Desiree

by Annemarie Selinko

  ‘Naturally, Sire.’

  ‘Naturally? We are old friends, Highness, are we not? Very old friends, if I remember aright. Why, then, are you surprised?’

  ‘Because of the time of your call. And because you have come unshaven.’

  Napoleon felt his beard with his hand, and a trace of the young, uncaring laughter of his Marseilles days played for a fleeting moment over his grey face. ‘I am sorry, Highness, I forgot to shave recently. I wanted to reach Paris as quickly as possible. Tell me, what was the effect of my last bulletin?’

  ‘Wouldn’t you like to take a seat, Sire?’

  ‘Thank you, I prefer to stand by the fire. But do not inconvenience yourself, Madame. Sit down, gentlemen.’

  We all sat down, Marie, myself, Count Rosen and Count Caulaincourt, who, I remember now, bore the title of Duke of Vicenza.

  ‘May I ask, Sire—’ I began.

  ‘No, Madame, you may not ask! You may not ask, Madame Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte!’ he screamed at me at the top of his voice. Count Rosen started on his chair.

  Calmly I said: ‘But I should like to know to what I owe the honour of this unexpected visit.’

  ‘My visit is not an honour for you but an ignominy. If you had not been such a childish thoughtless creature all your life, you would realise what an ignominy this visit is to you, Madame Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte!’

  ‘Keep your seat, Count Rosen. His Majesty is too tired to find the right tone,’ I said soothingly to the Count, who had jumped up, his hand on his sword. That would have been the last straw indeed.

  The Emperor paid no attention to us. He came nearer to stare at the portrait of the First Consul, the portrait of the young Napoleon with the lean face, the radiant eyes, the long untidy hair. ‘Do you know at all where I have just come from?’ he said in a monotonous yet hurried voice. ‘I have come from the steppes where my soldiers are buried. I have come from the wastes where my hussars are dragging themselves through the blinding snow. I have come from the bridge which collapsed under Davout’s grenadiers, the bridge across the Beresina. I have come from the camps where men crawl between the corpses of their comrades at night to keep warm, I have—’

  ‘How can I get the scarf to him, how?’ It was Marie screaming. She had jumped up and fallen on her knees in front of the Emperor. ‘Majesty, help a mother, send a courier with the scarf—’

  Repelled, Napoleon shrank back. I bent down to her quickly. ‘It is Marie, Sire, Marie from Marseilles. Her son Pierre is in Russia.’

  Marie had dug her finger-nails into his sleeve. Napoleon freed himself, his face distorted with rage.

  ‘I have the number of his regiment,’ whimpered Marie. ‘This scarf, only this warm scarf—’

  ‘Are you mad, woman?’ Foam appeared at the corners of Napoleon’s mouth. ‘I am to send a scarf to Russia, one scarf! Doesn’t it make you laugh?’ And he began to laugh, louder and louder and louder. ‘One scarf for my hundred thousand dead, for my frozen grenadiers, one beautiful scarf for my Grand Army!’

  I took Marie to the door. ‘Go to bed, dearest, go.’

  Napoleon had fallen silent. Helplessly he stood in the middle of the room. Then he went with strangely stiff movements to the nearest chair and collapsed into it. ‘Forgive me, Madame. I am very tired.’

  Endless minutes passed, not one of us spoke. This is the end, I felt, the end. My thoughts went across land and sea to Jean-Baptiste.

  Suddenly Napoleon spoke up in a clear hard voice. ‘I have come to dictate to you a letter to Marshal Bernadotte, Madame.’

  ‘I ask you to dictate this letter to one of Your Majesty’s secretaries.’

  ‘I wish you to write this letter, Madame. It is a very personal letter and not at all long. Tell the Swedish Crown Prince that we have returned to Paris to prepare the final defeat of the enemies of France.’ The Emperor got up and began to pace the floor. ‘Tell him that we remind the Swedish Crown Prince of the young General Bernadotte who with his regiments came in spring, 1797, to the assistance of General Bonaparte in Italy. That crossing of the Alps in an incredibly short time, a masterpiece of organisation, decided the issue of the Italian campaign in our favour. Will you remember that, Madame?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Then remind Bernadotte of the battles in which he defended the young Republic and of the song:

  ‘Le Régiment de Sambre et Meuse

  Marche toujours aux cris de la liberté

  Suivant la route glorieuse …

  ‘Tell him that I heard the song a fortnight ago in the Russian snow from two grendiers who could go no farther and sang the song as they dug themselves into the snow to wait for the wolves. Perhaps they were former soldiers of your husband’s Rhine Army. Do not forget to mention this incident to him.’

  My finger-nails dug into the palms of my hands.

  ‘Marshal Bernadotte advised the Tsar to safeguard the peace of Europe by capturing me during the retreat. You can tell him, Madame, that he very nearly succeeded, but only very nearly. I am here, in your drawing-room, and I shall safeguard the peace of Europe myself. In order to assure the final destruction of my enemies I propose an alliance to Sweden. Have you understood me, Madame?’

  ‘Yes, Sire. You propose an alliance to Sweden.’

  ‘To put it plainly, I want Bernadotte to march with me once more. Tell your husband that, word for word.’

  I nodded.

  ‘To defray the cost of rearming, Sweden will be paid one million francs a month besides goods to the value of six million francs.’ His eyes fastened on the young Count. ‘At the conclusion of peace Sweden will receive Finland, and of course Pomerania. Tell Bernadotte: Finland, Pomerania and,’ with a wide sweep of his arm, ‘the whole of the Baltic coast from Danzig to Mecklenburg.’

  ‘Count Rosen, get a piece of paper and note it down.’

  ‘Not necessary,’ said Caulaincourt, ‘I have a memorandum here dictated by His Majesty this morning.’ He handed Rosen a closely covered sheet.

  ‘Finland?’ the young Swede said incredulously.

  Napoleon smiled at him, the winning smile of his young days. ‘We shall restore to Sweden her position as a great power. By the way, young man, you will be interested to hear that the archives of the Kremlin yielded me a description of the Russian campaign of your heroic King Charles XII. I wanted to learn from him. But I have the feeling,’ he said, smiling wryly, ‘that someone else, someone in Stockholm, has read these descriptions as well and seems to have learnt a lot from them, your – what do you call him? Charles John, my old Bernadotte!’ He shrugged his shoulders, breathed deeply and looked at me. ‘Madame, you will write to Bernadotte to-morrow. I must know where I stand.’

  So that was why he came. ‘You haven’t told me what would happen if Sweden refused to enter the alliance, Sire.’

  He did not answer, but returned to his portrait. ‘A good picture. Did I really look like that, so – thin?’

  I nodded. ‘And in Marseilles you were thinner still, you looked really starved then.’

  ‘In Marseilles?’ His face registered keen surprise. ‘How do you know? Oh, of course, I had forgotten, quite forgotten. Yes, we have known each other for a long time, Madame.’

  I got up.

  ‘I am so tired, so terribly tired,’ he said, almost inaudibly.

  ‘Go to the Tuileries, Sire, and rest.’

  ‘No, dearest, I cannot. The Cossacks are on the move, and the coalition which Bernadotte has got together, Russia, Sweden, Britain. Do you know, Eugenie, what that means?’

  He was back to calling me Eugenie now, and he even seemed to have forgotten that I was Bernadotte’s wife. His head was too full. ‘What’s the good of writing,’ I asked, ‘if the coalition is a fact?’

  At that he screamed at me: ‘Because I shall wipe Sweden off the map if Bernadotte does not march with me.’ Abruptly he turned to the door. ‘You yourself, Madame, will bring me your husband’s answer. If it is a rejection you can then take your leave at the same t
ime. It would no longer be possible for me to receive you at court.’

  I curtsied. ‘I should no longer come to court, Sire.’

  Count Rosen saw the Emperor and Caulaincourt out. Slowly I went from candelabrum to candelabrum and put out the candles.

  Rosen returned. ‘Is Your Highness going to write to the Crown Prince to-morrow?’

  ‘Yes. And you’ll help me with the letter, Count.’

  ‘Do you think, Your Highness, that the Crown Prince will answer the Emperor?’

  ‘I am sure of it. And it will be the last letter my husband will write to the Emperor.’ I looked into the dying embers.

  ‘I should prefer not to leave Your Highness alone just now,’ the young man said hesitantly.

  ‘That’s very kind of you. But I am going to Marie to console her.’

  I spent the rest of the night by Marie’s bedside. I promised her to write to Murat, to Marshal Ney and to Colonel Villatte, of whom I had heard nothing for many weeks. I promised to travel with her to the Russian steppes in spring to find Pierre. I promised and promised and promised, and in her fright she was like a child and really thought I could help her.

  This morning, special editions of the papers shout it out to the rest of the world that the Emperor had unexpectedly returned from Russia. His Majesty’s health, they say, has never been better.

  Paris. The end of January 1813

  At long last a courier arrived with letters from Stockholm.

  ‘My dear Mama,’ wrote Oscar in his neat and very adult-looking handwriting – yes, in six months’ time he’ll be fourteen! – ‘My dear Mama, on the sixth of January we saw a marvellous play in the Gustavus III Theatre. Imagine, a famous French actress, Mademoiselle George, who used to be at the Théâtre Français in Paris, played the leading part. Afterwards Papa gave a dinner for Mademoiselle George, and the Queen didn’t like it at all that Papa and the actress talked of Paris and the old days all the time. She kept interrupting them and calling him “Our dear son Charles John”, which made Mademoiselle George laugh a lot, and at last she exclaimed: “General Bernadotte, that I’d find you here in Stockholm and as the son of the Swedish Queen at that is the last thing I’d have imagined.” That annoyed the Queen so much that she sent me to bed and withdrew with all her ladies. The actress stayed for coffee and liqueur with Papa and Count Brahe, and Miss Koskull took to her bed for a week with a cold in anger and jealousy. Papa works sixteen hours a day as a rule and doesn’t look at all well …’

  I laughed, and cried a bit too, and felt like going to bed for a week exactly like Mariana Koskull.

  That was the letter Oscar had written without his governor’s supervision. In his second letter my son expressed himself somewhat more stylishly about the visit to Stockholm of Madame de Staäl, the authoress whom Napoleon had banished and whom Papa received very often. He’d signed the letter ‘Your ever loving son, Oscar, Duke of Södermanland’, whereas the other letter was signed simply ‘Your Oscar’.

  I looked in vain for a letter from Jean-Baptiste. He must have had my letter about Napoleon’s visit and offer of alliance long ago. But all I found was a few hastily scribbled lines. ‘My beloved little girl,’ it read, ‘I am badly overworked, I shall write at greater length next time. Thank you for your report about the Emperor’s visit. I shall answer him, but I need time. My answer will be meant not only for him but also for the French nation and for posterity. I don’t know why he wishes to have it handed over to him by you. However, I shall send it to you and I only regret that in doing so I shall have to make you suffer once more. I embrace you – Your J.B.’

  Besides the letters the big envelope contained a sheet of music. In the margin Jean-Baptiste had scribbled: ‘Oscar’s first composition, a Swedish folk dance. Try to play the tune. J.B.’ At once I sat down at the piano and played it, again and again. And I remembered Oscar saying in the coach that took us back from Hanover to Paris that he wanted to be a composer or a King. And thinking of Jean-Baptiste’s scribbled lines about the answer to Napoleon that would be meant for the French nation and posterity as well, I also remembered Monsieur van Beethoven. ‘I shall simply call my symphony. “Eroica” to commemorate a hope which did not find fulfilment …’

  I rang the bell for Count Rosen. He, too, had had letters from Sweden. ‘Good news from home, Count?’

  ‘I can read between the lines of the letters – they have to be careful, of course, because of the French Secret Police – that the allies, Russia, Sweden, Britain, intend to entrust the plans for the coming campaign to His Royal Highness. And Austria’s attitude is most benevolent towards them.’

  So even his father-in-law, the Austrian Emperor Francis, would take the field against Napoleon.

  ‘The occupied German territories, the Prussians above all, are preparing for an uprising. All the preparations for this greatest campaign in history are being made secretly in Sweden.’ The Count’s voice, hoarse with excitement, had dropped to a whisper. ‘We shall be a great power again, and Your Highness’s son, the little Duke of Södermanland—’

  ‘Oscar’s just sent me his first composition, a Swedish folk dance. I shall practise it and play it to you to-night. Why do you look at me in such a strange manner? Are you disappointed in my son?’

  ‘Of course not, Your Highness. I am surprised, that’s what it is, I did not know—’

  ‘You didn’t know that the Prince is very musical? And yet you talk about Sweden regaining her great position?’

  ‘I thought of the country that the Crown Prince will leave to his son when the time comes.’ The words came tumbling out of him now. ‘Sweden elected one of the greatest Generals of all time to be the heir to its throne. The Bernadotte dynasty will rebuild Sweden’s traditional position as a great power.’

  ‘Count, you talk like an elementary reader for schoolchildren,’ I said, repelled. ‘In the coming campaign your Crown Prince will do nothing but fight for the Rights of Man which we call Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. He has fought for them for fifteen years, Count Rosen. That was why all the old royal courts secretly called him the Jacobin General. And later, when everything is over and Jean-Baptiste has won this dreadful war on behalf of all Europe, they’ll call him that again. Then—’ I broke off, because I could tell that Rosen didn’t understand a word I was saying. Finally I said in a very low voice: ‘A musician who never knew anything about politics once told me about a hope which never found fulfilment. Perhaps it will find fulfilment after all, at least in Sweden, and your small country will really be a great power again, Count, but in a way very different from the one you are thinking of. It will be a great power whose Kings no longer make war but have time to write poetry and make music. Aren’t you glad that Oscar is musical?’

  ‘Your Royal Highness is the strangest woman I have ever met.’

  Suddenly I felt very tired. ‘You only think so because I am the first middle-class woman you have come to know better. All your life you have known nothing but the court and the castle of the nobility. Now you are the adjutant of a silk merchant’s daughter. Try to get used to that, will you?’

  Paris. February 1813

  One evening about seven o’clock the letter I had been expecting for so long arrived. I ordered my carriage immediately and went with Count Rosen to the Hôtel Dieu Hospital opposite Notre-Dame. The wet pavement reflected the rainbow colours of the lights of Paris.

  ‘I have just had a letter from Colonel Villatte,’ I explained to Rosen. ‘He succeeded in getting Marie’s son into a transport of wounded for the Hôtel Dieu Hospital. I am told the hospital is overcrowded, and I should like to take Pierre home.’

  ‘How is Colonel Villatte?’

  ‘He couldn’t come to Paris, he’s been sent to the Rhineland, where they are trying to collect the remnants of his regiment.’

  ‘I am glad he is well,’ Rosen said politely.

  ‘He isn’t well, he’s suffering from the effects of a wound in the shoulder. But he hopes to see us again.’<
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  ‘When?’

  ‘Some time, when it is all over.’

  ‘A strange name for a hospital – Hôtel Dieu.’

  ‘Our Lord’s Hostel, a beautiful name for a hospital. The only transport of wounded to reach Paris has been accommodated there, and Villatte managed to get Pierre into it.’

  ‘What is the matter with Pierre?’

  ‘Villatte doesn’t say. That’s why I haven’t told Marie yet. Here we are.’

  The gate was locked. Count Rosen rang the bell and after a while the gate opened just enough to show the doorkeeper, a one-armed invalid from the Italian campaigns, to judge by his medals. ‘No visitors allowed!’ he said.

  ‘But it is Her Royal Highness—’

  ‘No visitors allowed!’ The door was banged to.

  ‘Knock again, Count.’

  He knocked, loud and long. At last the gate opened once more, I pushed Rosen aside and said quickly: ‘I have permission to visit the hospital.’

  ‘Have you got a pass?’ the man asked suspiciously.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, and we were allowed in. In a dark gateway the invalid looked us over by the light of a candle and asked for the pass.

  ‘I haven’t got it with me,’ I said. ‘I am the sister-in-law of King Joseph. You understand that I could have a pass at any time. But I am in such a hurry that I could not wait to ask for one. I wanted to fetch someone.’

  He didn’t answer, so I repeated: ‘I am really King Joseph’s sister-in-law.’

  ‘I know you, Madame. You are the wife of Marshal Bernadotte.’

  ‘Thank God,’ I thought, and smiled. ‘Did you perhaps serve under my husband?’

  Not a muscle in his face moved and he kept silent.

  ‘Please call someone to take us to the wards,’ I said in the end.

  Still he did not move. The man became alarming to me. ‘Lend us the candle. We shall find our own way,’ I said, feeling rather helpless.

  He gave me the candle, stepped back and disappeared in the dark. But we heard him say in a sneering, croaking voice, ‘The wife of Marshal Bernadotte indeed!’ and he spat resoundingly on the floor.