Désirée (22 page)

On the floor above there's a beautiful bedroom with a tiny dressing room. Jean-Baptiste had the attic rebuilt into two small bedrooms for Marie and Fernand. Of course I brought my Marie and Jean-Baptiste his Fernand.

Mama wanted to take Marie with her to Genoa, but Marie refused to go. She said nothing about her plans for the future, but rented a single room in Marseilles and supported herself by cooking on special occasions for people who were proud to employ "Mme Clary's former cook." Though Marie never said so in her letters, I knew that she was waiting in Marseilles. The day after my engagement I wrote her a short note; "I am engaged to the General B. of the Bridge, the one I told you about. We'll be married as soon as he finds a suitable
house. If I know him, he will find this house within twenty-four hours. When can you come to me?" I got no answer to this letter. A week later Marie was in Paris.

"How do you think your Marie and my Fernand will get on together?" Jean-Baptiste asked.

"Who is your Fernand?" I asked uneasily.

It seems that Fernand comes from Pau, Jean-Baptiste's home town in Gascony, that they were schoolmates, and then joined the Army at the same time. Jean-Baptiste got one promotion after another, but Fernand was always on the verge of being thrown out altogether. Fernand is small and fat; and whenever he had to march, his feet hurt; and every time an attack was ordered, Fernand had a stomach-ache. So of course he couldn't do anything and it was all very unpleasant for him. Nevertheless, he wanted to remain a soldier to be near Jean-Baptiste. He has a passion for polishing boots and can get the worst grease spots off a uniform, like magic. Two years ago Fernand was honourably discharged from the Army and now devotes his full time to the boots, grease spots and every last wish of Jean-Baptiste.

" I am my General's valet and former schoolmate," he said when he was presented to me.

Fernand and Marie immediately began to quarrel. Marie claimed that Fernand stole food from the pantry, while Fernand accused Marie of taking his shoe brushes—he has twenty-four of them—and the General's laundry, which she had decided to wash without asking him.

The first time I saw our little house I said to Jean-Baptiste, I must write Etienne to send you my dowry right away."

Jean-Baptiste's nostrils quivered in contempt. "What do you take me for? Do you think I would furnish my home with my bride's money?"

But Joseph used Julie's dowry—" I began.

" Please don't compare me with the Bonapartes," he said sharply. But then he put his arm lovingly around me and laughed. "Little girl, little girl—today Bernadotte can afford to buy you only a doll's house in Sceaux! But if you crave a castle, well . . ."

I quickly exclaimed, "Oh, please—not that! Promise me that we'll never have to live in a castle."

With horror I recalled the long months in those Italian palaces, and also that Bernadotte was called "the coming man." His gold epaulettes glittered dangerously.

"Promise me: never a castle!" I implored.

He looked at me. "We belong together, Désirée," he said and he was no longer smiling. "In Vienna I lived in a palace of sorts. Tomorrow I could be at the front, camping in the open. Day after tomorrow my headquarters may be in a castle and I would, of course, ask you to join me. Would you refuse?"

We were standing under the big chestnut tree in our future garden. We would be married soon, and then I would try to be a good housewife; to make the house attractive, the rooms tidy, and keep it neat. I wanted to belong here— in this tiny house, in this garden with the old chestnut tree and the neglected flowerbeds. But now the picture was spoiled by memories of ghostly, high-ceilinged halls, spurs clanking on marble tiles, and lackeys in everyone's way.

"Would you refuse?" Jean-Baptiste repeated.

"We will be very happy here," I whispered.

"Would you refuse?" he persisted.

I put my cheek on his shoulder; by this time I was used to the gold epaulettes scratching my face. "I will never refuse," I said, "but I would not be happy."

On the morning of my wedding day, Marie and I were kneeling in front of the kitchen cupboards, putting away the white china, decorated with tiny flowers, that Jean-Baptiste and I had picked out together. Marie asked, "Are you excited, Eugénie?"

A few hours later, while Julie's maid was curling my unruly hair with an iron, in an effort to arrange it in Josephine-ring- lets, Julie said, "I think it's funny that you don't seem a bit excited."

I shook my head. Excited? Since that wretched moment in the dark carriage, when Jean-Baptiste's hand embodied all the warmth in my life, I should have known that I belonged to him. In a few hours I would sign a piece of paper at the
Sceaux Registry Office and thereby confirm what seems so right. No, I was not excited in the least.

The ceremony was followed by the dinner party at Julie's it which I was so bored.

Except for a toast to the bridal couple, launched by my perspiring uncle Somis, and a passionate outburst from our orator, Lucien Bonaparte, in honour of two "children of the Revolution—he meant Jean-Baptiste and me—the conversation was chiefly about Napoleon's Egyptian campaign. Joseph was determined to convince my poor Jean-Baptiste, who already is sick of the subject, that the conquest of Egypt is fresh proof of Napoleon's genius. And Lucien, who envisions his brother Napoleon proclaiming the Rights of Man all over the world, supported Joseph.

"I think it's impossible," Jean-Baptiste said, "for us to hold Egypt for long. The English also believe we can't, and that's why they refuse to involve themselves in our colonial war."

But Napoleon has already conquered Alexandria and Cairo," Joseph insisted, "and won the Battle of the Pyramids."

"That doesn't worry the English particularly. After all, Egypt is under Turkish rule. The English consider our troops on the Nile a temporary danger."

The enemy casualties were twenty thousand in the Battle of the Pyramids; ours less than fifty. Magnificent," Joseph declared.

Jean-Baptiste shrugged his shoulders. "Magnificent? The glorious French Army, commanded by their brilliant General Bonaparte and equipped with modern heavy artillery, killed twenty thousand half-naked Africans, who didn't even have shoes on their feet. I would call it a magnificent victory of cannon over spears and bows and arrows!"

Lucien opened his mouth to contradict, but changed his mind. His blue, childishly radiant eyes clouded. "Perished in the name of the Rights of Man," said he, finally.

"The end justifies the means. Napoleon will drive deeper into
Africa and drive the English from the Mediterranean," Joseph declared.

The English have no idea of fighting us on land. Why
should they? After all, they have their fleet; and not even you will deny that the English fleet is far superior to ours. And as soon as they have destroyed our ships which carried Bonaparte's armies to Egypt—" Jean-Baptiste looked around the table. "Don't you see what's in the cards? Every hour, the French Army is in greater danger of being cut off from the Motherland; when this happens, your brother and his— victorious—regiments will be caught in the desert like mice in a trap. This Egyptian campaign is a wild gamble and the stake is too high for our Republic!"

I realized that Joseph and Junot would immediately write Napoleon that my husband had called him a gambler. What I didn't yet know, and what no one in Paris would have believed, was that exactly sixteen days ago the English fleet under the command of a certain Admiral Nelson, had attacked the whole French Fleet in the Bay of Aboukir and practically destroyed it. And that General Bonaparte was desperately trying to establish contact with France, while he paced restlessly up and down in front of a tent and realized that he and his troops might die there in the burning desert sand. Surely, on the night of my wedding, no one suspected that Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte had predicted precisely what had already happened.

I yawned for the second time—it's not quite the thing for a bride to do; but, after all, I'd never been married before so how could I know how a bride should behave—anyway, I yawned and Jean-Baptiste got up and said quietly, "It's late, Désirée. We must go home."

It sounded so intimate—"We must go home." 'Way down the table those schoolgirls, Caroline and Hortense, nudged each other and giggled. My jovial uncle Somis winked at me confidentially and patted my cheek when I said good night. "Don't be afraid, my child. Bernadotte won't bite off your head."

We drove to Sceaux in an open carriage through the hot, still, summer night. The stars and a round yellow moon seemed close enough to touch, and it seemed quite appropriate that we lived in the rue de la Lune. When we reached our
house, we found the dining room all lighted up. Tall candles shone out from the heavy silver candlesticks Josephine had given us from herself and Napoleon for a wedding present. A gleaming white damask cloth, champagne glasses, a dish of grapes, peaches, and marzipan cakes were on the table; and in the wine cooler, a bottle of champagne. We saw no one, and the house was silent.

"Marie did it," I said delightedly.

But Jean-Baptiste said, "No, it was Fernand."

"But I know Marie's marzipan cakes," I insisted, as one melted in my mouth.

Jean-Baptiste warily examined the champagne bottle. "If we drink any more tonight," he said, "we'll both have horrible headaches in the morning."

I nodded and opened the door to the garden. In wafted the fragrance of fading roses; sharp-etched chestnut leaves were rimmed with silver. Behind me, Jean-Baptiste blew out the tall candles.

Our bedroom was pitch-dark; but I groped my way to the
window, pulled the curtains aside, and let in the silver moonlight.
I heard Jean-Baptiste go into the next room and bustle abo
ut in there. Probably he wants to give me time to undress a
nd go to bed, I thought, and appreciated his thoughtfulness.

I quickly slipped off my dress and went over to the big double
bed where my nightgown was laid out on the silk coverlet. I p
ut on the nightgown, slid under the blanket—and shrieked.

"For God's sake, Désirée—what's wrong?" Jean-Baptiste sto
od beside the bed.

"I don't know, something stabbed me." I moved. "Ouch— there it is again!"

Jean-Baptiste lit a candle, I sat up and threw back the blanket:
Roses!
Roses and more roses—with sharp thorns! What idiot—?" exclaimed Jean-Baptiste while we both gaped in astonishment at the bed of roses. I began to collect them; Jean-Baptiste spread out the wide blanket. I kept fishing more roses out of the bed.

"Undoubtedly Fernand," I said. "He wanted to surprise us."

" You're unfair to the lad; it was your Marie, of course,"
Jean-Baptiste replied immediately. "Roses—I ask you, roses in a soldier's bed!"

The roses I had fished out of the soldier's bed were now strewn on the night table, and their fragrance filled the room. Suddenly I realized that Jean-Baptiste was looking at me and that I had only a nightgown on. I quickly sat down on the bed and said, "I'm cold, give me the blanket." With that he dropped the blanket completely over me. I almost suffocated but I stuck my nose out, closed my eyes tight, and didn't see him blow out the candle.

Next morning we discovered that Marie and Fernand had finally agreed about something: It was their joint idea, to decorate our bridal bed with roses; and, in complete accord, they had both forgotten the thorns.

Jean-Baptiste had taken two months' leave so that he could spend the first few weeks of our marriage with me undisturbed. But the moment we heard about the destruction of our fleet at Aboukir, he had to report every morning at the Luxembourg Palace and take part in the directors' consultations with the Minister of War.

He had rented a stable near our little house and kept two saddle horses there; and whenever I think now of my honeymoon, I always see myself, late every afternoon, standing at the garden gate waiting for Jean-Baptiste. When I heard the distant
clop-clop-clop
of horses' hooves, my heart beat faster because I knew that any minute Jean-Baptiste would appear on the good-natured brown horse or the unfriendly sorrel, that I was actually married to him for always—and not dreaming. . . . Ten minutes later we would sit under the chestnut tree drinking coffee, and Jean-Baptiste would tell me the news —which wouldn't be published in the
Moniteur
for a day or two—and other things which, "for God's sake," I "mustn't mention." And I blinked contentedly at the sinking sun and played with the big shiny chestnuts that had fallen on the grass.

The defeat at Aboukir was like a signal to the enemies of our Republic. Russia started arming; and the Austrians, who only
a short time before had apologized to our Government for their insult to our flag in Vienna—those same Austrians were on the march again. They were approaching our frontiers from Switzerland and northern Italy. The Italian States under French rule, which Napoleon had so
proudly set up, welcomed the Austrians with open arms; and our generals retreated in a panic.

One afternoon Jean-Baptiste came home unusually late.

"They have given me the supreme command in Italy; I've been ordered to stop the rout of our troops and at least hold Lombardy," he told me as he jumped from his horse.