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younger, and would like to marry her. Napoleon took Joseph aside. ‘In a happy marriage,’ he explained, ‘one person has to yield to the other. Now you’re not strong-minded, nor is Désirée, whereas Julie and I know what we want. You’d better marry Julie, and Désirée will be my wife.’

      Joseph had no objections. If his brother the Brigadier preferred Désirée, he in his easy-going way was prepared to stand down. He began to court the flirtatious Julie. Like her sister, Julie had a huge dowry of 100,000 livres, and Joseph had nothing; on the other hand Joseph had saved Etienne’s life. Madame Clary and Letizia gave their consent, and in August Julie Clary became Joseph’s wife. For both it was to prove a happy marriage.

      Before Napoleon could get to know Eugénie better or begin to court her, he was posted, in September, to the Alps where as senior gunner he fought the Austrians. In camp, where the only music was fife and drum, Napoleon evidently became aware of the many differences between himself and Eugénie, including the nine years’ difference in age, for his first letter was somewhat cool. ‘Your unfailing sweetness and the gay openness which is yours alone inspire me with affection, dear Eugénie, but I am so occupied by work I don’t think this affection ought to cut into my soul and leave a deeper scar.’ This was certainly blunt. But it reveals also a conflict between feeling and duty, heart and head, which was to be one of the characteristics of Napoleon’s relations with women. In the same letter he told Eugénie she was gifted for music and urged her ‘to buy a piano and engage a good teacher. Music is the soul of love.’

      Five months passed before Napoleon wrote again, this time from Toulon. The tone was now less personal, almost that of an elder brother or a teacher wishing to bring on a pupil. Napoleon enclosed a list of books Eugénie should read and promised to take out a subscription for her to a piano magazine printed in Paris, ‘so that every décade you will receive the latest tunes.’ He saw Eugénie now as a singer and, in order to help her, he who could hardly sing a note in tune devised a new way of singing the octave. He explained it to Eugénie like this:

      If you sing DEFGABCD, you know what usually happens? You pronounce D clearly but give it the same value as C; that is, you put an interval of one semitone between D and E. What you should do is put a full tone between them. Similarly, you should put a full tone between E and F … After that, you go on to sing EFGABCDE, passing from the first voice sound to the second by way of a semitone interval. You conclude by singing BCDEF GAB, which was the scale used in ancient times.

      It is quite clear from this that Napoleon knew nothing whatsoever about musical theory – he even gets all the intervals wrong – and was just showing off for Eugénie’s benefit. Since Eugénie had complained that his letters were cold, having given this music lesson Napoleon felt he could afford a warm ending: ‘Adieu, my good, beautiful and tender friend. Be gay and look after yourself.’

      On 21 April 1795 Napoleon went to Marseille and, after nine months’ separation, saw Eugénie again. She had evidently blossomed out; perhaps as a result of Napoleon’s encouragement she sang better; at any rate this time Napoleon fell in love with her, and a fortnight later, when he again stopped at the Clary house on his way to Paris, the question of marriage was raised. Eugénie was still only seventeen, and with her dowry of 100,000 livres a much better match than Napoleon, who had only his army pay. Far too good a match, thought Madame Clary, who had already given one daughter to penniless Joseph, and now let it be known: ‘I’ve quite enough with one Buonaparte in the family.’

      Madame Clary’s hostility did not shake Napoleon’s new affection, and from Avignon, his first stop after Marseille, he ended his letter: ‘Remembrances and love from one who is yours for life.’

      At the beginning of his stay in Paris Napoleon wrote every two or three days to his ‘adorable friend’ and asked Eugénie to write every day. He was now the one to worry when a letter did not arrive. He continued to foster her musical talent, sending her extracts from Martini’s recent success, Sappho, and some ‘romances that are pretty and sad. You’ll enjoy singing them if you feel as I do.’

      Napoleon was now going through his worst period of depression: it was the moment when his army career seemed hopelessly checked. In his sordid Left Bank hotel he thought of the Clary house, and the more things went wrong, the more he sought compensation in his feelings for Eugénie. He began to feel that he would be a failure as a soldier, and that love alone mattered. He was alone, and in his loneliness he poured out his feelings into a short story, the most personal of all his writings, in which he described his affection for Eugénie and sketched the kind of life he hoped to have with her. He kept her name for the heroine of the story, but his hero he called Clisson. It is a revealing name, the original Olivier de Clisson having been Constable of France, that is, supreme commander of the royal armies. He had served Charles V and Charles VII outstandingly well against the English and Flemings, and his name had become synonymous with loyal service.

      The story begins: ‘Clisson was born for war … Although a mere youth, he had reached the highest rank in the army. Good luck constantly aided his talents … And yet his soul was not satisfied.’ Clisson’s dissatisfaction arose from the fact that people were envious of his rank and spread false reports about him. To recover his spirits he went for a month to a spa in wooded country near Lyon.

      Here he met two sisters, Amélie and Eugénie. Despite his gloom, Amélie liked Clisson and flirted with him, whereas shy Eugénie at first felt a strong aversion to him, which she could neither explain nor justify to herself. ‘She fixed her eyes on the stranger’s, and never tired of gazing at him. What is his background? How sombre and thoughtful he seems! His glance reveals the maturity of old age, his physiognomy the languor of adolescence.’ During a walk in the woods Eugénie and Clisson again met, came to know each other better and fell in love.

      Clisson now ‘despised his former life, when he had lived without Eugénie, without drawing every breath for her. He gave himself up to love and renounced all thought of fame. The months and years rolled by as quickly as the hours. They had children and continued to be in love. Eugénie loved with as much steadfastness as she herself was loved. Not a sadness, not a pleasure, not a worry that they did not share …

      ‘Every night Eugénie slept with her head on her lover’s shoulder, or in his arms, every day they spent together, raising their children, cultivating their garden, keeping their house in order.

      ‘In his new life with Eugénie Clisson had certainly avenged men’s injustice, which had vanished from his mind like a dream.

      ‘The company of a man as talented as Clisson had made Eugénie accomplished. Her mind now was cultivated and her feelings, formerly very tender and weak, had taken on the strength and energy appropriate to the mother of Clisson’s children.’ Then follows a sentence remarkably prophetic of Napoleon’s own married life. ‘As for Clisson, he was no longer gloomy and sad, his character had taken on the sweetness and graciousness of hers. Fame in the army had made him proud and sometimes hard, but the love of Eugénie made him more indulgent and flexible.

      The world and mankind had quickly forgotten Clisson’s achievements. Most people, living far from the sea and from nature … considered him and Eugénie either mad or misanthropic. Only poor folk appreciated and blessed them. That made up for the scorn of fools.’

      Everything seems set for a happy ending, but no. Napoleon’s favourite literary form was tragedy. Moreover, he had a strong sense of the injustice in human affairs: he had already expressed this in his story about the Earl of Essex, and the Terror had surely strengthened it. But perhaps his dominant motive here was that, even while he idealized Eugénie, he sensed either that she was too young for him or that she was flawed by some weakness of character: there is a hint of this in his sentence about Clisson giving Eugénie the ‘strength and energy’ she lacks. Napoleon at any rate chose to end his story tragically.

      Clisson is recalled to the army. He is absent several years but each day receives a letter from Eugénie. Then he is wounded. He sends one of his officers, Berville, to comfort Eugénie and keep her company. Eugénie’s letters grow rarer and finally stop. Clisson is grief-stricken but cannot leave his post. A battle is about to begin, and at two in the morning he writes to Eugénie:

      How

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