Desiree

by Annemarie Selinko

  ‘On Napoleon becoming First Consul and Lucien Minister of the Interior and Joseph—’

  ‘The boys shouldn’t meddle so much with politics,’ her voice came out of the dark.

  ‘Madame Bonaparte will never speak French properly,’ I thought. ‘She speaks to-day exactly as she did when I first met her in Marseilles. And what an awful-smelling cellar they lived in then! And now they are having the Tuileries refurnished.’ ‘I thought you’d be very pleased, Madame,’ I said awkwardly.

  ‘No. The Tuileries are no place for Napoleone. It is not proper,’ the voice in the dark carriage said firmly.

  ‘But we live in a Republic,’ I said.

  ‘Call Julie and the two boys. I am tired. You will see, he will get into mischief in the Tuileries, into very great mischief.’

  At last Julie, Joseph and Lucien came out of the house. Julie embraced me and pressed her hot cheek against my face. ‘It’s so marvellous,’ she whispered, ‘so marvellous. Come to lunch with me. I must talk to you.’

  Jean-Baptiste joined us in the street to see our visitors off. On his appearance the strange shadows I had seen slipping away before emerged again out of the mist and a trembling voice shouted: ‘Vive Bernadotte!’ It was taken up by three or four other voices: ‘Vive Bernadotte, vive Bernadotte!’ and it seemed a bit ridiculous to me that they made Joseph start.

  The morning is grey and rainy. A moment ago an officer of the National Guard arrived with the message: ‘By order of the First Consul, General Bernadotte will report to him at the Tuileries at eleven o’clock.’

  I close my book and lock it. Later on I shall take it to Julie.

  Paris, March 21st, 1804. (Only the Authorities keep to the Republican calendar now and call it 1st Germinal of the Year XII)

  I was crazy to drive in the dead of night to the Tuileries to see Napoleon. I knew I was crazy, have known it from the very beginning, and yet I got into Madame Letitia’s carriage, trying to think what I was going to say to him.

  Somewhere a clock struck eleven. The carriage was rolling along by the banks of the Seine, and in my imagination I saw myself passing along the vast empty corridors of the Tuileries, entering his room, going up to his desk and starting my explanation.

  Down there was the river. In the course of the years I have come to know most of the bridges. There is one particular bridge, however, which, every time I pass it, makes my heart beat faster. I was passing it now, and I stopped the carriage, and got out and went to the bridge. My bridge!

  It was a night in early spring, a bit chilly still, but the air felt sweet and balmy. After a day’s rain the clouds were breaking up and stars appeared in the gaps.

  ‘He couldn’t have him shot,’ I thought as I leaned over the edge of the bridge and saw the lights of Paris dancing on the waves, ‘he couldn’t.’

  Couldn’t he? Of course he could. He could do anything. Slowly I began to walk the length of the bridge, backwards and forwards.

  My thoughts went back to all the past years through which I have lived in a whirl of events, big and small. There were the weddings I danced at, the receptions at the Tuileries I attended, the victories I celebrated, the dresses I wore and the champagne I drank: they were the small things. And there was Oscar’s first tooth and Oscar’s first ‘Mummy’ and Oscar’s first toddle, holding my hand, from the piano to the chest-of-drawers: they were the big ones. All these memories flooded through my mind, and they seemed to persuade me to delay the moment when I should continue on my way to the First Consul.

  Only a few days ago Julie gave me back my diary.

  ‘I cleared out that old chest-of-drawers, you know, the big one from our house in Marseilles, to make room, for the children’s things. They are growing, they need a bit of extra space. So I put it in the nursery, cleared it out and found your diary. I needn’t keep it for you any longer now, need I?’

  ‘No, you needn’t,’ I said, ‘or, at any rate, not at the moment.’

  There are lots of things for you to write down now,’ said Julie and smiled. ‘I’m sure you haven’t even entered that I have two daughters.’

  ‘No, how could I? I handed the book over to you the night after the coup d’état. But now I shall record that you went to Plombières Spa regularly every year with Joseph, and that Zenaïde Charlotte Julie was born two and a half years ago and Charlotte Napoleone thirteen months later. And I shall also record that you read fiction as enthusiastically as ever and that a story about a harem so entranced you that you called your poor elder daughter Zenaïde.’

  ‘I hope she’ll forgive me for it,’ said Julie remorsefully.

  I took the book home. ‘Above all,’ I thought, ‘I must note down Mama’s death.’ Last summer, when Julie was sitting with us in our garden, Joseph came with a letter from Etienne. He wrote that Mama had died after a heart attack in Genoa.

  ‘Now we are quite alone,’ said Julie.

  ‘But you have me,’ said Joseph.

  He didn’t understand what Julie meant. Julie belongs to him and I to Jean-Baptiste, but after Papa’s death only Mama could tell us what things had been like when we were children.

  On the evening of that day Jean-Baptiste told me: ‘You know that we are all subject to the laws of nature. They determine that we should survive our parents. It would be unnatural if it were the other way round. All we can do is to obey the laws of nature.’

  That was his way of consoling me. Every woman who in childbirth suffers almost unbearable pain is told that she is only sharing the fate of all mothers. But that, I think, is small consolation.

  From my bridge I could see Madame Letitia’s carriage standing there, dark in the darkness, like a threatening monster. Meanwhile on Napoleon’s desk there was a death sentence waiting to be signed, and I was going to say to him – well, what was I going to say to him? One could no longer talk to him as one talks to ordinary people, one couldn’t even sit down if he didn’t allow it …

  The floodtide of my memories was not diverted by the sight of that monstrous black carriage. There was the morning after that endless night during which we were expecting Jean-Baptiste’s arrest, when Napoleon had ordered Bernadotte to appear in the Tuileries.

  ‘You have been called into the Council of State, Bernadotte,’ said Napoleon to him. ‘You will represent the Ministry of War.’

  ‘Do you believe that I have changed my convictions in the course of one night?’ answered Jean-Baptiste.

  ‘No. But in the course of this one night I have become responsible for the fate of the Republic, and I cannot afford to do without one of its ablest men. Will you accept, Bernadotte?’

  A long silence fell, so Jean-Baptiste told me later, a silence in which he looked attentively round the room, at the ceiling, at the desk, through the windows: a silence in which he watched the soldiers of the National Guard below in the courtyard; a silence in which he pondered the legal position of the Consular Government which had been recognised by the Directors before their resignation; a silence in which he came to the conclusion that the Republic had delivered itself into this man’s hand to avoid a civil war.

  ‘You are right, Consul Bonaparte,’ he said at last, ‘the Republic needs every one of its citizens. I accept.’

  On the very next day Moreau and all arrested Deputies were set free, and Moreau was given a new command. Napoleon prepared for a new Italian campaign and appointed Jean-Baptiste Supreme Commander of the Western Army. In this capacity Jean-Baptiste guarded the Channel coast against British attacks; his command stretched all the way to the Gironde. He had set up his headquarters in Rennes and was not at home at the time that Oscar had whooping cough. Later Napoleon won the battle of Marengo and Paris nearly convulsed itself with victory celebrations. Our troops occupied half Europe now, because of the many territories ceded to France in Napoleon’s peace treaties, and these territories all needed garrisoning.

  There are more lights dancing on the waves of the Seine now than at that time long ago, I thought. Then I b
elieved that nothing in the world could be more magnificent and exciting than Paris. But Jean-Baptiste maintained that our present-day Paris is a hundred times more splendid than the Paris of that time and that I had no real basis of comparison.

  One thing Napoleon did was to allow the fugitive aristocrats to return. And so once more plots and intrigues abounded in the mansions of the Faubourg St Germain, confiscated property was handed back to its former owners and torchbearers ran alongside the calashes of the Noailles, the Radziwills, the Montesquieus and the Montmorencys. These former ornaments of the Court of Versailles themselves, however, moved once more with measured, graceful steps through the great state rooms of the Tuileries, bowing to the Head of State of the Republic and bending low over the hand of the ex-widow Comtesse de Beauharnais, who had never fled abroad and never gone hungry but had her bills paid by Monsieur Barras and danced with the ex-lackey Tallien at the ball of the ‘Association of Guillotine Victims’. Once more, too, the royal courts from all the quarters of the globe sent their most distinguished diplomats to Paris. Sometimes my poor head buzzed in confusion when I wanted to remember the names of all these princes, counts and lords who were introduced to me.

  Memories, memories, there was no end to them!

  ‘I’m afraid of him, he has no heart …’ That was Christine’s voice calling to me in the early spring night on my bridge, Christine, the peasant girl from St Maximin, the wife of Lucien Bonaparte. Innumerable witnesses saw Lucien push his brother on to the rostrum and heard him force the first ‘Vive Bonaparte!’ from their reluctant lips. A few weeks later the walls of the Tuileries resounded with the furious arguments of the two brothers and told just as many witnesses what Lucien Bonaparte, Minister of the Interior, and Napoleon Bonaparte, First Consul, were shouting at each other. First they argued about the press censorship introduced by Napoleon, then about the exiling of authors, and every now and then about Christine, the innkeeper’s daughter who was never received in the Tuileries.

  Lucien did not remain Minister for long, nor did Christine cause family strife for any length of time. The well-set-up girl from the country with the apple cheeks and the dimples began to cough blood after a damp winter.

  One afternoon I was sitting with her and we talked about spring and looked at fashion magazines. Christine wanted a gold-embroidered dress she saw illustrated.

  ‘In a dress like that,’ I said, ‘you’ll go to the Tuileries and be introduced to the First Consul, and you’ll be so beautiful that he’ll envy Lucien.’

  Christine’s dimples disappeared. ‘I’m afraid of him, he has no heart,’ she said.

  In the end Madame Letitia succeeded in persuading Napoleon to receive Christine, and a week later he said casually to his brother:

  ‘Don’t forget to bring your wife along to the opera to-morrow night and introduce her to me.’

  ‘I am afraid,’ answered Lucien, ‘my wife is not in a position to accept your most flattering invitation.’

  Napoleon’s lips at once tightened: ‘This is not an invitation, Lucien, but an order from the First Consul.’

  Lucien shook his head: ‘My wife cannot even obey an order from the First Consul. My wife is dying.’

  At Christine’s burial everybody noticed the inscription on the most expensive of the wreaths: ‘To my dear sister-in-law Christine – N Bonaparte.’

  After Christine the widow Jourberthon!

  The widow Jourberthon had red hair, a full bosom and dimpled cheeks which reminded one a bit of Christine. She had been married to a petty bank clerk. Napoleon demanded that Lucien should marry a daughter of one of the returned great noblemen. Instead one day Lucien arrived at the registry office with Madame Jourberthon, whereupon Napoleon at once signed a decree banishing the French citizen Lucien Bonaparte, former member of the Council of Five Hundred, ex-Minister of the Interior of the French Republic, from the country.

  Before Lucien left for Italy he came to us to say good-bye.

  ‘On that day in Brumaire,’ he said, ‘I only wanted everything to be for the best for the Republic. You know that, Bernadotte, don’t you?’

  ‘I know,’ said Jean-Baptiste, ‘I know. But you made a great mistake, on that day in Brumaire!’

  Then there was Hortense.

  Two years ago Hortense broke out into such weeping and screaming that the sentries in the courtyard of the Tuileries looked up to her windows in fright. Napoleon had ordered the engagement of his stepdaughter to his brother Louis, fat, flat-footed Louis who cared nothing for the colourless Hortense and preferred the actresses from the Comédie Française. But Napoleon was not going to tolerate another mésalliance in his family and so ordered his engagement to Hortense. As a result Hortense had locked herself in her bedroom and screamed the house down. When she refused to let her mother in, Julie was sent for.

  Julie hammered on Hortense’s door till the girl opened.

  ‘Can I help you?’ Julie asked.

  Hortense shook her head.

  ‘You love someone else, don’t you?’

  Hortense’s sobbing ceased and her face became rigid.

  ‘You love someone else,’ repeated Julie.

  This time Hortense nodded almost imperceptibly.

  ‘I shall speak to your stepfather,’ said Julie. But Hortense stared hopelessly at the floor.

  ‘Does this other man belong to the First Consul’s circle? Could your stepfather consider him a suitable candidate?’

  Hortense did not move. Only her tears continued to stream down her cheeks.

  ‘Or perhaps this other man is married already?’

  Hortense’s lips opened, she tried to smile, instead of which she suddenly burst into laughter, loud, shrill, uncontrollable laughter which made her shake like someone possessed by demons.

  Julie grabbed her by the shoulders: ‘Stop it! Control yourself! If you don’t I’ll fetch the doctor.’

  But Hortense couldn’t stop. She went on laughing crazily till my patient sister lost her patience and slapped her face. That made her stop.

  Hortense shut her wide-open mouth and breathed deeply a few times. Then she said very quietly and almost inaudibly: ‘But I love – him!’

  ‘Him? Napoleon?’ This possibility had never entered Julie’s mind. ‘Does he know?’

  Hortense nodded. ‘There are few things he does not know. And those few the Minister of Police Fouché ferrets out for him.’

  How bitter it sounded!

  ‘Marry Louis,’ said Julie, ‘marry him. It’s the best thing to do. After all, Louis is his favourite brother …’

  A few weeks later they got married. Polette had been held up as an example to Hortense. How she had fought against her marriage to General Leclerc! Napoleon had almost had to force her into the match. And how she had wept because Napoleon ordered her to accompany Leclerc on his journey to San Domingo! In San Domingo Leclerc died of yellow fever, and then Polette had been so inconsolable that she cut off her honey-coloured hair and put it in his coffin. This the First Consul kept citing as conclusive proof of Polette’s great love for the dead man. But I told him:

  ‘Just the opposite! It proves that she never loved him. Because she never loved him she wanted to do something special for him once he was dead!’

  Polette’s hair grew again; it grew in curls down to her shoulder, and now Napoleon insisted that she should put them up with the help of the most precious combs in the world: the pearl-studded combs of the Borghese family. The Borghese family belongs to the oldest families of Italy and is related to almost all the royal houses of Europe. The then head was the knock-kneed, shaky Prince Camillo Borghese, and into the arms of this elderly prince Napoleon put his favourite sister Polette. Her Highness, the Princess Polette Borghese! Yes, Her Highness Polette, little Polette with the patched dress who had street corner affaires with men …

  Yes, how they have changed, all of them!

  For the last time I looked down to the water where the lights of Paris were dancing up and down as before.
Why, I thought, why do they say that I am the only one who could succeed in this task?

  I went back to the carriage. ‘To the Tuileries!’

  On the way I sorted out one by one the points of this desperate task. The Duc d’Enghien, a Bourbon who has been said to be in the pay of the British and who for a long time threatened to reconquer the Republic for the Bourbons, had been captured. But this capture took place not on French soil but in a little town in Germany called Ettenheim, outside the French frontiers. Four days ago Napoleon all unexpectedly ordered three hundred dragoons to attack this little town. They crossed the Rhine, kidnapped the Duc in Ettenheim and dragged him away into France. Now he was a prisoner in the Fortress of Vincennes, awaiting the verdict. To-day a military tribunal condemned him to death for high treason and an attempt on the life of the First Consul.

  The death sentence has been put before the First Consul for confirmation or commutation. The aristocrats who are now daily guests at Josephine’s implored her, naturally enough, to ask Napoleon for mercy on the prisoner’s behalf. They went to the Tuileries in force and the foreign diplomats laid siege to Talleyrand. Napoleon, however, saw no one. At table Josephine tried to take up the matter, only to be cut short by Napoleon’s ‘Please, Madame, the matter is closed.’ Towards evening Joseph tried his hand and asked his brother for an interview. Napoleon inquired through his secretary what Joseph wanted to see him about, and when Joseph told the secretary it was about ‘a matter of justice’ the First Consul refused to see him.

  During dinner that evening Jean-Baptiste was unusually quiet. But suddenly he banged the table with his fist: ‘Do you realise,’ he said, ‘what Napoleon’s been doing? With 500 dragoons he’s kidnapped a political adversary on foreign territory, brought him to France and put him before a military tribunal! For anyone with the slightest sense of justice that is a blow in the face.’

  ‘And what is going to happen to the prisoner? He couldn’t have him – shot!’ I said in horror.

  Jean-Baptiste shrugged his shoulders. ‘And to think that he took the oath to the Republic, to defend the Rights of Man!’