Desiree by Annemarie Selinko
After his victories Barras recalled Jean-Baptiste to Paris.
One afternoon I was sitting by the piano as usual practising the Mozart minuet which by now wasn’t going too badly when I heard the door open behind me. ‘Marie,’ I said, ‘this is my surprise for our General, the minuet. It doesn’t sound too bad now, does it?’
‘It sounds wonderful, Désirée, and it is a very great surprise for your General!’ said Jean-Baptiste’s voice, and he took me in his arms. After two kisses it was as if he had never been away.
As I was laying the table I tried to think how to tell him about our baby coming. But his eagle eye misses nothing, and quite suddenly he asked:
‘Tell me, my girl, why didn’t you write that we were going to have a son?’ He, too, never thought for a moment that we might have a daughter!
I put my hands on my hips, frowned and tried to look annoyed: ‘Because I didn’t want to trouble my preacher! You’d have been desperate at the thought that I might be forced to interrupt my education!’ I went up to him: ‘But, my dear General, you may be easy in your mind: your son may not be born yet, but he has already started his lessons in deportment with Monsieur Montel!’
Jean-Baptiste at once forbade me to take any more lessons. If he had had his way he wouldn’t have let me out of the house, so concerned was he about my health!
Although all Paris talked of nothing but the political crisis caused by the Royalists on the Right and the Jacobins on the extreme Left and feared new riots, I myself noticed very little of it. The chestnut tree blossomed white, and I sat under its broad branches sewing baby-clothes. Julie, who came every day and helped with the sewing, sat with me, hoping that I should ‘infect’ her: she wants a child so badly, and she doesn’t mind at all whether boy or girl. In the afternoon Joseph and Lucien Bonaparte came round quite often and talked at Jean-Baptiste.
Apparently Barras made an offer to Jean-Baptiste which he indignantly rejected. Barras is the only one of our five Directors who matters, and all political parties are dissatisfied with their more or less corrupt practices. Barras had the idea of exploiting this dissatisfaction, getting rid of three of his co-Directors and then carrying on the Directorate with Sieyès, an old Jacobin. As he was afraid that his projected coup d’état might lead to riots he asked Jean-Baptiste to assist him as his military adviser. This Jean-Baptiste refused. Barras, he told him, should stand by the Constitution, and if he wanted a change in it he should put it before the Assembly.
Joseph thought my husband crazy. ‘You,’ he exclaimed, ‘with the help of your troops could be the dictator of France tomorrow!’
‘Quite!’ said Jean-Baptiste calmly, ‘and I want to avoid that. You seem to forget, Monsieur Bonaparte, that I am a convinced Republican!’
‘But it might be in the interests of the Republic if in critical times a General were at the head of the Government or, at any rate, backed it up,’ said Lucien thoughtfully.
Jean-Baptiste shook his head, ‘A change in the Constitution is the business of the representatives of the people. We have two Houses: the Council of Five Hundred to which you, Lucien, belong, and the Council of Ancients to which you may one day belong when you reach the age necessary for membership. It is they who have to decide about the Constitution, but certainly not the Army or one of its Generals. However, I’m afraid we are boring the ladies. By the way, Désirée, what is that funny thing you are working on?’
‘A jacket for your son, Jean-Baptiste.’
About six weeks ago, on the 30th Prairial, Barras succeeded in inducing three of his co-Directors to retire. Now he, together with Sieyés, was the master of our Republic. The dominant parties of the Left demanded the appointment of new ministers. Our Minister to Geneva, a Monsieur Reinhart, replaced Talleyrand as Minister of Foreign Affairs, and our most famous lawyer and gourmet, Monsieur Cambacérès, took over the Ministry of Justice. But as we are involved in war on all our frontiers and can defend the Republic in the long run only if the Army is thoroughly reorganised, everything depends on the choice of the new Minister of War.
Early in the morning of the 15th Messidor a messenger appeared from the Luxembourg Palace to order Jean-Baptiste to go at once to see the two Directors. Jean-Baptiste rode away, and I sat the whole morning under the chestnut tree. I was annoyed with myself, because last night I had eaten a whole pound of cherries at one sitting, and now they were rumbling about in my stomach and making themselves more and more disagreeable. Suddenly I felt as if a knife were thrust into my body. The pain only lasted the fraction of a second, but after it had gone I sat there paralysed. Oh God, how that hurt! ‘Marie,’ I called out, ‘Marie!’
Marie came, saw me and said: ‘Up into the bedroom with you! I’ll send Fernand for the midwife!’
‘But surely, it’s only last night’s cherries!’
‘Up into the bedroom!’ Marie repeated, and pulled me up. The knife-thrust pain did not come again, and, relieved, I went upstairs. I heard Marie despatching Fernand, who had returned from Germany together with Jean-Baptiste. ‘At last he’s of some use,’ she said, coming back into the bedroom with three sheets, which she spread over the bed.
‘I’m sure it’s only the cherries,’ I said obstinately. But I hadn’t finished speaking when the knife thrust again and pierced me right through from the back. I screamed, and when the pain had passed I started to weep.
‘Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? Stop blubbering!’ Marie shouted at me. But I could tell by her face that she was sorry for me.
‘I want Julie, I want Julie!’ I wailed. Julie would pity me, and I did so want to be pitied.
Fernand arrived with the midwife and was sent straight away to Julie.
Oh that midwife! That midwife! She had examined me a few times during the last few months, and there had always been something uncanny about her. But she appeared to me like some giantess out of a tale of horror. She had powerful red arms, a broad red face and a real moustache. The weirdest thing, however, was that this female grenadier had painted her lips heavily under the moustache and wore a coquettish white lace cap on the untidy grey hair.
The giantess looked me over carefully and, I thought, contemptuously.
‘No hurry,’ she said, ‘with you it’ll take a long time.’
At the same time Marie said that she had hot water ready down in the kitchen. But the giantess said: ‘No hurry! Better put some coffee on the fire!’
‘Strong coffee, I take it? To cheer Madame up?’ inquired Marie.
‘No, to cheer me up,’ said the giantess.
An endless afternoon passed into an endless evening, the evening into an endless night. A grey dawn came and hung over the room for an eternity, then followed a burning hot morning which seemed to last for ever, then another afternoon, an evening, a night. But by then I could no longer distinguish the times of day. The knife thrust through me without interruption, and as from a great distance I heard someone scream, scream, scream. In the intervals between the thrusts all went black before my eyes. Then they poured brandy down my throat, and I was sick and could not breathe, sank back into blackness and was torn awake again into horrible pains.
Sometimes I felt that Julie was near. Someone kept wiping the perspiration from my forehead and face. My shift stuck to me, and then Marie said in her quiet voice: ‘You must help us, Eugenie, you must help us!’
Like a monster the giantess bent over me, the flickering candlelight threw her shapeless shadow against the wall. Was it the same night still or was it the next? ‘Leave me alone,’ I cried, ‘leave me alone,’ and my fists beat the air around me wildly. They all shrank back, and then Jean-Baptiste sat on my bed, held me tightly in his arms, and I put my face against his cheek. The knife was thrusting again, but Jean-Baptiste did not let go of me.
‘Why aren’t you in Paris in the Luxembourg Palace? They sent for you, didn’t they?’ I said in a strange, panting voice during a short spell of painlessness.
‘It’s night,’ he said.
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‘No, no, I am staying here now, I am now—’
I didn’t hear the rest of what he said: the knife was at work again, and a wave of immeasurable pain closed over my senses.
A moment came in which I felt actually well. The pain had ceased, and I was so weak that I couldn’t think. It felt like floating along on waves, floating along not seeing anything. But I heard. Yes, I heard! ‘Hasn’t the doctor come yet? If he isn’t here soon, it’ll be too late!’ This was spoken by a voice pitched high in excitement, a voice strange to me. But why a doctor? I was all right now, I was floating along on waves, the waves of the Seine with the many lights dancing up and down …
Someone poured burning hot, bitter-tasting coffee into my mouth. My eyes blinked, and I noticed that it was the giantess who spoke in that excited, high-pitched voice. ‘If the doctor isn’t here within a minute—’ I heard her say. Funny, I should have thought it impossible that such a mighty woman could have a voice like that. But why this fuss about the doctor? The worst was over now, wasn’t it?
But it wasn’t, it was only beginning.
I heard voices from the door. ‘Please wait in the drawing-room, your Excellency. Calm yourself, your Excellency, I assure you, your Excellency—’
Excellency, Excellency? What was an Excellency doing in my room?
‘I implore you, doctor—’ That was Jean-Baptiste’s voice. Jean-Baptiste, Jean-Baptiste, you must not go away …
The doctor gave me a camphor injection and told the giantess to prop me up by the shoulders. I had come to again and saw Julie and Marie standing on either side of the bed holding candelabra.
The doctor was a small thin man in a dark suit. I couldn’t see his face, but I saw something flashing in his hands. ‘A knife,’ I screamed, ‘he’s got a knife.’
‘No, only a forceps,’ said Marie calmly. ‘Don’t scream, Eugenie!’
But perhaps he had had a knife after all, for once again the dreadful pain pierced my body exactly as before, only faster, faster, faster still and finally without any interruption whatever till I felt that I was torn here, torn there, torn completely to pieces. I fell into a bottomless pit, and all went black again.
Coming to, I heard the giantess’s voice again, but now as coarse and indifferent as before: ‘She’ll be finished soon, Doctor Moulin.’
‘She might get through, citizeness, if only we could stop the hæmorrhage.’
Something was whimpering somewhere in the room. I should have liked so much to open my eyes, but the lids were like lead.
‘Jean-Baptiste, a son, a wonderful small son,’ sobbed Julie.
And all of a sudden I could open my eyes, wide. Jean-Baptiste had a son. Julie held a little white bundle in her arms, and Jean-Baptiste was standing next to her. ‘I didn’t know how small a small child is!’ he said in amazement, turned and came to my bed. He knelt down, took my hand and put it against his cheek. It felt unshaven and wet, yes, quite wet. So Generals too could weep?’
‘We have a wonderful son,’ he said, ‘but he is still very small.’
‘They always are, in the beginning,’ I said with difficulty.
Julie showed me the bundle. A face as red as a lobster could be seen among its white coverings. Its eyes were closed and it had an air of being offended. Perhaps it hadn’t wanted to be born?
‘I must ask everybody to leave the room. The wife of the Minister of War needs rest,’ the doctor said.
‘The wife of the Minister of War? Does he mean me, Jean-Baptiste?’
‘Yes, I became France’s Minister of War the day before yesterday.’
‘And I haven’t even congratulated you on it,’ I whispered.
‘You were busy,’ he said, and smiled.
Julie put the bundle into its cot. Only the doctor and the giantess were left with me in the room, and I fell asleep.
Oscar!
It was quite a new name to me. Os – car … Really and truly, it didn’t sound too bad. It was supposed to be a Nordic name, this Oscar, and that’s what we called our son.
It was Napoleon’s idea. He wanted to be godfather. The name Oscar occurred to him because he was reading the Celtic songs of Ossian in his desert tent. When one of Joseph’s talkative letters to Napoleon reached him with the news of my pregnancy, he wrote back: ‘If it is a son Eugenie must call him Oscar. And I want to be his godfather!’Jean-Baptiste, who, as the father, had some say in the matter after all, he didn’t mention at all. But Jean-Baptiste, when we showed him the letter, smiled.
‘We don’t want to offend your old admirer, my little girl,’ he said. ‘As far as I am concerned he can be our boy’s godfather, and Julie can represent him at the christening. The name of Oscar—’
‘It’s a dreadful name,’ said Marie, who happened to be in the room just then.
‘It’s the name of a Nordic hero,’ put in Julie, who had brought Napoleon’s letter.
‘But our son is neither Nordic nor a hero,’ I said, and looked at his tiny face in my arms. It was no longer red but yellow from jaundice. But Marie insisted that most new babies get jaundice a few days after their birth.
‘Oscar Bernadotte sounds good,’ said Jean-Baptiste, and there the matter ended as far as he was concerned. ‘In a fortnight’s time,’ he added, ‘we shall leave here, Désirée, if you agree.’
A fortnight later we were going to move into a new house. The Minister of War is obliged to live in Paris, and therefore Jean-Baptiste bought a small villa in the Rue Cisalpine, between the Rue Courcelles and the Rue du Rocher, quite close to Julie. The new house wouldn’t be much bigger than the little house in Sceaux. But at any rate it would give us, apart from our own bedroom, a proper children’s bedroom, and downstairs we would have not only a dining-room but also a reception room, so that Jean-Baptiste would have somewhere to entertain the officials and politicians who often come to him in the evening. Up till now our social life has gone on in the dining-room.
I myself am now on top of the world. Marie cooks all my favourite dishes, and I am no longer so dreadfully feeble. I can even sit up in bed without any help. Unfortunately, however, I have too many visitors, and that is rather a strain. Josephine called and even Madame Tallien and that authoress with a face like a full moon, Madame de Staël, whom I only know very casually. Besides, Joseph solemnly handed me a novel he has written which makes him feel like a great writer. Its name is Moïna or The peasant girl from Saint-Denis, and it is so boring and sentimental that every time I start reading it I fall asleep. But Julie never stops asking me: ‘Isn’t it wonderful?’
I know, of course, that all the visits are not meant for me personally nor for my son Oscar but for the wife of the War Minister. This moon-faced woman Madame de Staël, who, by the way, is the wife of the Swedish Minister but doesn’t live with him, this Madame de Staël told me that France at last had found the man to put her affairs in order, and that everybody regarded Jean-Baptiste as the real head of the Government.
I read Jean-Baptiste’s Proclamation which on the day of his appointment he addressed ‘To the Soldiers of France!’ It was so beautiful that I cried as I read it. ‘I have seen your dreadful privation,’ Jean-Baptiste said in it, ‘and I need not ask you whether you know that I have shared it. I swear to you that I shall not give myself a moment’s rest till I have found for you your bread, your clothing and your arms. And you, comrades, you will swear to me that you are going to defeat once again the dreadful coalition against France. We shall stand by the oaths we are taking.’
When Jean-Baptiste comes home at eight o’clock in the evening from the Ministry he eats his meal by my bedside, and then he goes to his study, where he dictates to his secretary till deep into the night. And at six o’clock in the morning he is on his way again to the Rue de Varennes where the War Office is housed at the moment. I know from Fernand that the camp bed down in Jean-Baptiste’s study is quite often not used at all. I think it awful that my husband is su
If Jean-Baptiste could at least be left alone in the evenings when he wants to work at home! But there are always people coming and going. Jean-Baptiste told me only yesterday that the representatives of all the parties are doing their best to get him to support their side.
One evening, just as, weary and exhausted, he was gobbling down his evening meal, Fernand announced that ‘a Monsieur Chiappe’, who didn’t want to say what he had come for, was waiting downstairs. Jean-Baptiste rose hurriedly and ran down to get rid of this mysterious Monsieur Chiappe. After a quarter of an hour he was back in our room, his face red with fury.
‘This Chiappe,’ he said, ‘has been sent to me by the Duc d’Enghien. The cheek of it! What Bourbon impudence!’
‘And who is the Duc d’Enghien, if I may ask?’
‘Louis de Bourbon Condé, Duc d’Enghien. He is the ablest member of the Bourbon family, works for the British and is somewhere in Germany. If I seize power and give France back to the Bourbons they want to make me Constable of France and goodness knows what else. The impudence of it!’
‘And what did you answer?’
‘I threw him out. And told him to tell his chiefs that I am a convinced Republican.’
‘Everybody says that it’s you who really governs France now. Could you overthrow the Directors and become Director yourself, if you wanted to?’ I asked cautiously.