The Many Lives & Secret Sorrows of Josephine B.

by Sandra Gulland

  I left even more determined to find answers.

  Saturday, March 15.

  Deputy Tallien is back in Paris, thank God. I sent him a message: it was urgent that I see him. He returned a note within an hour. I was to come to his office—in disguise. I was to give my name as a Citoyenne Gossec, a perfumer, witness to a shipment of grain that had been destroyed outside the city walls.

  The need for disguise puzzled me. I borrowed a dress from Lannoy. By putting a small pillow into a corset I was able to give the appearance of a woman with child. That together with a veiled hat made me sufficiently mysterious.

  I arrived at Tallien’s office at precisely two. I was let into the anteroom. When Deputy Tallien came to the door, he looked at me without recognition. I smiled and then he realized who I was.

  Once within the privacy of his office—which had been elaborately refurnished since I had last been there—we were able to embrace.

  “No, I am not with child,” I smiled, in answer to his questioning look. “Why the necessity of disguise?” I asked, accepting my friend’s offer of a glass of Clos-Vougeot.

  “I am watched.”

  “You? ”He did not look well. “You’ve returned to Paris unexpectedly.”

  “Been recalled is more accurate.”

  “Was there a problem?” I thought of the things I’d heard, of the terrible things my friend was rumoured to have been responsible for: a massacre in Bordeaux, hundreds of aristocrats executed. Was it possible? I could not believe it.

  “You should know that your wish has been granted.” He placed his hand over his heart.

  “My wish?”

  “I now know what it is to love.”

  I could not but smile at such a solemn confession. “That grieves you?” I asked. His expression was one of profound misery.

  “The possessor of my affection has an untamed heart—for which I love her all the more, I confess. But I will die as a result—if not of a broken heart, then by the loss of my head on the scaffold.” He sat solemnly with his hands before him, his long fingers clasped.

  “Pray do not keep me in suspense, my friend.”

  “The captor of my heart wrote a letter to Citoyen Jullien, Robespierre’s nancy-boy sent to spy on me in Bordeaux. In it she gave him her undying love, and complained of me, ‘the tyrant’! She even tried to persuade him to escape to America with her!”

  “She sent this letter to Jullien? How did you come to know of it?”

  “The saga, my friend, gets worse.” He downed his wine and poured himself another glass. “Jullien forwarded this missive to the Committee of Public Safety. Now it is a public scandal and I’m cast in the role of a fool.” He looked forlorn.

  “Perhaps it is a plot by Jullien and Robespierre to discredit you. Have you considered that possibility?”

  Deputy Tallien shook his head. “I examined the letter. It is in her hand. There can be no mistake. She, the angel who has claimed my heart, she alone is the author of my defeat. Jullien has accused me before the members of the Committee of being her bondslave; I cannot deny it!”

  “Where is she now? This angel of yours …”

  “I’ve just learned that she is back in Paris. I cannot tell you how it torments me to know that she is near.” He stood and began pacing, waving his glass of wine around wildly. “You know her, no doubt. Her name is Thérèse … Thérèse Cabarrus.”

  I was stunned. Thérèse Cabarrus? I had met her at a salon years ago. Even as a girl she had been known for her extraordinary beauty—and her height: “Amazon” she’d been called. She was the daughter of the Treasurer to the King of Spain. Her family was both powerful and wealthy. Thérèse had been one of the few women admitted to Club 89, an exclusive group whose members included Mirabeau, Lafayette, Sieyès, Condorcet. … Of course the gossips contended that her contribution was not philosophical in nature and had even published a pamphlet to that effect.

  Suddenly I understood my friend’s lament. Young Deputy Tallien, thehumble son of a lowly valet, had given his heart to the wealthiest, most beautiful, most spirited woman in all of Europe.

  “What a terrible affliction you have wished upon your friend!” he cried. “It is not the guillotine I fear, but the loss of her love!”

  I sighed. There was little likelihood that my friend could be attentive to any of myrequests for help—not in his agitated condition. “Perhaps I can be of assistance,” I offered.

  And then I would see about Alexandre, Frédéric, Marie….

  March 16.

  Thérèse Cabarrus was at her toilette when I entered. It was nine in the morning. She was drinking champagne before an open window that looked out on the Seine. A young woman (I would guess her age at twenty), and strikingly tall, she was wearing a revealing dressing gown with no attempt at modesty. “May I help you?” she asked, turning to greet me. She spoke with a slight Spanish accent. Her voice was deep, soothing, without the ostentation so common to her rank.

  I glanced around her bedchamber—everywhere, in and among numerous flowering plants, there were paintings, sculptures, works of art. In the corner was a harpsichord. By the window an unfinished painting on an easel. The abundant trimmings were elegant—yet the effect of the arrangement was unique, bizarre, stimulating to the imagination.

  “I am here on behalf of a mutual acquaintance,” I began, accepting the offer of a chair.

  The chambermaid slipped the dressing gown from Thérèse’s shoulders and began massaging her neck. “And who might that be?” Thérèse asked. Her eyes were huge, black—not without wisdom.

  “A man who loves you very much.”

  Thérèse looked at me with a playful expression. “Ah—but there are so many.”

  I smiled. I believed her. I believed it entirely possible for all the men of Paris to lust after such a creature.

  “You find me vain?”

  “I find you disarmingly honest,” I said.

  “Does this disturb you?”

  “I appreciate honesty.”

  She looked at me for a long moment. “We shall be friends,” she said.

  We finished the bottle of champagne. I informed her that Deputy Jullien had forwarded her letter on to the Committee of Public Safety.

  “Grand Dieu!” She put her hands to her heart. “My intention was to discredit Deputy Jullien, for I had discovered that he was spying on Tallien and reporting back to Robespierre. I had intended to tempt him into foolishness.”

  “You are aware of the danger this puts Deputy Tallien in?”

  “Will he ever forgive me?”

  “He will forgive you anything.”

  March 20.

  Deputy Tallien leaps about. He cannot believe his good fortune, cannot believe that a woman as rich and as beautiful and as aristocratic as Thérèse could love him. He is beside himself with fretfulness, overcome with sentiments of tenderness, writing sonnets and sighing all day long. It is difficult to keep him focussed on my petitions, but I persist. Daily I visit Alexandre. Daily I visit Frédéric, Marie. The situation worsens.

  April 3.

  I’ve become ill. Every day brings news of arrests, deaths. I’ve exhausted myself begging audiences, writing appeals. Deputy Tallien warns me to be more circumspect in my endeavours. “You will be arrested if you persist,” he cautioned. “You’d best think of yourself. Your children need a mother.”

  “My children need a father,” I said, fighting back tears.

  April 19.

  Tonight, at dusk, three men came to the door. Fortuné growled. I recognized one of the men from the section office. The other two were unknown to me. I was alarmed lest they enter and find evidence of the Easter drawings I had made the children.

  They handed me a paper. “What does this mean?” I asked. It was a search warrant.

  Uninvited, the men proceeded into the front parlour.

  “The drawings are in the fire,” Lannoy whispered.

  The men were not gentle with our possessions. They began in the
basement and worked up to the attic, where they were excited to discover a locked desk, which they forced open. It was with disappointment that they discovered only patriotic letters from Alexandre (which I had intentionally placed there). They left dejected, having found nothing incriminating.

  It is dark now. The flame from the candle sputters. I cannot sleep. I know they will return—for me.

  Later.

  It was four in the morning when the banging on the door began. This time they had a warrant for my arrest.

  “And for what reason!” Lannoy protested.

  “They need no reason,” I whispered. To resist would only make it more difficult. I asked Agathe to gather together a few things.

  I went to the children’s room. I intended to wake them, bid farewell. I thought of their tears. I could not disturb them, sleeping so. I kissed them each, pulled their bedclothes over them, silently said a prayer.

  Agathe and Lannoy both began to weep. “Take care of them,” I said, as the men led me out the door.

  * The young woman who murdered Deputy Marat.

  In which my husband and I are reconciled

  I was thankful it was night. I would not have wanted witnesses.

  My captors were ordinary men, doing a job. One, Citoyen Delmer, the more outspoken of the three, had a wife sick, and was anxious to get home. I was the last call and he was glad it was done. He didn’t like taking mothers from their children. “It’s good you didn’t wake them. It’s better that way.”

  They took me to the convent of the English Ursulines. The turnkey, who smelled of liquor, said there wasn’t a chair to sit on, much less a bed.

  “Where are we to take her?” Citoyen Delmer saw more work ahead.

  The turnkey scowled. Delmer suggested the truckle-bed in the guardroom.

  “That’s my bed,” the turnkey said, but he agreed finally.

  The next day I asked to be transferred to the Carmes.

  “You want to go to the Carmes?” The gaoler was a small man with pockmarks on his face.

  “My husband is there.”

  “It’s crowded and none too pleasant.”

  Nonetheless, he complied. At noon, after ham, eggs and dirty water, which made me nauseous, I was loaded into a covered cart along with three others. One was a boy of about fifteen. The other two, a man and wife, were puppeteers, arrested for making a puppet of Charlotte Corday.*

  There was straw in the cart, some of it soiled. The cart had been used to bring in prisoners from Versailles the night before, our guard explained. As we made our way through the streets people looked in at us and cursed. A boy threw a rotten egg. I turned my head in shame.

  At the Carmes we were required to wait as the turnkey, a heavy man named Roblâtre, grumbled over the documents. “Every day they change how it goes,” he cursed. “And if I don’t get it right …!” He rolled his eyes. It was evident from his flushed visage that he was overly fond of the juice of the grape.

  We were led down a narrow stone corridor. The smell from the open latrines made me choke. Roblâtre opened a door to a narrow room. The floor was lined with straw pallets, all in a row. Clothing was hung everywhere. The smell of mould was strong.

  I was assigned a pallet facing one of the barred windows. To one side a young woman reclined, her golden hair fanned out over her pillow like a halo. “Citoyenne Madame Custine,” she introduced herself. “You may call me Delphine.”

  “Custine? The General—”

  “The great General Custine was my husband’s father.” She had a high, musical voice and spoke in a studied manner, like an actress, with exaggerated feminine flourishes.

  “My husband served under General Custine. Alexandre Beauharnais. He is here.”

  “Oh—Citoyen General Beauharnais! You are his wife?”

  “You know him?”

  “He is my husband’s bosom friend.” She lay back down on the bed and sighed, her hand over her heart. “General Beauharnais has been drawing my portrait.”

  A bell was rung in the corridor. I followed Delphine and the others down a labyrinth of stairs into the rectory. There, under the vaulted ceilings, under the scratched-out images of Christ and the Virgin, crude plank tables had been set.

  I sought a place on a bench. Bent cutlery was stacked in piles. I sat down facing a stained-glass window. To my left were the wood steps to the altar.

  “That’s where they read out the names every night,” a woman behind me said. The voice sounded like that of Aimée.

  I turned. It was Aimée. I burst into tears. She squeezed in beside me.

  She handed me a teacup. “Here—drink this,” she hissed. It was whisky. “I bribed the turnkey.” Her cheeks were flushed. I suspected she’d had a bit.

  A scrawny woman with dirty fingernails handed me a metal plate of boiled haricots and sardines.

  “Ugh, this again.” Aimée made a face at the food. “One meal a day and it’s garbage.”

  “What names?” I asked.

  “Of the condemned—who goes, who stays, who lives, who dies. It’s the nightly entertainment—quite dramatic, I must say.”

  The lard on the beans was rancid. I put down my fork. The helper woman threw a basket of coarse black bread onto the table. Aimée tore off an end and tucked it down her bodice.

  I felt dazed. “When did you …?”

  “Yesterday morning—but already it seems like a year. They took us all. Jean-Henri—he’s over in the men’s quarters. Even Lucie, poor child. She’s asleep right now, upstairs.”

  Lucie? After losing her first, the girl had quickly become pregnant again—by her husband this time, fortunately.

  “She’s sick, too ill to eat—if you call this eating. I think it was the eggs we ate yesterday—laid under the Ancien Régime.”

  “We were all arrested at the same time. Curious.”

  “Do you know why?” she asked.

  I shook my head. “Have you seen Alexandre?” Before Aimée could answer the helper woman was taking our plates and our tables and chairs were being moved. The sound in the chapel was deafening. The big double doors opened and a group of men entered. They were unshaven, in dirty shirts and breeches. One wore a kerchief around his head.

  “And now the excitement begins,” Aimée sighed with mock reverence. “Alexandre will likely be outside. I beat him in a fencing match last night.”

  “ You beat Alexandre?” I followed her through a wide corridor that opened onto a walled garden. It was a hot, humid night. The smell of mint was strong. Next to an oak tree I saw Alexandre standing withanother man. He looked up as we approached.

  “And so it is that fate unites us.” Alexandre kissed my hand. “I was told you were here. I can’t say that I’m happy to see you.”

  I was introduced to Boyce Custine, a young man with glowing pink cheeks and an eager look. “Welcome,” he said, bowing gallantly, “to what we Bucks and Bloods once termed a frolic. C’est bizarre, cela.”

  “I met your wife,” I told him. “We share sleeping quarters.”

  “Perhaps we could trade places,” he said mournfully.

  “He’s an eager lad, but his wife is reluctant,” Alexandre explained. “I’ve been trying to persuade her to rendezvous with her beloved in the Lovers’ Suite.”

  “The Lovers’ Suite?”

  “A private chamber reserved for married couples,” Aimée said, “the rights to which are much coveted, as you can imagine.” She had stripped a lilac branch of its leaves and was using it as a makeshift sabre.

  “Except by the beautiful Delphine,” Alexandre said.

  “Alas!” Boyce Custine exclaimed theatrically, and we laughed.

  We were allowed to mingle in the garden until ten. It seemed strange considering the setting. I was introduced to a variety of people of different political persuasions—from the aristocratic Duchesse Jeanne-Victoire d’Aiguillon to the radical Jacobin, General Santerre.

  “The General Santerre?” I whispered to Aimée. The tavernkeeper who
had proposed killing all the dogs and cats of Paris? The monster who had led the invasion on the Tuileries, who had silenced the King on the scaffold, ordered the drums to roll when the King began to speak?

  “All the ladies call him ‘Consoler,’” Aimée said. She put her arm through his. Apparently the burly tavernkeeper had become the favourite.

  “General Santerre,” I said, “I am surprised, I confess, to see a man of your political persuasion here.”

  The Consoler grinned sheepishly, adjusting his red cap. “The way I see it, this way, when they really need me, they’ll know exactly where to find me.”

  “Frankly, if you’re not in here, you’re suspect,” Alexandre said.

  April 23.

  For two mornings now, Lannoy has brought the children and Alexandre and I have been permitted a short visit. But this morning, Roblâtre would not permit us to see them.

  “Tomorrow?” I asked.

  Roblâtre shook his head. “There’s a new rule.” It was morning, yet already he was drunk.

  “You mean we may not see them at all?” Alexandre demanded.

  Roblâtre shrugged. “No longer.”

  Alexandre struck the chair, sending it flying.

  [Undated]

  I’ve become ill. Everyone has. We think it was the soup and bouilli last night. Duchesse Jeanne-Victoire d’Aiguillon said it was made from diseased horses’ flesh and would not eat it. Others say worse.*

  Later.

  I am weak, confined to my pallet. This afternoon Alexandre brought me the parcel of clean linens Lannoy had delivered. In a petticoat I discovered my fortune-telling cards and a letter written by Eugène. Overcome with joy, I began to weep. Alexandre held me to his heart.

  April 25.

  Now the children are not able to write even—our parcels are searched.

  “How are we to know how they are, Alexandre?” I wept. There are rumours that the children of prisoners will be taken by the state, placed in the care of “good” Republicans. “They might be ill, they might be dying! We wouldn’t even know!”