Folk-Tales of Napoleon

"I'm sorry for you. As if it were possible to conquer the whole world!"

"I'll subdue all the kingdoms," replied Napoleonder, "and put all peoples in chains, and then I'll reign as Tsar of all the earth."

The soldier shook his head. "And God?" he inquired. "Will you conquer him?"

Napoleonder was confused. "No," he finally said. "God's will is over us all; and in the hollow of his hand we live."

"Then what's the use of your conquering the world?" said the soldier. "God is all; therefore the world won't belong to you, but to him. And you'll live just so long as he has patience with you, and no longer."

"I know that as well as you do," said Napoleonder.

"Well, then," replied the soldier, "if you know it, why don't you reckon with God?"

Napoleonder scowled. "Don't say such things to me!" he cried. "I've heard that sanctimonious stuff before. It's of no use. You can't fool me! I don't know any such thing as pity."

"Indeed," said the soldier, "is it so? Have a care, Napoleonder! You are swaggering too much. You lie when you say a man can live without pity. To have a soul, and to feel compassion, are one and the same thing. You have a soul, haven't you?"

"Of course I have," replied Napoleonder; "a man can't live without a soul."

"There! you see!" said the soldier. "You have a soul, and you believe in God. How, then, can you say you don't know any such thing as pity? You do know! And I believe that at this very moment, deep down in your heart, you are mortally sorry for me; only you don't want to show it. Why, then, did you kill me?"

Napoleonder suddenly became furious. "May the pip seize your tongue, you miscreant! I'll show you how much pity I have for you!" And, drawing a pistol, Napoleonder shot the wounded soldier through the head. Then, turning to his dead men, he said: "Did you see that?"

"We saw it," they replied; "and as long as it is so, we are your faithful servants always."

Napoleonder rode on.

At last night comes; and Napoleonder is sitting alone in his golden tent. His mind is troubled, and he can't understand what it is that seems to be gnawing at his heart. For years he has been at war, and this is the first time such a thing has happened. Never before has his soul been so filled with unrest. And to-morrow morning he must begin another battle – the last terrible fight with the Tsar Alexander the Blessed, on the field of Borodino.

"Akh!" he thinks, "I'll show them to-morrow what a leader I am! I'll lift the soldiers of the Tsar into the air on my lances and trample their bodies under the feet of my horses. I'll make the Tsar himself a prisoner, and I'll kill or scatter the whole Russian people."

But a voice seemed to whisper in his ear: "And why? Why?"

"I know that trick," he thought. "It's that same wounded soldier again.

All right. I won't give in to him. 'Why? Why?' As if I knew why!

Perhaps if I knew why I shouldn't make war."

He lay down on his bed; but hardly had he closed his eyes when he saw by his bedside the wounded soldier – young, fair-faced, blond-haired, with just the first faint shadow of a mustache. His forehead was pale, his lips were livid, his blue eyes were dim, and in his left temple there was a round black hole made by the bullet from his – Napoleonder's – pistol. And the ghastly figure seemed to ask again, "Why did you kill me?"

Napoleonder turns over and over, from side to side, in his bed. He sees that it's a bad business. He can't get rid of that soldier. And, more than all, he wonders at himself. "What an extraordinary occurrence!" he thinks. "I've killed millions of people, of all countries and nations, without the least misgiving; and now, suddenly, one miserable soldier comes and throws all my ideas into a tangle!"

Finally Napoleonder got up; but the confinement of his golden tent seemed oppressive. He went out into the open air, mounted his horse, and rode away to the place where he had shot to death the vexatious soldier.

"I've heard," he said to himself, "that when a dead man appears in a vision, it is necessary to sprinkle earth on the eyes of the corpse; then he'll lie quiet."

Napoleonder rides on. The moon is shining brightly, and the bodies of the dead are lying on the battle-field in heaps. Everywhere he sees corruption and smells corruption.

"And all these," he thought, "I have killed."

And, wonderful to say, it seems to him as if all the dead men have the same face, – a young face with blue eyes, and blond hair, and the faint shadow of a mustache, – and they all seem to be looking at him with kindly, pitying eyes, and their bloodless lips move just a little as they ask, without anger or reproach, "Why? Why?"

Napoleonder felt a dull, heavy pressure at his heart. He had not spirit enough left to go to the little mound where the body of the dead soldier lay, so he turned his horse and rode back to his tent; and every corpse that he passed seemed to say, "Why? Why?"

He no longer felt the desire to ride at a gallop over the dead bodies of the Russian soldiers. On the contrary, he picked his way among them carefully, riding respectfully around the remains of every man who had died with honor on that field of blood; and now and then he even crossed himself and said: "Akh, that one ought to have lived! What a fine fellow that one was! He must have fought with splendid courage. And I killed him – why?"

The great conqueror never noticed that his heart was growing softer and warmer, but so it was. He pitied his dead enemies at last, and then the evil spirit went away from him, and left him in all respects like other people.

The next day came the battle. Napoleonder led his forces, cloud upon cloud, to the field of Borodino; but he was shaking as if in a chill. His generals and field-marshals looked at him and were filled with dismay.

"You ought to take a drink of vodka, Napoleonder," they say; "you don't look like yourself."

When the Russian troops attacked the hordes of Napoleonder, on the field of Borodino, the soldiers of the great conqueror at once gave way.

"It's a bad business, Napoleonder," the generals and field-marshals say.

"For some reason the Russians are fighting harder to-day than ever.

You'd better call out your dead men."

Napoleonder shouted at the top of his voice, "Bonaparty!" – six hundred and sixty-six, – the number of the Beast. But, cry as he would, he only frightened the jackdaws. The dead men didn't come out of their graves, nor answer his call. And Napoleonder was left on the field of Borodino alone. All his generals and field-marshals had fled, and he sat there alone on his horse, shouting, "Bonaparty! Bonaparty!"

Then suddenly there appeared beside him the smooth-faced, blue-eyed, fair-haired Russian recruit whom he had killed the day before. And the young soldier said: "It's useless to shout, Napoleonder. Nobody will come. Yesterday you felt sorry for me and for my dead brothers, and because of your pity your corpse-soldiers no longer come at your call. Your power over them is gone."

Then Napoleonder began to weep and sob, and cried out, "You have ruined me, you wretched, miserable soldier!"

But the soldier (who was Ivan-angel, and not a soldier at all) replied: "I have not ruined you, Napoleonder; I have saved you. If you had gone on in your merciless, pitiless course, there would have been no forgiveness for you, either in this life or in the life to come. Now God has given you time for repentance. In this world you shall be punished; but there, beyond, if you repent of your sins, you shall be forgiven."

And the angel vanished.

Then our Don Cossacks fell on Napoleonder, dragged him from his horse, and took him to Alexander the Blessed. Some said, "Napoleonder ought to be shot!" Others cried, "Send him to Siberia to!" But the Lord God softened the heart of Alexander the Blessed, and the merciful Tsar would not allow Napoleonder to be shot or sent to Siberia. He ordered that the great conqueror be put into an iron cage, and be carried around and exhibited to the people at country fairs. So Napoleonder was carried from one fair to another for a period of thirty summers and three years – until he had grown quite old. Then, when he was an old man, they sent him to the island of Buan to watch geese.

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THE NAPOLEON OF THE PEOPLE[2 - A story told to a group of French peasants one evening, in a barn, by Goguelat, the village postman, who had served under Napoleon in a regiment of infantry.]

Napoleon, my friends, was born, you know, in Corsica. That's a French island, but it's warmed by the sun of Italy, and everything's as hot there as if it were a furnace. It's a place, too, where the people kill one another, from father to son, generation after generation, for nothing at all; that is, for no reason in particular except that it's their way.

Well, to begin with the most wonderful part of the story, it so happened that on the very day when Napoleon was born, his mother dreamed that the world was on fire. She was a shrewd, clever woman, as well as the prettiest woman of her time; and when she had this dream, she thought she'd save her son from the dangers of life by dedicating him to God. And, indeed, that was a prophetic dream of hers! So she asked God to protect the boy, and promised that when he grew up he should reestablish God's holy religion, which had then been overthrown. That was the agreement they made; and although it seems strange, such things have happened. It's sure and certain, anyhow, that only a man who had an agreement with God could pass through the enemy's lines, and move about in showers of bullets and grape-shot, as Napoleon did. They swept us away like flies, but his head they never touched at all. I had a proof of that – I myself, in particular – at Eylau, where the Emperor went up on a little hill to see how things were going. I can remember, to this day, exactly how he looked as he took out his field-glass, watched the battle for a minute, and finally said: "It's all right! Everything is going well." Then, just as he was coming back, an ambitious chap in a plumed hat, who was always following him around, and who bothered him, they said, even at his meals, thought he'd play smart by going up on the very same hill; but he had hardly taken the Emperor's place when – batz! – away he went, plume and all!

Now follow me closely, and tell me whether what you are going to hear was natural.

Napoleon, you know, had promised that he'd keep his agreement with God to himself. That's the reason why his companions and even his particular friends – men like Duroc, Bessières, and Lannes, who were strong as bars of steel, but whom he molded to suit his purposes – all fell, like nuts from a shaken tree, while he himself was never even hurt.

But that's not the only proof that he was the child of God and was expressly created to be the father of soldiers. Did anybody ever see him a lieutenant? Or a captain? Never! He was commander-in-chief from the start. When he didn't look more than twenty-four years of age he was already an old general – ever since the taking of Toulon, where he first began to show the rest of them that they didn't know anything about the handling of cannon.

Well, soon after that, down comes this stripling to us as general-in-chief of the Army of Italy – an army that hadn't any ammunition, or bread, or shoes, or coats; a wretched army – naked as a worm. "Now, boys!" he said, "here we are, all together. I want you to get it fixed in your heads that in fifteen days more you 're going to be conquerors. You're going to have new clothes, good leggings, the best of shoes, and a warm overcoat for every man; but in order to get these things you'll have to march to Milan, where they are." So we marched. We were only thirty thousand bare-footed tramps, and we were going against eighty thousand crack German soldiers – fine, well equipped men; but Napoleon, who was only Bonaparte then, breathed a spirit of – I don't know what – into us, and on we marched, night and day. We hit the enemy at Montenotte, thrashed 'em at Rivoli, Lodi, Arcola, and Millesimo, and stuck to 'em wherever they went. A soldier soon gets to like being a conqueror; and Napoleon wheeled around those German generals, and pelted away at 'em, until they didn't know where to hide long enough to get a little rest. With fifteen hundred Frenchmen, whom he made to appear a great host (that's a way he had), he'd sometimes surround ten thousand men and gather 'em all in at a single scoop. Then we'd take their cannon, their money, their ammunition, and everything they had that was worth carrying away. As for the others, we chucked 'em into the water, walloped 'em on the mountains, snapped 'em up in the air, devoured 'em on the ground, and beat 'em everywhere. So at last our troops were in fine feather – especially as Napoleon, who had a clever wit, made friends with the inhabitants of the country by telling them that we had come to set them free; and then, of course, they gave us quarters and took the best of care of us. And it was not only the men: the women took care of us too, which showed their good judgment!