FullReads

LIEUTENANT. There’s something in that. Here: you needn’t be in such a fright. Take my arm. (Giuseppe does so.) That’s the way.(They go out, arm in arm. It is now starry night. The lady throws the packet on the table and seats herself at her ease on the couch enjoying the sensation of freedom from petticoats.)

LADY. Well, General: I’ve beaten you.

NAPOLEON (walking about). You have been guilty of indelicacy–of unwomanliness. Do you consider that costume a proper one to wear?

LADY. It seems to me much the same as yours.

NAPOLEON. Psha! I blush for you.

LADY (naively). Yes: soldiers blush so easily! (He growls and turns away. She looks mischievously at him, balancing the despatches in her hand.) Wouldn’t you like to read these before they’re burnt, General? You must be dying with curiosity. Take a peep. (She throws the packet on the table, and turns her face away from it.) I won’t look.

NAPOLEON. I have no curiosity whatever, madame. But since you are evidently burning to read them, I give you leave to do so.

LADY. Oh, I’ve read them already.

NAPOLEON (starting). What!

LADY. I read them the first thing after I rode away on that poor lieutenant’s horse. So you see I know what’s in them; and you don’t.

NAPOLEON. Excuse me: I read them there in the vineyard ten minutes ago.

LADY. Oh! (Jumping up.) Oh, General I’ve not beaten you. I do admire you so. (He laughs and pats her cheek.) This time really and truly without shamming, I do you homage (kissing his hand).

NAPOLEON (quickly withdrawing it). Brr! Don’t do that. No more witchcraft.

LADY. I want to say something to you–only you would misunderstand it.

NAPOLEON. Need that stop you?

LADY. Well, it is this. I adore a man who is not afraid to be mean and selfish.

NAPOLEON (indignantly). I am neither mean nor selfish.

LADY. Oh, you don’t appreciate yourself. Besides, I don’t really mean meanness and selfishness.

NAPOLEON. Thank you. I thought perhaps you did.

LADY. Well, of course I do. But what I mean is a certain strong simplicity about you.

NAPOLEON. That’s better.

LADY. You didn’t want to read the letters; but you were curious about what was in them. So you went into the garden and read them when no one was looking, and then came back and pretended you hadn’t. That’s the meanest thing I ever knew any man do; but it exactly fulfilled your purpose; and so you weren’t a bit afraid or ashamed to do it.

NAPOLEON (abruptly). Where did you pick up all these vulgar scruples–this (with contemptuous emphasis) conscience of yours? I took you for a lady–an aristocrat. Was your grandfather a shopkeeper, pray?

LADY. No: he was an Englishman.

NAPOLEON. That accounts for it. The English are a nation of shopkeepers. Now I understand why you’ve beaten me.

LADY. Oh, I haven’t beaten you. And I’m not English.

NAPOLEON. Yes, you are–English to the backbone. Listen to me: I will explain the English to you.

LADY (eagerly). Do. (With a lively air of anticipating an intellectual treat, she sits down on the couch and composes herself to listen to him. Secure of his audience, he at once nerves himself for a performance. He considers a little before he begins; so as to fix her attention by a moment of suspense. His style is at first modelled on Talma’s in Corneille’s “Cinna;” but it is somewhat lost in the darkness, and Talma presently gives way to Napoleon, the voice coming through the gloom with startling intensity.)

NAPOLEON. There are three sorts of people in the world, the low people, the middle people, and the high people. The low people and the high people are alike in one thing: they have no scruples, no morality. The low are beneath morality, the high above it. I am not afraid of either of them: for the low are unscrupulous without knowledge, so that they make an idol of me; whilst the high are unscrupulous without purpose, so that they go down before my will. Look you: I shall go over all the mobs and all the courts of Europe as a plough goes over a field. It is the middle people who are dangerous: they have both knowledge and purpose. But they, too, have their weak point. They are full of scruples–chained hand and foot by their morality and respectability.