Desiree

by Annemarie Selinko

  I heard a clock strike half-past six. ‘And the Emperor?’ I asked.

  ‘He hopes to defend the Rhine frontier somehow,’ answered Villatte, ‘and, if that fails, to defend at least Paris.’

  ‘The Rhine frontier,’ I thought, ‘the front where Jean-Baptiste became a General …’

  Someone came into the kitchen and said: ‘Damnation, who’s gone into the kitchen without my permission? – oh, I am sorry, Your Highness!’

  It was my fat cook. A kitchen maid opened the windows, and the cold morning air made me shudder.

  ‘A cup of hot chocolate, Your Highness?’ suggested the cook.

  I shook my head, ‘No, thank you,’ and then told Villatte and Rosen to go to their old rooms. ‘You’ll find everything as you left it.’

  I asked for a duster, instead of which the maid brought me a beautiful white napkin. She probably thought that that was the right kind of duster for a Crown Princess. However, I took it and went to Jean-Baptiste’s room to give it a good dusting. The room looked very inhospitable. All the things that Jean-Baptiste valued went with him to Stockholm, so there was nothing much left here to make it friendly.

  I opened the window to let some fresh air in. Marie came in, ‘Don’t stand by the open window in your dressing-gown,’ she said. ‘You’ll catch a cold. What are you doing here, anyway?’

  ‘I’m preparing the room for Jean-Baptiste. His troops are marching on Paris, he’s coming home, Marie!’

  ‘He ought to be ashamed of himself!’ she hissed, not very loudly but loud enough for me to hear, and I remembered the rider of my dream, my poor, lonely rider …

  Paris. The last week of March 1814

  Marie had just come home from the baker’s, where the women shoppers were telling each other dreadful tales about the things the Cossacks had in store for the female sex, when we heard for the first time the distant thunder of the guns. That was two days ago. Since then they have never been silent.

  We knew the Austrians, the Cossacks and the Prussians were in France, but that was all we knew. Now they are here on our doorstep.

  I am waiting for Jean-Baptiste, but I don’t know where he is. I don’t get any more letters, either from him or from Oscar. Now and then a message is smuggled through to us, and that is how I know that Jean-Baptiste has refused to pursue the beaten French across the Rhine, that he gave up his command of all troops bar his 30,000 Swedes, that he was marching northwards through Hanover against the Danes and that he had written a letter to the Tsar demanding that France’s frontiers should remain inviolate because Napoleon was not France and Napoleon had been beaten already anyway … But the Prussians, the Russians and the Austrians invaded France all the same, whilst Jean-Baptiste continued his private war against Denmark, Napoleon’s ally whom he had forced into war against Sweden.

  Marshal Marmont is in charge of the defence of Paris, Marmont who once wanted to marry me. But the thunder of the guns is coming nearer and nearer hourly.

  Meanwhile we had news that Jean-Baptiste had reached Kiel and sent an ultimatum to the King of Denmark from there. He demanded the cession of Norway to Sweden and offered a million thaler in exchange. Denmark accepted the demand for the cession of Norway but rejected indignantly the offer of money. ‘So you are Crown Princess of Sweden and Norway,’ said Count Rosen when he received the message, the last message we had had from him, about three weeks ago. Since then we have heard nothing except that he gave in to the demands of his allies and marched towards the Rhine, towards Belgium, and that he got into a carriage there – it was said together with Count Brahe – and disappeared, just disappeared.

  I am writing in my diary, writing feverishly to run away from my anxiety, writing down everything. Nobody knows where Jean-Baptiste is. Some say that Napoleon secretly in his despair asked Jean-Baptiste for help. Others that he had a disagreement with the Tsar because of the Tsar’s refusal to recognise France’s frontiers of 1794. Meanwhile the papers in Paris write that he has gone mad, that his father had died as a lunatic and that his brother, too, was out of his mind and – no, I can’t repeat that, now that Jean-Baptiste is wandering about somewhere. Marie and Yvette try to keep from me the papers which write this kind of stuff, but Madame La Flotte takes jolly good care to leave them lying about in the drawing-room.

  His chamberlain Count Löwenstein managed to get two messages through to me from Liège recently. In both of them he wanted to know whether I had any idea of the whereabouts of His Royal Highness. I hadn’t, I haven’t now, but I can guess, and my guess is that he has come home and is somewhere in France. Perhaps, my dear chamberlain Count Löwenstein, it is better to leave him alone for the time being now that he is looking round the ruins …

  Yesterday, March the 29th, at half-past six in the morning, Marie came into my bedroom. ‘You are to go to the Tuileries at once.’

  ‘To the Tuileries?’ I asked incredulously.

  ‘King Joseph has sent a carriage for you. You must go to Julie at once.’

  I got up and dressed quickly. Julie, obedient to her husband, had not been to see me for months. And now this unexpected request!

  ‘Shall I wake one of the adjutants?’ asked Marie.

  ‘No,’ I said. Surely I could go to Julie without either my ‘allied’ or my ‘prisoner-of-war’ adjutant.

  Shuddering with cold, I rode through empty streets where only the street cleaners were busy. I saw them sweeping together posters printed in big letters. The lackey got me one which read:

  ‘Parisians, surrender! Do as your fellow countrymen did in Bordeaux, call

  Louis XVIII to the throne and safeguard peace!’

  It was signed by Prince Schwarzenberg, the Austrian Commander-in-Chief.

  A whole regiment of cuirassiers sitting immovably on their horses was lined up outside the Tuileries. Inside, the yard was filled with coaches, carriages, ten green State equipages and wagons of all kinds. Lackeys were carrying innumerable heavy iron chests to the wagons. ‘The crown jewels and treasures of the Imperial family and its money,’ I thought. The sentries looked on with expressionless faces.

  I was surprised to be taken to the private rooms of the Empress. When I got there I found Joseph standing in front of the fireplace and trying very hard to look like Napoleon. He had clasped his hands behind him and spoke in a hurried voice with his head thrown back. The Empress, whom Napoleon had made Regent during his absence, sat on a sofa with Madame Letitia. Madame Letitia had thrown a scarf round her shoulders peasant fashion, and the Empress wore a travelling coat and a hat and had the air of a visitor who could hardly spare a minute to sit down. Meneval was there, some members of the Senate and King Jerome of Westphalia, now a tall slim man in immaculate uniform. Many candles lit the room brightly; their light mingled with the grey light of dawn and made the whole scene look unreal.

  Joseph was just reading a letter from Napoleon. ‘Here it is,’ he said, ‘here: “Do not leave my son, and remember that I would rather have him dead in the Seine than alive in the hands of enemies of France” and so on and so on.’

  ‘But we know that. You read the letter to us before, last night in the Council of State. What possibilities are there of preventing the child from falling into the river or into the hands of the enemy?’ asked Jerome in the deliberate nasal drawl which he had acquired in America.

  Joseph pulled another letter from Napoleon out of his breast pocket and read it aloud. It contained exact instructions as to how many men were to be posted at each gateway and how they were to be armed: fifty men with rifles and shot-guns and a hundred men with lances. Besides the troops at the gates they were to form a mobile reserve of three thousand men, armed in the same way.

  ‘That is all very clear, Joseph,’ remarked Madame Letitia. ‘Have you carried out the orders?’

  Joseph, who was responsible for the defence of the city proper, answered that he couldn’t because there were neither rifles nor shot-guns left in the depots.

  He, Jerome and Meneval argued f
or a while as to what could or could not be done with lances against guns. When they had ended Marie-Louise asked calmly and as if it were a matter of no importance: ‘Well? What is the decision? Am I to leave with the King of Rome or am I to stay?’

  ‘Madame,’ said Jerome, planting himself in front of her, ‘the officers of the Guards have sworn never to surrender Paris as long as you and the King of Rome are in it. Every man capable of bearing arms will, to the last drop of blood—’

  Joseph interrupted him: ‘Jerome, we have nothing but lances for the men capable of bearing arms.’

  ‘But the Guards are still fully armed, Joseph!’

  ‘Yes, but there are only a few hundred of them. However, I realise that the presence of the Regent and her son will spur on the Guards as well as the people of Paris to fanatical resistance, whereas their departure would have an unfortunate influence on the populace. I fear that in that case—’ He broke off in the middle of the sentence.

  ‘Well?’ the Empress asked once more.

  ‘I leave the decision to the Regent,’ said Joseph, tired. He had lost his well-studied resemblance to Napoleon; nothing was left of him but a fat, elderly, helpless man.

  Marie-Louise said: ‘I want to do my duty and don’t want to be blamed for anything afterwards.’ She sounded very bored.

  ‘Madame,’ urged Jerome, ‘if you leave the Tuileries now you may lose any claim to the French crown, you and your son. Stay, Madame, let the Guards defend you, entrust your fate to the people of Paris.’

  ‘Well, let’s stay, then,’ she said amiably, and began to undo the ribbons of her hat.

  ‘But, Madame, think of His Majesty’s instructions!’ moaned Joseph. ‘You know he wants his son dead in the Seine rather than—’

  ‘Don’t repeat that dreadful sentence!’ I exclaimed. Everybody turned round to me. It was very embarrassing. I was still standing in the doorway and, bowing in the direction of the Empress, I said: ‘I am sorry, I didn’t want to intrude.’

  ‘The Crown Princess of Sweden in the Regent’s rooms? Madame, this is a challenge which cannot be left unanswered!’ shouted Jerome, and rushed at me like a madman.

  ‘Jerome, I myself asked for her Royal Highness because of – because of Julie,’Joseph said awkwardly, pointing to my sister. I followed his movement and discovered Julie with her daughters on a sofa at the far end of the room. Their outlines were blurred by the uncertain morning light.

  ‘Please take a seat, Highness,’ said Marie-Louise kindly.

  Quickly I went over to Julie and sat down by her side. She had put her arm round the shoulders of her daughter Zenaïde. ‘Don’t get agitated, Julie,’ I whispered, ‘you shall come to me with your children.’

  Meanwhile the discussion near the fireplace raged on, till Joseph came away from the group there to us.

  ‘If the Regent and her son go to Rambouillet I shall have to accompany her,’ he said to Julie.

  ‘But how can you if you are to defend the city?’

  ‘The Emperor has told me that I am not to let his son out of my sight. The whole family is coming along. Julie, I am asking you for the last time—’

  Julie, tears streaming down her face, shook her head. ‘No, no, please. We’ll be chased from castle to castle till the Cossacks catch up with us. Please, let me go to Désirée, Joseph, her house is safe. Isn’t it, Désirée?’

  Joseph and I looked at each other for a long time. ‘You too could come to me, Joseph,’ I said at last.

  He shook his head and forced himself to smile. ‘Perhaps Napoleon will be here in time to hold Paris, and in that case I shall be back with Julie in a few days’ time. If not—’ he bent to kiss my hand, ‘let me thank you for all you are doing for Julie and my children, you and your husband.’

  At this moment the chamberlain announced that the Prince of Benevento requested an audience. Smilingly the Empress asked him in.

  Talleyrand, tired and worn, but with his hair carefully powdered and wearing the uniform of the Vice-Grand Elector of the Empire, limped quickly towards the Empress. ‘Your Majesty, I have just come from the Minister of War, who is in touch with Marshal Marmont. The Marshal requests Your Majesty to leave Paris immediately with the King of Rome. He does not know how much longer he will be able to keep open the road to Rambouillet. I am disconsolate to have to be the bringer of this dreadful message.’

  A deep silence fell. It was broken only by the rustling of the silk ribbons of Marie-Louise’s hat, which she started tying up again under her chin. ‘Shall I be able to meet His Majesty in Rambouillet?’

  ‘But His Majesty is on the way to Fontainebleau and from there will go on straight to Paris,’ said Joseph.

  ‘But I mean His Majesty the Emperor of Austria – my papa.’

  Joseph grew deathly pale, Jerome clenched his teeth, and I saw a vein on his forehead swell. Only Talleyrand smiled. He didn’t seem at all surprised. Madame Letitia, however, gripped the arm of her daughter-in-law fiercely: ‘Come on, Madame, come on!’

  By the door Marie-Louise turned round and surveyed the room. Her eyes met those of the still smiling Talleyrand. ‘I hope no one is going to blame me for anything afterwards!’ she sighed, and went out.

  But her son, the little King of Rome, didn’t feel like going. He screamed and screamed and shouted: ‘Don’t want to! Don’t want to!’ At long last Hortense appeared. She knew how to deal with the boy, and a moment later Napoleon’s son went obediently down the stairs between his two governesses.

  ‘Exit Napoleon II,’ murmured Talleyrand close to me.

  ‘I am very uneducated,’ I said. ‘What does “exit” mean?’

  ‘Exit is a Latin word and means “goes out”, “leaves”, “disappears”. Exit Napoleon II, therefore, stands for Napoleon II disappears from – the Tuileries? The pages of world history?’ He looked at his watch. ‘I am afraid I have to say good-bye, my carriage is waiting.’

  He, like the Empress, surveyed the room thoughtfully. Looking at the curtains with the bees, he said: ‘A pretty pattern! Pity that they will soon be removed!’

  ‘If you hang them upside down the bees look like lilies. Like the Bourbon lilies!’

  He raised his lorgnette to his eyes. ‘Indeed! How strange! But really, I must go now, Highness.’

  ‘No one is keeping you, Prince. Is it true you are going to follow the Empress?’

  ‘I am. But first I shall be taken prisoner by the Russians outside the gate. That’s why I must not be late. The Russian patrol is waiting for me now. Au revoir, Highness!’

  ‘Perhaps Marshal Marmont will rescue you,’ I hissed. ‘You deserve it.’

  ‘Do I? But I fear I must disappoint you. Marshal Marmont is far too busy to bother about me at the moment: he is conducting the negotiations for the surrender of Paris. But keep this piece of news to yourself, Highness. We want to avoid unnecessary bloodshed and confusion.’ He bowed gracefully and limped away.

  I drove home with Julie and her daughters. For the first time since the day Julie had become Queen, Marie spoke to her again. Like a mother she laid her arm round Julie’s narrow shoulders and led her up the stairs.

  ‘Marie, give Oscar’s room to Queen Julie and Madame La Flotte’s to her children. Madame La Flotte will have to move into the spare room.’

  ‘And General Clary, the son of Monsieur Etienne?’ asked Marie.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The General arrived an hour ago and would like to stay here for the time being.’

  General Clary was Etienne’s son Marius, who had become an officer instead of going into Papa’s firm, and with the help of God and Napoleon had reached General’s rank. I decided that the two adjutants could share Rosen’s room and that he should have Villatte’s.

  ‘And what about Countess Tascher?’

  This question only made sense to me when I entered the drawing-room. There Etienne’s daughter Marceline, who is married to a Count Tascher, threw herself into my arms, crying.

  ‘I am
so frightened, Aunt, in my house. The Cossacks might come at any moment,’ she sobbed.

  ‘And your husband?’

  ‘He is somewhere at the front. Marius stayed at my house last night and we decided to come here to you for the time being—’

  I let her have the spare room and thought of putting Madame La Flotte on the divan in my boudoir.

  ‘And my children’s governess?’ Julie wailed. ‘You must give her a room of her own. Otherwise she’ll give me notice. Who is having Jean-Baptiste’s bed?’

  ‘Not the governess,’ I thought in fury, and fled into Jean-Baptiste’s empty bedroom. There I sat down on the wide empty bed and listened into the night …

  At about five o’clock in the afternoon the guns had ceased firing. Villatte and Rosen, returning from a walk, reported that Blücher had taken Montmartre by storm and that the Austrians were in Menilmontant. The allies, they said, demanded unconditional surrender.

  Paris. March 30th, 1814

  At two o’clock this morning the capitulation was signed. When I looked out of the window I saw the Swedish flag flying over my house. Count Rosen had put it up with the help of Johansson, the Swedish coachman. A dense crowd was waiting outside. Its voice rose dully to my window.

  ‘What do they want, Villatte?’

  ‘There is a rumour that His Royal Highness is coming to-day.’

  ‘But what do they want of Jean-Baptiste?’

  The sounds from outside grew louder and more menacing, and I stopped asking.

  A carriage arrived at the gate. Gendarmes pushed back the crowd and I saw Hortense with her two sons, the nine-year-old Napoleon Louis and the six-year-old Charles Louis Napoleon, get out. The murmur of the crowd ceased. One of the boys pointed to the Swedish flag and asked a question. But Hortense quickly pulled her boys into the house.

  Madame La Flotte came. ‘Queen Hortense asks Your Highness if the Emperor’s nephews could live under the protection of Your Highness for the time being. The Queen herself is going to join her mother at Malmaison.’