Tales of Passion, Tales of Woe

by Sandra Gulland

  “But Bonaparte—”

  “Perhaps it would be wisest to wait. In a short time it’s possible I could marry her into royalty.” He smiled. “Now that’s a thought.”

  “Murat is brave,” I persisted. A swearing swashbuckler so much the fashion now. A swashbuckler in peacock plumes. “He served you well at the Battle of Aboukir, and at Saint-Cloud.”

  “Brave isn’t enough. He’s not intelligent, he’s uneducated and he’s of lowly birth—”

  “He suits Caroline perfectly.”

  Waiting to be called to supper.

  An amusing exchange. “Are you sure this is what you want?” Bonaparte demanded of his young sister.

  Caroline sat primly on the sofa, muslin ruffles everywhere. “I love him.”

  “That’s easy to say now, but as your brother I must warn you, when he’s naked, a big brute of a man like that, and in a state of desire, you’re not going to find him so very—”

  She burst into a peal of delighted giggles.

  January 18.

  It’s done, the contract has been signed in the presence of every Bonaparte in Paris: Signora Letizia, the five brothers, two sisters, Uncle Fesch. And, as well, a tiny trio of Beauharnais: myself, Hortense and Eugène.

  The house-poor brothers were scarcely able to scrape together a dowry of thirty thousand francs, ten thousand less than Elisa and Pauline each received when they were married, so at the last moment Bonaparte added a lovely pearl necklace. I frowned when I saw it. It looked familiar. It was familiar: it was my own.

  January 20.

  The iridescent pearls, loose on a black satin cloth, reflected the candlelight. “I’ve never seen pearls so …” So pure.

  “Indeed, Madame, these are that rarest of gems, the round saltwater pink pearl.” Monsieur Lamarck spoke in a reverent hush. “It is impossible to find pearls of this size and perfection: look at these ugly baroque pearls, Madame, to compare: covered with blisters. They resemble potatoes. Or look at this set of freshwater pearls, shaped like little wine barrels. But these pearls—” He handed me a magnifying glass, pulled a lantern closer. “These pearls have lustre.” He murmured the word “lustre” confidentially, as if he were imparting dangerous information. “And iridescence. Observe: rainbows. Captured within. Indeed, Madame, it is an exceptionally thick layer of nacre that makes them so”—he rolled his eyes erotically—”hypnotic. Some claim that the nacre has healing powers—but that is strictly conjecture and as you know, Madame, we deal only in fact. Observe, Madame, a fact: they are imperfect. A perfect pearl is an imperfect pearl. Did you know, the Queen of Spain wears green pearls?” Whispering now. “Her jeweller should be hanged. But these pearls, Madame, these pearls are without question the finest in the world. Even a queen could wear them with confidence. Oh, forgive me.” Withdrawing an enormous handkerchief from his gold-embroidered waistcoat pocket. “Excuse me, Madame.” Sniffing. “I got carried away. Now, where was I—yes, the price. The price is five hundred thousand francs.”

  I swallowed, my mouth suddenly dry.

  “Y-y-yes?” Monsieur Lamarck slipped off his spectacles, cleaned them with a corner of his handkerchief, put them back on. “Did I hear you correctly, Madame? Was it yes that you said?”

  What has come over me, what have I done? I am made breathless by my daring, shaken by my foolishness—giddy by my gall! Such money! The price of a vast estate contained in a necklace. I look upon them entranced; it’s as if they have cast a spell over me. I am transformed, bewitched! How am I to pay? I’ll find a way, for I cannot be parted from them. I put on these gems, and I am a queen. Grand Dieu.

  * Josephine was said to have a low, musical voice. When she read to Napoleon, the servants would hover outside the door to listen.

  In which I must sleep in Marie Antoinette’s bed

  January 21, 1800.

  This evening Bonaparte handed me a thick file.

  “What is this?” But I knew: it was the List—the names of the French aristocrats who were forbidden from returning to the Republic. For years Thérèse and I had lobbied to get names removed. Each small success had been a battle won.

  “I’d like you to determine who should be taken off,” Bonaparte said, opening his battered tin snuffbox.

  I stared at him, not comprehending. “You want me to decide?” To name who was innocent, who guilty—rule whose life would be ruined, whose life saved?

  “If you prefer, I could get Duroc to do it.”

  Duroc, the most heartless of Bonaparte’s aides. “No, I’ll do it!”

  Now, alone in my boudoir, I look through the thick file, the names of so many thousands of men and women, and I am overwhelmed. Can I do this? I pray for strength.

  February 5.

  “Don’t blame your hall porter,” I told Thérèse. “I pushed my way past him. May I come in?” I stepped boldly into the room. “I heard you had your baby, a girl.”

  Thérèse regarded me without a smile. Swaddled at her side was the infant, only a few days old. I stood for a moment in uncomfortable silence, remembering Thérèse as I’d first met her, her eyes so dark, so seeking. Eyes of wisdom, of innocence. And now, tired eyes. “I need your help going over the List. I’ve been asked to name the émigrés who should be allowed to return.”

  “Back to the Republic?”

  I nodded. “But it’s a big job, too big for me.” One of Thérèse’s canaries broke into song.

  “Come in then,” she said finally. “And take off your coat,” she added in an exasperated tone, as if it was too difficult to maintain, this chill, an unnatural thing.

  I put down the basket of comfits and toys I’d brought and leaned over the bed. “She’s beautiful. She looks just like Thermidor when she was born. What’s her name?”

  “Clémence.”

  Mercy. Forgiveness. “Yes.”

  Thérèse touched my hand. “How are you doing, Rose?” Addressing me by my former name. My old self. Not my new self. “Surviving.” I shrugged.

  “You and I, we’d hoped for more,” she said, gesturing to a chair beside the bed.

  Before long we were sharing confessions. I spilled out my heart to her, telling her how dismal it was to live in the palace, about all the boring fêtes, the tedious ceremonies, the Queen’s ghost. “Forgive me,” I said when the clock chimed three. “I promised myself I wouldn’t stay long.” It was unfair of me to unburden myself to this woman in childbed. I pulled my shawl around my shoulders and stood—but there was more, we both knew, a name not yet spoken. “How is he doing?” I asked finally.

  “You care?” Yet her tone was curiously gentle.

  Yes, I nodded. I cared. In spite of everything.

  “He’s drinking too much, gambling recklessly, his health is not good—but then all that’s to be expected, I think, under the circumstances.”

  I felt the weight of her accusation. “You don’t understand.” “Then enlighten me, please.” Her huge eyes swimming. “I had reason. That’s all I can say.”

  She stared at me for a long moment. “I know Barras was taking Royalist money, but that was no reason to betray him. He was playing all sides. That’s his way—he makes no secret of it. He was taking their money and using it against them.” The baby made a chirping noise.

  “Is that what he told you?”

  “You don’t believe it?” Thérèse asked, putting the infant to breast.

  I felt a familiar tingling in my own breasts. “It’s more complex than that, Thérèse.” More deadly.

  “He didn’t poison Lazare, if that’s what you’re thinking. He broke down one night, told me everything.”

  “Oh?” Wine talking, no doubt—wine and tears, a potent mix. Wine and tears and rage. I knew Barras so well. But not well enough, as it turned out. I sat back down on the little upholstered chair by her toilette table. “But Lazare was poisoned?”

  She nodded. “By a Royalist agent.”

  I propped my elbow on the table and rested my chin in the palm of my hand.
Trying to take this in. “The Royalist agent Barras was taking money from?” My words hung in the silence.

  She paused before saying, “One of them.”

  I glanced at my friend in the looking glass. Then I turned to face her. “But why?”

  “Do you really want to know?” I nodded, but fearful.

  “Lazare found out what Barras was doing. So then he knew too much. The agent was worried he might talk.”

  So. A Royalist agent poisoned Lazare to silence him, to protect his dirty secret that Director Barras, the most powerful man in the French Republic, was in his pay.

  “Barras went mad when he found out,” Thérèse said, switching the baby to her other breast. “He wanted to strangle the man.”

  When did this happen? I wondered, thinking back. I was stunned by the realization that Thérèse had known and had kept it from me. “You knew all along.” We had all been deceiving each other—a thought that did not comfort me in the least.

  “We’re all guilty,” she said with a sweet-sad smile.

  Except Lazare, I thought.

  “And so you see,” Thérèse sang to her baby, quoting a line from Candide, “the new world is no better than the old.”

  8:30 P.M.

  Adélaïde Hoche sat upright in her chair like a schoolgirl, her hands folded neatly in her lap. Her eyes look frightened. Père Hoche stood behind her.

  “I just want you both to know I found out what happened. At least, what likely happened,” I said.

  Père Hoche leaned forward, one hand on the back of Adélaïde’s wooden chair, the other hand on his cane, a thick oak cudgel. One could kill with such a stick, I thought.

  I began: “Director Barras had been taking money from the Royalists.” Père Hoche cursed. “It’s hard to know for sure what his intention was,” I persisted. He’d been taking money from the Pretender faction as well as from the Orléanists, I explained. He’d been dealing with all parties, as was his way, but holding his cards close, playing his own game. Then, when he learned that evidence had been found exposing the Pretender agents, he decided to jump ship. To cover himself, he attacked the Pretender group—but the plan failed (at least the first time) and Lazare took the blame.

  “They called my son a traitor.”

  “He had to go along with it, Père Hoche,” I told him, as gently as I could. Lazare would have preferred musketfire to such a slur, I knew. Traitors were scum in his eyes. The scar on his face was testimony to the passion of his creed: as a youth of sixteen, he’d challenged a grenadier in his barracks who was spying for bribes. They’d duelled on Mont-Martre on a cold winter’s day. The spy had scarred him, a badge Lazare had worn proudly. “If Director Barras had been accused, the Republic would have fallen. The agents knew that, so they tried to expose Barras. The agent for the Pretender must have shown your son proof that Director Barras had accepted their bribe money.”

  I could imagine the depth of Lazare’s disillusionment, his disgust. “The Royalists were trying to get your son to turn against the Director, but it didn’t work,” I went on. “He knew what was at stake. Then the agent must have panicked, because General Hoche, their worst enemy, knew too much—knew everything.”

  “And so the agent poisoned him,” Adélaïde said, her voice clear and strong. She was standing with one hand on the mantel—on the blue urn.

  The urn. Mon Dieu, I thought, suddenly remembering what Fouché had said, about Lazare’s heart. “Yes,” I said, sickened, my throat tight. I heard the child laughing. I glanced up at Lazare’s portrait, for strength. “Director Barras had nothing to do with it.” The truth was not so simple, however. The truth was that Lazare, the brave innocent, had fallen victim to one of Barras’s greedy intrigues.

  February 6.

  The final vote on the new constitution has been tallied. Bonaparte is now First Consul. Three million voted in favour—and less than two thousand voted against.* It’s a miracle.

  [Undated]

  I knew by Fauvelet’s flustered look that he had something to say to me, something I wasn’t going to like. “It’s about your debts, Madame. The First Consul wishes to have them settled.”

  “And so Bonaparte sent you?” Coward!

  Fauvelet nodded. “I’m to ask you the total sum.” He scratched his chin. “He will pay them. He only asks that you withdraw from all speculative endeavours now and in the future, Madame.”

  I paced around him as he talked. In truth, there was no other way. My debts were beyond my ability to settle. It wasn’t all hats! (Although I did owe for thirty-eight—how did that happen?) The big bills were substantial: Bodin Company debts, a National Property I’d invested in and Malmaison alone accounted for over one million. And the pearls, mon Dieu.

  It is done: I’ve withdrawn from the Bodin Company. Bonaparte settled my debts. There were tears.

  February 7.

  “Damn, Washington died,” Bonaparte said, throwing down a dispatch.

  “The American?”

  “Of all times. Now I’ll have to show mourning.” He looked over a calendar. “How many days left?”

  How many days until we moved to the Tuileries Palace, he meant. “Eleven,” I said, examining the calendar. Just thinking about the move induced a panic in me. There was so much to do, so much that had to be accomplished in so little time. The walls were not yet plastered. And the floors—the workers were supposed to have begun work on them three days ago.

  “Perfect, ten days of mourning: and then the move.”

  February 14.

  A good meeting with Thérèse. We’re making progress going over the List. It’s so much easier with the two of us.

  February 16.

  “You sent for me, Citoyenne?” Émilie’s husband Lavalette stood before me at attention, as if for a military review.

  I begged him to be seated. “I have a favour to ask of you, Lieutenant Lavalette. However, I am hesitant, as it entails a certain degree of personal danger. I need someone to go into Austria—”

  Lavalette registered surprise.

  “—in order to locate a certain individual, an emigré whose name has finally been removed from the List. I need you to help that individual cross the border back into France.” No easy task.

  “May I ask who?”

  “Certainly, but you must vow not to tell a soul, not even your wife.” I paused, smiled. “François Beauharnais.” Émilie’s father, the Marquis’s son.

  February 17—Tuileries Palace.

  I am writing this at my escritoire in what will soon be my new drawing room—the yellow room, I call it. I feel uneasy, at odds with the taste of the Queen, who occupied these rooms before me. Every surface—the walls, the ceiling, even the floor—is covered with ornament.

  Will I ever be happy here? Was she? I wonder. (I doubt it.)

  I’m exhausted, I remind myself. Even now, there are trunks to be unpacked, put away. But the dining and reception rooms are finally presentable, the heavy brocade drapes hung only an hour ago. Day after tomorrow …

  February 18.

  Everything should be ready for tomorrow’s move—the grand parade, the reception, the dinner. Ready in theory, anyway. In reality, every time I go to look over the work, something is amiss. The workers were only this afternoon laying the carpets. And now, my cook is ill with an ague.

  February 19.

  Eugène’s uniform has been mended and Hortense has finally determined the right shade of ribbon (a lovely blue-green) to go with her gown. Bonaparte just rushed in and we went through the order of events one last time. “Make sure Hortense is watching just after the cavalry,” he whispered to me. But he wouldn’t say why.

  Shortly after 5:00—a quiet moment.

  “I hate all this.” Bonaparte tore at his sash.

  “Be still.”

  “You look majestic, General,” Fauvelet said, helping Bonaparte on with his jacket.

  “I’ve never seen you looking so … pressed,” I said with a smile. Bonaparte was most comfortabl
e in old, worn clothes.

  “Is that supposed to be a compliment?” He did not smile. “Fauvelet, you’re lucky. You don’t have to make a fool of yourself in public, as I do.”

  “Madame Bonaparte?” One of the movers gestured toward a mountain of trunks. “Do these all go?”

  I nodded. Moving, on top of everything else. Any minute, I would collapse. “As you have said yourself, Bonaparte, the people need to see you, they need a spectacle.”

  “So you do listen to me.”

  “Bonaparte, I’m always listening.” Tweaking his ear.

  Hortense, Émilie and Caroline came gliding into the room, twirled for inspection. I fixed Hortense’s hair ribbon. Caroline’s dress was tight on her, but there was nothing to be done. (Is she in an interesting condition? I wondered. Already?) “You should see Joachim’s new plume for his hat,” Caroline said. “It cost three hundred francs.”

  “What’s that terrible racket?” I looked toward the door.

  Eugène appeared, straddling a chair, rocking and jumping it into the room as if it were a horse. The girls and I burst into laughter. He jumped off, tamed his “steed,” saluted. “Well?” Grinning. Showing off his new uniform, the uniform of the Consular Guards.

  “Oh,” said Hortense, breathlessly, “all the girls will be throwing their bouquets at you.”

  “So long as they don’t throw them at my husband.” Caroline crimped the bow in her hair, so that it would stand better. “See how it droops?”

  Our coachman appeared at the door wearing tails. “Your coach is ready, Madame.”

  I looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. We were on time—miraculously. I glanced in the glass: I felt I had too much make-up on, like an actress preparing to go on stage. And then I realized that I was an actress, and this was a stage.

  “Come, darling. It’s time!” Caroline said to Hortense and Emilie, putting on an exaggerated air of grandeur as she swept into the corridor.