CHAPTER 21

We were married at midnight on March 9, 1796, at the decaying Hôtel du Mondragon, which had been converted into a town hall. Theresa, Tallien, Barras, and one of Bonaparte’s aides acted as witnesses. The hour was so late because Bonaparte had lost all sense of time poring over his maps of Italy and plans for the upcoming campaign. The candles were sputtering and the registrar had already gone off to bed in a huff declaring that when—if—the groom ever arrived his subordinate, already dozing at his desk, could marry us.

Theresa and I shivered in our thin white dresses and huddled near the fire. As usual, we had considered our appearances before the weather. To please my husband-to-be, who often told me he found no sight on earth more pleasing than a graceful woman gowned in white, I was wearing white on our wedding night, though it was only a civil ceremony. My arms were bare and the straps of my filmy, flowing Grecian-style gown were held up by bronze cameos of Julius Caesar crowned with laurel leaves, and a third cameo belted the red velvet sash just below my breasts. There were red satin ribbons crisscrossing my limbs from ankles to knees to fasten my golden sandals and I was wearing ruby and sapphire rings on my toes. I was so cold I longed for a full-length ermine coat, but all I had was my red and gold cashmere shawl.

As the clock struck the last stroke of twelve, Bonaparte bounded up the stairs, seized me in his arms, and kissed me on the lips. Declaring me “the most beautiful bride who ever lived,” he hung round my neck a great gold medallion with a wreath of laurel leaves encircling the boldly etched words To Destiny! It felt cold and heavy between my breasts and I lifted it to examine it as best I could in the light of the dying candles. I had the ominous feeling that it was more than just a pretty ornament but something akin to a dog collar to let the world know who my master was.

But I didn’t have time to think; Bonaparte was shaking the clerk awake and urging, “Let’s get on with it!” Thus we were married in haste with, I feared, years’ worth of leisure yawning before us in which to repent. I just hoped I was doing the right thing. It was so hard to be certain! But Barras would ruin me if I didn’t go through with it, Bonaparte thought he loved me, and he certainly loved my children. Be sure to tell them that I love them as if they were my own, he had once written. What is yours or mine is so mixed up in my heart that there is no difference there. He was taking Eugène to Italy with him as his aide-de-camp and he thought Hortense was a darling and doted on each little painted porcelain knickknack she gave him as though it were a great work of art.

“Don’t worry,” Theresa whispered in my ear. “If it doesn’t work out you can always get a divorce!”

But I failed to find much comfort in her words.

I should have taken his lateness as an omen. It would indeed prove to be my destiny—to always wait for Bonaparte, in every way, in all things.

* * *

In my bed that night, my dear old pug, Fortune, growled at Bonaparte and refused to budge. I shrugged and told my new husband that he would have to share the bed or sleep elsewhere, as Fortune had the prior claim. When Bonaparte instead tried to shift Fortune, my cantankerous pug lunged and sank his teeth deep into Bonaparte’s leg. This time he ruined my coverlet by bleeding all over it.

Two days later when Bonaparte rode off to Italy he was still wearing a bandage. I got up long enough to kiss him good-bye.

“There has never been a love like mine,” he said as he embraced me one last time. “It will last as long as my life.”

I just wanted to go back to bed, but he insisted that I stand, framed in the window, so he could see me one last time before he rode away.

I was already turning away from the window, yawning, pulling up the sagging straps of my nightgown, and staggering back to bed while he was still blowing kisses and waving good-bye, as excited as a little boy. I was sure I wouldn’t miss him at all; as Barras had said, I would have all the pleasures of Paris to console me. And there was work for me to do—as a wedding present, Bonaparte had said I could redecorate the house to render it worthy of a returning hero. “Just make sure to put portraits of yourself everywhere and whatever else you do I shall be pleased,” he said.

Before he had even been away a week he had bombarded me with so many letters anyone would have thought that I was the one he was laying siege to. Like cannonballs they came at me, ardent sentiments such as:

You are the constant object of my thoughts, my incomparable Josephine, away from you there is no joy—away from you the world is a wilderness in which I am alone.

 

To live for Josephine, that is the story of my life!

 

I would be so happy if I could help undress you, and see and kiss your small shoulders, supple, firm white breasts, and pretty little face with your hair tied up in a scarf à la Creole. You know that I always remember the visits to your little black forest. I kiss it a thousand times and wait impatiently for the moment when I will again be in it. To live with Josephine is to live in the Elysian Fields! Kisses on your mouth, your eyelids, your shoulders, your breasts, everywhere, everywhere!

* * *

It made me tired just to look at them. Just touching them it seemed I could feel the heat coming off his words and the holes the impatient pen had poked through the paper. How the blots must have sizzled as soon as the ink was spilled! He was so ardent, obsessive, and untiring! Many times I would toss them on my little rosewood writing desk, promising I would open and read them later, always later, and write a line or two in answer. But it was so difficult; there were so many of them! They just kept piling up day after day until I could no longer see the surface of my desk and they were spilling off onto the floor. Soon their very number, not just their content, was overwhelming me. Such relentless passion is very fatiguing!

When I didn’t answer his letters he only grew more fervent and frantic, impatient, and possessed of wild notions that I was ill or unfaithful or that I didn’t love him. But if I did answer he cursed me for the brevity and blandness of my letters, counting the lines, at most three or five—I really was a poor correspondent and had always hated writing letters—and taking them to heart, as an insult, as the true measure of my love. He said I wrote as coldly as though we had been married fifteen years.

You are the only woman I have ever loved and adored! If you do not love me anymore, there is nothing left for me! If I have lost your love, I have lost more than life, more than happiness, I have lost everything! he agonized in words so blotted by tears and ink that it overtaxed my poor eyes just to read them.

One day when he discovered that the glass on the miniature portrait he always carried of me had cracked he became convinced that it was a sign that I was either dying or unfaithful. The whole situation really was too tedious for words! All that hard riding and gunfire, the cannonballs that shook the earth and showered shrapnel, I would have been more surprised if the glass hadn’t cracked! But there was no telling Bonaparte that. I was his superstition, his talisman, his good-luck charm, and he considered me one of the rays of his star.

* * *

My husband should have been less demanding; after all, I was only doing what he asked me to, renovating our home to make it worthy of him. I threw myself into a frenzy of shopping, consulting with decorators and designers, carpenters, painters, and furniture-makers. I ordered pink roses and swans painted on my bedroom walls and bought a harp and new bronze chairs and tables topped in rose-colored marble and a new, even bigger bed with a tent-like canopy of pink satin. Since I must take even greater care of my appearance now that I had a husband six years my junior to please, I had my dressing room lined entirely, floor to ceiling, with mirrors, and a new marble bath. I had the dining room done over in gold and red and purchased a new mahogany table and chairs.

Since Bonaparte said that he desired to see my portrait everywhere, I took him at his word. I began to pose each afternoon for artists. Many of them were eager to have me pose for them now that I was famous again. So there I was, my painted presence, everywhere in every room, in flowing white dresses and colored shawls glimmering discreetly with gold threads, with cameos and diadems evocative of ancient glories or pink or white roses in my hair, which I had let grow long again. I posed in profile, face forward, or full figure, sitting, standing, or half-reclining on sofas, always with a wistfully sweet, closemouthed smile that lent me a provocative air of melancholy that always made men long to comfort me. Sometimes the paintings showed me standing at windows longing to see my husband return, waiting alone on a garden bench surrounded by roses; they even depicted me reading his letters with a stack of them in my lap and scattered like white rose petals around my feet.

One grand larger-than-life canvas showed me as “Our Lady of Victories,” standing with the torn and bullet-riddled flags of conquered nations at my feet and a portrait of my husband on the wall behind me, looking over my shoulder. And there were engravings of me in all the newspapers—Barras saw to that—showing me kneeling in prayer at Notre Dame, praying for my husband and the men who had gone into battle with him, giving alms to wounded and crippled soldiers, or visiting them in hospitals. I felt guilty because these images made me look more selfless than I was. I had never been particularly religious, and the sight of blood, lost limbs, and rotting wounds made me sick and faint. Those pictures were not true portraits of me.

Everyone knew of Bonaparte’s great love for me and that he carried my likeness above his heart into battle with him, like a lucky charm he was never without, pressing it to his lips before the first charge and again in thankfulness after. I was his lucky star. As long as he had me, he believed that he could never be defeated, and his ever-increasing string of victories seemed to prove it.

“Vive Madame Bonaparte!” the people would shout every time I appeared in public. Every time my husband scored another victory there was dancing and singing in the street outside our house. I couldn’t step outside without being pelted with flowers, poetry, and praise. Everyone adored me and wanted to kiss my hand or hem. I was the subject of songs and sonnets. My likeness was everywhere, sold in shops and on street corners, in every newspaper and magazine, even on painted fans, playing cards, and snuffboxes. There were balls and supper parties in my honor; plays and operas were dedicated to me; every time I went to the theater everyone stood up and cheered when I entered my box. No merchant dared deny me credit. All I had to do was walk into any shop in Paris and point and say, “I want that!” and it was mine; it didn’t matter if it was diamonds or dancing slippers, an Oriental carpet, a suite of rosewood furniture, or an ancient Etruscan urn.

Every eye appraised me, the women noting every detail of my costume from the top of my head to my toes. I was featured in every fashion magazine; there were engravings and beautiful colored plates of me in all manner of dresses—negligees, afternoon dresses, riding habits, evening dresses, and ball gowns. I was the darling of Le Journal des Dames et des Modes, which was widely regarded as the Bible of fashion; even British women smuggled copies across the Channel to see what I was wearing. If I wore roses in my hair or a long gold pin encrusted with diamonds and shaped like an arrow it was news of the most vital importance.

I was famous again; I tried to enjoy it, but my previous experience riding on the comet’s tail of Alexandre’s fame had tempered my exuberance and taught me how quickly it could all go sour. Adored one day, abhorred the next. Every star that rises must also fall. The end was inevitable; it was only a question of when.

My real happiness came from something that had nothing to do with fame. I was in love again. As cruel Fate would have it, no sooner had I married Bonaparte than I met the man I had been waiting my whole life for—Lieutenant Hippolyte Charles. With curly black hair, cornflower-blue eyes, a heart- and knee-melting smile, a wicked sense of humor, and an interest in clothes to match mine, a dandy to the core, he was my soul’s perfect mate. The first time I saw him in his powder-blue hussar’s uniform trimmed with scarlet my heart stood still, and then it melted. I swooned, but he was swift. He caught me in his arms and carried me upstairs, to my room at Theresa’s country house. He stayed with me all night and we had champagne and kisses for breakfast and didn’t get up until half past two.

* * *

I was simply too busy to give much time or thought to correspondence. I was being adored by the masses and decorating a house, posing for portraits, and there was always more shopping to do, and fittings with my dressmaker, and people would be offended if I didn’t accept their invitations, especially when I was the guest of honor, but Bonaparte simply could not understand that. But it wasn’t my fault; no woman so preoccupied could have found time to write to her husband! There simply were not enough hours in the day to accomplish everything that was being demanded of me.

Bonaparte decided if I would not write to him, then he must have me with him where he could see and touch me. He began to pester me to come to Italy until I had even less desire than ever to open his letters. I felt sick at my stomach every time a new one arrived.

When he found my silence on the subject deafening, he started sending his generals to my door to volunteer their services as my escort. I was so desperate to stay in Paris that I used all my wiles to win them to my side, to make my excuses to Bonaparte and persuade him that such arduous travel was not in my best interests. If my body was the fee the generals demanded I paid it gladly; some of them were very handsome and skilled in the amatory arts, so I didn’t really mind.

I began dropping coy little hints that I was ill, and Bonaparte leapt to the conclusion that I was pregnant. Since the idea gave him so much pleasure, I let him believe it. From that day forward he wrote obsessively about my “little belly” and how much he longed to see it. I imagine constantly that I see you with your round little tummy, it will make you look fascinating!

Of course, he was bound to be disappointed when I revealed that I had been mistaken about my condition, and I knew it was wrong to mislead him, but I just couldn’t bear to leave Hippolyte. If only I had met him before Bonaparte! As it was, I couldn’t even consider divorce. Bonaparte was the hero of France; everyone loved him and celebrated him as their savior. They would hate me if I divorced him.

* * *

Soon he was bewailing my absence again; his desire to see my round little belly began to outweigh the risks of travel for a woman in my condition.

Without you, I am useless here! he wrote. I will leave the chase after glory and serving the country to others and come back to Paris to be with you, my incomparable and inconstant Josephine! A thousand daggers are ripping my heart to bits!

To try to force me to his will, Bonaparte ordered his brother Joseph, the banker of the family, to deprive me of funds. But Hippolyte had the ideal solution—I could join him in a business venture that was bound to reap stupendous profits, thousands and thousands of livres, for everyone involved. Of course I said yes.

Since my days as Barras’s mistress, I had not been a stranger to the world of black-market dealings, army contracts, profiteering, and speculation. With the aristocracy banished from France, the only men who could afford to support me were engaged in such dubious and shady activities. Now, as General Bonaparte’s adored wife, I was able to use my influence to obtain valuable contracts for my lover to provision the French army. It was very exciting, and we now had a legitimate cause to cloak our illicit trysts and explain all the time we spent alone together—we were business partners! Every day we were out and about making deals, buying cheap, and hoping to sell high. Soon the money was pouring in, and I didn’t have to worry about Joseph’s penny-pinching; I had my own money.

But every time I saw a wounded soldier, a lump rose in my throat and tears filled my eyes—tears the soldiers always mistook for compassion, never guessing that they sprang from guilt. I would always stop and speak to them and empty my purse into their hands. Yet the whole time I was speaking and smiling and dispensing alms, or visiting a hospital as Bonaparte now insisted I actually do, and Barras obligingly arranged, I could not stop thinking about the shoddy, worthless supplies we had sent them: the boots that had their soles sucked off in mud, the sour wine and spoilt milk, rancid meat, moldy grains and putrid eggs, rotten cloth for uniforms that their thumbs poked through when they pulled up their breeches, seams that tore and unraveled, canvas tents that leaked, defective muskets prone to exploding, cracked ramrods, lame horses, and bridles and stirrups that broke under the slightest pressure. I could not help but wonder if I, the one these men venerated and adored as “Our Lady of Victories,” the army’s good-luck charm, had caused their injuries, cost this man an eye or that one an arm, and another a lifetime as an invalid, and that led to thoughts of the hundreds of others who lay dead upon the fields of battle, never to come home again. Some nights I started awake screaming after a bad dream in which I saw my son, Eugène, die or be hideously maimed when one of the muskets I had supplied exploded in his hands, burning and blinding him, turning his sweet, handsome face into a monstrosity that made even his own mother scream. It made me realize that all those men were some mother’s son.

But I just couldn’t stop. Life was Heaven with Hippolyte, and as long as Joseph held the purse strings, providing myself with an independent income was the only way I could sustain it. Otherwise, I would have to give in and go to Italy. Just the thought of it was enough to make me weep! I wanted to stay with Hippolyte! We went out with our friends and dined and danced every night, then came home and made love until dawn. We slept until half past noon or even one o’clock; sometimes we didn’t get out of bed until two or three o’clock. After a leisurely and loving breakfast we bathed and dressed and went out to attend to business, to secure more cheap goods and lucrative contracts. Then it was dinner and dancing and laughter and love all over again before we fell asleep in each other’s arms. I couldn’t give all that up, I just couldn’t!

* * *

But I had not reckoned on my husband’s romantic delirium swaying The Directory in his favor. He was so lovelorn and frantic, so entirely, body and soul, besotted with me, that they feared he really would make good his threats to abandon the campaign for my sake. Barras came to see me, barging into my bedroom before noon while Hippolyte and I were still sound asleep. He yanked me out of bed naked and ordered me to pack. The next morning he was there again to make sure I got in the coach. I can still feel the iron grip of his hand on my soft arm, forcing me in, then slamming the door. Thus I departed for Italy, with six coaches crammed full of luggage and my maid Louise following behind. My only consolation was that Hippolyte was going with me as my escort—Barras had been kind enough to arrange that at least—and I had a new little pug dog Hippolyte had given me after my dear old Fortune died.