Desiree

by Annemarie Selinko

  Internal enemies … where had I heard that before? Yes, Barras had said it once, a long time ago, and he had looked at Napoleon as he said it.

  The golden clock on the mantelpiece showed the time: one o’clock. I rose. ‘It’s getting very late,’ I said.

  But he made me sit down again. ‘Don’t go yet, Eugenie,’ he said. ‘I am so glad that you came to see me. And the night is long yet.’

  ‘You’ll be tired yourself.’

  ‘I am a bad sleeper, I—’ A hidden door which I hadn’t noticed opened a few inches on the far side of the room. Napoleon didn’t notice it.

  ‘Someone’s opened the door over there,’ I said.

  Napoleon turned round. ‘What is it, Constant?’

  A lackey, small and gesticulating ridiculously, appeared. Napoleon went over to him. The little man whispered agitatedly ‘—doesn’t want to wait any longer.’ ‘Tell her to get dressed and go home,’ I heard Napoleon say. The lackey disappeared.

  That was probably Mademoiselle George from the Théâtre Français, I thought. All Paris knows that Napoleon had had an affaire with the singer Grassini, and that she was succeeded by ‘Georgina’, this sixteen-year-old actress Mademoiselle George.

  ‘I won’t keep you any longer,’ I said, and got up.

  ‘Now that I have sent her away you can’t leave me to myself,’ he answered, and again I had to resume my seat. His voice grew tender: ‘You have asked me a favour, Eugenie. For the first time you have asked me for something.’

  I shut my eyes, weary. His constant change of mood exhausted me, and the heat in the room was stifling. Also, the man radiated a feverish restlessness which made me feel dizzy. Strange, strange, that after all these years I could still echo every mood and every sentiment of this man. I knew without a doubt that, at this moment, he was trying to come to a decision, he was at odds with himself. No, this was not the moment to go; if I stayed he might give way, he might, he might.

  ‘But, Eugenie, you don’t know what you are asking. It is not the person of this Enghien that matters, no, what matters is to show all these Bourbons, to show the whole world what France feels. The French people itself will choose its ruler—’ Here I pricked up my ears, as Napoleon continued: ‘Free citizens of a free Republic will go to the poll.’

  Was he reciting poetry, rehearsing a speech?

  He went to the desk once more and took up the document. The dark red seal hung down from it like a gigantic drop of blood.

  ‘You asked me,’ I said very loudly, ‘who had sent me to you to-night. I will answer that question before you make your decision.’

  ‘Well? I am listening,’ he said without looking at me.

  ‘Your mother.’

  Slowly he put the document down, went to the fireplace and put on another log. ‘I did not know,’ he said in low tones, ‘that my mother occupied herself with politics. Most likely she has been pestered and plagued—’

  ‘Your mother does not consider the death sentence as a political matter.’

  ‘But as?’

  ‘Murder.’

  ‘Eugenie! You have gone too far now!’

  ‘Your mother asked me so very urgently to speak to you. God knows, it’s no easy matter!’

  The ghost of a smile flitted over his face, and he began to rummage among the piles of documents and files on the small tables. At last he had found what he wanted, a big sheet of drawing paper which he unrolled and held out to me. ‘How do you like this? I have not shown it to anybody yet.’

  The top of the sheet showed the sketch of a big bee, and a square in the middle showed a number of small bees at regular intervals from each other. ‘Bees?’ I asked in amazement.

  ‘Yes, bees.’ He nodded, gratified. ‘So you know what they stand for?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘It is an emblem.’

  ‘An emblem? Where are you going to use it?’

  He made a sweeping gesture. ‘Where? Everywhere. On walls, carpets, curtains, liveries, court equipages, the coronation robe of the Emperor—’

  I sat up, startled. It made him stop and look at me. His eyes held mine as he said slowly: ‘Do you understand – Eugenie, little fiancée?’

  I felt nothing but my heart racing in my body. Already he was unrolling another sheet. It contained lions, lions in all sorts of positions, lions rampant, lions puissant, lions couchant. Across the top of the sheet Napoleon’s hand had written: ‘An eagle with outspread wings.’

  ‘I commissioned the painter David to design the coat of arms.’ He dropped the lions to the floor and handed me the sketch of an eagle with wings spread. ‘This is my choice. Do you like it?’

  It was so hot in the room, I could hardly breathe. The outlines of the eagle blurred before my eyes. It seemed to grow to alarming proportions.

  ‘My coat of arms. The arms of the Emperor of the French.’

  Had I dreamed these words or had I really heard them? I pulled myself together. The sketch trembled in my hands. I hadn’t noticed that he had given it to me.

  Napoleon was back at his desk, standing there rigidly, his mouth a thin hard line, his chin jutting out, staring at the document with the red seal. Beads of perspiration ran down my forehead, but my eyes were as if riveted to his face.

  He bent forward now. He seized the pen. He wrote a single word on the paper and sanded it. Then he rang the handbell, a bell on the top of which was fixed the brass figure of an eagle with outspread wings.

  The secretary arrived within a second. Napoleon folded the document carefully and gave it to him. ‘Seal it!’ he said and watched the secretary do so. ‘Go at once to Vincennes,’ he ordered, ‘and hand it to the Commanding Officer himself. I’ll hold you responsible for placing it in the Commanding Officer’s hands.’

  The secretary bowed himself out of the room. In a hoarse voice I asked: ‘I should like to know what you have decided.’

  Napoleon stooped down to collect from the floor the leaves of the silk rose from my hat. ‘You have ruined your hat, Madame,’ he said, and passed me the handful of bits.

  I rose, put the sketch of the eagle on one of the tables and threw the bits into the fire.

  ‘Don’t take it to heart,’ he said. ‘The hat did not suit you anyway.’

  Napoleon accompanied me through the empty corridors. Bees, I thought, as we went along, bees will be on all the walls here.

  He took me right down to the carriage.

  ‘Your mother is waiting for the answer. What am I to tell her?’

  He bent over my hand but did not kiss it. ‘Give her my best wishes. And many thanks to you, Madame, for your visit.’

  I found Madame Letitia where I had left her, in the arm-chair by the window. The light of dawn was spreading over the sky and the first birds twittered in the garden. Jean-Baptiste was working at his desk.

  ‘I am sorry that I have been so long,’ I said. ‘He would not let me go. He talked about all sorts of things.’ My head felt like bursting.

  ‘Has he made his decision?’ Madame Letitia asked.

  ‘Oh yes. But he didn’t tell me what it was. And I am to give you his best wishes, Madame.’

  ‘Thank you, my child.’ Madame Letitia got up and went to the door. There she turned round again and said: ‘Thank you, thank you – whatever happens.’

  Jean-Baptiste carried me up to the bedroom. He undressed me. I was too tired to do anything at all. ‘Do you know,’ I said, ‘that Napoleon wants to be Emperor?’

  ‘I have heard the rumour, probably spread by his enemies. Who told you?’

  ‘Napoleon himself.’

  Jean-Baptiste stared at me, then turned away abruptly and went into the dressing-room. I heard him walking up and down there for hours, and I could only fall asleep after he, at last, had come to bed and I could put my head on his shoulder.

  I slept very late next morning and had awful dreams of a white sheet of paper over which blood-red bees kept crawling. Marie brought me my breakfast and a late-morning edit
ion of the Moniteur. There, on the front page, it said that at five o’clock this morning at the Fortress of Vincennes the Duc d’Enghien had been executed by a firing squad.

  A few hours later Madame Letitia left to join her exiled son Lucien in Italy.

  Paris, May 20th, 1804. (1st Prairial of the Year XII)

  ‘Her Imperial Highness, the Princess Joseph!’ Fernand announced. And my sister Julie swept into the room.

  ‘Madame la Maréchale, and how are you this morning?’ said Julie, and the corners of her mouth twitched, with laughter or with tears?

  ‘Thank you, Your Imperial Highness,’ I said, and bowed low, exactly as Monsieur Montel had taught me in days gone by.

  ‘I’ve come a bit earlier, so that we can have a few moments in the garden,’ said my sister, Her Imperial Highness, Princess of France.

  Our garden is small, and in spite of Josephine’s advice the rose trees haven’t done too well, and there is no tree to equal the beautiful chestnut tree in Sceaux. But when the lilac and the two little apple trees, which Jean-Baptiste planted on Oscar’s first birthday, are in bloom there is no lovelier place for me anywhere on earth than this garden in the Rue Cisalpine.

  Julie dusted the garden seat carefully before sitting down in her light blue satin frock. Marie brought us some lemonade and looked critically at Julie. ‘Imperial Highness ought to put a bit of rouge on,’ she said. ‘Madame la Maréchale looks much prettier.’

  Julie threw back her head angrily: ‘Madame la Maréchale hasn’t got my troubles. I am so bothered, Marie. We are moving into the Luxembourg Palace.’

  ‘The beautiful house in the Rue du Rocher doesn’t seem to be good enough for Princess Julie,’ said Marie acidly.

  ‘Marie, you are unfair. I hate castles, I hate them. But we must move there because the Heir to the Throne of France and his wife must live in the Luxembourg Palace.’

  Julie, wife of the Heir to the Throne of France, looked very miserable. But Marie did not change her tune. ‘The late Monsieur Clary would not have approved of it, indeed he wouldn’t,’ she said, putting her hands on her hips. ‘Your late papa was a Republican, you know!’

  Julie made a despairing gesture. ‘It isn’t my fault,’ she moaned.

  ‘Leave us alone for a bit, Marie,’ I asked. When Marie had gone I said to Julie: ‘Don’t listen to that old dragon.’

  ‘But really, it isn’t my fault,’ she wailed. ‘Moving is no fun, God knows, and all these ceremonies make me ill. Yesterday, during the parade for the Marshals, we had to stand for three whole hours, and to-day, in the Dôme des Invalides—’

  ‘To-day we’re going to sit down,’ I assured her. ‘Drink your lemonade.’

  The lemonade had exactly the same kind of taste as the one that these last days had left on my tongue, bitter-sweet. They had been sweet because we had been inundated with congratulations on Jean-Baptiste’s promotion to Marshal of France.

  The Marshal’s rank is every soldier’s dream whether he is a private or a General. And now this dream has come true for my husband, but so differently, so very differently from the way we had imagined.

  Shortly after my visit to the Tuileries the leader of the Royalists, George Cadoudal, had been captured. After the Duc d’Enghien’s execution no one had any doubts as to what was going to happen to him. But I grew nearly sick with anxiety for Jean-Baptiste when suddenly General Moreau, General Pichegru and other officers were arrested as Cadoudal’s accomplices. At any moment we expected the police. Instead of that, however, Jean-Baptiste, as once before, was called to the Tuileries to the First Consul.

  ‘The French people has decided for me. Are you going to oppose the will of the people?’

  ‘I have never opposed the will of the people, and I cannot imagine myself ever doing it,’ Jean-Baptiste answered calmly.

  ‘We shall promote you to the rank of Marshal.’

  ‘We?’ asked Jean-Baptiste.

  ‘Yes, we, Napoleon the First, Emperor of the French.’

  Jean-Baptiste was speechless, and Napoleon, seeing his speechless stupor, slapped his knee and danced about the room in merriment.

  General Moreau was found guilty of high treason but not condemned to death, only banished. He went to America in the uniform of a French General and with his sword, on which were engraved all the names of the victorious battles he had fought, dangling from his belt.

  After that things happened in quick succession. The day before yesterday the First Consul went hunting near St Cloud. There he allowed himself to be surprised by the decision of the Senate to elect him Emperor of the French. Yesterday, during an elaborate military parade he handed the Marshal’s baton to eighteen of the most famous Generals of the French Army. A week before that Jean-Baptiste had been told in strict confidence to order a Marshal’s uniform according to a drawing which reached him from the Tuileries. After they had received their batons each of the new Marshals made a short speech. All eighteen of them addressed Napoleon as ‘Your Majesty’. During Murat’s and Masséna’s speeches Napoleon kept his eyes half shut; one could tell how these last days had exhausted him. When Jean-Baptiste started his speech, however, a tense expression came into Napoleon’s face, which finally changed into a smile, that winning spell-binding smile of his. He walked up to Jean-Baptiste, shook his hand and told him to consider him ‘not only his Emperor but also his friend’. Jean-Baptiste stood to attention and did not let an eyelid flicker.

  I witnessed all this from a stand erected for the wives of the eighteen Marshals. Oscar was with me, although it had been hinted that this would not be desirable. ‘Just imagine, Madame la Maréchale,’ some master of ceremonies had moaned, ‘just imagine how awful it would be if your infant interrupted His Majesty’s speech by his crying!’ But I wanted Oscar to be present when his papa was made a Marshal of France. When the many thousands of spectators cheered Napoleon because he was shaking Jean-Baptiste by the hand, Oscar in excitement waved the little flag which I had bought for him.

  Julie was in a different stand, that of the Imperial family. Since an Emperor has to have an Imperial family Napoleon made his brothers – with the exception of Lucien, of course – Imperial Princes and their wives Imperial Princesses. Joseph is regarded as the heir apparent so long as Napoleon himself has no son. Madame Letitia’s title caused Napoleon a lot of headaches. He could not well call her ‘Empress Mother’, since she had never been an Empress, only the wife of the modest Corsican lawyer Carlo Buonaparte. But he and his brothers and sisters usually talk about her as ‘Madame Mère’, and so he hit on the idea of introducing her to the nation as just that: Madame Mère. Madame Mère, by the way, is still in Italy with Lucien. As for Hortense, wife of the flat-footed Prince Louis, and Eugene her brother, they too were promoted to Imperial rank.

  Napoleon’s sisters had very rashly got themselves gowns embroidered all over with bees. Yet the Moniteur had nothing to say about any promotion of theirs to Princess. Caroline, who had married General Murat shortly after the coup d’état in Brumaire, became a Madame la Marêchak like me. According to the Moniteur a Marshal of France has a right to be addressed as ‘Monseigneur’, and Caroline, having taken her place next to me in the stand, asked me seriously whether I was going to address my husband in future as ‘Monseigneur’ in public. Such a stupid question, I thought, merited a very stupid answer, and so I said: ‘No. I call him Jean-Baptiste when there are other people about. Only in our bedroom do I call him Monseigneur.’

  After the ceremony we, the eighteen Marshals and their wives, dined with the Imperial family in the Tuileries. The walls, the carpets, the curtains were covered with embroidered bees. Many hundreds of women must have been working day and night to get them all embroidered in time.

  At first I couldn’t think of what this bee design reminded me. But as the evening went on and I had more and more champagne the bees seemed to be standing on their heads. And suddenly I knew: the lily! Napoleon’s bee was the Bourbon lily upside down! ‘That can’t be an acciden
t,’ I thought, and I wanted to ask Napoleon about it. But he was sitting too far away from me. I sometimes heard him laugh loudly, and once, when there was a moment’s silence, I heard him address his youngest sister Caroline as ‘Madame la Maréchale’.

  ‘I don’t know how it is all going to end,’ I said to Julie as we were sitting now on our garden seat.

  ‘But it has only just started,’ said Julie in low tones, and held a smelling-bottle to her nose.

  ‘Aren’t you feeling well?’ I asked her, frightened.

  ‘I can’t sleep at all now,’ she said. ‘Imagine, if the Emperor really has no son and Joseph does succeed him and I—’ She began to tremble violently and threw her arms round my neck. ‘Désirée, you are the only one who understands me. Désirée, I am only the daughter of the silk merchant Clary, how can I—’

  Gently I took her arms from my neck. ‘You must pull yourself together, Julie. Show them who you are, show Paris, show the whole country.’

  ‘But who am I, Désirée, who am I?’ She trembled more violently than ever.

  ‘You are the daughter of the silk merchant François Clary,’ I said with great emphasis. ‘Don’t you forget that, Julie Clary! Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?’

  Julie got up and I took her to my bedroom. Her hair was disarranged and her nose red from tears. I helped her to put herself straight again. In the middle of it I couldn’t help laughing out loud. ‘No wonder, Julie, that you feel tired and worn. Ladies belonging to a noble house are always most delicate, and Princess Julie of the noble family of the Bonapartes is therefore bound to be less robust than Citoyenne Bernadotte.’

  ‘You are making a great mistake, Désirée, if you don’t take Napoleon seriously,’ said Julie.

  ‘You forget that I was the very first person ever to take him seriously,’ I told Julie. ‘But let’s hurry up now. I want to see the procession of the Senators on our way to the Dôme.’