Desiree by Annemarie Selinko
‘A court-martial! But that would have been dreadful!’
‘Why? I should have been able then to explain to some senior officers what it was really all about. I could have told them of the plans I had left with that ass, Carnot, the Minister of War. They would at least have taken notice of that. Instead of that—’ He moved away a little, and rested his head on his hands. ‘Instead of that, my plans are gathering dust in some pigeon-hole. And Carnot rests content with a precarious defence of our frontiers!’
‘What are you going to do now?’
‘They have set me free, because there is nothing against me. But those gentlemen at the Ministry don’t like me. They will send me to the dullest sector of the front, and—’
‘It’s raining,’ I said, interrupting him. Big drops were falling on my face.
‘No matter,’ he said, surprised at my mentioning it, and he told me of the horrid things they do to a General they want to be rid of. I drew in my legs and wrapped the cloak closer round me. It thundered, and a horse neighed.
‘My horse, I tied it up to your garden fence,’ he said.
It began to rain more heavily. There was a flash and a clap of thunder alarmingly close, and the horse neighed desperately. Napoleone shouted something to it.
A window opened above us. ‘Who’s there?’ Etienne shouted.
‘Come into the house,’ I whispered to Napoleone, ‘we shall be soaked.’
‘Who’s that?’ roared Etienne.
Then we heard Suzanne’s voice:
‘Shut the window, Etienne, and come over to me, I’m frightened!’
There’s somebody in the garden,’ Etienne replied, ‘I must go down and see what he’s up to.’
Napoleone went under the window. ‘Monsieur Clary, it is I, Napoleone.’
There came another flash. I saw for a moment his thin slight figure in his scanty uniform. Then it was pitch dark again, there was a crash of thunder, and the horse tugged at the reins. Now it poured in torrents.
‘Who is that?’ Etienne shouted into the rain.
‘General Buonaparte,’ Napoleone shouted back.
‘But you are in prison!’ Etienne retorted stupidly.
‘I have been set free,’ Napoleone explained.
‘But what are you doing here, General, at this hour?’
I jumped up, caught up the cloak, which came down to my ankles, and joined Napoleone.
‘Don’t stop here, it will be the death of you,’ Napoleone whispered.
‘Who are you talking to?’ Etienne shouted. The rain had abated, and now I could tell how his voice was shaking with fury.
‘He’s talking to me!’ I called back. ‘Etienne, it’s me, Eugenie!’
The rain had stopped. A very pale moon came out timidly between the clouds, and showed us Etienne in his nightcap.
A hiss came from the nightcap: ‘General, you owe me an explanation!’
Napoleone shouted up to him. He had put his arm round my shoulder. ‘I have the honour,’ he said, ‘Monsieur Clary, to request the hand of your younger sister.’
‘Eugenie, come in at once!’ Etienne ordered. Behind him we could see Suzanne’s head. It looked rather funny in its countless curlers.
‘Good night, carissima,’ said Napoleone, kissing me on my cheek, ‘until to-morrow’s wedding breakfast.’ His spurs rattled as he went along the gravel path. I slipped indoors, forgetting to give him back his cloak.
Etienne was standing at his bedroom door in his nightshirt, holding a candle. I slipped past him barefooted and wearing Napoleone’s cloak.
‘What would Papa have said!’ Etienne growled.
Julie was sitting up in bed. ‘I heard it all,’ she told me.
‘I shall have to wash my feet, they are all gritty,’ I said, taking the jug and pouring water into the basin. When I had finished I got back into bed, spreading the army cloak over the counterpane. ‘It’s his cloak,’ I said to Julie. ‘I shall have such lovely dreams under it.’
‘Madame la Générale Bonaparte,’ murmured Julie thoughtfully.
‘If I’m lucky, he will be thrown out of the army,’ I said.
‘Gracious! that would be awful!’
‘Do you think I want a husband spending all his life at the front? No, let them dismiss him! Etienne can make use of him in the firm.’
‘You’ll never get Etienne to do that!’ said Julie, snuffing out the candle.
‘I suppose you’re right,’ I said. ‘What a pity! But Napoleone is not likely to take any interest in the silk trade. Good night, Julie.’
Julie was almost late at the registrar’s office. We could not find her new gloves anywhere, and Mama declared that you can’t get married without gloves.
When Mama was young everybody was married in church, but since the Revolution people have had to go for the ceremony to the registry, and very few couples trouble to go on to a church or find one of the few priests who have sworn allegiance to the Republic. Julie and Joseph, of course, had no intention of bothering about that. Mama had been talking for days about the bridal veil she had; she would so have liked Julie to wear it. She told us, too, about the organ music you heard at a proper wedding when she was young.
Julie has put on a pink dress with real Brussels lace and red roses, and Etienne got a Paris business friend to hunt for some pink gloves for her and send them to him. Now we couldn’t find those gloves anywhere. The wedding was to be at ten o’clock, and it was not till five minutes to ten that I found the gloves under Julie’s bed. Julie rushed off with them, followed by Mama and the two witnesses.
Julie’s witnesses are Etienne and Uncle Somis. Uncle Somis is one of Mama’s brothers, and he comes to all the funerals and weddings. They found Joseph and his witnesses, Napoleone and Lucien, waiting at the registrar’s ofice.
I simply had not had time to get dressed, as I had had all the hunt for the gloves. I stood at our window and called out ‘Good luck!’ to Julie, but she didn’t hear. The carriage was covered with white roses from the garden, rather faded; it did not look at all like an ordinary hackney coach.
I had given Etienne no peace till he brought me home some sky-blue satin from the shop for a new dress. Then I insisted that Mademoiselle Lisette, our dressmaker, should not cut the skirt too full. But I’m sorry to say it’s not as close-fitting as in the Paris fashion-plates, and I’m laced round the waist and not close up under the breast like Madame Tallien in the pictures showing her as ‘Madame de Thermidor’, the goddess of the Revolution. Still, I think my new dress is wonderful, and I feel like the Queen of Sheba, when she was tricked out for King Solomon. After all, I am a fiancée too, though Etienne seems to look upon that as nothing but a troublesome midnight rumpus.
They arrived before I was really ready, I mean the guests. Madame Letitia was in dark green; her hair was simply combed back, and bunched on her neck like a countrywoman; there is not a single white hair to be seen in it.
Eliza had thick paint on her face, and looked as garish as a tin soldier; she was wearing all the ribbons she had been able to wheedle out of Etienne in the last few weeks. Polette looked very pretty in a dainty little pink muslin dress. (Heaven only knows how she got Etienne to give her that material, the most modern there is!) Louis had untidy hair and obviously felt like a fish out of water. Caroline had had her face washed, and her hair was actually in order. That dreadful child Jerome began asking for something to eat the moment he arrived. Suzanne and I gave liqueurs to those over fourteen.
Madame Letitia said she had a surprise for us all. ‘A wedding present for Julie?’ asked Suzanne, for Madame Letitia had not given Julie anything. She is dreadfully poor, but she might at least, I thought, have made something by hand.
Madame Letitia shook her head, smiled mysteriously, and said, ‘Oh no!’ We wondered what she could have brought. Then it came out: yet another of the Buonapartes! He was her stepbrother, an uncle named Fesch, only thirty years old, an ex-priest. But there is nothing of the martyr about this uncle Fes
‘Is he doing well?’ I asked. Madame Letitia shook her head. She hoped Etienne might persuade him to enter the firm of Clary.
Uncle Fesch came in a few minutes; he had a round jolly face, and was wearing a clean but shabby coat; he kissed Suzanne’s hand and mine, and praised our liqueur.
Then they all came in from the registry. The first to appear was the carriage with the faded white roses, and Julie and Joseph and Mama and Napoleone got out. In the second carriage were Etienne, Lucien, and Uncle Somis. Julie and Joseph ran up to us; Joseph threw his arms round his mother’s neck. The rest of the Buonapartes crowded round Julie; then Uncle Fesch put his arm round Mama, who had no idea who he was. Our Uncle Somis gave me a resounding kiss on my cheek and then patted Eliza. Then all the Clarys and all the Buonapartes formed such an excited cluster that Napoleone and I had a chance of a good long kiss – till somebody next to us coughed in disgust. Etienne, of course!
At the breakfast the bride and bridegroom sat between Uncle Somis and Napoleone, while I found myself squeezed in between Uncle Fesch and Lucien. Julie’s cheeks were flaming with excitement and her eyes were sparkling, and for the first time in her life she looked really pretty.
Immediately after the soup, Uncle Fesch tapped his glass, because as a former priest he felt he really must make a speech. He spoke for a long time, very solemnly and very tediously, and as he considered it politically inadvisable to mention God he gave praise to ‘Providence’. We owed to Providence, he said, this great happiness and this good meal and this harmonious gathering; we owed them all entirely to the great and beneficent rule of Providence.
Joseph winked at me and then smiled at Julie; Napoleone began to laugh. Mama’s eyes were brimming more and more the longer Uncle Fesch preached; she turned them on me, full of emotion. Etienne, too, looked at me, but wrathfully, because the Providence that had brought Joseph and Julie together, and had so intimately united the Clary and Buonaparte families, was, without any question – I, Eugenie.
After the toast, Etienne made a speech; it was brief and bad. After that we left Julie and Joseph in peace.
We had just come to Marie’s wonderful marzipan cakes with crystallised fruits on them, when Napoleone jumped up. Instead of politely tapping his glass, he thundered:
‘Attention for a moment!’
We all sat up, coming to attention like startled recruits, and Napoleone told us, in short little sentences, how happy he felt to be able to take part in that family celebration. But he owed that good fortune not to Providence, but to the Ministry of War in Paris, which had suddenly, without any explanation, released him from arrest. Then he paused, and looked at me, and I knew what was coming – and I was very worried about what Etienne might do.
‘So I will take this opportunity,’ he resumed, ‘when the Clarys and the Buonapartes are joined together in a family celebration, to tell you all that—’
His voice had dropped, but we were all so quiet that it was easy to tell that it was shaking with emotion.
‘—that last night I sued for the hand of Mademoiselle Eugenie, and that Eugenie agreed to become my wife.’
There came a storm of congratulations from the Buonapartes, and I found myself being hugged by Madame Letitia. But I looked across at Mama. Mama seemed to have had a shock; she was not at all glad. She looked away and turned to Etienne, and Etienne shrugged his shoulders.
At that moment Napoleone went up to Etienne, holding his glass, and smiled at him. It is wonderful what power Napoleone has over people; for Etienne’s thin lips parted, and he grinned and clinked glasses with Napoleone.
Polette hugged me and called me ‘sister’. Monsieur Fesch shouted something in Italian to Madame Letitia, and she replied happily ‘Ecco!’ I think he had asked her whether I was to have as big a dowry as Julie.
Amid all the excitement and emotion nobody had been watching Jerome, and the imp had been able to stuff into his mouth whatever he could find room for. Suddenly I heard Madame Letitia cry out, and she dragged away a green-faced Jerome. I took the two on to the terrace, and there Jerome surrendered all his ill-gotten gains. He felt better then, but it was quite impossible for us to take coffee on the terrace as we had intended.
Soon Julie and Joseph said good-bye to us all, and got into their decorated carriage to drive to their new home. We all went with them to the garden gate, and I put my arm round Mama’s shoulder.
‘Don’t cry, dear Mama,’ I said.
Then came more liqueur and cakes, and Etienne gently told Uncle Fesch that he could not take another assistant into the firm, as he had already promised to take in Joseph and probably Lucien. Finally all the Buonapartes left, except Napoleone.
We walked round the garden, and Uncle Somis, whom we only see at weddings and funerals, asked me when I was going to be married. At that Mama turned to Napoleone, with tears in her eyes.
‘General Buonaparte, will you promise me one thing?’ she said. ‘Will you put off the wedding till Eugenie is sixteen? Will you?’
‘Madame Clary,’ Napoleone replied, smiling, ‘that is not for me to say, but for you yourself, and Monsieur Etienne and Mademoiselle Eugenie.’
But Mama shook her head. ‘I don’t know how it is, General Buonaparte,’ she said, ‘you are so young, and yet I have the feeling—’
She broke off and looked at him with a wry smile. ‘I have the feeling,’ she resumed, ‘that people always do what you want. They do at all events in your family, and, since we have known you, in my family as well. So I turn to you. Eugenie is still so young; do please wait till she is sixteen!’
In reply to that, Napoleone silently lifted Mama’s hand to his lips. And I knew that that was a promise.
On the very next day Napoleone received orders to proceed at once to the Vendée to take up the command of an infantry brigade under General Hoche. I sat on the grass in the warm September sunshine and watched him tramping to and fro, pouring out his indignation at that shabby treatment. The Vendée! To hunt Royalists hiding there! A few starving aristocrats with their fanatically loyal peasants!
‘I’m an artillery specialist, not a gendarme!’ he exclaimed. Up and down he went, with his hands behind him. ‘They deny me the triumph of a court-martial, and now they propose to bury me in the Vendée, like a Colonel on the eve of retirement! They are keeping me away from the front, to commit me to oblivion!’
When he was full of wrath there was a yellow gleam in his eyes.
‘You could resign,’ I said softly. ‘I could buy a little house in the country with the money Papa left for my dowry, and perhaps some land with it. If we manage carefully and—’
He stood still and looked at me.
‘But if you do not care for that,’ I continued, ‘you might perhaps join Etienne.’
‘Eugenie! Are you mad? Or do you seriously think I could settle in a farmhouse and keep fowls? Or sell ribbons in your brother’s shop?’
‘I did not want to hurt you, I was only thinking what we could do.’
He laughed heartily. ‘What we could do! What the best General of Artillery in France could do! Don’t you know that I am France’s best General?’
Then he began walking silently up and down. In a few moments he said:
‘I’m riding away to-morrow.’
‘To the Vendée?’
‘No, to Paris. I’m going to talk to the people at the Ministry.’
‘But isn’t that – I mean, in the army don’t you have to do exactly what is ordered?’
‘Yes, yes indeed. If one of my soldiers disobeys an order, I have him shot. They may have me shot when I get to Paris – I shall take Junot and Marmont with me.’
Junot and Marmont, his ADCs since Toulon, are still in Marseilles, without employment. They regard his future as their own.
‘Can you lend me any money?’
I nodded.
‘Junot and Marmont cannot pay for their l
I had been saving up for a gala uniform for him. There were ninety-eight francs lying under the nightdresses in my chest-of-drawers.
‘Give me all you can,’ he said, and I ran up to my room and collected the money.
He put the notes in his pocket. Then he pulled them out again and carefully counted them.
‘So I owe you,’ he said, ‘ninety-eight francs.’
Then he put his arms round my shoulders and embraced me. ‘You will see that I shall persuade all Paris: they must give me the Command-in-Chief in Italy. They have got to!’
‘When will you be starting?’
‘As soon as I have paid my ADCs’ bill. Don’t forget to write to me often; at the Ministry of War in Paris; the letters will be posted on to me at the front. Don’t fret.’
‘I shall have lots to do. I have all the monograms to embroider on my trousseau.’
He nodded eagerly. ‘B, B, B, Madame la Générale Buonaparte.’
Then he untied his horse, which, to Etienne’s annoyance, he had tied again to our garden fence, and rode away into the town. The slim horseman in the quiet road between the villas looked unimposing and very solitary.
Paris, twelve months later: Fructidor, Year III. (I’ve run away from home!)
There’s nothing more disagreeable than running away from home. I haven’t seen a bed for two nights now, and my back aches because I’ve been sitting in the mail coach for four days without interruption. I feel sure I’m black and blue all over; stage coaches are so horribly badly sprung. And I haven’t any money for the return journey either. But I don’t need that. After all, I’ve run away from home and I’ve no intention of going back.
It’s only two hours since I reached Paris. It was getting late, and in the dusk the houses all looked the same, grey houses with no front gardens, houses, houses, nothing but houses. I had no idea that Paris was so big.