Alexandre Dumas

“ Why did Bonaparte prefer the 25,000 naked and famished soldiers of the coastline of Genoa to those grand armies of the Rhine, to those 80,000 well-armed, well-equipped men who had been put under the orders of Jourdan and Moreau, whose command could have been his, had he wished it? Because Italy is Italy—the country of wonderful memories; he chose rather the Éridan and the Tiber to the Rhine and the Meuse, the Milanese country to the Palatinate; he preferred to be a Hannibal rather than a Turenne or the Marshal of Saxony. ”

“ Moinat was sixty at the time of which I am writing; but in walking powers and in keenness of eye he could hold his own with the youngest. On the open ground he could walk his ten leagues without a stumble; in the marsh-land he would go into the water and mire up to his middle; he would trample over the thickest of the underwood in the forest, and over the thorniest of brambles. My father was very fond of Moinat, so he did me a great honour, which he would not have done for just anybody,—he constituted himself both my friend and my teacher. ”

“ Cæsar, the general and dictator, passed across the world with his immense flood of an army, in which fourteen nations were absorbed like so many streams, making one watercourse by their junction, one people out of all their peoples, one language out of their many tongues, an organisation which only passed out of his hands to become under Augustus a single empire out of all the other empires.
Then, when the time was ripe, Christ, the Sun of civilisation, was born in an obscure corner of Judea, in the far East, whence rises the day, and He shone upon the Roman world. ”

“ Oh I dear Madame Dupuis, what a profound knowledge you had of the human heart in general, and of my heart in particular!
No, I hadn't a clear conscience, and so I remained standing at the window, half-hidden behind the curtains, exploring the square on all sides to see if a keeper or a policeman, or even Tournemolle, with whom I had already had a skirmish over my pistol, were coming to the house from some quarter or other.
One far worse than keeper, or policeman, or Tournemolle came into the square.
M. Deviolaine came himself! ”

“ Just as he got up to Miollis, through the firing, and saluted, a bullet carried the general's cap off.
"Ah! is it you, my lad?" said Miollis. "Have you come from Dumas?"
"Yes, General; he heard your cannonade, and, knowing the rotten condition of your fortifications, he was very uneasy about you."
"Very good. Tell him not to worry about me; I have made my headquarters here in the citadel, and, if there is one thing more certain than another, it is that the enemy will have to pass over my grave if they enter the citadel."
"But what about Provera?" asked Dermoncourt.
"Bah! Provera is in a trap. ”

“ Napoleon, on his return from the isle of Elba, like François the First, had had his belle Ferronnière; the difference was, that she had not brought him the vengeance of a husband, but the advice of a diplomatist.
Man of destiny, thou hast finished thy work,—now thou must fall!
See him at the Élysée—the man with an eagle's glance, full of quick resolves, tenacious and masterful of purpose! Is this the hero of Toulon, of Lodi, of the Pyramids, of Marengo, of Austerlitz, of Jena, and of Wagram? Is this the hero of Lutzen and of Bautzen? Is this even the man of Montmirail and of Montereau? ”

“ What! with your king a prisoner in his own capital, surrounded by the enemy's bayonets, you would call it perjury to break promises wrung from you by force against your consciences? You would call the extermination of your tyrants assassination? No, the French battalions are scattered up and down Piedmont full of confidence in the security of peace. Stir up the patriotic feelings of the people to a pitch of enthusiasm and frenzy, until every Piedmontese will pant to tread his enemies beneath his feet. ”

“ It was then very rarely that I slept on fine nights, when excited by anticipation of a bird-snaring, or shooting, or hunting excursion. Those lonely vigils were not waste time, [Pg 358] for I love solitude and silence and vastness, and I owe this love to those nights spent in the forest, at the foot of a tree, watching the stars through the canopy of leaves stretched between me and the sky, and listening to all the mysterious, incomprehensible sounds which are awake in the bosom of the wood while Nature sleeps. ”

“ Bonaparte looked at my father for a moment, then, almost affectionately, he said:
"And so, Dumas, you make a division in your mind: you place France on one side and me on the other. You think I separate her interests and fortunes from my own."
"I think that the interests of France ought to come before those of an individual, no matter how great that man may be.... I do not think that the fortunes of any nation should be subordinated to those of an individual." ”

“ When we came to the first houses on our return home, I left M. Picot; I was most anxious to go through the town with my gun under my arm and the larks round my neck.
No Pompey or Cæsar entered Rome with more triumphant pride than I felt.
But, alas! everything decays in this world, joy, grief, and even vanity! A time came when, like Cæsar, I gave up my triumphs to my lieutenants.
One thought and one only used to fill my mind: and that was the promised shooting for the following Sunday, if the Abbé Grégoire was satisfied with me. ”

“ It was not a confession that the dying man wanted to make, for in all his life my father had not done a single bad action with which he could reproach himself; maybe in the depths of his heart he harboured feelings of hatred towards Berthier and Napoleon. But how could the last hours of a dying man concern these men at the pinnacle of fame and fortune? Moreover, all feelings of hatred were forgotten in the two hours before his death, which were spent in trying to comfort those he was to leave alone in the world, when he had departed from it. ”

“ Were there so many that all the towns between Waterloo and Villers-Cotterets were filled to overflowing?
Oh! what a hideous, mad, stupid thing war is, seen divorced from the blaring of trumpets and rolling of drums, the smoke of cannon and the fusillade of guns.
We could recognise among this débris the remains of those splendid regiments we had seen pass by so proud, so determined, whose bands had borne witness to their enthusiasm as they marched by playing "Veillons au salut de l'empire!"
Alas! the army was destroyed, and the Empire crushed. ”

“ I should have annihilated the enemy at the beginning of the campaign, had not a traitor abandoned me; I should have crushed them at Ligny, if my left wing had done its duty; [Pg 414] I should have crushed them again at Waterloo if my right wing had not failed me."
Sire, it was Providence!
Then, again, on another occasion:
"A singular defeat wherein, in spite of the most horrible catastrophe, the glory of the conquered did not suffer, nor was that of the conqueror increased! The memory of the one will survive in its destruction; the memory of the other may be buried in its triumph!" ”

“ Choron took a knife out of his pocket—
"Well, I shall kill it with that!"
M. Deviolaine shrugged his shoulders.
"Shrug your shoulders to your heart's content, M. Deviolaine,—it shall be as I tell you. These wretched boars have been the cause of my uncle's death, and I should not feel as though I were killing them if I did it with a carbine or a musket—but with my knife it is a different matter! Besides, don't they cut pigs' throats with a knife? and what else is a boar but a pig?" ”

“ She entrusted me to Crétet and to Mademoiselle Adélaïde, who took me with them.
I have but two clear recollections of this journey—although it was eight years later than the last one.
One, radiant and poetic: and the other impure and stained.
The first was when, at the flourish of brazen trumpets and the waving of welcoming flags, they lifted up above the heads of 50,000 of the National Guard, the rosy, fair, curly head of a child of three, amid cries of Vive le roi de Rome? Vive la régence! ”

“ I went nearer to the boar, which redoubled its efforts as it saw me coming, and gnashed its tusks, looking at me with bloodshot eyes; but it was caught in a regular trap this time, and none of its struggles could free it.
I put the end of the barrel of my gun into its ear, and I fired.
The shock was so violent that the animal tore itself out of Choron's hands, but only to roll over ten steps away; bullet, wadding, and powder had all entered its head, and I had literally blown out its brains.
Choron burst out laughing.
"Come now," he said. "There is still some pleasure left in life!" ”

“ I saw the general raise his sabre, as a thresher lifts his flail, and each time the sword fell a man was felled. But I was soon so busy looking after myself that I was compelled to lose sight of the general; two or three Austrian cavalrymen made a furious set at me, determined to take me, dead or alive. I wounded one with the point of my sword, I cut open the head of another, but the third dealt me a cut with his sword between the joints of the shoulder, which made me rein in my horse so sharply that the beast, whose mouth was very tender, reared and fell back on top of me into a ditch. ”

“ Napoleon listened to Jérôme, but made him no reply, and dismissed him; a moment later, a great tumult was heard on the terrace of the Élysee; two regiments of sharp-shooters from the guard of volunteers drawn from the working classes of the faubourg Saint-Antoine threaded their way through the garden in disorder; they were the forerunners of a vast column of men, the rank and file of the nation, who came demanding with loud shouts that the emperor should place himself at their head and lead them against the enemy. ”

“ Suddenly we found ourselves face to face with a platoon of cavalry, upon which the general fell; and, as the men were all in line, with one single back-handed blow of his sabre he killed the quartermaster, gashed the soldier horribly who was next to him, and with the point of the weapon wounded a third. The Austrians not conceiving it possible that two men would have the audacity to charge them thus, wheeled to the right-about; but the horses stumbled, and horses and riders fell pell-mell. ”

“ But—I can say it to the dead as to the living—when the last communion shall come to me, as the pendant of the first, when the hand of the Lord shall have closed the two horizons of my life, and drawn the veil of His love between the nothingness that precedes and the nothingness that follows man's life, He can search every atom of the intermediate space with the most rigorous eye and He will not find in it one evil thought, or one action with which I can reproach myself. ”

“ Imagine an army compelled to cross those arid plains, which do not afford the soldier the faintest fleck of shade against the intolerable heat. Dressed in woollen, carrying his five days' rations and his knapsack, a soldier is so overcome by the heat and the weight of the things he is carrying that at the end of an hour's march he lightens his burden by throwing away his rations, thinking only of his present sufferings, and regardless of the morrow's hunger. ”

“ And indeed if any soul should rest in peace it ought indeed to be that of the good and religious-minded Demoustier, whose memory was venerated by all Villers-Cotterets. My mother often used to tell me that a gentler, more sympathetic, more delightful man never breathed. He died at the same age as my father—forty-one—and faced his end with the gentle and pious resignation of all good souls. The day before his death, my mother sat beside his bedside and, though hopeless herself, she tried to instil hope into him. ”

“ The country owes a debt of gratitude to you for her prosperity. Conquerors of Toulon if you foreshadowed the immortal campaign of 1793, your actual victories predict still finer things to come. The two armies which recently had the effrontery to attack you, fled before you in terror; wicked men, who mocked at your misery and rejoiced in their hearts at the thought of your enemies triumphing over you, have been put to shame, and they tremble before you. But, soldiers, whilst there still remains something not yet accomplished, your duties are not at an end. Neither Turin nor Milan are ours. ”

“ He said to himself, "Every man can be bought, just as every tree can be sold. I possess vast forests, I will sell the trees, and I will purchase men."
Sire, you were self-deceived. There are other things in life than algebra and mathematics: there is faith, there is belief; you put no faith in others, and others therefore put no faith in you; you breathed scorn on the past, and now the past scorns you.
What a long way we have travelled, though, from the home of M. Deviolaine—which to me seemed such a palace! ”