Tales of Passion, Tales of Woe

by Sandra Gulland

  * It was customary to fire servants who married or got pregnant.

  In which I become involved in intrigues

  January 4, 1798.

  “Where to, Madame?” my coachman asked, tipping his sheepskin cap. Feeling poorly, I suspected. The drivers and postillions had hobnobbed and glass-jingled last night, while their masters were enjoying the ball.

  “One hundred Rue Honoré,” I told Antoine, reading the card on which was printed the Paris address of the Bodin Company. I’d told Bonaparte I was going to call on Thérèse—which was true, in part. After I called in at one hundred Rue Honoré.

  A butler in tails opened the oak door. I was shown into a salon so large it required two fireplaces. In a window alcove was a desk covered with files and a counting device.

  I heard the even thump, thump, thump of a wooden leg. “Madame Bonaparte?” Hugo Bodin was younger than his brother, but every bit as round, and his complexion even pinker. He pulled on the bell rope. “Captain Charles,” he instructed the butler, pushing forward a shield-back chair for me. “I have been anticipating your call, Madame. We are honoured. The fervour of the people for your husband is electric, to use a modern word.” He lowered himself onto a crimson sofa, his stump sticking out to one side like the oar of a boat. “That was quite a fête last night in his honour, I am told. Even we plebeians who were not invited were all ‘in a twitter,’ as the English say.”

  “It was an extraordinary display.” A ball in the style of the Ancien Régime: a full orchestra, dancers, a feast. “And quite cleverly done. The Minister of Foreign Affairs transformed his residence to look like the backstage of the opera.”

  “I was told that that dance the clergy wish to have banned was performed. Wallace? No, valse.”

  From somewhere in the building, I heard a dog bark. “The captain said to tell you that he will be a moment,” the butler announced.

  As if on cue the captain appeared, buttoning the top button of a corded white vest figured in gold. “Madame Bonaparte! I hope this means …?”

  “I’m not sure,” I told them both. “My lawyer and I have gone over the contract carefully, and considering the amount of the investment, I’m afraid that the—”

  Hugo held up his hands. “Before you say anything, Madame, you should know that we’d be willing to up your share to twelve per cent.”

  They’d doubled it. “I appreciate your offer, Citoyen Bodin, but I’m afraid I’d require at least fifteen.”

  “Done,” Hugo said.

  Done? I looked from one man to the other. Then I smiled at the captain and said, “Captain Charles, it would appear that we are now business associates.”

  “Hooray!” Hugo exclaimed in a burst of undignified enthusiasm. We toasted our partnership with thimble-glasses of Chartreuse.

  After, in the privacy of my carriage, I laughed at my audacity. Fifteen per cent: a small fortune. A fortune I urgently needed.

  Thérèse was thrilled. “You’re actually going to do it? You’re going to be a partner in a military supply company? That’s so daring! You’re the only woman I know who has done that.”

  “But you’re the one who told me I should.”

  “I just can’t believe it. You’ll be making millions.”

  “Borrowing millions is more like it.”

  January 6.

  “It’s a large sum,” I warned Barras. The leather chair creaked as I shifted my weight. “Four hundred thousand.” I was conscious of blinking—once, twice, three times.

  Barras sat back, examining his fingernails. Then he grinned. “Welcome to the world of high finance.”

  High finance, high debt: high profit.

  January 8.

  “There’s a Negress outside demanding to see you,” Lisette informed me this afternoon. “I told her to go around to the back entrance, but she just stood there.”

  I fumbled with the window latch and looked out. A Negro woman was standing in the courtyard—a tall, older woman, shivering in a worn wool cloak over a long calico gown. “Mimi?” She looked up, squinting against the sun. “Mimi!”

  I did not know how to greet her. It had been over seven years. We’d parted in a difficult time, in a world torn by Revolution, a world divided. It seemed a lifetime ago. “I thought I would never see you again,” I said, my eyes filling. She’d been like a sister to me in my youth—a sister, a mother, a friend. It was Mimi who’d taught me to dance, read the cards, make charms, Mimi who had nursed me through childhood fevers, helped birth my babies, Mimi who had been their nanny.

  “Yeyette,” she said, calling me by my baby name, her warm Island accent music to my ears, “still always weeping.” And then she smiled, that big-toothed, big-hearted grin.

  We’ve been talking for hours. I’m starved for news of home. “And how is Maman?” was one of my first questions.

  Mimi pushed out her big lower lip, the inside pink as an oyster shell. “She can’t walk or use her hands.”

  “How awful!” My mother is a proud woman, independent. She had run the family sugar plantation without any help from my hapless father. After his death she’d worked hard to pay off his debts.

  “She says you’ve married a Jacobin, the Devil himself.”

  I smiled. I was not surprised. My mother believes in God and the King. “I miss her!”

  Mimi touched my hand. “She told me to look after you for her.”

  My throat tightened. Oh, Maman.

  January 9.

  I was reviewing procedures with Mimi when Hortense stuck her head into the room. She started, surprised by the presence of a dark-skinned woman.

  “Hortense, do you remember Mimi?”

  “My nanny, you mean?” Hortense asked, putting down her portfolio.

  “Oh, my Lord.” Mimi slapped her hands over her cheeks.

  [Undated]

  News of an uprising in Rome. Lieutenant Duphot, Eugène’s friend who was to be married, was killed the night before his wedding. How awful! No word yet from Eugène. I can’t sleep.

  January 22.

  It was past midnight when I was awakened by a tap on the door, the sound of the door creaking open. “Madame?” Lisette’s candle threw ghostly shadows onto the walls.

  I slipped out of bed, my heart aflutter. Bonaparte, asleep, did not stir. “What is it?” My teeth chattering, I pulled on a robe.

  “Your son, Madame.”

  I put my hand over my mouth, fearing the worst. “He’s downstairs!”

  “Maman!” Eugène pulled off a boot and lumbered to his feet.

  “You’re back!” I wept. “I’ve been frantic with worry.”

  He held his lantern high, letting out an appreciative whistle. “Is this the right house, Maman? The street name isn’t even the same.* And a porter at the gate! He almost didn’t let me in.”

  We talked late into the night, whispering by the fire. So many adventures!

  Twenty-four days of storm at sea …

  “I was so sick, I thought I was going to die.”

  “I get like that too.”

  Murderers waking him in the night in Naples … “Murderers?”

  “With these tiny rusty daggers.” Laughing about it now.

  The gift of a jewelled sword from the Municipality of Corfu, which he proudly unsheathed for me …

  “Are those real rubies? It must be worth a fortune.”

  “I was thinking of selling it and buying a horse, but Uncle Joseph says I can’t—that it was really intended as a gift to the General, and that therefore it belongs to the Bonaparte family.”

  “He said that?”

  And then, at the last, what happened in Rome, the uprising… “Is it true—was Lieutenant Duphot …?”

  “The night before his wedding, Maman! We were giving a dinner for him when the trouble started. He grabbed his sword and went charging out into the mob. I tried to stop him. He fancied himself a hero, and now—” Eugène stopped, a stricken look in his eyes.

  February 9.

&nb
sp; I had planned to meet with Hugo Bodin and Captain Charles today, but it proved to be too difficult. Bonaparte insists on knowing every move I make.

  February 10.

  Bonaparte departed this morning with Eugène and Louis for an inspection tour of the coast. I stood waving until the carriage was out of sight. Bonaparte will be gone for three weeks—time enough.

  [Undated]

  Barras has agreed to one per cent, but the Minister of War will expect more, he warned me. “And what about General Berthier?” Bonaparte’s former chief of staff was now Commander-in-Chief of the Army of Italy.

  “Him, too,” he said.

  Everyone expects a piece of the pie. Bien. So long as there is a piece for me.

  February 18.

  I was preparing to go to the Luxembourg Palace to meet with Barras when Bonaparte’s carriage pulled up the narrow laneway, the horses steaming in the chilly air. He leapt out while the carriage was still moving.

  “You’re back early,” I said, embracing him—but thinking, I confess, that I had a meeting to get to, and now …

  “I saw what I needed to see.”

  “It was not a good trip?” He smelled of the sea.

  “The Directors are dreaming. We’re in no position to attack England.”

  His new secretary, Fauvelet Bourrienne, stumbled as he climbed down out of the coach. Then young Louis Bonaparte emerged, yawning and blinking, followed by Eugène, his hair sticking up like a haystack.

  “Welcome home!” I said, kissing my son’s cheek (stubble?), but worrying about how I would get word to Barras. The Bodin Company business would have to wait.

  February 23.

  Every afternoon Citoyen Talleyrand, the poker-faced Minister of Foreign Affairs, calls and he and Bonaparte disappear into the study. Then I disappear as well—to go to the riding school, I tell my husband. Or to the dressmaker’s. Or to visit Thérèse.

  All lies. It is “to work” I go—to the Bodin Company office on Rue Honoré. There, over a table covered with parchment and counting machines, we—Captain Charles, Hugo Bodin and I—work out the final details of the proposal: the suppliers, transportation, delivery schedules, but most important, the finances.

  I confess that I enjoy this vocation, in spite of my sex. I feel a certain thrill, as if I were visiting a lover. But it is money I court, money that woos me, and the intoxicating power to earn a very great deal.

  February 24.

  I put down the draft of the proposal. Captain Charles’s eyes seemed huge in the lantern light, black ink spots. “It’s clear, well documented. I think it’s ready.”

  He stood behind me, leafed through to the third page. He smelled of water of roses. “What about this?” He pointed at a paragraph.

  “It’s fine.” His hand was only inches from my breast. He gathered up the papers with exaggerated, busy movements and put them in his blotting book.

  I pulled on my gloves, my heart skittering like a leaf in a tempest.

  Late afternoon, around 4:00.

  At last, the Bodin Company proposal is finished. Captain Charles copied it out two times in his neat and tiny script. I’m to deliver it to Barras in the morning. “Wait,” the captain called out as I was leaving. He did a handspring and landed on his feet in front of me. “Yes?” I asked, amused.

  He wiggled his fingers over the envelope as if casting a spell. February 25.

  “Voilà, the Bodin Company proposal,” I told Barras, presenting the portfolio.

  Barras pointed his gold-braided hat at the stack of papers on a side table. “Put it there, along with all the others.” With a weary, long-suffering look.

  I put it on top of the pile and smiled my persuasive best. “The first to be considered, Père Barras?”

  Now all we can do is wait. Everything depends on the approval of Schérer, the Minister of War.

  Late afternoon (just before 5:00), still raining.

  “Does the Minister of War ever attend your salon, Fortunée?” I asked, dealing out the cards.

  “Citoyen Schérer? Every week.”

  “Oh, there she goes bragging again,” Thérèse said.

  “I thought you knew him, Josephine.”

  “I’ve conversed with him at Barras’s, and I know his wife, but he has yet to come to my salon.”

  “The Minister of the Interior came to my salon last week. And four deputies,” Madame de Crény said, swinging her feet.

  “Deputies will go to anything.”

  “I’ve been trying for months to get the Minister of Foreign Affairs to come to mine and at last I succeeded.” “So I heard.”

  “You mean you actually lured Talleyrand away from Josephine’s salon?”

  “All the important men go to her salon.”

  All but Schérer, the Minister of War, I thought—the one man who mattered.

  “Invite Geneviève Payan,” Fortunée Hamelin told me later, as she was leaving.

  The opera singer? “I’m in your debt,” I said, embracing her.

  February 26.

  At noon Lisette brought me the calling cards that had been dropped off over the course of the morning. I sorted through the names, placing them in three piles—those to whom I would send a card, those who required a call, those I would invite to return.

  The last card gave me pause. Bordered in black, it was of common design. La veuve Hoche. Lazare’s widow.

  After 10:00 P.M. (a guess).

  It was dark, the narrow streets muddy. “Are you sure, Madame?” My coachman let down the step, gave me his hand. The house was small, without a courtyard. I nodded. “I won’t be long.”

  “Citoyenne Beauharnais,” the widow Hoche said, addressing me by the name of my first husband, by the name Lazare would have called me. Her dark eyes, hidden under the fluted ruffle of a plain linen cap, had a frightened look. She dropped a dutiful curtsy, much as a schoolgirl might greet a teacher, lifting the hem of her stained white apron at each corner. She seemed a wounded bird, a foundling, her shoulders painfully thin. I could not imagine her in Lazare’s arms, could not imagine that this was the woman he’d loved, the wife he’d betrayed. I had imagined Lazare’s wife as a well-made farmgirl, blushing and buxom, with apple cheeks and a hearty laugh. Not this ethereal creature with thin fingers more suited to lace work than to pulling on a cow’s teat. “My profound condolences,” I said.

  She pushed a wisp of hair back under her cap, blinking. I followed her upstairs to a small sitting room at the end of a dark and narrow passage. A portrait of Lazare hung over a coal fireplace—it made him appear stern. I was surprised to see a crucifix on the wall next to it. I accepted the offer of a chair, clearly the best chair in the room, the place of honour. His young widow took the seat opposite, her hands clasped in her lap. I heard a child’s laugh, then little footsteps, hard leather shoes on a bare wooden floor. “Your daughter?” I asked.

  The door creaked on its hinges. “This lady was a friend of your father’s.” Adélaïde Hoche’s voice quavered.

  The child poked one finger in her ear, and then pointed to the portrait. She was not yet three, I estimated, but a big girl for her age. “She has her father’s eyes,” I said. And his mouth.

  An old woman appeared, scooped up the child. The door closed with a slam that shook the thin walls. I wondered if she was the aunt who had raised Lazare, the peddler of vegetables who went without vegetables in order to save every sou, so determined was she that Lazare would learn to read and write.

  We sat for a moment in silence, Adélaïde Hoche sitting on her hands, staring at the floor. From somewhere I could hear a cat meowing plaintively. I was about to make a comment on the indifferent weather when she blurted out, “He said you would help me if I ever needed it.”

  “General Hoche?” Should anything happen to me, please, I beg you, help my wife and child.

  “He said I could trust you.”

  I nodded, yes!

  In the other room the child began to cry; the widow tilted her head, asses
sing the degree of distress. The crying stopped, turned to chatter. “It has to do with Père Hoche …” The knuckles of her clasped hands were white.

  “General Hoche’s father?”

  “He’s gone back to Thionville to look after things, so I took the chance to talk to you. I’m glad you came. He’s coming back tomorrow.” She stared at a blue crockery urn on the mantel. “He’s in a bad way,” she said finally, her chin trembling.

  I looked away. I feared she might begin to weep and then we would both be crying, I knew. “It must be terribly hard. Is there anything I can do?”

  She paused before saying, “If you could just get the report. Père Hoche tried, but they won’t let him see it.” “I don’t understand.” The autopsy report?

  “Père Hoche has become—” She twisted her fingers together. “Maybe if he could just see the report on how his son died, maybe it would help.” “But is there any doubt? Were you not with your husband?” “He died in my arms,” she said with pride.

  A sob burst from me. “Forgive me,” I said, wiping my cheeks. I’d vowed I would not let it happen.

  “I do forgive you,” she said with a look of ancient wisdom.

  “I understand why he loved you so very much,” I said, my eyes brimming.

  Immediately after I called on Barras. I was relieved to find him alone. “I’ve just been to see the widow Hoche,” I told him, attempting a casual tone.

  He pulled out his lorgnon, looked at me with surprise. “You went to see her?”

  “She initiated it. She is concerned about her father-in-law.” “Hoche’s father? He broke down at the funeral, did you know? It was terrible.”

  Yes, I’d heard. “The widow feels that Père Hoche has become obsessed, I guess one would say, with his son’s death, with trying to find out how he died.”

  “He knows perfectly well how Lazare died—of consumption. The autopsy made it perfectly clear. It was in all the journals. I don’t understand what the problem is.”