Désirée (45 page)

"Marie, the Emperor's youngest brother has become a king!"

"Now he can eat too much every day, if no one's watching him," Marie said. Colonel Moulin stared at her in horror. It was not the first
lèse-majesté
she'd committed in his presence. I dropped the old number of the
Moniteur
out of the carriage window to flutter over the recent battlefields.

In our new home in the rue d'Anjou
in Paris. July, 1809

The church bells woke me up. Tiny dust particles danced in the rays of the sun, slanting into the room through the close shutters. It was awfully hot although it was still very early. I tossed off the covers, crossed my hands behind my head and remembered. The bells of Paris. . . .

Perhaps it's the birthday of one of the many kings in the Bonaparte family. Napoleon has, of course, allowed all his relatives to rule something. Joseph, incidentally, isn't King of Naples any more but of Spain. Julie has been on her way to Madrid for months. Literally months.

The Spaniards wanted no part of Joseph so they ambush his troops, encircled and annihilated them. Therefore, instead of King Joseph, the opposition entered Madrid. At which point the Emperor dispatched fresh troops to rescue Joseph's people from these misguided patriots. Murat, however, is ruling peacefully in Naples with Caroline. That is, Caroline is ruling since Murat is also a marshal and finds himself constantly at some front.

Caroline doesn't bother much with her kingdom or her son. She prefers to visit Elisa, Napoleon's oldest sister, who rules in Tuscany, gets fatter every year and at the moment is having an affair with a court musician, a certain Paganini. Julie told me all about it when she spent a few weeks here before leaving for Spain so she could have some new clothes made. Purplish-red, of course, to please Joseph. The church , bells. . . .

Which Bonaparte could be having a birthday? Not King Jéröme, nor Eugène de Beauharnais, Viceroy of Italy. That
backward young man has changed since his marriage.
Napoleon married him to a daughter of the King of Bavaria,
and Eugène now opens his mouth occasionally in society. I
suppose Eugène is happy.

Again the bells. The deep voice of Notre-Dame. When is
King Louis's birthday? He'll probably last forever, he only imagines he's sick. Except for his flat feet he's perfectly healthy. Napoleon has taken good care of this brother from the very beginning. Put him in the Army so he'd have a profession, then appointed him his aide, and married him to his stepdaughter Hortense. Finally he installed dear old Louis on the Dutch throne— What do they call the Dutch adherents who persist in rebelling against Louis and his troops? Oh, yes, Saboteurs—because they wear "sabots," shoes made of wood like our fishermen's in Marseilles. They hate Louis mainly because Napoleon made him King of Holland. They couldn't possibly know that Louis can't stand his brother. Louis closes both eyes when merchant ships secretly leave his home port for England. Actually Louis is a super-saboteur when it comes to annoying Napoleon. Napoleon should at least have allowed him to choose his own wife. Who was just talking about Louis to me? Paulette, yes, Paulette. The only Bonaparte who doesn't care a fig for politics, but only for her amusement and her lovers. On Paulette's birthday no bells are rung. Nor on Lucien's. Lucien is still in exile, although Napoleon offered him the Spanish crown. Naturally, on condition that he leave his red-haired Mme Jouberthou. Lucien sensibly ducked that and tried to take his family to America. But en route his ship was captured by the English. Now Lucien lives as an "enemy alien" in England. Always watched but still—free. He recently wrote just that to his mother in a letter he had smuggled into France. And that's Lucien who once helped Napoleon to the Consulate to save the Republic of France. Lucien, the blue-eyed idealist. No bells for Lucien. . . .

The door opened a crack. "I thought the bells might have wakened you. I'll have your breakfast brought up," Marie said.

"Why are the bells ringing, Marie?"

"Why are they ever rung? The Emperor has won a great victory."

"Where? When? Is there anything in the paper?"

"I'll send you your breakfast and your reader," said Marie. "No, first your breakfast, then the fine young lady who reads to you."

Marie is always amused because, like the other court ladies, I must employ the young daughter of an old impoverish aristocratic family to read the
Moniteur
and novels to me. I'd rather read them alone and in bed. The Emperor insists that we marshals' wives be waited on as if we were all eighty yean old. I am twenty-nine.

Yvette brought my morning chocolate. She opened the windows and sun and the fragrance of roses filled the room, although I've only three rosebushes. The garden here is very small, the house is right in the city. Most of Moreau's furniture we found here I gave away and bought some new— white-gold, luxurious, terribly expensive. In the salon there was a bust of the former owner. At first I didn't exactly know what I ought to do with it. I couldn't leave it in the salon. Our friend Moreau is unfortunately in disgrace these days. But I didn't want to throw it out. I finally put it in the hall.

In the salon opposite I had to hang a portrait of the Emperor. I succeeded in getting a copy of the portrait showing Napoleon as First Consul. In it the face of God's image on earth is thin and tense as before in Marseilles. The hair is long and tangled the way it was then, and the eyes are neither hard as glass nor unnaturally glittering. The eyes lost in thought but intelligent have a faraway look, and the mouth is that of the youthful Napoleon who once leaned against a summer hedge and said that there were men destined to make world history.

The bells. . . . They still give one a headache, although we're well used to victory chimes. "Yvette," I asked between two sips of chocolate, "what have we won, where, when?"

"At Wagram, Princess, on the fourth and fifth of July."

"Send in Mademoiselle and Oscar."

The child and my reader came at the same time. I arranged
my pillows, and Oscar sat beside me. "Mademoiselle will read to us from the
Moniteur,
We've had another victory."

That's how Oscar and I learned a great battle had been fought at Wagram near Vienna. An Austrian army of seventy thousand men was completely destroyed. Only fifteen hundred Frenchmen were killed and three thousand wounded. Details followed. The names of most of the marshals were given. Jean-Baptiste wasn't mentioned. And yet I knew that he and his troops were in Austria. Napoleon had given him command of all the Saxon regiments in his army.

"If only nothing terrible has happened."

"But, Princess, I've just been reading that it was a very great victory," Mademoiselle assured me.

"Isn't there anything about Papa in the paper?" asked Oscar.

Mademoiselle studied the report again. "No, nothing at all," she said finally. At that moment there was an urgent knock at the door. Mme la Flotte poked her bewitchingly painted face in.

"Princess, His Excellency, Minister Fouché, begs to be received!"

Police Minister Fouché had never before called on me. The victory bells are silent at last. Perhaps I misunderstood Mme la Flotte.

"Whom did you announce?"

"M. Fouché! His Excellency, the Minister of Police," Mme la Flotte repeated. She tried to seem casual, but her pop eyes practically rolled out of her head from excitement.

"Run along, Oscar, I must dress quickly. Yvette-Yvette!" Yvette was already beside me with the lilac-coloured day dress. Yvette is right, lilac looks well on me. "Mme la Flotte, show His Excellency into the little salon."

"I have already taken him to the little salon."

"Mademoiselle—go down and ask His Excellency to wait a minute. I'm still dressing, but I'll soon be ready. Tell him that. Or no—tell him nothing. Give him the
Moniteur
to read."

A smile flitted across Mme la Flotte's pretty face. "Princess,
the Minister of Police reads the
Moniteur
before it goes to press. It's part of his job."

"Yvette, we have no time to fix my hair. Get me the rose-coloured muslin scarf, tie it like a turban around my head."

The La Flotte and the reader vanished.

"Mme la Flotte—" There she was again. "Tell me, does this turban make me look like poor Mme de Staël? The author, the one the Minister of Police banished from Paris?"

"Princess, the De Staël is pug-faced and the Princess isn't."

"Thank you, Mme la Flotte. Yvette, I can't find my rouge."

"In a drawer of the dressing table. The Princess uses it so seldom."

"Yes, because I'm already too rosy-cheeked for a princess. Princesses are pale. It's more genteel. But right now I am too pale. Is it really so hot today or is it just me?"

"It's very hot, Princess. It's always hot in Paris in midsummer," Yvette said.

With which I went reluctantly downstairs. Fouché— Someone called him the bad conscience of the nation. People fear him because he knows too much. During the Revolution, they named him "Bloody Fouché," because no other deputy signed so many death sentences. He finally got too bloodthirsty for even Robespierre.

Fouché has his own idea of the responsibilities of a Minister of Police. Offices and ministries, officials and ministers, officers and civilians all come under his observation. This is not too difficult if one's generous. And the Minister of Police has a secret fund out of which he pays his spies. Who is in his pay? Or rather—who is not?

"What does he want from me?" I asked myself for the last time as I stood at the door of my little salon. The mass-murderer of Lyons, Etienne had called him when the death sentences he'd ordered in Lyons during the Revolution were discussed. How silly to think of that now. He doesn't look a bit like a murderer. I met him often at receptions in the Tuileries. Fouché is always carefully turned out and strikingly pale. Probably anemic. He speaks courteously and softly with his eyes half-closed. . . . The communiqué doesn't mention
Jean-Baptiste, I know perfectly well what's happened. But I have no guilty conscience, M. Fouché! I'm just worried, terribly worried.

When I came in he jumped right up. "I come to congratulate you, Princess—we've won a great victory, and I read that the Prince of Ponte Corvo and his Saxon troops were the first to storm Wagram. I also read that the Prince, with seven— nearly eight thousand soldiers beat back forty thousand men to do so."

"Yes, but—there was nothing about it in the paper," I stammered, and asked him again to be seated.

"I only said that I had read it, dear Princess, not where I read it. No, it's not in the newspaper, but in an Order of the Day your husband addressed to his Saxon troops, praising them for their valour."

Fouché paused, selected a piece of candy from a Dresden china box on a little table between us. He looked at the box thoughtfully. "Incidentally, I have read something else. The copy of a letter from His Majesty to the Prince of Ponte Corvo, in which the Emperor expresses his complete disagreement with the Prince's Order of the Day. His Majesty explains that this Order contains many things contrary to fact. For instance, Oudinot seized Wagram, and the Prince of Ponte Corvo could not possibly have been the first to storm the town. Furthermore the Saxons under your husband's command could hardly have distinguished themselves since they did not fire a single shot. In conclusion the Emperor made the statement that the Prince of Ponte Corvo is to be informed that in this campaign he in no way distinguished himself."

"That— Has the Emperor written that to Jean-Baptiste?" I asked, considerably upset.

Fouché carefully put the bonbon dish back on the table. No doubt about that. A copy of his letter was enclosed in a note to me. I have received an order to—" Again that ominous pause. He looked me right in the eye, in what I suppose he thought was a friendly way. "—to watch the movements of the Prince of Ponte Corvo and censor his correspondence."

"That will be difficult, Your Excellency. My husband is still with his troops in Austria."

"You are mistaken, dear Princess. The Prince of Ponte Corvo is expected momentarily in Paris. After this exchange of letters with the Emperor, he resigned command of his troops and, because of his health, requested leave. Leave for indefinite period has been granted him, I congratulate you, Princess. You haven't seen your husband for a long time am in a very short time he'll be here."

Why not play out the comedy? That's what they all do. What can you lose? "May I think a moment?"

He looked amused. "Think about what, honoured Princess?"

I put my hand to my head. "Everything. I'm not very clever. Your Excellency—please don't contradict—I must think about what's happened. You say that my husband writes his Saxon troops distinguished themselves—is that right?"

"They faced the enemy bold as brass. At least so the Prince wrote in his Order of the Day."

"And why does this annoy the Emperor?"

"In a secret circular letter to all his marshals, the Emperor explained, 'His Majesty the Emperor personally commands his troops, and it is his prerogative to praise any of them. Besides, our French Army is responsible for our victories and not any foreign troops. It would not otherwise be consistent with our politics or our honour.' Anyway, that's the way it went in the Emperor's letter to the marshals."