an island made prosperous by commerce, and an important stopping
point fo r ships from the two Sicilies and the East, was wide of the mark.
Gradually Napoleon lost interest in his kingdom and rarely emerged from
his two-storey palace, to the intense discomfiture of the scores of
sightseers, adventurers, mercenaries and spies who thronged the island.
Disappointed, too, with the standard of his court, he soon gave up
holding receptions, preferring to play vingt-et-un and dominoes with his
immediate circle of intimates. He was so bored that he started taking up
practical jokes: once he slipped a fish into Bertrand's pocket, then asked
him fo r the loan of a handkerchief, so that fish came slopping out on to
the table.
The Emperor was left with much time on his hands to reflect on the
past and mull over the news from France, with which he kept in constant
touch through his secret agents. He was clearly a man fated to be
betrayed by all those he had helped and protected. Even his valet
Constant and the faithful Mameluke Roustam, who used to sleep outside
his door, abandoned him when he went to Elba. Then there were the
great betrayals: by Fouche, by Talleyrand, by Murat and by Bernadotte.
Murat's treachery had been decisive in 1814 for, if he had remained loyal,
a large Austrian army would have been pinned down in Italy, and the
Allies would not have had the numbers necessary to invade France until
May. As for Bernadotte, the man's ability to survive scandals that would
have disgraced anyone else and to continue to be taken seriously by the
Allies was nothing short of astonishing. One single statistic is eloquent on
Bernadotte, a Walter Mitty who became a King. Of the lavish subsidies
provided by the British in 1812-14, Prussia received £2,088,682, Austria
£1,639,523 and Russia £2,366,334. These were the three nations whose
forces tore the heart out of the Grande Armee. Yet Sweden, headed by a
king who did little more than find excuses not to take action, received
£2,334,992 in the same period.
A great man is bound to be surrounded by jealous nonentities, just as
the shark swims surrounded by remora fish. To an extent, then, the
Murats, Bernadottes, Fouches and Talleyrands could be understood if
not forgiven. But scarcely to be borne was the treachery of his own
brothers and of his sisters Elisa and Caroline. It is in this context that the
sublimely immoral Pauline finally appears to advantage. Unconcerned in
her featherheaded way about the great crisis faced by the Bonaparte
dynasty in 1812-13, Pauline lolled in the flesh pots of Aix-les-Bains,
fending off the advances of Fran�ois-Joseph Talma, the great French
tragedian of the day, and taking as her latest lover instead an obscure
soldier, Colonel Antoine Duchard. But when Napoleon was exiled to
marcin
(Marcin)
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