The Man of Destiny
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George Bernard Shaw >> The Man of Destiny
LIEUTENANT. Come, drop it, Giuseppe: you're making me feel hungry
again.
(Giuseppe, with an apologetic shrug, retires from the
conversation, and busies himself at the table, dusting it,
setting the map straight, and replacing Napoleon's chair, which
the lady has pushed back.)
NAPOLEON (turning to the lieutenant with sardonic ceremony). I
hope _I_ have not been making you feel ambitious.
LIEUTENANT. Not at all: I don't fly so high. Besides: I'm better
as I am: men like me are wanted in the army just now. The fact
is, the Revolution was all very well for civilians; but it won't
work in the army. You know what soldiers are, General: they WILL
have men of family for their officers. A subaltern must be a
gentleman, because he's so much in contact with the men. But a
general, or even a colonel, may be any sort of riff-raff if he
understands the shop well enough. A lieutenant is a gentleman:
all the rest is chance. Why, who do you suppose won the battle of
Lodi? I'll tell you. My horse did.
NAPOLEON (rising) Your folly is carrying you too far, sir. Take
care.
LIEUTENANT. Not a bit of it. You remember all that red-hot
cannonade across the river: the Austrians blazing away at you to
keep you from crossing, and you blazing away at them to keep them
from setting the bridge on fire? Did you notice where I was then?
NAPOLEON (with menacing politeness). I am sorry. I am afraid I
was rather occupied at the moment.
GIUSEPPE (with eager admiration). They say you jumped off your
horse and worked the big guns with your own hands, General.
LIEUTENANT. That was a mistake: an officer should never let
himself down to the level of his men. (Napoleon looks at him
dangerously, and begins to walk tigerishly to and fro.) But you
might have been firing away at the Austrians still, if we cavalry
fellows hadn't found the ford and got across and turned old
Beaulieu's flank for you. You know you daren't have given the
order to charge the bridge if you hadn't seen us on the other
side. Consequently, I say that whoever found that ford won the
battle of Lodi. Well, who found it? I was the first man to cross:
and I know. It was my horse that found it. (With conviction, as
be rises from the couch.) That horse is the true conqueror of the
Austrians.
NAPOLEON (passionately). You idiot: I'll have you shot for losing
those despatches: I'll have you blown from the mouth of a cannon:
nothing less could make any impression on you. (Baying at him.)
Do you hear? Do you understand?
A French officer enters unobserved, carrying his sheathed sabre
in his hand.
LIEUTENANT (unabashed). IF I don't capture him, General. Remember
the if.
NAPOLEON. If! If!! Ass: there is no such man.
THE OFFICER (suddenly stepping between them and speaking in the
unmistakable voice of the Strange Lady). Lieutenant: I am your
prisoner. (She offers him her sabre. They are amazed. Napoleon
gazes at her for a moment thunderstruck; then seizes her by the
wrist and drags her roughly to him, looking closely and fiercely
at her to satisfy himself as to her identity; for it now begins
to darken rapidly into night, the red glow over the vineyard
giving way to clear starlight.)
NAPOLEON. Pah! (He flings her hand away with an exclamation of
disgust, and turns his back on her with his hand in his breast
and his brow lowering.)
LIEUTENANT (triumphantly, taking the sabre). No such man: eh,
General? (To the Lady.) I say: where's my horse?
LADY. Safe at Borghetto, waiting for you, Lieutenant.
NAPOLEON (turning on them). Where are the despatches?
LADY. You would never guess. They are in the most unlikely place
in the world. Did you meet my sister here, any of you?
LIEUTENANT. Yes. Very nice woman. She's wonderfully like you;
but of course she's better looking.
LADY (mysteriously). Well, do you know that she is a witch?
GIUSEPPE (running down to them in terror, crossing himself). Oh,
no, no, no. It is not safe to jest about such things. I cannot
have it in my house, excellency.
LIEUTENANT. Yes, drop it. You're my prisoner, you know. Of course
I don't believe in any such rubbish; but still it's not a proper
subject for joking.
LADY. But this is very serious. My sister has bewitched the
General. (Giuseppe and the Lieutenant recoil from Napoleon.)
General: open your coat: you will find the despatches in the
breast of it. (She puts her hand quickly on his breast.) Yes:
there they are: I can feel them. Eh? (She looks up into his face
half coaxingly, half mockingly.) Will you allow me, General?
(She takes a button as if to unbutton his coat, and pauses for
permission.)
NAPOLEON (inscrutably). If you dare.
LADY. Thank you. (She opens his coat and takes out the
despatches.) There! (To Giuseppe, showing him the despatches.)
See!
GIUSEPPE (flying to the outer door). No, in heaven's name!
They're bewitched.
LADY (turning to the Lieutenant). Here, Lieutenant: YOU'RE not
afraid of them.
LIEUTENANT (retreating). Keep off. (Seizing the hilt of the
sabre.) Keep off, I tell you.
LADY (to Napoleon). They belong to you, General. Take them.
GIUSEPPE. Don't touch them, excellency. Have nothing to do with
them.
LIEUTENANT. Be careful, General: be careful.
GIUSEPPE. Burn them. And burn the witch, too.
LADY (to Napoleon). Shall I burn them?
NAPOLEON (thoughtfully). Yes, burn them. Giuseppe: go and fetch a
light.
GIUSEPPE (trembling and stammering). Do you mean go alone--in the
dark--with a witch in the house?
NAPOLEON. Psha! You're a poltroon. (To the Lieutenant.) Oblige me
by going, Lieutenant.
LIEUTENANT (remonstrating). Oh, I say, General! No, look here,
you know: nobody can say I'm a coward after Lodi. But to ask me
to go into the dark by myself without a candle after such an
awful conversation is a little too much. How would you like to
do it yourself?
NAPOLEON (irritably). You refuse to obey my order?
LIEUTENANT (resolutely). Yes, I do. It's not reasonable. But I'll
tell you what I'll do. If Giuseppe goes, I'll go with him and
protect him.
NAPOLEON (to Giuseppe). There! will that satisfy you? Be off,
both of you.
GIUSEPPE (humbly, his lips trembling). W--willingly, your
excellency. (He goes reluctantly towards the inner door.) Heaven
protect me! (To the lieutenant.) After you, Lieutenant.
LIEUTENANT. You'd better go first: I don't know the way.
GIUSEPPE. You can't miss it. Besides (imploringly, laying his
hand on his sleeve), I am only a poor innkeeper; and you are a
man of family.
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.
LADY. Then you will beat the English; for all shopkeepers are
middle people.
NAPOLEON. No, because the English are a race apart. No Englishman
is too low to have scruples: no Englishman is high enough to be
free from their tyranny. But every Englishman is born with a
certain miraculous power that makes him master of the world. When
he wants a thing, he never tells himself that he wants it. He
waits patiently until there comes into his mind, no one knows
how, a burning conviction that it is his moral and religious duty
to conquer those who have got the thing he wants. Then he becomes
irresistible. Like the aristocrat, he does what pleases him and
grabs what he wants: like the shopkeeper, he pursues his purpose
with the industry and steadfastness that come from strong
religious conviction and deep sense of moral responsibility. He
is never at a loss for an effective moral attitude. As the great
champion of freedom and national independence, he conquers and
annexes half the world, and calls it Colonization. When he wants
a new market for his adulterated Manchester goods, he sends
a missionary to teach the natives the gospel of peace. The
natives kill the missionary: he flies to arms in defence of
Christianity; fights for it; conquers for it; and takes the
market as a reward from heaven. In defence of his island shores,
he puts a chaplain on board his ship; nails a flag with a cross
on it to his top-gallant mast; and sails to the ends of the
earth, sinking, burning and destroying all who dispute the empire
of the seas with him. He boasts that a slave is free the moment
his foot touches British soil; and he sells the children of his
poor at six years of age to work under the lash in his factories
for sixteen hours a day. He makes two revolutions, and then
declares war on our one in the name of law and order. There is
nothing so bad or so good that you will not find Englishmen doing
it; but you will never find an Englishman in the wrong. He does
everything on principle. He fights you on patriotic principles;
he robs you on business principles; he enslaves you on imperial
principles; he bullies you on manly principles; he supports his
king on loyal principles, and cuts off his king's head on
republican principles. His watchword is always duty; and he
never forgets that the nation which lets its duty get on the
opposite side to its interest is lost. He--
LADY. W-w-w-w-w-wh! Do stop a moment. I want to know how you make
me out to be English at this rate.
NAPOLEON (dropping his rhetorical style). It's plain enough. You
wanted some letters that belonged to me. You have spent the
morning in stealing them--yes, stealing them, by highway robbery.
And you have spent the afternoon in putting me in the wrong about
them--in assuming that it was I who wanted to steal YOUR
letters--in explaining that it all came about through my meanness
and selfishness, and your goodness, your devotion, your
self-sacrifice. That's English.
LADY. Nonsense. I am sure I am not a bit English. The English are
a very stupid people.
NAPOLEON. Yes, too stupid sometimes to know when they're beaten.
But I grant that your brains are not English. You see, though
your grandfather was an Englishman, your grandmother was--what?
A Frenchwoman?
LADY. Oh, no. An Irishwoman.
NAPOLEON (quickly). Irish! (Thoughtfully.) Yes: I forgot the
Irish. An English army led by an Irish general: that might be a
match for a French army led by an Italian general. (He pauses,
and adds, half jestingly, half moodily) At all events, YOU have
beaten me; and what beats a man first will beat him last. (He
goes meditatively into the moonlit vineyard and looks up. She
steals out after him. She ventures to rest her hand on his
shoulder, overcome by the beauty of the night and emboldened by
its obscurity.)
LADY (softly). What are you looking at?
NAPOLEON (pointing up). My star.
LADY. You believe in that?
NAPOLEON. I do. (They look at it for a moment, she leaning a
little on his shoulder.)
LADY. Do you know that the English say that a man's star is not
complete without a woman's garter?
NAPOLEON (scandalized--abruptly shaking her off and coming back
into the room). Pah! The hypocrites! If the French said that, how
they would hold up their hands in pious horror! (He goes to the
inner door and holds it open, shouting) Hallo! Giuseppe. Where's
that light, man. (He comes between the table and the sideboard,
and moves the chair to the table, beside his own.) We have still
to burn the letter. (He takes up the packet. Giuseppe comes back,
pale and still trembling, carrying a branched candlestick with a
couple of candles alight, in one hand, and a broad snuffers tray
in the other.)
GIUSEPPE (piteously, as he places the light on the table).
Excellency: what were you looking up at just now--out there? (He
points across his shoulder to the vineyard, but is afraid to look
round.)
NAPOLEON (unfolding the packet). What is that to you?
GIUSEPPE (stammering). Because the witch is gone--vanished; and
no one saw her go out.
LADY (coming behind him from the vineyard). We were watching her
riding up to the moon on your broomstick, Giuseppe. You will
never see her again.
GIUSEPPE. Gesu Maria! (He crosses himself and hurries out.)
NAPOLEON (throwing down the letters in a heap on the table). Now.
(He sits down at the table in the chair which be has just
placed.)
LADY. Yes; but you know you have THE letter in your pocket. (He
smiles; takes a letter from his pocket; and tosses it on the top
of the heap. She holds it up and looks at him, saying) About
Caesar's wife.
NAPOLEON. Caesar's wife is above suspicion. Burn it.
LADY (taking up the snuffers and holding the letter to the
candle flame with it). I wonder would Caesar's wife be above
suspicion if she saw us here together!
NAPOLEON (echoing her, with his elbows on the table and his
cheeks on his hands, looking at the letter). I wonder! (The
Strange Lady puts the letter down alight on the snuffers tray,
and sits down beside Napoleon, in the same attitude, elbows on
table, cheeks on hands, watching it burn. When it is burnt, they
simultaneously turn their eyes and look at one another. The
curtain steals down and hides them.)