This fine flunkey then looked me up and down and asked in an arrogantly nasal voice:
‘What do you want, citizeness?’
This question was the last thing I had expected, and so I only managed to stammer:
‘I should like to – to go inside!’
‘I can see that,’ said the lackey. ‘Have you an invitation?’
I shook my head. ‘I … I thought that – well, that anybody might come in here.’
‘You did, did you?’ the fellow grinned, his eyes becoming more and more insolent. ‘The Rue Honoré and the Arcades of the Palais Royal are good enough for the likes of you, dearie!’
I felt myself turning puce in the face. ‘What – whom do you think you are talking to, citizen?’ I managed to bring out, nearly overcome with shame. ‘I’ve got to get inside because I’ve got to see someone in there.’
But he simply opened the gate and pushed me out. ‘Order from Madame Tallien: ladies not allowed in except when accompanied by gentlemen. Or perhaps you claim to be a personal friend of Madame’s?’ he added in his most contemptuous voice, pushing me out on to the street and banging the gate.
And there I was, among the curious mob on the pavement.
Meanwhile the gate opened and closed all the time; but some girls had forced themselves in front of me so that I couldn’t see who the guests of Madame were.
‘It’s a new arrangement,’ said a girl with a thickly rouged face to me, and winked. ‘Only a month ago we were all allowed in without the slightest difficulty. But then some foreign paper wrote that Madame Tallien’s house was no better than a brothel …’ She bleated rather than laughed and her mouth showed more gaps than teeth between purple-painted lips.
‘It’s all the same to her, but Barras said that one had to keep up appearances,’ said another one from whom I shrank back in horror because of the awful pus-filled sores in her chalk-white powdered face. ‘You are a new one, aren’t you?’ she asked me, looking pitifully at my old-fashioned dress.
‘Barras! Don’t talk about Barras!’ Purple Lips bleated out once more. ‘Two years ago he had to be satisfied with Lucille at twenty-five francs a night. To-day he can afford the Beauharnais! That old she-goat! Rosalie, who got in there’ – her pointed chin jerked towards the house – ‘the day before yesterday with her new friend, wealthy Ouvrard, told me that that Beauharnais woman is having an affair now with a real youngster, an officer who knows how to press her hand and look deep into her eyes …’
‘Fancy Barras standing for that!’ marvelled Pustule Face.
‘Barras? Why, he doesn’t mind, he even wants her to sleep with the officers! All he cares for is to be on good terms with the Army people because some day he may have to depend on them. Besides, he’s probably sick of her already. Josephine, always in white, and nothing but white. That old bitch with grown-up children …’
A young man intervened here: ‘Her children are twelve and fourteen years of age. Not much grown-upness there. By the way, Theresa spoke in the Assembly to-day.’
‘You don’t say, citizen!’ The two girls at once turned their whole attention on the young man. But he bent over to me and asked:
‘You’re not from Paris, citizeness? But you probably read in the papers that lovely Theresa is the first woman ever to have addressed the National Assembly. To-day she talked about the necessary reforms in the education of young girls. Are you interested in all that, citizeness?’
He smelt abominably of wine and cheese and I withdrew a bit from him.
‘It’s raining, let’s go into a coffee-house,’ said Purple Lips, looking encouragingly at the young man with the abominable smell. But he stuck to me.
‘It’s raining, citizeness,’ he said.
Yes, it was raining. My blue frock was all wet and, besides, I felt cold. The young man touched my hand as if by accident, and at that moment I knew that I couldn’t stand it any longer.
Just then another cab drew up by the gate. With both elbows I forced my way out of the group of loiterers, ran like mad towards the cab and right into a man wearing an army officer’s greatcoat. He had just got out of the cab, a dreadfully tall man, so tall that I had to raise my eyes in order to see his face. But since he had pulled his three-cornered hat down over his eyes I saw nothing but a gigantic nose.
‘Please forgive me, citizen,’ I said to the giant, who shrank back in astonishment from my attack, ‘please forgive me, but I should like to go with you.’
‘You would like what?’ he asked, taken aback.
‘Yes, I’d like to go with you for a moment. Ladies are only allowed into Madame Tallien’s house if they are in the company of gentlemen. I’ve got to get in there, you see, I’ve got to – and I have no gentleman to escort me in.’
The officer looked me up and down and didn’t seem to like the prospect. The, suddenly coming to a decision, he offered me his arm and said:
‘Come on, citizeness!’
The lackey in the hall recognised me at once. He looked at me with indignation and then bowed deeply to the giant and took his greatcoat whilst I inspected myself in a tall mirror. Wet strands of hair were hanging into my face, and as I rearranged them I found that my nose was shiny. But there was no time to powder it because just then the giant said impatiently:
‘Well, are you ready, citizeness?’
He was wearing a beautifully tailored uniform with thick gold epaulettes. When I lifted my face to see him properly I noticed that the small mouth under his striking nose was curled in disapproval. Quite obviously he was annoyed because he had given in and taken me along. And now it occurred to me that most likely he took me for one of the prostitutes outside the gate.
‘Please forgive me,’ I murmured, ‘I didn’t know what else to do.’
‘Conduct yourself decently in there and don’t let me down,’ he said severely, made a stiff little bow and once again offered me his arm.
The lackey opened a white double door and we entered a big room crowded to the walls with people. Another lackey seemed to shoot out of the floor in front of us and looked at us questioningly. My escort turned to me abruptly:
‘What’s your name?’
I didn’t want anybody to know of my presence, and so I only whispered my Christian name, ‘Désirée.’
‘Désirée who?’ he asked, annoyance in his voice.
I shook my head. ‘Please, please, just Désirée.’
So he told the lackey curtly, ‘Citizeness Désirée and Citizen General Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte.’
‘Citizeness Désirée and Citizen General Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte!’ the lackey announced into the room. The people standing near us turned round, and a dark-haired young woman in a gown that seemed to consist of yellow veils at once left her group and glided towards us.
‘How lovely to see you, Citizen General! What a marvellous surprise!’ she twittered and stretched out both her hands to the giant. A searching glance of her great dark eyes ran over me from top to bottom and stopped for a fraction of a second on my dirty shoes.
Meanwhile the giant bent down over her hands and kissed – no, not her hands but her white wrists. ‘You are too kind, Madame Tallien,’ he said. ‘As always when Fortune allows a poor soldier from the front a sojourn in Paris, my first call is here at Theresa’s magic circle!’
‘As always the poor soldier from the front deigns to flatter. And he’s lost no time in finding company either, I see …’ Her dark eyes scrutinised me once again. I attempted a little bow, but its only result was that Madame Tallien lost every shred of interest in my poor little person and calmly interposed herself between the General and me.
‘Come on, Jean-Baptiste,’ she said, ‘you’ll have to say how-do-you-do to Barras. He is sitting in the garden-room with that horrible Germaine de Staël – you know, old Necker’s daughter who scribbles novels all the time – and we’ve got to relieve him. He’ll be delighted at your …’
And then I saw nothing but my giant’s back and the yellow vei
ls over her otherwise naked shoulders. Other guests came between us, and there I was quite by myself in Madame Tallien’s glittering salon.
I took refuge in a window niche and surveyed the room. But I couldn’t see Napoleon anywhere. There were a lot of uniforms there, but not one as shabby as that of my fiancé.
The longer I stayed the deeper I crept into the protecting window niche. Not only was my dress impossible but my shoes too appeared quite ridiculous to me. The ladies here didn’t wear proper shoes at all, just soles without heels, tied round the feet with narrow gold or silver straps so that the toes were left free, and the toe-nails were painted pink or silver.
I could hear a violin playing in one of the adjoining rooms. Servants in red uniforms moved among the guests balancing trays full of enormous bowls, glasses and snacks. I gobbled a smoked salmon roll, but the taste was lost on me because of my excited state. Then two gentlemen came into the window niche and stood near me talking without paying any attention to me. They talked about the people of Paris who wouldn’t put up much longer with the rise of prices and would riot soon.
‘My dear Fouché,’ one of them said, taking snuff with a bored air, ‘if I were in Barras’ place I’d shoot the mob to bits.’
‘For that you’d first have to find someone ready to do the shooting,’ the other one remarked.
Thereupon the first man, between two snuff boxes, jerked out the sentence that he had just seen General Bernadotte among the guests.
The other one, the man called Fouché, shook his head. ‘Bernadotte? Never in your life. But what about that little wretch who keeps hanging round Josephine these days?’
At that moment someone clapped his hands, and over the general murmur I heard the twitter of Madame Tallien’s voice:
‘Everybody to the green room, please! We have a surprise for our friends.’
I went along with the crowd into an adjoining apartment where we were so tightly packed that I couldn’t see what was going on. All I could take in was the green-and-white striped silk covering the walls. Then champagne was handed round and I too was given a glass. We had to press together still more closely to let the lady of the house make her way through. Theresa passed quite close to where I stood, and I saw that she had nothing on under the yellow veils. The dark red nipples of her bosom showed quite clearly. How indecent it was!
She had taken the arm of a gentleman whose purple frock-coat was embroidered with gold all over. He was holding a lorgnette to his eyes and gave an impression of extraordinary arrogance. Someone murmured, ‘Good old Barras is getting fat,’ and I realised that I was in the presence of one of the five masters of France.
‘Form a circle round the sofa please!’ Theresa called out.
Obediently we arranged ourselves in a circle. And at that moment I saw him!
Where? On the little sofa. With a lady in white.
He still wore the old down-at-heel boots, but his trousers were new and immaculately pressed and new too was his uniform jacket, a jacket without either badges of rank or medals. His lean face was no longer tanned but almost sickly pale. He sat there stiffly and stared at Theresa Tallien as if the salvation of his soul depended on her. The woman by his side was leaning against the back of the sofa, her arms stretched out and her small head with its tiny curls thrown backwards. Her eyes were half closed, the lids painted silver, the long neck shining up provocatively white out of a narrow dark-red velvet ribbon. And then I knew who she was: the widow Beauharnais. Josephine!
A mocking smile played round her closed mouth, and we all followed the glance of her half-open eyes: she was smiling at Barras.
‘Has everybody got champagne?’ asked the voice of Madame Tallien.
The small figure in white stretched out her hand, someone gave her two glasses and she held out one towards Napoleon: ‘General, your glass!’
She was smiling at him now, a very intimate, somewhat pitying smile.
‘Citizens and citizenesses,’ came Theresa’s voice loud and shrill, ‘I have the honour to make an announcement to our friends which concerns our beloved Josephine.’
Theresa obviously enjoyed the scene. She was standing quite close to the sofa, holding her glass high, while Napoleon had got up, looking at her in great embarrassment. Josephine, however, had once more thrown back her childlike curly head with its painted eyelids.
‘Our beloved Josephine,’ Theresa continued, ‘has decided to enter again the holy state of matrimony …’ A suppressed titter sprang up somewhere and Josephine absent-mindedly fingered the red velvet ribbon round her neck. ‘… to enter again the holy state of matrimony and …’ Here Theresa made an eloquent pause and looked across to Barras who nodded to her. ‘… and engaged herself to Citizen General Napoleon Bonaparte.’
‘No!’
I heard the scream exactly as everybody else did. Shrilly it seemed to cut the room in two and to hover for a moment in the air, followed by an icy silence. Not till a second later did I realise that it was I who had screamed.
The next moment I found myself in front of the sofa, saw Theresa Tallien shrink away terrified, smelled her sweetish scent and felt on me the stare of the other one, the woman in white on the sofa. But consciously I saw only Napoleon. His eyes were like glass, transparent and expressionless. A vein was quivering on his right temple.
We faced each other for what seemed to be an eternity. But perhaps it was no more than the fraction of a second. Only then I turned my eyes to the woman.
I saw her silvery eyelids. I saw the tiny wrinkles round the corners of her eyes. I saw her lips painted deep red. Oh, how I hated her! With one sudden lunge I threw my glass of champagne at her feet.
The champagne splashed on to her frock. She screeched hysterically …
I found myself running for all I was worth, running and running, along a rain-drenched street. I had no idea how I had got out of the green room, the white room and the hall, past the guests who recoiled from me in horror, past the servants who tried to seize me by the arm. I only knew that suddenly a wet darkness enveloped me, that I ran along a row of houses, that I turned into another street, that my heart was thumping like mad and that like an animal, instinctively, I was running in the direction I wanted. And then I reached a quay, stumbling and slipping on the wet stones all the time till a bridge loomed up before me. The Seine, I thought, the Seine, oh good, good! And then I stopped running, walked slowly across the bridge, leant over and saw thousands and thousands of lights dancing on the water, up and down with the waves. How merry it looked! I bent forward over the parapet, the lights danced up towards me, the rain pattered. Never before in my life had I been so alone.
I thought of Mama and Julie and how they would forgive me once they knew the whole story. In any case Napoleon was probably going to report his engagement this very night to Joseph or his mother.
That, I suddenly realised, was the first clear thought in my brain. It hurt so much that I couldn’t stand it. So I put my hands on the edge of the parapet and tried to pull myself up and—
Yes, and at that moment someone gripped me hard by the shoulder and pulled me back. I tried to shake off the strange hand and shouted, ‘Leave me alone, leave me alone!’ But I was seized by both arms and dragged away from the parapet. I struggled as hard as I could to tear myself free, but it was no use. It was so dark that I couldn’t even see the face of the man who dragged me off. For sheer despair I sobbed and panted and I loathed the sound of the man’s voice which I heard over the noise of the rain, shouting:
‘Quiet now, quiet. Don’t be a fool! Come, here is my cab.’
There was a chaise standing on the quayside.
I continued to struggle desperately, but the stranger was far stronger than I and pushed me into the cab. He sat down by my side and called to the coachman:
‘Drive off, never mind where. Just drive.’
I sat as far away as possible from the stranger. But then I noticed that my teeth were chattering with the wet and the excitement and rivu
lets were streaming from my hair across my face.
A hand, a big warm hand came towards me and searched for my fingers.
I sobbed. ‘Let me get out! Let me, please …’ At the same time I clung to this strange hand because I felt so wretched.
‘But you asked me yourself to be your escort,’ the voice came out of the dark of the carriage. ‘Don’t you remember, Mademoiselle Désirée?’
I pushed his hand away. ‘I – now – I, I want – to be alone.’
‘Oh no, you asked me to accompany you to Madame Tallien’s. And now we’ll stay together till I see you home.’
His voice was very quiet and really very agreeable.
‘Are you this General – this General Bernadotte?’ I asked. And then everything came back to me with perfect clarity and I shouted:
‘Do leave me alone. I hate Generals. Generals have no heart.’
‘There are Generals and – Generals!’ he said, and laughed.
I heard something rustling in the dark and a coat was laid across my shoulders.
‘Your coat will be soaked,’ I said. ‘I am wet from the rain, wet through.’
‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘I was expecting that. Wrap yourself up well.’
A memory seared through me like fire, a memory of another General’s coat, of another rainy night. That night Napoleon asked for my hand …
The carriage rolled on and on. Once the driver stopped and asked a question, and the strange General answered:
‘Go on, never mind where.’
And so we rolled on, and I kept sobbing into the strange coat. Once I said:
‘What a coincidence that you happened to pass over the bridge just then.’
‘Not a coincidence at all. I felt responsible for you because I brought you among those people. And when you ran away so suddenly I followed you. Only, you ran so fast I preferred to hire a cab and keep on your track. But I wanted to leave you alone as long as possible.’
‘And why were you so awful then and didn’t leave me alone?’
‘Because it was no longer possible,’ he said calmly, and put his arm round my shoulders. I was dead tired and weary and didn’t care any longer what happened. Driving on, just driving on, I thought, and never to have to get out again, never to see again, to hear again, to speak again, I thought … And so I put my head on his shoulder and he pulled me closer to him.
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