by Brandy Purdy
Every eye appraised me, the women noting every detail of my costume from the top of my head to my toes. I was featured in every fashion magazine; there were engravings and beautiful colored plates of me in all manner of dresses—negligees, afternoon dresses, riding habits, evening dresses, and ball gowns. I was the darling of Le Journal des Dames et des Modes, which was widely regarded as the Bible of fashion; even British women smuggled copies across the Channel to see what I was wearing. If I wore roses in my hair or a long gold pin encrusted with diamonds and shaped like an arrow it was news of the most vital importance.
I was famous again; I tried to enjoy it, but my previous experience riding on the comet’s tail of Alexandre’s fame had tempered my exuberance and taught me how quickly it could all go sour. Adored one day, abhorred the next. Every star that rises must also fall. The end was inevitable; it was only a question of when.
My real happiness came from something that had nothing to do with fame. I was in love again. As cruel Fate would have it, no sooner had I married Bonaparte than I met the man I had been waiting my whole life for—Lieutenant Hippolyte Charles. With curly black hair, cornflower-blue eyes, a heart- and knee-melting smile, a wicked sense of humor, and an interest in clothes to match mine, a dandy to the core, he was my soul’s perfect mate. The first time I saw him in his powder-blue hussar’s uniform trimmed with scarlet my heart stood still, and then it melted. I swooned, but he was swift. He caught me in his arms and carried me upstairs, to my room at Theresa’s country house. He stayed with me all night and we had champagne and kisses for breakfast and didn’t get up until half past two.
* * *
I was simply too busy to give much time or thought to correspondence. I was being adored by the masses and decorating a house, posing for portraits, and there was always more shopping to do, and fittings with my dressmaker, and people would be offended if I didn’t accept their invitations, especially when I was the guest of honor, but Bonaparte simply could not understand that. But it wasn’t my fault; no woman so preoccupied could have found time to write to her husband! There simply were not enough hours in the day to accomplish everything that was being demanded of me.
Bonaparte decided if I would not write to him, then he must have me with him where he could see and touch me. He began to pester me to come to Italy until I had even less desire than ever to open his letters. I felt sick at my stomach every time a new one arrived.
When he found my silence on the subject deafening, he started sending his generals to my door to volunteer their services as my escort. I was so desperate to stay in Paris that I used all my wiles to win them to my side, to make my excuses to Bonaparte and persuade him that such arduous travel was not in my best interests. If my body was the fee the generals demanded I paid it gladly; some of them were very handsome and skilled in the amatory arts, so I didn’t really mind.
I began dropping coy little hints that I was ill, and Bonaparte leapt to the conclusion that I was pregnant. Since the idea gave him so much pleasure, I let him believe it. From that day forward he wrote obsessively about my “little belly” and how much he longed to see it. I imagine constantly that I see you with your round little tummy, it will make you look fascinating!
Of course, he was bound to be disappointed when I revealed that I had been mistaken about my condition, and I knew it was wrong to mislead him, but I just couldn’t bear to leave Hippolyte. If only I had met him before Bonaparte! As it was, I couldn’t even consider divorce. Bonaparte was the hero of France; everyone loved him and celebrated him as their savior. They would hate me if I divorced him.
* * *
Soon he was bewailing my absence again; his desire to see my round little belly began to outweigh the risks of travel for a woman in my condition.
Without you, I am useless here! he wrote. I will leave the chase after glory and serving the country to others and come back to Paris to be with you, my incomparable and inconstant Josephine! A thousand daggers are ripping my heart to bits!
To try to force me to his will, Bonaparte ordered his brother Joseph, the banker of the family, to deprive me of funds. But Hippolyte had the ideal solution—I could join him in a business venture that was bound to reap stupendous profits, thousands and thousands of livres, for everyone involved. Of course I said yes.
Since my days as Barras’s mistress, I had not been a stranger to the world of black-market dealings, army contracts, profiteering, and speculation. With the aristocracy banished from France, the only men who could afford to support me were engaged in such dubious and shady activities. Now, as General Bonaparte’s adored wife, I was able to use my influence to obtain valuable contracts for my lover to provision the French army. It was very exciting, and we now had a legitimate cause to cloak our illicit trysts and explain all the time we spent alone together—we were business partners! Every day we were out and about making deals, buying cheap, and hoping to sell high. Soon the money was pouring in, and I didn’t have to worry about Joseph’s penny-pinching; I had my own money.
But every time I saw a wounded soldier, a lump rose in my throat and tears filled my eyes—tears the soldiers always mistook for compassion, never guessing that they sprang from guilt. I would always stop and speak to them and empty my purse into their hands. Yet the whole time I was speaking and smiling and dispensing alms, or visiting a hospital as Bonaparte now insisted I actually do, and Barras obligingly arranged, I could not stop thinking about the shoddy, worthless supplies we had sent them: the boots that had their soles sucked off in mud, the sour wine and spoilt milk, rancid meat, moldy grains and putrid eggs, rotten cloth for uniforms that their thumbs poked through when they pulled up their breeches, seams that tore and unraveled, canvas tents that leaked, defective muskets prone to exploding, cracked ramrods, lame horses, and bridles and stirrups that broke under the slightest pressure. I could not help but wonder if I, the one these men venerated and adored as “Our Lady of Victories,” the army’s good-luck charm, had caused their injuries, cost this man an eye or that one an arm, and another a lifetime as an invalid, and that led to thoughts of the hundreds of others who lay dead upon the fields of battle, never to come home again. Some nights I started awake screaming after a bad dream in which I saw my son, Eugène, die or be hideously maimed when one of the muskets I had supplied exploded in his hands, burning and blinding him, turning his sweet, handsome face into a monstrosity that made even his own mother scream. It made me realize that all those men were some mother’s son.
But I just couldn’t stop. Life was Heaven with Hippolyte, and as long as Joseph held the purse strings, providing myself with an independent income was the only way I could sustain it. Otherwise, I would have to give in and go to Italy. Just the thought of it was enough to make me weep! I wanted to stay with Hippolyte! We went out with our friends and dined and danced every night, then came home and made love until dawn. We slept until half past noon or even one o’clock; sometimes we didn’t get out of bed until two or three o’clock. After a leisurely and loving breakfast we bathed and dressed and went out to attend to business, to secure more cheap goods and lucrative contracts. Then it was dinner and dancing and laughter and love all over again before we fell asleep in each other’s arms. I couldn’t give all that up, I just couldn’t!
* * *
But I had not reckoned on my husband’s romantic delirium swaying The Directory in his favor. He was so lovelorn and frantic, so entirely, body and soul, besotted with me, that they feared he really would make good his threats to abandon the campaign for my sake. Barras came to see me, barging into my bedroom before noon while Hippolyte and I were still sound asleep. He yanked me out of bed naked and ordered me to pack. The next morning he was there again to make sure I got in the coach. I can still feel the iron grip of his hand on my soft arm, forcing me in, then slamming the door. Thus I departed for Italy, with six coaches crammed full of luggage and my maid Louise following behind. My only consolation was that Hippolyte was going with me as my escort—Barras
had been kind enough to arrange that at least—and I had a new little pug dog Hippolyte had given me after my dear old Fortune died.
CHAPTER 22
It was a miserable and terrifying journey over high, jagged snow-capped mountains. At times the carriage wheels were so close to the edge I feared we were about to plunge down to certain death. I fainted the one and only time I dared look down. I was dizzy from the heights and sick with a headache half the time. The winds were so cold they cut through me like knives of ice and left my skin red and raw.
The inns that we stopped at were awful, the bedding infected with bugs, and one innkeeper actually dared serve us spinach doused in lamp oil and red asparagus fried in curdled milk for supper. But Hippolyte’s room was always next to mine. After we were sure everyone was asleep, he would come to me and we would make love all night. In the morning, we would stagger out and pile into the carriage still half-asleep. We slept through the day as best we could, the sway of the carriage rocking us, and the wheels going over rocks and ruts periodically jarring us awake, sending me into clinging, crying frights. But we had each other, and the night, to dream of.
* * *
When we arrived in Milan, Bonaparte was so glad to see me that he cried and covered me with kisses. He swept me up in his arms and carried me tenderly upstairs as though I were some fragile object that might break beneath too firm a touch, though I told him there was no need to exercise such caution. When I took off my veil and voluminous beige traveling coat and he saw that there was no child, he fell to his knees before me, wrapped his arms around my waist, and bathed my belly with his tears. Soon my gown was soaked through. I stroked his hair and murmured something about the mountains, the rutted roads and jarring, jagged rocks. A loud, keening wail rose as though from the very depths of his soul as he realized that our son had been sacrificed to his own selfish desire.
“You mustn’t think that! Oh, Bonaparte, please, never, never think that!” I cried, feeling suddenly guilty that I had led him to believe he was at fault just to cloak my lies. That really was not my intention. “These things happen, Bonaparte, often without reason. . . . It might not have been the roads after all . . . just . . . nature!”
Within moments his rain of tears had turned to a shower of ardent kisses as hope came surging back. He lifted me in his arms and carried me to the bed, determined to fill me with his love, and his seed. “We shall have a son yet, you shall see! A son who will rule the world!”
I smiled, nodded, and hoped those intense gray eyes would not see through me. Sometimes I thought I didn’t have an honest bone left in my body anymore. But what else could I do? The truth would have been ruinous!
Though I still bled every month, I was not certain that children were still possible for me. After I abandoned Rosette in Martinique, I had lost the benefit of her herbal brews and had of necessity switched to a rather caustic douche the midwife recommended. Though it stung and brought tears to my eyes, I had used it religiously after my abortion, for the most part, though there were a few times when I was careless and forgot or, for whatever reason, just didn’t bother. During those hellish months when I was a prisoner in Les Carmes, coupling recklessly and desperately with any man who wanted me, I did not have recourse to the douche, or any other preventatives, yet I never conceived, and that at a time when I would have welcomed the chance to plead my belly and stay the descending blade of the guillotine. Afterward, in those hedonistic days when I danced at the Victims’ Balls so grateful to be alive, I gave myself just as wantonly; I never said no or asked a man to withdraw. Some days when I tumbled out of bed with my head aching from too much champagne the night before I just couldn’t bear the thought of that stinging concoction, or only remembered that I had forgotten at an inconvenient moment when it was already likely to be too late to do any good. But I had never had cause to regret my carelessness. And since my marriage to Bonaparte I had never again bothered with the douche. I was happy to be done with it. But no man’s seed ever made my womb quicken. Whether it was the abortion, the douche, the prison fever, or something else entirely, I feared my womb was now a sterile and barren place where no seed could ever again take root. But that was something I could never tell Bonaparte; he wanted a child so badly, I couldn’t bear to disappoint him. Yet every month when he solicitously inquired about the coming and going of my “little red sea,” I felt like I was living a lie.
* * *
No sooner had I arrived than Bonaparte was bidding me farewell again, making me resent all the more having made the tedious, harrowing journey.
“I will not say good-bye,” he said as he embraced me, “for I carry you always with me”—he patted the miniature over his heart—“as my good luck charm.”
Even as he rode away he was already writing to me, scribbling madly on his lap desk, the words zigzagging wildly as the carriage bounced: I thought I loved you, but now that I have seen you again, I love you a thousand times more. Your charms burn my heart and my senses. You must promise me never to cry, for your tears carry away all reason and burn up my blood.
He left me ensconced in the red granite Serbelloni Palace, surrounded by life-sized bronze statues, servants, and hundreds of pieces of plundered art, paintings and statues that he had stripped from various palaces and the homes of noble families, a ready-made art collection just for me, tribute, Bonaparte said, that he laid at my feet, “though your love is the greatest treasure of all, Josephine!” Guests and dignitaries were always streaming in and out, eager to meet the great man’s lady, all of whom I must speak graciously to and entertain and accept invitations from in return. I presided over balls, receptions, and dinner parties, scandalizing the locals with my scanty muslin dresses; it was obvious I didn’t have a thing on underneath, and when I danced they could see every line of my form.
But it didn’t matter how appalled they were, or pretended to be; soon they all were imitating me. Soon every lady passing before me in the receiving line had rose-red rouged nipples glowing through her thin muslin bodice, even the ones old enough that they should have known better than to attempt such revealing fashions, and when they danced, bellies and buttocks jiggled and thighs rippled beneath their transparent skirts.
Everyone adored me and was so anxious to please me and curry favor with my husband. The King and Queen of Naples gave me a parure of perfect pearls, so large, lustrous, and creamy they took my breath away, and the Pope sent me several rare and precious cameos since he had heard that I collected them. But any pleasure I experienced at the moment passed fleetingly. I was superbly bored and dying of boredom. My husband doesn’t love me, he worships me. I think he will go mad. I have seen him only briefly. He is terribly busy, I dutifully reported back to Barras.
* * *
When I could endure the boredom not a moment longer, I let Hippolyte whisk me away for a romantic holiday at a rustic, but decent, country inn with all the necessary and desirable amenities to make our stay a pleasure in every way. But we timed it rather badly. Bonaparte returned unexpectedly, bounding up the stairs, eager to see and embrace me, only to find my bedroom empty. He immediately sat down and poured all his wrath into a letter and sent it flying after me like a flaming arrow:
I get to Milan, I fling myself into your room; I have left everything to see you, to hold you in my arms, and you are not there! The unhappiness I feel is incalculable! While I give you all my desires, all my thoughts, every second of my life, Josephine, I willingly submit to the power that your charms, your character, and the whole of your person have over my poor heart, you deny me what I deserve to receive from you—respect, esteem, and compassion!
Alarmed by his hot words and temper, I raced back to Milan. We drove all night, not sparing the horses, even when it rained and the roads grew muddy and slick. I risked our necks to reach Bonaparte. Then it was my turn to race up the stairs and burst into my bedroom, hoping to find him.
Bonaparte was lying on my bed, haggard and hot with fever, his clothes soaked through with swea
t, leaving a wet outline of his form on the satin coverlet. His eyes were glazed and he was holding one of my filmy rose-colored negligees, clutching it to his nose, as though inhaling my perfume could restore him.
I wept to see him in such a sorry state. I flung myself onto the bed, mud spattered and weary from driving all night, and burrowed into his arms, weeping and assuring him over and over again that I was faithful, Hippolyte was just a friend, a diverting dandy who made me laugh and liked to dance and talk of fashion; he meant nothing more to me. I had only planned to be away a few days. I had no way of knowing that my husband would be returning so soon. I needed a change of scene, fresh air, and informality. I felt so overwhelmed and isolated, yet at the same time suffocated, in that great big palace, surrounded by servants, with many acquaintances but no real friends, always having to be brave and force a smile and play the gracious hostess to hundreds of strangers, all the time terrified that I would fail.
“I fear this role is beyond me,” I confessed.
But Bonaparte was quick to reassure me that no, “you were born to play this part, my Josephine. You are graciousness personified.”
My husband decided to play doctor and prescribe a remedy to cure my loneliness and unease. He would invite his family to stay with me. He might as well have dropped me naked with no weapon to defend myself into a pit teeming with venomous vipers.
The matriarch, Letizia Bonaparte, was like a witch straight out of a storybook. She never gave me a chance; she loathed me at first glance. She refused to speak directly to me, so that any speech that passed between us was conducted via a third party, usually with servants or one or more of her dreadful brood acting as intermediary.
