Chapter 7
Marseille
Autumn 1794
NOTHING WAS THE SAME FOR me after that. I was changed—Napoleone had entered my world and overturned the way I viewed my place in it. I was, suddenly, a woman. A powerful, desired woman, and one who carried a secret.
Whenever I thought back to what we had done, to the intensity with which he’d touched me and kissed me and looked at me, the way his accent tinged his words as he called me Desired One, I felt newly dizzy. We had a secret that was ours and ours alone.
How did they not see it? I wondered. Maman and Julie. As members in their own right, how did they not detect that I, too, had become one of the initiated? Wasn’t there suddenly some fever to my cheeks, an awareness to my expression, a sense of knowing that somehow seeped out of me? But I shared my secret with no one; I guarded it, hoarded it, savored it. Julie, too busy in her new role as wife, in her zeal to set up a household of her own, in her determination to have a baby, did not notice. Nor did Maman; perhaps Maman underestimated me. Still thought of me as nothing more than a girl. Perhaps she didn’t know what I was capable of, the latent power that had suddenly uncoiled within me, the passions and promises that I could draw out of a man. And such a man as Napoleone, at that.
France, too, was in the throes of a sudden and drastic change. As a nation, we were as unstable as we had ever been since the overthrow of Louis and Marie-Antoinette. With Napoleone out of prison and the Buonapartes, for the moment, safe, we tried to make sense of the ever-shifting situation. The journals and newspapers were giving the recent chaos a name: the Thermidorian Reaction, labeled thusly because it had begun in the hot summer month of Thermidor on our revolutionary calendar. Beginning in Paris, it had been an uprising against Robespierre and his Jacobin friends, a backlash against the radicals who had made mass executions and public denunciations a matter of state policy.
By summer’s end, the Jacobins were out—guillotined or fled—and a new government had solidified behind a group of moderates: advocates of the free Republic but comprising largely liberal landowners, pragmatic businessmen, even members of the nobility. They vowed to dismantle the dreaded Committee of Public Safety, proposing to replace it with a group of appointed executives and a national legislature.
“This is good, the new government, is it not?” I asked Maman as she and I walked to Julie’s one afternoon for a visit. The days were getting shorter, the thick moisture of summer thinning into a pleasant autumn coolness, and I enjoyed the feeling of the gentle sunshine on my face. Napoleone had been gone the past few weeks, assigned to the camp in nearby Nice for training exercises, but I hoped for news from his brother when we visited Julie that afternoon.
Maman sighed. “I’ve given up trying to divine anything in this madness,” she answered, weaving to avoid the young women who peddled flowers and spices along the port’s crowded square. Not quite so hot and pungent, the autumn air smelled of saffron and lavender, of bread baking in the nearby boulangerie, and I found myself in a generous mood. I reached into my pocket and tossed the closest peddler-woman a sou that I had left over from running errands for Cook. Maman didn’t notice but kept her eyes fixed firmly ahead. “Nothing has made sense to me in years. Sometimes I think it a blessing, your father’s fate. That he didn’t live to see his country come to this.”
I knew from Napoleone and Joseph that the men now in power seemed to be less radical than the men they had deposed—so far at least. The daily public executions in our town square had, for the moment, been halted. And so I allowed myself to hope that perhaps our fear might at last subside, even just a little bit.
We arrived at my sister’s home, a modest but comfortable townhouse, narrow and comprising four stories, of which my sister and Joseph occupied the bottom two. The rooms were not overly large, but they had gracious floor-to-ceiling windows and soft mint-green shutters. With no income yet from Joseph and just an allowance from her dowry, my sister employed only a few servants and an older woman named Selene to cook. The house had a walled garden in the back, and we found Julie there, sitting in the shade with Joseph as they drank lemonade. To my surprised delight, Napoleone sat with them.
“Desiree, Maman, hello.” My sister glided toward us as both men rose. Napoleone wore his officer’s uniform and he stood rigid, his expression unsmiling, as it so often was when he found himself in group company. Julie, on the other hand, appeared happy, as she usually did these days; she and Joseph were indeed a good match. “I’m so delighted you’ve come,” Julie said. “Napoleone is here from Nice; isn’t it a wonderful surprise?”
“Indeed,” Maman said, but her tone indicated otherwise. She had still not warmed to him, even though she knew he was courting me. Imagine if she knew the full truth, I thought, recalling how he had told me we were bound to each other for eternity.
I curtsied toward my secret fiancé, smiling, ignoring Maman’s displeasure. I hadn’t seen him in weeks, and now, there he stood. The small garden suddenly felt warm, far too cramped for this many people; all I wanted was to be alone with him.
“Mother, I need to speak with you.” Julie turned from me and angled herself toward Maman.
“Oh?” Maman eyed my sister.
Julie’s voice was suddenly grave with concern as she said: “I fear my bedroom is not spacious enough for the armoire we currently have. Would you come inside—with Joseph—and give us your opinion on what sort of piece we might find to replace it?”
“Replace it? But that armoire is a family heirloom. No, no, no, you cannot be rid of that piece, my foolish girl. You must simply rearrange the other pieces in the room.” Maman threw her shoulders back and nodded, ready to dispense her opinions. “I’ll have a look.”
“Oh, I knew you’d have an idea.” Julie steered my mother away, beckoning Joseph to join, and I was certain she could sense my gratitude.
Now, with only the two of us remaining in the garden, I hurried toward Napoleone, putting my hands out. He raised them to his lips and kissed them, the hint of a smile softening his sharp features. “Desiree.” He stared at me intently, and I resisted the urge to shift under the weight of his gaze. “You’ve grown more beautiful in my absence. It is hardly fair that the other men of Marseille should have the chance to appreciate your charms while I, a soldier, am stuck in the barracks.”
I wanted to fold into him, to cover him with my kisses, to insist that no other man in Marseille would ever be the recipient of my charms—I saved myself only for him. But I restrained myself, sensing even in my youthful ebullience that a lady ought to hold back some of her overflowing joy, to allow a man such as Napoleone to indulge in a bit of competitive jealousy. Cocking my head, attempting a coy smile, I said: “Then I think it best that you not stay away for too long.”
He liked that, as was evident in the way he nodded. “Sit with me?” He gestured toward the table and chairs.
I sat, refilling his lemonade and pouring myself a glass.
“I’m not sure how long we have alone, and there is so much I need to tell you,” he said.
“Oh?” I took a slow sip, trying to look poised, careful not to spill any of the cool drink even though my hands trembled with excitement at this unexpected reunion.
Napoleone told me how he had been stationed in recent weeks at the barracks in Nice and that he’d just heard back from the new Parisian government on his proposal to lead the army into Italy. He had been correct—they had indeed denied his request. “Our national resources are depleted,” he explained. “There are bread shortages across the country. Pockets of resistance—pro-monarchy communities—are erupting in fighting, and the army is being deployed to crush those revolts. The French people are exhausted…as hungry as ever, yet no nearer to any relief.”
I listened, absorbing the news. Nearby, the horn of a ship droned, its bellow low and long in the harbor. “Well, then there is one bright spot,” I said.
“What is that?” he asked.
“If not Italy, then you stay here with me.”
He lowered his gaze, his finger rubbing a line through the condensed moisture on the outside of his glass. “I’m afraid not,” he said after a moment, meeting my eyes with his.
I frowned, unsure of his meaning.
“I plan to go to Paris.” From the way he said it, a declaration, I knew that he was decided.
“Paris?” That seemed, to me, like the worst place to be at the moment; hadn’t he just explained to me the extent of our Republic’s instability?
“Within this chaos and disorder lies opportunity,” he said, noting my confusion.
“But why must you go already?” I hated how I sounded as soon as I asked the question—like a petulant child. But he was only just back from Nice. And prison. What of us? How would he court me for marriage all the way from Paris? He looked away, his stare landing on the burst of red hibiscus that climbed the nearby trellis.
When he spoke next, his words and his tone were direct, matter-of-fact, with no crack of emotion in his voice. “I will use this response from the government to go to Paris and speak to them directly. Introduce myself to them, now that they know who I am.”
The joy of our reunion was suddenly gone. I shifted in my chair, glowering at my glass of lemonade as he continued.
“I am languishing here in the south, Desiree. With each day that passes, I am squandering the goodwill I acquired with my fighting in Toulon. Now is the time for a young man with talent and ambition to put himself forward; I need to be present in the capital, to pledge my loyalty to the new regime and seek out my next appointment. Perhaps I might find an older general to take me under his patronage and advocate for me with the new government. I am not sure yet—I only know that I would be a fool not to act during this time of change and upheaval.”
“When will you go?”
He folded his hands on the table. “Soon.”
“How soon?”
“I am here…to say farewell. I will leave this week.”
My whole body sagged. Before I could form a reply, he leaned toward me, but he did not reach for me, did not put his hands on mine. “I’ve never concealed from you the fact that I feel called to greatness. In fact, I’ve been very honest with you about it.”
I blinked, willing myself not to give in to tears. After a moment, I nodded, acknowledging this. “How long will you be gone?”
He shrugged his narrow shoulders, his face expressionless. “There is no way to know.”
“I…I would go to Paris, you know. If we were married, I would join you as your—” But he raised his hand, shaking his head, speaking decisively before I had the chance to finish my thought.
“It’s not safe for you just yet. I will go. Allow me to ingratiate myself with the men who now hold the reins of power. I will make a place for myself under this new leadership, and then I will send for you and my brother.” As so often happened with Napoleone, it had all already been decided. Both for himself and for me. My only choice, it appeared, was to accept his verdict. But at least I knew I could trust him; I knew how badly he wanted Joseph beside him, and he had told me he would send for Joseph and me. I could trust in that and take some comfort there.
Muffled voices traveled out to the garden from the house—Maman was returning with Julie, and my sister was speaking loudly to give us warning. They were arguing over the armoire.
“We have so little time together,” Napoleone said, leaning close to me, finally putting his hand on mine. “You won’t spend it in a quarrel, will you?”
I shook my head, grateful at least for his touch. “Can I see you tomorrow evening?” he asked. “Come back here, tell your mother you are visiting Julie.”
“Julie and Joseph plan to go out to the theater tomorrow evening,” I answered, aware of the plans my sister had already made.
“Yes, they do,” he said, nodding. “That’s why you and I shall meet here.”
Napoleone opened the door when I arrived at Julie’s home the next evening, as if he’d been watching for my arrival. “Good evening,” he said.
I thrilled, feeling as if I transgressed by walking into the quiet interior of my sister’s home, even though I’d visited the place more times than I could count. But this was different; Julie and Joseph were out, and Napoleone and I were alone. We had not been alone, not entirely alone like this, since the night he had led me up the hill to Notre Dame de la Garde. I felt my face grow warm at the memory. Would the same thing happen this evening? I wondered. I was young, but I wasn’t a fool; I was certain that he’d thought of it in inviting me here, where it would be just the two of us. Just as I’d thought of it in accepting his invitation.
Napoleone put his hand on my shoulder, pulling my attention back from my fidgety thoughts. “Have you eaten supper?” he asked. I nodded, even though I hadn’t. My stomach had been a tempest all afternoon in anticipation of this meeting.
“Then can I pour you a drink?” he asked.
“Yes,” I agreed. “Where is the cook?” I asked, looking around for the older woman who worked in my sister’s home.
“I’ve dismissed her for the evening,” Napoleone said.
I removed my bonnet and gloves as he fetched a carafe of wine and two glasses, and we made our way out into the garden, where the languid sounds of evening sailed across the air. He poured us each a drink and we sat in silence, serenaded by the hum of the city, of the breeze slipping through the trees, sticky with the scent of the nearby saltwater.
“Another?” he offered when I’d emptied my glass, and I nodded, accepting his refill.
“It is pleasant here,” he said after a while. It was a statement, rather than a question, but the thought that came to me in reply was instantaneous: Then why do you insist on leaving? But I bit the words back, saying only: “Yes, it is.”
“I won’t miss it, though.”
His words stung, the blunt candor of them; I was grateful for the evening, for the way the darkness concealed my frown.
“We are too far from everything that truly matters. Sea breezes and Mediterranean views are all well and good. Some soldiers would choose this, gladly. But it’s a false peace—a siren’s call. A beautiful but dangerous diversion.”
I sipped my drink, not answering. So much of what Napoleone said came out sounding like a riddle to me.
“The only thing I shall miss…” His tone was different now. Emotion had seeped in—even longing. “The only thought that troubles me as I depart, Desiree, is the thought of being away from you.”
I turned to him, seeing just the vague outline of his features in the muted glow of distant lights, the moon and stars shuttered behind clouds.
He reached for me, taking my hands in his. “Do you promise you shall be faithful?” His voice was tinged with a sudden urgency, and I wanted to laugh at his concern, at the absurdity of his wondering such a thing. I squeezed his hand, bringing it to my cheek and pressing his cool palm to my skin. “More than promise. I vow it.”
“Why would a Clary trouble herself with a Buonaparte?” he asked, exposing a rare chink in his usually impermeable armor of self-assuredness. But I could hear what was surely there—worry. And doubt. He continued: “I’m a penniless man who has been imprisoned. A man without a nation, without powerful friends. Why would you choose me? I’m out of favor, with no hopes for any career advancement.”
Maman had said the same thing earlier in the day, in her own way. A passing remark that she knew I’d hear. “We already have one Buonaparte; I think that is plenty for our family.” I’d ignored the barb, clinging to my secret plans to marry my soldier as soon as he could send for me from Paris. Or, if Paris did not work out for him, I’d go to him wherever he was. Yours, for eternity. As constant as the sea. That was the vow we’d exchanged, atop the hill at La Bonne Mère.
I looked at him now, leaning forward in my chair, my own voice matching his urgency: “Napoleone di Buonaparte, you could be a farmer tending fruit trees and you’d still be worth more to me than any dignitary in the capital. Know that as you go to Paris: know that, no matter the outcome, I am faithful to you and eagerly awaiting the day when you can send for me to join you.”
He pulled me out of my chair and lifted me into his arms. I was amazed at his strength, thin as he was. I heard the receding chorus of frogs and other night creatures as Napoleone swept me into the house, leading me into the spare bedchamber on the ground floor. There, without a word, he lay me down on the bed and I allowed it, meeting his kisses with a hunger that only seemed to fuel his further. I suppose I had known that the evening would lead to this; I suppose I’d even hoped for it. He clawed at my gown, struggling with its layers, groaning with impatience until I helped him. He had less trouble with the pieces of his own uniform.
I closed my eyes and stifled the urge to wince in the moment when our bodies joined. His movements were more rushed, more rough, than I might have liked. It was only a matter of minutes before his whole frame convulsed, collapsing over me, his slack mouth falling open. It was as it had been on the hilltop—hasty and brusque. Once more, I couldn’t help but wonder if I had done something wrong. The ardor and attention from just the moment earlier were so quickly gone, and he pulled away from me, his gaze suddenly distant.
I lay there in the silence, questioning if there was supposed to be something more between us than simply these quick and curt couplings. I knew nothing else and thus had no way of knowing what to expect. Of course, I would never have dared to ask Julie, for I knew what she would say about my engaging in such behavior before any exchange of formal wedding vows. And so I ignored the itch of longing that throbbed inside me long after our lovemaking was complete; I pushed aside the desire I felt, the wish I had that Napoleone would continue to hold me, continue to love me. To put some tenderness or softness into his caresses. To keep me close even after his own ferocious needs had been so hastily and roughly sated.
He was scheduled to leave on the next day’s tide. I felt tired and glum as I joined Julie and Joseph to see him off at the crowded port. Julie stood beside me, holding my hand, as the brothers said their farewells in hasty and muttered Italian. I noticed how Joseph stuck a fistful of money into his brother’s pocket when they pulled apart.
When it was my turn to say goodbye, I remembered Napoleone’s emphasis on bravery as a necessary character trait, and I forced myself not to cry. “You’ll write me?” he asked, his voice firm as we embraced one final time.
“Of course,” I promised.
“I won’t become an afterthought? A jilted man put aside as soon as this ship pulls away and some other man comes calling at the Clary mansion?” He stared at me with his burning green eyes, as if appraising me one final time, probing for any flaw or weakness he might have heretofore overlooked.
I weaved my hands through his. “You, Napoleone di Buonaparte, could never be an afterthought.”
The ship sounded its horn in warning, and Joseph helped his brother load his one trunk. Napoleone gave us a final wave before stepping onto the gangplank. As I watched his figure recede, a trim outline against the backdrop of the ship and wide blue sky, I allowed myself tears for the first time.
He couldn’t see my crying at this point, and, besides, hadn’t I been strong, like he’d asked? Well, now that he was gone, it was more than I could bear not to give in to the crush of sadness. I felt a sense of loss, and indeed of being lost, as I watched his shape growing smaller, replaced by a foreground of rolling Mediterranean surf. He had loomed so large over each of my days since he’d entered them, but now, his absence left me feeling unmoored. I wondered—I worried—whether I had perhaps forgotten how to be myself without Napoleone beside me.
And yet, even in his absence, everything in me and around me had shifted. My life had taken on a new orientation; Napoleone was the fixed pole at the center of the rest of my life, even though he was miles away, in a distant capital that I knew only in my imagination.
Napoleone kept me busy, even after he was gone. He’d left me with a regimen he’d designed, a course of study that involved music, reading, philosophy, and other subjects dear to his own curious mind. Not a particularly avid student in my own youth, I was nevertheless grateful for the distraction at first, relieved that I could apply my energy and focus to something that I knew would make my Napoleone proud. He’d opened a subscription to a musical journal in Paris so that I might practice the most current pieces on my piano. He urged me to practice my singing as well. He left me with a long list of texts I was to study: the writings of Rousseau, Montesquieu, Thomas Jefferson, Marcus Aurelius, and so many others. He urged me to write to him with my opinions on their subject matter.
You must seek always to improve your mind, my dear girl, he wrote in his first letter from the journey, posted while he was still aboard the ship carrying him north. For I plan to be a great man, and so you must be the great woman who stands beside me. Imagine the pride I will feel when my fellow generals remark that my wife is a woman without equal, an enlightened citizeness of our Republic, one who can expound on the preeminent writings of political philosophy and theory.
In truth, I wrote back to him, what I’d rather do than spend hours reading or practicing the piano is to work on my drawing. And I’ve settled on the perfect subject: the Boy General, Napoleone di Buonaparte. I shall attempt to sketch your profile in pencil, with only my memory as guide. This will serve the double purpose of keeping my hands applied to the improvement of my art, while also producing a finished product that will provide much pleasure as I look on it.
A fine idea, he wrote back to me. But I suggest one change to your plan: when the sketch is complete, you must send it to me. I would like to see your artistic skill at work, and I would like to see what sort of likeness you render. Otherwise, I approve heartily of this idea, and am delighted to know that you will be spending hours thinking of my face, and not some other man’s.
I chuckled at this, pleased to read of my lover’s jealousy. And then I saw his postscript:
Only, be sure not to neglect your books, my dear Desiree. I still await your opinions on Rousseau and Jefferson.
As the weeks passed and the autumn air grew milder, I tried my best to make my way through the dense tomes Napoleone had selected for me, but, really, once he’d made it safely to the capital, what I craved were the details of my lover’s daily life in Paris. What were his lodgings like? What did the women wear in the city, now that Marie-Antoinette was no longer there to set the fashion for the nation and indeed for the whole continent? Was dancing permitted once more at balls? Was it really true, as we read in the journals, that it was the new style to wear red strings around one’s neck to imitate the effect of the guillotine?
Napoleone chided me gently when I asked about these details rather than discussing politics or music or philosophy in my letters. Frivolity is destructive, and complacency is corrosive, and neither must ever be tolerated, my heart. And yet he begrudgingly answered my queries, indulging my requests for gossip with the matter-of-fact accounting of his soldier’s attention to detail: Everyone is determined to make up for their sufferings, to make light of the hell which they have just narrowly escaped. He told me about a ball he had recently attended with several other officers, one of the infamous Bal des Victimes, a Victims’ Ball. It is à la mode to have been imprisoned, only barely saved from death, to have lost a loved one to the guillotine. The women wear the red ribbons around their throats indeed. They crop their hair into the coiffure à la victime, the victim’s hairstyle—shorn short, like the damned whose locks were clipped on their way to death.
I read these details with a mixture of horror and curiosity. The Terror of recent years still seemed so fresh, so recent, a caged beast that might yet rise up and strike at any moment, but there in Paris, they made merry in the wake of it.
Napoleone, from his letters, seemed both disapproving and daunted. Paris is one large flea market. The wealthy compete to see who lost more, he wrote. So, in that way, my poverty is fashionable, I suppose. And yet, the women who run the social calendars of this city don’t truly have nothing, as they preside over their salons, seduce their wealthy lovers, host their fêtes in their grand drawing rooms surrounded by silk and champagne.
Napoleone wrote to me of autumn and then winter, his words foreign as he described the shifting of the leaves, the first blanketing of snow. I don’t even wear gloves, as they are an extravagance for which I cannot pay. You, my Desired One, my summertime love, serve as a warm and pleasant refuge for my thoughts as I shiver here under a thin coat which I cannot afford to replace. For me, a girl from the south, where the trees always remained in full leaf and the birds sang year-round, I could only imagine myself beside him, holding fast to his arm as we shivered, walking the quays of the Seine and watching the floes of ice that bobbed atop its surface. I wanted so badly to be there with him, to see what he was seeing, even if it was so terribly cold. I was ready to begin my life beside Napoleone, to leave my childhood in the south and embrace the adventures with which he’d filled my mind.
As the months strung together, I was slow to make progress on my pencil sketch. I’d begin each morning, only to spend several hours of frustrated work that usually ended in my tearing up the parchment and vowing to start anew the next day. The truth was, the longer we spent apart, the harder I was finding it to sit and conjure the finer details of Napoleone’s profile. Nothing that I put on paper came close to recalling the image of the man who inhabited my memory. Watercolors of the sea and gardens proved far easier, and I found myself gratefully distracted by those projects, though I did not dare send them to my exigent lover.
He asked me about my progress, wondered when he would see my completed drawing, but I demurred, telling him it was not yet ready. He pestered me, also, about my music and quizzed me about my philosophy reading. But he did not speak of his military career or what his plans were for advancement. Did not mention when he would send for me. I did not learn until the spring that he had led a failed mission to try to recapture his island home of Corsica from the English. Joseph had known, but Napoleone had sworn him to secrecy, for fear that I would worry too much. I learned of it only once he was safely back in the capital, failed in his attempt, writing to me once more from his dingy rented room at the Hôtel de la Liberté.
“My poor brother.” Joseph spoke to Julie and me on a rainy afternoon in Marseille. I was at their home, as I so often was those days, eager to escape Maman’s headaches and my own restless melancholy. My sister was not yet pregnant, a fact that I knew upset her, but she and Joseph had a nice, gentle manner of speaking to each other, and Joseph, attentive husband that he was, remained solicitous of my sister’s happiness above all else. He had made it clear that he saw me as a sister, a member of their family and one who was always welcome in the Buonaparte home.
But on this day, I could see as we sat down to luncheon that Joseph’s mood was heavy. “It’s Napoleone,” my sister explained, serving me a slice of cold ham. “Joseph has had a letter from Paris this morning.”
“And?” I asked, looking to Joseph, feeling the hastening of my own heartbeat. I hadn’t had a letter that morning.
“He’s miserable.” Joseph sighed. He told me about Napoleone’s recent loss to the British naval forces off Corsica. “He’s disgraced. He lost several ships and had to abandon the mission. The Brits chased him across the Mediterranean. He returned to Paris humiliated and without any hopes for advancement.”
“What has happened since he’s returned to Paris?” I asked. Could a man be sent to the guillotine these days for failure to win a military campaign? Certainly we’d heard of it happening often enough in recent years—officers executed for any number of reasons, even in victory, and oftentimes without a trial.
“They haven’t arrested him for it,” Joseph said, assuaging my fears. “But they’ve reassigned him. To the Army of the West, under General Hoche.”
I knew about the west, the area of France called the Vendée; Napoleone had told me about the pockets of resistance there. Royalist factions in and around Brittany were holding out hope of overthrowing the Republic and reestablishing the monarchy.
“Napoleone rejected the assignment,” Joseph added.
“But…why?” I’d never known my fiancé to turn down a military assignment.
“He has no desire to move to some remote outpost on the Atlantic, where the only action he shall face will be to fire on Frenchmen. And so now”—Joseph shrugged—“he’s without a place, even in his beloved army.”
I hadn’t known any of this; Joseph was giving me an unvarnished account so unlike what Napoleone ordinarily confided in me. He wrote to me that my letters were the brightest moments of his day, that I made up a full half of every aspiration he held for the future. But he’d never admitted to me any sort of pessimism about his place in the army.
And yet, even in his notes to me, I had detected a sort of restlessness, a lurking melancholy, a sense of unease, even if only veiled or obliquely hinted at. I knew that he struggled without enough money. I knew that he felt very much an outsider, excluded not only from the new administration, but from the festive aspects of Parisian society as well. But Joseph now painted a picture that was far less hopeful, even than Napoleone’s bluntest notes to me.
“He has no hope for promotion if he goes to Brest and takes up a position under Hoche fighting the royalists. There’s no glory in crushing your own countrymen. Plus, Hoche is young, about the same age as Napoleone. He’s not dying or retiring any time soon. What can my brother hope to gain from his patronage?”
“So then, what does he plan on doing?” Julie asked. I knew that her own life plans were on hold while Joseph awaited his brother’s next move. They, like me, had intended to go to Paris—they had put their hopes in Napoleone’s plans to gain a position for himself in the new regime and send for us. But now, it all appeared so uncertain.
“For the first time in his life, I don’t know that my brother has a plan,” Joseph said, sighing, looking forlornly from his wife to his luncheon plate. “Currently, there are more than one hundred generals ahead of him in seniority. His hopes for elevation look unlikely. He’s doomed to be standing still for a good long while, and there’s nothing Napoleone loathes more than standing still.”
Julie looked to me. “Well…what does he say to you about it?”
I shifted in my seat, glancing over at the clock on the nearby mantel when it chimed the new hour. “He…he has said nothing to me, just yet, about these recent developments.” In truth, I had no idea when, if ever, he would confess these same troubles to me that he confided to his brother.
“He doesn’t want you there while he’s so miserable, Desiree,” Joseph said. “He can barely afford to feed himself, let alone a wife. And, of course, with a wife, there’s always the possibility of ever more mouths to feed, bodies to keep warm.” Joseph drifted off, turning back to his plate. I knew that his intention was to bolster my spirits, to explain his brother’s behavior, even though his words were having the opposite effect.
Julie’s face was pale now, too, the topic of children in a marriage surely bringing to mind her own longing for a baby. I took her hand and gave it a silent squeeze.
Joseph went on: “He feels he has to be in Paris, to be near the seat of power, if he has any hope of grabbing an opportunity…if and when it might present itself. But he’s penniless. They’re not paying him a sou while he’s not employed in an actual mission. He’s got no salary, and yet he’s supporting Mamma and our sisters, paying for our younger brother’s training at the military academy out of his own scanty savings. He is hungry, wandering the streets of Paris without a friend. His lodgings are cramped, barely enough for him, and certainly not spacious enough for a wife. But do not believe he has forgotten you. If not for your love, Desiree, he might find himself in front of a passing carriage. He tells me as much, not infrequently.”
My brother-in-law’s words offered some small consolation, but I wished that Joseph—that Napoleone—would see that my attachment ran deeper than such material concerns. All I wanted was to join him, to be his comfort. I did not care that his boarding room was cramped, that his pockets were empty. But how could I tell him that without offending his pride? He wished to make something of himself, and he wished for me to believe in him while he did so.
And yet, it seemed that our hopes hinged on so many unknowns, on an opportunity that we prayed would someday present itself. Our future remained as blank and indecipherable as the pencil portrait I was trying—and failing—to sketch. I longed to go to Paris with Julie and Joseph, to begin the adventure for which Napoleone and I had planned. To start my life as a bride, with a home and a family of my own. But Napoleone was not yet ready to start that life with me.
I did not like feeling so stuck, so entirely helpless. I knew no other way to help my lover, so I prayed each night. Alone, in the dark, I called upon God and his Virgin Mother, even though the Church had been outlawed from our Republic and praying to Jesus or the Virgin Mother was illegal. I prayed, even though I had never been a particularly pious girl. Please, dear God, please give my Napoleone the opportunity he seeks, so that he may distinguish himself. So that, in his greatness, he might finally send for me and welcome me to Paris, where I might fully become his wife.
Hands clasped, I begged God to grant Napoleone some opportunity for greatness. I could never have guessed how resoundingly these silent entreaties of my heart would be answered.