The Rose of Old St. Louis Part 30

"You are unjust enough to attribute to obstinacy what is the effect of wise reflection."

Lucien was evidently afraid of an outbreak, and he interposed quickly and laughingly:

"Then that means, brother Joseph, that I hold my ideas so lightly I can easily be reasoned out of them."

"Ah, my dear boy," said Bonaparte, with affectionate raillery, "fear not that any one will accuse thee of lightness. Thou art more likely to be named 'Iron-head.'"

For a few minutes the two brothers playfully called each other nicknames, going back to the days of their boyhood in Corsica, while Joseph stood by, looking bored and every moment growing more impatient. Finally he broke in quite brusquely:

"Well, you say nothing more about your famous plan!"

Bonaparte turned at once to Lucien.

"Well, Lucien, I have made up my mind to sell Louisiana to the Americans."

"Indeed!" said Lucien, in a tone of curiosity, but with so much coolness I suspected he was not hearing the announcement for the first time.

Bonaparte turned to Joseph with an air of triumph.

"Well, Joseph, you see Lucien does not utter loud cries about this thing. Yet he almost has a right to, seeing that Louisiana is, so to speak, his own conquest."

I knew what the Consul meant by that, for it was Lucien who had negotiated the San Ildefonso treaty which gave Louisiana to France.

This speech of his brother's seemed to irritate Joseph still more, and he replied quite sharply:

"I a.s.sure you, if Lucien says nothing, he thinks none the less."

"Indeed!" said Bonaparte, his eyes beginning to flash and his lip to curl. "And why should he be diplomatic with me?"

It was evident that Lucien thought it time to come forward to support Joseph, but that he also wished to placate the rising wrath of the Consul. So he spoke very gently:

"I really think as my brother Joseph does on this matter, and I undertake to say that the Chambers will never a.s.sent."

Bonaparte's head shot up above the rim of the bath-tub, and he leveled a fiery glance at Lucien.

"_You_ undertake to say! A pretty piece of business!" with an air and tone of withering contempt.

"Yes; and _I_ undertake to say," cried Joseph, in a tone of triumph, "that it will be so. And that is what I told the First Consul before."

"And what did I say?" said the Consul, his tone rising with his wrath, and with his head still above the rim of the bath-tub, looking by turns quickly from one brother to the other, as if not to lose any change in the countenance of either.

"You declared," said Joseph, his voice also rising, "you would get along without the a.s.sent of the Chambers; did you not?"

"Exactly," said Bonaparte, concentrated irony in his tone. "That is what I took the liberty to say to Monsieur Joseph, and what I repeat here to Citizen Lucien, begging him to give me his opinion about it, derived from his paternal tenderness for that mighty diplomatic conquest of his, the treaty of San Ildefonso."

Now I thought this a very unkind thrust at Lucien, for I had heard his part in the treaty had been most creditable and that the First Consul had been much pleased with it. I could see that Lucien found it hard to brook, but he struggled for mastery with himself, and spoke still gently:

"My brother, my devotion is deep enough to sacrifice everything for you, except my duty. If I believed, for example, this sale of Louisiana would be fatal to me alone, I would consent to it to prove to you my devotion. But it is too unconst.i.tutional."

Bonaparte broke into his sentence with a fit of rasping, sarcastic laughter, sinking back into the bath-tub almost in a convulsion of demoniacal mirth.

"Ha, ha, ha! You are drawing it fine. 'For example'!" His words struggled out in the intervals of his spasms of laughter. "Ha, ha, ha!

'For example'!"--catching his breath. "'Unconst.i.tutional'! That's droll from you; a good joke--ha, ha!" As his laughter ceased an expression of ironical and contemptuous rage pa.s.sed over his face.

"How have I touched your const.i.tution?" he cried. "Answer!"

"I know well," said Lucien, still trying to control himself, "you have not done so; but you know well that to alienate any possession of the republic without the consent of the Chambers is unconst.i.tutional."

That last word seemed to drive the Consul beside himself. Once more his head shot above the top of the bath-tub, and with blazing eyes he shook his fist at Lucien.

"Clear out!" he shouted. "'Const.i.tution'! 'Unconst.i.tutional'!

'Republic'! Great words--fine phrases! Do you think you are still at the Club of St. Maximin? We are past that, you had better believe!

Parbleu! You phrase it n.o.bly. 'Unconst.i.tutional'! It becomes you well, Sir Knight of the Const.i.tution, to talk that way to me. You hadn't the same respect for the Chambers on the eighteenth Brumaire."

Lucien, roused at last, broke in, in a tone as high as Bonaparte's:

"You well know, my dear brother, that your entry into the Five Hundred had no warmer opponent than I. No! I was not your accomplice, but the repairer of the evil which you had done to yourself!--and that at my own peril, and with some generosity on my part, because we did not then agree. Not to boast, I may add that no one in Europe, more than I, has disapproved the sacrilege against the national representation."

Bonaparte's eyes blazed like diamonds.

"Go on--go on!" he thundered. "That's quite too fine a thing to cut short, Sir Orator of the Clubs! But at the same time take note of this: that I shall do just as I please; that I detest, without fearing, your friends the Jacobins!--not one of whom shall remain in France if, as I hope, things continue to remain in my hands; and that, in fine, I snap my fingers at you and your 'national representation.'"

"On my side," shouted Lucien, "I do not snap my fingers at you, Citizen Consul, but I well know what I think about you."

"What do you think about me, Citizen Lucien? Parbleu! I am curious to know. Out with it!"

"I think, Citizen Consul, that, having sworn to the const.i.tution of the eighteenth Brumaire, as President of the Council of the Five Hundred, and seeing you despise it thus, if I were not your brother I would be your enemy!"

"My enemy!" screamed Bonaparte. "Try it once! That's rather strong!"

And, shaking his fist at Lucien, as he had done once before, "Thou my enemy!" he screamed again, and then sank back in the water up to his neck, as if exhausted. In a moment he spoke again in a somewhat quieter tone:

"Cease this miserable caviling which you and Joseph are at work on night and day--ridiculous for him, and still less appropriate for you.

It is not from you that I expect lessons in government. Enough! Forget all you have said about it! I shall contrive to dispense with you. A precious, well-disposed pair of brothers you are! Please call back the valet; I must get out of the bath-tub at once."

The valet had come in; Joseph and Lucien, thinking the matter was dropped, were turning toward the door; the valet was spreading open the sheet to wrap up his master, when the Consul suddenly returned to the charge, and thundered in a tone that made Lucien and Joseph start and turn back quickly, and the valet drop the sheet from his trembling hands:

"Well, sirs, think what you please about the sale of Louisiana! but you may both of you put on mourning over this thing--you, Lucien, over the sale of your province; you, Joseph, because I propose to dispense with the consent of all persons whatsoever. Do you hear?"

I fairly shivered in my hiding-place at such an outbreak on such a topic in the presence of a servant. Lucien shrank farther toward the door, but Joseph, who had held his peace through the quarrel of the two brothers, stung by the scornful words and manner, and especially by the contemptuous "Do you hear?" which was like a cutting snapper to the Consul's lashing wrath, rushed back, exclaiming:

"You will do well, my dear brother, not to lay your plan before the Chambers, for I swear to you I will put myself, if necessary, at the head of the opposition which will certainly be made."

There was no reply from Bonaparte but an outburst of loud and sardonic laughter.

Joseph flushed dark red, and, almost beside himself with rage, stooping over the figure that lay immersed in the bath, screamed out:

"Laugh! laugh! laugh, then! All the same, I shall do what I say, and, though I do not like to mount the tribune, this time you'll see me there!"

At these words, Bonaparte rose in the bath-tub so as to show half his body out of the water, opaque and frothy with cologne, and pale as his brother was red, he cried sternly: