I lowered myself into an armchair, folding my hands in my lap, falling silent as I considered this news. All winter long, as the damp and the breezes skittered off the Mediterranean, I’d been longing for word from Paris, but Napoleone had become very inconsistent in his writing. Whereas before he used to grow needy and covetous when I skipped even a day, begging me for letters, he now regularly went weeks without sending word to me. He rarely mentioned or apologized for his periods of silence, occasionally making offhand references to his workload and recent responsibilities following the coup. But now, with a promotion, it seemed that he’d be even busier.
I kept myself busy with my art and my reading, with visits to Julie and Nicolas, errands to help Cook and Maman, but I was no fool. After the part he’d played in crushing the attempted uprising of Vendémiaire, my fiancé had gone, seemingly overnight, from a man who could not afford a cup of wine in a café to being the toast of Paris, indeed of the entire country. He was referred to as “General Vendémiaire” and sometimes even the “Savior of the Republic.” I knew that surely he was enjoying the sudden fame.
“With big promotions come big pay, too,” Joseph said, lowering his bulky frame into the chair beside his wife. “Forty-eight thousand francs a year,” he whispered, an offhand and perfunctory acknowledgment of the poor taste of discussing money with ladies. But Julie and I both gasped at this announcement. Forty-eight thousand francs a year! It was a sum that a year ago would have caused Napoleone to faint. Why, with such a salary, he could afford to hire a secretary to write daily to his fiancée, if he so wished.
What pained me the most, more than even my longing for his presence, was the fact that he did continue to write faithfully to his brother, even as he used his busy schedule as his excuse for neglecting me. Did he not realize that I was close enough to Julie—and therefore Joseph—to know how often he wrote his brother? To see how he still found the time and energy for detailed accounts of his outings to theaters and restaurants, evenings in the fashionable faubourg salons hosted by Paris’s socialites?
One recent letter to Joseph, which Julie left out on the table in their salon, I managed to pilfer and read: Everyone here appears determined to make up for what they have suffered; determined, too, because of the uncertain future, not to miss a single pleasure in the present.
So then, I wondered, in what pleasures was my fiancé partaking?
When his letters did arrive at my home, they increasingly carried words of scolding or irritation. Gone were the flirtatious greetings and the affectionate teasing, replaced instead with a stern coldness: You never told me what you thought of Rousseau, and now I am left to question whether in fact you even read the books I asked you to acquire. As I’ve said, not infrequently, these works ought to have an effect not only on your mind, but indeed, even on your very soul.
What could I say to that? I longed for word from him, and then, when it finally came, it seemed like each letter was filled with mounting frustrations on his part over my shortcomings. He no longer asked to see any of my drawings, and I, feeling sure that my novice technique would draw nothing other than censure from him, had stopped offering to show him.
Your previous letter, Desiree, contained several grammatical errors; I have asked you on more than one occasion to apply yourself to the improvement of your prose and to the formation of your reason.
Oftentimes, I finished these critical letters in tears, feeling that my mood was worse on days when mail came than on days when it did not.
You wrote to me of the concert you attended with your sister and Joseph—but what of your efforts to improve your own skills at the piano? Do you apply yourself? I think a woman’s skills in music ought to be a priority; one must always be disciplined and aspire to greatness. For then, if mastered, music can have the happiest effect on the soul.
But for all of his talk of the improvement of my soul and reason, he sought very little of my heart, and he gave me no mention of his. His tone grew colder, increasingly aloof, as the months progressed. He returned to addressing me with the formal “vous” greeting, which he had not used since our earliest acquaintance. It pained me to witness how Joseph took Julie’s hand each day and spoke to her about all manner of things, addressing her gently as “tu.”
It was as though he was slipping from me in ever new ways, daily becoming less recognizable as the man who’d sworn his love for me for all of eternity. The change in the spelling of his name became permanent; he didn’t explain it to me—he simply began signing his letters as Napoleon Bonaparte, just as he was now known in the journals. I noticed all of these shifts with a mounting sense of discomfort, but I restrained myself from saying anything. Previously, I had teased him about any number of things, mocking him gently for the officer’s formality with which he sometimes treated me, but now, I didn’t even have the comfort to do that; I was frightened of how he might reply. I did not feel sure enough of my standing in his affection to tease him, even lovingly.
In late winter, he began to write vague remarks to me, troubling statements that seemed to carry some deeper meaning: You know that my destiny lies in the hazard of combat, in glory or in death. You must follow your own instincts. Allow yourself to enjoy what is near to you.
I always rejected such statements from him, writing back with warm affection, hoping to thaw his encroaching coolness with increasing intimacy on my part. But my confident words belied the actual fears I harbored as I sensed his widening separation. I wished to join him in Paris—and yet, he still did not invite me. Then, one day in early spring, he began his letter to me with the impersonal and dispassionate salutation of “Mademoiselle,” rather than the usual “My Dear One,” or “My Dearest Desiree,” or even simply “Desiree.” I spent the remainder of the day in tears.
Napoleon’s dizzying rise through the leadership of the army meant that he was suddenly a fixture in the newspapers. Columnists kept track of his movements around the capital—outings in his fine new coach to the theater, evenings attending the fashionable balls or the stylish salons of the Right Bank. I knew from the journals and from Joseph—and then from what little Napoleon wrote to me—that he was in charge of keeping France safe from domestic threats. He oversaw the wing of the government that monitored the press and any potential dissident journalists. He was to watch the theaters and the operas for any unpatriotic material. He kept his ears alert at the high-society salons for potentially dangerous gossip or discussion. He oversaw the purging of monarchists from within the government, and he ordered the closing and mass arrests of private clubs that fostered anti-republican ideology.
It was a lot of work, but with a heftier salary came added comforts to which he had never previously been entitled. He wrote to me of a new address: he would no longer rent a single dingy room, but instead he took a spacious and well-decorated house for himself in the affluent Rue Chantereine, just a short walk from Place de la Révolution. He now had a coach and driver to himself. And most shockingly of all, he suddenly began writing to me about his fashion—new boots, leather gloves, which he had earlier called a waste and superfluous extravagance. Cravats of silk and a manservant to wash and set his previously unkempt hair. I read all of this and wondered to myself: couldn’t he certainly afford a wife?
I felt a considerable jolt of comfort when I did at last receive good news, some affirmation of the prominent place I still held in his affection: he’d had his book about us published, the one he had told me about in the earlier days of our courtship, Clisson et Eugenie.
Oddly, news of its publication did not in fact come to me directly from Napoleon himself. I was surprised, even if immensely proud, when I found out about it from Joseph, who’d had a copy mailed to him by his brother. And yet, I had been the inspiration for the love interest, the female heroine Eugenie—he’d even used my age and middle name in creating his character. So, surely, this was something.
I asked Joseph if I m
ight borrow his copy to read it, and he obliged, admitting to me that romance novels held little interest for him and he had not yet looked it over. I hurried home, the book tucked tightly in my arms as if I clutched a precious babe, and I settled myself in the salon to read my fiancé’s novel.
I’d seen passages already, portions of the book that he’d shared with me, eager as he was for my opinion and approval in the early days of the project. He’d acquainted me with the broad outline of the plot and the characters of his two lovers. And yet, as I read to the end of the novel, I found several stunning surprises—and I felt my dread hardening to a heavy stone in my gut.
It was not what he had told me. It was not what I had been expecting. It was not the inspiring, happy tale of love and marriage that he had initially promised to me. To begin, Clisson and Eugenie did fall passionately in love and were married. Their love only deepened when Clisson retired from the army and moved them to a prosperous farm in the countryside. But then, when the nation fell under attack once more, Clisson put down his scythe and kissed his wife farewell and nobly took up arms once more, selflessly returning to the army and the service of France. All of this I had anticipated. But then, to my utter horror, while Clisson is away fighting for his country, Eugenie shamelessly begins an affair with another man, forsaking the pure and faithful love of her husband. Clisson, upon hearing of this treachery, hurls himself heroically into battle and dies before the enemies of France.
I read it in one sitting. When I finished the book, its ending overwrought and tragic, I found myself too horrified for tears. I had stopped caring about the characters in the plot and through the last few pages had instead been fixated only on the thoughts and psyche of their writer; what had compelled Napoleon to write such a ghastly ending? If Clisson was indubitably based on Napoleon’s own ideas of himself, then did he really believe me capable of behaving like the disgraceful Eugenie? Did he really have such little faith in women—in me, the woman whose name and character had inspired his Eugenie? Had he truly drawn on our love in writing of such an ill-fated union?
My entire frame was cold, and I began to tremble as my mind spun with more questions. Did Napoleon believe me guilty of some unthinkable betrayal? Or even capable of it, for that matter? But how could he—where would he have gotten such an idea?
I picked up the book, hateful object that it was, and raced out the door, back toward my sister’s home. It was late, evening had come as I’d read, but I knew I could not wait through the entire night before speaking to them. Surely Joseph would have answers, would know something. At the very least, he’d certainly know more than I did.
“I need to go to Paris,” I told Julie and Joseph as I barged, unannounced, into their small, candlelit salon. They’d finished supper and were sitting before a small fire, Joseph’s head resting in my sister’s lap as Julie read to him. No doubt they would retire to bed soon. They both looked at me with alarm as I entered, and then Julie noticed the book in my hand. My sister tapped Joseph, and he rose from her lap, sitting rigid beside her.
“How was it?” my sister asked, her tone wary.
“Have you read it?” I demanded.
They both shook their heads.
“It’s horrifying,” I said, my throat tightening around my desperate words. “I must see him. He clearly has the wrong idea about me. Someone has told him something dreadful.”
Joseph sighed, and I noticed the look he exchanged with my sister. “What?” I asked, my mouth dry. “What is it?” I was fed up with other people knowing more about my fiancé, my life, than I did. I stared at Julie. “You must tell me.”
“Will you sit, Desi?” Julie asked. And then, turning to her husband, she added: “Go and fetch wine, two glasses. My sister and I will have a drink while we talk.”
Joseph nodded, hurrying to obey. I was left alone in the room with my sister. “Please, Desi.” She patted the place on the sofa beside her, the place her husband had just vacated.
“What is it?” I slowly lowered myself to her side, my entire body feeling heavy. “Oh God, Julie, you do know something. What?”
My sister put her hand gently on mine, her face wilting. “He has invited us.”
“Invited…whom?” I asked.
“He’s invited Joseph to Paris; he’s secured a position in the government for him.”
I could feel the blood draining from my face. And yet, I clung to some feeble hope, staking my claim in the past words of Napoleon’s, even if he had not repeated them to me recently. “Well then, I’ll go with you,” I said, sounding perhaps more certain than I felt. “Now’s the time. For all of us. Isn’t this what we have all been waiting for?”
Julie frowned, shifting in her seat, and just then Joseph entered with two glasses of wine.
“Thank you,” Julie said. “Would you leave us a moment?”
Joseph deposited the drinks and promptly quit the room. My sister reached for a drink and brought it to her lips, draining the entire contents of the glass. She grimaced, pausing a moment before turning to me. “You know that Napoleon has had a rapid rise in the new government,” she said.
I nodded. “Yes, of course.”
“Will you have your drink?” She glanced at the full glass on the table.
I picked it up and took a sip. “What do you know, Julie?” I asked, my voice pleading.
“Nothing for certain, I promise you that. Only rumors. There are always rumors. It’s nothing that Napoleon has said to Joseph, or of course I would have told you. It’s just…what we read…in some of the papers.”
I squeezed her hand. “Please, Julie. You must tell me.”
She nodded, her shoulders sagging. “You know that one of his new responsibilities is to seize all private arms and weaponry…anything that royalist civilians might use to rise up against the government.”
“Yes,” I said. “And?”
My sister sighed. “This has put him in the path of all sorts of powerful families. Noble families eager to forfeit their arms in an effort to show good faith to the new government. It seems that…it seems that Napoleon has met someone, while performing this job.”
“Someone?” I asked.
“A lady,” Julie said, her tone tenuous.
I took a large gulp of wine, blinked back the tears that stung my eyes. “And? What is her name?”
“I’m not certain. I don’t know much about her. Joseph will not tell me much, if in fact he knows more.” My sister rose and crossed the room to a mahogany desk. There she pulled open the top drawer and retrieved a small piece of paper, a newspaper clipping. She walked back toward me and offered the paper. “This is all I know.”
I glanced down, reading through a scrim of tears that blurred the words. It was a single sentence, a vague line in a society column: General Bonaparte was spotted, dining at the exclusive restaurant Esprit de la Nation, in the company of one of Paris’s most fashionable and desired hostesses.
I read it several times, blinking against the threat of more tears, before looking to my sister. “All right. Well, it’s dinner. It’s not necessarily…” But my voice trailed off. I guessed that it was so much more. Combined with his prolonged periods of neglect, his cold words. His lack of affection or interest of late. The absence of his summoning me to Paris, even after he’d made a place for Joseph and my sister. I’d feared it for a long time in silence, and now I knew that my concerns had been well founded: I was losing Napoleon.
* * *
Within days, my fear turned into something more: heartache. My sister had seen only that one small column, a vague sentence she had noticed only because she scoured the Parisian society news. But one morning the following week, when I walked out to find a fresh newspaper, I did not have to scour any obscure columns. Because there, on the front page of a Parisian journal, in large and bold letters, was my fiancé’s name:
“GENERAL VENDÉMIA
IRE” BECOMES “GENERAL AMOUR”! NATIONAL HERO NAPOLEON BONAPARTE ATTENDS THE OPÉRA COMIQUE ACCOMPANIED BY HIS BEAUTIFUL MISTRESS, THE VICOMTESSE JOSEPHINE DE BEAUHARNAIS
I dropped the paper, my hands shaking, not even caring that I was in a public square and others might see my immoderate behavior. My heart clamored against my rib cage, each beat sending a fresh shudder of pain through my body.
What had happened to the man I loved? The man I’d trusted? I’d lost him. He’d demanded my promise to be as constant as the sea, and yet he’d left me as quickly as a retreating tide.
I no longer knew this distant, foreign person, this man who looked different and dressed differently and spelled his name differently. This man who would abandon me like this, behaving in a manner as cold and callous as if he owed me nothing, felt nothing for me. As if we’d made no vows. This man who would so callously break my heart, replacing me with a woman named Josephine.
Chapter 10
Rue des Capucines, Paris
Winter 1796
WHO WAS JOSEPHINE DE BEAUHARNAIS? If I had been desperate for news while marooned in the south, I soon found that Paris would provide me with more information than I could ever wish to know about the lady who had replaced me.
The capital was a city seduced, a population frantic for any gossip it could have about the dark-haired beauty—a widow of the Terror, a fixture at the city’s most fashionable soirees, and, most importantly, the newly minted mistress of France’s latest darling, the Boy General, Napoleon Bonaparte.
None of the journalists who wrote of “General Amour” and his new lover seemed to have any idea that I existed, that I was a girl named Desiree Clary from Marseille, and that, until recently, I had believed myself engaged to a young Corsican refugee named Napoleone di Buonaparte. It was as if that man had never existed, nor had the young girl who’d loved him and made her promises to him. I came to realize that this was because he’d never told anyone in Paris of my existence.
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