Desiree

by Annemarie Selinko

  ‘But he governs Hanover and Ansbach so well that the Emperor wants to confer a distinction on him,’ she said in a jubilant voice, letting go of Oscar and coming close to me. ‘Aren’t you pleased, Your Highness? Aren’t you pleased, Princess?’

  ‘I suppose—’ I interrupted myself: ‘Yvette, champagne!’ then turned back to Julie: ‘Champagne in the morning makes me drunk, I know. But Marie won’t serve us chocolate any more since you made her furious that time. Well, now tell me: where is Ponte Corvo?’

  Julie shrugged her shoulders. ‘How stupid of me! I should have asked Joseph. I don’t know, darling. But does it matter?’

  ‘Perhaps, if we have to go there and reign there. But wouldn’t that be dreadful!’

  ‘The name sounds Italian. Perhaps it’s near Rome,’Julie said. ‘In that case you might be quite close to us. But that,’ her face clouded over, ‘that would be too good to be true. Your Jean-Baptiste is a Marshal, and the Emperor needs him for his campaigns. No, I’m sure you’ll be able to stay on here and I’ll have to go to Naples without you.’

  ‘These wars must end sometime, mustn’t they?’

  ‘Ruin ourselves with our victories,’ who said that to me once? Jean-Baptiste did. France has no more frontiers to defend, France is Europe, and Napoleon and Joseph and Louis and Caroline and Eliza reign over it all, and now the Marshals are to take a hand too …

  ‘Your health, Your Serene Highness!’ Julie raised her glass.

  ‘To yours, Your Majesty!’

  ‘And to-morrow we’ll read it in the Moniteur,’ I thought, as the champagne trickled sweetly down my throat. Ponte Corvo, where was Ponte Corvo? And when would my Jean-Baptiste come home?

  Summer 1807, in a coach somewhere in Europe

  Marienburg, that was the name of the place I was making for. I had no idea where it lay, but a colonel was sitting by my side whom the Emperor had given me as my escort, and the Colonel held a map on his knees from which he now and then shouted directions to the coachman. I took it therefore that we should get to Marienburg in due course …

  Marie, who was sitting opposite me, kept grumbling about the bad roads in which we got bogged so often. From the language which I heard people use when we stopped to change horses I guessed that we were passing through a stretch of Poland. It didn’t sound Germanic to me. The Colonel explained to me that we were taking a shorter route.

  ‘We could have gone through Northern Germany,’ he said. ‘But it would have meant a detour, and Your Highness is in a hurry.’

  Yes, I was in a great hurry.

  ‘Marienburg is not very far from Danzig,’ said the Colonel.

  That didn’t mean anything to me either, as the whereabouts of Danzig were as unknown to me as those of Marienburg.

  ‘A few weeks ago there was still fighting along these roads,’ the Colonel went on. ‘But now we are at peace.’

  Yes, Napoleon had concluded another treaty of peace, this time at Tilsit. The Germans, under the leadership of the Prussians, had risen, and with the help of the Russians had tried to chase our troops out of the country. In the Moniteur we read all about our glorious victory at Jena. At home, however, in the secrecy of our four walls, Joseph told me that Jean-Baptiste had refused to obey an order from the Emperor, ‘for strategical reasons’, and that he had told the Emperor plainly that he could court-martial him if he liked. But before that could come to pass Jean-Baptiste had surrounded General Blücher and his army in Lübeck (another place I wouldn’t know where to look for on the map!) and taken the town by assault.

  There followed an endless winter during which I hardly got news at all. Berlin had been taken and the enemy troops were pursued across Poland. Jean-Baptiste was in command of the left wing of our Army. Near Mohrungen he won a victory over an enemy far superior in numbers. On that occasion he not only won a decisive success against the advancing foe but even managed to save the Emperor himself. This personal act of bravery made such a profound impression on the Prussian High Command that they sent his travelling bag with the Marshal’s uniform in it, and the camp bed, which had already fallen into their hands, back to him.

  All that, however, happened many months ago. Meanwhile Jean-Baptiste’s regiments beat back all attacks on the flank of our Army, the Emperor won the battles of Eylau and Jena, and dictated the conditions of peace to a Europe united in subjection to him. And one day, to everybody’s surprise, Napoleon arrived back in Paris, and his lackeys in their green uniform – green is the colour of Corsica – rode from house to house to distribute invitations to a great victory ball in the Tuileries.

  For this ball I put on my new robe of pale pink satin with dark roses on the bodice, and on my head I wore the diadem made of rubies and pearls which Jean-Baptiste had sent me through a courier on the last anniversary of our wedding day in August.

  ‘Your Serene Highness is going to have a good time,’ said my companion jealously, staring at the golden casket with the engraved eagle in which I keep my jewellery, the casket which was given me on the day of the coronation.

  I shook my head. ‘I shall be very lonely in the Tuileries. Not even Queen Julie will be there.’ No, she wouldn’t be there because she was in Naples, enduring in the southern heat an infinite loneliness.

  The ball in the Tuileries took a course very different from the one I had expected. We foregathered in the great ballroom and waited there till the doors opened and the Marseillaise rang out. The Emperor and the Empress appeared and we curtsied deeply. They made a slow round of the guests, talking to some and making others miserable by overlooking them.

  I couldn’t see Napoleon properly at first because of the tall adjutants who surrounded him. Suddenly he stopped, quite close to me, in front of a Dutch dignitary, I thought, and he began:

  ‘I am told that malicious tongues maintain of my officers that they only send their troops to the fighting line, whereas they themselves keep out. Well, is not that what they say in your country, in Holland?’ he thundered all at once.

  I knew that the Dutch were very dissatisfied with French overlordship in general and with their awkward King Louis and their melancholy Queen Hortense in particular. I was not surprised, therefore, about the Emperor’s displeasure towards them, and didn’t listen to what he said but studied his face instead. The sharp features under the short-cut hair had become ampler, the smile of his colourless mouth had changed from the winning and challenging smile of years ago to one of superiority. Besides, he had grown fatter, he looked as if he were going to burst out of his plain General’s uniform, which bears no medals except that of the Legion of Honour which he himself had founded. He had a pronounced look of rotundity about him, and this rotund image of God on earth harangued with wide gestures and only now and then controlled himself and clasped his hands behind his back, as formerly in moments of great tension. He had clasped them behind his back now as if he were trying to keep a grip on those far too restless fingers of his.

  His superior smile turned sneering: ‘Gentlemen, I believe that our great Army has proved the bravery of its officers in unique style. Not even the highest officers refrain from exposing themselves to danger. In Tilsit I received news that one of my Marshals of France has been wounded.’

  There was deep silence. Could the whole ballroom hear my heart beat?

  ‘The Marshal in question is the Prince of Ponte Corvo,’ he added after an artificial pause.

  ‘Is – that – true?’ My voice cut through the circle of etiquette which surrounds the Emperor. At once a frown appeared on his face. One doesn’t shout in the presence of His Imperial Majesty … The frown disappeared from his face, and at that moment I knew that he had seen me before he spoke. So that was the way in which he wanted to inform me, in front of thousands of strangers, as if he wanted to punish me. Punish me for what?

  ‘My dear Princess,’ he said, and I curtsied deeply. He took my hand and pulled me up. ‘I regret to have to tell you this,’ he said, at the same time looking indifferently away from m
e. ‘The Prince of Ponte Corvo, who has gained great distinction in this campaign and whose conquest of Lübeck we greatly admired, has been slightly wounded in the neck, near Spandau. I am told that the Prince is already on the road to recovery. I beg you not to alarm yourself, dear Princess.’

  ‘And I beg you to make it possible for me to go to my husband, Sire,’ I said in a toneless voice. Only now the Emperor turned his eyes on me fully. Marshals’ wives do not usually follow their husbands to their headquarters.

  ‘The Prince has gone to Marienburg to have himself looked after properly. I advise you against this journey, Princess. The roads through Northern Germany, and above all in the region round Danzig, are very bad. Moreover, these districts were battlefields only a short while ago. They are no sight for the eyes of beautiful women,’ he said coldly. But he examined my face with great interest.

  ‘That’s his revenge,’ I thought, ‘for my visit to him the night before the execution of the Duc d’Enghien, his revenge for my escape from his hands that night, his revenge for my love of Jean-Baptiste, the General whom he had not wanted me to marry.’

  ‘Sire, I ask you from the bottom of my heart to enable me to get to my husband. I have not seen him for nearly two years.’

  His eyes still rested on my face. He nodded. ‘Almost two years. You see, gentlemen, how the Marshals of France sacrifice themselves for their country! If you want to risk it, dear Princess, you will be given a passport. For how many persons?’

  ‘For two. I am only taking Marie.’

  ‘I beg your pardon, Princess – whom?’

  ‘Marie. Our faithful old Marie from Marseilles. Your Majesty will perhaps remember her,’ I said defiantly.

  At last! His face stopped being a marble mask and a smile of amusement appeared on it. ‘Of course, faithful Marie! Marie of the marzipan tarts!’ He turned to one of the adjutants: ‘A passport for the Princess of Ponte Corvo and one accompanying person.’

  His eyes glanced round his circle and stopped at a tall Colonel in the uniform of the grenadiers. ‘Colonel Moulin, you will go with the Princess, and you are responsible to me for her safety.’ Turning back to me, ‘When do you want to depart?’

  ‘To-morrow morning, Sire.’

  ‘I should like you to convey my kind regards to the Prince and to take him a present from me. In recognition of his services for this victorious campaign I am presenting him with—’ I saw his eyes change colour, his smile turn to a jeer; now, I felt, he was going to strike – ‘I am presenting him with the house of the former General Moreau in Rue d’Anjou. I bought it from his wife a short time ago. I am told the General has gone into exile in America. A pity, an able soldier but unfortunately a traitor to France, a great pity …’

  Curtseying deeply again, I only saw his back and his hands stiffly clasping each other behind it. General Moreau’s house! That Moreau who, together with Jean-Baptiste, wanted to stand by the Republic on that 18th Brumaire and whom, five years later, in connection with a Royalist plot, they arrested and condemned to prison for two years. The ludicrousness of it, to arrest this most loyal General of the Republic as a Royalist. The First Consul subsequently commuted the sentence to exile for life. And now, as Emperor, he bought his house and gave it as a present to Moreau’s best friend, the man whom he hates but can’t do without …

  And that was how I came to travel along highways through battlefields, past dead horses with inflated bellies stretching their limbs to the sky, past little mounds surmounted by slanting crosses hastily put together. And all the time it was raining, raining, raining.

  ‘And all of them had mothers,’ I said, apparently apropos of nothing.

  The Colonel, who had fallen asleep by my side, started. ‘I beg your pardon? Mothers?’

  I pointed to the small mounds of earth outside in the rain. ‘Those dead soldiers. Are they not all mothers’ sons?’

  Marie pulled the curtains across the carriage windows. Puzzled, the Colonel looked from one to the other. We said nothing. He shrugged his shoulders and closed his eyes once more.

  ‘I am longing for Oscar,’ I said to Marie. It was the first time since he was born that I had left him. In the early hours of the morning before my departure I had taken him to Madame Letitia at Versailles, where the Emperor’s mother lives in the Trianon Palace. She had just returned from early Mass when we arrived, and she promised me to look after Oscar well. ‘After all, I have brought up five sons,’ she said.

  ‘Brought up, yes, but badly,’ I thought. But one couldn’t say such things to the mother of Napoleon.

  ‘You go to your Bernadotte, Eugenie, I’ll look after him,’ she repeated, and stroked his hair with her horny hand.

  ‘Should we not stop at an inn?’ the Colonel asked.

  I shook my head.

  At nightfall Marie pushed a hot-water-bottle, which we had filled at a coaching inn, under my feet. The rain drummed on the roof of the coach, and the soldiers’ graves and their pitiful crosses were drowned in the downpour. And on we went on our way to Marienburg.

  ‘This really is too awful!’ I said involuntarily when our coach came at last to a halt outside Jean-Baptiste’s headquarters. I had slowly got used to mansions and palaces, but the Marienburg is neither one nor the other but a medieval, grey, desolate, decayed, eerie castle.

  There were crowds of soldiers outside by the gate, and great was the excitement and clicking of heels when Colonel Moulin showed my passport. Fancy, the Marshal’s wife herself!

  Getting out of the carriage I said: ‘Please do not announce me. I want to surprise the Prince.’

  Two officers took me through the portal into a miserably paved courtyard. The mighty ruined walls around it shocked me deeply. Any moment I expected to see knightly damsels and minnesingers. Instead I saw only soldiers of a number of different regiments.

  ‘Monseigneur has very nearly recovered. About this time Monseigneur works and does not generally wish to be disturbed. What a surprise!’ said the younger of the two officers, and smiled.

  ‘Was it impossible to find a better headquarters than this minnesinger castle?’ I couldn’t help saying.

  ‘In the field it is a matter of indifference to the Prince where he resides. And at any rate there is plenty of room here for our offices. In here, Your Highness, if you please.’

  He opened an inconspicuous door and we passed along a corridor. It was cold in here and the air smelt stale. At last we reached a little ante-chamber and there Fernand rushed up to me. ‘Madame!’ he shouted.

  He was so elegantly dressed that I hardly recognised him.

  ‘Dear me, you have become elegant, Fernand!’ I laughed.

  ‘We are now the Prince of Ponte Corvo,’ he said solemnly. ‘Please to look at the buttons, Madame!’ He pushed out his stomach to show me the gold buttons on his wine-red livery. They showed a strange armorial design. ‘The arms of Ponte Corvo, the arms of Madame!’ he said proudly.

  ‘At long last I am setting eyes on them,’ I said, and regarded the complicated engraving with interest.

  ‘We are really quite well again. Only the new skin over the wound still itches,’ said Fernand. I put my finger over my mouth. Fernand understood and very quietly opened the door.

  Jean-Baptiste didn’t hear me. He was sitting by a desk, his chin in his hand, studying a folio. The candle near the book threw its light on his forehead, a clear and serene forehead.

  I looked round. Jean-Baptiste had put a strange mixture of things into the room. The desk covered with documents and leather-bound folios stood near the fireplace, in which a big fire roared. A map of enormous size hung by the mantelpiece and the flickering flames threw a red glare over it. In the background I saw his narrow camp bed and a table with a silver washing bowl and some bandaging material. Apart from that the vast room was empty.

  I went nearer to him. The logs in the fire crackled and Jean-Baptiste didn’t hear me. The collar of his dark blue field uniform stood open and showed a white scarf. It was loosen
ed under the chin and I saw a white bandage. Now he turned a page of the heavy tome and wrote something in the margin.

  I took off my hat. It was warm by the fireplace, and for the first time for days I felt warm and sheltered, but tired too, dreadfully tired. Yet tiredness didn’t matter now, I had arrived.

  ‘Your Highness,’ I said, ‘dear Prince of Ponte Corvo—’

  He jumped to his feet. ‘My God, Désirée!’ And the next moment he stood by my side.

  ‘Does the wound still hurt?’ I asked between two kisses.

  ‘Yes, particularly when you put your arm on it as firmly as now,’ he said.

  I dropped my arms at once. ‘I shall kiss you without putting my arms round you,’ I said.

  ‘Marvellous!’

  I sat on his lap and pointed to the big tome on his desk. ‘What is that you are reading?’

  ‘Law. An uneducated sergeant has to learn a lot if he is to administer the whole of Northern Germany and the Hanse towns.’

  ‘Hanse towns? What are they?’

  ‘Hamburg, Lübeck and Bremen. And don’t forget that we are still responsible for Hanover and Ansbach besides.’

  I shut the book and clung tightly to him. ‘Oscar was ill,’ I whispered, ‘and you have been away from us for so long. You were wounded and you were far away from me …’

  I felt his mouth on mine. ‘My little girl, my little girl,’ he said, and held me tightly.

  Suddenly the door was flung open, which was rather embarrassing. I jumped down from his lap and tidied my hair. But it was only Marie and Fernand.

  ‘Marie wants to know where the Princess is going to sleep. She wants to unpack,’ Fernand said in a doleful voice. I realised, of course, that he was furious because I had brought Marie.

  ‘My Eugenie can’t sleep in this place full of bugs,’ said Marie.

  ‘Bugs?’ Fernand shouted. ‘There aren’t any here. It’s far too cold and damp for them.’

  ‘When these two are arguing I feel I am back home in Rue Cisalpine,’ said Jean-Baptiste, and laughed. As he spoke I remembered the Emperor’s present, Moreau’s house. ‘After supper I shall have to tell him,’ I thought. ‘But first let’s eat, and drink some wine, and then we’ll see.’