Marianne and the Crown of Fire

'Oh, will he? And on what conditions? No, my friend, don't talk to me about chivalry and gallantry and such drawing-room niceties. They do not hold in a situation of this kind. Not to beat about the bush, I've no desire to be raped I don't know how often before we reach civilization. In any case, have you forgotten what you promised me in Moscow? You said that, once here, it would be easy for you to help me to continue my journey.'

Beyle literally exploded. 'How do you expect me to do that? You've seen what's left of the city on which we had all based such hopes! No garrison to speak of, no supplies, no communication with other cities, and a hostile population only waiting for the word to turn and rend us.'

'Well, you might have expected all that.'

'I might not! Smolensk was our main supply depot. Only it seems that since Marshal Victor left, all our reserves have mysteriously disappeared. As for the things I sent for from Mohilev and Vitebsk, scarcely any of it has arrived. And I was told nothing, nothing! They let me come here without saying a word. Poor Villeblanche almost died of fright when he got my letters and dared not tell me. But now, I must admit, I'm just as frightened and as desperate as he is. Do you know that in a fortnight from now we shall have something like a hundred thousand men descending on us and all we've got to feed them is a few quintals of flour, a little flour and buckwheat, a handful or so of hay and oats, a few dozen scrawny hens, a mountain of cabbages – oh yes, and casks and casks of brandy! How the devil do you expect me to find the time or means to do anything for you when I'm within an ace of going raving mad!'

'A hundred thousand men? What do you mean?'

He smiled bitterly. 'That instead of the modest title I'd been looking forward to as the reward of my labours I'm likely to find myself wholly and irrevocably disgraced. The Emperor will never forgive me – or Count Dumas, either, or my cousin Daru. I'm finished, ruined utterly!'

'Oh, do stop moaning,' Marianne cried impatiently, 'and explain! Where are these hundred thousand men to come from?'

'With the Emperor! A courier arrived this afternoon, on foot because his horse had broken its neck on the ice coming down the valley. The Emperor is falling back on us.'

The gloom in his voice told how little he relished Napoleon's imminent arrival. Like a man getting a burden off his chest, he went on to pour out all his news in a rush. He said that on October 24th Prince Eugene had defeated General Dokhtourov's Russian troops at Malo-Yaroslavetz but it had been no more than a partial victory as a result of which Napoleon had learned that the Russian army was re-forming behind Dokhtourov in incalculable numbers. Aware of his own dwindling resources, he had decided to return to the main road and when the courier set out the French army's headquarters had been at Borovsk.

The Emperor's orders were precise. Everything was to be made ready at Smolensk to receive the hundred thousand or so men that remained with him, along with several thousand civilians who had left Moscow in his train.

'But that's not all,' Beyle went on tensely. 'The Emperor is expecting to find massive reinforcements awaiting him here – the 9th Corps, which has gone off to assist Gouvion St Cyr. The Marshal has been wounded and is no longer able to hold the line of the Dvina. And Oudinot's 2nd Corps, which included, among others, four stout Swiss regiments, has suffered heavy losses. Consequently Victor can't hurry back to Smolensk, not if he wants to continue to keep watch on the Vilna road, and without him it's by no means sure that Napoleon could withstand an all-out Russian attack if Kutuzov took it into his head to launch one…'

Marianne listened, appalled and at the same time vaguely irritated by the flat, expressionless voice. Beyle might have been reciting a lesson – a lesson he had not learned very well. Then, quite suddenly, a dark flush mounted to his cheeks and he began to shout in uncontrollable anger:

'So this is not the moment for you to be talking of your finer feelings, Marianne! Can't you understand that you've no choice! If you won't go with the convoy, then you'll fall into the Emperor's hands before very much longer. Therefore I have decided that you're going with the wounded, whether you like it or not.'

Marianne jibbed at that, stung by his angry tone.

'You have decided, did you say?'

'Yes, I! Mourier will come for you at dawn tomorrow with a carriage – yes, I've even managed to work that miracle for you! You won't have to go on foot. You ought to thank me.'

'Thank you? Who gave you the right to order me about?'

She, too, was beginning to lose her temper. By what right did this young man who, after all, was nothing to her, dare to take that tone with her? He had helped her during the fire but had she not returned his kindness a hundredfold? Forcing herself to remain calm, she said, with awful clarity: 'I refuse absolutely to submit to your dictation, my friend. I have said that I am not going and there is an end of it.'

'And I tell you that you are going because I say you shall. You may think you would prefer to face Napoleon. Your previous intimacy may give you the right to hope for some lessening of his displeasure, but I am in no such happy position and I've no wish to make matters worse for myself than they are. If he finds out, at the very moment when I'm having to confess my failure to produce those damned reserve supplies, that I've been hiding you and helping you to escape from his anger my position will be intolerable! I'll be court martialled, perhaps even shot!'

'Don't talk such nonsense! Why should the Emperor find out all that now? We're not living together any more, are we? And I can't see the Emperor taking a Jewish house for his headquarters. Mourier is the only person who knows that I am a woman and once the convoy has gone no one will ever guess that you helped me.'

'And what of the people here? Believe me, your disguise was transparent enough to the fellows at the commissariat. Then there are the people of this house.'

'Exactly. And it may surprise you to learn that I've nothing to fear from them. I'm sure of that. Far from it, indeed. There's no reason why I shouldn't stay hidden in this house until the time comes when I can get away.'

Beyle shrugged angrily. 'Hide here for months, is it? You really are mad. Anywhere is safer in these days than a Jew's house. Suppose the Russians retake Smolensk! These people you trust so much will throw you out into the street at the first hint of danger. And I'll wager you'd not stay here long if they found out the terms you'd been on with Napoleon. They could find themselves in serious trouble if you were discovered in their house. Enough of that! You'll be fetched tomorrow at dawn – and you will go. I shall get an expulsion order from the governor tonight. It won't be hard to drum up some pretext. Then the house will be searched from top to bottom should you fail to appear. Now do you understand—?'

For a moment they stood facing one another like a pair of fighting cocks. Marianne was white and Beyle red with anger, and both pairs of fists were clenched. The girl was trembling with indignation at the discovery of what changes fear and selfishness could work in a man who at the outset had shown himself good and kind, with a mind and heart not merely better than average but even with a kind of greatness. She had learned enough during the time of their enforced proximity to know that there was the stuff of a great literary genius in this young man. But he had been prised out of his cosy elegancies of life and thrust into the hell of ice and fire by turns that was war. He had been tired and hungry and dirty, and frightened, too, almost certainly. And now to that was added the fear of disgrace, because in his pride and his innocence he was taking on himself all the responsibility for this – by no means unforeseeable – shortage of provisions. If he were not quite himself there might certainly be said to be some excuse for him, but she, Marianne, was not going to allow herself to be infected by his panic.

'This is a great change in you,' was all she said, her anger subsiding all at once, like a ship in a storm. Her calmness acted on Beyle like a shower of cold water. Gradually, his natural colour returned and he shook his head, opened his mouth as if to say something, shut it again and made a helpless gesture with his hands. Then, abruptly, he shrugged and turned away.

'I'll come and say goodbye tomorrow – before you leave,' he said. Then he was gone.

Marianne stood motionless in the middle of the room, listening to the echoes of their quarrel dying away in the quiet house. Then she turned slowly and looked at Barbe.

Barbe was standing by the stove, her arms folded low over her stomach and her breathing sounding strangely loud in the silence of the room. The green eyes and the violet met but Marianne's were beginning to glisten with unshed tears while the Polish woman's showed only a quiet contentment.

'Well,' Marianne said with a sigh, 'it seems we have no choice, Barbe. We must resign ourselves to going with the convoy. We'll defend ourselves as long as we can.'

'No,' Barbe said.