He had a suite of rooms at the end of the gallery of Francis the First, not very far from those of the Emperor. In the antechamber were waiting two men whom I knew well: Colonel Despienne, of the 57th of the line, and Captain Tremeau, of the Voltigeurs. They were both old soldiers—Tremeau had carried a musket in Egypt—and they were also both famous in the army for their courage and their skill with weapons. Tremeau had become a little stiff in the wrist, but Despienne was capable at his best of making me exert myself. He was a tiny fellow, about three inches short of the proper height for a man—he was exactly three inches shorter than myself—but both with the sabre and with the small-sword he had several times almost held his own against me when we used to exhibit at Verron’s Hall of Arms in the Palais Royal. You may think that it made us sniff something in the wind when we found three such men called together into one room. You cannot see the lettuce and the dressing without suspecting a salad.
“Name of a pipe!” said Tremeau, in his barrack-room fashion. “Are we then expecting three champions of the Bourbons?”
To all of us the idea appeared not improbable. Certainly in the whole army we were the very three who might have been chosen to meet them.
“The Prince of Neufchâtel desires to speak with the Brigadier Gerard,” said a footman, appearing at the door.
In I went, leaving my two companions consumed with impatience behind me. It was a small room, but very gorgeously furnished. Berthier was seated opposite to me at a little table, with a pen in his hand and a notebook open before him. He was looking weary and slovenly—very different from that Berthier who used to give the fashion to the army, and who had so often set us poorer officers tearing our hair by trimming his pelisse with fur, one campaign, and with grey astrakhan the next. On his clean-shaven, comely face there was an expression of trouble, and he looked at me as I entered his chamber in a way which had in it something furtive and displeasing.
“Chief of Brigade Gerard!” said he.
“At your service, your Highness!” I answered.
“I must ask you, before I go farther, to promise me, upon your honour as a gentleman and a soldier, that what is about to pass between us shall never be mentioned to any third person.”
My word, this was a fine beginning! I had no choice but to give the promise required.
“You must know, then, that it is all over with the Emperor,” said he, looking down at the table and speaking very slowly, as if he had a hard task in getting out the words. “Jourdan at Rouen and Marmont at Paris have both mounted the white cockade, and it is rumoured that Talleyrand has talked Ney into doing the same. It is evident that further resistance is useless, and that it can only bring misery upon our country. I wish to ask you, therefore, whether you are prepared to join me in laying hands upon the Emperor’s person, and bringing the war to a conclusion by delivering him over to the allies.”
I assure you that when I heard this infamous proposition put forward by the man who had been the earliest friend of the Emperor, and who had received greater favours from him than any of his followers, I could only stand and stare at him in amazement. For his part he tapped his pen-handle against his teeth, and looked at me with a slanting head.
“Well?” he asked.
“I am a little deaf on one side,” said I, coldly. “There are some things which I cannot hear. I beg that you will permit me to return to my duties.
“Nay, but you must not be headstrong,” said he, rising up and laying his hand upon my shoulder. “You are aware that the Senate has declared against Napoleon, and that the Emperor Alexander refuses to treat with him.”
“Sir,” I cried, with passion, “I would have you know that I do not care the dregs of a wineglass for the Senate or for the Emperor Alexander either.”
“Then for what do you care?”
“For my own honour and for the service of my glorious master, the Emperor Napoleon.”
“That is all very well,” said Berthier, peevishly, shrugging his shoulders. “Facts are facts, and as men of the world, we must look them in the face. Are we to stand against the will of the nation? Are we to have civil war on the top of all our misfortunes? And, besides, we are thinning away. Every hour comes the news of fresh desertions. We have still time to make our peace, and, indeed, to earn the highest reward, by giving up the Emperor.”
I shook so with passion that my sabre clattered against my thigh.
“Sir,” I cried, “I never thought to have seen the day when a Marshal of France would have so far degraded himself as to put forward such a proposal. I leave you to your own conscience; but as for me, until I have the Emperor’s own order, there shall always be the sword of Etienne Gerard between his enemies and himself.”
I was so moved by my own words and by the fine position which I had taken up, that my voice broke, and I could hardly refrain from tears. I should have liked the whole army to have seen me as I stood with my head so proudly erect and my hand upon my heart proclaiming my devotion to the Emperor in his adversity. It was one of the supreme moments of my life.
“Very good,” said Berthier, ringing a bell for the lackey. “You will show the Chief of Brigade Gerard into the
