Tales of Passion, Tales of Woe (17 page)

After his maid gave me morphine for nerves, he excused himself, explaining that he would only be a moment. I heard cries—the peasant girl?—and then he rushed into the room with a bloody tooth pinched in a vise-like tool, two assistants dashing in after him. Involuntarily I shrank back, but the assistants laid hold of me, and the doctor yanked my tooth out and pushed the new tooth into its place. Then one of the assistants held my jaw closed while the other wound my head with a strong strip of linen so that I might not open my mouth.

And so here I am, mute and dazed, bandaged and sedated, with a peasant girl’s tooth in my mouth. I dare not get sick.

July 7.

My tooth came out—an infection had set in. I’m taking generous doses of laudanum. God meant me to have bad teeth, and to receive the Austrian diplomats thus. Or so I tell myself.

July 9.

The Austrian delegates will be here tomorrow. I’ve been all day in the hands of beauticians: I’ve been waxed, massaged, pounded and polished. Lisette painted my nails as Eugène quizzed me on the name and title of each diplomat (Cobenzl, Gallo, Merfeld, Ficquelmont), their children, parents, aunts and uncles even, the year each was born, the town. “You know all this, Maman,” Eugène said, throwing down the lists.

July 10, 4:00
P.M.
or so.

They’ll be arriving in an hour. “You’ve never looked more beautiful,” Bonaparte told me reverently, taking in the details of my gown, a muslin draped in the style of the ancient Romans. A filigree laurel of gold held back my loose curls.

“It’s not too modern?” I studied the effect in the looking glass.

“That’s the point. The old world meets the new. Old world
bows
to the new.”

New world, indeed. I smiled, for Bonaparte refused to lace his boots with silk ribbons. I knew aristocrats. I feared they would laugh at his laces and round hat.

“Uff! They’ll be wearing plebeian shoelaces soon enough,” Bonaparte said, giving me a careful kiss before disappearing back into his study to his maps and documents, texts and correspondence—the work that keeps him up all day and all night, day after day. Winning battles had only been a step; the important work was establishing democracy in Italy.

“Kings never worked so hard,” I said to Lisette, turning to view myself from the side. I’d become slender in Italy, due to ill health. I was pleased with the effect—it made me look younger.

Captain Charles and Eugène appeared at the door wearing tablecloths for capes and lampshades for hats. “Vee must ‘av peace!” they barked in unison, imitating an Austrian accent.

“Don’t make me laugh,” I pleaded. “I’ll ruin my make-up!”

11:20
P.M.

It went well! I am pleased. Bonaparte, however, is
not.
I’m having a bath prepared to calm him.

On the whole I found the diplomats to be pleasant—especially the Comte de Cobenzl, the head of the delegation, who speaks elegant French. “I look forward to many pleasant evenings,” I told him as they left, adding, daringly, “Citoyens.” The Comte de Cobenzl, who heard me distinctly, smiled and embraced me fraternally.

He is an ugly but genial older man with the aristocratic talent of
putting everyone at ease. We talked of Corneille’s
Le Cid
(parts of which I was surprised to discover Bonaparte had committed to memory); Goethe’s new epic
Hermann und Dorothea;
the corresponding theories of electricity and animal magnetism; Mozart’s opera
The Marriage of Figaro.
Bonaparte praised his beloved Ossian, which surprised and impressed the Austrians, I could see—they hadn’t expected a Republican general to read poetry.

“The charming bastards,” Bonaparte cursed as soon as the door closed behind them. “They have no intention whatsoever of negotiating a peace agreement.”

July 14.

This evening as I was preparing for bed, Bonaparte burst into my dressing room. “They’re balking,” he said, pacing in front of the wardrobe with his hands behind his back. “They refuse to come to an agreement.” He sat down on a little stool. “And why should they? As long as the Royalists are gaining strength in Paris—” He clenched his fists.

July 16.

The trouble began before the midday meal. Lisette and I were meeting with two of the cooks, discussing the menu for a reception in honour of the Austrian delegates.

“Solo—” I turned to Lisette. “What is the word for chicken?”

“Polio.”

“Solo pollo.” Only chicken. The words rolled off my tongue like a song, as if I were in an opera. A comic opera. Opéra bouffe.

The cooks could not comprehend. No pasta? No salami?

“Lisette, explain to them that that is what the General wishes—” I was interrupted by the sound of someone shouting. It was Bonaparte, yelling in Italian. He only spoke Italian when he was angry. Or amorous.

The two cooks began to laugh.

“What did he say?” I asked Lisette. Bonaparte had been quite explosive of late. The peace talks had not been progressing. The Austrians were
not taking him seriously. They were biding their time in the belief that soon the Royalists would be back in power in France. “He said asswipe, Madame.” Lisette flushed.

Asswipe?
It was unlike Bonaparte to be crude. “Are you sure?” Lisette has been studying Italian, but how would she know a word like that? “And blazes. And devil.”

“The General is savage as …” The head chef held up a meat axe, grinned. “Meat. Axe.” Enunciating slowly, proudly, in French.

There was another angry outburst. “That haughty, demanding prick!” Napoleon shouted, in French this time. My cheeks burned.

The cook with the wen on his neck snorted. That word he knew.

I stood. “No, you stay,” I told Lisette.

Bonaparte was standing with his back to the door. His grey wool waistcoat was stained with perspiration. The scene was one of disorder, the carpet strewn with journals from Paris. I recognized one—the
Mémorial,
a Royalist publication. Berthier, Bonaparte’s chief of staff, was sitting at the desk in the corner, staring at the General, a quill in one hand. They seemed frozen in an antique tableau, shadow silhouettes against the light. The very air felt dangerous, like gunpowder, as if it might explode. “The lives of good men have been sacrificed,” Bonaparte yelled, breaking the spell. “And for what? Without a peace agreement, what have we accomplished? Nothing!”

“Un momento,” I whispered to the hall porter, positioning myself beside the door out of sight, standing purposefully, as if spying on one’s husband was the normal thing to do.

“The enemy isn’t here, the enemy is in Paris! The Royalists have taken over. The traitors should be arrested, banished! All of them!
Veni, vidi, fugi,
my ass.
^*
The journals should be repressed! They’re in the pay of England, of Austria, of every damned Royalist nation in Europe—why should they be tolerated? And the Church fomenting trouble again.
Basta!
Berthier, take this down. Address this to the Emperor. Yes, of course, the Emperor of Austria. Tell him this. Tell him if a peace agreement is not signed by the first of September—No, don’t put that. Put … what is it? Yes. Put fifteen Fructidor. Let him figure it out. If the peace negotiations are not concluded by fifteen Fructidor, we go to war. You heard me: war!”

I stepped into the doorway. Bonaparte turned to me, his eyes bulging. He looked feverish, emanating a manic energy.

“Has something happened?” I crossed the room and took his hand. He is shortsighted; it is a mistake to address him from a distance. “What’s all the shouting about?”

“Shouting?”

“We could hear you in the kitchen.”

Bonaparte glanced at his chief of staff, puzzled. “We weren’t shouting.”

La Chaumière
Darling!

A quick note: I’ve heard rumours that Lazare is being considered for Minister of War. Your husband is to take orders from your former lover? Nom de Dieu!

Your most loving, etc., Thérèse

July 18, past midnight (can’t sleep).

“May I ask you something?” Bonaparte’s hand on my shoulder was cold. “Of course.” I kissed his hand, as if to warm it—warm him. “How … close were you with General Hoche?” “We were friends.”

He snorted. “You were lovers. Everyone knew that.”

I pulled the covering sheet up over me. “In prison, yes.” A partial truth.

“General Hoche is said to appeal to women. He’s a chevalier of the bedchamber, it is said.”

“Bonaparte, please, don’t be like this.” I pressed myself into his arms, pushing through the thicket of elbows and hands he put up as obstacles, pressing against him, knowing his need.

August 1.

“What does
res non verba
mean?” Eugène asked, looking up from reading the
Moniteur.

Res non verba
was Lazare’s motto. I looked over my son’s shoulder. The article quoted a speech Lazare had made to his troops. “It means, the thing, not the word—that what you do is more important than what you say,” I told Eugène, disconcerted by my son’s inability to translate a simple Latin phrase. I heard the sound of spurs jingling outside the door. Hastily, I folded the journal. “Eugène, don’t speak of General Hoche around Bonaparte,” I said under my breath, standing to greet my husband.

July 22, Luxembourg Palace, Paris
Chère amie,

It is almost midnight as I write this. I am in a state, I confess. Forgive my hasty pen. Regrettably, things did not work out with respect to Lazare. It is too complex a matter to explain here. Nobly, he retreated. Whatever you might hear, he did this of his own accord.

Director Reubell has gone mad with fear. His delirium recalled to my mind an ancient Oriental proverb: that one should not confuse the sound of the beating of one’s heart with the hooves of approaching horses. It is the beating of my own heart that causes me pain. I begin to see that my life has been spent not as a conquering knight, but as a rather pathetic courtier, sitting, ever hopeful, in the antechamber to the boudoir of the Goddess of Love. In all my groping encounters, was it not simply Love I sought? (I recall a little lecture from you, my friend, to this effect.) And yet, having at last been blessed, I submitted not to the light, but to the darkness within.

I hear the hooves of approaching horses. By the time you receive this, it will all be over. It is said that the guilty are victorious. If so, I need not fear.

Père Barras

July 23, Fontainebleau
Dear Rose,

Imagine General Hoche behaving in such a shameful way! He had nine
thousand soldiers quartered at La Ferte-Alais and he as much as admitted that he was going to take over by force. And to think that our Eugène served on his staff.

Your godmother, Aunt Désirée

Note—I saw Marie-Adélaïde d’Antigny this morning when I stopped by with the money for her education and keep.
^*
She has just turned eleven, a pretty little thing. I almost wept to see her—she looks just like Alexandre! Please don’t forget to send money.

July 27, La Chaumière
Darling,

Lazare was forced to leave Paris under a cloud of suspicion, accused of being a traitor. I am sick with apprehension. Barras refuses to talk about it. If you can shed any light on this mystery, please let me know.

Your loving and very dearest friend, Thérèse

Wetzlar
Rose,

Forgive me for writing. I have a courier I can trust—otherwise, I would not compromise you in this fashion.

You will have accounts of my disgrace in the journals. I beg you to believe me when I say I did not behave dishonourably. Although clear in conscience, I carry the burden of shame. It is not a mantle I wear willingly. Assure your son that I honoured my vows to the Republic.

Should anything happen to me, please, I beg you, help my wife and child.

I love you still.

Burn this letter.

Your soldier, always, Lazare

[Undated]

Oh, Lazare, Lazarro …

August 4.

Something happened in Paris—but what? Today, when Bonaparte was meeting with the Austrian delegates, I went through the journals in his office. Apparently, Lazare was named Minister of War, and then there was an outcry due to his youth and he resigned. And then his troops were discovered close to Paris, within a forbidden zone. (From what I can make out, the constitution forbids troops within twelve leagues of the building in which the Legislative Councils meet.) And then he was publicly accused of being a traitor to the Republic.

I cannot make sense of this. There is no greater patriot than Lazare, no man more honourable. It sickens me to think of him publicly reviled, branded with the one word he most deeply loathed:
traitor.

September 8—Passariano.
^*

We’ve arrived in Passariano, at last. We are staying in the palace of the last doge of Venice. The courtyard is the size of a military field and the palace itself is huge, ostentatious, ornate. I wander from golden room to golden room, watched by the servants. A fraud, they judge us, Republican imposters.

We won’t be here long, I hope.

September 10.

Mail from Paris. Trouble again. I’m even more confused than before.

18 Fructidor, Luxembourg Palace, Paris
Chère amie,

It is over; I am alive. So, it would seem, is the Republic.

At dawn I ordered the alarm gun fired. Over sixty Royalist deputies have been arrested. Soon they will all be deported. So be it, the Republic has been saved.