Desiree

by Annemarie Selinko

  We dropped the subject. But I couldn’t help thinking all the time of the death sentence which, we had heard, was waiting on Napoleon’s desk for his signature.

  The silence at the table grew oppressive. Finally, in order to break it I said: ‘Julie told me that Jerome Bonaparte has agreed to divorce his American wife.’

  Jerome, that dreadful boy of the days in Marseilles, had become a naval officer and on one occasion had very nearly been captured by the British. He only escaped by landing in a North American port, where he met and married a Miss Elisabeth Patterson. It caused Napoleon another fit of fury, and so Jerome, now on his way home, had given way to his great brother and agreed to divorce the former Miss Patterson. The only objection he dared to raise in his letter was: ‘But she has a lot of money.’

  ‘The First Consul’s family affairs,’ remarked Jean-Baptiste, ‘are of no interest to me.’

  Outside we heard a carriage draw up. ‘It’s gone ten o’clock,’ I said, ‘a bit late for calls.’

  Fernand came in and announced Madame Letitia Bonaparte.

  That was a surprise indeed. Madame Letitia as a rule did not visit without a previous appointment. And there she was already heaving herself into the room behind Fernand with a ‘Good evening, General Bernadotte, good evening, Madame.’

  Madame Letitia has grown younger rather than older during recent years. Her former hard and careworn face looked fuller, the wrinkles round her mouth seemed smoothed away. But there were a few grey strands in her dark hair, which she still wears in the Corsican peasant women’s manner, tied in a knot on her neck; a few fashionable curls falling down over her forehead seem rather out of harmony with her whole personality.

  We took her into the drawing-room, where she sat down and slowly stripped off her pearl-grey gloves. Looking at her hands with the big cameo ring – a present from Napoleon from Italy – I remembered the red, chapped skin of her fingers in that cellar dwelling, the fingers which had to wash clothes all day long.

  ‘General Bernadotte, do you think it possible that my son will condemn this Duc d’Enghien to death?’ she asked without any further preliminaries.

  Jean-Baptiste answered cautiously: ‘It was not the First Consul but a military tribunal that condemned him.’

  ‘The military tribunal judges according to my son’s wishes. Do you think it possible that he will have the sentence carried out?’

  ‘Not only possible but probable. Otherwise, why should he have given the order to seize the Duc on foreign territory and put him before a court-martial?’

  ‘I thank you, General Bernadotte.’ Madame Letitia looked at her cameo ring. ‘Do you know my son’s reasons for this step?’

  ‘No, Madame.’

  ‘Have you any ideas about them?’

  ‘I should not like to put them into words.’

  She fell silent again. Sitting on the sofa bent forward and with knees slightly apart, she had the air of a very tired peasant woman who wanted a moment’s rest.

  ‘General Bernadotte, do you realise what the carrying out of this sentence means?’

  Jean-Baptiste did not answer. I could see how embarrassing the conversation was for him.

  Madame Letitia raised her eyes to meet his and said: ‘Murder, that is what it means, foul murder!’

  ‘You should not excite yourself, Madame—’

  She raised both her hands and cut him short: ‘Not excite myself, you say? General Bernadotte, my son is about to commit a foul murder, and I, his mother, I am not to excite myself?’

  I went and sat down by her side and took her hand. It trembled. ‘Napoleon may have political reasons,’ I murmured.

  ‘Hold your tongue,’ she said, and turned back to Jean-Baptiste. ‘There is no excuse for murder, General! Political reasons are—’

  ‘Madame,’ said Jean-Baptiste, ‘many years ago you sent your son to a military academy and made him an officer. Perhaps, Madame, as an officer he may judge the value of an individual human life differently from you.’

  She shook her head. ‘General, this is not the question of the value of an individual human life in battle. This is a question of a man who has been dragged by force into France, there to be killed. With this killing France will lose her greatness. I will not have my Napoleone turning into a murderer, you understand, I will not have it!’

  ‘You should go and talk to him, Madame.’

  ‘No, no, Signor—’ Her voice became uncertain and her lips twitched. ‘It would be no use. He’d just say, “Mama, you don’t understand these things. Go to bed. You want me to raise your allowance?” No, Signor, she must go, she, Eugenie!’

  My heart stopped beating. I shook my head in desperation.

  ‘Signor General, you don’t know, but at that time when my Napoleone had been arrested and we were afraid that they might shoot him, she, little Eugenie, went to the authorities and helped him. Now she must go to him, must remind him of it and ask him—’

  ‘I don’t believe that that would make any impression on the First Consul.’

  ‘Eugenie – I am sorry, Signora Bernadotte, Madame – you do not want your country to be called a murderous Republic by the rest of the world? You do not, do you? I have been told – oh, many people came to me to-day on behalf of this Duc – I have been told that he has an old mother and a fiancée and – oh, Madame, have pity on me, help me, I will not have my Napoleone—’

  Jean-Baptiste had got up and paced restlessly up and down the room. Madame Letitia kept on:

  ‘General, if your boy, your little Oscar, were about to sign this death sentence—’

  ‘Désirée’ – Jean-Baptiste said it gently but very firmly – ‘Désirée, get ready and go to the Tuileries!’

  ‘You are coming with me, Jean-Baptiste, aren’t you?’

  ‘You know quite well, my girl, that would destroy the Duc’s last chance.’Jean-Baptiste smiled wryly and took me in his arms: ‘No, you will have to go alone. I fear it will be useless, but, darling, you must try.’ His voice was full of pity.

  Still I did not give in: ‘It looks bad if I go to the Tuileries by myself at night. Too many women—’ I hesitated a moment, but then went on regardless of whether Madame Letitia heard it or not – ‘too many women come late at night to the First Consul by themselves.’

  ‘Put on a hat, take a cape and go,’ was all Jean-Baptiste answered.

  ‘Take my carriage, Madame. And if you don’t object I should like to wait here for your return.’ I nodded and then heard her add: ‘I shall not disturb you, General. I shall sit here by the window and wait.’

  Since on Christmas Eve four years ago a bomb exploded behind the First Consul’s equipage, and almost every month a new plot on the First Consul’s life is being discovered by Fouché, it is impossible to enter the Tuileries without being stopped every ten yards or so by guards wanting to know your business. In spite of that everything was far simpler than I had thought. Whenever I was stopped I simply said, ‘I want to see the First Consul,’ and was allowed to pass on. Nobody asked either my name or the purpose of my visit. The National Guards suppressed a smile and stared at me impertinently. I felt dreadfully embarrassed.

  At last I reached the door which is supposed to lead to the First Consul’s offices. I had never been here before. The few family parties to which I had gone in the Tuileries had taken place in Josephine’s apartments.

  The two guards in front of this door did not ask me any questions at all. So I just entered. Inside, a young man in civilian clothes was sitting at a desk, writing. I had to clear my throat twice before he heard me. He shot up from his seat in surprise: ‘Mademoiselle?’

  ‘I should like to see the First Consul.’

  ‘I am afraid, Mademoiselle, you have mistaken the room. This is his office.’

  I didn’t know what the young man was driving at. ‘He hasn’t gone to bed yet?’ I asked.

  ‘The First Consul is still working.’

  ‘Why, then, take me to him.’


  ‘Mademoiselle—’ The young man, who, in his dilemma, had not dared to take his eyes from his boots, now looked up and faced me for the first time: ‘Mademoiselle,’ he said, blushing, ‘Constant, the valet, surely must have told you that he would expect you at the back door. These rooms here are – are the offices.’

  ‘But I want to speak to the First Consul, not to his valet. Go to him and ask him if I may disturb him for a moment. It is very important.’

  ‘Mademoiselle!’ the young man said imploringly.

  ‘Don’t call me Mademoiselle but Madame. I am Madame Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte.’

  ‘Mademoi – I am so sorry – Madame – so sorry—’ He looked at me as if I were a ghost. ‘So sorry,’ he murmured.

  ‘All right. But would you mind announcing me now?’

  The young man disappeared and returned almost immediately. ‘Madame, may I ask you to follow me? Some gentlemen are with the First Consul at the moment, and he asks you to wait just one second.’

  He took me into a small waiting-room where dark-red velvet chairs were grouped round a marble table. But I didn’t have to wait long.

  A door opened. Three or four men carrying piles of documents under their arms appeared, bending low and saying good night to someone invisible to me, and went out towards the ante-room, whilst the secretary darted past them and into the First Consul’s room. Next moment he shot out again and announced solemnly:

  ‘Madame Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, the First Consul will see you now.’

  ‘This is the most charming surprise for years,’ said Napoleon as I entered. He was standing close by the door, and he took my hands and put them to his lips, kissing first my right and then my left. I withdrew them quickly and didn’t know what to say.

  ‘Sit down, my dear, sit down. And tell me how you are. You are getting younger, younger every time I see you.’

  ‘Oh no,’ I said, ‘time flies. Next year we’ll have to look round for a tutor for Oscar.’

  He pressed me into the arm-chair next to his desk. He himself, however, didn’t sit down. Instead, he kept wandering round the room, and I had to crane my neck not to lose sight of him.

  It was a very big room with a number of small tables standing about in it, all loaded with books and documents. But on the big writing desk the documents were arranged in two neat piles resting on wooden boards. Between the two piles, directly in front of the desk chair, lay a single sheet with a dark red seal affixed to it. A big fire roared in the fireplace. The room was hot to suffocation.

  ‘You must see this,’ he said, and held out a few sheets closely printed in tiny letters with paragraph signs standing out in the margin, ‘the first copies fresh from the printers! It is the new Civil Law, the Code Civil of the French Republic! The laws for which the Revolution strove, here they are: worked out, written down and printed. And in force, for all time! I have given France its new Civil Law!’

  Year after year, I knew, he had closeted himself with France’s greatest lawyers and worked out the new code of law. And now, here it was, in print and in force.

  ‘The most humane laws in history!’ he said. ‘Just look here, for instance, concerning children: the first-born has no more rights than his younger brothers and sisters. And here: all parents are compelled to look after their children. And see here—’ He fetched some more sheets from one of the small tables and began to explain their contents: ‘See here, the new marriage laws. They make possible not only divorce but separation. And here—’ He fished out another sheet. ‘This concerns the nobility. Hereditary titles are abolished.’

  ‘The man in the street already calls your Code Civil the Code Napoléon,’ I said. This was perfectly true, but besides, I wanted to keep him in good humour.

  He threw the sheets back on the mantelpiece and came up to me. ‘I am sorry,’ he said, ‘this must be very boring for you. Do take off your hat, Madame!’

  ‘No, no,’ I said, ‘I am only going to stay for one moment, I only wanted—’

  ‘But it doesn’t suit you, Madame, really. May I take it off?’

  ‘No. Besides, it is a new hat, and Jean-Baptiste said it suited me excellently.’

  He drew back at once. ‘Of course, if General Bernadotte says so—’ He began pacing up and down again behind my back.

  ‘Now I’ve annoyed him,’ I thought, and quickly undid the ribbon holding my hat.

  ‘May I ask,’ he said somewhat sharply, ‘how I came to have the honour of your visit at this hour?’

  ‘I’ve taken the hat off,’ I said.

  He stopped at once, and then came back to my chair touching my hair very lightly with his hand. ‘Eugenie,’ he said, ‘little Eugenie.’ It was the voice of that rainy night, the night when he and I got engaged.

  I bent my head quickly to escape his hand. ‘I wanted to ask you a favour,’ I said in a trembling voice.

  He went away across the width of the room and leaned against the mantelpiece. The flames from the fire were mirrored in his polished boots. ‘Of course,’ was all he said.

  ‘Why “of course”?’ I said.

  ‘I realise that you would not have come to see me without some ulterior motive,’ he said pointedly. Stooping to throw a log into the fire he continued: ‘Almost everybody who comes to me asks for some favour or other. One gets used to that in my position. Well now, Madame Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, what can I do for you?’

  His jeering was more than I could bear: ‘Do you imagine,’ I said in a fury, ‘that I’d have come to you in the middle of the night if it had not been for something particularly urgent?’

  He seemed to enjoy my anger. Amusedly he rocked from his heels to his toes and back again. It struck me that apart from his short hair and his immaculately cut uniform he looked hardly different from the man who came to us in our garden in Marseilles.

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘I should hardly think so, Madame Bernadotte, though perhaps, at the bottom of my heart, I may have hoped so. There is always room for hope, Madame, is there not?’

  ‘That’s the wrong way,’ I thought in despair, ‘I can’t even get him to take me seriously.’ My fingers started to play nervously with the silken rose on my hat.

  ‘You are ruining your new hat, Madame,’ he said.

  I didn’t look up. A lump came into my throat, and I felt a hot tear running down my cheek. I tried to lick it up with the tip of my tongue.

  ‘What do you want me to do, Eugenie?’

  There he was again, the Napoleon of the old days, the gentle and candid one.

  ‘You say that many people come to you to ask you favours. Do you usually do what they ask of you?’

  ‘If it can be done, of course.’

  ‘“Can be done”? But surely you are the most powerful man in France, aren’t you?’

  ‘I must be able to do it with a good conscience, Eugenie. What is your wish?’

  ‘I am asking you to spare his life.’

  He did not answer at once, and the roar of the fire was the only sound.

  ‘You are talking about the Duc d’Enghien?’

  I nodded.

  Tensely I waited for his answer, but he took his time. Meanwhile I tore the silken rose on my hat to pieces.

  ‘Who has sent you with this request, Eugenie?’

  ‘What does that matter? Many people are making this request, and I am one of them.’

  ‘I want to know who sent you,’ he said sharply.

  I only shook my head.

  ‘Madame, I am used to having my questions answered.’

  I looked up. He had pushed his head forward, his mouth was twisted and little flecks of foam appeared at the corners of his mouth. ‘You needn’t shout,’ I said. ‘I am not afraid of you.’ And it was quite true, I wasn’t afraid of him any longer.

  ‘Yes, I know. You are very fond of acting the courageous young lady. I remember the scene at the house of Madame Tallien,’ he said between his teeth.

  ‘I am not courageous at all, I am really rather a coward.
But when there is much at stake I try to pluck up my courage.’

  ‘And,’ he said, ‘at that time, at Madame Tallien’s, there was a lot at stake for you?’

  ‘Everything,’ I said, and waited for some cynical remark from him. It did not come. I looked up and tried to catch his eye. ‘But there had been one occasion before that when I had had to pluck up my courage. That was at the time when my fiancé – you know, I was engaged once, long before I met General Bernadotte – when my fiancé had been arrested after the fall of Robespierre. We were afraid that he might be shot. His brothers thought it very dangerous, but I went with a parcel of underwear and a cake to the Military Commander of Marseilles and—’

  ‘Yes. And that is why I must know who it was that sent you to-night.’

  ‘What has that got to do with it?’

  ‘Let me explain, Eugenie. The person or persons who sent you obviously know me very well. They really have found the one chance to save Enghien’s life. Mind you, I am only saying “chance”. But I am interested to find out who it is who possesses such exact knowledge of me, who uses this chance so cleverly and at the same time tries to oppose me politically. Well?’

  I couldn’t help smiling. The complications he saw in everything, the political problems!

  ‘Do try, Madame, to see the situation for once through my eyes. The Jacobins blame me for allowing the émigrés to return and even for favouring them socially. At the same time they are busy spreading the rumour that I am selling the Republic to the Bourbons. Selling our France, this France which I created, France of the Code Napoléon, doesn’t that sound crazy?’

  As he was speaking he went up to the desk and took up the sheet with the dark red seal. He stared at the few words on it, threw it down on to the desk and turned back to me.

  ‘By having this man Enghien executed I shall prove to the whole world that I consider the Bourbons as nothing but a gang of traitors. Do you understand, Madame? When I’ve finished with Enghien, however,’ here he started swaying backwards and forwards on his heels again, heel to toe, heel to toe, and an air of triumph appeared on his face – ‘the turn of the others will come, the rioters, the malcontents, the pamphleteers and those confused dreamers who call me a tyrant. I shall eliminate them from the ranks of the French people and protect France against its internal enemies.’