



Produced by Eve Sobol.  HTML version by Al Haines.









THE MAN OF DESTINY

BERNARD SHAW

1898



The twelfth of May, 1796, in north Italy, at Tavazzano, on the road
from Lodi to Milan. The afternoon sun is blazing serenely over the
plains of Lombardy, treating the Alps with respect and the anthills
with indulgence, not incommoded by the basking of the swine and oxen in
the villages nor hurt by its cool reception in the churches, but
fiercely disdainful of two hordes of mischievous insects which are the
French and Austrian armies. Two days before, at Lodi, the Austrians
tried to prevent the French from crossing the river by the narrow
bridge there; but the French, commanded by a general aged 27, Napoleon
Bonaparte, who does not understand the art of war, rushed the fireswept
bridge, supported by a tremendous cannonade in which the young general
assisted with his own hands. Cannonading is his technical specialty; he
has been trained in the artillery under the old regime, and made
perfect in the military arts of shirking his duties, swindling the
paymaster over travelling expenses, and dignifying war with the noise
and smoke of cannon, as depicted in all military portraits. He is,
however, an original observer, and has perceived, for the first time
since the invention of gunpowder, that a cannon ball, if it strikes a
man, will kill him. To a thorough grasp of this remarkable discovery,
he adds a highly evolved faculty for physical geography and for the
calculation of times and distances. He has prodigious powers of work,
and a clear, realistic knowledge of human nature in public affairs,
having seen it exhaustively tested in that department during the French
Revolution. He is imaginative without illusions, and creative without
religion, loyalty, patriotism or any of the common ideals. Not that he
is incapable of these ideals: on the contrary, he has swallowed them
all in his boyhood, and now, having a keen dramatic faculty, is
extremely clever at playing upon them by the arts of the actor and
stage manager. Withal, he is no spoiled child. Poverty, ill-luck, the
shifts of impecunious shabby-gentility, repeated failure as a would-be
author, humiliation as a rebuffed time server, reproof and punishment
as an incompetent and dishonest officer, an escape from dismissal from
the service so narrow that if the emigration of the nobles had not
raised the value of even the most rascally lieutenant to the famine
price of a general he would have been swept contemptuously from the
army: these trials have ground the conceit out of him, and forced him
to be self-sufficient and to understand that to such men as he is the
world will give nothing that he cannot take from it by force. In this
the world is not free from cowardice and folly; for Napoleon, as a
merciless cannonader of political rubbish, is making himself useful.
indeed, it is even now impossible to live in England without sometimes
feeling how much that country lost in not being conquered by him as
well as by Julius Caesar.

However, on this May afternoon in 1796, it is early days with him. He
is only 26, and has but recently become a general, partly by using his
wife to seduce the Directory (then governing France) partly by the
scarcity of officers caused by the emigration as aforesaid; partly by
his faculty of knowing a country, with all its roads, rivers, hills and
valleys, as he knows the palm of his hand; and largely by that new
faith of his in the efficacy of firing cannons at people. His army is,
as to discipline, in a state which has so greatly shocked some modern
writers before whom the following story has been enacted, that they,
impressed with the later glory of "L'Empereur," have altogether refused
to credit it. But Napoleon is not "L'Empereur" yet: he has only just
been dubbed "Le Petit Caporal," and is in the stage of gaining
influence over his men by displays of pluck. He is not in a position to
force his will on them, in orthodox military fashion, by the cat o'
nine tails. The French Revolution, which has escaped suppression solely
through the monarchy's habit of being at least four years in arrear
with its soldiers in the matter of pay, has substituted for that habit,
as far as possible, the habit of not paying at all, except in promises
and patriotic flatteries which are not compatible with martial law of
the Prussian type. Napoleon has therefore approached the Alps in
command of men without money, in rags, and consequently indisposed to
stand much discipline, especially from upstart generals. This
circumstance, which would have embarrassed an idealist soldier, has
been worth a thousand cannon to Napoleon. He has said to his army, "You
have patriotism and courage; but you have no money, no clothes, and
deplorably indifferent food. In Italy there are all these things, and
glory as well, to be gained by a devoted army led by a general who
regards loot as the natural right of the soldier. I am such a general.
En avant, mes enfants!" The result has entirely justified him. The army
conquers Italy as the locusts conquered Cyprus. They fight all day and
march all night, covering impossible distances and appearing in
incredible places, not because every soldier carries a field marshal's
baton in his knapsack, but because he hopes to carry at least half a
dozen silver forks there next day.

It must be understood, by the way, that the French army does not make
war on the Italians. It is there to rescue them from the tyranny of
their Austrian conquerors, and confer republican institutions on them;
so that in incidentally looting them, it merely makes free with the
property of its friends, who ought to be grateful to it, and perhaps
would be if ingratitude were not the proverbial failing of their
country. The Austrians, whom it fights, are a thoroughly respectable
regular army, well disciplined, commanded by gentlemen trained and
versed in the art of war: at the head of them Beaulieu, practising the
classic art of war under orders from Vienna, and getting horribly
beaten by Napoleon, who acts on his own responsibility in defiance of
professional precedents or orders from Paris. Even when the Austrians
win a battle, all that is necessary is to wait until their routine
obliges them to return to their quarters for afternoon tea, so to
speak, and win it back again from them: a course pursued later on with
brilliant success at Marengo. On the whole, with his foe handicapped by
Austrian statesmanship, classic generalship, and the exigencies of the
aristocratic social structure of Viennese society, Napoleon finds it
possible to be irresistible without working heroic miracles. The world,
however, likes miracles and heroes, and is quite incapable of
conceiving the action of such forces as academic militarism or Viennese
drawing-roomism. Hence it has already begun to manufacture
"L'Empereur," and thus to make it difficult for the romanticists of a
hundred years later to credit the little scene now in question at
Tavazzano as aforesaid.

The best quarters at Tavazzano are at a little inn, the first house
reached by travellers passing through the place from Milan to Lodi. It
stands in a vineyard; and its principal room, a pleasant refuge from
the summer heat, is open so widely at the back to this vineyard that it
is almost a large veranda. The bolder children, much excited by the
alarums and excursions of the past few days, and by an irruption of
French troops at six o'clock, know that the French commander has
quartered himself in this room, and are divided between a craving to
peep in at the front windows and a mortal terror of the sentinel, a
young gentleman-soldier, who, having no natural moustache, has had a
most ferocious one painted on his face with boot blacking by his
sergeant. As his heavy uniform, like all the uniforms of that day, is
designed for parade without the least reference to his health or
comfort, he perspires profusely in the sun; and his painted moustache
has run in little streaks down his chin and round his neck except where
it has dried in stiff japanned flakes, and had its sweeping outline
chipped off in grotesque little bays and headlands, making him
unspeakably ridiculous in the eye of History a hundred years later, but
monstrous and horrible to the contemporary north Italian infant, to
whom nothing would seem more natural than that he should relieve the
monotony of his guard by pitchforking a stray child up on his bayonet,
and eating it uncooked. Nevertheless one girl of bad character, in whom
an instinct of privilege with soldiers is already dawning, does peep in
at the safest window for a moment, before a glance and a clink from the
sentinel sends her flying. Most of what she sees she has seen before:
the vineyard at the back, with the old winepress and a cart among the
vines; the door close down on her right leading to the inn entry; the
landlord's best sideboard, now in full action for dinner, further back
on the same side; the fireplace on the other side, with a couch near
it, and another door, leading to the inner rooms, between it and the
vineyard; and the table in the middle with its repast of Milanese
risotto, cheese, grapes, bread, olives, and a big wickered flask of red
wine.

The landlord, Giuseppe Grandi, is also no novelty. He is a swarthy,
vivacious, shrewdly cheerful, black-curled, bullet headed, grinning
little man of 40. Naturally an excellent host, he is in quite special
spirits this evening at his good fortune in having the French commander
as his guest to protect him against the license of the troops, and
actually sports a pair of gold earrings which he would otherwise have
hidden carefully under the winepress with his little equipment of
silver plate.

Napoleon, sitting facing her on the further side of the table, and
Napoleon's hat, sword and riding whip lying on the couch, she sees for
the first time. He is working hard, partly at his meal, which he has
discovered how to dispatch, by attacking all the courses
simultaneously, in ten minutes (this practice is the beginning of his
downfall), and partly at a map which he is correcting from memory,
occasionally marking the position of the forces by taking a grapeskin
from his mouth and planting it on the map with his thumb like a wafer.
He has a supply of writing materials before him mixed up in disorder
with the dishes and cruets; and his long hair gets sometimes into the
risotto gravy and sometimes into the ink.

GIUSEPPE. Will your excellency--

NAPOLEON (intent on his map, but cramming himself mechanically with his
left hand). Don't talk. I'm busy.

GIUSEPPE (with perfect goodhumor). Excellency: I obey.

NAPOLEON. Some red ink.

GIUSEPPE. Alas! excellency, there is none.

NAPOLEON (with Corsican facetiousness). Kill something and bring me its
blood.

GIUSEPPE (grinning). There is nothing but your excellency's horse, the
sentinel, the lady upstairs, and my wife.

NAPOLEON. Kill your wife.

GIUSEPPE. Willingly, your excellency; but unhappily I am not strong
enough. She would kill me.

NAPOLEON. That will do equally well.

GIUSEPPE. Your excellency does me too much honor. (Stretching his hand
toward the flask.) Perhaps some wine will answer your excellency's
purpose.

NAPOLEON (hastily protecting the flask, and becoming quite serious).
Wine! No: that would be waste. You are all the same: waste! waste!
waste! (He marks the map with gravy, using his fork as a pen.) Clear
away. (He finishes his wine; pushes back his chair; and uses his
napkin, stretching his legs and leaning back, but still frowning and
thinking.)

GIUSEPPE (clearing the table and removing the things to a tray on the
sideboard). Every man to his trade, excellency. We innkeepers have
plenty of cheap wine: we think nothing of spilling it. You great
generals have plenty of cheap blood: you think nothing of spilling it.
Is it not so, excellency?

NAPOLEON. Blood costs nothing: wine costs money. (He rises and goes to
the fireplace. )

GIUSEPPE. They say you are careful of everything except human life,
excellency.

NAPOLEON. Human life, my friend, is the only thing that takes care of
itself. (He throws himself at his ease on the couch.)

GIUSEPPE (admiring him). Ah, excellency, what fools we all are beside
you! If I could only find out the secret of your success!

NAPOLEON. You would make yourself Emperor of Italy, eh?

GIUSEPPE. Too troublesome, excellency: I leave all that to you.
Besides, what would become of my inn if I were Emperor? See how you
enjoy looking on at me whilst I keep the inn for you and wait on you!
Well, I shall enjoy looking on at you whilst you become Emperor of
Europe, and govern the country for me. (Whilst he chatters, he takes
the cloth off without removing the map and inkstand, and takes the
corners in his hands and the middle of the edge in his mouth, to fold
it up.)

NAPOLEON. Emperor of Europe, eh? Why only Europe?

GIUSEPPE. Why, indeed? Emperor of the world, excellency! Why not? (He
folds and rolls up the cloth, emphasizing his phrases by the steps of
the process.) One man is like another (fold): one country is like
another (fold): one battle is like another. (At the last fold, he slaps
the cloth on the table and deftly rolls it up, adding, by way of
peroration) Conquer one: conquer all. (He takes the cloth to the
sideboard, and puts it in a drawer.)

NAPOLEON. And govern for all; fight for all; be everybody's servant
under cover of being everybody's master: Giuseppe.

GIUSEPPE (at the sideboard). Excellency.

NAPOLEON. I forbid you to talk to me about myself.

GIUSEPPE (coming to the foot of the couch). Pardon. Your excellency is
so unlike other great men. It is the subject they like best.

NAPOLEON. Well, talk to me about the subject they like next best,
whatever that may be.

GIUSEPPE (unabashed). Willingly, your excellency. Has your excellency
by any chance caught a glimpse of the lady upstairs?

(Napoleon promptly sits up and looks at him with an interest which
entirely justifies the implied epigram.)

NAPOLEON. How old is she?

GIUSEPPE. The right age, excellency.

NAPOLEON. Do you mean seventeen or thirty?

GIUSEPPE. Thirty, excellency.

NAPOLEON. Goodlooking?

GIUSEPPE. I cannot see with your excellency's eyes: every man must
judge that for himself. In my opinion, excellency, a fine figure of a
lady. (Slyly.) Shall I lay the table for her collation here?

NAPOLEON (brusquely, rising). No: lay nothing here until the officer
for whom I am waiting comes back. (He looks at his watch, and takes to
walking to and fro between the fireplace and the vineyard.)

GIUSEPPE (with conviction). Excellency: believe me, he has been
captured by the accursed Austrians. He dare not keep you waiting if he
were at liberty.

NAPOLEON (turning at the edge of the shadow of the veranda). Giuseppe:
if that turns out to be true, it will put me into such a temper that
nothing short of hanging you and your whole household, including the
lady upstairs, will satisfy me.

GIUSEPPE. We are all cheerfully at your excellency's disposal, except
the lady. I cannot answer for her; but no lady could resist you,
General.

NAPOLEON (sourly, resuming his march). Hm! You will never be hanged.
There is no satisfaction in hanging a man who does not object to it.

GIUSEPPE (sympathetically). Not the least in the world, excellency: is
there? (Napoleon again looks at his watch, evidently growing anxious.)
Ah, one can see that you are a great man, General: you know how to
wait. If it were a corporal now, or a sub-lieutenant, at the end of
three minutes he would be swearing, fuming, threatening, pulling the
house about our ears.

NAPOLEON. Giuseppe: your flatteries are insufferable. Go and talk
outside. (He sits down again at the table, with his jaws in his hands,
and his elbows propped on the map, poring over it with a troubled
expression.)

GIUSEPPE. Willingly, your excellency. You shall not be disturbed. (He
takes up the tray and prepares to withdraw.)

NAPOLEON. The moment he comes back, send him to me.

GIUSEPPE. Instantaneously, your excellency.

A LADY'S VOICE (calling from some distant part of the inn). Giusep-pe!
(The voice is very musical, and the two final notes make an ascending
interval.)

NAPOLEON (startled). What's that? What's that?

GIUSEPPE (resting the end of his tray on the table and leaning over to
speak the more confidentially). The lady, excellency.

NAPOLEON (absently). Yes. What lady? Whose lady?

GIUSEPPE. The strange lady, excellency.

NAPOLEON. What strange lady?

GIUSEPPE (with a shrug). Who knows? She arrived here half an hour
before you in a hired carriage belonging to the Golden Eagle at
Borghetto. Actually by herself, excellency. No servants. A dressing bag
and a trunk: that is all. The postillion says she left a horse--a
charger, with military trappings, at the Golden Eagle.

NAPOLEON. A woman with a charger! That's extraordinary.

THE LADY'S VOICE (the two final notes now making a peremptory
descending interval). Giuseppe!

NAPOLEON (rising to listen). That's an interesting voice.

GIUSEPPE. She is an interesting lady, excellency. (Calling.) Coming,
lady, coming. (He makes for the inner door.)

NAPOLEON (arresting him with a strong hand on his shoulder). Stop. Let
her come.

VOICE. Giuseppe!! (Impatiently.)

GIUSEPPE (pleadingly). Let me go, excellency. It is my point of honor
as an innkeeper to come when I am called. I appeal to you as a soldier.

A MAN's VOICE (outside, at the inn door, shouting). Here, someone.
Hello! Landlord. Where are you? (Somebody raps vigorously with a whip
handle on a bench in the passage.)

NAPOLEON (suddenly becoming the commanding officer again and throwing
Giuseppe off). There he is at last. (Pointing to the inner door.) Go.
Attend to your business: the lady is calling you. (He goes to the
fireplace and stands with his back to it with a determined military
air.)

GIUSEPPE (with bated breath, snatching up his tray). Certainly,
excellency. (He hurries out by the inner door.)

THE MAN's VOICE (impatiently). Are you all asleep here? (The door
opposite the fireplace is kicked rudely open; and a dusty
sub-lieutenant bursts into the room. He is a chuckle-headed young man
of 24, with the fair, delicate, clear skin of a man of rank, and a
self-assurance on that ground which the French Revolution has failed to
shake in the smallest degree. He has a thick silly lip, an eager
credulous eye, an obstinate nose, and a loud confident voice. A young
man without fear, without reverence, without imagination, without
sense, hopelessly insusceptible to the Napoleonic or any other idea,
stupendously egotistical, eminently qualified to rush in where angels
fear to tread, yet of a vigorous babbling vitality which bustles him
into the thick of things. He is just now boiling with vexation,
attributable by a superficial observer to his impatience at not being
promptly attended to by the staff of the inn, but in which a more
discerning eye can perceive a certain moral depth, indicating a more
permanent and momentous grievance. On seeing Napoleon, he is
sufficiently taken aback to check himself and salute; but he does not
betray by his manner any of that prophetic consciousness of Marengo and
Austerlitz, Waterloo and St. Helena, or the Napoleonic pictures of
Delaroche and Meissonier, which modern culture will instinctively
expect from him.)

NAPOLEON (sharply). Well, sir, here you are at last. Your instructions
were that I should arrive here at six, and that I was to find you
waiting for me with my mail from Paris and with despatches. It is now
twenty minutes to eight. You were sent on this service as a hard rider
with the fastest horse in the camp. You arrive a hundred minutes late,
on foot. Where is your horse!

THE LIEUTENANT (moodily pulling off his gloves and dashing them with
his cap and whip on the table). Ah! where indeed? That's just what I
should like to know, General. (With emotion.) You don't know how fond I
was of that horse.

NAPOLEON (angrily sarcastic). Indeed! (With sudden misgiving.) Where
are the letters and despatches?

THE LIEUTENANT (importantly, rather pleased than otherwise at having
some remarkable news). I don't know.

NAPOLEON (unable to believe his ears). You don't know!

LIEUTENANT. No more than you do, General. Now I suppose I shall be
court-martialled. Well, I don't mind being court-martialled; but (with
solemn determination) I tell you, General, if ever I catch that
innocent looking youth, I'll spoil his beauty, the slimy little liar!
I'll make a picture of him. I'll--

NAPOLEON (advancing from the hearth to the table). What innocent
looking youth? Pull yourself together, sir, will you; and give an
account of yourself.

LIEUTENANT (facing him at the opposite side of the table, leaning on it
with his fists). Oh, I'm all right, General: I'm perfectly ready to
give an account of myself. I shall make the court-martial thoroughly
understand that the fault was not mine. Advantage has been taken of the
better side of my nature; and I'm not ashamed of it. But with all
respect to you as my commanding officer, General, I say again that if
ever I set eyes on that son of Satan, I'll--

NAPOLEON (angrily). So you said before.

LIEUTENANT (drawing himself upright). I say it again, just wait until I
catch him. Just wait: that's all. (He folds his arms resolutely, and
breathes hard, with compressed lips.)

NAPOLEON. I AM waiting, sir--for your explanation.

LIEUTENANT (confidently). You'll change your tone, General, when you
hear what has happened to me.

NAPOLEON. Nothing has happened to you, sir: you are alive and not
disabled. Where are the papers entrusted to you?

LIEUTENANT. Nothing! Nothing!! Oho! Well, we'll see. (Posing himself to
overwhelm Napoleon with his news.) He swore eternal brotherhood with
me. Was that nothing? He said my eyes reminded him of his sister's
eyes. Was that nothing? He cried--actually cried--over the story of my
separation from Angelica. Was that nothing? He paid for both bottles of
wine, though he only ate bread and grapes himself. Perhaps you call
that nothing! He gave me his pistols and his horse and his
despatches--most important despatches--and let me go away with them.
(Triumphantly, seeing that he has reduced Napoleon to blank
stupefaction.) Was THAT nothing?

NAPOLEON (enfeebled by astonishment). What did he do that for?

LIEUTENANT (as if the reason were obvious). To show his confidence in
me. (Napoleon's jaw does not exactly drop; but its hinges become
nerveless. The Lieutenant proceeds with honest indignation.) And I was
worthy of his confidence: I brought them all back honorably. But would
you believe it?--when I trusted him with MY pistols, and MY horse, and
MY despatches--

NAPOLEON (enraged). What the devil did you do that for?

LIEUTENANT. Why, to show my confidence in him, of course. And he
betrayed it--abused it--never came back. The thief! the swindler! the
heartless, treacherous little blackguard! You call that nothing, I
suppose. But look here, General: (again resorting to the table with his
fist for greater emphasis) YOU may put up with this outrage from the
Austrians if you like; but speaking for myself personally, I tell you
that if ever I catch--

NAPOLEON (turning on his heel in disgust and irritably resuming his
march to and fro). Yes: you have said that more than once already.

LIEUTENANT (excitedly). More than once! I'll say it fifty times; and
what's more, I'll do it. You'll see, General. I'll show my confidence
in him, so I will. I'll--

NAPOLEON. Yes, yes, sir: no doubt you will. What kind of man was he?

LIEUTENANT. Well, I should think you ought to be able to tell from his
conduct the sort of man he was.

NAPOLEON. Psh! What was he like?

LIEUTENANT. Like! He's like--well, you ought to have just seen the
fellow: that will give you a notion of what he was like. He won't be
like it five minutes after I catch him; for I tell you that if ever--

NAPOLEON (shouting furiously for the innkeeper). Giuseppe! (To the
Lieutenant, out of all patience.) Hold your tongue, sir, if you can.

LIEUTENANT. I warn you it's no use to try to put the blame on me.
(Plaintively.) How was I to know the sort of fellow he was? (He takes a
chair from between the sideboard and the outer door; places it near the
table; and sits down.) If you only knew how hungry and tired I am,
you'd have more consideration.

GIUSEPPE (returning). What is it, excellency?

NAPOLEON (struggling with his temper). Take this--this officer. Feed
him; and put him to bed, if necessary. When he is in his right mind
again, find out what has happened to him and bring me word. (To the
Lieutenant.) Consider yourself under arrest, sir.

LIEUTENANT (with sulky stiffness). I was prepared for that. It takes a
gentleman to understand a gentleman. (He throws his sword on the table.
Giuseppe takes it up and politely offers it to Napoleon, who throws it
violently on the couch.)

GIUSEPPE (with sympathetic concern). Have you been attacked by the
Austrians, lieutenant? Dear, dear, dear!

LIEUTENANT (contemptuously). Attacked! I could have broken his back
between my finger and thumb. I wish I had, now. No: it was by appealing
to the better side of my nature: that's what I can't get over. He said
he'd never met a man he liked so much as me. He put his handkerchief
round my neck because a gnat bit me, and my stock was chafing it. Look!
(He pulls a handkerchief from his stock. Giuseppe takes it and examines
it.)

GIUSEPPE (to Napoleon). A lady's handkerchief, excellency. (He smells
it.) Perfumed!

NAPOLEON. Eh? (He takes it and looks at it attentively.) Hm! (He smells
it.) Ha! (He walks thoughtfully across the room, looking at the
handkerchief, which he finally sticks in the breast of his coat.)

LIEUTENANT. Good enough for him, anyhow. I noticed that he had a
woman's hands when he touched my neck, with his coaxing, fawning ways,
the mean, effeminate little hound. (Lowering his voice with thrilling
intensity.) But mark my words, General. If ever--

THE LADY'S VOICE (outside, as before). Giuseppe!

LIEUTENANT (petrified). What was that?

GIUSEPPE. Only a lady upstairs, lieutenant, calling me.

LIEUTENANT. Lady!

VOICE. Giuseppe, Giuseppe: where ARE you?

LIEUTENANT (murderously). Give me that sword. (He strides to the couch;
snatches the sword; and draws it.)

GIUSEPPE (rushing forward and seizing his right arm.) What are you
thinking of, lieutenant? It's a lady: don't you hear that it's a
woman's voice?

LIEUTENANT. It's HIS voice, I tell you. Let me go. (He breaks away, and
rushes to the inner door. It opens in his face; and the Strange Lady
steps in. She is a very attractive lady, tall and extraordinarily
graceful, with a delicately intelligent, apprehensive, questioning
face--perception in the brow, sensitiveness in the nostrils, character
in the chin: all keen, refined, and original. She is very feminine, but
by no means weak: the lithe, tender figure is hung on a strong frame:
the hands and feet, neck and shoulders, are no fragile ornaments, but
of full size in proportion to her stature, which considerably exceeds
that of Napoleon and the innkeeper, and leaves her at no disadvantage
with the lieutenant. Only her elegance and radiant charm keep the
secret of her size and strength. She is not, judging by her dress, an
admirer of the latest fashions of the Directory; or perhaps she uses up
her old dresses for travelling. At all events she wears no jacket with
extravagant lappels, no Greco-Tallien sham chiton, nothing, indeed,
that the Princesse de Lamballe might not have worn. Her dress of
flowered silk is long waisted, with a Watteau pleat behind, but with
the paniers reduced to mere rudiments, as she is too tall for them. It
is cut low in the neck, where it is eked out by a creamy fichu. She is
fair, with golden brown hair and grey eyes.)

(She enters with the self-possession of a woman accustomed to the
privileges of rank and beauty. The innkeeper, who has excellent natural
manners, is highly appreciative of her. Napoleon, on whom her eyes
first fall, is instantly smitten self-conscious. His color deepens: he
becomes stiffer and less at ease than before. She perceives this
instantly, and, not to embarrass him, turns in an infinitely well bred
manner to pay the respect of a glance to the other gentleman, who is
staring at her dress, as at the earth's final masterpiece of
treacherous dissimulation, with feelings altogether inexpressible and
indescribable. As she looks at him, she becomes deadly pale. There is
no mistaking her expression: a revelation of some fatal error utterly
unexpected, has suddenly appalled her in the midst of tranquillity,
security and victory. The next moment a wave of color rushes up from
beneath the creamy fichu and drowns her whole face. One can see that
she is blushing all over her body. Even the lieutenant, ordinarily
incapable of observation, and just now lost in the tumult of his wrath,
can see a thing when it is painted red for him. Interpreting the blush
as the involuntary confession of black deceit confronted with its
victim, he points to it with a loud crow of retributive triumph, and
then, seizing her by the wrist, pulls her past him into the room as he
claps the door to, and plants himself with his back to it.)

LIEUTENANT. So I've got you, my lad. So you've disguised yourself, have
you? (In a voice of thunder.) Take off that skirt.

GIUSEPPE (remonstrating). Oh, lieutenant!

LADY (affrighted, but highly indignant at his having dared to touch
her). Gentlemen: I appeal to you. Giuseppe. (Making a movement as if to
run to Giuseppe.)

LIEUTENANT (interposing, sword in hand). No you don't.

LADY (taking refuge with Napoleon). Ah, sir, you are an officer--a
general. You will protect me, will you not?

LIEUTENANT. Never you mind him, General. Leave me to deal with him.

NAPOLEON. With him! With whom, sir? Why do you treat this lady in such
a fashion?

LIEUTENANT. Lady! He's a man! the man I showed my confidence in.
(Advancing threateningly.) Here you--

LADY (running behind Napoleon and in her agitation embracing the arm
which he instinctively extends before her as a fortification). Oh,
thank you, General. Keep him away.

NAPOLEON. Nonsense, sir. This is certainly a lady (she suddenly drops
his arm and blushes again); and you are under arrest. Put down your
sword, sir, instantly.

LIEUTENANT. General: I tell you he's an Austrian spy. He passed himself
off on me as one of General Massena's staff this afternoon; and now
he's passing himself off on you as a woman. Am I to believe my own eyes
or not?

LADY. General: it must be my brother. He is on General Massena's staff.
He is very like me.

LIEUTENANT (his mind giving way). Do you mean to say that you're not
your brother, but your sister?--the sister who was so like me?--who had
my beautiful blue eyes? It was a lie: your eyes are not like mine:
they're exactly like your own. What perfidy!

NAPOLEON. Lieutenant: will you obey my orders and leave the room, since
you are convinced at last that this is no gentleman?

LIEUTENANT. Gentleman! I should think not. No gentleman would have
abused my confi--

NAPOLEON (out of all patience). Enough, sir, enough. Will you leave the
room. I order you to leave the room.

LADY. Oh, pray let ME go instead.

NAPOLEON (drily). Excuse me, madame. With all respect to your brother,
I do not yet understand what an officer on General Massena's staff
wants with my letters. I have some questions to put to you.

GIUSEPPE (discreetly). Come, lieutenant. (He opens the door.)

LIEUTENANT. I'm off. General: take warning by me: be on your guard
against the better side of your nature. (To the lady.) Madame: my
apologies. I thought you were the same person, only of the opposite
sex; and that naturally misled me.

LADY (sweetly). It was not your fault, was it? I'm so glad you're not
angry with me any longer, lieutenant. (She offers her hand.)

LIEUTENANT (bending gallantly to kiss it). Oh, madam, not the lea--
(Checking himself and looking at it.) You have your brother's hand. And
the same sort of ring.

LADY (sweetly). We are twins.

LIEUTENANT. That accounts for it. (He kisses her hand.) A thousand
pardons. I didn't mind about the despatches at all: that's more the
General's affair than mine: it was the abuse of my confidence through
the better side of my nature. (Taking his cap, gloves, and whip from
the table and going.) You'll excuse my leaving you, General, I hope.
Very sorry, I'm sure. (He talks himself out of the room. Giuseppe
follows him and shuts the door.)

NAPOLEON (looking after them with concentrated irritation). Idiot! (The
Strange Lady smiles sympathetically. He comes frowning down the room
between the table and the fireplace, all his awkwardness gone now that
he is alone with her.)

LADY. How can I thank you, General, for your protection?

NAPOLEON (turning on her suddenly). My despatches: come! (He puts out
his hand for them.)

LADY. General! (She involuntarily puts her hands on her fichu as if to
protect something there.)

NAPOLEON. You tricked that blockhead out of them. You disguised
yourself as a man. I want my despatches. They are there in the bosom of
your dress, under your hands.

LADY (quickly removing her hands). Oh, how unkindly you are speaking to
me! (She takes her handkerchief from her fichu.) You frighten me. (She
touches her eyes as if to wipe away a tear.)

NAPOLEON. I see you don't know me madam, or you would save yourself the
trouble of pretending to cry.

LADY (producing an effect of smiling through her tears). Yes, I do know
you. You are the famous General Buonaparte. (She gives the name a
marked Italian pronunciation Bwaw-na-parr-te.)

NAPOLEON (angrily, with the French pronunciation). Bonaparte, madame,
Bonaparte. The papers, if you please.

LADY. But I assure you-- (He snatches the handkerchief rudely from
her.) General! (Indignantly.)

NAPOLEON (taking the other handkerchief from his breast). You were good
enough to lend one of your handkerchiefs to my lieutenant when you
robbed him. (He looks at the two handkerchiefs.) They match one
another. (He smells them.) The same scent. (He flings them down on the
table.) I am waiting for the despatches. I shall take them, if
necessary, with as little ceremony as the handkerchief. (This
historical incident was used eighty years later, by M. Victorien
Sardou, in his drama entitled "Dora.")

LADY (in dignified reproof). General: do you threaten women?

NAPOLEON (bluntly). Yes.

LADY (disconcerted, trying to gain time). But I don't understand. I--

NAPOLEON. You understand perfectly. You came here because your Austrian
employers calculated that I was six leagues away. I am always to be
found where my enemies don't expect me. You have walked into the lion's
den. Come: you are a brave woman. Be a sensible one: I have no time to
waste. The papers. (He advances a step ominously).

LADY (breaking down in the childish rage of impotence, and throwing
herself in tears on the chair left beside the table by the lieutenant).
I brave! How little you know! I have spent the day in an agony of fear.
I have a pain here from the tightening of my heart at every suspicious
look, every threatening movement. Do you think every one is as brave as
you? Oh, why will not you brave people do the brave things? Why do you
leave them to us, who have no courage at all? I'm not brave: I shrink
from violence: danger makes me miserable.

NAPOLEON (interested). Then why have you thrust yourself into danger?

LADY. Because there is no other way: I can trust nobody else. And now
it is all useless--all because of you, who have no fear, because you
have no heart, no feeling, no-- (She breaks off, and throws herself on
her knees.) Ah, General, let me go: let me go without asking any
questions. You shall have your despatches and letters: I swear it.

NAPOLEON (holding out his hand). Yes: I am waiting for them. (She
gasps, daunted by his ruthless promptitude into despair of moving him
by cajolery; but as she looks up perplexedly at him, it is plain that
she is racking her brains for some device to outwit him. He meets her
regard inflexibly.)

LADY (rising at last with a quiet little sigh). I will get them for
you. They are in my room. (She turns to the door.)

NAPOLEON. I shall accompany you, madame.

LADY (drawing herself up with a noble air of offended delicacy).I
cannot permit you, General, to enter my chamber.

NAPOLEON. Then you shall stay here, madame, whilst I have your chamber
searched for my papers.

LADY (spitefully, openly giving up her plan). You may save yourself the
trouble. They are not there.

NAPOLEON. No: I have already told you where they are. (Pointing to her
breast.)

LADY (with pretty piteousness). General: I only want to keep one little
private letter. Only one. Let me have it.

NAPOLEON (cold and stern). Is that a reasonable demand, madam?

LADY (encouraged by his not refusing point blank). No; but that is why
you must grant it. Are your own demands reasonable? thousands of lives
for the sake of your victories, your ambitions, your destiny! And what
I ask is such a little thing. And I am only a weak woman, and you a
brave man. (She looks at him with her eyes full of tender pleading and
is about to kneel to him again.)

NAPOLEON (brusquely). Get up, get up. (He turns moodily away and takes
a turn across the room, pausing for a moment to say, over his shoulder)
You're talking nonsense; and you know it. (She gets up and sits down in
almost listless despair on the couch. When he turns and sees her there,
he feels that his victory is complete, and that he may now indulge in a
little play with his victim. He comes back and sits beside her. She
looks alarmed and moves a little away from him; but a ray of rallying
hope beams from her eye. He begins like a man enjoying some secret
joke.) How do you know I am a brave man?

LADY (amazed). You! General Buonaparte. (Italian pronunciation.)

NAPOLEON. Yes, I, General Bonaparte (emphasizing the French
pronunciation).

LADY. Oh, how can you ask such a question? you! who stood only two days
ago at the bridge at Lodi, with the air full of death, fighting a duel
with cannons across the river! (Shuddering.) Oh, you DO brave things.

NAPOLEON. So do you.

LADY. I! (With a sudden odd thought.) Oh! Are you a coward?

NAPOLEON (laughing grimly and pinching her cheek). That is the one
question you must never ask a soldier. The sergeant asks after the
recruit's height, his age, his wind, his limb, but never after his
courage. (He gets up and walks about with his hands behind him and his
head bowed, chuckling to himself.)

LADY (as if she had found it no laughing matter). Ah, you can laugh at
fear. Then you don't know what fear is.

NAPOLEON (coming behind the couch). Tell me this. Suppose you could
have got that letter by coming to me over the bridge at Lodi the day
before yesterday! Suppose there had been no other way, and that this
was a sure way--if only you escaped the cannon! (She shudders and
covers her eyes for a moment with her hands.) Would you have been
afraid?

LADY. Oh, horribly afraid, agonizingly afraid. (She presses her hands
on her heart.) It hurts only to imagine it.

NAPOLEON (inflexibly). Would you have come for the despatches?

LADY (overcome by the imagined horror). Don't ask me. I must have come.

NAPOLEON. Why?

LADY. Because I must. Because there would have been no other way.

NAPOLEON (with conviction). Because you would have wanted my letter
enough to bear your fear. There is only one universal passion: fear. Of
all the thousand qualities a man may have, the only one you will find
as certainly in the youngest drummer boy in my army as in me, is fear.
It is fear that makes men fight: it is indifference that makes them run
away: fear is the mainspring of war. Fear! I know fear well, better
than you, better than any woman. I once saw a regiment of good Swiss
soldiers massacred by a mob in Paris because I was afraid to interfere:
I felt myself a coward to the tips of my toes as I looked on at it.
Seven months ago I revenged my shame by pounding that mob to death with
cannon balls. Well, what of that? Has fear ever held a man back from
anything he really wanted--or a woman either? Never. Come with me; and
I will show you twenty thousand cowards who will risk death every day
for the price of a glass of brandy. And do you think there are no women
in the army, braver than the men, because their lives are worth less?
Psha! I think nothing of your fear or your bravery. If you had had to
come across to me at Lodi, you would not have been afraid: once on the
bridge, every other feeling would have gone down before the
necessity--the necessity--for making your way to my side and getting
what you wanted.

And now, suppose you had done all this--suppose you had come safely out
with that letter in your hand, knowing that when the hour came, your
fear had tightened, not your heart, but your grip of your own
purpose--that it had ceased to be fear, and had become strength,
penetration, vigilance, iron resolution--how would you answer then if
you were asked whether you were a coward?

LADY (rising). Ah, you are a hero, a real hero.

NAPOLEON. Pooh! there's no such thing as a real hero. (He strolls down
the room, making light of her enthusiasm, but by no means displeased
with himself for having evoked it.)

LADY. Ah, yes, there is. There is a difference between what you call my
bravery and yours. You wanted to win the battle of Lodi for yourself
and not for anyone else, didn't you?

NAPOLEON. Of course. (Suddenly recollecting himself.) Stop: no. (He
pulls himself piously together, and says, like a man conducting a
religious service) I am only the servant of the French republic,
following humbly in the footsteps of the heroes of classical antiquity.
I win battles for humanity--for my country, not for myself.

LADY (disappointed). Oh, then you are only a womanish hero, after all.
(She sits down again, all her enthusiasm gone, her elbow on the end of
the couch, and her cheek propped on her hand.)

NAPOLEON (greatly astonished). Womanish!

LADY (listlessly). Yes, like me. (With deep melancholy.) Do you think
that if I only wanted those despatches for myself, I dare venture into
a battle for them? No: if that were all, I should not have the courage
to ask to see you at your hotel, even. My courage is mere slavishness:
it is of no use to me for my own purposes. It is only through love,
through pity, through the instinct to save and protect someone else,
that I can do the things that terrify me.

NAPOLEON (contemptuously). Pshaw! (He turns slightingly away from her.)

LADY. Aha! now you see that I'm not really brave. (Relapsing into
petulant listlessness.) But what right have you to despise me if you
only win your battles for others? for your country! through patriotism!
That is what I call womanish: it is so like a Frenchman!

NAPOLEON (furiously). I am no Frenchman.

LADY (innocently). I thought you said you won the battle of Lodi for
your country, General Bu-- shall I pronounce it in Italian or French?

NAPOLEON. You are presuming on my patience, madam. I was born a French
subject, but not in France.

LADY (folding her arms on the end of the couch, and leaning on them
with a marked access of interest in him). You were not born a subject
at all, I think.

NAPOLEON (greatly pleased, starting on a fresh march). Eh? Eh? You
think not.

LADY. I am sure of it.

NAPOLEON. Well, well, perhaps not. (The self-complacency of his assent
catches his own ear. He stops short, reddening. Then, composing himself
into a solemn attitude, modelled on the heroes of classical antiquity,
he takes a high moral tone.) But we must not live for ourselves alone,
little one. Never forget that we should always think of others, and
work for others, and lead and govern them for their own good.
Self-sacrifice is the foundation of all true nobility of character.

LADY (again relaxing her attitude with a sigh). Ah, it is easy to see
that you have never tried it, General.

NAPOLEON (indignantly, forgetting all about Brutus and Scipio). What do
you mean by that speech, madam?

LADY. Haven't you noticed that people always exaggerate the value of
the things they haven't got? The poor think they only need riches to be
quite happy and good. Everybody worships truth, purity, unselfishness,
for the same reason--because they have no experience of them. Oh, if
they only knew!

NAPOLEON (with angry derision). If they only knew! Pray, do you know?

LADY (with her arms stretched down and her hands clasped on her knees,
looking straight before her). Yes. I had the misfortune to be born
good. (Glancing up at him for a moment.) And it is a misfortune, I can
tell you, General. I really am truthful and unselfish and all the rest
of it; and it's nothing but cowardice; want of character; want of being
really, strongly, positively oneself.

NAPOLEON. Ha? (Turning to her quickly with a flash of strong interest.)

LADY (earnestly, with rising enthusiasm). What is the secret of your
power? Only that you believe in yourself. You can fight and conquer for
yourself and for nobody else. You are not afraid of your own destiny.
You teach us what we all might be if we had the will and courage; and
that (suddenly sinking on her knees before him) is why we all begin to
worship you. (She kisses his hands.)

NAPOLEON (embarrassed). Tut, tut! Pray rise, madam.

LADY. Do not refuse my homage: it is your right. You will be emperor of
France.

NAPOLEON (hurriedly). Take care. Treason!

LADY (insisting). Yes, emperor of France; then of Europe; perhaps of
the world. I am only the first subject to swear allegiance. (Again
kissing his hand.) My Emperor!

NAPOLEON (overcome, raising her). Pray, pray. No, no, little one: this
is folly. Come: be calm, be calm. (Petting her.) There, there, my girl.

LADY (struggling with happy tears). Yes, I know it is an impertinence
in me to tell you what you must know far better than I do. But you are
not angry with me, are you?

NAPOLEON. Angry! No, no: not a bit, not a bit. Come: you are a very
clever and sensible and interesting little woman. (He pats her on the
cheek.) Shall we be friends?

LADY (enraptured). Your friend! You will let me be your friend! Oh!
(She offers him both her hands with a radiant smile.) You see: I show
my confidence in you.

NAPOLEON (with a yell of rage, his eyes flashing). What!

LADY. What's the matter?

NAPOLEON. Show your confidence in me! So that I may show my confidence
in you in return by letting you give me the slip with the despatches,
eh? Ah, Dalila, Dalila, you have been trying your tricks on me; and I
have been as great a gull as my jackass of a lieutenant. (He advances
threateningly on her.) Come: the despatches. Quick: I am not to be
trifled with now.

LADY (flying round the couch). General--

NAPOLEON. Quick, I tell you. (He passes swiftly up the middle of the
room and intercepts her as she makes for the vineyard.)

LADY (at bay, confronting him). You dare address me in that tone.

NAPOLEON. Dare!

LADY. Yes, dare. Who are you that you should presume to speak to me in
that coarse way? Oh, the vile, vulgar Corsican adventurer comes out in
you very easily.

NAPOLEON (beside himself). You she devil! (Savagely.) Once more, and
only once, will you give me those papers or shall I tear them from
you--by force?

LADY (letting her hands fall ). Tear them from me--by force! (As he
glares at her like a tiger about to spring, she crosses her arms on her
breast in the attitude of a martyr. The gesture and pose instantly
awaken his theatrical instinct: he forgets his rage in the desire to
show her that in acting, too, she has met her match. He keeps her a
moment in suspense; then suddenly clears up his countenance; puts his
hands behind him with provoking coolness; looks at her up and down a
couple of times; takes a pinch of snuff; wipes his fingers carefully
and puts up his handkerchief, her heroic pose becoming more and more
ridiculous all the time.)

NAPOLEON (at last). Well?

LADY (disconcerted, but with her arms still crossed devotedly). Well:
what are you going to do?

NAPOLEON. Spoil your attitude.

LADY. You brute! (abandoning the attitude, she comes to the end of the
couch, where she turns with her back to it, leaning against it and
facing him with her hands behind her.)

NAPOLEON. Ah, that's better.  Now listen to me. I like you. What's
more, I value your respect.

LADY. You value what you have not got, then.

NAPOLEON. I shall have it presently. Now attend to me. Suppose I were
to allow myself to be abashed by the respect due to your sex, your
beauty, your heroism and all the rest of it? Suppose I, with nothing
but such sentimental stuff to stand between these muscles of mine and
those papers which you have about you, and which I want and mean to
have: suppose I, with the prize within my grasp, were to falter and
sneak away with my hands empty; or, what would be worse, cover up my
weakness by playing the magnanimous hero, and sparing you the violence
I dared not use, would you not despise me from the depths of your
woman's soul? Would any woman be such a fool? Well, Bonaparte can rise
to the situation and act like a woman when it is necessary. Do you
understand?

The lady, without speaking, stands upright, and takes a packet of
papers from her bosom. For a moment she has an intense impulse to dash
them in his face. But her good breeding cuts her off from any vulgar
method of relief. She hands them to him politely, only averting her
head. The moment he takes them, she hurries across to the other side of
the room; covers her face with her hands; and sits down, with her body
turned away to the back of the chair.

NAPOLEON (gloating over the papers). Aha! That's right. That's right.
(Before opening them he looks at her and says) Excuse me. (He sees that
she is hiding her face.) Very angry with me, eh? (He unties the packet,
the seal of which is already broken, and puts it on the table to
examine its contents.)

LADY (quietly, taking down her hands and showing that she is not
crying, but only thinking). No. You were right. But I am sorry for you.

NAPOLEON (pausing in the act of taking the uppermost paper from the
packet). Sorry for me! Why?

LADY. I am going to see you lose your honor.

NAPOLEON. Hm! Nothing worse than that? (He takes up the paper.)

LADY. And your happiness.

NAPOLEON. Happiness, little woman, is the most tedious thing in the
world to me. Should I be what I am if I cared for happiness? Anything
else?

LADY. Nothing-- (He interrupts her with an exclamation of satisfaction.
She proceeds quietly) except that you will cut a very foolish figure in
the eyes of France.

NAPOLEON (quickly). What? (The hand holding the paper involuntarily
drops. The lady looks at him enigmatically in tranquil silence. He
throws the letter down and breaks out into a torrent of scolding.) What
do you mean? Eh? Are you at your tricks again? Do you think I don't
know what these papers contain? I'll tell you. First, my information as
to Beaulieu's retreat. There are only two things he can
do--leatherbrained idiot that he is!--shut himself up in Mantua or
violate the neutrality of Venice by taking Peschiera. You are one of
old Leatherbrain's spies: he has discovered that he has been betrayed,
and has sent you to intercept the information at all hazards--as if
that could save him from ME, the old fool! The other papers are only my
usual correspondence from Paris, of which you know nothing.

LADY (prompt and businesslike). General: let us make a fair division.
Take the information your spies have sent you about the Austrian army;
and give me the Paris correspondence. That will content me.

NAPOLEON (his breath taken away by the coolness of the proposal). A
fair di-- (He gasps.) It seems to me, madame, that you have come to
regard my letters as your own property, of which I am trying to rob you.

LADY (earnestly). No: on my honor I ask for no letter of yours--not a
word that has been written by you or to you. That packet contains a
stolen letter: a letter written by a woman to a man--a man not her
husband--a letter that means disgrace, infamy--

NAPOLEON. A love letter?

LADY (bitter-sweetly). What else but a love letter could stir up so
much hate?

NAPOLEON. Why is it sent to me? To put the husband in my power, eh?

LADY. No, no: it can be of no use to you: I swear that it will cost you
nothing to give it to me. It has been sent to you out of sheer
malice--solely to injure the woman who wrote it.

NAPOLEON. Then why not send it to her husband instead of to me?

LADY (completely taken aback). Oh! (Sinking back into the chair.) I--I
don't know. (She breaks down.)

NAPOLEON. Aha! I thought so: a little romance to get the papers back.
(He throws the packet on the table and confronts her with cynical
goodhumor.) Per Bacco, little woman, I can't help admiring you. If I
could lie like that, it would save me a great deal of trouble.

LADY (wringing her hands). Oh, how I wish I really had told you some
lie! You would have believed me then. The truth is the one thing that
nobody will believe.

NAPOLEON (with coarse familiarity, treating her as if she were a
vivandiere). Capital! Capital! (He puts his hands behind him on the
table, and lifts himself on to it, sitting with his arms akimbo and his
legs wide apart.) Come: I am a true Corsican in my love for stories.
But I could tell them better than you if I set my mind to it. Next time
you are asked why a letter compromising a wife should not be sent to
her husband, answer simply that the husband would not read it. Do you
suppose, little innocent, that a man wants to be compelled by public
opinion to make a scene, to fight a duel, to break up his household, to
injure his career by a scandal, when he can avoid it all by taking care
not to know?

LADY (revolted). Suppose that packet contained a letter about your own
wife?

NAPOLEON (offended, coming off the table). You are impertinent, madame.

LADY (humbly). I beg your above suspicion.

NAPOLEON (with a deliberate assumption of superiority). You have
committed an indiscretion. I pardon you. In future, do not permit
yourself to introduce real persons in your romances.

LADY (politely ignoring a speech which is to her only a breach of good
manners, and rising to move towards the table). General: there really
is a woman's letter there. (Pointing to the packet.) Give it to me.

NAPOLEON (with brute conciseness, moving so as to prevent her getting
too near the letters). Why?

LADY. She is an old friend: we were at school together. She has written
to me imploring me to prevent the letter falling into your hands.

NAPOLEON. Why has it been sent to me?

LADY. Because it compromises the director Barras.

NAPOLEON (frowning, evidently startled). Barras! (Haughtily.) Take
care, madame. The director Barras is my attached personal friend.

LADY (nodding placidly). Yes. You became friends through your wife.

NAPOLEON. Again! Have I not forbidden you to speak of my wife? (She
keeps looking curiously at him, taking no account of the rebuke. More
and more irritated, he drops his haughty manner, of which he is himself
somewhat impatient, and says suspiciously, lowering his voice) Who is
this woman with whom you sympathize so deeply?

LADY. Oh, General! How could I tell you that?

NAPOLEON (ill-humoredly, beginning to walk about again in angry
perplexity). Ay, ay: stand by one another. You are all the same, you
women.

LADY (indignantly). We are not all the same, any more than you are. Do
you think that if _I_ loved another man, I should pretend to go on
loving my husband, or be afraid to tell him or all the world? But this
woman is not made that way. She governs men by cheating them; and (with
disdain) they like it, and let her govern them. (She sits down again,
with her back to him.)

NAPOLEON (not attending to her). Barras, Barras I-- (Turning very
threateningly to her, his face darkening.) Take care, take care: do you
hear? You may go too far.

LADY (innocently turning her face to him). What's the matter?

NAPOLEON. What are you hinting at? Who is this woman?

LADY (meeting his angry searching gaze with tranquil indifference as
she sits looking up at him with her right arm resting lightly along the
back of her chair, and one knee crossed over the other). A vain, silly,
extravagant creature, with a very able and ambitious husband who knows
her through and through--knows that she has lied to him about her age,
her income, her social position, about everything that silly women lie
about--knows that she is incapable of fidelity to any principle or any
person; and yet could not help loving her--could not help his man's
instinct to make use of her for his own advancement with Barras.

NAPOLEON (in a stealthy, coldly furious whisper). This is your revenge,
you she cat, for having had to give me the letters.

LADY. Nonsense! Or do you mean that YOU are that sort of man?

NAPOLEON (exasperated, clasps his hands behind him, his fingers
twitching, and says, as he walks irritably away from her to the
fireplace). This woman will drive me out of my senses. (To her.) Begone.

LADY (seated immovably). Not without that letter.

NAPOLEON. Begone, I tell you. (Walking from the fireplace to the
vineyard and back to the table.) You shall have no letter. I don't like
you. You're a detestable woman, and as ugly as Satan. I don't choose to
be pestered by strange women. Be off. (He turns his back on her. In
quiet amusement, she leans her cheek on her hand and laughs at him. He
turns again, angrily mocking her.) Ha! ha! ha! What are you laughing at?

LADY. At you, General. I have often seen persons of your sex getting
into a pet and behaving like children; but I never saw a really great
man do it before.

NAPOLEON (brutally, flinging the words in her face). Pooh: flattery!
flattery! coarse, impudent flattery!

LADY (springing up with a bright flush in her cheeks). Oh, you are too
bad. Keep your letters. Read the story of your own dishonor in them;
and much good may they do you. Good-bye. (She goes indignantly towards
the inner door.)

NAPOLEON. My own--! Stop. Come back. Come back, I order you. (She
proudly disregards his savagely peremptory tone and continues on her
way to the door. He rushes at her; seizes her by the wrist; and drags
her back.) Now, what do you mean? Explain. Explain, I tell you,
or--(Threatening her. She looks at him with unflinching defiance.)
Rrrr! you obstinate devil, you. Why can't you answer a civil question?

LADY (deeply offended by his violence). Why do you ask me? You have the
explanation.

NAPOLEON. Where?

LADY (pointing to the letters on the table). There. You have only to
read it. (He snatches the packet up, hesitates; looks at her
suspiciously; and throws it down again.)

NAPOLEON. You seem to have forgotten your solicitude for the honor of
your old friend.

LADY. She runs no risk now: she does not quite understand her husband.

NAPOLEON. I am to read the letter, then? (He stretches out his hand as
if to take up the packet again, with his eye on her.)

LADY. I do not see how you can very well avoid doing so now. (He
instantly withdraws his hand.) Oh, don't be afraid. You will find many
interesting things in it.

NAPOLEON. For instance?

LADY. For instance, a duel--with Barras, a domestic scene, a broken
household, a public scandal, a checked career, all sorts of things.

NAPOLEON. Hm! (He looks at her, takes up the packet and looks at it,
pursing his lips and balancing it in his hand; looks at her again;
passes the packet into his left hand and puts it behind his back,
raising his right to scratch the back of his head as he turns and goes
up to the edge of the vineyard, where he stands for a moment looking
out into the vines, deep in thought. The Lady watches him in silence,
somewhat slightingly. Suddenly he turns and comes back again, full of
force and decision.) I grant your request, madame. Your courage and
resolution deserve to succeed. Take the letters for which you have
fought so well; and remember henceforth that you found the vile, vulgar
Corsican adventurer as generous to the vanquished after the battle as
he was resolute in the face of the enemy before it. (He offers her the
packet.)

LADY (without taking it, looking hard at him). What are you at now, I
wonder? (He dashes the packet furiously to the floor.) Aha! I've
spoiled that attitude, I think. (She makes him a pretty mocking
curtsey.)

NAPOLEON (snatching it up again). Will you take the letters and begone
(advancing and thrusting them upon her)?

LADY (escaping round the table). No: I don't want letters.

NAPOLEON. Ten minutes ago, nothing else would satisfy you.

LADY (keeping the table carefully between them). Ten minutes ago you
had not insulted me past all bearing.

NAPOLEON. I-- (swallowing his spleen) I apologize.

LADY (coolly). Thanks. (With forced politeness he offers her the packet
across the table. She retreats a step out of its reach and says) But
don't you want to know whether the Austrians are at Mantua or Peschiera?

NAPOLEON. I have already told you that I can conquer my enemies without
the aid of spies, madame.

LADY. And the letter! don't you want to read that?

NAPOLEON. You have said that it is not addressed to me. I am not in the
habit of reading other people's letters. (He again offers the packet.)

LADY. In that case there can be no objection to your keeping it. All I
wanted was to prevent your reading it. (Cheerfully.) Good afternoon,
General. (She turns coolly  towards the inner door.)

NAPOLEON (furiously flinging the packet on the couch). Heaven grant me
patience! (He goes up determinedly and places himself before the door.)
Have you any sense of personal danger? Or are you one of those women
who like to be beaten black and blue?

LADY. Thank you, General: I have no doubt the sensation is very
voluptuous; but I had rather not. I simply want to go home: that's all.
I was wicked enough to steal your despatches; but you have got them
back; and you have forgiven me, because (delicately reproducing his
rhetorical cadence) you are as generous to the vanquished after the
battle as you are resolute in the face of the enemy before it. Won't
you say good-bye to me? (She offers her hand sweetly.)

NAPOLEON (repulsing the advance with a gesture of concentrated rage,
and opening the door to call fiercely). Giuseppe! (Louder.) Giuseppe!
(He bangs the door to, and comes to the middle of the room. The lady
goes a little way into the vineyard to avoid him.)

GIUSEPPE (appearing at the door). Excellency?

NAPOLEON. Where is that fool?

GIUSEPPE. He has had a good dinner, according to your instructions,
excellency, and is now doing me the honor to gamble with me to pass the
time.

NAPOLEON. Send him here. Bring him here. Come with him. (Giuseppe, with
unruffled readiness, hurries off. Napoleon turns curtly to the lady,
saying) I must trouble you to remain some moments longer, madame. (He
comes to the couch. She comes from the vineyard down the opposite side
of the room to the sideboard, and posts herself there, leaning against
it, watching him. He takes the packet from the couch and deliberately
buttons it carefully into his breast pocket, looking at her meanwhile
with an expression which suggests that she will soon find out the
meaning of his proceedings, and will not like it. Nothing more is said
until the lieutenant arrives followed by Giuseppe, who stands modestly
in attendance at the table. The lieutenant, without cap, sword or
gloves, and much improved in temper and spirits by his meal, chooses
the Lady's side of the room, and waits, much at his ease, for Napoleon
to begin.)

NAPOLEON. Lieutenant.

LIEUTENANT (encouragingly). General.

NAPOLEON. I cannot persuade this lady to give me much information; but
there can be no doubt that the man who tricked you out of your charge
was, as she admitted to you, her brother.

LIEUTENANT (triumphantly). What did I tell you, General! What did I
tell you!

NAPOLEON. You must find that man. Your honor is at stake; and the fate
of the campaign, the destiny of France, of Europe, of humanity,
perhaps, may depend on the information those despatches contain.

LIEUTENANT. Yes, I suppose they really are rather serious (as if this
had hardly occurred to him before).

NAPOLEON (energetically). They are so serious, sir, that if you do not
recover them, you will be degraded in the presence of your regiment.

LIEUTENANT. Whew! The regiment won't like that, I can tell you.

NAPOLEON. Personally, I am sorry for you. I would willingly conceal the
affair if it were possible. But I shall be called to account for not
acting on the despatches. I shall have to prove to all the world that I
never received them, no matter what the consequences may be to you. I
am sorry; but you see that I cannot help myself.

LIEUTENANT (goodnaturedly). Oh, don't take it to heart, General: it's
really very good of you. Never mind what happens to me: I shall scrape
through somehow; and we'll beat the Austrians for you, despatches or no
despatches. I hope you won't insist on my starting off on a wild goose
chase after the fellow now. I haven't a notion where to look for him.

GIUSEPPE (deferentially). You forget, Lieutenant: he has your horse.

LIEUTENANT (starting). I forgot that. (Resolutely.) I'll go after him,
General: I'll find that horse if it's alive anywhere in Italy. And I
shan't forget the despatches: never fear. Giuseppe: go and saddle one
of those mangy old posthorses of yours, while I get my cap and sword
and things. Quick march. Off with you (bustling him).

GIUSEPPE. Instantly, Lieutenant, instantly. (He disappears in the
vineyard, where the light is now reddening with the sunset.)

LIEUTENANT (looking about him on his way to the inner door). By the
way, General, did I give you my sword or did I not? Oh, I remember now.
(Fretfully.) It's all that nonsense about putting a man under arrest:
one never knows where to find-- (Talks himself out of the room.)

LADY (still at the sideboard). What does all this mean, General?

NAPOLEON. He will not find your brother.

LADY. Of course not. There's no such person.

NAPOLEON. The despatches will be irrecoverably lost.

LADY. Nonsense! They are inside your coat.

NAPOLEON. You will find it hard, I think, to prove that wild statement.
(The Lady starts. He adds, with clinching emphasis) Those papers are
lost.

LADY (anxiously, advancing to the corner of the table). And that
unfortunate young man's career will be sacrificed.

NAPOLEON. HIS career! The fellow is not worth the gunpowder it would
cost to have him shot. (He turns contemptuously and goes to the hearth,
where he stands with his back to her.)

LADY (wistfully). You are very hard. Men and women are nothing to you
but things to be used, even if they are broken in the use.

NAPOLEON (turning on her). Which of us has broken this fellow--I or
you? Who tricked him out of the despatches? Did you think of his career
then?

LADY (naively concerned about him). Oh, I never thought of that. It was
brutal of me; but I couldn't help it, could I? How else could I have
got the papers? (Supplicating.) General: you will save him from
disgrace.

NAPOLEON (laughing sourly). Save him yourself, since you are so clever:
it was you who ruined him. (With savage intensity.) I HATE a bad
soldier.

He goes out determinedly through the vineyard. She follows him a few
steps with an appealing gesture, but is interrupted by the return of
the lieutenant, gloved and capped, with his sword on, ready for the
road. He is crossing to the outer door when she intercepts him.

LADY. Lieutenant.

LIEUTENANT (importantly). You mustn't delay me, you know. Duty, madame,
duty.

LADY (imploringly). Oh, sir, what are you going to do to my poor
brother?

LIEUTENANT. Are you very fond of him?

LADY. I should die if anything happened to him. You must spare him.
(The lieutenant shakes his head gloomily.) Yes, yes: you must: you
shall: he is not fit to die. Listen to me. If I tell you where to find
him--if I undertake to place him in your hands a prisoner, to be
delivered up by you to General Bonaparte--will you promise me on your
honor as an officer and a gentleman not to fight with him or treat him
unkindly in any way?

LIEUTENANT. But suppose he attacks me. He has my pistols.

LADY. He is too great a coward.

LIEUTENANT. I don't feel so sure about that. He's capable of anything.

LADY. If he attacks you, or resists you in any way, I release you from
your promise.

LIEUTENANT. My promise! I didn't mean to promise. Look here: you're as
bad as he is: you've taken an advantage of me through the better side
of my nature. What about my horse?

LADY. It is part of the bargain that you are to have your horse and
pistols back.

LIEUTENANT. Honor bright?

LADY. Honor bright. (She offers her hand.)

LIEUTENANT (taking it and holding it). All right: I'll be as gentle as
a lamb with him. His sister's a very pretty woman. (He attempts to kiss
her.)

LADY (slipping away from him). Oh, Lieutenant! You forget: your career
is at stake--the destiny of Europe--of humanity.

LIEUTENANT. Oh, bother the destiny of humanity (Making for her.) Only a
kiss.

LADY (retreating round the table). Not until you have regained your
honor as an officer. Remember: you have not captured my brother yet.

LIEUTENANT (seductively). You'll tell me where he is, won't you?

LADY. I have only to send him a certain signal; and he will be here in
quarter of an hour.

LIEUTENANT. He's not far off, then.

LADY. No: quite close. Wait here for him: when he gets my message he
will come here at once and surrender himself to you. You understand?

LIEUTENANT (intellectually overtaxed). Well, it's a little complicated;
but I daresay it will be all right.

LADY. And now, whilst you're waiting, don't you think you had better
make terms with the General?

LIEUTENANT. Oh, look here, this is getting frightfully complicated.
What terms?

LADY. Make him promise that if you catch my brother he will consider
that you have cleared your character as a soldier. He will promise
anything you ask on that condition.

LIEUTENANT. That's not a bad idea. Thank you: I think I'll try it.

LADY. Do. And mind, above all things, don't let him see how clever you
are.

LIEUTENANT. I understand. He'd be jealous.

LADY. Don't tell him anything except that you are resolved to capture
my brother or perish in the attempt. He won't believe you. Then you
will produce my brother--

LIEUTENANT (interrupting as he masters the plot). And have the laugh at
him! I say: what a clever little woman you are! (Shouting.) Giuseppe!

LADY. Sh! Not a word to Giuseppe about me. (She puts her finger on her
lips. He does the same. They look at one another warningly. Then, with
a ravishing smile, she changes the gesture into wafting him a kiss, and
runs out through the inner door. Electrified, he bursts into a volley
of chuckles. Giuseppe comes back by the outer door.)

GIUSEPPE. The horse is ready, Lieutenant.

LIEUTENANT. I'm not going just yet. Go and find the General, and tell
him I want to speak to him.

GIUSEPPE (shaking his head). That will never do, Lieutenant.

LIEUTENANT. Why not?

GIUSEPPE. In this wicked world a general may send for a lieutenant; but
a lieutenant must not send for a general.

LIEUTENANT. Oh, you think he wouldn't like it. Well, perhaps you're
right: one has to be awfully particular about that sort of thing now
we've got a republic.

Napoleon reappears, advancing from the vineyard, buttoning the breast
of his coat, pale and full of gnawing thoughts.

GIUSEPPE (unconscious of Napoleon's approach). Quite true, Lieutenant,
quite true. You are all like innkeepers now in France: you have to be
polite to everybody.

NAPOLEON (putting his hand on Giuseppe's shoulder). And that destroys
the whole value of politeness, eh?

LIEUTENANT. The very man I wanted! See here, General: suppose I catch
that fellow for you!

NAPOLEON (with ironical gravity). You will not catch him, my friend.

LIEUTENANT. Aha! you think so; but you'll see. Just wait. Only, if I do
catch him and hand him over to you, will you cry quits? Will you drop
all this about degrading me in the presence of my regiment? Not that I
mind, you know; but still no regiment likes to have all the other
regiments laughing at it.

NAPOLEON. (a cold ray of humor striking pallidly across his gloom).
What shall we do with this officer, Giuseppe? Everything he says is
wrong.

GIUSEPPE (promptly). Make him a general, excellency; and then
everything he says will be right.

LIEUTENANT (crowing). Haw-aw! (He throws himself ecstatically on the
couch to enjoy the joke.)

NAPOLEON (laughing and pinching Giuseppe's ear). You are thrown away in
this inn, Giuseppe. (He sits down and places Giuseppe before him like a
schoolmaster with a pupil.) Shall I take you away with me and make a
man of you?

GIUSEPPE (shaking his head rapidly and repeatedly). No, thank you,
General. All my life long people have wanted to make a man of me. When
I was a boy, our good priest wanted to make a man of me by teaching me
to read and write. Then the organist at Melegnano wanted to make a man
of me by teaching me to read music. The recruiting sergeant would have
made a man of me if I had been a few inches taller. But it always meant
making me work; and I am too lazy for that, thank Heaven! So I taught
myself to cook and became an innkeeper; and now I keep servants to do
the work, and have nothing to do myself except talk, which suits me
perfectly.

NAPOLEON (looking at him thoughtfully). You are satisfied?

GIUSEPPE (with cheerful conviction). Quite, excellency.

NAPOLEON. And you have no devouring devil inside you who must be fed
with action and victory--gorged with them night and day--who makes you
pay, with the sweat of your brain and body, weeks of Herculean toil for
ten minutes of enjoyment--who is at once your slave and your tyrant,
your genius and your doom--who brings you a crown in one hand and the
oar of a galley slave in the other--who shows you all the kingdoms of
the earth and offers to make you their master on condition that you
become their servant!--have you nothing of that in you?

GIUSEPPE. Nothing of it! Oh, I assure you, excellency, MY devouring
devil is far worse than that. He offers me no crowns and kingdoms: he
expects to get everything for nothing--sausages, omelettes, grapes,
cheese, polenta, wine--three times a day, excellency: nothing less will
content him.

LIEUTENANT. Come, drop it, Giuseppe: you're making me feel hungry again.

(Giuseppe, with an apologetic shrug, retires from the conversation, and
busies himself at the table, dusting it, setting the map straight, and
replacing Napoleon's chair, which the lady has pushed back.)

NAPOLEON (turning to the lieutenant with sardonic ceremony). I hope _I_
have not been making you feel ambitious.

LIEUTENANT. Not at all: I don't fly so high. Besides: I'm better as I
am: men like me are wanted in the army just now. The fact is, the
Revolution was all very well for civilians; but it won't work in the
army. You know what soldiers are, General: they WILL have men of family
for their officers. A subaltern must be a gentleman, because he's so
much in contact with the men. But a general, or even a colonel, may be
any sort of riff-raff if he understands the shop well enough. A
lieutenant is a gentleman: all the rest is chance. Why, who do you
suppose won the battle of Lodi? I'll tell you. My horse did.

NAPOLEON (rising) Your folly is carrying you too far, sir. Take care.

LIEUTENANT. Not a bit of it. You remember all that red-hot cannonade
across the river: the Austrians blazing away at you to keep you from
crossing, and you blazing away at them to keep them from setting the
bridge on fire? Did you notice where I was then?

NAPOLEON (with menacing politeness). I am sorry. I am afraid I was
rather occupied at the moment.

GIUSEPPE (with eager admiration). They say you jumped off your horse
and worked the big guns with your own hands, General.

LIEUTENANT. That was a mistake: an officer should never let himself
down to the level of his men. (Napoleon looks at him dangerously, and
begins to walk tigerishly to and fro.) But you might have been firing
away at the Austrians still, if we cavalry fellows hadn't found the
ford and got across and turned old Beaulieu's flank for you. You know
you daren't have given the order to charge the bridge if you hadn't
seen us on the other side. Consequently, I say that whoever found that
ford won the battle of Lodi. Well, who found it? I was the first man to
cross: and I know. It was my horse that found it. (With conviction, as
he rises from the couch.) That horse is the true conqueror of the
Austrians.

NAPOLEON (passionately). You idiot: I'll have you shot for losing those
despatches: I'll have you blown from the mouth of a cannon: nothing
less could make any impression on you. (Baying at him.) Do you hear? Do
you understand?

A French officer enters unobserved, carrying his sheathed sabre in his
hand.

LIEUTENANT (unabashed). IF I don't capture him, General. Remember the
if.

NAPOLEON. If! If!! Ass: there is no such man.

THE OFFICER (suddenly stepping between them and speaking in the
unmistakable voice of the Strange Lady). Lieutenant: I am your
prisoner. (She offers him her sabre. They are amazed. Napoleon gazes at
her for a moment thunderstruck; then seizes her by the wrist and drags
her roughly to him, looking closely and fiercely at her to satisfy
himself as to her identity; for it now begins to darken rapidly into
night, the red glow over the vineyard giving way to clear starlight.)

NAPOLEON. Pah! (He flings her hand away with an exclamation of disgust,
and turns his back on her with his hand in his breast and his brow
lowering.)

LIEUTENANT (triumphantly, taking the sabre). No such man: eh, General?
(To the Lady.) I say: where's my horse?

LADY. Safe at Borghetto, waiting for you, Lieutenant.

NAPOLEON (turning on them). Where are the despatches?

LADY. You would never guess. They are in the most unlikely place in the
world. Did you meet my sister here, any of you?

LIEUTENANT. Yes. Very nice woman. She's wonderfully like you; but of
course she's better looking.

LADY (mysteriously). Well, do you know that she is a witch?

GIUSEPPE (running down to them in terror, crossing himself). Oh, no,
no, no. It is not safe to jest about such things. I cannot have it in
my house, excellency.

LIEUTENANT. Yes, drop it. You're my prisoner, you know. Of course I
don't believe in any such rubbish; but still it's not a proper subject
for joking.

LADY. But this is very serious. My sister has bewitched the General.
(Giuseppe and the Lieutenant recoil from Napoleon.) General: open your
coat: you will find the despatches in the breast of it. (She puts her
hand quickly on his breast.) Yes: there they are: I can feel them. Eh?
(She looks up into his face half coaxingly, half mockingly.) Will you
allow me, General? (She takes a button as if to unbutton his coat, and
pauses for permission.)

NAPOLEON (inscrutably). If you dare.

LADY. Thank you. (She opens his coat and takes out the despatches.)
There! (To Giuseppe, showing him the despatches.) See!

GIUSEPPE (flying to the outer door). No, in heaven's name! They're
bewitched.

LADY (turning to the Lieutenant). Here, Lieutenant: YOU'RE not afraid
of them.

LIEUTENANT (retreating). Keep off. (Seizing the hilt of the sabre.)
Keep off, I tell you.

LADY (to Napoleon). They belong to you, General. Take them.

GIUSEPPE. Don't touch them, excellency. Have nothing to do with them.

LIEUTENANT. Be careful, General: be careful.

GIUSEPPE. Burn them. And burn the witch, too.

LADY (to Napoleon). Shall I burn them?

NAPOLEON (thoughtfully). Yes, burn them. Giuseppe: go and fetch a light.

GIUSEPPE (trembling and stammering). Do you mean go alone--in the
dark--with a witch in the house?

NAPOLEON. Psha! You're a poltroon. (To the Lieutenant.) Oblige me by
going, Lieutenant.

LIEUTENANT (remonstrating). Oh, I say, General! No, look here, you
know: nobody can say I'm a coward after Lodi. But to ask me to go into
the dark by myself without a candle after such an awful conversation is
a little too much. How would you like to do it yourself?

NAPOLEON (irritably). You refuse to obey my order?

LIEUTENANT (resolutely). Yes, I do. It's not reasonable. But I'll tell
you what I'll do. If Giuseppe goes, I'll go with him and protect him.

NAPOLEON (to Giuseppe). There! will that satisfy you? Be off, both of
you.

GIUSEPPE (humbly, his lips trembling). W--willingly, your excellency.
(He goes reluctantly towards the inner door.) Heaven protect me! (To
the lieutenant.) After you, Lieutenant.

LIEUTENANT. You'd better go first: I don't know the way.

GIUSEPPE. You can't miss it. Besides (imploringly, laying his hand on
his sleeve), I am only a poor innkeeper; and you are a man of family.

LIEUTENANT. There's something in that. Here: you needn't be in such a
fright. Take my arm. (Giuseppe does so.) That's the way.(They go out,
arm in arm. It is now starry night. The lady throws the packet on the
table and seats herself at her ease on the couch enjoying the sensation
of freedom from petticoats.)

LADY. Well, General: I've beaten you.

NAPOLEON (walking about). You have been guilty of indelicacy--of
unwomanliness. Do you consider that costume a proper one to wear?

LADY. It seems to me much the same as yours.

NAPOLEON. Psha! I blush for you.

LADY (naively). Yes: soldiers blush so easily! (He growls and turns
away. She looks mischievously at him, balancing the despatches in her
hand.) Wouldn't you like to read these before they're burnt, General?
You must be dying with curiosity. Take a peep. (She throws the packet
on the table, and turns her face away from it.) I won't look.

NAPOLEON. I have no curiosity whatever, madame. But since you are
evidently burning to read them, I give you leave to do so.

LADY. Oh, I've read them already.

NAPOLEON (starting). What!

LADY. I read them the first thing after I rode away on that poor
lieutenant's horse. So you see I know what's in them; and you don't.

NAPOLEON. Excuse me: I read them there in the vineyard ten minutes ago.

LADY. Oh! (Jumping up.) Oh, General I've not beaten you. I do admire
you so. (He laughs and pats her cheek.) This time really and truly
without shamming, I do you homage (kissing his hand).

NAPOLEON (quickly withdrawing it). Brr! Don't do that. No more
witchcraft.

LADY. I want to say something to you--only you would misunderstand it.

NAPOLEON. Need that stop you?

LADY. Well, it is this. I adore a man who is not afraid to be mean and
selfish.

NAPOLEON (indignantly). I am neither mean nor selfish.

LADY. Oh, you don't appreciate yourself. Besides, I don't really mean
meanness and selfishness.

NAPOLEON. Thank you. I thought perhaps you did.

LADY. Well, of course I do. But what I mean is a certain strong
simplicity about you.

NAPOLEON. That's better.

LADY. You didn't want to read the letters; but you were curious about
what was in them. So you went into the garden and read them when no one
was looking, and then came back and pretended you hadn't. That's the
meanest thing I ever knew any man do; but it exactly fulfilled your
purpose; and so you weren't a bit afraid or ashamed to do it.

NAPOLEON (abruptly). Where did you pick up all these vulgar
scruples--this (with contemptuous emphasis) conscience of yours? I took
you for a lady--an aristocrat. Was your grandfather a shopkeeper, pray?

LADY. No: he was an Englishman.

NAPOLEON. That accounts for it. The English are a nation of
shopkeepers. Now I understand why you've beaten me.

LADY. Oh, I haven't beaten you. And I'm not English.

NAPOLEON. Yes, you are--English to the backbone. Listen to me: I will
explain the English to you.

LADY (eagerly). Do. (With a lively air of anticipating an intellectual
treat, she sits down on the couch and composes herself to listen to
him. Secure of his audience, he at once nerves himself for a
performance. He considers a little before he begins; so as to fix her
attention by a moment of suspense. His style is at first modelled on
Talma's in Corneille's "Cinna;" but it is somewhat lost in the
darkness, and Talma presently gives way to Napoleon, the voice coming
through the gloom with startling intensity.)

NAPOLEON. There are three sorts of people in the world, the low people,
the middle people, and the high people. The low people and the high
people are alike in one thing: they have no scruples, no morality. The
low are beneath morality, the high above it. I am not afraid of either
of them: for the low are unscrupulous without knowledge, so that they
make an idol of me; whilst the high are unscrupulous without purpose,
so that they go down before my will. Look you: I shall go over all the
mobs and all the courts of Europe as a plough goes over a field. It is
the middle people who are dangerous: they have both knowledge and
purpose. But they, too, have their weak point. They are full of
scruples--chained hand and foot by their morality and respectability.

LADY. Then you will beat the English; for all shopkeepers are middle
people.

NAPOLEON. No, because the English are a race apart. No Englishman is
too low to have scruples: no Englishman is high enough to be free from
their tyranny. But every Englishman is born with a certain miraculous
power that makes him master of the world. When he wants a thing, he
never tells himself that he wants it. He waits patiently until there
comes into his mind, no one knows how, a burning conviction that it is
his moral and religious duty to conquer those who have got the thing he
wants. Then he becomes irresistible. Like the aristocrat, he does what
pleases him and grabs what he wants: like the shopkeeper, he pursues
his purpose with the industry and steadfastness that come from strong
religious conviction and deep sense of moral responsibility. He is
never at a loss for an effective moral attitude. As the great champion
of freedom and national independence, he conquers and annexes half the
world, and calls it Colonization. When he wants a new market for his
adulterated Manchester goods, he sends a missionary to teach the
natives the gospel of peace. The natives kill the missionary: he flies
to arms in defence of Christianity; fights for it; conquers for it; and
takes the market as a reward from heaven. In defence of his island
shores, he puts a chaplain on board his ship; nails a flag with a cross
on it to his top-gallant mast; and sails to the ends of the earth,
sinking, burning and destroying all who dispute the empire of the seas
with him. He boasts that a slave is free the moment his foot touches
British soil; and he sells the children of his poor at six years of age
to work under the lash in his factories for sixteen hours a day. He
makes two revolutions, and then declares war on our one in the name of
law and order. There is nothing so bad or so good that you will not
find Englishmen doing it; but you will never find an Englishman in the
wrong. He does everything on principle. He fights you on patriotic
principles; he robs you on business principles; he enslaves you on
imperial principles; he bullies you on manly principles; he supports
his king on loyal principles, and cuts off his king's head on
republican principles. His watchword is always duty; and he never
forgets that the nation which lets its duty get on the opposite side to
its interest is lost. He--

LADY. W-w-w-w-w-wh! Do stop a moment. I want to know how you make me
out to be English at this rate.

NAPOLEON (dropping his rhetorical style). It's plain enough. You wanted
some letters that belonged to me. You have spent the morning in
stealing them--yes, stealing them, by highway robbery. And you have
spent the afternoon in putting me in the wrong about them--in assuming
that it was I who wanted to steal YOUR letters--in explaining that it
all came about through my meanness and selfishness, and your goodness,
your devotion, your self-sacrifice. That's English.

LADY. Nonsense. I am sure I am not a bit English. The English are a
very stupid people.

NAPOLEON. Yes, too stupid sometimes to know when they're beaten. But I
grant that your brains are not English. You see, though your
grandfather was an Englishman, your grandmother was--what? A
Frenchwoman?

LADY. Oh, no. An Irishwoman.

NAPOLEON (quickly). Irish! (Thoughtfully.) Yes: I forgot the Irish. An
English army led by an Irish general: that might be a match for a
French army led by an Italian general. (He pauses, and adds, half
jestingly, half moodily) At all events, YOU have beaten me; and what
beats a man first will beat him last. (He goes meditatively into the
moonlit vineyard and looks up. She steals out after him. She ventures
to rest her hand on his shoulder, overcome by the beauty of the night
and emboldened by its obscurity.)

LADY (softly). What are you looking at?

NAPOLEON (pointing up). My star.

LADY. You believe in that?

NAPOLEON. I do. (They look at it for a moment, she leaning a little on
his shoulder.)

LADY. Do you know that the English say that a man's star is not
complete without a woman's garter?

NAPOLEON (scandalized--abruptly shaking her off and coming back into
the room). Pah! The hypocrites! If the French said that, how they would
hold up their hands in pious horror! (He goes to the inner door and
holds it open, shouting) Hallo! Giuseppe. Where's that light, man. (He
comes between the table and the sideboard, and moves the chair to the
table, beside his own.) We have still to burn the letter. (He takes up
the packet. Giuseppe comes back, pale and still trembling, carrying a
branched candlestick with a couple of candles alight, in one hand, and
a broad snuffers tray in the other.)

GIUSEPPE (piteously, as he places the light on the table). Excellency:
what were you looking up at just now--out there? (He points across his
shoulder to the vineyard, but is afraid to look round.)

NAPOLEON (unfolding the packet). What is that to you?

GIUSEPPE (stammering). Because the witch is gone--vanished; and no one
saw her go out.

LADY (coming behind him from the vineyard). We were watching her riding
up to the moon on your broomstick, Giuseppe. You will never see her
again.

GIUSEPPE. Gesu Maria! (He crosses himself and hurries out.)

NAPOLEON (throwing down the letters in a heap on the table). Now. (He
sits down at the table in the chair which he has just placed.)

LADY. Yes; but you know you have THE letter in your pocket. (He smiles;
takes a letter from his pocket; and tosses it on the top of the heap.
She holds it up and looks at him, saying) About Caesar's wife.

NAPOLEON. Caesar's wife is above suspicion. Burn it.

LADY (taking up the snuffers and holding the letter to the candle flame
with it). I wonder would Caesar's wife be above suspicion if she saw us
here together!

NAPOLEON (echoing her, with his elbows on the table and his cheeks on
his hands, looking at the letter). I wonder! (The Strange Lady puts the
letter down alight on the snuffers tray, and sits down beside Napoleon,
in the same attitude, elbows on table, cheeks on hands, watching it
burn. When it is burnt, they simultaneously turn their eyes and look at
one another. The curtain steals down and hides them.)










End of Project Gutenberg's The Man of Destiny, by George Bernard Shaw

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