Napoleon Great-Great-Grandson Speaks. Rafael Grugman
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and set sail for Sevastopol. But the French had not abandoned their primary goal, for which they had gone to war. On April 30, under cover of a thick mist, the English frigate «Tiger» and a French gunboat had torn themselves away from the squadron and made a new attempt to land a group for the kidnapping.
However, on that day as well, success did not smile on the French. Having no local navigational charts, the captain of the frigate made an error; and, not far from Station 10 of Bolshoi Fountain, he ran the ship aground.
The motionless frigate became an excellent target for the Russian artillerymen, who, in revenge for the recent bombardment of the city-during which one of the shells had even hit the monument to Richelieu-pulled out all the stops.
The frigate was set afire with several well-aimed shots, and afterwards (and this was a first in the history of world wars!), the cavalry attacked the ship. The valiant hussars saddled their horses and, before the ship managed to sink, captured it with a swift assault, and even carried off a trophy or two.
While the «Tiger,» ripped to shreds, slowly sank beneath the waves, half a mile away, a boat approached the rocky shore.
Three brave men dragged it ashore and, seizing their luggage, began to ascend the rocky precipice.
A short time later, a stagecoach on its way to the city fell victim to their attack. At pistol-point, the stalwart Frenchmen forced the passengers to leave the carriage; and they ordered the coachman to take them to Odessa immediately, waving a pistol and a wad of hundred-ruble notes under his nose as incentives.
The Frenchmen were out of luck: the coachman valued patriotism over currency. He urged on the horses and, with a sharp tug on the reins, sent the poor animals, together with the equipage, off the cliff, while he himself managed at the last minute to leap out on the side of the road.
Upon inspection of the bodies, besides money and arms, a map was discovered on which a house on Novoselsk Street was marked with a cross, and two words were written in French: «Yosif Ravelli.»
For the Odessa police, it was no trouble at all to search out the house marked on the map and arrest the French spy.
At the police station, where poor Yosif was held for several days, he argued in vain that he had nothing to do with the scouts and had absolutely no idea why his good name was mentioned in their papers.
Convinced of the futility of trying to make sense of the case, they let him go, under police surveillance; meanwhile, the occurrence was mentioned in a secret dispatch to Petersburg-an appendix to a report from the Governor-general addressed the Tsar.
Soon, a secret order was received in Odessa from the police administration in Petersburg: to keep Ravelli under close observation.
In order to exert psychological pressure on the «spy,» he was ordered to appear every week at the police station.
For several years, poor Ravelli conscientiously carried out this order from the authorities, until, convinced at last of his honesty, the counterintelligence officers left the merchant in peace.
Hardly had Ravelli acquired freedom of movement, when, at the very first opportunity, he moved away from dangerous Odessa, settling in a small town not far from Akkerman.
There, he changed two letters in his documents, becoming Rivilli; and after that, so as to thoroughly confuse his trail, dropped one «l» from his surname.
He survived to the age of seventy-two (his wife had died still earlier)-one year too few to see his son's wedding-in constant terror of falling once again under police surveillance.
It is hard to say how Old Man Ravelli-Rivili would have looked upon his son's action, but the latter chose as his bride the daughter of a grocery store assistant, a Jewish woman named Rakhil.
I think Rakhil's parents would not have been happy with their daughter's marriage to an Italian, either, and probably wouldn't have given their consent; but the prudent girl explained to her father that Grigory was a Jew.
His hair, which was curly, thanks to his Italo-French ancestry, could absolutely be passed off as Jewish. And his poor knowledge of the laws of the faith she explained by his coming from an assimilated family, in which they didn't study Torah or send their children to Hebrew school. True, Rakhil taught him some things: first off, not to cross himself; not to eat pork; and, provided no important deal was in the works, to observe the Sabbath.
And, in order that her fiancé's manifestly non-Jewish surname should not arouse her father's suspicions, Rakhil counseled him to add an «S» on the end.
The deception succeeded. All the more so, because in Tiraspol-and it was there that Rakhil's family lived-nobody knew him.
In 1886, a son was born to Grigory Rivilis and entered in the synagogue book under the name of Shmuel. Shmuel (Shmuel is sometimes pronounced Shimon, but Grigory privately took note of the French sound of his name, Simon)-was my grandfather.
Since his mother was Jewish, under Hebrew law, Shmuel Rivilis is considered a Jew. And on his father's side…all of us, in the final analysis, are children of Noah. So, what is there to argue about?
There is not much to tell about his subsequent life. Shmuel grew up in the manner prescribed for boys from respectable Jewish families: he went to the synagogue, studied the Torah, married a girl from a Jewish family-Sara, my grandmother, who, though illiterate, nonetheless had sekhl-or, in Russian, «brains.»
Of his genealogy, he also knew little until a certain time, for his father, fearing exposure, carefully hid the truth from his children-his son and three daughters.
But, if Grigory Rivilis dreamed of being forgotten, the French Secret Service was conducting a careful search for the Emperor's vanished descendant-supposing that, possibly, they had gotten wind of him already in Petersburg, and were only waiting for the right time to play the card they held in their hands.
All the more so since, after the overthrow of Napoleon III-ending with the bloody Paris Commune-people in certain circles had begun to talk again about the necessity of restoring the monarchy.
The efforts of one secret service do not go unnoticed by another. Having pinpointed the location of French Intelligence activity in southern Russia, they took alarm in Petersburg.
The Russian agents in Paris sat up and took notice. After lengthy efforts, which cost the Third Department no small sum, it became clear: this all had to do with the descendants of Napoleon Bonaparte, no more, no less. The news was improbable. They decided not to believe it.
Common sense whispered to the aces of counterintelligence that the story about Ravelli was most likely a cover for some other, more refined operation. But if the efforts of one secret service were directed toward the abduction of Ravelli, then it was in the interest of the other to protect him until circumstances were fully clarified.
These were precisely the instructions that the police chief of Odessa received. But, to find the true reasons for the French Secret Service's anxiety and the recruitment of Ravelli, the head of the Third Police Department himself, trusting no one, traveled in person to Odessa.
But Ravelli had disappeared. A preliminary interrogation of his business associates yielded nothing. Ravelli had dissolved into thin air, and had not reappeared in Odessa.
The search for him went on for more than a year, and what a surprise it was for the chief of the Secret Police, Colonel Zubatov, when it was reported to him that Yosif Ravelli, firstly, was no longer a Ravelli; and, secondly, had given up the ghost three years since. And Colonel Zubatov decided to interrogate his son, Grigory.
This is how Grandfather Shmuel records Grigory Rivilis' talk with Colonel Zubatov in his diary. The translation, I repeat, from Yiddish to Russian was done with Mama's assistance. And polished by his grandson-that is, by me:
«Wouldn't you like, young man, to go to Paris?» in an insinuating voice, the Colonel began his talk with Grigory Rivilis. «The Lord Emperor is preparing to go there soon on an official visit…hunh? Wouldn't you like to associate with Himself?»
Grigory's heart sank into his boots. He felt as though he were just about to fall off his chair.
«Why