Jean d'Ormesson: The Conversation

BONAPARTE

Of course, of course.

CAMBACÉRÈS

Don’t let yourself get caught up in them.

BONAPARTE

My heart is no less soft than that of other men. I am generous with my family. But I also respond to their demands and pleas by means of the Eternal Me. Make no mistake. I know perfectly well that I have a destiny, and I will not let myself be distracted from it by squabbles and whining.

CAMBACÉRÈS

Thank heaven for that. That is the leader the Republic needs.

BONAPARTE

I will tell you something I have told no one else. I have never had a master plan for my life. I have always been governed by circumstances. But I have always taken advantage of these circumstances and been their master. Nothing has happened that I did not foresee and seek out, and therefore I am the only one not to be surprised by what I have accomplished. I can even foresee the future and will get to where I plan to go. When my political wagon has begun to move nothing will stop it, and woe to him who falls under its wheels.

CAMBACÉRÈS

And this wagon, which is also the wagon of the French Republic, where is it headed?

BONAPARTE

It’s about that that I wanted to speak with you, my dear colleague. For the first time in ages, power in France is being wielded by a man who understands the country’s needs and who matches what the people want: order, glory, peace, respect for religion, the national good. I am that man. Anyone can see what I have accomplished in Italy, in the East, in France. Do you believe that all this is purely for the glory of gossips and lawyers? Death means nothing. Living without glory means dying each and every day. I am telling you, Cambacérès, I can no longer simply obey. I have tasted command and cannot now give it up.

CAMBACÉRÈS

Three-and-a-half million Frenchman against eight thousand three hundred have chosen to make you Consul for Life, with the right to freely choose your successor. In the Vendée — the Vendée! Counter-Revolutionary capital of France — there were six no’s and seventeen thousand yes’s. All power now resides with you. What more can you hope for?

BONAPARTE

I have not forgotten the role you played in the passage of the vote to make me Consul for Life, and I am grateful to you. You are an invaluable man. Still, what would happen if I disappeared? That is the question.

CAMBACÉRÈS

Why would you disappear? You are thirty-four years old.

BONAPARTE

Yes, of course. The bullet that will kill me has not yet been forged. But there have already been several attempts on my life. There will be others, perpetrated either by the Jacobins or the Royalists. It is rumored that the Count d’Artois maintains sixty assassins in Paris. Enghien is plotting in Baden. And the madmen of the Terror have not been disarmed. In the eyes of many, on either side, I am a kind of dog and whoever gets to me first can bludgeon me with impunity. Three years ago, on Christmas evening, on Rue Saint-Nicaise, just a few steps from your home, I was nearly killed. Had I been killed it would have taken guts to restore order and pick up the reins of power, and you’re a little wobbly in the stirrups. I like you a great deal, Cambacérès, but you know as well as I that everything rides on me. I founded a new era and now I must make it stick. Dramatic change means nothing unless it lasts. Do you not think that we should rise above a regime in which I am only the first magistrate of a republic that is still vulnerable and threatened?

CAMBACÉRÈS

I knew from the beginning of this conversation that behind it was the end of the Republic. Like you, I’ve seen for some time, and with justification, that things are tending toward that.

BONAPARTE

I never doubted it, my dear friend. You are a man of discernment.

CAMBACÉRÈS

The key is to know when the pear is ripe. If it is, you must not hesitate to pick it. The only question I would ask is this: do you think that the French are still attached to the idea of a republic, at least in name?

BONAPARTE

I know the French and their flightiness, the ease with which they can change their minds. The Republic is a chimera with which they are infatuated, but the infatuation will pass, just as others have. I am persuaded that in the country’s heart lies the willingness for a return to the ways of monarchy.

CAMBACÉRÈS

The word still strikes fear.

BONAPARTE

My dear colleague, it would not be reestablished for the benefit of the Bourbons.

CAMBACÉRÈS

Heaven preserve us from a return of the Bourbons, with all of their prejudices, favorites, and their priests. They would immediately make themselves as hated as before.

BONAPARTE

Yet they dream of nothing but returning to their throne. The pretender who sometimes call himself the Count of Lille and sometimes Louis the Eighteenth sent me a letter, begging me to save the French from themselves and returning to them their king, such that future nations would bless my memory.

CAMBACÉRÈS

As if you needed to restore the Bourbon yoke to be celebrated by those who will come after you!

BONAPARTE

My response to him consisted of five lines, essentially informing him that he should not dream of returning to this country. He would first have to walk across a hundred-thousand dead bodies. I will never play the role of Monk. I do not want to play it and I do not want others to play it. None of us has any interest in seeing the Bourbons return.

CAMBACÉRÈS

You especially, Citizen First Consul.

BONAPARTE

Nor you, Citizen Second Consul. You should even be more afraid than me at the thought of their restoration. As I remember you voted in favor of the death of the king.

CAMBACÉRÈS

With reservations. With reservations!

BONAPARTE

Your reservations won’t count for much in their eyes. My poor Cambacérès, I’m afraid it’s abundantly clear that should the Bourbons ever return, it would be the end of you. There would be nothing I could do about it.

CAMBACÉRÈS

Then may they stay where they are! To rid them of any hope of a return — and, since you put it that way, to give me some sense of peace — I am ready to help in the establishment of any royal line other than theirs.

BONAPARTE

I’m going to surprise you, Cambacérès, but I do not want a royalty that the last Bourbons had shrunk to such an extent that now it matches their size. The other day, one of a throng of courtesans addressed me in language designed for a king. I informed him that I was First Consul of the Republic, and that using or acceding to feudal forms of address was a crime.

CAMBACÉRÈS

But if you do not want to be king, what will become of us?

BONAPARTE

I understand you, Cambacérès. No longer is it a matter of saving principles but of saving people. The era of opinions has been replaced by that of interests. You can be sure that I am perfectly able to defend both people and interests.

CAMBACÉRÈS

You have already proved as much.

BONAPARTE

I will prove it again. Nevertheless I will never be content merely to substitute one elite for another. After the monarchic heredity and Jacobin egalitarian leveling, I have found a third way — that of merit. “To each according to his birth and his rank” and “Equality or death” will be replaced by “To each according to his talents.” I don’t repent the Revolution, but I always detested its crimes. I want to complete the Revolution in both senses of the word — both to fulfill it and to bring it to a conclusion.