Memoirs of Thiebault #32 - ''Are you sulking?''

     Around that time, a rather dramatical incident almost interrupted my stay. Sicardi’s skill and faithfulness in portraying my father had led me to order him my portrait, of which he made two copies, one for my family and the other one for Pauline; both were set on medallions whose back was decorated with patterns made from my hair. The letter that announced the arrival of the second portrait in Milan was heartbreaking: It had, said the note, cruelly renewed her pain and grief. Perhaps it also brought untold relief; but was it not an omen of delays in my return to Italy, and would I ever come wipe the tears which it had caused to flow? This letter left me deeply moved. I answered it at once, but writing could not appease my exaltation. I longed to see Pauline again; I would have shed my blood for an hour with her; as I grew tired of waiting for my rank to be confirmed, I decided to go back to Milan as an adjudant général. My zeal in carrying out a decision was then equal to my swiftness in making it; I had resolved to leave Paris within three days, when my father, dining with Bacher, found himself sitting next to General Junot, the First Consul’s aide-de-camp as well as the Governor of Paris. As soon as Junot learnt that his neighbour was my father, he exclaimed:

     “What! Your son is here, and I haven’t seen him!”

     “General,” my father answered, “it was one of the sacrifices he had to make, and he expressed regret for it more than once; but he is entitled to a confirmation which he has not received; he hates begging; this aversion determined him not to go anywhere for fear that his visits would be misinterpreted.”

     “That’s insane,” Junot replied; “tell him to come at my house tomorrow for lunch.”

     I accepted his invitation; Junot welcomed me warmly. He had recently married Mlle Laure Permon and introduced me to her. No one in the world could be prettier, wittier, friendlier and overall more remarkable that this young lady, whose simple attire matched her natural elegance. She was lovely, and although I was far from feeling anything that could resemble love or desire, it is nonetheless true that she struck me then as a most graceful apparition.

(...)

     As I left the table, General Junot took me aside and said:

     “Well, are you sulking?”

     “Not at all. But I can only visit those from whom I have nothing to obtain.”

     “If you don’t dare ask for anything, you’ll end up renouncing everything, and even a just cause requires some pleading. What is it you need?”

     I explained my situation.

     “Well, come pay a visit to the First Consul tomorrow morning at nine, and wait for me if you arrive before I do.”

     “Thank you, but please tell me, what stairs should I climb?”

     “What do you mean? Have you never set foot in the Tuileries?”

     “Never.”

     “In that case,” he added with a smile, “you must take the stairs of the Pavillon de l’Horloge, and you will tell the ushers that I allow you to enter the room where the First Consul will hear my reports.”

     As you can see, it would be impossible to be more benevolent.

     On the next morning, at five to nine, I entered the Tuileries. I was announced after a short explanation with the ushers. As the bells rang, General Mortier, the commander of the 1^st military division, entered the palace. One minute later, General Junot joined us, and just as he came in, the First Consul made his appearance. After a broad glance at the room, barely stopping upon my unexpected presence, the First Consul walked towards General Mortier, and, while listening to him, he kept pacing around, sniffing tobacco, while I stood unmoving in a corner of the great room and General Junot was in front of the fireplace.

     After receiving a few documents and hearing reports which he only answered in monosyllables, the First Consul stopped near me and exclaimed:

     “Again with the coach attacks? Again with the theft of public money? And no one does anything to stop these crimes?”

     As General Mortier answered nothing, conforming once more to the proverb: “the big mortar has a short range” (he was six feet tall [more like 6’ 5’’ in English feet, or 1m95]), the First Consul started walking again, and still speaking out loud, he added, stressing each word and making short pauses between each clause:

     “You must turn the top of each coach into a miniature fortress. Reinforce the parapets with thick and narrow mattresses, cut embrasures into them and put behind as many sharpshooters as you can fit. Now, General, get it done as fast as possible.”

     Just as General Mortier left, General Junot walked towards the First Consul; after listening to his aide-de-camp in silence for one moment, he quickly came near me and said:

     “You are General Thiébault?”

     I fought to suppress a half-smile, for I found it amusing that he seemed to ask me whether I was what I wanted him to make me; but he provoked this quick reply:

     “I wish I were, General, but for that I need your confirmation.”

     “You can count on it.”

     Now I could express my gratitude, my respect and my profound devotion.

     “And you are in Paris?”

     “On a leave, but I am ready to go back to Italy.”

     “We’ll see about it. Have a good day, General Thiébault!”

     Such was our brief interview, during which, thanks to General Junot, I did not have to perform feats of eloquence and pleading, but where the First Consul did not say a word about Genoa and my Journal, and, through this beginning that felt more like an affirmation than an interrogation: “... You are General Thiébault”, I avoided saying how I had been promoted, or rather, who had promoted me, which I only understood as I reminisced upon every detail of this meeting.

     Having left General Junot, who had not yet begun his report, I went to wait for him in the first room to thank him a thousand times. Once this duty was fulfilled, and after registering with General Berthier, the Minister of War, I made haste to see my father, to present him with the news of my confirmation and to tell him of the good fortune that had made me witness the scene about the coaches, which gave my father and me proof that the superiority of the extraordinary man who had just left such a mark on my existence showed itself in all things.

     Indeed, the day one is promoted to general is an important one. This is what all worthy men aspire to when they join the army. A soldier, or even a junior officer, finds himself in painful submission, constrained to trials and tribulations which the ranks of lieutenant and captain transform, without erasing them altogether. A senior officer starts to acquire a value that elevates him; however, he cannot remain in this category without feeling that he has missed his career, and it is only the rank of general that gives him the reward for his sacrifices; for this title grants him definite rights to a qualification which is on its own an apologia, an honour and a source of glory.

     I had just turned thirty-one. In truth, this rank was nothing extraordinary for my age; not mentioning the great warriors who had held the rank of commander-in-chief at a younger age, I could name, among the less illustrious ones, Kellerman the Younger, a divisional general at thirty-one. As for me, had I consented to my marriage with Perrin des Vosges’ daughter, I could have been a general at twenty-four. However, while I attained this rank later in life, I had done so without any kind of patronage, but only through my own actions; and this was in a time where positions were much scarcer than in the early days of the Revolution, and I had to face terrible competition. Besides, I had thirty or forty years left to enjoy this elevation, and taking all these conditions into account, you can surely understand my father’s and my emotion.

     Barely three days after the interview I mentioned, I received the official notice of my confirmation, which was dated 10 Floreal Year VIII (30 April 1800), that is, from the day I had obtained this rank at Fort Quezzy in Genoa, which entitled me to more than honourable arrears. As soon as I received this document, I called on General Masséna to express my gratitude once more. Then, I went to see General Junot, and the Minister of War, to thank him for establishing the document so quickly and to ask whether I could return to Milan once my leave ended, or whether I need new orders.

     “I do not knows what the First Consul has in mind for you,” General Berthier answered, “but you must wait for him to make it known.”

     “General, couldn’t you please tell him of my eagerness to justify his choice, and to be as soon as possible on the stage of his immortal Cisalpine conquests?”

     “I will tell him.”

     And he did; but when I saw him again, he told me that the First Consul had merely answered this:

     “General Thiébault can be at peace, I will take care of him when it is time.”

     This was actually far from reassuring. This curt answer, combined with his previous reply: “We’ll see about it”, as I had asked him whether I would go back to Italy, made me fear that he wanted to send me elsewhere, and, thinking of Pauline who was waiting for me, whom I ached to see again, I despaired at the thought of paying so high a price for my rank of general.

     Amidst my anxieties and tortures, I learnt that General Oudinot, the chief of staff of the Army of Italy, was about to leave for Milan, and I ran to ask him to present the First Consul with one last request, that I be allowed to join him. It was really a last resort, for I had little hope of this move succeeding; at least, I wanted my conscience to be clean. Since General Oudinot left on the next day, he had to take his leave from Mme Bonaparte and the First Consul on that evening, taking advantage of the hour or two which the latter spent in his wife’s parlour. He offered me to accompany him, and I accepted.

     When we entered Mme Bonaparte’s parlour, she was there along with his daughter, Mme Murat, two or three other ladies, Colonel Sébastiani and two younger men with whom the First Consul talked animatedly. It was about a certain financial system, and they disagreed on whether, as the interlocutor said, they could set the bases for such a system through mere talks, or whether, as the First Consul claimed, they should decide on the basis of several years of experience. The First Consul’s reasons seemed to brook no answer, yet the other man constantly defied them, and finally the First Consul broke the talks with a barb, although it did not seem entirely appropriate: “It is as if you gave me a hundred thousand men and told me to make good soldiers out of them. Well, I would answer: give me time to get half of them killed, and the rest will be good.”

     Just as he turned his back on the two men, General Oudinot approached him and followed him near the entrance. Their discussion lasted for fifteen minutes; I had begun to chat with Mme Bonaparte and Mme Murat, but I kept an eye on General Oudinot, ready to come at the first sign; but I saw none, and the First Consul suddenly disappeared. We remained with Mme Bonaparte for fifteen more minutes, which were more than enough for me to take note of Sébastiani’s self-satisfaction; the son of a cooper from Ajaccio, he was very proud of his blood ties with the First Consul and even more so of himself; and although he was a man of spirit, he did not have enough brains to stay in his place and avoid leaving a disagreeable impression wherever he went; as cocky in the parlours as he was inadequate on the battlefield, this red-heeled liberal was only playing a role when he stopped being a man of the world and pretended to be a man of war. Had my mind been free enough to be entertained by his ridiculousness, the time I spent at Mme Bonaparte’s would have felt short; but I was waiting for a decision, and General Oudinot’s impassibility worried me all the more; as a friend, if he had received the good news which he knew I expected, he would have hurried to tell me. Finally, he left.

     “Well”, he said as soon as the parlour’s doors closed behind us, “I got nothing. The First Consul has plans for you; he did not share them with me, but no doubt he does not intend to send you back to Italy.”

     I was crushed. This was a definite refusal and it gave me no hopes for future attempts. My letters alone would present Pauline with a testament to our love and my distress; one of them announced that I sent her a chain, a symbol of our mutual link, which I had hoped to attach by myself around the neck of the one who had made me her slave forever, or so I thought at the time.

     To celebrate my promotion, I was invited by my friends and I invited them in turn, and this exchange of feasts reminds me of something which I could very well avoid mentioning; still, I will speak about it. Although the ten months I spent with my deputy Piquet should have made me immune to the jokers’ tricks, I was among those whom Musson deceived one evening as I dined at Lenoir’s. This Musson, whom I already mentioned, posed as a wine merchant from Orleans, but a merchant of the lowest class, which made his improprieties all the more natural as Lenoir did a wonderful job of feigning chagrin that he could not get rid of such a boor. The scene was well acted, and as a kind of revenge for this mystification, I rented this animal for the price of one louis and one dinner, one day as, among others, Colonel Mouton, the future Marshal Lobau, dined at my house; but I made the mistake of surrounding him with first-class wits; thus, Gassicourt, Rivierre, Lhomet, the quick-witted Richebourg and Lenoir, who could smell the ruse from miles away, were so brilliant that Musson only played the part of a fool.