The Many Lives & Secret Sorrows of Josephine B.

by Sandra Gulland

  “Is he angry?” I asked Barras. Had I said something to offend him?

  “He’s a little strange sometimes.” Barras took my arm, drew me into the entryway. “I’d like you to befriend him. Get to know him,” he whispered.

  “He is not an easy man to talk to,” I protested. “I don’t know if I—”

  “If anyone can, Rose, you can,” Barras said. He took several coins out of his pocket, slipped them into my hand.

  “What’s this for?” The three gold louis were worth over seventy livres.

  “I can count on you?” he asked.

  August 15.

  “Napoleone has become a regular member of your Tuesday night salon, I see.”

  Barras and I were enjoying a private lunch in his garden.

  “I am getting to know him,” I said. “A little.” Napoleone Buonaparte was a complex person; one evening, he talked openly, and the next, he did not say a word. “It is difficult to know where one stands with him.”

  “And how would one like to stand?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  Barras ordered his butler to bring the dessert. “Do you ever discuss politics with him?”

  “He supports the Republic,” I said, “if that’s what you want to know.”

  “But with who running it?”

  “I believe him to be more of a leader than a follower—at least in his own mind.”

  Barras laughed as he filled my glass. “And that’s why we must keep our eye on him, my dear.”

  * Louis-Marie-Stanislas Fréron had met Buonaparte’s thirteen-year-old sister Maria-Paola in Marseille two years before. They wanted to marry, but met resistance from Madame Buonaparte. Although an educated aristocrat, turned violent revolutionary, Fréron was over thirty, inclined to drink and had had three children by an actress.

  In which I find a home

  August 16, 1795.

  I have fallen in love … with a house.

  Julie Carreau’s, to be precise, on the slopes of Mont-Martre. One approaches it by a long walled-in drive opening onto a most charming setting: a small hôtel, a carriage house, a stable with a garden behind. A tiny, perfect world.

  It was a hot day, but cool there, the breeze coming up the mountain from the city. “This is like a country home,” I told Julie, “yet close to the heart of the city.” I was enchanted.

  “I will miss it,” she said.

  “You are moving?”

  “It’s small. I can’t keep enough staff here. And there’s only room for one carriage.”

  I walked down the garden path. There were rosebushes on both sides. “Are you selling it?”

  “Leasing.”

  “I’ll take it.” I did not ask the price.

  August 17.

  I signed the lease. Ten thousand livres a year—almost half my allowance from Mother, if it ever comes through. I move in five weeks, on the Republican New Year. I’ve made arrangements to have my cow brought from Croissy. A house, horses, a cow, garden, staff. A modest establishment, yet even so, so much to attend to … so much to pay for.

  Wednesday, August 19.

  Thanks to Tallien my appeal for compensation on Alexandre’s La Ferté property has been granted. We are to get back the books in his library (an extensive collection), the silver that was confiscated, as well as an advance of ten thousand livres (only!) against the value of the property, which the government sold.

  “It will take time for the paperwork to go through,” Tallien warned. “It’s unlikely that you will see anything until spring.”

  “How can I thank you?”

  “You have done enough already, Rose.”

  I looked at him with a question in my eyes.

  “You are perhaps the only person who overlooks my more visible weaknesses in favour of my more hidden strengths. That is thanks enough.”

  August 17, 1795—Rennes

  Dear Rose,

  The post is being watched. Give letters and parcels addressed to me to Deputy Barras. The government couriers are secure.

  I love you.

  Your soldier, Lazare

  August 27.

  In the post this afternoon I received a hand-lettered bulletin regarding a school for girls in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, next to Collège Irlandais, a school for boys.

  I showed the bulletin to Lannoy. “Madame Campan is running it,” I said. I had known Madame Campan’s brother and his wife in Croissy—the Augiés. Hortense often played with Adèle, their daughter.

  “Ah, Madame Campan!” Lannoy whispered reverently. As former lady-in-waiting to our poor departed Queen, Madame Campan was close to being royal herself, in Lannoy’s eyes. “That would be the perfect school for Hortense,” she said.

  And the Collège Irlandais next door for Eugène.

  But for the cost. …

  Sunday, August 30.

  Today the children and I visited the two schools in Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Eugène succumbed with resignation. His is a Spartan institution, as one expects in a school for boys. He liked the playing fields.

  Madame Campan’s school is situated in the adjoining Hôtel de Rohan, a beautiful if run-down estate on a rambling country property. Hortense and her friend Adèle Augié ran about in a fever of excitement. I rejoiced seeing them together again; one would never know, hearing them laugh, that Hortense had not so long ago lost her father, Adèle her mother to the violence of the Terror.

  Madame Campan greeted me with elegant simplicity in the foyer. “Please, call me Henriette.” She is a plain woman with heavy features. She was wearing a simple black dress, severely cut. Mourning, I wondered? For her sister, the Queen, the Boy? I had heard stories of what she’d been through, her own narrow escapes from death.

  She invited me into her office. I was surprised to see a framed copy of the Rights of Man on the wall above her desk. Noting my expression, she slyly turned it over to reveal a portrait of the Queen.

  “Comtesse de Montmorin has told me of the heroic efforts you made to save her husband,” Madame Campan said, taking a seat beside me.

  “Would that I could have saved him from death.” And others. “I was grieved to learn of your sister-in-law.” I remembered Madame Augié as a sweet-tempered, somewhat distracted woman, always trying to keep track of her three active young daughters.

  Madame Campan offered me a cup of weak tea in fine china, slightly cracked. “I tell the girls their mother died in her sleep.” Her cup began to rattle in its saucer. Quickly she put it down. “I am mother to them all now. An invalid husband, a son, three nieces to look after as well as a school for one hundred girls.” She took up her cup again, took a sip. “I don’t have time to mourn.”

  She outlined the school’s program: the girls would be given a classical education with special attention to art (Jean-Baptiste Isabey, a portrait painter I admire, will be teaching there) and history. She glanced at the Queen’s portrait. Although hers was a well-to-do establishment, she assured me the girls would not be indulged—they would be taught tocook and to clean up after themselves. “And, as well, in spite of the fashion now, my girls will be taught good manners and the art of conversation.”

  I heard a child shriek. I looked out the window to see Hortense wildly chasing both Eugène and Adèle across the lawn. Manners? Bonne chance, I thought, smiling. “Hortense has a cousin, Émilie—the daughter of an émigré,” I said. “Her family is ruined, now, of course. She’s in need of education; I’d like to provide for her, but—”

  Madame Campan agreed to take both Hortense and Émilie, charging only for Hortense. As well she offered the use of second-hand uniforms. “Adèle speaks so often of your daughter, I regard her as one of the family. I must beg your forgiveness for charging at all.”

  September 6.

  I had a meeting scheduled with Barras at his house in Chaillot but the afternoon proved to be too hectic. He’d just come in from a hunt and his excited spaniels were running up and down the halls barking at Toto, the minature greyhound. There were
two men waiting in the foyer and a courier with an urgent message to respond to. “Come back at six,” he suggested. “It will be quieter.” I gave him a letter to forward on to Lazare (none for me again, alas) and left.

  In the evening, however, it was not much different: messengers, men waiting. Barras told them all to go away. “If it isn’t the Jacobins, it’s the Royalists,” he cursed. “We put down one, only to be attacked by the other.”

  “You’re anticipating violence?” I’d noticed an increase in the number of National Guardsmen posted near the Assembly. Now, too, one had to apply for a special passport even to go into that neighbourhood.

  “I dare say the worst is yet to come.”

  “Who is behind it?”

  “Sometimes I think it’s Royalists disguised as Jacobins. At other times, Jacobins disguised as Royalists. It’s the damndest thing.”

  “Why do you smile?”

  “The fact is, who cares? The people are exhausted. How many turnedout for this last election? One in thirty? But announce the results, and the rocks come flying.”

  After supper he got around to the subject of Buonaparte.

  “I haven’t seen him lately,” I said. “Not at any of the salons, not even at the theatre.”

  “I daresay he’s been busy. I got him a job in the topographic department, making maps. Strategic stuff—his passion. A curious enthusiasm.”

  “Yet you respect him.”

  “I just wish I could trust him. He’s impoverished, with a huge family to support. One wonders what he might do for money. And certainly the Royalists have plenty to throw around. If Buonaparte went over to them …”

  “It’s hard to imagine. If anything, he is a bit of a Jacobin.”

  “Yes—he’s got the rhetoric.”

  “You doubt his sincerity?”

  Barras shrugged. “There is nothing more dangerous—or perhaps the word unpredictable is more accurate—than a revolutionary in want of a fortune.”

  September 12—Fontainebleau.

  I’ve been two days in Fontainebleau, without the children—already Eugène and Hortense are involved in school activities—yet I spent the entire time talking about them. Aunt Désirée and the Marquis were charmed by my reports of what Hortense’s teachers were saying, how she is doted on by Madame Campan (“La Petite Bonne,” she has been named). “She loves school,” I told them. “I don’t think I’ll ever get her to leave.” I’ve become a little jealous, I confess; Hortense speaks reverently of Madame Campan.

  We had a good visit, without Aunt Désirée’s customary lectures on the sins of idleness, revels and reading romances. But as I was preparing to leave, she came to my door. I knew by her manner that there was something she wanted to say. Finally, with some hesitation, she confessed she was concerned about rumours she’d heard about Madame Tallien. I assured her Thérèse was an angel, a friend in every way.

  “And you’re not having anything to do with these criminals who are running the government now, I hope.”

  “Criminals?”

  “Deputy Barra …

  Bassar … You know who I mean.” Barras, she meant. I kept quiet. I did not have the heart to tell her that it was “this criminal” who was paying for Hortense and Eugène’s education.

  September 15, 1795—Hôtel de Croisoeuil, Croissy

  Dear Citoyenne Madame Beauharnais,

  My mother has asked me to respond to your letter, as she is not well. She regrets that she will not be able to come see you. She asked me to congratulate you on acquiring the Talma residence, but also to express her sorrow that you will be giving up the château at Croissy. Do you plan to move your cow? We hope to be seeing you soon. Mother is in need of diversion.

  Citoyenne Madame Lucie Hosten de Croisoeuil

  Note—Maman asked me to tell you that she recommends Citoyen Callyot, an excellent cook who can make créole dishes. (I recommend him too!)

  September 18—Croissy.

  A rainy, melancholy weekend at Croissy, sorting and packing. And going twice daily to visit Aimée.

  She is much weakened. It is distressing to see her confined to bed, a situation she does not take to happily. “If I want so much as a dish of tea, I have to ask my daughter for it,” she complained. “Fortunately Lucie is still under the impression that I have some authority over her, but soon, no doubt …”

  “I’d like to meet the person who can succeed in dominating you, Aimée.”

  She cursed lustily. There is life in her yet.

  September 23.

  The New Year, the new constitution proclaimed. Fireworks late into the night. Thérèse and I watched the display from my garden—my garden! Iam exhausted from the move, but happy. I love my new home. I call it Chantereine.

  September 25.

  I worked all day in the garden. Fortuné sniffed every mound of dirt, barked at every bug. Lannoy has begun making drapes for the bedroom (blue nankeen with red-and-yellow crests). The drawing room looks like a seamstress’s studio, the floor covered over with scraps. I am having six wooden chairs and a small couch covered. I purchased a Renaud harp (only three strings missing) and a marble bust of Socrates at a secondhand shop. Little by little, my home begins to come together. The effect will be simple, but elegant (I hope).

  I’ve hired a cook, Callyot, a Negro from Sainte-Lucie who makes créole dishes as well as more traditional fare. (He was recommended to me by Aimée.)

  Agathe ran off with a fowler from the Midi but quickly saw the error of her ways (he stank of chicken) and returned, not with child we hope.

  Gontier is staying on, dear old soul. Fortunately—for he’s the only one who can coax milk from Cleopatra, my cow.

  Now all I need is a coachman and a gardener. I am hoping we can manage on that—for a time. Funds are tight, even with Barras’s generous contributions.

  September 26.

  A hot day, but a breeze was cooling. I worked in my garden again. Mosquitoes hovered, dragonflies circled. Now and again I heard popping noises and a faint ringing sound—a tocsin, perhaps? The ferment of Paris seems so very far away. …

  In which we are at war again

  Monday, September 28, 1795.

  It is so peaceful at Chantereine I was shocked to learn that there had been a riot at the Assembly yesterday. Several hundred people were killed.

  “Several hundred?”

  “Even the Jacobins are beginning to think that only a monarchy can save us.” Barras’s sword clanked against the fireplace. He had just come from the Military School, where he’d been training a group of men—"My private fighting force, my ‘Sacred Battalion.’”

  “Not the National Guard?”

  “Too civilized,” he said. “Upstanding citizens, men of property. How many have ever killed a man? In a conflict, how many will bolt? Half, I predict. They’re good for a parade, but not much else. No—I need seasoned killers, men with the smell of blood on their hands.”

  “And where does one find ‘seasoned’ killers?”

  “In the prisons, of course—thugs, murderers, the occasional terrorist.” He accepted my offer of another brandy. “I’ve got fifteen hundred of them already. I’ve virtually emptied the prisons.”

  “No—”

  “My men,” he grinned.

  I remembered something Thérèse had once said: Barras prefers his men coarse, his ladies refined.

  “And the more the merrier, thank you,” Barras said, as if reading my thoughts. He pulled out his timepiece. He must go. But first there was something he wanted to ask: Would I seek out Citoyen Buonaparte? “There’s arumour he’s been in contact with the Royalists. Whose side is he on? I must know. Things are heating up—”

  “But he’s busy, you said—with this business of maps.”

  “You women have your ways. … Invite him to your home. Surely this is not a mystery to you.”

  The project struck me as distasteful.

  “Consider the fate of the Republic,” Barras insisted, “your children’
s future.”

  October 4.

  Citoyen Buonaparte was better clothed than I was accustomed to seeing him, dressed in a new blue uniform. Even so, he looked sickly, his skin sallow, his boots huge on his spindly legs.

  I invited him into the garden. I asked Agathe to bring us café au lait. “Made with coffee beans from Martinico,” I told him, “and milk from my cow.”

  He accepted, although he was in a hurry, he said. He could not stay for crêpes. He has been toiling day and night—on a plan to liberate Italy from the Austrians, he said.

  I smiled. “You say this in all seriousness.”

  “One need only believe.”

  “Is it that simple?” He did not answer. He was absorbed in an examination of the sundial. “You do not credit destiny?” I prompted him.

  He turned to me abruptly. “One can become accustomed to appeasing destiny rather than controlling it.” He had a strange way of putting things—rather in the manner of proverbs.

  “I believe I am of the first party, Citoyen Buonaparte.” Although I wasn’t sure what he meant.

  “Brigadier-General Buonaparte,” he corrected me.

  “Forgive me, I thought—”

  “Actually …” He smiled. He is almost charming when he smiles. “You may call me Emperor.”

  “Emperor Buonaparte?” I bowed my head, amused.

  He stared at me, his eyes grey, cold but inflamed, unsettling. “I mystify you,” he said. “That is understandable. But what I don’t understand is why you induced me to call. I confess I have developed something of an attachment for you. Nevertheless, I am under the impression that this feeling is not, at this time, reciprocated.”

  I stooped to pick a rose. A thorn pricked my finger. Tears came to my eyes, an embarrassing weakness.

  “Barras has something to do with this,” he persisted.

  I turned to him, angry for being so bluntly challenged. “It is clear you favour directness, General Buonaparte. Very well then, yes, it was Deputy Barras.”

  “And how much did he pay you?” He put on his hat.