Two Empresses

by Brandy Purdy

  I spent my days waiting, always waiting, like a bejeweled slave in a sultan’s harem, waiting for, both wanting and dreading, the moment when my husband would want me, so I could rush to him. I must never keep him waiting.

  I was exhausted by etiquette. I could understand now why Marie Antoinette had longed to put on shepherdess frocks and escape to the Petit Trianon and her pretend farm.

  I longed for the weekends when I could escape to Malmaison. I had a whole zoo of animals and hothouses full of tropical plants, a flock of sheep, a working farm, and a vineyard there. I grew pineapples and bananas, palm trees, and orchids in a hothouse to remind me of Martinique. Over fifty varieties of roses bloomed in my garden and I was determined to obtain specimens of flowers and trees from all over the world.

  * * *

  It was only at Malmaison that I found peace. I would put on a simple dress and sit and watch my black swans glide past and walk hand in hand with my orangutan, dressed up in a little girl’s frock, and sit at the table with her and feed her turnips with a knife and fork.

  I begged Bonaparte to let me stay at Malmaison. But he always made me go back to the Tuileries on Monday.

  “I was never made for such grandeur,” I protested, “I will never be happy there,” but he didn’t care.

  His eyes reminded me that he was the Devil and I had best keep our bargain, or else . . .

  He shoved me to my knees before him.

  “I expect four things from you,” he said. “Worship at my feet; proclaim my excellence to everyone; please me in bed; and give me a son if you can.”

  An heir was still at the forefront of his mind. In the spring, when he saw the animals with their newly born or hatched young, he turned his bitterness upon me. “It seems that everything here is fertile except you, madame!”

  To punish me he liked to use my animals as living targets. He shot an emu and a Peruvian llama and mortally wounded a gazelle; the zebra survived, just barely. When he missed my black swans he became so disgusted that he flung his pistol into the lake.

  * * *

  On constant show at the Tuileries, I began my day at eight o’clock with a light breakfast, a bath, and the long, tedious business of dressing, a ceremony I thought designed more to give my attendants something to do than to actually help me put clothes on my back. I spent my days bored nearly to tears, listening to my ladies chatter; sometimes we played cards, interminable games of whist or piquet, or billiards, or they sang or read to me. I received whole bags full of letters now, all of which must be read, and most must be answered, by either my own hand or a secretary’s. Bonaparte joined me for lunch, he gobbled his food and was gone in twenty minutes, and then I was left to my ladies again. They helped me change my dress and then the doors of my yellow salon were thrown open wide to receive petitioners and any tradespeople who had goods to show me. For the rest of the afternoon, I had fittings with my dressmakers and milliners and posed for portraits; there were always at least three or four artists painting portraits of me. Sometimes I stole an hour to stroll in the gardens, though never alone; solitude was not allowed.

  At any hour of the day Bonaparte might burst in and demand tea and my company or want my opinion about some pressing matter and I must always be immaculately dressed and ready to receive him. There mustn’t be a moment’s delay; the instant he commanded it my full attention must be entirely his. I must never be tired or out of sorts or betray a lack of interest. Then it was time to change my dress again. Every evening I hosted endless dinners and balls, smiling graciously and listening attentively to upwards of 150 guests, always with a kind and flattering word to say to each.

  Most nights I didn’t get to bed until two o’clock. And, if Bonaparte deigned to visit me, I might not be able to sleep till three or four. His lovemaking was swift, but his talk was endless. He liked to lay his head in my lap and have me read him ghost stories or massage his brow, and when he had the agonizing stomach pains that were the bane of his existence I was the only one who could soothe him. He needed me—his Josephine. I was the only one he could confide in, and even when he bored me with all his talk of politics and military matters, I had to feign an avid interest. He also liked to stay with me because I was such a light sleeper; if an assassin intruded I was sure to wake and this made him feel more secure.

  But things were far from happy between us. Once awakened to all my flaws, Bonaparte wasn’t about to overlook or forget them. He told me often that I only looked pretty from afar. When I was at my dressing table sometimes he would station himself behind my chair and stare critically at my face in the mirror as I applied my cosmetics. He would reach out and stay my hand when I started to move the rouge pot away and order, “More!” I had to diet constantly because he loathed fat women. Yet if I was too thin he said I looked skinny and old. If I appeared in a dress he did not like he threw an inkwell at me, tore it into tatters, or kept the whole court waiting, even an hour or more while I went to change, just so he could have the pleasure of blaming me for the delay. He thought nothing of snatching a shawl that displeased him from my shoulders and tossing it into the fire. Once, when I came before him in a dress he deemed too thin, he grasped it by the hem and tore it up the front all the way to the jeweled belt fastened snugly just below my breasts. “There now!” he cried. “You have what you want—every man in Paris can see your little black forest!” I fled in tears and shame, trying to hold my skirt together to cover me. If my neckline was too low he announced that no one wanted to see “an old woman’s sagging teats.” If there was an important ball or reception and one of the guests was someone he was very eager to impress, he would often sit for hours in my bedroom making me try on dress after dress until he found one grand enough to suit him. Whenever he saw a pretty woman in a white dress he would comment on how much this pleased him, yet silence reigned when I wore white or else he castigated me because my attire was too plain. If I favored muslin over silk he said the same thing: He hated muslin; it was too common to suit his rich tastes. If I dared appear in the same gown twice, or in one too similar to another I had already worn, he would loudly remark in full hearing of the court, “That is a very pretty dress, madame, but we have all seen it before! Go and change it at once and do not offend our eyes by letting us see it again!”

  I needed to look opulent and outshine everyone else around me, my husband demanded it, so I spent more lavishly than ever before. But whenever Bonaparte saw the bills he berated me. His explosions of rage were truly terrifying. If I spent too little, I was embarrassing him; if I spent too much, I was bankrupting him. I could never find the right balance. Nothing I did seemed to please him and I was left wishing he still saw only his ideal, his perfect dream, of Josephine when he looked at me, not Rose with all her flaws dressed up in Josephine’s finery.

  * * *

  He took mistresses openly now—actresses, dancing girls, opera singers, and ladies of the court. Though he professed that they meant nothing to him and only satisfied his lust for conquest, he flaunted them, inviting them to court to perform so I must sit and watch while everyone was watching, and laughing, at me. One of Bonaparte’s women, the beautiful contralto Giuseppina Grassini, he actually brought to Malmaison, to sully my paradise, to sing for me on my birthday. He slept with her that night in the bedroom across the hall from me. His family, knowing all that it would take was for one of his mistresses to succeed where I had so far failed and become pregnant, pushed pretty young girls as well as mature women into his path, anyone likely to tempt him. The woman didn’t matter to them, only her womb. A pregnancy would prove the fault was mine, not his, and Bonaparte would be done with me at last.

  When I wept over his affairs, he slapped and raged at me.

  “I am not like other men,” he railed. “The ordinary laws of morality do not apply to me!”

  Other times he would take me in his arms and assure me, “Those women mean nothing to me. I take them and then forget them.”

  CHAPTER 28

  On
New Year’s Eve, Haydn’s Creation was to be performed at the Opéra in Bonaparte’s honor. I was halfway down the stairs when I realized my shawl didn’t quite suit my gown. Bonaparte was bound to be displeased, he was very particular about such things, so I sent Hortense down to tell him that I would only be a few moments more. In my haste, the heel of my shoe caught in my hem, tearing my gown, and “a few moments more” turned into fifteen and then twenty, then thirty minutes as my ladies swarmed about me, bumping into one another, dropping things, and snapping crossly at one another in their haste, making me want to just swat them all away and dress myself.

  At last, in an ivory satin gown overlaid with shimmering gold net and the parure of pearls the King and Queen of Naples had given me, I rushed downstairs, throwing an Indian shawl of deep crimson and burnished gold about my shoulders as I ran, just in time to see Bonaparte’s carriage driving away. A footman informed me that the First Consul had gone on ahead. He had only just left and if we hurried we could catch up, so Hortense and I climbed into the carriage that had been brought for us. Bonaparte would be angry if I wasn’t there in the royal box for all the people to see us before the performance started.

  As we neared the opera house there was a great flash of blinding white light. The carriage felt like it had been swept up on a tremendous wave; it shuddered and rocked as the windows exploded, showering us with shards of broken glass. I heard the horses scream and there was a great crash as the carriage fell over on its side. Then everything went black. The next thing I knew, a man—my husband!—was lifting me from the broken, splintered ruins of the carriage. I was bleeding from a cut on my temple and Bonaparte pressed his handkerchief firmly against it, murmuring something about head wounds always bleeding like the devil. Hortense—alive and safe, thank God!—was standing beside me, staring about her in horrified wonder as she bound her shawl around her arm, to staunch the blood seeping from several small cuts.

  “Josephine—you are still my good-luck charm!” Bonaparte cried as he enfolded me in his arms and smothered me with kisses. “Had it not been for you, and your infernal shawl, keeping me waiting, my carriage would have been caught in the blast and I would have been blown to bits!”

  My ears were ringing; his voice sounded very far away. Though I heard his words, I couldn’t comprehend what he was saying. I stepped back from his embrace and stared around me. Someone had tried to kill Bonaparte with a bomb. It had been left in a cart blocking the street where he must pass in order to reach the opera house. All about us, the streets were littered with broken glass, glittering in the moon- and lamplight as far as the eye could see, and the bodies of the dead, and the wounded groaning in agony. I saw men missing limbs and white bones jaggedly protruding from torn and bloody flesh. Slivers of glass stabbed their skin like tiny knives and many had been blinded. At least thirty were dead and twice more had suffered injuries. Hortense and I were fortunate to have escaped with barely a scratch when so many others had suffered much worse. There wasn’t a house standing within sight that hadn’t lost all its windows, and the roofs of several had caved in, crushing and burying anyone unfortunate enough to be inside.

  If we had left the Tuileries on time our carriage would have been almost on top of the bomb when it exploded; it would have meant certain death for all of us. The enormity of it shook me, I felt suddenly very dizzy and weak. Spots danced before my eyes. I staggered and only just had time to reach out to my husband before I fainted again. He caught me and cradled me in his arms, and, for the first time in a very long time, I felt safe. How strange that I should feel that way, bleeding and wounded, when we had just come so very close to death.

  * * *

  He loved me again . . . for a little while. I tried to hold on, to make it last. But Bonaparte couldn’t give up what I called his “two-minute conquests” and I was sorely afraid that one of them would capture his fascination the way I once had. My jealous tears annoyed him and kept him from my bed. He was restless and ill-tempered and itching to embark on another campaign.

  I begged him not to go. I ran after him in my nightgown with my hair flowing down and caught desperately at his arm as he climbed into his coach. But he shook me off.

  “My power depends on my glory and my glory depends on my victories,” he said. “Conquest alone can maintain me.”

  “Please!” I tried again to push my way into the coach, and into his arms again. “Take me with you!”

  But he pushed me away.

  “Nature has given me a strong and resolute character, but she has made you out of lace and gauze, just like your nightgown,” he said as his fingers plucked disdainfully at the lace.

  He closed the door on me. I stood and watched and wept until I could no longer see his carriage.

  * * *

  I was “Our Lady of Victories” once more with the tattered and burnt flags of the fallen being laid at my feet, drinking champagne toasts and hosting grand balls every time Bonaparte’s latest victory was announced, consoling the widows and wounded, and being feted and celebrated by all Paris in his absence.

  My hero returned victorious, drunk with power, and more obsessed with having a child than ever before. I was thirty-seven now, but it was still possible; his own mother had been deep into her thirties when her last child was born and would have likely continued breeding had her husband not died.

  “It is the torment of my life not to have a child,” Bonaparte bemoaned his misfortune. “My power will never be firmly established until I have one.”

  He sent me to La Plombières again, though I pleaded and wept not to go. I knew it would do no good, and it brought back so many unpleasant memories of how much I had suffered there.

  “This time it will work,” Bonaparte confidently asserted. “Believe it will work, and it will. You must set your mind to giving me a son.”

  As I was climbing into my carriage, about to drive away to the detested place, his brother Lucien sidled up to me and whispered in my ear that I should get a child if I could off another man and palm it off on Bonaparte. I knew it was a trick; my in-laws would like nothing better than to prove me guilty of such duplicity. I was not about to walk into their trap. Besides, if it hadn’t worked with Hippolyte, the most passionate affair of my life, then it was doubtful to work with any other man playing the role of stud.

  * * *

  I was desperate and I knew my days were numbered. The waters of La Plombières failed to wake my womb and every time my “little red sea” began to flow Bonaparte brooded and wept with disappointment. Everywhere I turned was the word “divorce” being whispered loud enough to make sure I heard it. I had to do something, so, to my great and eternal shame, I sacrificed my sweet daughter to try to save myself.

  One night in bed, after I had been particularly zealous in pleasuring him, I suggested to Bonaparte that his brother Louis, the mad invalid, might marry Hortense. If they had a child it would be Bonaparte’s blood united with mine flowing in its veins, just the same as if it were our very own child, and, provided it was a boy, it could be his heir. My husband thought it was a most ingenious idea and ordered me to start planning the wedding without delay.

  Hortense wept when I told her—I let her believe it was all Bonaparte’s idea; I couldn’t bear to have my daughter hate me—but she stoically accepted her fate.

  “My stepfather is a comet of which we are but the tail, and we must follow him everywhere without knowing where it carries us—for our happiness or for our grief,” she said bravely.

  I tried to atone with gifts—a beautiful white satin wedding dress covered with pearls, a diamond diadem, necklace, and earrings, and ropes of magnificent pearls. But Hortense wasn’t me; she merely smiled and, like the dutiful daughter she always was, thanked me for my gifts, but I could tell they meant nothing to her and her heart was breaking. Whenever she looked at Louis, I had a feeling she was seeing prison doors slamming shut in front of her and hearing the clank and rattle of phantom locks.

  I lied to myself, even as
I lied to Hortense, trying vainly to reassure her that perhaps Louis would be kind. After all, they had so much in common—they were both fond of music and liked to read. But I knew Louis would make her miserable, he hated me just as much as his siblings and mother did, and he would seek to hurt me through Hortense. He would never be kind to her. But I had no choice. I was fighting for my survival; if Hortense and Louis failed to give Bonaparte an heir I was certain to be set aside. The whispers were just too loud to ignore; there had to be more than a grain of truth in them. Bonaparte must have said something to someone.

  * * *

  Luck was with me once again. Hortense quickly conceived and gave birth to a healthy son. They named him Napoleon Louis Charles. My husband was elated; now if my womb failed to flourish, there was this child waiting in the wings to assume the mantle of heir. I thought now, whatever happened, I would be safe. My daughter had done what I could not; she had given my husband an heir.

  * * *

  Bonaparte was inching ever closer to a crown. He became more pompous and pretentious every day. He began wearing gold-embroidered red velvet suits and a jeweled sword, more ornament than weapon, and declared his birthday a national holiday. He had coins minted with his profile, wearing a crown of laurel leaves just like Julius Caesar. He decided that the people missed the awe and grandeur of the Catholic Church, so he restored the religion that the Revolution had abolished. On Easter Sunday, for the first time in years, church bells rang in France, summoning the people to Mass. In Notre Dame, I knelt beside my husband, stumbling over the long-forgotten prayers. Afterward, my husband stood and nodded his approval. “Now everything is just like before.”