Brienne-le-Château, August 25, 1782, that evening
By the time the gate closed and the last ticket had been checked, the story of Madame Haute had already outpaced Napoleone back into the school.
He heard it first in fragments, boys passing him in the corridor with sideways glances, a group near the well falling quiet as he approached and picking their conversation back up, louder, the moment he'd passed. He heard it properly, in full, from Davout, who found him near the kitchens and didn't bother softening it.
"Half the school's talking about it," Davout said. "Some think you were right. Rules are rules, and a school that bends them for one favorite loses the right to enforce them on anyone. Others think you humiliated a woman who's done nothing but feed hungry boys for fifteen years, over a piece of paper that wouldn't have cost the school anything to overlook for one afternoon."
"And you?"
"I think you did exactly what you said you'd do three days ago, when you told me you didn't know what you'd choose. You chose the rule." Davout's flat, careful face gave away nothing. "I'm not going to tell you whether that was right. I don't think there's a clean answer sitting at the bottom of it. I only came to warn you that Bourrienne's heard it too, and he didn't look pleased when he heard it."
He found Bourrienne backstage twenty minutes later, half into his Brutus costume, a borrowed toga draped awkwardly over one shoulder while he practiced lines under his breath, and the moment their eyes met, Napoleone understood Davout hadn't exaggerated.
"You turned her away," Bourrienne said, not a question, his voice tight in a way Napoleone had rarely heard from him.
"I did."
"Madame Haute. Who gave you cheese three days ago and has fed half this school since before either of us arrived. You stood at that gate and refused her entry over a ticket."
"I did that too."
"Why?" Bourrienne's jaw was tight, the toga forgotten on his shoulder. "You could have waved her through. Nobody would have said a word. Father Berton wasn't standing there counting every face against his list personally. You chose to enforce a rule against the one person in this whole town who's actually earned some warmth from you, and I want to understand why, because right now it looks like you'd rather be right than be kind."
"Because if I bend the rule for her, I have no honest ground to refuse the next person who asks the same favor and doesn't deserve it half as much." Napoleone kept his voice level, though something under it had begun to fray at the edges of Bourrienne's tone. "A rule that only holds for strangers isn't a rule. It's just a convenient excuse to be harsh with people who don't matter to you and generous with people who do."
"That's not fairness, Napoleone. That's cruelty wearing fairness as a costume." The words landed harder than Bourrienne perhaps meant them to, and something flickered across his face that might have been regret, though he didn't take them back. "You humiliated a woman in front of half the town because you were more afraid of looking inconsistent than you were of hurting someone who'd done nothing to deserve it."
"I don't accept that."
"You don't have to accept it. It happened anyway." Bourrienne's voice cracked slightly, more frustration than anger now. "I have to go stand on that stage in twenty minutes and pretend to be a man who murdered his own friend for the sake of a principle, and I keep thinking about how you did something considerably smaller than that this afternoon for exactly the same reason, and I don't know how I'm supposed to feel about either of you right now."
"That's not a fair comparison."
"Maybe not. I'm not feeling especially fair at the moment." Bourrienne turned back to the mirror, adjusting the toga with hands that weren't quite steady. "I need to finish dressing. Go find your seat, Napoleone. We'll talk after."
"Bourrienne—"
"After." He didn't turn around again.
Napoleone found a place near the back of the assembled crowd, close enough to the gate to see, at some distance, the porter's small lodge where Madame Haute had presumably retreated, its shutters closed against the evening's festivities despite the noise and torchlight spilling from the courtyard beyond.
Rocher found him there, uncharacteristically subdued. "Is it true? What they're saying?"
"Some of it. Probably all of it, by now, knowing how fast this school talks."
"Picot thinks you were right to hold the line. Davout won't say either way. I think..." Rocher hesitated, choosing his words with more care than usual. "I think I understand why you did it. I don't know that I think it was the right thing to actually do."
"That seems to be the general opinion tonight."
"Bourrienne's furious."
"I noticed."
"He's never been furious at you before. Not properly. I didn't think he had it in him, honestly, given how much he usually just teases you out of whatever mood you're in." Rocher glanced toward the stage, where the first boys were already taking their places, torchlight catching on the borrowed costumes and painted scenery. "For what it's worth, I don't think he's wrong to be upset. I also don't think you're wrong that a rule which bends for the people you like stops being a rule at all. I just don't know how both of those things can be true at the same time, and I suspect that's exactly the problem."
The play began before Napoleone could answer, torches lifted, the assembled townsfolk hushing as the first actor stepped forward to set the scene, and he watched, alone in the crowd despite the hundreds of bodies pressed around him, as his closest friend strode onto the stage playing a man who had chosen a principle over the people who loved him, and found he had no ready argument left for anyone, least of all himself.