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LADY (amazed). You! General Buonaparte. (Italian pronunciation.)

NAPOLEON. Yes, I, General Bonaparte (emphasizing the French pronunciation).

LADY. Oh, how can you ask such a question? you! who stood only two days ago at the bridge at Lodi, with the air full of death, fighting a duel with cannons across the river! (Shuddering.) Oh, you DO brave things.

NAPOLEON. So do you.

LADY. I! (With a sudden odd thought.) Oh! Are you a coward?

NAPOLEON (laughing grimly and pinching her cheek). That is the one question you must never ask a soldier. The sergeant asks after the recruit’s height, his age, his wind, his limb, but never after his courage. (He gets up and walks about with his hands behind him and his head bowed, chuckling to himself.)

LADY (as if she had found it no laughing matter). Ah, you can laugh at fear. Then you don’t know what fear is.

NAPOLEON (coming behind the couch). Tell me this. Suppose you could have got that letter by coming to me over the bridge at Lodi the day before yesterday! Suppose there had been no other way, and that this was a sure way–if only you escaped the cannon! (She shudders and covers her eyes for a moment with her hands.) Would you have been afraid?

LADY. Oh, horribly afraid, agonizingly afraid. (She presses her hands on her heart.) It hurts only to imagine it.

NAPOLEON (inflexibly). Would you have come for the despatches?

LADY (overcome by the imagined horror). Don’t ask me. I must have come.

NAPOLEON. Why?

LADY. Because I must. Because there would have been no other way.

NAPOLEON (with conviction). Because you would have wanted my letter enough to bear your fear. There is only one universal passion: fear. Of all the thousand qualities a man may have, the only one you will find as certainly in the youngest drummer boy in my army as in me, is fear. It is fear that makes men fight: it is indifference that makes them run away: fear is the mainspring of war. Fear! I know fear well, better than you, better than any woman. I once saw a regiment of good Swiss soldiers massacred by a mob in Paris because I was afraid to interfere: I felt myself a coward to the tips of my toes as I looked on at it. Seven months ago I revenged my shame by pounding that mob to death with cannon balls. Well, what of that? Has fear ever held a man back from anything he really wanted–or a woman either? Never. Come with me; and I will show you twenty thousand cowards who will risk death every day for the price of a glass of brandy. And do you think there are no women in the army, braver than the men, because their lives are worth less? Psha! I think nothing of your fear or your bravery. If you had had to come across to me at Lodi, you would not have been afraid: once on the bridge, every other feeling would have gone down before the necessity–the necessity–for making your way to my side and getting what you wanted.

And now, suppose you had done all this–suppose you had come safely out with that letter in your hand, knowing that when the hour came, your fear had tightened, not your heart, but your grip of your own purpose–that it had ceased to be fear, and had become strength, penetration, vigilance, iron resolution–how would you answer then if you were asked whether you were a coward?

LADY (rising). Ah, you are a hero, a real hero.

NAPOLEON. Pooh! there’s no such thing as a real hero. (He strolls down the room, making light of her enthusiasm, but by no means displeased with himself for having evoked it.)

LADY. Ah, yes, there is. There is a difference between what you call my bravery and yours. You wanted to win the battle of Lodi for yourself and not for anyone else, didn’t you?