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Updated: June 4, 2025
"No prisoners!" said he, repeating the aide-de-camp's words. "They are forcing us to exterminate them. So much the worse for the Russian army.... Go on... harder, harder!" he muttered, hunching his back and presenting his fat shoulders. "All right. Let Monsieur de Beausset enter, and Fabvier too," he said, nodding to the aide-de-camp.
M. de Beausset has given me a very amusing account of one night, when sleeping pell-mell on a little straw, in very narrow quarters, the aides-de-camp attending upon the Emperor stepped mercilessly on the limbs of their sleeping companions, who, fortunately, did not all suffer from gout like M. Beausset, and were not injured by such sudden and oft-repeated onslaughts.
He did not wish to deprive them of the pleasure of giving him a surprise, so he pretended not to see de Beausset and called Fabvier to him, listening silently and with a stern frown to what Fabvier told him of the heroism and devotion of his troops fighting at Salamanca, at the other end of Europe, with but one thought to be worthy of their Emperor and but one fear to fail to please him.
The Emperor had in his suite the Prince of Neuchatel; the Prince of Benevento; the grand marshal of the palace, Duke de Frioul; General Caulaincourt, Duke of Vicenza; the Duke of Rovigo; General Lauriston, his Majesty's aide-de-camp; General Nansouty, first equerry; the chamberlain, Eugene de Montesquiou; the Count de Beausset, prefect of the palace; and M. Cavaletti.
The Duke of Vicenza, charged in the interim with the duties of grand marshal of the palace, was ordered to make all necessary preparations to receive them. He committed this duty to the care of Messieurs de Beausset and de Turenne, to whom the Emperor gave the superintendence of the theater; and a hall to be used for this purpose was erected in the orangery of the Marcolini palace.
The Duke of Vicenza, charged in the interim with the duties of grand marshal of the palace, was ordered to make all necessary preparations to receive them. He committed this duty to the care of Messieurs de Beausset and de Turenne, to whom the Emperor gave the superintendence of the theater; and a hall to be used for this purpose was erected in the orangery of the Marcolini palace.
Beausset, through which we passed, is as filthy a town as Cujes, and the country as beautifully cultivated, and as rich in flowers, fruit, and corn; it is difficult, indeed, to find animal and vegetable nature more strongly contrasted. If I may be allowed to parody the words of a noble poet "They are brown as the dunghills whereon they decline, "And all, save the dwelling of man, is divine."
On returning from a second inspection of the lines, Napoleon remarked: "The chessmen are set up, the game will begin tomorrow!" Having ordered punch and summoned de Beausset, he began to talk to him about Paris and about some changes he meant to make in the Empress' household, surprising the prefect by his memory of minute details relating to the court.
The side facing their Majesties was always empty; and there stood M. de Beausset, the prefect of the palace, who relates in his Memoirs that one day he overheard the following conversation: "On that day the subject of conversation was the Golden Bull, which, until the establishment of the Confederation of the Rhine, had served as a constitution, and had regulated the law for the election of emperors, the number and rank of the electors, etc.
Suddenly he remembered that the Seine was not far off. Why had he not thought of this before? He hastened to the river side, but saw nothing to confirm his suspicions. We will now disclose the secret tie between this man and Jane Zeld. Fifteen years before, the convict Sanselme had witnessed a terrible scene in a cottage at Beausset, a village between Toulon and Marseilles.
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