Two Empresses

by Brandy Purdy

  As he gave me his arm and we walked back down the aisle, to wave to the people from the church steps, I could not help but wonder, Was it all for nothing? The Revolution and all those thousands of lives lost in Liberty’s name, what had it all been for?

  I knew better than to try to talk to Bonaparte about it. I knew exactly what he would say if I tried: Women should stick to knitting and not meddle in politics! But he would not leave it at that. He would feel the need to punish me for forgetting my place. He had cruelly devised the perfect method: He would summon his latest mistress and order her to be stripped and ready, scrubbed clean of perfume, as it always gave him headaches, and waiting naked in the bedroom across the hall from mine. When he was finished, he would come to me and tell me all about it, describing the lady’s anatomy and everything they had done together. He spared me nothing! As I sat weeping, he would come to me and kiss the top of my head and say, “You are a fool, Josephine; you always weep and are afraid that I will fall in love. Do you not know by now that I am not made for love?” And then he would leave me to sleep alone that night, though I very rarely slept, I was so tormented.

  Scoff though he might, I thought my fears justified. Bonaparte had loved me once; it was not inconceivable that he could love again, another, in the same mad, passionate manner. If a woman ever came along who fascinated him as much as I once had, everything would be over for me.

  I was fighting harder than ever now to hold on to my husband’s affections. I was desperate to please him, to keep him interested and satisfied. I was dyeing my hair regularly with dark coffee to keep the encroaching gray at bay, wearing more rouge than ever before, and lining my amber eyes with kohl and shading them with a mixture of elderberries and soot to create a mysterious smoky effect, sometimes enhanced by a shimmer of silver or gold paint.

  I appeared in a series of fascinating and exotic gowns that would be endlessly talked about and fill pages in the popular fashion magazines and make Bonaparte proud. One night I was all in gold net in which jeweled and enameled sea creatures were ensnared. Another night my black silk gown was covered in toucan feathers encrusted with pearls. I even had the new gold coins minted with my husband’s profile made into a dress; I sparkled and jingled every time I moved, liquid nude silk peeping out between where the coins were joined. I imagined it was almost like wearing a knight’s chain mail. Another night I was diamonds and pearls from décolletage to hem and the next I appeared in a sheer black gown encrusted with rubies and sapphires, and after that it was lilac silk overlaid with white netting covered with sparkling amethysts from the palest hue to the deepest regal purple. Hoping to remind my husband of the first night we spent together as lovers, I appeared at our anniversary ball in a sheer, body-hugging blush-pink gown sewn all over with real pink rose petals, a creation so delicate I could not sit down and hardly dared move lest I split a seam or the petals fall away and reveal that I was wearing nothing underneath.

  But it was all in vain. I appealed to Bonaparte’s vanity, not his heart. He was proud of me—sometimes—but he no longer loved me. The dream had died; Josephine was just a pretense, a role I played, only make-believe on the world’s stage. Unfortunately, where my husband was concerned, I now lacked the appeal of other actresses.

  All Paris was being titillated by tales of the two actresses currently dueling for his affections—the mature, well-seasoned, and very dignified tragedienne Madame Duchesnois and the fifteen-year-old in-génue Mademoiselle Weimar. While the former delighted Bonaparte with her sensual prowess, the latter coaxed the little boy in him out to play. Whenever Mademoiselle Weimar was visiting him at the Tuileries the corridor outside my rooms would ring with Bonaparte’s laughter and her girlish shrieks as they romped in and out of his bedroom and played hide-and-seek amongst the bronze and marble statues. She skipped about quite shamelessly in her shift and bare feet with her long blond hair down in pigtails. He would sit her on his knee and feed her sweets right in front of me; sometimes he even gave her my candied violets.

  Bonaparte insisted I accompany him to the theater whenever one of them was appearing in a new play. I had to sit there, smile and applaud, and pretend nothing was wrong and I didn’t already know more than I cared to about their more intimate performances. Sometimes Bonaparte made me wait while he visited his actress amours in their dressing rooms backstage. “I’ll only be a few minutes,” he always said; to him it was a boast that he could “get the job done in three or four minutes.” Just because it was true didn’t make it any easier to bear. I suppose this humiliation was a just penance for my own infidelities.

  CHAPTER 29

  In 1804 it finally happened. Bonaparte came in while I was sitting at my dressing table in my lace peignoir with my hair down, layering on the rouge, just the way he liked it. He met the reflection of my eyes in the mirror, bowed, and addressed me as “Your Imperial Majesty.”

  The wheels had already been set in motion. The frail and elderly Pope Pius VII was coming from Rome to crown him.

  Until almost the last moment, I did not know if I would be crowned beside Bonaparte. His family was up in arms, simply livid that “that old Creole whore” might become the Empress of France. They were insatiable in their greed and never stopped bickering; even after their brother carved up Europe like a roast and gave them all crowns in their own right or by marriage and overlooked their gross incompetence, it still was not enough for them. Mother Letizia said if I was crowned she would not come to the coronation, and my husband’s sisters refused to walk in procession behind me and carry my train. “We are better than she is!” they hotly maintained. “She isn’t even good enough to walk behind us and carry our trains!”

  Bonaparte had a tabletop model of the interior of Notre Dame Cathedral made and little dolls in costumes evocative of medieval splendor to aid in planning the procession and ceremony. The little dark-haired doll in a long crimson velvet train furred with ermine that was made to represent me was constantly being moved, the center of attention, right beside Bonaparte one day, lost in the crowd the next. She was moved so much the pressure of fingers wore threadbare patches in the velvet. One day I walked in and found the poor little doll outside the model cathedral altogether, lying prone and perilously near the edge of the table, like she was about to fall off the face of the earth.

  The whole court took note of this uncertainty. The whispers of divorce were louder than ever now. In fact, they could hardly be called whispers anymore. The word was spoken openly and no one bothered to lower their voice; they didn’t care if I heard. My ladies, and the rest of the court, began to snub me, at first in little ways, like pretending not to notice when I entered a room, neglecting to curtsy, arriving late to attend me, ignoring my requests, and finally, the ultimate insult, remaining seated in my presence. Those of aristocratic pedigree, many of whom had been émigrés I had helped return to France and regain their rights and property, began to loudly complain that it was beneath them to have to serve a commoner like Madame Bonaparte, who was just “a Creole nobody.”

  It didn’t help that my husband was openly dallying with no fewer than three of my ladies at the time, a trio of blondes ranging from eighteen to thirty, none of whom felt an ounce of gratitude or loyalty toward me.

  Elizabeth de Vaudey, one of my ladies of the bedchamber, was ripe and voluptuous, an ash-blond songbird with the cunning of a serpent. She began scorning, deriding, and mocking me, putting on airs as though she had more chance of becoming empress than I did. Bonaparte would drag me out of bed at two or three o’clock in the morning and regale me with the intimate details of their latest tryst. “Madame de Vaudey practically sings an aria when she comes,” he gleefully confided.

  He was even more smitten with my reader, the lovely honey-blond Anna Roche de La Coste, who affected a studied indifference and refused to give up her own lover even for an emperor. Bonaparte was so wild to win her that he gave her an enormous sapphire ring right in front of the whole court.

  His third amour was
Adèle Duchâtel, only eighteen with spun gold hair and dewy blue eyes. She was new to court and married to a man approaching eighty. Bonaparte fell madly in love with her when he chanced upon her eating olives at a buffet supper. “You shouldn’t eat olives at night. They’re very bad for you! They will give you indigestion!” he scolded as he slapped an olive from her fingers’ delicate grasp. Either by cruel intent or accident, my husband forgot that he had asked me to come to him and I walked in on them naked in his bed, interrupting them right at the climactic moment. I fled in the face of Bonaparte’s wild rage, but he followed me, naked as he was, and smashed every stick of furniture in my bedchamber, screaming the whole time that he was sick of my spying and he must think of his legacy, which demanded that he take a wife who was capable of bearing children; he owed it to France, he said. He left me weeping on the floor amidst jagged splinters of gilded rosewood, broken mirrors and shattered porcelain, and my own pride.

  * * *

  Despite his valor on the battlefield, Bonaparte was cowardly and timid about broaching the subject of divorce directly with me; he preferred a more roundabout way. He tried to take my children into his confidence, to persuade them to be the bearers of bad tidings, but, to their credit, both Eugène and Hortense refused.

  Rather than stoop to begging his stepfather to reconsider, Eugène stood there, straight and stoic, a model man and soldier, and said that if such came to pass then it was his duty to leave the court and accompany his mother wherever she wished to go, even if it was back to Martinique. God bless my sweet boy, I didn’t deserve such a son! He was nothing like Alexandre de Beauharnais!

  * * *

  The spiteful Bonaparte clan was jubilant; they were certain that I would not be crowned and would soon be sent away. But they overplayed their hand. One spiteful remark too many reached Bonaparte’s ears. All of a sudden he seemed to wake up and take note of how everyone was treating me. Before them all one evening, he came to me and took my hand and said loud enough for everyone to hear: “It is only fair that she should be an empress. If I was thrown into prison instead of ascending a throne, she would share my misfortune with me, so she should also share my grandeur.” Then he addressed me directly: “The Pope will be here at the end of the month. He will crown us both. Order your gown and start to prepare for the ceremony.”

  I was so grateful that I flung myself at Bonaparte’s feet. I had to stop myself from actually kissing them.

  I thought I was safe. He came to my bed that night and he was tender and kind with me. But as I lay with my head on his chest, while he stroked and played with my long hair, he said to me, “I know that I shall never have the strength to oblige you to leave me. I tell you plainly, however, that it is my wish that you will resign yourself and spare me all the difficulties of this painful but necessary separation.”

  I knew exactly what he was saying: he could not bear to ask me to leave him; he wanted me to do it for him, seemingly of my own free will, to be noble and sacrifice myself, to withdraw voluntarily for the good of emperor and empire alike.

  I nodded and swallowed hard, choking back the tears and the egg-sized lump rising in my throat. I would not, I could not, do what he was asking.

  “I promise that I shall leave the minute I receive a direct order from you to descend the throne,” I said.

  Stalemate. Neither of us would make the first move. But I knew the end was near. He would have his way; it was only a matter of time.

  * * *

  I had less than four weeks to prepare. Seamstresses and embroiderers slaved day and night over the magnificent white satin gown swathed in gold tulle, embellished with large, milky teardrop pearls, and embroidered breast to hem with swarms of Bonaparte’s golden bees. The thirty-foot-long, eighty-pound ermine-bordered crimson velvet train was embroidered with thousands of golden bees and bordered by Bs encircled by wreaths of laurel leaves. They were still working, their fingers numb and blue with cold on the icy December night before the coronation when I, grasping like a drowning woman at anything that might keep me afloat, ran to the Pope and begged a private audience with him to ease my troubled soul.

  Though he was clearly weary and longed for his bed, Pius welcomed me. We sat together by the fire and I, with tears in my eyes, explained that something was weighing heavily upon my soul—I was afraid my husband and I were not truly married in God’s sight, as we had been united in a civil ceremony. I was afraid we might both go to Hell.

  In truth, I was not thinking of my soul or Bonaparte’s at all. It was a calculated move to fortify my position. I was forty and fighting to hold on to a life I didn’t truly want but couldn’t bear to lose. I spent every waking hour feeling like I was walking on slippery ice, eggshells, or broken glass, but I feared life without Bonaparte, as his scorned and set-aside wife, would be even worse.

  I was hoping that a religious ceremony might carry more weight than a civil one and make it impossible for Bonaparte to divorce me. But Pius did not know this; he thought I was “a true daughter of the church” and that my tears were sincere. Lying to the Pope, this was what I had come to!

  Pius agreed that the situation must be remedied at once. He sent for Bonaparte, already in his dressing gown, ready for bed, and told him that we had been living in sin and unless we were married at once, in a proper Catholic ceremony, he would not crown us on the morrow.

  Bonaparte had no choice but to submit, so witnesses were hastily summoned, a makeshift altar was erected in my husband’s study, and Pope Pius himself spoke the words that would make us one in God’s sight. I retired victorious, and alone, to my bed, but I did not sleep. It seemed I had only just lain down before I had to rise again.

  * * *

  December 2, 1804 was a dismal day for a coronation. It was the coldest day of the year. The weather couldn’t decide whether it wanted to be snow or rain so had combined the two into an icy slush. Everyone seemed peevish and out of sorts, but still the people gathered, starting at dawn, thronging the streets all the way from the Tuileries to Notre Dame Cathedral. Few of the courtiers had slept well, if they had slept at all, so they greeted the day waspish and abrupt, constantly snapping at one another as they went about their duties. Many of the ladies, fearing to spoil their coiffures, since there were too few hairdressers to attend us all, had had their hair done the evening before and passed the remainder of the night sitting upright in chairs.

  This should have been the happiest day of my life, I thought as my attendants dressed me. I had never had so many hands on me at once, except in Barras’s orgies. My hairdresser arranged my hair in a pile of shimmering dark ringlets crowned with a diadem of pearls and diamond leaves, and my ladies fussed with the high stand-up lace collar framing my shoulders, fastened a necklace of great sapphires and rubies carved like Egyptian scarabs nested in diamonds around my throat, and earrings dangling with truly enormous pearls that tugged painfully at my ears, while others knelt at my feet to smooth out the glimmering rich folds of my gold-encrusted white satin gown and fasten the sapphire buckles on my satin shoes.

  “You have never looked more beautiful, Mother,” Hortense said, and squeezed my hand.

  “I’ve never felt more afraid,” I whispered as I fought to hold back my tears; it wouldn’t do to spoil my rouge or to drip tears infused with lampblack from my lashes down to soil my white satin.

  Bonaparte had decreed that his coronation must evoke the splendors of the Renaissance. “What I want above all is grandeur,” he said, “and what is grand above all is beautiful,” so we were all weighed down with cumbersome velvets and heavy satins and taffetas encrusted with gold embroidery and suffering the scratchy neck ruffs and stand-up collars we had copied from sixteenth-century portraits. The men felt ill at ease in their unaccustomed doublets and puffed breeches, which were far from flattering on those with short and stocky figures like Bonaparte, and wrestled to arrange their stiff robes and embroidered mantles into more flattering, and concealing, folds. My husband’s purple velvet mantle and
white satin raiments were so stiff with gold embroidery they might have stood alone and sewn with so many diamonds that he looked like a walking mirror. There were even diamonds scattered amongst the gilded laurel leaves wreathing his head. He joked that he was the King of Diamonds. The truth was we looked like we were going to a costume ball that most of us had no desire to attend, in abysmal weather and unflattering costumes we would never have chosen for ourselves.

  * * *

  We rode through the streets of Paris in a glass and gold coach like something out of a fairy tale. The people stood shivering in the rain and stared at us; some waved and cheered, but I thought overall there was more an air of curiosity than jubilation. When we arrived at Notre Dame, just as Bonaparte was handing me down from the coach, the dark, drizzling clouds suddenly parted and the sun shone down on us, striking our diamonds and gold embroidery so that we glowed like divine beings.

  Bonaparte smiled and said it was a good omen. “You’re still my good-luck charm, Josephine,” he whispered as his lips brushed my cheek.

  The people cheered wildly at this sign of affection between us. They still believed in our love story.

  I smiled wanly back at Bonaparte and tried valiantly to hold back the tears. If that is true, how can you even think of giving me up? I wanted to ask him, right there on the steps of Notre Dame Cathedral before everyone, but I didn’t dare.

  Then it began, what should have been the crowning achievement of my life. I was walking down the center aisle of Notre Dame, my imperial crown carried on a gold-tasseled crimson cushion before me, and my husband’s vile and bitter sisters, Pauline, Caroline, and Elisa, seething with ill will as they carried my train behind me. People would afterward say I wore my crown as lightly as a feather, but the truth is my head was heavy and aching the whole time and the weight of my train was almost unbearable. It was like dragging a corpse in chains behind me. My sisters-in-law frequently let it sag to stagger my graceful carriage; they were hoping, I think, to make me fall.