, to make selection from among the texts, to complete them with commentaries! But those "Mémoires" were at last to appear, all the traits of that noble figure were to shine out in a brilliant light, and the author of this posthumous justice could not gaze enough on the printed characters that would soon shine forth in the cover of the first volume—the complete work would be in four volumes—in the booksellers' shop windows....
The sound of a door opening roused Boyer from his "semihypnotic"[14] trance. He raised his head and sprang suddenly to his feet. It was the Prince of Augsbourg who had just entered the library. Those visits, rare at first, had become more frequent as Alfred Boyer's work advanced. Not that the sportsman had ever ventured to give any advice to the memorialist, who had read to him some of the pages dictated or written by his grandfather—those, more frequently, in which the marshal told of the departure from his paternal roof (he was the son of a physician at Combronde), to join the army—the story of the first battle in which he had taken part, at Hondschoote—that of his last, and his farewell to the Emperor before the charge at Waterloo.