The Many Lives & Secret Sorrows of Josephine B.

by Sandra Gulland

  Thérèse loaned me a hat with long silver plumes, a matching silver wig and a necklace shaped like a snake.

  “Are you going to go out looking like that?” Lannoy demanded when she saw me preparing to leave.

  “You should see what Thérèse is wearing,” I said, amused by her disapproving look.

  “It’s what Madame Cabarrus doesn’t wear that attracts notice.”

  At the theatre there was a terrible crush. The Feydeau is known for its excellent orchestra and the best soloists in Paris, but that isn’t the main attraction. “It’s the audience,” Thérèse said—and she was right. All the fine ladies of Paris arrive as if onto a stage, looking rather like courtesans. No corsets at the Feydeau!

  I felt like a star, the crowd lined up three deep to watch the parade, with applause for the most dramatic, the most outrageous. Thérèse, who would look spectacular in a nun’s habit, was the obvious favourite.

  “You should have been an actress,” I told her. The press of the crowd frightened me.

  “I am an actress,” she said.

  Inside, it was like a private reception, everyone going from loge tologe, so unlike former times when it was considered improper for a woman to even move from her chair. Fortunée Hamelin was there, an ugly seventeen-year-old créole well known for her ribald wit—"and a body that makes men weep,” Tallien moaned. And sweet-faced Madame de Châteaurenaud (“Minerva”)—looking like a cream puff in white gauze. And even sweet little Madame de Crény was there, wearing an amusing headpiece with a giant feather sticking straight up. I last saw her when we were both living at the abbey de Penthémont—a saltpetre factory now.

  It was an amazing scene—all the aging aristocrats, the former elegant men and women of taste, together with their now-grown children, who, having come of age in the Terror, have cast aside all restraint and dress outrageously. “It reminds me of Carnival in Martinico.” I looked out over the audience. We were sitting in Thérèse’s luxurious loge, sipping excellent champagne.

  “Isn’t that Citoyen Loménie’s son?” she asked, indicating a youth in a checked coat and an enormous green cravat. “Is that a blond wig he’s wearing?” The “Gilded Youths,” they were called—our outrageously dressed young men.

  “It’s the half of thirty-four crowd gone to seed,” someone said.

  Thérèse turned, spilling her champagne. “Citoyen Fouché! You are forever creeping up behind me.”

  I attempted to disguise my surprise. Fouché: “the mass murderer of Lyons,” the deputy who had signed the most death warrants. Yet the man who stood before me was a slight, ill-kempt, and pockmarked human being with gaps between his teeth and unruly red hair. I’d been told he went mad with grief when his daughter died. How could such a man be a monster?

  “Half of thirty-four?” I asked. “I’ve heard that expression before. What does it signify?”

  Thérèse explained: “Half of thirty-four is seventeen. The Boy in the Temple is Louis XVI’s heir, seventeenth in line …”

  “I understand—seventeenth in line for the throne.” The Boy. Le Petit Roi. “The Little Fellow” was what Hortense called him—an orphan of ten sleeping alone in the Temple prison with rats. And now, according to some, King.

  Thérèse filled our glasses. “Are not the words ‘Révolution Française’ an anagram for ‘La France veut son Roi’?”*

  I looked at her. For a brief, treacherous moment I doubted my friend’s Republican conviction.

  “Royalists!” Citoyen Fouché cursed. He took a box of snuff out from his waistcoat pocket. “They are stupid, greedy, entirely without morals—and all here tonight.” With his eyes half closed, he inhaled the fine powder.

  “You jest,” I said.

  Citoyen Fouché brushed the snuff off his waistcoat, smiling slowly. The smile of a man who did not jest.

  “Citoyen Fouché knows everything,” Thérèse said. “He makes himself useful in this way.” She leaned toward him, her low décolletage revealing. “It is rumoured you have eyes and ears in every salon, Citoyen.”

  Citoyen Fouché snapped shut his snuffbox lid, making a sound not unlike a pistol being cocked. “Is there something you wish to tell me, Our Good Lady of Liberty?”

  Thérèse tapped Citoyen Fouché’s hand with her fan. “You could profit at the gaming tables, you dissemble so well.”

  The musicians began to warm their instruments. A group of people in the lower levels clapped, then laughed.

  Citoyen Fouché turned to go. “Good evening, Citoyennes. I see the concert is about to begin.”

  “A curious man,” I said, after he left.

  Thérèse fanned herself languidly. “Did you notice that Iva Théot is here tonight?”

  Iva Théot is an older woman, a former duchesse, prominent in society. “Is that significant?” I asked.

  “Iva Théot reports to Citoyen Fouché.” Thérèse finished off her glass.

  “Iva?” Bumbling, matronly Iva Théot—a spy for Fouché?

  Thérèse laughed. “Rose—you are so easy to shock.”

  “Conspiring, ladies?” It was Deputy Barras, arm in arm with Tallien.

  “Oh, it’s the mischief-makers.” Thérèse made a face behind her fan. “You both look … bright, shall I say? Deputy Barras—have you been leading my darling astray?”

  “Just a little contraband coffee, my dear—six cups.”

  “Coffee!” Thérèse groaned. “And you didn’t bring me any.”

  Deputy Barras greeted me gallantly, then stooped to kiss Thérèse’s hand. “You look exquisite tonight, Thérèse, my child. Good enough to eat. Caution lest you excite an old man’s interest.”

  “Doesn’t she?” Tallien put his long fingers around Thérèse’s neck.

  “What’s that unpleasant odour?” Deputy Barras sniffed the air.

  “Citoyen Fouché was just here,” Thérèse said, and they laughed.

  “Have you ever met his wife?” Tallien asked. “The ugliest, the most stupid woman …”

  “Yet he’s devoted to her,” Thérèse said. “I find it touching.”

  “Citoyenne Beauharnais, you elegant creature,” Deputy Barras said, filling my glass with champagne, “what do we hear from our beautiful man in Cherbourg?”

  “General Lazare Hoche is already spoken for, Paul,” Thérèse said.

  “Alas.” Deputy Barras lowered himself gracefully into the chair next to mine. He turned to me with a plaintive expression. “Such is the thanks one gets for saving the man’s life.”

  “You saved General Hoche’s life?” I was confused. “I thought it was Deputy Carnot who arranged for his release.”

  Deputy Barras made a theatrical groan. “Carnot! When General Hoche was in the dungeon I was approached by the executioner with a list of the condemned. I was the one who scratched out our dear Lazare’s name—but you need not tell him that. One wouldn’t want him to feel beholden to me, would we?”

  “Hush,” Thérèse whispered as the soloist began.

  After the concert we went to Garchy’s on Rue Richelieu (I had an apricot ice with almond biscuits—delicious) where the gaiety continued into the small hours. Deputy Barras entertained us with stories that had us aching with laughter. In company he is the spark that makes a gathering memorable, the master of comedy, of wit. It is hard to believe the rumours one hears. “A man who knows how to play his cards,” Thérèse told me in the powder room, referring not to the sport of the gaming tables—a passion both Deputies Barras and Tallien share—but to his unerring instinct forstrengthening his political hand.

  From Garchy’s the men persuaded us to go to a gaming house in the Palais Égalité (I won two livres—in coin—playing faro), and from there, after Tallien lost more than was wise, to the Café Covazza, and then to Madame de Châteaurenaud’s (Minerva’s, that is), where we played “magnetism” games, debated reform and gossiped about love.

  At dawn we all headed over to a little café on Rue Saint-Honoré where we encountered a number of peo
ple who had been at the theatre: wild Fortunée Hamelin and two of her party (not her disapproving husband, I noted), tiny Madame de Crény with a tall man named Denon, as well as Citoyen Fouché, oddly enough, sitting alone at a table at the back, an untouched bowl of broth in front of him.

  “Do you not enjoy your broth warm, Citoyen?” I asked, stopping to exchange pleasantries.

  He shrugged. “Have a seat, Citoyenne Beauharnais?” In spite of the hour, he was sober. Unlike myself.

  I took the chair he offered. He asked the waiter to bring a glass, which he filled from the bottle of Hungary water on the table. “Have you been working, perhaps?” I asked. “You do not have the air of a carefree man.”

  “Yes, I believe I have been working.”

  “You are not sure?”

  “The line between work and play is never entirely clear.”

  “It is the nature of your work that is not clear.”

  He looked at me with a steady expression. “You are a woman who appears to speak truthfully—yet in this instance I feel I can be confident that you are fully informed as to the nature of my work. I can only conclude that you are one of those women who gives the impression of candour all the while concealing your hand.”

  I cocked my head to one side. “I generally win at the gaming tables, too.” I smiled.

  “Not many regard an ability to dissemble an attribute. Yet it is one of the truly indispensable talents.”

  “I did not know you to be a philosopher.”

  “There are many things you do not know about me.”

  “There are things I know that would surprise you.”

  “Such as …?”

  “Oh—that you feign not to care, yet your heart is tender,” I ventured, “and that this distresses you.” I observed his look. He appeared amused rather than upset. Perhaps foolishly, I went on. “That you put on an undisturbed air—yet your imagination is easily heated, so you guard against it.”

  He sat back in his chair and looked at me. “I understand you are in need of money.”

  I felt heat in my cheeks.

  “Forgive me, I have offended you,” he said. “You must understand that such matters do not mean anything to me. You are a woman without the protection of a husband—this is not a fault, although some would have it so. Your family is distant and in all likelihood impoverished. You have two children to provide for. Furthermore, you play in the company of the rich and reckless. This costs—of course—costs a great deal, but it also pays, does it not? Contacts, properly cultivated, are an invaluable asset. No doubt the balance is to the good. Over time, of course.” He sat back.

  I glanced toward the table at the front. Deputy Barras was observing us.

  “Furthermore,” Citoyen Fouché went on, “I am aware of the contributions you give to your relatives, as well as to a number of friends. Not to mention neighbours, street beggars, common ruffians. Indeed, your hand is too frequently open. I would advise you to be more cautious.”

  “You do know everything.” I was embarrassed. Was nothing private?

  He did not smile. “I will take that as a compliment—but alas, much eludes me. I am in need of assistance in this respect. If you are ever in need, do come to me—I would be most grateful for the services you could provide, services that would be of benefit to the Republic, I should add. I know you to be a sincere patriot.” He glanced toward my table, where Tallien was speechifying rather loudly now, Thérèse laughing. “Unlike some.”

  I rose to go, uneasy. “We are all of us patriots, Citoyen Fouché.”

  “You are leaving me.” He refilled his glass with water. “I confess my imagination has been heated. You seem to understand a great deal.”

  “My friends claim I am naive.”

  “They are mistaken—you see through the masquerade to the truespirit of a man. I have been disarmed. Like a gallant knight in days of old, I am for ever at your service.”

  I smiled. “I believe you mean it.” I gave him a kiss on the cheek and returned to my friends, who teased me at length about my new conquest. I endured, enjoying their good humour—yet I confess that this one brief interchange has disturbed my repose. Citoyen Fouché’s words linger still.

  September 10.

  Last night, just after midnight on Rue des Quatre Fils, Tallien was attacked by a ruffian with a pistol. He fell, wounded. When the assassin hit him on the chest with the butt end of his pistol, Tallien let out a cry that woke the neighbours. He was taken to his mother’s home, close by.

  When I saw him in his mother’s humble apartment, I was shaken. He was resting on a bed in the tiny salon, behind a canopy of patched curtains. A bullet had gone through his left shoulder. He’d been bled, but even so, he continued to suffer pain.

  “Remember when I said that in a revolution, men must not look behind them?” he asked. “I was wrong.”

  “It was a Jacobin who tried to kill him,” Thérèse told me as we helped Tallien’s mother clear the tea cups. Six days earlier Tallien had been expelled from the Jacobin Club for being too liberal in his views.

  “You don’t think Carrier had anything to do with it, do you?” I asked. Deputy Carrier was President of the Jacobin Club. He was the one who had had Tallien expelled.

  “Carrier wouldn’t do his own dirty work.” Thérèse put a soup bowl down on the wood table. “He would hire some thug to do it for him.”

  Dirty work. It was rumoured that during the Terror, Carrier had ordered over ten thousand executed in Nantes—drowned in the Loire River. Ten thousand.

  I heard voices. “It’s the National Guard!” Tallien’s mother cried out, hastily drying her hands on her stained muslin apron. “There’s a crowd out on the street!” Her cheeks were pink.

  “I’ll talk to them,” Thérèse said.

  There were a number of visitors throughout the morning. The policecame twice. Several journalists begged entrance, which Tallien refused, making an exception for a friend who writes for the Moniteur. At the end of the day Deputy Barras arrived, laden with spirits and a port pudding he insisted he’d made himself. His eyes filled with tears when he saw his friend’s injury. He was accompanied by two fashionably unkempt Gilded Youths, not too much older than Eugène, I thought.

  “Bonjour, Monsieur,” one of the young men greeted Tallien. He lisped as he talked, as was the fashion, so that it sounded: Bonzou, monsez. His breeches were stretched and thin ribbons fell in long curls from the knees.

  “We’ll kill the assassin for you,” the other said. His coat-tails were ragged and the pockets of his vest had been stuffed to make him look deformed. “Just tell us who.”

  I was chilled by his words. I knew him to be the son of the Duc d’Annonay. He must have been twelve or so when his father was murdered, hacked to death in front of the family home. How could such a thing not scar a child?

  “Baptized in blood,” Thérèse whispered, after they had left. We were in the kitchen, helping Tallien’s mother prepare a tincture for wounds.

  “It makes me sad,” I said. An entire generation, orphaned by the Rrevolution, hardened by violence, schooled on the streets. What was to become of them now?

  “Did you notice how they talk? Barras says they babble nonsense rhymes while beating Jacobins to death. It’s a bit strange, don’t you think?”

  Revenge. Would the violence never stop? “If only there were a way of putting the past behind us,” I said.

  “Try telling that to Tallien,” she said.

  By evening Tallien was feeling well enough to begin formulating a plan of attack against the Jacobin Club—against Carrier. “I’m going to demand that hearings be conducted into the atrocities at Nantes,” he said, “hearings into Carrier’s crimes there. Thousands murdered in cold blood. It shouldn’t take much to convict him, put him away.” This idea gave him strength.

  Thérèse and I exchanged looks. “Is this wise?” she asked.

  “Shouldn’t our goal be to unite all parties?” I suggested, gently, I hoped. “Fa
ctions have been our ruin.”

  “Justice must be done,” Tallien said.

  “But what if the Assembly becomes enthusiastic about this notion of hearings?” Thérèse asked. “If they decide to look into what happened at Lyons, it will be Citoyen Fouché they put on the stand. If they look into Marseille, it will be our friend Barras.”

  And if they look into Bordeaux, it will be Tallien himself, I thought. Thérèse didn’t say that.

  “Who among us is innocent?” she went on.

  “You.” Tallien slid his hand up under her petticoats.

  “Innocent!” She laughed.

  Quietly, I left, without bidding adieu.

  September 9, 1794—Cherbourg

  Dear Rose,

  Forgive my messy scrawl. I did not have a writing master when I was young. The grooms at the stable were my masters and I wouldn’t want to tell you what they taught me.

  Your son is a fine lad—he will make a good soldier. I know I did not handle things very well when I left. Can you forgive me? I do love you.

  Your soldier, Lazare

  Saturday, September 12.

  Tallien has recovered—enough to make an appearance at the Odéon Theatre. “My public demands it!” he said, adjusting his sling of red silk.

  “Our public.” Thérèse was dressed in a simple white shift, quite revealing. A string of diamonds threw flecks of dancing light over her breasts.

  “Your public.” Tallien regarded her with devotion.

  The theatre was packed, the applause deafening as Thérèse and Tallien entered. People got up on their chairs to see them, cheering and screaming. I felt awed, proud—and frightened.

  In which I am witness to a wedding

  September 22, 1794.

  Day One, Year Three of the Republic. I am writing this on a writing desk in a small but elegant suite of rooms on Rue de l’Université. I’m leasing them at a reasonable rate from Madame de Crény (“The Little Woman” Hortense calls her). Hortense and I moved in this morning. It didn’t take long—we have so little.

  Lannoy has agreed to stay with me in spite of the fact that I am unable to pay her. As well, Agathe will work for board, as will an old man I hired today, Citoyen Gontier, who insists he is strong enough to carry water buckets. So we’re settled … for the moment, in any case. Dear little Madame de Crény is willing to wait three months for the rent. If only, by some miracle, I could get through to Mother. …