CHAPTER 24

La Plombières was a little village in Lorraine surrounded by pine forests and I thought I might rest quietly there. I was weary of being “Our Lady of Victories,” “Madame Bonaparte,” and constantly on display, like an actress always onstage. I needed peace and privacy, I needed a rest, to put away Josephine and be Rose again, just for a little while so I didn’t forget her too.

But apparently that was too much to ask. Bonaparte had sent heralds riding ahead to announce my arrival, and I was welcomed like a queen, with a band playing, flowers flying, and cheers resounding the moment my carriage rolled into town, passing beneath the triumphal arch that had been erected. Children sang and the Mayor came out to meet me and make a speech and his wife and daughters practically drooled over my dress. It was so hard to keep smiling when all I wanted to do was cry.

I found my stay there anything but peaceful. One day when I went out onto the balcony of the house where I was staying it suddenly collapsed, plunging me twenty feet down onto the cobblestone street below. When those who rushed to my aid lifted me I felt like every bone in my body was broken. Every little movement hurt and I screamed and screamed. I was in so much pain I was incapable of a single coherent word.

In truth, I was very fortunate; my spine was not broken as was originally suspected, merely bruised so badly I could not bear to move. But my pelvis had also suffered injuries, a series of delicate fractures, which did not bode well for any future hope of motherhood. There was for a time grave concern about whether I would ever walk again.

An incompetent quack, the so-called “Dr.” Martinet was summoned and he promptly ordered a sheep slaughtered and my naked body wrapped in the bloody skin while it was still warm. While I lay there in excruciating pain, swaddled in that horrible sheepskin, reeking of blood, Dr. Martinet bled me from the bottoms of my feet and administered an enema of brandy and camphor followed by a douche of the same mixture for good measure. Afterward, I was plunged into a bath so hot it nearly scalded what life remained out of me, and then I was tucked into bed, lying on my stomach, with a poultice of boiled potatoes on my back. When the potatoes had completely cooled, leeches were put on the blisters they left behind, followed by mustard plasters. This was my life for the next two months.

While I was enduring this barbaric treatment, day after terrible day, in so much pain I wanted to die, and all I could do was cry and worry whether I would be a cripple, Dr. Martinet sat by my bedside and wrote a book, exposing every intimate detail of my injuries and the treatment he prescribed, and arranged to give a series of lectures about how he had saved the life of Bonaparte’s wife. The only thing he withheld was the possible repercussions of my pelvic injuries upon my future fertility. With many tears and anguished, heartfelt words, I persuaded him to tell no one of this. I did not want to deprive my husband of all hope of offspring, I said, and it really was for Mother Nature, not medicine, to decide. And, I added craftily, if I did have a child, I would give the credit to his treatment, the diligent care he had taken over my shattered pelvis; I would see that he was hailed as a miracle worker. Because he admired Bonaparte so much, Dr. Martinet agreed to honor my request.

Because of me, Dr. Martinet became rich and famous, even people who cared nothing about medicine flocked to buy his book and attend his lectures, and society ladies rushed to La Plombières to be treated by him just so they could say they had the same doctor as Josephine. Privacy, it seemed, had fallen by the wayside. Everyone thought they had the right to know everything about me, even my private, natural functions. Nothing was secret or sacred anymore.

I hated La Plombières and could not wait to leave. I think the happiest steps I ever took were when I walked out of the house that had become like a prison to me with Dr. Martinet as my jailer and climbed into my carriage. I never looked back. I sincerely hoped I would never see that wretched village, or Dr. Martinet, again.