CHAPTER XXIII
The Threshold of Monarchy[24]
Bonaparte at Maturity — Ability and Opportunity — Personal Appearance — Mind and Manners — Personal Habits — The Man of France — The Consular Court — The First Consul's Cynicism — The Feud between Bonapartes and Beauharnais — Disuse of the Republican Calendar — The "Genius of Christianity."
Bonaparte was now thirty-four. Thus far he had been not alone the tool of fate nor yet entirely the architect of his own fortunes; he had been both. In Corsica his immature powers had been thwarted by conditions beyond his control. During the Revolution he had caught at every straw which would spare his life and give him a living. Until his marriage he was a soldier of fortune, and fortune made it difficult, either by professional excellence or political scheming, to grasp any of her favors. Accordingly he went without them, suffering, erring, dreaming, philosophizing, observing, and gathering the experience which made him mature at the age when most men are still boys. The observer can descry no revolution in his character when opportunities began to open. There are the same unscrupulous enterprise, the same determination to seize the chances of the hour, the same ability to make the most of circumstances; but the grist is now wheat and the resultant output is flour.
Every success is made introductory to another effort, and his scheming shows the same overweening self-confidence as that of his boyhood. Only now his plans unfold, not in the chill blasts of habitual failure, but in the mild breezes of prospering influences. Many historians proclaim the existence of a great life-scheme, declaring that with satanic powers the boy had prearranged every detail of his manhood. Of this there is not the slightest proof. All that is clear is the continued use, by a great mind tempered in the fires of experience, of ever greater opportunities as they arose. Like all men of commanding ability, Bonaparte belonged, not to one age, but to all ages. His elemental nature made the time and place and conditions in which he actually lived a means to his end, exactly as another century and another environment would have been. Whatever he might have been elsewhere or in another age, he was the personification of France as she was in his time, when he arrived by her desire and connivance at the height of his power.
1803
"Calm on a fiery steed"; thus he desired that the great painter of the time, David, should portray him for posterity. Thus he firmly decided both to appear and to be. But the trustworthy portraits of the time, varying strangely, according to the artist and the mood of the sitter, leave in the composite a quite different impression, expressed by Lamartine as that of a "restless flame." His massive brow jutting over piercing blue eyes, his fine-cut nose, his thin curved lips, his strong short chin, all crowned by scant lank chestnut hair and firmly set on a sturdy neck, gave an impression of manly strength; so, too, did his long bust. But his rather muddy complexion, his short stature, his fine and exquisitely modeled hands and feet, the former dazzling in their clear white skin, the easy comfort of supple hat, loose garments, and wrinkled footwear, were evidence of a nervous temperament, impatient of physical discipline. His voice was ordinarily soft and caressing, but his address was cold and haughty, especially to strangers; when roused, however, his speech was brief, sharp, incisive. His gestures were inelegant and his carriage uneasy; his French was incorrect, and the expression of his face had little or no connection with his language. His smiles were forced, but his laughter was hearty. "Smite brass with a glove," he said, "and it is mute, but strike it with a hammer and you get its ring." So he was almost rude in addressing persons of importance, but he was neither affected nor arrogant. It is the universal testimony of those who saw him that his presence was grave and noble, even majestic. De Staël declared that "more and less than human, comparison was impossible."
His imagination was considered by his poet contemporaries to be prodigious: his word memory was poor, but he recalled figures with accuracy, in numbers and details that were bewildering; and he mastered the reports of finance and statistics in such perfection as to stun his agents and ministers. He had an intimate acquaintance with the persons, lives, and family archives of his officers, and as he paced with his hands behind his back, his head on one side, his lips mechanically working from side to side, he could open any pigeonhole of his memory and dictate facts, figures, orders, suggestions for hours. Enemies like Rémusat and Talleyrand thought him ill-bred, but they admitted that his judgment was infallible, and his capacity for work beyond compare; that, at least, of four men in one. He was an indefatigable reader, especially in the fields of law, philosophy, administration, and war; and in conversation with great specialists he could draw from their stores by apt question the exact explication of difficult points in such a skilful way as to infatuate and fascinate the great men whose society he sought.
Time was his most precious commodity, and for every stage and state of life he had a routine from which he deviated most unwillingly. In these years his days were spent in the careful husbanding of every hour. He rose at seven, summoned his secretaries, and saw both letters and papers opened before his eyes. He read all the former, and heard full reports of the latter, the periodicals, and journals, English and German, as well as French. Meantime he was thoroughly rubbed from head to foot with a silk brush, sprayed with perfumed alcohol, and dried with a sponge. This was varied by frequent baths, for cleanliness, not for invigoration. He then shaved himself before a glass held in position by his body-servant, the Mameluke Rustan. He then slipped quickly into his clothes, all made of the finest, softest materials procurable; his ordinary uniform being the green coat of his chasseurs with a colonel's epaulettes, white nankin breeches, and varnished boots with spurs. Having taken his handkerchief and snuff-box from an attendant, he passed through the door into his office and worked until ten, when a plain breakfast, some simple dish with a single glass of wine, was set before him on a little mahogany table. Having eaten, he took an easy posture on the sofa, spending a short time in reflection, often in light sleep; then rousing himself swiftly, he resumed his dictation, pacing the floor with knitted brow. The late afternoon was devoted to outdoors and the reception of visitors, his dinner hour was seven, the evening was given to relaxation, and at ten he was asleep. When affairs were urgent, as they very often were, he rose again at midnight, took some light refreshment, chocolate or ices, and wrapped in a gown resumed his work with secretaries at hand for the purpose. His labors terminated, he retired once more and fell at once into a sound sleep. When overwhelmed with anxiety he withdrew from the Tuileries to the quiet of Malmaison.
Visionaries might say in vain and beautiful phrase, as they did then and do now, that, having harvested his laurels and exhausted the glories of conquest, he should turn to ameliorate the race, to guide a great nation with the easy reins of popular law in the brilliant paths illuminated by the light of the century. The ideal nation referred to did not exist. It was because the despotism of monarchy and the madness of revolution had shown the utter absence of self-control in the nation—because the French as a whole were avid not of virtue but of pleasure, not of self-denial but of luxury, not of stern morality but of glory—because Bonaparte was a man after their own heart, that he had some justification in his reply to a demand for liberty of the press: "In a moment," said he, "I should have thirty royalist journals and as many Jacobin ones, and I should have to govern with a minority." Many an earnest, liberty-loving French statesman of to-day has had cause in the bitterness of his heart to recall the language. As the ministries in France topple, and a dozen legislative factions, having each its journal, combine for no other purpose than the sport of overturning the government, it is, alas! too often a minority which neither governs nor rules, but guides the public career by a kind of sufferance. This occurs because control of the government, even for a short time, means the autocratic control of power, patronage, and honor, as it was arranged by Bonaparte for his own purposes.