Jean d'Ormesson - The Conversation

CAMBACÉRÈS

You have a response for everything. You are not like other men. In ancient days, like Alexander, you would have been a half-god, a son of the king of the gods.

BONAPARTE

I admit that I have done well, and made my way handsomely. My approach is nonetheless quite simple: I stay ahead of events, I immerse myself in the details, and I leave nothing in the shadows. You are sometimes mistaken, Cambacérès, and you lack audacity. But you are also loyal and uncomplicated. While I am with my soldiers on a campaign, you will manage the affairs of state. You will gather the ministers, you will preside over the Senate and the State Council, where you will display your greater talent and your deeper logic, and you will prove worthy of my confidence.

CAMBACÉRÈS

I hope I have been worthy of it until this moment. Time is short. We will have to come up with a coat of arms for the empire and the imperial family. Would you take up the escutcheon of your fathers, a golden rake on azure with three fleur-de-lys?

BONAPARTE

No, no fleur-de-lys. It is an emblem of a banished House and as hated as the white flag. You do not know the power of men’s memories. Unfurl a white flag with a fleur-de-lys, and half of France will think it means the return of Louis the Eighteenth, to whom today no one gives any thought. I am not the son of Louis the Sixteenth, or even of Louis the Fourteenth. I am starting a new dynasty, a new empire, and it will not be that of Hugues Capet. Instead it will come from me and from antiquity. The things, the words, and the images shall be different. Fleur-de-lys and white flags belong to the Bourbons. I will retain the three colors with which we ran them out. Nothing must separate me from France. We must be exactly the same thing.

CAMBACÉRÈS

Would you choose the traditional Gallic rooster? You could set it on a tricolor flag.

BONAPARTE

The rooster is reminiscent of the barnyard and not noble enough to incarnate a great nation. What is required a more powerful beast — an elephant, for example, or a lion crouched upon a map of France, one paw extended along the Rhine with the motto: “He who seeks me, beware!”

CAMBACÉRÈS

Isn’t the Rhine too limiting for France’s ambitions?

BONAPARTE

You are right. We need not put boundaries on either our dreams or our courage. Let us find something better.

CAMBACÉRÈS

What would you say to golden bees? They can be found on Chilperic’s tombstone.

BONAPARTE

Bees are a good idea. They could figure on wallhangings, carpets, on mantles. But I am an emperor and I trace myself back to the Caesars, so I must have their symbols. I choose the eagle, its wings outspread, bearing lightning in its claws. It will be gold and set upon a field of the noblest color.

CAMBACÉRÈS

On a field of red?

BONAPARTE

A field of blue. My livery shall be green, because the Bourbons used blue livery and the heavens are for everyone. The imperial eagle shall be set upon an azure field, the image of the sky in which he rules. The eagle shall be my emblem, and it will be indistinguishable from me. My coronation will take place beneath its sign.

CAMBACÉRÈS

And so shall Rheims be returned to its ancient splendor.

BONAPARTE

If I may ask, why that city before any other?

CAMBACÉRÈS

But general, tradition. . An emperor needs to be anointed. Your coronation could only take place at. .

BONAPARTE

My coronation will not take place in Rheims. One could easily choose the cathedral at Aix-laChappelle or Saint Peter’s in Rome to announce to the world that I am succeeding Charlemagne. Still, I have no need of going that far. As the founder of a new empire, I would prefer my coronation to take place in my own capital, and in the ancient and noble cathedral of Notre Dame.

CAMBACÉRÈS

What a godsend this will be for Monsigneur de Belloy!

BONAPARTE

Yet another mistake, Cambacérès. I will not need the services of the Cardinal of Paris.

CAMBACÉRÈS

No need of the cardinal! So to whom will fall the honor of. .

BONAPARTE

It would not be inappropriate for a pope to crown an emperor.

CAMBACÉRÈS

Ah, then you’ll go to Rome?

BONAPARTE

Rome will come to Paris.

CAMBACÉRÈS

Pious the Seventh in Paris? That’s impossible. Recall Cardinal Caprara’s cross.

BONAPARTE

Impossible, yes, and yet it will happen. The “impossible” is not French. The pope will come to Paris to crown me. He will come and he will come willingly, because he knows that I could reduce him to Bishop of Rome, and instead I will treat him as if he had two-hundred-thousand men. I will immerse him in so many tokens of respect and honor that he will not hesitate to proclaim me God’s Elected. Woe to him who behaves inappropriately before the supreme pontiff.

CAMBACÉRÈS

Will the pope want to come?

BONAPARTE

Who could doubt it? We could make the entire College of Cardinals with him leading the way walk to the end of the earth if it pleased us.

CAMBACÉRÈS

By instilling fear?

BONAPARTE

By appealing to their interests. By dangling before them the riches of the world, which they sometimes seem to prefer over those of heaven. There will be much we can do for religion and the clergy: tracts of land and possessions of every kind restored to them, seats in the Senate, a minister dedicated to their needs, convents re-opened, altars restored, and, beyond that, honors, wealth, credit, and power. Maybe even something greater: my conversion, yours, that of Fouché, the Jacobins, my generals, and my soldiers. The Holy See is a vast, empty reservoir of money and ambition. Filling it would be very hard indeed.

CAMBACÉRÈS

And in exchange for this coronation, what will the pope get?

BONAPARTE

Hope.

CAMBACÉRÈS

I will say it again: you are the most extraordinary of all men, the most extraordinary since the arrival of the Messiah on earth.

BONAPARTE

Let us dispense with comparisons to God. I have enough doubts about myself. I sleep more than is rumored. I am a man like others.

CAMBACÉRÈS

Like others?

BONAPARTE

With a greater spirit, a more reliable memory, a larger capacity to work hard. Imagination rules the world, and it is my most treasured possession. I cannot see the future any more clearly than you or than any common mortal. I rely upon unceasing thought and memories that are both numerous and specific, and I prepare for it with a great deal of care. I always give myself up entirely to what I undertake. I take my ideas and projects by the neck, the rear, the feet, the head, and I do not stop until I have examined every last inch. Hence when I have finished considering a project in my head I think of it as already in motion. I am less moved by the moment of the realization of my designs than by their conception.

CAMBACÉRÈS

You are already emperor because you have resolved to be so. You have already been crowned by the pope, acclaimed by the French, feared and admired throughout Europe.

BONAPARTE

I will be, Cambacérès. Have no doubt of that. Things will go as I have planned them, event after event. Our conversation must remain a secret. Act as if it had never taken place. But everything will happen, point by point, just as I have decided.