The Secret Life of Josephine: Napoleon's Bird of Paradise

by Carolly Erickson

  “Dress yourselves at once,” he ordered his sisters in the sternest tone. Paulette threw up the sash of one window and climbed out on the stone window ledge. Elisa clambered after her, but was too stout to reach the ledge. Bonaparte grabbed Elisa and thrust her into the arms of a bewildered Felix, whose efforts to soothe her met with more screams and shrieked curses.

  “Paulette!” Bonaparte continued, “unless you dress yourself immediately I shall order Corporal Trenet’s execution.”

  At the mention of her lover’s name Paulette turned, trembling, and began to wail. Her lovely face, now swollen, red and blotchy with hives, was the picture of misery.

  Bonaparte took a step toward the open doorway.

  “Yes, yes, all right,” she sobbed, and screamed angrily for her maid.

  “I shall expect to see you and Elisa in the chapel in an hour.”

  We all dispersed to our rooms, well aware that we too would be expected in the chapel very soon to witness the wedding mass.

  Try as we might, Euphemia and I could not entirely suppress our laughter as, exactly one hour later, we watched the wretched brides walking down the aisle of the chapel, their faces hidden behind thick veils, scratching themselves continuously. Letizia, in her pew, also scratched and fidgeted. Outside, rain poured down and there was an occasional clap of thunder.

  “It is the Red Goddess,” Euphemia whispered. “She is announcing herself.”

  As soon as the mass ended, Paulette and Elisa ran to their rooms and would not speak to anyone, not even their new husbands. Bonaparte threw up his hands and swore, but left them alone.

  The guests went home. The fireworks were forgotten, the wedding gifts abandoned in heaped piles in a locked chamber of the villa. And the ten cannon, whose gunners stood ready to fire, were left to sink further into the mud of the courtyard, under the pouring rain, until Bonaparte remembered to call off the salute.

  33

  BONAPARTE WAS DREAMING OF EGYPT— and I was dreaming of Donovan.

  My husband’s great Italian adventure was over, we left the villa and returned to Paris where I was joyfully reunited with Hortense and Coco. Our lives had changed, and would never be the same again, for Bonaparte had risen greatly in stature and popular esteem and his ambitions were soaring. He wanted to conquer the world, beginning with Egypt.

  I, on the other hand, was suffering, and I found relief only in Donovan’s arms. I craved relief from the burden of my unhappy marriage, and freedom from my hostile in-laws. I disliked my public role as Bonaparte’s wife, and wanted only the quiet and privacy of a life lived outside the public gaze.

  I felt as though I were living two lives: one as Madame Bonaparte, and one as my authentic self. As Madame Bonaparte I was gracious, hospitable, dignified—but false. As Donovan’s lover I was open, genuine, passionate—in short, my real self. I was Yeyette, Creole of Martinique. I was who I was meant to be.

  Donovan always seemed to know how and where to find me, how to elude the watchdogs Bonaparte put around me and slip through the network of his spies. While we were in Italy, he had come often to the villa. On many a night when Bonaparte was away, with his troops, I listened for the faint scratching at my window that told me Donovan was on my balcony I got up and opened the window, catching my breath when he took me in his arms.

  We lay together in the bed I shared with Bonaparte, an immense featherbed of the kind the Italians call a matrimoniale, a marriage-bed. (I enjoyed the irony of it, lying with my lover in the bed I was supposed to share with my husband.) Together we sank deep into the soft downy warmth, our breaths one breath, clinging to each other, becoming one flesh. I lost myself in him, letting his strength and his ardor take all my worries from me. In his comforting embrace my fears fled and all my tension eased. I was myself again. I was deeply content.

  In those stolen, heavenly hours together I felt no awareness of past or future, only a rich, full present. I sighed, savoring each moment, wishing with all my heart that every hour of my life could be as blissful as the one I now enjoyed. I existed: that was enough.

  Despite Bonaparte’s insistence that I give up the provisioning business and devote myself to family I continued to cultivate my contacts in the army. As Bonaparte’s wife I was in a better position than ever to stay on good terms with the supply officers who bought foodstuffs and clothing for their men, and Donovan, from his rented rooms in Milan, and afterwards in Paris, was my partner in each of these transactions. Our business dealings gave us an excuse to meet, though we often spent more time together than any purely business arrangements justified.

  Late one afternoon as I emerged from Donovan’s lodgings in the rue Angereau I came face to face with my brother-in-law Joseph.

  “Meeting your lover again?” he said with a smirk.

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Of course you do. We are not fools, you and I. Only my brother is a fool, for refusing to believe the truth about you. Your lover is Monsieur de Gautier, and these are his lodgings.”

  “I hope you are not inventing lies about me, Joseph,” I said evenly. “I would hate to have to force Bonaparte to choose between us. You know how much he loves me.”

  “I know you have him in thrall. You have some sort of dark power over him that keeps him from realizing what a she-wolf you really are.”

  “Let’s not insult each other, Joseph. Besides, we both know that insults are the only weapons you possess against me. If you had proof that I am an unfaithful wife to Bonaparte, you would assuredly produce it. But there is no proof, as your suspicions are unfounded.”

  I began to move past Joseph, intending to walk to the nearby inn where my carriage was waiting.

  “I have all the proof I need. I have the word of your maid, Clodia.”

  Joseph’s words made me pause. I felt my cheeks grow hot, and knew that they were turning red, betraying my distress. What did Clodia know? I had always been careful to remove every evidence of Donovan’s presence in my bedchamber. There were no messages or notes from him that she could have seen, no gifts, not even flowers. Donovan came and went in my life like a shadow, leaving no trace behind.

  “If Clodia says she has seen me with another man, then she is lying,” I said, keeping my voice as firm as I could. “If you are bribing her to lie, Bonaparte will find out and you will lose his trust.”

  He smiled. (It was a first! A smile on Joseph’s somber face!) “I think we both know, Josephine Beauharnais, who is about to lose his trust.” At his most hateful, Joseph always called me by my first husband’s name. Along with the rest of his family, he continued to deny that my marriage to Bonaparte was legal, because it was a civil marriage and not blessed by the church.

  “I am Madame Bonaparte, and I am not going to listen to any more of your slander.” I turned and walked away Behind me, I could hear Joseph’s mirthless laugh.

  As soon as I saw Donovan again I told him what Joseph had said about my maid. He said nothing, but merely pursed his lips and frowned.

  “Has she seen us, do you think?”

  He shook his head. “No. Unless she was concealed in the bedroom.” He looked thoughtful.

  “She has always been secretive. She makes no noise when she walks. She is a spy for Joseph. And she has never liked me, I can feel her coldness.”

  “All good reasons to dismiss her. Why haven’t you?”

  I shook my head ruefully. “I can’t bear to let servants go. It seems cruel.”

  “You must send her away. Immediately.”

  I nodded. Yet I procrastinated. Telling a servant to go was so distasteful, almost painful. I asked Bonaparte to do it for me.

  I entered his study with trepidation. He disliked being interrupted. He sat at his large desk of polished walnut, half a dozen maps spread out before him, books piled high at his elbow. He was deep in thought, his mouth pursed, his forehead creased. His intensity filled the room. Eventually he became aware of my presence. Immediately his appearance changed, with the quicksilv
er suddenness I had so often observed in him. He smiled, his eyes limpid, and held out his hand to me.

  I crossed to him and took his outstretched hand.

  “Bonaparte, I have a favor to ask.”

  “Yes, my beloved?”

  “I need you to dismiss my maid, Clodia.” He lifted his eyebrows in mild surprise.

  “Oh? And why is that, my lovely girl?”

  I was prepared for his question.

  “She has been stealing from me.”

  “I see. Do you want me to talk to her?”

  “No. I just want her gone.”

  The finality in my voice made him curious.

  “Has she been aggravating you in some other way?” he asked, his interest aroused.

  I hesitated. “She has been—taunting me. About our having no children.” It was untrue, of course. But I knew it was a sensitive subject with Bonaparte. As soon as I spoke the words his expression turned grim.

  “It seems our failure to have children together is the topic of the day. I never stop hearing about it from my relatives.”

  The Buonapartes had scattered, Letizia and Elisa and Felix living in Naples, Paulette and General Leclercq in Marseille, Louis with his regiment in some provincial town, I wasn’t sure which, and only my nemesis Joseph in Paris, near us.

  “My mother writes me constantly—she goes to a notary to do it for her, as she never really learned to write properly—and nags me about your barrenness. She can’t quite decide whether it is a result of your promiscuity or God’s wrath because we were never married in a church.”

  He looked amused, yet it was a wry amusement that told me he too regretted our childless state. In fact I would have borne Bonaparte a child, even more than one, for I have always loved children. But the more unhappy I became in our marriage, the more relieved I was that there were no babies to complicate our lives. If we had had a child or two, Letizia would surely have disapproved of me as a mother, and would have tried her best to take my children away from me and raise them herself.

  “Perhaps Letizia has been influencing Clodia.”

  “Probably.”

  “Please Bonaparte, relieve me of this unpleasantness and dismiss Clodia.”

  “Very well.” He turned back to his maps and books, and I prepared to leave. Then I heard him say, “No, wait.”

  He was frowning. “Clodia is a Corsican girl. I think she’s a relative, the daughter of one of my mother’s cousins, Adele Permon.”

  My heart sank. Bonaparte would never dismiss a relative. I felt sure of that.

  “Perhaps she could work in the kitchens?”

  “That would be a demotion. An insult to the family.”

  Once again, as so often in my marriage, I felt trapped. Joseph was threatening to reveal, through Clodia, that I was an unfaithful wife. Yet Bonaparte was bound to protect Clodia and keep her near me, where she could spy on me and betray me. What was I to do?

  I did the only thing I could.

  I went to Donovan, and told him that our secret life together, if not our business partnership, might have to end.

  34

  EGYPT! IT WAS ALL I HEARD ABOUT, all anyone seemed to talk about. Bonaparte was leaving soon for the land of the pharaohs, and I would be blessedly free of him for many months.

  I could not wait for him to go, for all the two hundred ships to be loaded and all the fifty thousand soldiers to be outfitted and made ready for the grand campaign. Donovan and I were kept busy buying tons of hay and oats from farmers as far away as Creil and Rozoy not their best grains of course, or their freshest, but what they had been hoarding and were willing to sell if the price was high enough. We then sold this food to the supply officers for as high a price as we could get—for in business, that is what one does, surely, maximize one’s profits—and we made a good deal of money in a very short time.

  We not only bought and resold hay and oats, but olive oil and brandy, chickens and ducks, empty casks and barrels, canvas for sails and rope for hawsers, leather for saddles and anything else of value we could acquire, to pass along to the troops at high prices. We were avid for gain, we thought of little else in the final weeks before the army was due to depart. I had made money before, as the partner of the late Baron Rossignol, but with Donovan I was on my way to becoming truly rich.

  Wealth, I was discovering, was a protean thing; my concept of it changed as I became more affluent. I had once thought the Grand Blancs of Martinique wealthy, until I encountered the rich of Paris. Then I redefined wealth yet again when I encountered the political fortune of Paul Barras and his banker and financier friends. Donovan and I, I realized, had become far better off than my Uncle Robert in Martinique, at least as affluent as my former stepfather the Marquis de Beauharnais. Had we been able to continue along our path of wealth-building for another year we would have begun to eclipse some of the wealthy Parisian merchants whose fine houses and beautiful furnishings I had long coveted.

  As it was, I was able to pay for a grand renovation of Bonaparte’s mansion on the rue Chantereine (now renamed, in his honor, the rue des Victoires)—or at least to begin to pay for it. The house was redone in the classical style, which was then much in vogue. In imitation of the villas of Greece and Rome, the walls were painted in deep reds and dark blues, with white Doric columns and white trim. The furniture I had made to order, the designs drawn from models brought from Rome by Bonaparte. Antique statues, some life-size, were placed in the foyer and in the stairwells, their nearly translucent white marble gleaming softly beneath lamps of burnished brass.

  All was going well, I thought, except for my nagging fear, which I shared with Donovan, that Clodia, urged on or bribed by Joseph, would tell Bonaparte what she knew of my adultery. Bonaparte would not hear of having her dismissed; she was family, hence she could do no wrong. She would be in my household for life.

  Donovan said little on the subject of Clodia, but I could tell by the firm set of his jaw that he took it very seriously indeed. He would not hear of our ending our secret liaison, and he certainly saw no reason for us to cease to work together.

  “Nothing must interfere with the operations of our business,” he said. “Not now, at this crucial time.” Having known what it was to live with deprivation, he was eager to attain wealth—as eager as I. He planned to pay off all the debt on his plantation in Martinique and buy a second property, even larger and grander than the first. Clodia’s inconvenient revelations could interfere with these plans. Our fantastic prosperity could disappear overnight.

  “Things may turn out better than you imagine,” he said. “Your fears may be exaggerated.”

  Then, about ten days before Bonaparte was to depart for Marseille, to launch his Egyptian campaign, Clodia disappeared.

  One evening she was there, helping me undress after a dinner party held in Bonaparte’s honor; the next morning she was gone.

  At first I thought she must be ill, and keeping to her room, a tiny cupboard of a room in the attic where all the women servants slept. But when I sent Euphemia to look for her she came back and said the little room was empty.

  I felt a stab of unease. I knew well that servants often left their posts suddenly, without warning and without giving notice. Sometimes they returned within a few days, sometimes they left for good. But for Clodia to disappear, thin, dark, small Clodia with her taciturn ways and furtive manner, seemed sinister. I could not help wondering whether Donovan had found a way to get rid of her.

  “Perhaps she’s gone back home to Corsica,” was the view most often expressed by the other servants. “Perhaps she has had a letter from her sister, telling her that her mother is ill and she needs to return home,” one of the grooms suggested. “Perhaps she has a lover, and she ran off with him,” was another view—but I knew that to be very unlikely. Clodia had never been known to keep company with a man.

  By the time she had been gone two days it was assumed that she would not be back, and I chose another girl to take her place as my maid. But
my suspicions nagged at me. Had Donovan done the unthinkable and spirited her away? I didn’t dare ask him directly, for fear I would dislike the answer he gave.

  I was nervous. I felt a vague pounding in my skull. I jumped when my new maid came quietly up behind me and said, “Mistress, the general wishes to see you.”

  I was trembling when I entered Bonaparte’s study, and my fear increased when I saw that Joseph was already there, his hawklike face dark with anger. Bonaparte, on the other hand, was a figure of farce, though his demeanor was serious. He had taken to wearing a turban, which his new Turkish manservant wound around his head each morning and secured with a diamond stickpin. With the turban he wore a long jeweled coat of russet velvet, black silk trousers and gold slippers with uptilted toes that curled toward the ceiling. In this garb, he liked to say, he was ready to take on the hosts of the Ottoman Empire, the rulers of Egypt.

  As soon as Bonaparte spoke I knew that he was angry.

  “Are you selling inferior grains to the Sarre regiment, Josephine?”

  “The Sarre regiment? I am not sure what was sold to them, if anything.”

  The Sarre was Alexandre’s former regiment. Of course I knew that Donovan and I were providing them with horse fodder, and that it was of inferior grade.

  “I inspected that regiment this morning. It’s a wonder their horses are still alive.”

  “Our suppliers may have tricked us, and substituted bad quality foodstuffs for the good ones we thought we were buying.”

  “Nonsense!” was Bonaparte’s sharp reply. “The guilt is yours, and yours alone.

  “This cannot continue,” he went on, pacing the room in his golden slippers with their curled-up toes. “I told you to cease your business endeavors yet you defy me. You weaken my army by poisoning their horses with rotten grain. According to Joseph, you dishonor your marriage vows—and you have even gone so far as to eliminate the witness to your amours, our relative Clodia, the maid you asked me to dismiss.”