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"Take him away!" he said, pointing with a gracefully majestic gesture to the portrait. "It is too soon for him to see a field of battle." De Beausset closed his eyes, bowed his head, and sighed deeply, to indicate how profoundly he valued and comprehended the Emperor's words.
This spectre was that of his mother, whom he had stabbed in the breast at Beausset so many years before. And the ghost stood gazing at him with her large eyes, while her gray tresses floated in the wind. Benedetto did not seek to understand. He believed that the dead had risen from the tomb. She looked at him for a full minute. Then she said: "Come, Benedetto; come, my son."
Let our remotest posterity recall your achievements this day with pride. Let it be said of each of you: "He was in the great battle before Moscow!" "Before Moscow!" repeated Napoleon, and inviting M. de Beausset, who was so fond of travel, to accompany him on his ride, he went out of the tent to where the horses stood saddled.
The customary hesitation of such councils, in face of the difficulties of the situation, was increased by an appeal to the delusion of commerce-destroying as a decisive mode of warfare. M. de Beausset urged that "the allied fleets should direct their whole attention to that great and attainable object, the intercepting of the British homeward-bound West India fleets.
The result of that battle had been deplorable. Napoleon made ironic remarks during Fabvier's account, as if he had not expected that matters could go otherwise in his absence. "I must make up for that in Moscow," said Napoleon. "I'll see you later," he added, and summoned de Beausset, who by that time had prepared the surprise, having placed something on the chairs and covered it with a cloth.
The Abbé de Montesquiou hastened to bestow on the clergy an early gratification, that of seeing one of their most justly esteemed members, M. de Beausset, formerly Bishop of Alais, at the head of the Royal Council.
"Your Majesty is too kind!" replied de Beausset to the invitation to accompany the Emperor; he wanted to sleep, did not know how to ride and was afraid of doing so. But Napoleon nodded to the traveler, and de Beausset had to mount. When Napoleon came out of the tent the shouting of the Guards before his son's portrait grew still louder. Napoleon frowned.
Ordinance officers: Baron de Mortemart, Baron Athalin, M. Beranger, M. de Lauriston; Messieurs Barons Desaix, Laplace, and de Caraman; Messieurs de Saint Marsan, de Lamezan, Pretet, and Pailhou; there was also M. d'Aremberg, but at this time he was a prisoner in the town of Dantzic. First chamberlain and master of the wardrobe, the Count of Turenne. Prefect of the palace, Baron de Beausset.
Napoleon sat on a campstool, wrapped in thought. M. de Beausset, the man so fond of travel, having fasted since morning, came up to the Emperor and ventured respectfully to suggest lunch to His Majesty. "I hope I may now congratulate Your Majesty on a victory?" said he. Napoleon silently shook his head in negation.
A large string of mules, however, which met us from Toulon, loaded with barilla for the great glass works at Beausset, showed us that the one or the other was practicable, and on advancing a little farther, we distinguished the chasm through which the road to Toulon is conducted, surmounted by the black ruins of an old castle to the left.
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