Free The Retreat by Patrick Rambaud

signs.’ Today, therefore, the secretaries were waiting at their desks facing the wall, a position which made dictationharder for them because they couldn’t decipher difficult words by reading the Emperor’s lips. Hands behind his back, he was pacing up and down, mumbling, delivering streams of invective or grumbling. Napoleon wanted to send a message to the Tsar proposing peace; the secretaries had been told this, to make it easier for them to improvise on the final draft. A letter had to be dashed off that was at once majestic, amicable and conciliatory – so much for the tone. But the content? They were still waiting when the major general entered the salon unannounced with some grenadiers of the Old Guard in long grey greatcoats, who were escorting a moustachioed man in a big bearskin coat.
    â€˜Berthier, you’re bothering me!’ said the Emperor.
    â€˜Sire, I beg you.’
    â€˜I’m listening,’ the Emperor sighed, dropping into a chair and jabbing at the armrest with a penknife.
    â€˜And looking, I trust – this is what we found on this bandit.’
    â€˜A muff? A cushion?’
    â€˜A powder hose, sire. This brute was trying to set the palace roof on fire.’
    The Emperor took the well-sewn canvas object thoughtfully; he slit it with his penknife the way one guts a fish, and black powder spilled onto the floor. The prisoner was laughing noiselessly.
    â€˜Are you convinced, sire?’
    â€˜That this Russian wanted to set this whole damn place on fire? Oh yes, Berthier, but why is he laughing, the devil?’
    â€˜Because “sire” in his language means “cheese”,’ explained Caulaincourt, who had joined the group with Marshal Lefebvre.
    â€˜Very amusing!’ Turning to Lefebvre, he asked, ‘Have you questioned him, Your Grace?’
    â€˜Ov corrrse.’
    â€˜Well?’
    â€˜He sit nawthing.’
    â€˜But under his bearskin,’ said the major general, ‘look, he’s wearing the blue jacket of a Cossack officer.’
    â€˜It is an isolated attempt.’
    â€˜No, sire, a premeditated crime.’
    â€˜A trap,’ added Caulaincourt.
    â€˜Yor orrrdrs?’ asked Lefebvre.
    â€˜My orders? Guess,
è davvero cretino!’
    Lefebvre signalled to the grenadiers. ‘Have this incendiaarry shot!’
    â€˜He is not necessarily alone,’ continued the major general.
    â€˜Send out patrols, suspects are to be shot, hanged, exterminated, understood?’
    The Emperor stood up and pressed his forehead to the pane of a French window. The Chinese quarter was burning again but this time in different parts. Fires were breaking out in remote suburbs towards the east, and the wind was rising, carrying the flames towards the ramparts.
    *
    From the Kremlin, the Emperor could not see the fires that were starting beyond the bazaar, they were obscured by a ring of churches, but all the glass in the windows of the Kalitzin house had shattered and flames were belching out of them and blackening the facade; the curtains, net and hangings had been torn loose and were flapping in the wind. Beams started snapping, one after another, and thenthe roof collapsed with a crash as if the house had sucked it into itself. The surviving watchdog, which was still chained up, had abandoned Maillard’s barely touched corpse and was barking frenziedly; when the fire rolled onto the steps, it would burn alive.
    At the head of his men, with Mme Aurore close on his heels, d’Herbigny kept to the middle of the thankfully broad avenue, while his dragoons pulled their mounts behind them by the bridle; the horses had been blinkered so they wouldn’t see the lurid light of the fires, but still the oven-like heat and the smells of charred wood, tar and black smoke made them step nervously. The troupe of actors followed, indistinguishable from the bizarrely dressed soldiers. Mlle Ornella limped, barefoot, on the hot cobbles;