The Josephine B. Trilogy

by Sandra Gulland

  “May I help you?” she asked. She spoke with an accent—a German accent, I thought.

  “Is Comtesse Fanny de Beauharnais in?” I asked, embarrassed by our clothing, fallen to rags.

  “Whom may I tell her is calling?” She had a musical voice.

  “Her niece, Madame Rose de Beauharnais.”

  “And Hortense!” my girl said boldly.

  Suddenly, from across the courtyard, there appeared a plump woman with wild white hair, her face covered over with rouge. Fanny!

  “Ortensia! My baby!” Fanny stooped down to look into Hortense’s face. Hortense offered her godmother her hand. Fanny gave it a loud kiss, leaving a bright smear of rouge on Hortense’s skin.

  Fanny embraced me in the Italian manner, with great vigour. She smelled strongly of attar of roses. “It can’t be you,” she said, leading the way into the house. I detected a hint of wine on her breath. “Forgive me, darling, but I’ve just returned from my Italian tour with Michel.” Her voice reverberated through the half-empty rooms.

  From the stairway I heard a hiss. I looked up. A girl of about eight or nine stood at the landing, dressed in a white cotton gown. “Émilie?” I recognized the pixie face, the big black eyes: Fanny’s granddaughter, Marie’s only surviving child. She’d grown tall in the two and a half years since I’d seen her, her limbs long. She gestured to Hortense.

  “Remember your cousin Émilie?” I said. Hortense hesitated only a moment and then ran up the stairs.

  I followed Fanny through a swinging door into the kitchen. There, seated at a painted table, were a man and a woman. The man’s hair was short and unpowdered and he was wearing a peasant’s smock.

  “Rose!” A woman in man’s clothing stood to greet me, her loose curls caught back informally in a linen bonnet. I was astonished to see that it was Marie, Émilie’s mother—timid, proper, shy Marie. But something had changed, for the woman I saw before me was quite bold, and certainly not proper.

  “Why—it’s Alexandre’s wife!” the man exclaimed. He had big lips and his voice was booming—surprising in a man of his short height. Michel de Cubières, the poet. I had met him at one of Fanny’s receptions years ago. He poured a glass of red wine from the bottle in the middle of the table. There were three empty wine bottles lined up on the counter.

  Fanny handed me the glass. “Oh, Rose, you have missed the most glorious fêtes.”

  “The most glorious Revolution!” Michel exclaimed, hitting the bare tabletop with his fist.

  “Am I not going to be introduced?” the aristocratic woman asked from the door.

  “Princess Amalia, Madame Beauharnais; Rose, Princess Amalia.” Marie broke off a piece of a breadstick on a platter. “Come, Rose, eat. We’re enjoying the servants’ day off.”

  They all laughed, as if this were a joke.

  “But Princess Amalia is my servant now,” Fanny protested.

  Princess Amalia? The woman in the wig made a full court bow. I felt I had walked onto a stage in the middle of a comedy and did not know the lines.

  “I’ve come up in the world,” Fanny said in a stage whisper. “Princess Amalia de Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen is now my kitchen help.”

  “And we’re helping clean out the wine cellar,” Marie said, her eyes shining.

  Michel de Cubières raised his glass. “To housecleaning!”

  Fanny pulled out a chair for me to sit on. I backed away. “I must go,” I said, stuttering, “to the Collège d’Harcourt. I am anxious to see Eugène.”

  “Collège d’Harcourt?” Princess Amalia asked.

  “But Rose, darling,” Fanny stuttered, “you…”

  “Is…is there a problem?” Suddenly I was fearful.

  Michel burst into laughter. “I suggest one of you ladies give Madame Beauharnais a looking glass.”

  How delirious to be clean. How shocking to be full. I’ve become too accustomed to hunger. After a meal of slipcoat cheese and skerret, and a change into clean linens (provided by Marie) and a walking dress (provided by Fanny), I felt renewed.

  Renewed, but far from rested, I might add, for every move I made (even into the water-closet) I was followed by Marie, who felt called upon to provide a minute-by-minute account of every political event of the last six hundred days, as well as Fanny, who kept interrupting her daughter to give me a minute-by-minute account of her recent Italian tour. Finally, I was forced to interrupt. “I must go,” I said.

  It was not yet three in the afternoon. There was time.

  The Collège d’Harcourt is a large institution. Aristocratic, militaristic: there was a sentry at the gate. Everyone was in uniform.

  I wandered into the centre court, looking into each boy’s face. I feared I would not recognize Eugène, feared he would not know me. He was nine now. He’d been only six when I last saw him.

  I knocked on the door to the office. I was introduced to the headmaster, Monsieur de Saint-Hilaire, a portly man in a vivid red frock suit. I explained who I was and my business there. Monsieur de Saint-Hilaire bowed and offered a chair, but I refused. “I haven’t seen my son for two and a half years, Monsieur.”

  After mentioning the tuition, long overdue apparently, Monsieur de Saint-Hilaire ordered a thin boy with boils on his face to escort me to the study hall. I followed the boy through several corridors to a room occupied by only three students. In the far corner was Eugène, glumly hunched over a chalkboard. He seemed older than I had pictured him.

  I gave my guide a sou and he ran off. It was then that Eugène looked up, his curly hair falling onto his forehead. He glanced at me and went back to his work with a resigned expression. I was filled with confusion, for no maternal feeling came to aid me.

  I stepped back out into the corridor, out of view, and leaned against the wall. I felt short of breath and suddenly unsure. Nothing had prepared me for this—this indifference on my part, this lack of love. I felt tears again, but this time they were tears of dismay.

  I resolved to trust whatever Providence offered. I went to the door again. I called out to Eugène this time, softly. He looked up, stood and came to the door with a questioning look. I detected a moment of recognition in his face—but he was insecure, unsure of his young memories. I extended my hand to him. “It is me,” I whispered, leading him into the hall, out of view of the other students who were watching us. “Maman.”

  He did not know what to say. I stooped so that I could better see his face. “Did you get the cricket cage I sent you—for your birthday?”

  Eugène looked down at the stone floor and pushed the toe of his boot into a crack. I put one hand on his shoulder. The memory of him came to me forcefully then, through the fragile feel of one bony shoulder. “Oh, my boy,” I whispered. I took him in my arms and he clung to me, as if he would never let me go.

  Little by little the pieces fall into place, the parts make up the whole. Myself, my boy, my girl.

  Arriving back at Fanny’s, we three sat in the big empty salon on the big empty sofa, a tiny touching cluster down at one end, telling little stories. Shyly. Getting to know one another again.

  At nightfall I shook the big featherbed out over them and sang to them, one childhood song after another. I kissed them once and then again—and then again and again. How can there ever be enough?

  It is late now as I write. The night is clear; the street lanterns sparkle like diamonds in the dark. From somewhere I hear the sweet sound of a Provençal flute mingled with a violin and a cello. The light from the fire touches the faces of my sleeping children.

  A church bell rings, Paris sleeps. But before I blow out the candle, I vow to remember this, this night, to remember that whatever life holds, it is really only this that matters, this fullness of heart.

  In which I discover my husband a changed man

  Monday, November 22, 1790.

  Fanny had tickets to the National Assembly and insisted that I go. “Watching the Assembly has replaced theatre,” she said. She was wearing a bold ensemble entirely of r
ed, white and blue. “My revolutionary toilette.” Apparently the Revolution is the style now in fashionable circles. “Charming, is it not?” She made a clumsy pirouette. Even her gloves matched. “And beside, my dear Rose, it is time you saw your husband.”

  It was a beautiful morning, cold but bright. We hired a fiacre to take us to the river and across to the Tuileries. The Assembly meets in the former Palace riding school next to the terrace of the Feuillants’s convent. Everywhere there were deputies in black. The gardens were crowded with vendors selling pamphlets and news-sheets, lemonade sellers shouting, “Freshly made!” People of all classes pressed to gain entrance.

  Inside there were public galleries elevated above the Assembly chamber. Fanny chose a bench that was cleaner than others and spread out a cloth for us to sit on. I noticed a number of elegant women dressed as for an afternoon stroll in the Bois de Boulogne. Intermixed were men and women—mostly women—of the serving class, even market women in one section.

  I scanned the faces of the deputies below.

  “He isn’t here yet,” Fanny said, in answer to my thoughts.

  A deputy stood and with an air of authority went to the front of the chamber. A woman in back of us cursed. I must have flinched, for Fanny leaned over and whispered, “You should have been here last year—she’d have been armed with a pike.” She pointed to a man on the far side of the hall. “See Robespierre? He’s the one in the powdered wig.”

  “The tiny aristocrat?” The man I saw was wearing a pale green frock coat and a white lace cravat. He was sitting very quietly with his hands folded in his lap, watching everyone.

  Fanny scoffed, snapping her fan shut. “He should have been a priest.”

  Suddenly there was a tumultuous cheer. I leaned forward to discern what had occasioned the commotion. Fanny pointed to a man who had just entered.

  “The peasant?” I asked. He was a thin man dressed in a coarse linen tunic and wearing wood clogs.

  “That’s Deputy Luzerne. They’re cheering because he came dressed as a peasant. There’s François! In the fourth row. He’s wearing one of those dreadful pigtail wigs and a king’s hat. Can you see him?”

  I placed François by the white plume of his round beaver hat.

  But where was Alexandre?

  Fanny nudged me in the ribs, nodded toward the far entrance. A man was standing in one of the doors, his long hair curled about his shoulders. He was dressed in a black coat and nankeen pantaloons. It was Alexandre.

  “Stop watching me,” I protested.

  “You still fancy him. Confess.”

  “You’re making up romances.” If Fanny wanted to see love in my expression, nothing would prevent her from doing so.

  Fortunately, Fanny’s attention was distracted by a flurry of shouting from the floor. Two men had stood and were yelling with considerable vigour at another deputy. Finally, order was restored—but with difficulty.

  Fanny explained: “Some deputies, your husband among them, are proposing that the clergy be elected officials, government employees. The subject gets them wonderfully heated, don’t you think?”

  “The clergy—elected? But the Pope would never consent to such a proposal,” I said, shocked at the notion.

  “Who’s asking the Pope?” Fanny hissed.

  Speakers for and against alternated. Alexandre was the sixth to go to the podium. He expressed himself most persuasively. France was facing financial ruin, he began. The poor were starving, yet the clergy continued to enjoy an exorbitant lifestyle at the people’s expense, free from taxation, free from any allegiance to the state. The nobles had given up their special privileges. So in turn must the clergy…

  Then Alexandre’s brother François spoke, in opposition. He was not as eloquent as Alexandre; his voice did not carry and he was hard to understand. Nevertheless, I found, to my confusion, that I could see his point as well. He argued that in principle such concepts made sense, but in practice the solution proposed was unthinkable. One could not expect men of God to forsake allegiance to the Church.

  From there the discussion became extreme, with both sides becoming vociferous. The woman sitting in back of us began cursing again. At last the debate was brought to a close, but without resolution.

  “It’s that tithe system that gets the Church into so much trouble,” Fanny ranted as we were exiting. “If the clergy would only exert a little self-control—but no, they have to live like kings. And at whose expense, I ask you? And all those gloomy parades! Why do they have to clog up the streets every Sunday? Aren’t feast-days enough?”

  “I’d hate to be at the family gathering when this comes up,” I said, thinking of Aunt Désirée, who was so devout, and the Marquis, who demanded loyalty, whatever the cause.

  We followed the crowd into a large central hall. Alexandre was standing with a group of deputies. He looked up and returned to his discussion.

  “He doesn’t recognize you.” Before I could stop her, Fanny was pushing her way into his group.

  Alexandre turned to me with a quizzical look. He broke away and in two steps was in front of me. “Madame Beauharnais,” he said, “what a surprise. I learned just this morning you were back.” He pushed his fair hair out of his eyes. “I was beginning to fear you would never return. Hortense is with you?”

  “She is anxious to see you,” I said. I adjusted my gauze fichu; Marie’s dress was too small for me. “I thought you gave an excellent speech.”

  Alexandre glanced toward the hallway where two men, deputies, were trying to get his attention. He looked at me with an apologetic shrug. “I’m sorry, but I must go. You’re at Fanny’s?”

  “For one more week. I’ve had difficulty obtaining seats on the post coach to Fontainebleau. I’d like to take Eugène with me, for the holidays, if, that is—”

  We were interrupted by a plump little man in a white dimity waistcoat.

  “Deputy Dunnkirk—you’re just the man I need to see,” Alexandre said. “I’d like you to meet my wife, Madame Beauharnais.”

  “Your wife!” The man gripped me in the comradely embrace that seemed to have become customary in France.

  “Deputy Dunnkirk is a banker—be kind to him,” Alexandre winked.

  “The ladies are all so kind to me,” the little man said sadly.

  Alexandre took my hand. “Tonight? You’ll be in?” He disappeared into the crowd.

  “I didn’t know Deputy Beauharnais was married.” Deputy Dunnkirk sneezed into an enormous linen handkerchief.

  “There you are, darling!” Fanny pressed her thickly painted face between us. “I didn’t know you knew Emmery.”

  “Deputy Dunnkirk, forgive me if I appear abstracted,” I said. “I have only been in Paris for a few days, and it is really all so…”

  “Indeed. We are all of us in a state of confusion. I very much doubt that we will ever recover.”

  Fanny laughed too loudly. “Dear, dear Emmery. Why do I never see you?”

  “You were in Rome, with that wild man. On a tour of propaganda, I am told, preaching to the unenlightened masses…”

  “I’m beginning my evenings again, this coming Monday,” Fanny said. “I will simply die of grief if I don’t see you there.”

  I looked at her. “Monday!” That was only in four days.

  “But you don’t even have a cook,” I exclaimed, as we waited outside for our fiacre.

  “Mon Dieu! I’d forgotten!” Fanny said, fanning herself furiously in spite of the cold.

  That evening.

  I spent most of the afternoon preparing for Alexandre’s visit. I bathed, found a suitable dress, this one a loan from Princess Amalia, one of her less formal creations—a teal silk with ivory ribbons and lace, quite the confection. Hortense tried on all of Émilie’s big-girl dresses and finally settled on a horrid pink one. It is far too big for her but she will not be persuaded otherwise, especially after Eugène told her she looked “lovely” in it.

  Alexandre arrived after supper. Proudly, Eugèn
e performed civilités—showing his father to a seat in the front parlour, ordering refreshments. Hortense refused to leave my side, clinging to me—her eyes never leaving the face of this stranger, her father. She would not allow him near her.

  “She will get over it,” I assured him, after the children had been taken to bed. I sounded more confident than I felt, for in truth I find Hortense difficult to predict. “You will be pleased to discover that she is quite bright,” I told him, “and possesses a number of remarkable abilities.”

  “I wish I could say the same for our son.” Alexandre stood in front of the fire, warming his hands.

  “Perhaps Eugène takes after me in the matter of school.” I stared into the flames, the heat warming my face.

  “He certainly has your nature.” He cleared his throat. “Kind, generous…” He studied me for a moment. “Charming. That colour quite suits you, Rose.”

  I flushed.

  “Do you ever think of me?” he asked.

  “I often think of you.”

  “Do you think of me kindly?”

  How honest was I willing to be? “You are an easy man to care for, Alexandre.”

  “You make it sound facile.”

  “Is that a fault?”

  “I wish you to know that I am a changed man; I feel I have risen from some magnetic slumber. I am intent on putting the foolishness of youth behind me.”

  We talked for some time of the changes in his life—of his health, the lingering effects of the fever he had suffered in Martinico, which had made a military life untenable. A political career was his only alternative. “Fortuitously,” he said, for politics had become his passion. “I should like to tell you more,” he said, pulling out a timepiece, “but I promised the Duc d’Orléans I would help prepare a petition. Oh—I almost forgot. I have something for you.” He reached into his waistcoat pocket, pulling out an envelope.