The Josephine B. Trilogy (28 page)

Saturday, September 22.

The new Republic dawned wet and dreary. The streets are crowded with people milling about in the rain, sharing wine, singing, celebrating the new Era of Liberty. Dressed in Roman tunics, ragged old army uniforms, mouldy court gowns, they link arms and roam from one neighbourhood to the next.

Aimée has cluttered the front parlour with revolutionary newspapers and magazines. “For our salon,” she explained.

“
Our
salon?”

“Every Tuesday evening, revolutionaries welcome,” she said, scratching out a guest list. “They’re a rowdy bunch—it might even be amusing.”

September 26.

Our “salon” was a success. There were seventeen guests. Fanny arrived first (looking fashionably rustic). She came with Michel de Cubières (looking fat), her daughter Marie (looking thin) and a Citoyen Lestaing (looking wealthy), a mulatto widower from Saint-Domingue who appeared to be on more than friendly terms with Marie. (Everyone pretended not to be shocked.)

Marie informed me that she has filed for a divorce from François under the new law. “It’s easy!” She was wearing a worker-woman cap with an enormous tricolour cockade stuck to the front. “When are you going to divorce Alexandre?”

“I hadn’t thought of it,” I said. In spite of everything, I still felt Alexandre
was
my husband—the father of my children.

A number of deputies had been invited, including Deputy Barras, who arrived in the company of Citoyen Botot and Deputy Tallien, all of them in spirits.

Deputy Barras kissed my hand. “Citoyenne Beauharnais,” he said, his big eyes mournful. “I regretted learning of your friend’s—”

Citoyen Botot looked equally stricken. “The timing—” he lisped. He shrugged.

“I have been meaning to write to you both,” I said, “to thank you for your help.”

“Should aging libertines be trusted in the company of a lady?” a young man in a red frock coat interrupted. Inordinately tall with a bristly head, he moved like a cat.

“Did your mother give you permission to go out tonight, Tallien?” Deputy Barras asked, setting up a table for cards. Citoyen Botot laughed.

“Deputy Tallien is
Secretary
of the Commune?” I asked Aimée later, when I had a chance. “But he’s so young.” Although gentle in appearance, his manner is one of a gay blade: sarcastic, irreverent, a bit of a wit.

“Hardly five and twenty, the son of a valet. But comely, is he not? And
educated, apparently. His father’s master made the mistake of educating him. I’m told he quotes Plutarch as well as any noble. In fact, it’s said the master
is
his father. Do you not see something aristocratic in his profile? In his nose? A gentle, good-hearted man, by the
looks
of him, but ruthless, they say—one of the Commissaires. Did you hear about that nineteen-year-old woman from Saint-Denis? Disguised as a delegate, she was apprehended in the Assembly carrying sulphuric acid—intended for his face.”

“He’s a Septembrist?” I thought of Luce de Montmorin, his violent death. How could we have invited a
Septembrist
to our home?

“But influential—he’d be the one to ask about passes out of the city for Princess Amalia and Frédéric.” Aimée squeezed my arm. “It’s said he fancies aristocratic women.”

After innumerable toasts to the Republic, I invited Citoyen Tallien to join me in a game of écarté. He has a weakness for gambling, I perceived. I pleased him greatly by losing. After two games (at a cost of seventeen livres) I summoned the courage to put forward my request on behalf of my friends.

“And allow your friend Frédéric to join the army of the enemy?” Tallien responded.

I had to smile.

“Forgive me if I fail to see the humour,” Tallien said.

I explained: “This is perhaps the first time my friend has been regarded as an asset on the battlefield.” Dear Frédéric had a reputation for being a coward. He had even had the dishonour to be dismissed from the volunteer National Guard.

Levity or no, Tallien said he doubted that passports could be obtained.

“But there
must
be a way.” Were it not for me, Frédéric and Princess Amalia would be in England now, they would be safe.

September 30, 1792—Strasbourg

Rose,

How can you accuse me of valuing my own safety over that of my children! I would die for them! And as for Amalia and Frédéric, they are better off in Paris.

Alexandre

October 2.

This afternoon I went to Deputy Tallien’s office, to ask him once again about passports for Frédéric and Princess Amalia. I was kept waiting for some time. He was working on the layout of
L’Ami des citoyens,
the revolutionary news-sheet he publishes, he explained, when finally he consented to speak to me. He had a deadline to meet, he said.

“Some other time?” I inquired, making the bold step of inviting him to supper.

“Perfect,” Aimée said when I told her, offering to keep Eugène and Hortense in her apartment for the night.

That evening.

Deputy Tallien is gone; my virtue intact. Tarnished, perhaps, but unsullied.

We spent the evening together, sharing two bottles of wine, which Deputy Tallien clearly enjoys. We played piquet and talked—of the Republic, the constitution, the future. Under a gentle demeanour is a young man who longs to make a difference. He is fervent in his belief in the Revolution, dedicated to a vision of a better world.

“The moderate deputies maintain that the radicals aren’t heeding the past,” he said, “yet the moderates ignore the present. They refuse to see the poverty that surrounds us.”

“It is difficult to understand how one could
not
see it.”

We talked of our families, our hopes and aspirations. “You are—twenty-four? Twenty-five?” I asked. “Do you not seek a wife?”

“I seek the wife of a brigadier-general,” he said sweetly.

“You know what I mean.” I smiled.

“I believe I am incapable of the emotion they call love.”

I looked at him, surprised. “That must be a sad feeling.”

“It is a secure feeling.” He stood to go. “You’ve not asked about the passes for your friends.” He pulled a paper out of his vest pocket. “I’ve arranged for two to be issued.”

The light from a candle reflected in his eyes. “You are kind to have done this,” I said.

“Not many call me
kind.
”

“I have another request to make,” I said, made bold by wine. “Regarding a girl named Anne-Julie de Béthisy, in the Port-Libre prison. She’s only nineteen.”
^*
A weeping Marquise de Moulins had contacted me three days earlier about about her niece, imprisoned when the girl’s family returned from Germany.

Tallien smiled. “One gets the impression your list may be long…” He leaned toward me.

I stooped suddenly to take up his sword, handed it to him. “I believe it time you fell in love,” I said.

He sighed, put a hand to his heart. “Everyone seeks my downfall.”

I laughed. He left content; I am relieved.

Thursday, October 4.

Frédéric and Princess Amalia departed this morning, quietly, before I could bid them farewell.

October 9.

This evening I received a note from Frédéric: “Alas, we’re back.”

I hurried to the Hôtel de Salm. Frédéric came to the door. He’d been weeping. “It’s hopeless. We’ll perish!”

Princess Amalia entered. She told me what had happened. They’d set out for Amiens, but at a post station near Clermont their papers had been questioned. No amount of persuasion—“Or gold,” Frédéric interjected—could persuade the station-master not to turn them over to the authorities. Fortunately, the precinct commander was more lenient and let them go, provided they returned immediately to Paris.

“And so here we are, in the gayest prison in all of Europe,” Frédéric concluded, waving an embroidered handkerchief through the air. “At least
here
we may go to the opera.”

Friday, October 12.

A military coach pulled into our courtyard this morning.

“Lieutenant Soufflet,” Agathe informed me. “He has a message from your husband.”

“From Alexandre?”

“Oui, oui.” Lieutenant Soufflet remembered to remove his hat. He seemed a boy—no more than fourteen or fifteen. “Oui,” yet again. He felt around in his pockets and handed me a letter.

I recognized Alexandre’s hand.
I can no longer trust you. I do not have to remind you of the law.

“I am to take General Beauharnais’s son back to Strasbourg with me.” Lieutenant Soufflet spoke these words resolutely, as if he had been practising.

“Eugène is to go to Strasbourg? With you?”

“Oui.”

“Now?”

“Oui, oui.”

“Surely there has been a mistake!”

I read the note again.
The law.
As the father, Alexandre could command his children back to the dangers of Paris, entrust his son on a long and perilous journey in the care of a boy, expose him to the dangers of a garrison town. I put the note in my pocket. I understood: I had no choice.

Lieutenant Soufflet and I left to fetch Eugène at the joiner’s workshop in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, where he has been serving as an apprentice, as required by the Commune. The fragrant smell of wood dust filled the room. Eugène, busy at a table at the back, did not look up.

I explained to Citoyen Quinette the purpose of my call. He called Eugène over and told him he was dismissed. Eugène looked alarmed. He enjoyed his apprenticeship more than he had ever enjoyed school.

“I will explain,” I said.

The large, official coach and the handsome team of horses impressed Eugène, as did the uniform Citoyen Soufflet was wearing, his jaunty hat and long, shiny sword. Eugène brushed the sawdust off his clothes and climbed onto the leather seat.

We returned to Rue Saint-Dominique. It took less than one half-hour to prepare. Proudly, Eugène strapped on his sword. Hortense pushed a
drawing into his haversack. I checked over the basket of foodstuffs. “No eggs?” Agathe went to see if there were any hard-cooked.

Lieutenant Soufflet was growing uneasy. It was time. It was raining so we said our farewells at the door. I feared tears, but was instead startled—and, I admit, saddened—by Eugène’s enthusiasm. He was going to join his father at the front. What could be closer to a boy’s heart?

In which we grieve for our King

November 5, 1792.

Eugène sends brief, mournful letters. Life in Strasbourg is not as he imagined. Instead of being “on the front”—in tents and around campfires, which is how he imagined it—he is enrolled in Collège Nationale, a revolutionary boarding school which he loathes even more than the aristocratic ones.

Hortense struggles over a sash she is making for him. She misses him greatly. We all do.

November 16.

I have spent most of this week interviewing applicants for a governess for Hortense. This afternoon I asked my mantua-maker if she might be interested. Her name is Marie de Lannoy, of the ancient Lannoy family of Flanders (she insists)—a homely, vain woman with claims to being an aristocrat. She chatters incessantly, but she can read and I’m desperate. As a former seamstress for the Queen, she will also be able to teach Hortense a trade, fulfilling the legal requirement. She starts next week.

Monday, November 19.

“Mademoiselle
Lannoy, s’il vous plaît.” She is stout, with a pockmarked face, buck teeth and bad breath. She has insisted on a bedchamber on the second floor, objecting to the one on the third. Already the cook is cursing,
for she sent her mutton chops back three times. No “tu” or “toi” for this lady, not even to the children, much less to Fortuné, who tried to bite her.

Agathe, our stuttering revolutionary, is the only brave soul among us. She alone refuses to be cowed, boldly addressing her as “
Citoyenne
Lannoy” and taking the liberty of bestowing upon her a vigorous fraternal embrace—much to Mademoiselle Lannoy’s obvious discomfort. I confess I was amused.

November 22.

Mademoiselle Lannoy will not speak to Agathe. “I will have nothing to do with a Jacobin,” she told me firmly.

“Must I remind you,” I told her, “my husband is a Jacobin as well as a Brigadier-General in the revolutionary army. We are a
Republican
family.”

I have insisted that she take Hortense to all the revolutionary festivals and allow her to play with the bookseller’s children. I sound more patriotic than I am, I confess, but Lannoy’s arrogance brings out the revolutionary spirit even in me.

November 18, 1792—Strasbourg

Dear Rose,

Thank you for your “olive branch”—nor do I want to quarrel. It is important in a time such as ours that all factions be eliminated. We must stand united against the Enemy, against the oppressors of Freedom.

Eugène seems to have adjusted and is showing more of a Republican spirit.

Your husband, Alexandre Beauharnais

Monday, November 26.

We’ve become a house of spies. Agathe spies on Lannoy, Lannoy on Agathe. Hortense spies on them both.

Last week Hortense informed me that Agathe sneaks out after petit déjeuner each day—and I’ve discovered that it is so. Agathe does go out,
and furtively so, around ten in the morning. An hour later she is back, her cheeks flushed, her chores undone.

Now I have discovered where it is that she goes. It’s the guillotine that draws her, across the river in the Place Louis Quinze—Place de la Révolution now—where daily crowds gather, the vendors selling lemonade, the children playing prisoner’s base, the old ladies gossiping as the heads fall.

November 29.

This morning I went to my dressmaker on Rue Saint-Honoré. It was with a sinking heart that I saw a cart approaching, three men and a woman on their way to the guillotine, one of the men a youth, really, quite young and weeping, another man doing his best to console him. Five boys were following behind the cart, dancing the farandole.