Désirée (78 page)

"You came to say good-by and to suggest—" I kept my voice under control. "Tell me what you have to say to me. But say it quickly, or I'll go mad."

He looked at me in bewilderment. "It's not important. I
wanted to drive with you once more through the streets of Paris. For the last time, Désirée."

"For—the last time?" I whispered.

At first I hadn't heard right. And then I began to weep.

"What's the matter, Désirée? Don't you feel well?",

"I thought—you wanted—a divorce," I sobbed, and threw back the bedclothes. "And now I'll dress quickly, and we'll drive through the streets, Jean-Baptiste, together."

The carriage rolled along beside the Seine. It was an open carriage. I put my head on Jean-Baptiste's shoulder, and felt his arm around me. The lights of Paris danced in the dark water. Jean-Baptiste had the carriage stop. We got out and strolled, arm in arm, over "our bridge," and leaned over the parapet.

"It's always the same," I said sadly. "I make a scene. First in the Tallien's salon, later in the Queen of Sweden's. Forgive me, Jean-Baptiste."

"I don't care for myself. I'm only sorry for your sake."

The same words as before. Other words of our first conversation came back to me, and I asked: "Don't you know General Bonaparte personally?"

"Yes, I do not find him attractive," he answered, as he had so long ago.

I leaned forward and spoke to the dancing lights, " I've earned my way, mademoiselle—I joined the Army when I was fifteen, and for a long time I was a noncommissioned officer. At present, mademoiselle, I am a divisional general. My name is Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte. For many years I have saved part of my pay, I can buy a small house for you and the child. . . .' That's what you once said, do you remember?"

"Of course. But I'd rather know how you envisage your own future, Désirée."

At first I stuttered. Then it came more easily. "If you believe it would be better for you and Oscar to divorce me, and marry a princess—then, get a divorce. I make only one condition."

"And that?",

"That I become your mistress, Jean-Baptiste."

"Out of the question. I'm not going to start keeping mistresses at the Swedish court! Besides, I can't afford a mistress, little girl. You'll just have to remain my wife, Désirée, whatever happens!"

Our Seine rippled beneath us. It was like music, like a sweet waltz. "And what if the worst happens—if you become King?"

"Yes, darling, even if I become King."

We sauntered back to the carriage. "Perhaps you could do me a favour, and refrain from selling silk personally," he remarked. Notre-Dame loomed up before us. "Stop." Jean-Baptiste stared up at the Cathedral, his mouth open as if he wanted to drink in the sight. Then he closed his eyes to impress it indelibly on his memory.

"Drive on."

"I'll have Pierre collect my share of the Clary firm's profits regularly," I said. "Pierre will stay with me as steward of my household. I'll appoint Marius Clary my equerry, and Marcelline Tascher a lady-in-waiting. I want to let La Flotte go."

"Are you pleased with Count Rosen?"

"Personally, yes, but for business, no."

"What does that mean?"

"The Count can't even tie up a package. I took him with me to the warehouse originally only to deal with the Prussians —the Prussians were naturally looting, right under our noses. But since we had no apprentice at the time, Rosen . . ."

"Désirée! You can't change Dragoon Lieutenant County Rosen into an apprentice!"

"Well, perhaps you could send me an aide who isn't a born count. Aren't there any parvenus at the Swedish court?"

"Only the Bernadottes," laughed Jean-Baptiste. "And Baron Wetterstedt, but he's Chancellor and I need him myself."

Jean-Baptiste leaned forward and called out an address to the coachman. We drove to Sceaux to see our first home again.

The stars were very near. Behind the garden wall the lilacs were in bloom. "I travelled this road twice a day as Minister
of War," he said, and then, "When may I expect you in Stockholm, My Royal Highness?"

"Not yet." His epaulettes scratched my cheek. "The next few years will be hard enough for you. I don't want to make your life still more difficult. You know how ill-suited I am for the Swedish court."

He looked at me intently. "Do you mean to say, Désirée, that you're not going to adapt yourself to Swedish court ceremonial?"

"When I come, I'll decide all questions of etiquette myself," I said slowly. The carriage stopped at No. 3 rue de la Lune in Sceaux. Strangers live in our little house. I thought—Oscar was born upstairs there.

At that moment Jean-Baptiste said, "Imagine, Oscar already has to shave. Twice a week." We saw that the old chestnut tree in the garden had candle blossoms.

On the way home we felt so close to one another that we didn't talk at all. As the carriage drove into the rue d'Anjou, Jean-Baptiste spoke for the first time. "You have no other reasons for staying here? Really not?"

"Yes, Jean-Baptiste. Here I'm needed. There I'm superfluous. I must help Julie."

"I defeated Napoleon at Leipzig. But even so, I can't get rid of the Bonapartes."

"I'm thinking of the Clarys," I said sorrowfully. "Please— don't forget that."

The carriage stopped for the last time. Everything happened terribly fast. Jean-Baptiste got out of the carriage with me, and looked at the house. Attentively, silently. The two sentries presented arms. I held out my hand to Jean-Baptiste. The sentries were watching.

"Whatever rumours you read in the newspaper—" he drew my hand to his lips—"don't believe them, understand?"

"Too bad! I would so love to be your mistress—ouch!" Jean-Baptiste had bitten me on the finger.

The sentries, unfortunately, were watching.

Paris, Whitmonday, May 30, 1814
Late in the evening

To me there's nothing more disagreeable than making calls of condolence, especially on a lovely Whitmonday.

Yesterday evening a weeping ex-lady-in-waiting from Malmaison was announced. Josephine had died on Whitsunday noon. Recently, she'd caught a heavy cold taking an evening walk on the arm of the Tsar in the park at Malmaison. "The evening was quite cool, but Her Majesty absolutely refuse to wear a wrap. Her Majesty wore a new muslin gown, very décolleté, with only a very light transparent scarf."

I remember that muslin, Josephine, too light for a May evening. Violet, wasn't it? Sweet, melancholy, and so becoming.

Hortense and Eugène de Beauharnais lived with their mother. The ex-lady-in-waiting handed me a note. "Bring the children with you, my one comfort," Hortense had scrawled among other messages, all generously interspersed with dashes and exclamation marks.

So this morning, with Julie and the two sons of the former Queen of Holland, I drove to Malmaison. We tried to make the boys realize that their grandmother was dead.

"Perhaps she's not actually dead. Perhaps she's merely letting the Allies think she's dead, so she can secretly join Napoleon in Elba," Charles Louis Napoleon suggested. In the Bois de Boulogne the breeze blew a whiff of summer and of lindens into the carriage. It seemed incredible that Josephine should be dead.

In Malmaison, we found Hortense in deep black mourning, her face pale green and her nose red from crying. Solemnly
she flung herself first into my arms and then into Julie's. Eugène de Beauharnais sat at a lady's tiny desk riffling through some papers. He's the erstwhile shy young man whom Napoleon appointed Viceroy of Italy, and for whom he arranged a marriage with a daughter of the King of Bavaria. He bowed stiffly over our hands. Then pointed to the pile of papers on the desk and sighed. "Unbelievable—stacks of unpaid bills. For gowns, hats, and rosebushes."

Hortense's mouth was thin. "Mama never could get along on her allowance."

"Besides the two million the State paid her every year after
the divorce, Napoleon gave her one million from his civil list.
And nevertheless—" Eugène smoothed his hair despairingly.
"Hortense, these debts run into millions, I'd like to know who
will pay them."

"The ladies aren't interested in that," Hortense said, and begged us to sit down. Stiff and silent we sat on Josephine's white salon sofa. The folding doors to the garden were open, and the fragrance of Josephine's roses wafted in.

"The Tsar of Russia came to pay Mama his respects, and Mama asked him for supper." Hortense dabbed at her now-dry eyes with her handkerchief. "I assume she wanted to ask him to protect my poor defenceless children. You know that I'm now divorced?"

We nodded politely. Hortense's lover, Count Flahault, came in. Their illegitimate son is being brought up by a Count Morny. Eugène de Beauharnais wrestled with the unpaid bills of the dead Josephine. "Mama seems not to have paid Le Roy for months. Yet she ordered twenty-six new gowns. I can't see why Mama, living in retirement, needed twenty-six gowns." He stared at the bills. His sister shrugged her shoulders contemptuously; her handkerchief hid her mouth. The one man Hortense de Beauharnais ever really loved had married her mother.

"Do you want to see her?" Hortense asked sternly.

Julie shook her head firmly. "Yes," said I, without thinking.

"Count Flahault. Take Her Royal Highness upstairs."

We went up one flight. "The dear departed is still in her
bedroom," he whispered. "Here—please come in, Highness."

The tall candles burned without flickering. The shutters were closed tight. The room was permeated with incense, roses, and Josephine's heavy perfume. Gradually my eyes became accustomed to the semidarkness. Like huge black birds, the nuns knelt at the foot of the wide, low bed, and murmured prayers for the dead.

At first I shrank from looking at the dead woman. But I pulled myself together and went closer. I recognized the coronation robe which lay in gentle folds across the bed. Like a comfortable, warm coverlet. The ermine-lined cape around her breast and shoulders gleamed yellow in the candlelight, yellow like the face of the dead Josephine.

No—Josephine didn't frighten me. Nor make me want to weep. . . . Her small head lay a little to one side. Just as she often held it when she looked up at a man from under her long eyelashes. Her eyes were not quite closed, and shone under the veil of her eyelashes. Only her thin nose seemed strange and sharp. Sweeter than ever was the smile on her closed lips which not even in death betrayed the secret of her bad teeth. No, Josephine dead betrayed none of her secrets. For the last time her lady's maid had arranged the thinning hair of the fifty-one-year-old woman in childlike curls. Once more, silver paint on the eyelids, which would be closed forever, and rouge on the yellow cheeks, over which the candlelight played. How sweetly Josephine smiled in her eternal sleep, sweetly and coquettishly . . .

". . . and so charmingly," remarked a voice at my elbow. An old gentleman with bloated cheeks and lovely silvery hair. He seemed to have emerged from the darkness of a corner. "My name is Barras," he announced, and raised his lorgnon to his eye. "Have I had the honour of meeting madame?"

"Long ago," I said. "We met in General Bonaparte's salon. You were then a Director of the Republic, M. Barras."

He let the lorgnon drop. "That coronation robe. Josephine had me to thank for that, madame. 'You marry that little Bonaparte, I'll appoint him military governor of Paris, and everything will be arranged for you, dear—very dear Jose
phine,' I told her. As you know, madame—everything was indeed arranged for her." Barras giggled softly. "Was she close to you, madame?"

No, she only broke my heart, I thought, and I began to cry.

"A fool, this Bonaparte, a fool," the old gentleman whispered, tenderly smoothing out a crease in the purple robe. "He divorced the only woman in the world with whom a man couldn't have been bored even on a desert island."

On the ermine cape of the Empress of the French lay red roses. The warmth of the candles had wilted them, and their heavy perfume oppressed me. My knees gave way and suddenly I knelt beside Josephine's bed and buried my face in the velvet coronation robe.

"Don't cry for Josephine, madame. Josephine died as she lived. On the arm of a very powerful man who promised her one May evening among the roses at Malmaison to pay all her debts. . . . Do you hear me, dear, very dear Josephine?"

When I stood up, the old gentleman had vanished again into the darkness of his corner. Only the prayers for the dead were to be heard. So I nodded to Josephine once more. Her long eyelids seemed to flutter. She smiled sweetly, with her closed lips.

When I got downstairs, Eugène was asking Julie earnestly, "Does a dressing gown of Brussels lace with a little cap to match really cost twenty thousand francs, madame?"

I quickly walked out of the open door that led to the garden.

The sun shone so strong the air trembled. Roses bloomed in every colour. Suddenly I came upon a tiny artificial pool. On a stone bench sat a little girl watching baby ducklings swim excitedly and awkwardly behind a fat mother duck. I sat down beside the child. She had brown hair that fell in corkscrew curls to her shoulders and a white dress with a black sash. When she looked up at me sideways, my heart skipped a beat—very long eyelashes over oval eyes, a sweet, heart-shaped face. The child smiled, and she smiled with closed lips. I asked, "What's your name?"