Tales of Passion, Tales of Woe (21 page)

“I’m so sorry, Lambert!” I put down the parcel of infant gowns I’d brought from Italy and embraced him. How many times in the past had I done so, thinking him young, thinking he was not so much vulnerable as impressionable, in need of guidance. But now he had the weary fragility of age. Something in him had broken, had not mended. “How is Thérèse taking it?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

Thérèse was enthroned on the chaise longue in her bedroom. I leaned over to kiss her cheek.

“Did Tallien tell you I’ve locked him out? Did he tell you why? Of course not. He refused to call a priest! My baby died unbaptized. And then, a few days after, he expects ‘service.’ I’ve had it with these men of the people.”

Her hand was icy cold. I pressed it between mine to warm it. I felt utterly miserable. I loved her with all my heart, but I loved Tallien too. I’d known him as an idealistic youth.

The maid appeared with a bottle of port, crystal stem glasses. Thérèse wiped her cheeks, embarrassed to be caught crying. “My midwife’s orders,” she said brightly, clinking the rim of my glass with her own. “I can’t tell you how relieved I am to see you. We’re all still in shock over Lazare’s death. You should have seen his funeral. The streets were thronged—I’ve never seen anything like it. And now my midwife tells me his widow miscarried, the poor thing. She’s only nineteen. A bit touched, though, they say.” Thérèse downed her glass. “You’re going to Talleyrand’s ball tonight?”

“I’m so sorry you won’t be there.”

“I wasn’t invited. It appears that I’m no longer wanted at any gathering that includes virtuous women,” she said with obvious irony. “Did you hear what happened at the ball given by Pulchérie de Valence? As soon as I arrived, all the women left.”

“I don’t understand!” During the Terror Thérèse had saved the lives of
many of these so-called virtuous women, often at the risk of her own life.

“I was apparently too public about threatening Tallien with a divorce. Women are supposed to suffer in silence, remember? And then I made the mistake of offering shelter to a young man who had rescued me from bandits one night. He was injured, but a woman of virtue would have sent him away regardless. And
then
there was a horrific scandal over a portrait of me that was hung in the annual Salon. The arbiters of good taste demanded that it be removed.”

I smiled. “Were you clothed in this portrait?”

“I’ve never looked more chaste! No, they didn’t approve that the painter portrayed me in my prison cell. Anything to do with the Terror is not to be mentioned in polite society, I gather. I’m not sure I care, frankly.”

But she did. I could hear it in her voice.

The door was pushed open by a child in ruffled muslin. “Maman?” It was baby Thermidor—walking, and talking!

“Sweetie, do you remember Josephine, your godmother?”

“Yes,” the two-year-old said doubtfully, her chubby fingers stuffed into her mouth.

I held out my arms. Would she come to me? She ran across the room and onto my lap. I felt her tiny fingers pat my neck, tap, tap. I glanced at Thérèse.
She’s so beautiful,
I mouthed. But thinking, I confess, how the little girl’s future would be ruined if Thérèse and Tallien were to divorce.

After my visit with Thérèse I instructed my coachman to take me to the Luxembourg Palace. The drive seemed to take forever, the streets were in such poor repair. And everywhere, signs of misery. Children in rags ran alongside my carriage, crying for alms. I threw them what coins I had. A boy in a moth-eaten English travelling cap, his ribs showing, beat the others away with a stick. I looked away, sickened, as I pulled through the palace gates and into the privileged realm.

“Damn the Royalists,” Barras’s parrot squawked as I was shown into the salon. Barras was sitting in an armchair by a roaring fire, petting his
miniature greyhound. “Don’t get up,” I told him, stooping to kiss him.

“No, no, a gentleman must always rise for a lady,” he said, lowering Toto onto a tasselled cushion, patting the dog’s head apologetically and then pulling himself up out of the chair. “Grand Dieu, my friend, but you do look lovely,” he said, his Provençal accent laconic, caressing. “As always.”

“Oh, I’ve made a mess of you,” I said, brushing powder from his velvet smoking jacket. He smelled pleasantly of cigars and spirit of ambergris. “Sit, sit,” he insisted.

There was a web of worry lines around his eyes. He seemed to have aged in the year and a half since I’d seen him last—or was it simply that I’d not noticed before? “How
are
you?” I asked, accepting the chair he indicated. He seemed weary, I thought. World-weary. Battle-weary, more likely.

“Oh …” He made a dismissive gesture, then let his hand drop. “The usual. I’m getting a new roof put on Grosbois, my modest country abode—now
that’s
a job.” He cleared his throat. “And now all this fuss over Talleyrand’s ball. Too Ancien Régime, according to my fellow Directors, who have only reluctantly consented to go, but in plain dress. We’re going to look as out of place as Quakers at a brawl.”

The name Lazare Hoche hovered between us, impossible to ignore. “I noticed funeral wreaths at Saint-Roch,” I said finally. “My coachman told me there’d been a service just recently in honour of Lazare.”

“The official service was three months ago, but people just won’t stop! Every time I turn around, I run into some damn procession carrying an effigy of him.” He looked away, struggling, I suspected, for control.

I studied my hands, turning my betrothal ring round and round. “You know, ironically, the last time Bonaparte saw him, he predicted that Lazare would die at a young age in his bed. We were at Thérèse and Tallien’s that night, before we were married, and Bonaparte was reading everyone’s palm. I never told you this story?”

Barras shook his head, his hand over his mouth.

“It comforts me, I confess,” I said, my voice quavering dangerously, “to think that maybe it was meant to be.” If Death wants you, he will find you: every soldier’s creed.

“Merde.”
Barras buried his face in his hands.

January 3.

Oh, what a day, what a night. It began with my cook, who was frantic—Bonaparte would only eat hard-boiled eggs, he claimed. Callyot leaned toward me confidentially. “Because they cannot be tampered with, Madame.”

Then the designer arrived; it was impossible to put him off. “I trust the work is pleasing?” Vautier said, handing me a scrap of paper on which the terrifying figure 130,000 francs had been written in a tiny script.

Oh, extraordinarily pleasing. Brilliant. But perhaps somewhat more …
costly
than I had anticipated. (By tenfold!)

“As you wrote, nothing but the best for the Liberator of Italy.” He bowed.

I’d written him that? “I will have my banker contact you.” Thinking, how was I going to come up with the money?

Lisette appeared at the door, one hand on the ivory knob. “The dressmaker, Madame.”

I dispatched the designer with extravagant praise and equally extravagant promises. He politely gave way to my frenzied dressmaker. Every woman in Paris required a new gown for the ball, her staff of thirty-two seamstresses had been working day and night, she exclaimed, instructing her footman to display our creations. The gown for Hortense was exquisite, I thought, but the gown for me—a simple yellow tunic of a Grecian design—had an under-chemise made of muslin. “But English muslin is expressly forbidden,” I said, dismayed. It had even been printed on the invitations.

Her eyes bulged; I feared she would be taken with apoplexy. “But Madame,” she said, lowering her voice to a whisper, “Madame de Chevalley’s underskirts are of muslin, as well as those of Madame de la Pinel.”

“Neither Madame Chevalley nor Madame de la Pinel is the wife of General Bonaparte,” I reminded her gently. As well—although I declined to tell her this—the design lacked elegance. (She’d ruffled the hem!) I repeated my request for simplicity.

“Madame Bonaparte—if I may be so bold—are you sure you want such a plain tunic? I have three girls in my employ devoted entirely to the application of sequins.”

No ornaments, I insisted. And no muslin petticoat. On account, Madame Bonaparte? Yes, of course—on account.

And then the jeweller, who insisted on being shown in with his case of (I confess) irresistible wares. I selected a lovely strand of gold interlocking leaves. What else would look right with a Grecian tunic? “On account, Madame?”

And so, on it went. Lisette has just arrived with a jug of warm mulled wine. The carriages have been called for nine, she informs me. “So early!”

It is time for my bath …

And perhaps just a bit of laudanum.

Bonaparte sat on a stool beside my toilette table, watching as Lisette made up my hair. He was pleased, he said, with the simplicity of my gown. “We must appear to live within my means.”

I refrained from laughing. Even the bachelor generals weren’t able to live on a general’s salary of forty thousand francs a year, and as for my “simple” tunic—

“How’s this?” Louis appeared in the doorway, pulling at the sleeves of a nankeen coat. He’d been ill earlier in the day and still looked pale. (Ever since Italy his health has been uncertain.)

“Ugly!” Jerome called out from behind his older brother, jealous because he was too young to go to the ball.

Bonaparte jumped to his feet. “Who made that jacket for you?” The collar was of black velvet, the insignia of a Royalist.

“How about your blue one?” I suggested.

“Don’t move, Madame!” Lisette sprayed lacquer over my hair. “You look lovely,” she said, handing me the looking glass.

I looked hideous! The curls were stuck to my head with a substance that made me look as if I had just been drenched by rain.

Bonaparte pulled out his timepiece. “We’re late.”

We set out in a light snow, Bonaparte, Louis, Hortense and I. The jingling of the brass bells on the horses’ harness made a festive sound. At the Rue de Grenelle we came to a stop. Equipages were backed up all the way to the Seine. Hortense made a peek-hole in the steamed-up glass. Where had all the carriages come from? For years only shabby hacks had been seen on the streets of Paris, and now suddenly the roadway was crowded with elegant landaus, phaetons, barouches and curricles.

It was half-past nine by the time we pulled into the courtyard of the Hôtel Gallifet. A bivouac scene had been created at the entrance—a campfire surrounded by men in uniform, tents. “The fields of Italy,” Louis explained to Hortense, offering her his arm. “But for the snow, of course,” he added and my daughter laughed.

As we headed up the steps, the double doors were flung open. Four hall porters jumped to take our cloaks. A butler with an operatic voice announced us. The musicians stopped playing and everyone turned to stare. Then a cheer went up and horns blazed out a welcome.

I was overwhelmed by the scene I saw before me. A profusion of candles in enormous hanging chandeliers revealed a crowd of men and women in glittering finery. A man with a shiny forehead was making his way toward us with the help of an ebony cane. He was slithering rather than walking, dragging a club foot, I realized. It was Talleyrand, the famous (infamous) Minister of Foreign Affairs.

He bowed deeply to Bonaparte and then to me, extending two fingers of his right hand as if in benediction. (He had been a bishop, I recalled.) “We have awaited your arrival, Madame la Generale.” Only his eyes showed any sign of life. They filled with a fawning reverence whenever they happened to alight upon my husband. My husband, who was ignoring us, however, looking out over the crowd with a hawkish expression, his hands clasped behind his back.

“I am astonished by the beauty of the décor,” I told Minister Talleyrand, introducing Hortense, who curtsied, and then Louis, who bowed.

“Delighted,” Talleyrand said, his voice a drone.

The playwright Arnault appeared, greeting us shyly. Bonaparte clasped his arm. “Take me about the room, Arnault. We shall engage in
discussion; that way no one will accost me.” Louis offered to escort Hortense to the ballroom.

Which left me quite suddenly alone with our host. “For this entire evening,” he informed me, “I will be your cavaliere servente. Is that not how it is done in Italy?” He smiled, an expression that made him look frightful. I heard the musicians warming up. “Come,” he said, “you must see my quarrelsome dancers. In a misguided spirit of equality they insisted that if they were to perform for us, they should have the honour of eating with us.”

The crowd parted for us as we approached. I moved slightly to one side in order to make room for each swing of his big foot. “And who was the victor in this debate?”

“I am always the victor, Madame.”

The orchestra stuck up a chord. “Ah. They are about to perform a new dance from Germany. The waltz, I believe they call it.” One corner of the Minister’s thin lips curled. “It requires that the male and female grasp one another, and so of course the priests are endeavouring to have it condemned.”

The ballroom was crowded with musicians, dancers, men standing behind women who were seated, watching. The waltz was a swirling of couples holding each other’s arms. I saw Hortense in an alcove with Louis, showing him how it was done.

“Ah, there’s Bonaparte.” I spotted him in a far corner.

“In my humble estimation, all five Directors together are not worth the General’s little finger. Twenty victories are becoming in so young a man. General Bonaparte
is the
Republic.” The Minister’s toneless drone was at odds with the impassioned nature of his words.

Yes, I nodded, feigning to listen. Bonaparte was heading toward us, arm-in-arm with Arnault. A cluster of men and women were following behind him—like a king’s entourage, I thought, a dazed feeling coming over me.

^*
Napoleon had returned to Paris by way of Rastatt, Germany, where meetings continued regarding the peace accord. Josephine had left Milan at a later date, returning to Paris on her own.

^*
It was customary to fire servants who married or got pregnant.