Free Napoleon's Exile by Patrick Rambaud

leaving trails of dung behind them. They reached the Palais-Royal at nightfall just as lamps and windows were being lit around the gardens. There was a party at the Savoy Café, the royalist hideout where the Imperial police had never officially shown their faces. Beneath the wooden arcades the prostitutes strolled once more, luring the soldiers with a swing of the shoulder and a flash of the eye. Under striped awnings, wine was being served up from the barrel. Smoke from the roast-meat stalls stinging their eyes, Octave and the Marquis progressed through greasy fog that stuck to their clothes, past shops where pretty girls, dressed as sellers of knick-knacks, tried to persuade the passers-by to come inside, behind the screens, and entered a restaurant filled with braying officers in green frock-coats. The porter greeted La Grange, pointing towards the stairs.
    Reaching the first floor, they found General Sacken, with his powdered wig and a strip of leather over one eye, his collar open, sitting at table with his entourage. The drawing-room was decorated in the oriental style; multiplied in the mirrors along all four walls, and engulfed by incense smoke that rose from braziers, the soldiers stabbed forks into the dishes before them, greedily tearing at their partridge casserole, stuffing their gullets with cucumbers and bone-marrow or sautéed white beet with ham - all of which, amid laughter and bellowed exchanges, was amply washed down with thick wines that burned the stomach. Some of the men, drunk already, staggered to the wide-open windows, guffawing between belches, and threw gold coins to the citizens assembled beneath the trees. Coloured lanterns, hanging from the branches, lit the beggars in a red light, making them look like a swarm of devils, as they elbowed each other out of the way, fought one another and held out their hats to collect the money raining down on them.
    Sacken’s chin glistened with sauce, and his eye was cloudy. Waving a drumstick he had been chewing on, he gestured to the colonels on either side of him to give up their seats to the new arrivals: ‘Sit down, Monsieur, and you too, Deputy,’ he said to Octave and the Marquis. ‘Are you hungry?’
    â€˜We just need your support,’ La Grange replied as he took his seat.
    â€˜A drink for my guests!’
    A servant turbaned like a pantomime Bedouin immediately charged the glasses.
    â€˜What can I do for you?’
    â€˜Place your signature at the bottom of this pass. We’re sending your comrade to join our provincial partisans.’
    â€˜Semanow!’
    The General’s orderly, who had been sitting behind him, stood up with a click of his heels, his chest thrown out to emphasize the garland of the yellow aiguilette on his blue double-breasted spencer. The General requested some writing materials, and as the man disappeared, his master read what Sémallé had written. When Semanow returned with a pen, an inkpot and some dusting powder, Sacken signed.
    â€˜There you are, Monsieur Chauvin,’ he said, holding out the document to Octave.
    â€˜General?’
    â€˜Your name is Chauvin, isn’t it?’
    â€˜Yes, yes, of course,’ said La Grange. ‘And now, about leaving Paris...’
    â€˜Semanow!’
    After a brief exchange in Russian, the General told his guests, ‘Semanow will come and lead you out of the tollgates.’
    The Marquis got to his feet with a word of thanks, and rested one hand on Octave’s shoulder as he put down his glass. ‘Good luck. I’d got used to you.’
    â€˜Me too,’ said Octave.
    â€˜Aren’t you staying, Marquis?’
    â€˜No, General, I am going off to earn my post as Deputy Governor. I have a thousand things to do tonight.’
    Then Octave found himself in the midst of the partygoers. To beguile the time he accepted a plate of fried goujons. Suddenly the ceiling slid open, and a gilded chariot descended majestically