"Forester, C S - Hornblower 09 - Lord Hornblower" - читать интересную книгу автора (Forester C S)

Hornblower explained to the Frenchman what he had said.
"Brown, come with me. I shall be in the main square if needed, Howard."
It was not much of a procession Howard was able to form, two score marines and seamen, but the band blared out as best it could as Hornblower marched triumphantly up the street. The people on the route looked at them, curious or sullen or merely indifferent, but there was no sign of active resentment. In the Place de l'H?tel de Ville there was far more bustle and life. Numerous men sat their horses there; a detachment of police, drawn up in line, gave an appearance of respectability to the proceedings. But what caught the eye was the multitude of white emblems. There were white cockades in the hats of the gendarmes, and the mounted officials wore white scarves or armbands. White flags - bed sheets, apparently - hung from most of the windows. For the first time in more than twenty years the Bourbon white was being flaunted on the soil of France. A fat man on foot, a white sash round his belly where (Hornblower guessed) yesterday he had worn the tricolour, hurried towards him as he rode in. Hornblower signalled frantically to the band to stop, and scrambled down from the saddle, handing the reins to Brown as he advanced towards the man he guessed to be Momas.
"Our friend!" said Momas, his arms outspread. "Our ally!"
Hornblower allowed himself to be embraced - even at that moment he wondered at what the leathernecks behind him would think about the sight of a commodore being kissed by a fat Frenchman - and then saluted the rest of the Mayor's staff as they came to greet him. Lebrun was at their head, grinning.
"A great moment, sir," said the Mayor.
"A great moment indeed, Monsieur le Baron."
The Mayor waved his hand towards the flagstaff that stood outside the Maine.
"The ceremony is about to take place," he said.
Lebrun was at his side with a paper, and Momas took it and mounted the steps at the foot of the flagstaff. He inflated his lungs and began to read at the top of his voice. It was curious how the French love of legal forms and appearances showed itself even here, at this moment of treason; the proclamation was studded with archaisms and seemed interminable in its prolixity. It mentioned the misdeeds of the usurper, Napoleon Bonaparte, it denounced all his pretensions to sovereignty, it disclaimed all allegiance to him. Instead it declared that all Frenchmen voluntarily recognised the unbroken reign of His Most Christian Majesty, Louis XVIII, King of France and Navarre. At those resounding words the men at the foot of the flagstaff hauled busily at the halliards, and the white standard of the Bourbons soared up the mast. It was time for a gesture on the part of the British. Hornblower turned to his men.
"Three cheers for the King!" he yelled.
He waved his cocked hat over his head.
"Hip - hip - hip -" he called.
"Hooray!" yelled the marines.
The cheer rang hollowly round the square; probably not one marine in ten had any idea as to which king he was cheering, but that did not matter.
"Hip - hip - hip -"
"Hooray!"
"Hip - hip - hip -"
"Hooray!"
Hornblower replaced his hat and stiffly saluted the white flag Now it was time, and high time, to start organising the defence of the town against Bonaparte's wrath.

CHAPTER XI
"Your Excellency," said Lebrun, sidling into the room where Hornblower sat at his desk, "a fishermen's deputation has asked for an audience."
"Yes?" said Hornblower. With Lebrun he was careful not to commit himself prematurely.
"I have endeavoured to discover what it is they seek, Your Excellency."
Anyone could be quite sure that Lebrun would try to find things out. And so far Hornblower had carefully left Lebrun under the not unnatural illusion that he liked being addressed as 'Your Excellency' in every other sentence, and would be more malleable in consequence.
"Yes?"
"It is a question of one of their vessels being taken as a prize."
"Yes?"
"It carried one of your certificates to the effect that the vessel was sailing from the free port of Le Havre, and yet an English ship of war took possession of her."
"Indeed?"
What Lebrun did not know was that lying on the desk before him Hornblower had the report of the captain of the English brig which had made the capture. The captain was convinced that the vessel, before he took her, had just slipped out from Honfleur, across the estuary, having sold her catch there. Honfleur, being still under Bonaparte's rule, and under blockade in consequence, would pay three times as much for fish as could be obtained in liberated Le Havre. It was a question of trading with the enemy, and the Prize Court could be relied upon to adjudicate on the matter.
"We wish to retain the goodwill of the people, Your Excellency, especially of the maritime population. Could you not assure the deputation that the boat will be returned to its owners?"
Hornblower wondered how much the fishing-boat owners of the city had paid Lebrun to exert his influence on their behalf. Lebrun must be making the fortune he craved as much as he craved power.
"Bring the deputation in," said Hornblower; he had a few seconds in which to compose his speech to them - that was always as well, because his French was deficient enough to make circumlocutions necessary when a word or a grammatical construction evaded him.
The deputation, three grey-haired Norman fishermen with an intense air of respectability and in their Sunday best, came in as near smiles as was possible to their solemn natures; Lebrun must have assured them in the anteroom of the certainty of their request being granted. They were quite taken aback when Hornblower addressed them on the subjects of trading with the enemy and its consequences. Hornblower pointed out that Le Havre was at war with Bonaparte, war to the death. Heads would fall in hundreds if Bonaparte should emerge victorious from this war and recapture Le Havre. The scenes of horror that had been witnessed when Toulon fell twenty years before would be reproduced a thousandfold in Le Havre. A united effort was still necessary to pull the tyrant down. Let them attend to that, and make no further attempt to increase their personal fortunes. Hornblower wound up by announcing not merely his intention of allowing the fishing-boat to come under the adjudication of the British Prize Court, but also his fixed determination, in the case of any repetition of the offence, to send officers and crew before a court martial whose sentence undoubtedly would be death.
Lebrun ushered the deputation out again. For a moment Hornblower wondered how Lebrun would explain the failure, but he had no time to wonder for more than a moment. The demands upon the time and energy of the Governor of Le Havre were enormous; Hornblower sighed as he looked at the papers stacked on his desk. There was so much to do; Saxton, the engineer officer just arrived from England, was clamouring to build a new battery, a demi-lune or a redan in his barbarous sapper vocabulary - to cover the defences of the Rouen Gate. All very well, but he would have to exact forced labour from the citizens to construct it. There was a mass of papers from Whitehall, mostly reports of spies regarding Bonaparte's strength and movements; he had skimmed through them, but one or two of them needed closer reading. There was the question of unloading the food ships which Whitehall had sent him - Le Havre should undoubtedly be well stocked with food in case of a close siege, but it was left to him to plan the warehousing of a thousand barrels of salt beef. There was the question of policing the streets. Old personal scores had been wiped out, Hornblower guessed, in the one or two murders of prominent Bonapartists - he even suspected Lebrun of having a hand in one of them - and there had already been some attempt at reprisal by secret assassination. He could run no risk, now that the city was under control, of allowing it to be divided against itself. The court martial was in progress of those mutineers of the Flame whom he had not pardoned. In every case the sentence would be death, inevitably, and there was food for thought in that He was Commodore of the British Squadron as well as Governor of Le Havre, and there was all the manifold business of the squadron to be attended to. He must decide about -
Hornblower was already walking up and down. This vast room in the H?tel de Ville was far better adapted for walking in than was any quarter-deck. He had had two weeks now to adapt himself to the absence of fresh air and wide horizons; his head was bent on his breast and his hands were clasped behind him as he paced, forming the decisions that were demanded of him. This was the reward of success; confinement in an office, chained to a desk; parcelling out his time among a dozen heads of departments and innumerable persons seeking favours. He might as well be a harassed City merchant instead of a naval officer, with the exception that as a naval officer he had the additional labour and responsibility of sending long daily reports to Whitehall. It may have been a great honour to be entrusted with the governorship of Le Havre, to head the attack upon Bonaparte, but it was onerous.
Here came another interruption; an elderly officer in a dark-green uniform waving a paper in his hand. This was - what was his name again? - Hau, a captain in the 60th Rifles. Nobody knew quite what his nationality was by this time; maybe he did not know himself. The 60th, since it had lost its title of Royal Americans, had become rather a depository for aliens in the service of the Crown. He apparently, before the French Revolution, had been a Court official of one of the innumerable little states on the French side of the Rhine. His master had been an exile for twenty years, his master's subjects had been Frenchmen for twenty years, and he himself had been for twenty years employed in odd duties by the British Government.
"The Foreign Office bag is in, sir," said Hau, "and this despatch was marked 'urgent'."
Hornblower took his mind from the problem of nominating a new juge de paix (to take the place of the recent incumbent, who had apparently escaped to Bonapartist territory) to deal with the new problem.
"They're sending us a prince," said Hornblower, having read the letter.
"Which one, sir?" asked Hau, with keen and immediate interest.
"The Duc d'Angoul?me."
"Eventual heir of the Bourbon line," said Hau, judiciously. "Eldest son of the Comte d'Artois, Louis' brother. By his mother he descends from the House of Savoy. And he married Marie Th?r?se, the Prisoner of the Temple, daughter of the martyred Louis XVI. A good choice. He must be aged about forty now."
Hornblower wondered vaguely what use a royal prince would be to him. It might sometimes be a convenience to have a figurehead, but he could foresee - Hornblower was labouring under all the burden of disillusionment - that the Duke's presence would much more often involve him in additional and unprofitable labours.
"He will arrive tomorrow if the wind is fair," said Hau.
"And it is," said Hornblower, looking out of the window at the flagstaff, where fluttered, side by side, the Union flag of England and the white flag of the Bourbons.
"He must be received with all the solemnity the occasion demands," said Hau, dropping unconsciously into French through a fairly obvious association of ideas. "A Bourbon prince setting foot on French soil for the first time in twenty years. At the quay he must be greeted by all the authorities. A royal salute. A procession to the church. Te Deum to be sung there. A procession to the H?tel de Ville, and there a grand reception."
"That is all your business," said Hornblower.