Letters полностью

Lafitte leaves. Andrew befriends one or two of the gardeners, is put to work spading, manuring, terracing. He converses in Sicilian with Vignali, the auxiliary priest sent out only a few months before in the party from Rome, who declares that Napoleon is Napoleon but won’t be for long: the Count de Montholon is poisoning him from jealousy of Count Bertrand. He speaks Corsican French with Montholon’s valet: the British doctors are feeding arsenic to the lot of them. He peddles a pilchard to Ortini, the emperor’s own footman: the new Italian doctor, Antommarchi, is the villain, assisted by Mme Bertrand. The French and Italians agree that Napoleon is Napoleon, and that he is nowise interested in escape. But among the fishermen and farmers who provision Longwood, and with whom both le Maure and Andrew carefully converse, there is more general suspicion that the French are conspiring to trick and/or to blame the English, an opinion shared in some measure by the British physicians on Sir Hudson Lowe’s staff: some believe Bonaparte—“if that’s who the rascal is”—to be poisoning himself, in order to consummate his martyrdom and inspire sympathy for his son’s succession. The only hypothesis not seriously entertained on the island is the one Andrew Cook more and more inclines to as his deadline nears: that while the ailing fellow who ever less frequently ventures outdoors (and in March takes to his bed almost constantly) just might be an impostor, and just might be being poisoned by one or a number of “interests,” he is most probably Napoleon Bonaparte dying in his fifty-second year of a variety of natural physical and psychological complaints.

So mutual are everyone’s suspicions among the Longwood entourage, so clear (however mixed with grief for their leader) their eagerness to begone, Andrew dares take none into his confidence; and there is no use in relaying his “credentials” to an obviously dying man. It becomes his job to persuade le Maure that he has already made contact with the emperor, who looks forward eagerly to rescue and who is feigning illness the better to isolate himself from English surveillance and mislead suspected traitors in his own household. The equinox approaches, but Andrew’s inventiveness fails him: how on earth to get himself delivered to Lafitte and le Maure as the emperor of the French, and at the same time persuade them that “André Castine” is ensconced in Longwood, composing the emperor’s last will and testament? He had not anticipated so universal and profound distrust, such general assumptions of conspiracy, counterconspiracy, double- and triple-agentry!

Word comes from le Maure that Jean Blanque has returned on schedule. Lafitte himself slips ashore, cool and smiling. With not the slightest notion how to manage it, Andrew assures him that all is arranged: after moonset next night, two of Bonaparte’s household — the lamplighter Rousseau and the usher Chauvin — will deliver their master to the trysting place. Bonaparte will be harmlessly narcotized, to exculpate him from charges of complicity should the escape be foiled by the British. He is in mild ill health, but expects to recover, the more rapidly for a bracing ocean voyage and release from captivity. He has reservations about the Louisiana Project, but is open to persuasion. Rousseau and Chauvin are acting in their master’s best interest, but will not refuse a just reward for their risk. Et cetera! Andrew even invites the Baratarian to slip back to Longwood next day and receive a signal from himself that the substitution has been successful; that he will carry through the charade of dying, return to the ranks of the fishermen, and confidently await his own rescue.

Desperate improvisation! He expects many questions, whether anxious or suspicious: Lafitte merely embraces him with a light smile, wishes him bonne chance, promises to be in the appointed place at the appointed hour on the morrow.

Throughout the 21st Cook conjures “shift after desperate shift,” and can hit upon nothing even remotely likely. He has not got through to the invalid prisoner. He has no confidence in Rousseau, Chauvin, Ortini; barely knows them. Beyond bribing a suit of Napoleon’s clothes from a laundry girl (the loss causes little stir; souvenir pilfering and counterfeiting are an industry on the island), he has been able to make no arrangements whatever. In a lifetime of stratagems and ruses he has never been so nonplussed.