Desiree

by Annemarie Selinko

‘Aux armes, citoyens!

  Formez vos bataillons!’

  The Marseillaise, the song of my early girlhood! Once upon a time I stood in my nightgown on the balcony and threw down roses to our volunteers, the tailor Franchon, and the bandylegged son of our cobbler, and the Levi brothers, who went out in their Sunday suits to defend the Republic which had given them full citizenship agains the whole world, that Republic which did not even have money enough to provide its soldiers with boots.

  ‘Formez vos bataillons!

  Marchons, marchons …’

  Silken trains rustled, State swords clattered, and we bowed deeply to Napoleon.

  When I met Napoleon for the first time I couldn’t understand that the Army accepted officers as short as he is. Now he even emphasised his short stature by surrounding himself with the tallest adjutants possible, and dressed in a plain General’s uniform.

  ‘How are you, Madame?’ the Emperor addressed fat Madame Berthier and, without giving her time to reply, turned to the next Marshal’s lady: ‘I am delighted to see you, Madame. You should always dress in Nile green, it suits you. By the way, the Nile is not really green at all but yellow. I remember it as ochre.’

  Feverish spots appeared on the faces of the ladies thus addressed. ‘Your Majesty is too kind,’ they breathed. ‘Do all crowned heads talk like Napoleon,’ I thought, ‘or has he prepared these short, hammered-out phrases because he supposes that that is how monarchs converse with their subjects?’

  Meanwhile Jospehine bestowed her highly polished smile on the ladies. ‘How are you?’ she inquired. ‘I heard your little girl had whooping cough. I was so sorry to hear it …’ Each one of them had the feeling that the Empress for days past had wanted nothing so much as to have a few words with her.

  The Imperial Princesses followed in Josephine’s wake, Eliza and Caroline with arrogance, Polette obviously a bit under the weather after a lively meal, Hortense awkward and anxious to appear friendly, and my Julie, pale and trying hard to overcome her shyness.

  Murat and Josephine proceeded slowly along the ballroom with Napoleon and Madame Berthier behind them. We others followed. Here and there Josephine stopped to say a few kind words. Napoleon talked mainly to men. Among them were numerous officers as representatives of provincial regiments, and Napoleon inquired after their garrisons. He seemed to know each military barracks in France inside out. Meanwhile I tried to think how to lure him to Box 17, and decided that the first thing necessary was to get him to drink a few glasses of champagne. After that I’d risk it …

  Champagne was handed round. Napoleon declined. He stood on the stage by his dais, with Talleyrand and Joseph talking to him. Josephine called me to her and said: ‘I am so sorry, I could not find the sapphire ear-rings the other day.’

  ‘Your Majesty is too kind, but I was unable to dress in blue in any case.’

  ‘Are you satisfied with Le Roy’s dresses, Madame?’

  I forgot to answer, because suddenly, in the crowd at the farther end of the ballroom, I discovered a ruddy squarish face which I thought I knew, a face over a colonel’s uniform.

  ‘With Le Roy’s dresses, Madame?’ repeated the Empress.

  ‘Yes, yes, very,’ I said, and looked for that squarish face again. A woman, impossibly provincial in dress and looks, was with him. ‘I don’t know her,’ I thought, ‘but I do know him, some colonel from some provincial garrison, but where?’

  A little later I managed to cross the ballroom towards that face. It annoyed me that I couldn’t remember who he was, and so I tried to get near him without attracting attention. But everybody gave way politely, my name was whispered, officers bowed low and ladies smiled. I smiled back, I smiled till my mouth hurt me. But at last I got near my Colonel, and I heard the provincial lady hiss into his ear: ‘So that’s the little Clary girl!’

  And then I knew him! The Commanding Officer of the Fortress of Marseilles! Without a wig now, but otherwise unchanged. The unimportant little General whom he had arrested ten years ago has meanwhile become the Emperor of the French.

  ‘Do you remember me, Colonel Lefabre?’ I asked. The provincial woman bowed awkwardly. ‘Madame la Maréchale!’ she said. ‘François Clary’s daughter,’ said Square Face. Both waited for what I would say next.

  ‘I haven’t been in Marseilles for many years,’ I said.

  ‘It would bore Madame dreadfully, such a dull backwater!’ said the lady.

  ‘If you ever wish to be moved, Colonel Lefabre,’ I said.

  ‘Could you put in a word with the Emperor for us?’ Madame Lefabre asked, excited.

  ‘No, but with Marshal Bernadotte.’

  ‘I used to know your father very well,’ the Colonel was beginning when the orchestra struck up the polonaise.

  I left the Lefabres and in the most undignified manner ran back. Murat was to open the polonaise with Julie, the Emperor with Madame Berthier and I with Prince Joseph. The dance had begun when I reached Joseph, who was standing alone on the stage waiting for me.

  He was indignant. ‘I could not find you anywhere, Désirée.’

  ‘I am so sorry,’ I said, and we started off. But his indignation took a long time to disappear.

  After two more dances everybody made for the buffet. Napoleon had withdrawn towards the back of the stage, talking to Duroc. I beckoned a servant to follow me with champagne and approached the Emperor, who immediately interrupted his conversation.

  ‘I have something to say to you, Madame,’ he said.

  ‘May I offer some refreshment to Your Majesty?’

  Both Napoleon and Duroc took a glass of champagne. ‘Your health, Madame!’ he said politely: he drank only the tiniest little drop and put the glass back. ‘Well, Madame, what I wanted to say—’ Napoleon stopped and looked me over from head to foot. ‘By the way, Madame la Maréchale, have I ever told you how pretty you are?’

  Duroc smiled broadly, clicked his heels and asked permission to withdraw.

  ‘Certainly, certainly, Duroc, go and entertain the ladies!’ Then his eyes returned to me, measuring me in silence. Slowly a smile began to play round his mouth.

  ‘Your Majesty wanted to say something to me,’ I said, and added quickly: ‘If I may be so bold as to make a request I should be most grateful to Your Majesty if we could go to Box 17.’

  He did not trust his ears. Bending forward he raised his eyebrows and repeated: ‘Box 17?’

  I nodded.

  Napoleon looked round the stage. Josephine was making conversation with a number of ladies, Joseph appeared to be haranguing Talleyrand and his bad-tempered-looking brother Louis, and the Marshals were distributed on the dancing floor. His eyes narrowed and began to flutter. ‘Is it – proper, little Eugenie?’

  ‘Sire, please do not misinterpret me!’

  ‘“Box 17,” there is nothing to be misinterpreted, is there?’ Quickly he added: ‘Murat will accompany us, it looks better.’

  Murat, as well as all the rest of the Emperor’s entourage, had watched us all the time out of the corner of his eyes. A sign from Napoleon brought him across post-haste.

  ‘Madame Bernadotte and I are going to a box. Show us the way.’

  The three of us left the stage and passed along the lane of overawed people which forms at once wherever the Emperor goes. On the narrow stairs leading up to the boxes we disturbed a few couples. Young officers sprang to attention out of the arms of their ladies. I found it funny, but Napoleon remarked: ‘The manners of these young people are too free and easy. I shall have a word with Despreaux about it. I want unexceptionable morals in my entourage.’

  We found ourselves before Box 17, the door of which was closed. ‘Thank you, Murat!’ said the Emperor, and Murat left.

  ‘Your Majesty wanted to say something to me. Is it good news?’

  ‘Yes. We have approved the application of Marshal Bernadotte for an independent command with extensive civil administration. To-morrow your husband will be appointed Governor of Hanover. I congratulate y
ou, Madame. It is a great and responsible position.’

  ‘Hanover!’ I murmured, without having the slightest idea where Hanover was.

  ‘When you go to visit your husband you will reside in royal castles and you will be the First Lady of the country. Here we are, Madame. Please enter and make sure that the curtains are properly drawn.’

  I opened the door to the box and closed it quickly behind me. I knew quite well that the curtains were drawn.

  ‘Well, my child?’ said Madame Letitia.

  ‘He is outside. And he doesn’t know you are here.’

  ‘Don’t be so nervous, child. He won’t bite off your head.’

  ‘No,’ I thought, ‘my head is all right, but what about Jean-Baptiste’s position as Governor?’ ‘I am calling him in now,’ I said.

  Outside I said: ‘The curtains are drawn.’ I wanted to let the Emperor go in first and then simply disappear. But without any more ado he pushed me into the little room.

  Madame Letitia had risen from her chair. Napoleon stood by the door rooted to the spot. The strains of a Viennese waltz filtered through the heavy curtains.

  ‘My boy, will you not say good evening to your mother?’ She took a step towards him. ‘If only she made a bow, the tiniest bow of her head, everything would be all right,’ I thought. The Emperor did not move. Madame Letitia took another step.

  ‘Madame Mère, what a beautiful surprise,’ said Napoleon, motionless.

  A last step brought Madame Letitia right up to him. She inclined her head, not to bow but to kiss him on the cheek! Without thinking of court ceremonial I pressed past him to the door, thus giving him a little push which made him land in his mother’s arms.

  When I reappeared down below, Murat came to me at once, his flat nose sniffing like a dog hot on the scent.

  ‘You are back quickly, Madame!’

  I looked at him in astonishment.

  He grinned. ‘I told the Empress that Bernadotte would be glad if she had a few words with him, and I hinted to Bernadotte to be near the Empress. In that way they could neither of them pay attention to what is happening in the boxes.’

  ‘Happening in the boxes? What are you talking about, Marshal Murat?’

  Murat was so hot on the scent that he completely missed the gasp of surprise that, all of a sudden, filled the ballroom.

  ‘I mean one particular box, Madame, the one to which you conducted His Majesty.’

  ‘Oh, you mean Box 17!’ I laughed. ‘Why must Jean-Baptiste and the Empress not know what’s happening in Box 17, since the whole room knows it already?’

  His face was a picture. He looked up, followed the direction of the glances from the eyes of the assembly and was just in time to see the Emperor pulling aside the curtains in Box 17. Madame Letitia was standing by the Emperor’s side.

  Despreaux gave a sign to the orchestra, which saluted with a mighty flourish, followed by a storm of applause.

  ‘Caroline did not know her mother was back in Paris,’ said Murat, and regarded me suspiciously.

  ‘Madame Mère, I believe, will always want to be with the son who needs her most. First she lived with Lucien, the exile, and now she is here with Napoleon, the Emperor.’

  The dance went on till morning dawned. During the last waltz I asked Jean-Baptiste: ‘Where is Hanover?’

  ‘In Germany. It’s the country where the British royal family comes from. The population had a very bad time during the war.’

  ‘Who, do you think, is going to govern Hanover as French Governor?’

  ‘No idea,’ he said. ‘And for all I care—’ He stopped in the middle of the sentence, in the middle of the waltz, and looked at me: ‘Is it true?’ was all he asked.

  I nodded.

  ‘Now I am going to show them,’ he said, and continued the dance.

  ‘Whom are you going to show what?’

  ‘How to administer a country. I am going to show the Emperor and the Generals. Particularly the Generals. I shall make Hanover a contented place.’

  He spoke quickly, and for the first time in many years I felt that he was happy, really happy. Strange that at this moment he never thought of France, only Hanover, a State in Germany.

  ‘You’ll have to live there in a royal castle,’ I said.

  ‘I suppose so. It will probably be the best accommodation,’ he said, with no indication of being thrilled at all. It was then that I realised that Jean-Baptiste only thought the very best quarters just good enough for him. The English King’s castle in Hanover was just good enough for the one-time Sergeant Bernadotte. Why does it all seem so monstrous to me, I wondered.

  ‘Jean-Baptiste, I’m dizzy, I’m dizzy.’

  But he only stopped dancing when the orchestra started packing up their instruments and the Marshals’ ball had come to an end.

  Before Jean-Baptiste went to Hanover he fulfilled my wish and had Colonel Lefabre moved to Paris. The story of Napoleon’s underclothing gave him the idea of appointing him to the Quartermaster-General’s department where he had to deal exclusively with the troops’ uniforms, boots and underclothes.

  The Colonel and his wife came to thank me.

  ‘I knew your father very well, very decent chap, your father,’ he said.

  My eyes felt watery, but I smiled. ‘You were right, Colonel, you remember? “A Bonaparte is no husband for – for François Clary’s daughter.”’

  His wife was shocked. I had committed lèse-majesté. The colonel, too, looked embarrassed, but he did not flinch.

  ‘You are right, Madame la Maréchale. I am certain your late father, too, would have preferred Bernadotte.’

  The transfers of all senior officers are regularly reported to Napoleon, and when he saw the name of Colonel Lefabre in a list, he thought hard for a moment and then laughed out loud: ‘My colonel of the underwear! Now Bernadotte has put him in charge of all the underwear of the Army to do his wife a favour!’

  Murat saw to it that Napoleon’s comment became known, and to this day everybody calls poor Lefabre ‘colonel of the underwear’.

  In a coach between Hanover in Germany and Paris, September 1805. (The Emperor has forbidden the use of the Republican calendar. Mama, who is dead now, would have been glad, because she could never get used to it)

  We were very happy in Hanover, Jean-Baptiste, Oscar and I. The only arguments we had there were on account of the valuable parquet floors of the royal castle. More than once Jean-Baptiste would shake his head and say: ‘I can understand Oscar when he thinks that the polished ballroom floor has been made specially for him so that he can slide on it. After all, he is only a little brat of six. But you …!’ And every time he said that there would be anger as well as amusement in his voice, and I would promise by all that was holy that I would never again slide in Oscar’s company across the ballroom of the castle of the former Kings of Hanover, Marshal Bernadotte’s residence as the Governor of Hanover. But however often I promised I could never resist the temptation to slide across the parquet floor. Which is really too bad of me, seeing that I am the First Lady of Hanover with a small suite of my own consisting of a reader, a lady-in-waiting and the wives of the officers of my husband’s staff. But I am apt to forget that sometimes …

  Yes, we were very happy in Hanover. And Hanover was very happy with us. That, I feel sure, sounds strange, for Hanover was occupied country and Jean-Baptiste the commander of an Army of Occupation.

  Jean-Baptiste worked from six in the morning till six in the evening and sometimes after dinner till deep into the night, and the documents on his desk never seemed to grow less in number. He began his ‘government’ of this Teutonic country with the introduction of the Rights of Man. In France plenty of people had shed their blood in order to bring about the equality of all people before the law. But in Hanover, conquered land, the stroke of Bernadotte’s pen was enough. He abolished flogging. He abolished the ghettoes and allowed the Jews to follow whatever professions or trades they liked. The Levis of Marseilles did not march
into battle in their Sunday suits in vain, after all!

  An ex-sergeant, naturally, knows well what is necessary for the provisioning of troops, and the levies exacted from the citizens of Hanover for the upkeep of our Army do not hurt them very much. All the contributions they have to make are laid down in writing by Bernadotte, and no officer is allowed to collect taxes on his own authority.

  The citizens of Hanover are better off than they ever were before, because Jean-Baptiste did away with the Customs frontiers. In the midst of war-ravaged Germany Hanover is now like an island of prosperity trading in all directions. As the State grew wealthier and wealthier Jean-Baptiste raised the taxes a bit and with the extra money he bought flour and sent it to North Germany, where there was a famine. The Hanoverians shook their heads about it, our officers thought him crazy, but you can’t really blame someone simply because he acts unselfishly. On top of it all Jean-Baptiste advised the merchants to make friends with the towns of the Hanseatic League and earn even more money that way. This advice left the Hanoverians speechless. It’s an open secret, of course, that the Hanseatic towns do not observe the Emperor’s Continental Blockade very strictly, and still trade with Britain. That, however, is one thing, whereas this advice by a Marshal of France to his poor miserable enemies is quite another … Once trade with the Hanseatic towns had got under way properly the exchequer of the State of Hanover flourished enormously, and Jean-Baptiste could even send big sums of money to support the University of Göttingen, where some of the greatest scholars of the day are teaching. Jean-Baptiste is very proud of ‘his’ university. And he is very glad when he can pore over his documents.

  Sometimes I found him studying enormous tomes. ‘The things an uneducated ex-sergeant has to learn!’ he would say then, and stretch out his hand to me without looking up. And I would go up to him and stand by his side, and he would put his hand on my cheek. ‘You do an awful lot of governing,’ I’d say then awkwardly, and he would only shake his head: ‘I’m trying to learn, my girl, and to do my best. It is not too difficult as long as he leaves me alone …’ We knew, both of us, whom he meant.