‘You could stay here, I would not object; I would happily share all that I have. But then you would live forever in this grief, this memory,’ the lawyer said. ‘There is nothing for you here. You are a young woman. It is only right that you should receive what he has left behind and I know that Alejandro would have wished it so.’

He gave her some money and a few of his wife’s dresses and her rosary beads. Elisabeth would never forget his kindness and generosity, but she was afraid and reluctant to leave. She was alone again. And for the first time since she’d left Berlin with the général, Elisabeth was tempted by the idea of return. Just go home, she thought. But in the moment of thinking it, she knew: there was no truth to the idea and there never had been.

AGAIN, THE MARCH; AGAIN, THE CALL OF DRUMS

The story is well known (six hundred loyal men, cheering crowds along the way, King Louis XVIII fleeing the Tuileries) but not everybody watched with love, or even vague interest, as Napoleon Bonaparte triumphantly returned to Paris. Talleyrand had sighed at the news, perfectly aware of what to expect (‘Farce,’ he said to the Duc d’Otrante, ‘affectation, ranting.’), while the gods had yawned and glanced down from on high, taking the scene in only briefly, distractedly. They saw straight off that it was the same man on the same white horse, with the same simple desires, and rubbed their sleepy eyes.

‘He’s still here?’

With the pure intent of his will, yes, he was still here, but what was human will to the gods? They stretched leisurely, turned over. ‘Wake us in Waterloo,’ they said.

Josephine’s daughter Hortense met with Bonaparte in Paris, as did the Countess Walewska and one or two former lovers, all wondering if the gleam would still be there in his eyes. They supposed it was, but of course so much had happened, the effect on them was different. The old energy seemed renewed, but the flesh was pale, the hair thinner, strands stuck to his sweating forehead.

‘I’m off to Malmaison,’ he said to Hortense. ‘Will you accompany me?’

They arrived in the late afternoon. He sat in her mother’s room alone, the door closed, a hushed silence throughout the house, servants afraid of making a sound. Hortense wished she hadn’t come.

Back in Paris, Bonaparte wrote to the Empress, but no, never. Marie-Louise would never come now.

Waterloo came and then went. They tried to wake them but the gods slept through the whole thing.

FREEDOM