Désirée (29 page)

During the evening, Fernand brought us the special editions, damp from the news presses. In enormous type the name
Bonaparte
hit us in the eye. In the kitchen with Marie I said, "Do you remember that other news sheet? Bonaparte was appointed Military Governor of Paris and you brought it to me on the terrace, at home in Marseilles. . . ."

Marie was carefully filling a bottle with the diluted milk Oscar still has to drink because his mama is very inefficient and can't produce enough for him. "And tonight he's moving to the Tuileries. Perhaps he'll sleep in the same room the King used to," I added.

"That would be just like him," Marie growled, and handed me the bottle.

While I sat in the bedroom with my child in my arms and watched how greedily he swallowed and smacked his lips, Jean-Baptiste came up and sat beside me. In stamped Fernand with a slip of paper. "Reporting, sir. This note has just been delivered by an unknown female."

Bernadotte glanced at the paper, and held it up for me to read. In shaky script it said, "General Moreau has just been arrested. . . . ."

"A message from Mme Moreau brought by her kitchen kid," Jean-Baptiste decided. Oscar was asleep
so
we went
downstairs, and ever since have been waiting for the state police. I began to write in my diary.

There are nights which never end.

Suddenly a carriage stopped in front of our house. Now they have come to take him away, I thought. I jumped up and ran into the salon. Jean-Baptiste was standing motionless in the centre of the room, listening tensely. I went to him, and he put his arm around me. Never in my life have I been so close to him.

Once, twice, three times—the door knocker banged. "I'll open it," Jean-Baptiste said and let go of me. At the same time we heard voices. First a man's voice, and then a woman's laugh. My knees gave way and I fell into the nearest chair, and suddenly found myself crying. It was Julie. Dear Lord, only Julie. . . .

We were all in the salon. Joseph and Lucien and Julie. With trembling fingers I put fresh candles in the holders, and all at once the room was very bright. Julie was wearing her red evening dress and had apparently drunk too much champagne. Small red spots blotched her cheeks, and she giggled so much she could hardly speak. We assumed that all three had come direct from the Tuileries. Discussions had been going on there all night, details of the new Constitution gone over, and a provisional list of new ministers compiled. Finally Josephine, who was unpacking in the former quarters of the ro
yal family, had decided that they really must celebrate. A state carriage had been sent to fetch Julie, Mme Letizia and Napoleon's sisters, and Josephine had had a room in the Tuileries festively lighted. "We drank much too much, but after all it's a big day. Napoleon will govern France, Lucien is Minister of the Interior, and Joseph is to be Foreign Minister —
at least he's on the list—" Julie prattled on. "You must forgive us for waking you, but as we drove past your house I said we could at least say good morning to Désirée and Jean-Baptiste . . ."

"You didn't wake us up; we haven't slept," I said.

". . . and the three consuls will be advised by a State
Council consisting of real experts. You may be chosen for this council, Bernadotte," Joseph was saying.

"Josephine wants to do over the Tuileries," Julie continued. "I can understand that, everything looks so dusty and old-fashioned. Her bedroom will be decorated in white. . . imagine—he says she must have a regular court household. She is to engage a reader, and three lady companions who will really be ladies-in-waiting. Foreign countries shall see that the wife of our new head of State understands such matters." Still Julie rambled on.

"I insist on the release of General Moreau," I heard Jean-Baptiste say.

"Protective custody and nothing more, I assure you—to protect Moreau from the mob. No one knows what the people of Paris might do in their wild enthusiasm for Napoleon and the new Constitution. . . ." This from Lucien.

A clock struck six. "We must go. She is waiting outside in the carriage for us. We only wanted to say a quick good morning to you," cried Julie.

"Who is waiting outside in the carriage?" I asked.

"Mama-in-law. Mme Letizia was too tired to come in. We promised to drive her home."

I suddenly longed to see Mme Letizia after this night. I went out. The air smelled of fog, and as I reached the street several figures slipped back into the half-light. Did people always stand in front of our house and wait?

I opened the carriage door. "Mme Letizia," I called into the darkness. "It's I—Désirée. I want to congratulate you. "

The figure in the corner of the carriage moved, but it was too dark for me to see her face. "Congratulate me? Why, my child?"

"Because Napoleon is our First Consul, and Lucien is Minister of the Interior, and Joseph says that he . . ."

"The children shouldn't get so involved with politics," came out of the dark. This Mme Bonaparte will never really learn French. She speaks not one syllable better than on the day I met her in Marseilles. I remembered the horrible reeking cell
ar where they lived then. And now they'd like to redecorate the Tuileries.

"I thought that you'd be very pleased, Madame," I concluded awkwardly.

"No. Napoleon doesn't belong in the Tuileries. It's not for him," came firmly from the dark carriage.

"We live in a republic," I remonstrated.

"Call Julie and the two boys. I'm tired. You'll see, in the Tuileries he will get bad ideas, some very bad ideas!"

They appeared finally, Julie, Joseph, Lucien. Julie embraced me, and pressed her hot cheek against mine. "It's so wonderful for Joseph," she whispered. "Come and have dinner with me. I must talk with you."

At that moment Jean-Baptiste came out to show our guests to their carriage. Suddenly out of the fog sprang the lurking figures —these unknowns who with us had waited through the endless night. "Vive Bernadotte!" someone shouted. The voice livered. "Vive Bernadotte, Vive Bernadotte!" There were only three or four voices. And it was ridiculous for Joseph to cringe with terror.

A grey rainy day has begun. An officer of the National Guard has just left the following message: "Order from the First Consul—General Bernadotte is to report to him at eleven clock o'clock in the Tuileries." I am closing and locking my diary. I shall take it to Julie.

Paris, March 21, 1804
(Only the Magistrates stick to the Republican calendar, and write today: 1 Germinal of the Year XII)

It was mad of me to drive alone at night to the Tuileries to see
him.

I realized this from the start. Nevertheless, I climbed into
Mme Letizia's carriage, still trying to decide what to say to him. Somewhere a clock struck eleven. I would walk through the long empty corridors of the Tuileries, slip into his study, stand in front of his desk, and explain to him that . .

The carriage rolled along beside the Seine. In the course of years, I've become familiar with most of the bridges. But whenever I come to a certain bridge, my heart starts pounding. I always have to stop, get out and walk. On my bridge.

. . . It was one of the very first spring nights of the year. Spring hadn't really quite come, but the air was soft and sweet. It had rained the whole day, but now the heavy clouds were breaking and the stars were out. He cannot have him shot, I thought. On the rippling waters of the Seine the stars danced with the lights of Paris. He cannot have him shot!

Cannot?

He can do anything.

On the bridge I walked slowly up and down, meditating on all these years I've lived through without respite. Danced at weddings, curtsied to Napoleon in the Tuileries as though to royalty, celebrated the victory of Marengo at Julie's and drunk so much champagne that the next morning Marie had to hold my head over the washbasin. I have bought a yellow silk evening dress, and a silver one embroidered with rose petals, and a white one with green velvet bows. Those were minor events. The big ones—Oscar's first tooth, Oscar's first "Mama" and Oscar who for the first time without my help on chubby, unsteady little legs had walked from the piano to the chest of drawers.

And now I've been thinking over these past years. Remembering them and trying desperately to put off the moment when I intended to force my way into the presence of the First Consul. Julie returned my diary just a few days.

"I was tidying up my chest of drawers, that mahogany monster I brought from Marseilles," she said. "It's in the nursery now; the children have so many things they really need it. And so I found your book. I don't have to take care of it any longer, do I?"

"No, no longer," I said. "Or, perhaps, not yet."

"You'll have a lot to catch up on." Julie laughed. "I don't suppose you've even mentioned that I have two daughters."

"No, I gave you the diary during the night after the coup d'état. But now I'll write down that you went regularly to take the cure at Plombières and took your Joseph with you, that over two and a half years ago Zenaïde Charlotte Julie was born, and thirteen months later Charlotte Napoleone. And that you still read innumerable novels and were so thrilled by some story about a harem that Miss Daughter Number One was christened Zenaïde"

"I hope she'll forgive me that," Julie said remorsefully.

 I took the diary from her. I must, first of all, I thought, write that Mama is dead. It was last summer. I was sitting with Julie in our garden and suddenly Joseph rushed in with Etienne's letter to us. Mama died in Genoa after a heart attack.
"Now we are all alone," Julie said. "You have me," Joseph insisted. He didn't understand us. Julie belongs to him and I to Jean-Baptiste, but since Papa's death, we have had only Mama who remembered how everything was when we were children.

On the evening of this sad day, Jean-Baptiste said to me, "You know that we must all abide by the laws of Nature. This law of Nature is that we do not outlive our children. It would be unnatural if we did. We must accept the laws of Nature philosophically." He wanted to comfort me. Every woman who has endured the pain of childbirth is told that she is sharing the fate of all mothers. But it's not much comfort, I find.

From my bridge, Mme Letizia's carriage loomed up like a black monster lying in wait for me. On Napoleon's desk lies a sentence of death, and I will say to him . . .

Yes, what will I say to him?

  One may no longer talk with him as with other people, one may not even sit down unless he suggests it. The morning after that endless night of waiting for Jean-Baptiste's arrest words flew between him and Napoleon.

"You have been elected to the State Council, Bernadotte.

"You will represent the Ministry of War in my State Council," the First Consul told him.

"Do you think I've changed my mind in one night? asked Jean-Baptiste.

"No. But, during this same night I have become responsible for the Republic, and I cannot afford to lose one of her ablest men. Will you accept, Bernadotte?"

Jean-Baptiste told me that there was a long pause. A pause in which he first inspected the huge room in the Tuileries, with its enormous desk resting on gilded lions' heads. A pause in which he then looked out of the window and down on the soldiers of the National Guard with their blue-white-red cockades. A pause in which he told himself that the directors had resigned and had recognized the Consular Government. That the Republic had delivered itself up to this man to avert civil war.

"You are right, the Republic needs each of her citizens, Consul Bonaparte. I therefore accept."

Early the next morning Moreau and all the arrested deputies were set free. Moreau, what's more, was given command. Napoleon was preparing a new Italian campaign, and appointed Jean-Baptiste supreme commander of our Army of the West. Jean-Baptiste fortified the Channel coast against English attacks, and commanded all the garrisons from Brittany to the Gironde. He has to spend most of his time at his headquarters in Rennes, and he wasn't home when Oscar had whooping cough. Napoleon won the Battle of Marengo, and Paris went mad celebrating. Today our troops are scattered all over Europe, because, in his negotiations for peace, Napoleon demanded the surrender to France of innumerable provinces, which the Republic is now occupying.

So many lights are dancing on the Seine, many more than before. Then I thought there could be nothing more cynical and more maddening than Paris. But Jean-Baptiste says that Paris today is a hundred times more full of fight than before and that I was hardly in a position to judge. Napoleon has allowed the exiled aristocrats to come back. In the Faubourg St. Germain there's intrigue again, confiscated gardens have b
een returned, torch bearers flank the light carriages of the Noailles, the Radziwills, the De Montesquieus, and the Montmorencys. With grace and dignity the former great of Versailles have moved through the rooms of the Tuileries and curtsied before the Leader of the Republic, bowed over the Hand of the erstwhile Widow Beauharnais who never left the country and never went hungry either. Instead, M. Barras paid her bills and she danced with the ex-lackey Tallien at the ball for "Relatives of Victims of the Guillotine." Sometimes it's more than I can manage to keep straight, the titles of all these princes, counts, and barons who are introduced to me.