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as in Genoa and Venice.’

      Second Lieutenant Buonaparte joined in the garrison dances and soon after arriving in Valence became attracted to the daughter of one of the local gentry. Her name probably was Caroline du Colombier, but Napoleon, who liked to make up his own names for girl-friends, called her Emma. Impoverished and aged sixteen, Napoleon was not very eligible and Emma seems to have treated him with disdain. Napoleon wrote, trying to soften her. ‘My feelings,’ he said. ‘are worthy of you. Tell me that you do them justice.’ This and similar phrases suggest that Napoleon was more interested in his own fine feelings for Emma than in Emma herself, and that, like many adolescents, he was just in love with love. It comes as no surprise to find Emma ‘cold and indifferent’. After trying unsuccessfully to make her take an interest in him, Napoleon asked Emma to return the four short letters he had written her, and his motive is characteristic – he does not want to be made to look a fool: ‘You took pleasure in humiliating me but you are too good to hold up to ridicule my ill-fated feelings.’ As it turned out, Emma kept his letters.

      After this Napoleon for a while seems to have shied away from girls. He knew he was too poor to marry, so the money his fellow officers spent on courting Napoleon spent on books, or on his brother Louis. During his time as a subaltern Alexandre des Mazis noted as one of Napoleon’s characteristics that he was exceptionally clean-living. Indeed the two had an argument about this, which Napoleon wrote up in his notebook. Girl-friends, Napoleon somewhat priggishly declared, made Alexandre neglect his parents and friends, and he concluded that ‘it would be a good action on the part of a protective godhead to rid us and the world generally of love.’

      When he was eighteen Napoleon went to Paris on family business. He found himself poor and suffered from loneliness. One evening – Thursday, 22 November 1787, for he recorded the incident in his notebook – Napoleon, to cheer himself up, went for a walk in the Palais Royal. Here were bright lights, cafés offering English beer, bavaroises and ratafia, and even a Café Mécanique, where the mocca was pumped to cups through the hollow central leg of each round café table. He walked about, he says, ‘taking long strides’.

      ‘I am vigorous by temperament and didn’t mind the cold; but after a time my mind became numb and then I did notice how cold it was. I turned into the arcades. I was on the point of entering a cafe when I noticed a woman. It was late, she had a good figure and was very young; she was clearly a prostitute. I looked at her, and she stopped. Instead of the disdainful manner such women usually affect, she seemed quite natural. I was struck by that. Her shyness gave me the courage to speak to her. Yes, I spoke to her, though more than most people I hate prostitution and have always felt sullied just by a look from women like that … But her pale cheeks, the impression she gave of weakness and her soft voice at once overcame my doubts. Either she will give me interesting information, I said to myself, or she’s just a blockhead.

      ‘“You’re going to catch cold,” I said. “How can you bear to walk in the arcades ?”

      ‘“Ah, sir, I keep on hoping. I have to finish my evening’s work.”

      ‘She spoke with a calm indifference which appealed to me and I began to walk beside her.

      ‘“You don’t look very strong. I’m surprised you’re not exhausted by a life like this.”

      ‘“Heavens, sir, a woman has to do something.”

      ‘“Maybe. But isn’t there some other job better suited to your health?”

      ‘“No, sir, I’ve got to live.”

      ‘I was enchanted. At least she answered my questions, something other women had declined to do.

      ‘“You must be from the north, to brave cold like this.”

      ‘“I’m from Nantes in Brittany.”

      ‘“That’s a part I know … Mademoiselle, please tell me how you lost your maidenhood.”

      ‘“It was an army officer.”

      ‘“Are you angry?”

      ‘“Oh, yes, take my word for it.” Her voice took on a pungency I hadn’t noticed before. “Take my word for that. My sister is well set up. Why aren’t I?”

      ‘“How did you come to Paris ?”

      ‘“The officer who did me wrong walked out. I loathe him. My mother was furious with me and I had to get away. A second officer came along and took me to Paris. He deserted me too. Now there’s a third; I’ve been living three years with him. He’s French, but has business in London, and he’s there now. Let’s go to your place.”

      ‘“What will we do there?”

      ‘“Come on, we’ll get warm and you’ll have your fill of pleasure.”

      ‘I was far from feeling scruples. Indeed, I didn’t want her to be frightened off by my questions, or to say she didn’t sleep with strangers, when that was the whole point of my accosting her.’

      This was probably the first time Napoleon slept with a woman. Probably she had the white skin and black hair typical of Bretons, perhaps too that dreamy quality that sets them off from the more matter-of-fact Parisian. What is certain is that she was slight and feminine, the type that appeals to manly men, that Napoleon liked her soft voice, and that it was something more than a mere physical encounter: Napoleon tried to get to know her as a person, and felt sympathetic towards her plight.

      From eighteen to twenty-five Napoleon was leading so crowded a life that he had little if any time for girls. He went rarely to Paris and it was doubtful whether he paid a second visit to the Palais Royal. As his fellow officers noted, he had great self-control and probably continued, as Alexandre des Mazis put it, ‘clean-living’. Only after Toulon, when he was a brigadier, did he have time to see girls.

      In Marseille there lived a textile millionaire named François Clary. Politically he was a royalist. When Government troops put down the Marseille rebellion in August 1793, and Stanislas Fréron began purging and terrorizing, François’s eldest son, Etienne, was thrown into prison, and another son, to escape being shot, committed suicide. Four months later François died of worry and grief. His widow, while soliciting for Etienne’s release, came to know Joseph Bonaparte, and it was Joseph, probably through Saliceti, who got Etienne out of prison. Joseph became a habitué of the big luxurious Clary house, and when Napoleon came to Marseille he went there also.

      There were two daughters living at home, Julie aged twenty-two, and the youngest Clary child, Bernardine Eugénie Désirée, aged sixteen. Both were brunettes, with large, dark-brown eyes. Napoleon got to know them both well, and in a short story he was to write the following year described the differences between them. Julie he calls Amélie.

      Améie’s glance seemed to say, ‘You’re in love with me, but you aren’t the only one, and I’ve plenty of other admirers; realize that the only way to please me is to give me flattery and compliments; I like an affected style.’ Eugénie … without being plain, was not a beauty, but she was good, sweet, lively and tender … she never looked boldly at a man. She smiled sweetly, revealing the most beautiful teeth imaginable. If you gave her your hand, she gave hers shyly, and only for a moment, almost teasingly showing the prettiest hand in the world, where the whiteness of the skin contrasted with blue veins. Amélie was like a piece of French music, the chords and harmony of which everyone enjoys. Eugénie was like the nightingale’s song, or a piece by Paesiello, which only sensitive people enjoy; it appears mediocre to the average listener, but its melody transports and excites to passion those who possess intense feelings.

      The musical simile is revealing. Napoleon at twenty-five liked music very much, particularly Paesiello, his favourite composer; he enjoyed listening to girls singing; and the younger Clary, besides her pretty white hands, seems to have had a good voice. Napoleon began to become very fond of the millionaire’s shy musical daughter. At home she was called Désirée, but Napoleon did not care for that name, with its suggestion of physical desire, and when they were alone called her, as in his short story, by her middle name, Eugénie. This private name, with their

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