LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

predicting an agreeable future, he took Hoche’s hand, inspected the lines on it, and announced curtly, ‘You will die in your bed.’ Hoche treated the prediction as an insult and scowled at Napoleon. Quickly and tactfully Rose intervened. ‘Nothing bad about that,’ she said. ‘Alexander the Great died in his bed.’ And the little contretemps passed off gaily.

      Napoleon grew increasingly fond of his new friend. But he did not care for the name Rose. He decided to change it, just as he had changed Désirée to Eugénie. One of Rose’s other names was Josèphe. Perhaps recalling the heroine of Le Sourd, which he had seen earlier that year, Napoleon lengthened and softened Josèphe to Josephine, and it was by this name that he began to call Rose Beauharnais.

      Among the other visitors to 6 Rue Chantereine was Paul Barras. Food being rationed, he used to send ahead baskets stacked with poultry, game and expensive fruit. With utensils borrowed from a neighbour Josephine’s cook turned these into an elaborate meal, for Barras had high standards where pleasure was concerned. On days when the Director was giving a party in his Chaillot house, Josephine would go there to act as hostess. Rumours circulated in Paris that Josephine was Barras’s mistress.

      Napoleon, hearing of this, began to keep away from 6 Rue Chantereine. He concentrated on his military duties, and on keeping order in Paris: no easy task, since people were discontented with the two-ounce ration of black bread composed partly of sawdust, beans and chestnuts. Once he was heckled by a fat woman of Paris: ‘What do these wearers of epaulets care if poor folk starve to death, provided they fill their own skins?’ To which Napoleon replied, ‘My good woman, look at me, and say which of us has fed the best.’

      Josephine began to miss Napoleon’s visits. She had become interested in this strange general who did not look like a soldier, and whose life had been as adventurous as her own. A fashionable painter had recently described Napoleon’s features as ‘Grecian’ and perhaps that made her see his gaunt face in a better light. She sent him a little note: ‘You no longer come to see a friend who is fond of you; you have completely abandoned her. You are wrong, for she is tenderly attached to you. Come to lunch tomorrow, Septidi. I want to see you and talk to you about your affairs. Good night, my friend, I embrace you. Widow Beauharnais.’ ‘I embrace you’ was a polite phrase – Marie Antoinette had used it to Fersen – and implies only friendship.

      In the winter of 1795 Napoleon resumed his visits. In Josephine he had found a woman prettier and much more of a person than Eugénie. She was not at all the simple flower of nature he had imagined he would fall in love with; she was sophisticated, smartly dressed, and interested in his ‘affairs’, that is, his career. She loved parties and pretty clothes, but Napoleon may well have glimpsed a more serious side: even in her letter to Thérésia about her dress for the dance it is significant how seriously Josephine takes the little plot. In a way he and Josephine were complete opposites; yet underneath they had much in common. They came from the same class, they both believed in the Revolution, they shared certain basic values.

      Napoleon began to fall in love. As he did so, he tried to draw back. Perhaps he recalled his sober, thrifty mother, who certainly would not approve of this gay widow with expensive tastes. He told himself sharply that his senses were getting the better of him, that Josephine did not really love him, and that she would bring him unhappiness. And having given himself that warning, Napoleon decided that he did not mind, that he wanted more from life than happiness.

      As for Josephine, she did not love Napoleon. But she found him oddly attractive, this man who spoke his mind in such a decided way and had given her a new name. He did not make her expensive presents, like Barras, but he had a sincerity Barras lacked. He was strange, he was different, and he had eyes only for her. Josephine’s moral standards could be summed up in the phrase, ‘I must look after my children and be kind;’ otherwise she lived for the day. And Napoleon was pressing.

      One evening in January 1796 Napoleon made love with Josephine. For her, the mother of two children, it was doubtless a diversion, a kindness, something drolle. But for Napoleon this was the first time he had possessed a woman he loved, and into the experience went all the force of a very passionate nature that had been kept in check since adolescence. Next day he expressed some of his feelings:

      Seven in the morning.

      I have woken up full of you. Your portrait and the memory of yesterday’s intoxicating evening have given my senses no rest. Sweet and incomparable Josephine, what an odd effect you have on my heart! Are you displeased? Do I see you sad? Are you worried? Then my soul is grief-stricken, and your friend cannot rest … But I cannot rest either when I yield to the deep feeling that overpowers me and I draw from your lips and heart a flame that burns me. Ah! last night I clearly realized that the portrait I had of you is quite different from the real you! You are leaving at noon, and in three hours I shall see you. Until then, mio dolce amor, thousands of kisses; but don’t kiss me, for your kisses sear my blood.

      Josephine was doubtless very surprised to receive a letter in this vein. In her set it was considered poor taste or a bad joke to treat bed as more than a passing pleasure. It spoiled the fun. And when Napoleon began to question her about Barras, it was doubtless to cool his ardour that she told him the rumours were true: she had been Barras’s mistress, though she was so no longer.

      This did not deter Napoleon. On the contrary, he decided that Josephine was more lovable than ever for being ‘experienced’. He could easily have had a woman like Josephine as his mistress, and morals are usually relaxed in a revolutionary society, but Napoleon liked everything regular and orderly. He at once began to think about marriage.

      Through one of his teachers at the Ecole Militaire, Napoleon got in touch with a Monsieur Emmery, a businessman who had interests in the Caribbean. He learned that the Taschers were a respected family and that La Pagerie, owned now by Josephine’s mother, was a valuable property, from which Josephine could expect an annual income of 50,000 livres. The snag was that since 1794 Martinique had been in English hands, no money from La Pagerie was reaching France and none would be likely to appear until Martinique was recaptured. Josephine had no property in France and did not even own 6 Rue Chantereine. Josephine might one day be very rich, but for the moment she was virtually penniless. Moreover, if he married her, Napoleon would be making himself responsible for her two children, both at expensive schools, at a time when he was already supporting two brothers and three sisters. On his side he had only his general’s pay. Yet so deeply was Napoleon in love that, having made these unpromising calculations, he decided that somehow he would be able to manage.

      The next question was, what effect would marriage have on his career? After Vendémiaire Napoleon no longer sought love in the wilds. Acting, instead, on his essay – ‘passion should be governed by reason’ – he wanted, should he marry, to continue to shoulder his responsibilities towards the Republic. In particular, he wished to fight France’s enemies, Austria and Piedmont, in the north of Italy. He had asked Barras, the foremost Director, for the command of the Army of the Alps. But Barras’s first instinct had been to say no. Each of the Directors had a special responsibility, Barras’s being the Interior. Napoleon was doing a good job there and it was against Barras’s interests to move him. Also, there were older generals with a better claim to the command.

      Then Barras learned that Napoleon was thinking of marrying Josephine, and Napoleon’s request appeared to him in a new light. Barras had only just come to power and felt insecure. Of the five Directors he alone was of noble birth, and he felt the need of friends from the same class. Josephine and Napoleon were both nobles, but Napoleon as a Corsican, and former friend of the traitor Paoli, was still an outsider, not wholly accepted. By marrying Josephine he would remove any latent doubts about his political loyalty. Then in Josephine and Napoleon Barras would have two useful allies. So Barras encouraged Napoleon to marry his former mistress, from whom, incidentally, he wished to be disentangled. ‘She belongs,’ he said, ‘both to the old régime and to the new. She will give you stability, and she has the best salon in Paris.’ Stability – consistance – was the key word.

      Barras not only approved the marriage, he now revised his attitude to Napoleon’s request. If Napoleon acquired ‘stability’, it would be to Barras’s advantage to appoint him to the Army of the Alps, for any successes

Скачать книгу