CHAPTER 28
On New Year’s Eve, Haydn’s Creation was to be performed at the Opéra in Bonaparte’s honor. I was halfway down the stairs when I realized my shawl didn’t quite suit my gown. Bonaparte was bound to be displeased, he was very particular about such things, so I sent Hortense down to tell him that I would only be a few moments more. In my haste, the heel of my shoe caught in my hem, tearing my gown, and “a few moments more” turned into fifteen and then twenty, then thirty minutes as my ladies swarmed about me, bumping into one another, dropping things, and snapping crossly at one another in their haste, making me want to just swat them all away and dress myself.
At last, in an ivory satin gown overlaid with shimmering gold net and the parure of pearls the King and Queen of Naples had given me, I rushed downstairs, throwing an Indian shawl of deep crimson and burnished gold about my shoulders as I ran, just in time to see Bonaparte’s carriage driving away. A footman informed me that the First Consul had gone on ahead. He had only just left and if we hurried we could catch up, so Hortense and I climbed into the carriage that had been brought for us. Bonaparte would be angry if I wasn’t there in the royal box for all the people to see us before the performance started.
As we neared the opera house there was a great flash of blinding white light. The carriage felt like it had been swept up on a tremendous wave; it shuddered and rocked as the windows exploded, showering us with shards of broken glass. I heard the horses scream and there was a great crash as the carriage fell over on its side. Then everything went black. The next thing I knew, a man—my husband!—was lifting me from the broken, splintered ruins of the carriage. I was bleeding from a cut on my temple and Bonaparte pressed his handkerchief firmly against it, murmuring something about head wounds always bleeding like the devil. Hortense—alive and safe, thank God!—was standing beside me, staring about her in horrified wonder as she bound her shawl around her arm, to staunch the blood seeping from several small cuts.
“Josephine—you are still my good-luck charm!” Bonaparte cried as he enfolded me in his arms and smothered me with kisses. “Had it not been for you, and your infernal shawl, keeping me waiting, my carriage would have been caught in the blast and I would have been blown to bits!”
My ears were ringing; his voice sounded very far away. Though I heard his words, I couldn’t comprehend what he was saying. I stepped back from his embrace and stared around me. Someone had tried to kill Bonaparte with a bomb. It had been left in a cart blocking the street where he must pass in order to reach the opera house. All about us, the streets were littered with broken glass, glittering in the moon- and lamplight as far as the eye could see, and the bodies of the dead, and the wounded groaning in agony. I saw men missing limbs and white bones jaggedly protruding from torn and bloody flesh. Slivers of glass stabbed their skin like tiny knives and many had been blinded. At least thirty were dead and twice more had suffered injuries. Hortense and I were fortunate to have escaped with barely a scratch when so many others had suffered much worse. There wasn’t a house standing within sight that hadn’t lost all its windows, and the roofs of several had caved in, crushing and burying anyone unfortunate enough to be inside.
If we had left the Tuileries on time our carriage would have been almost on top of the bomb when it exploded; it would have meant certain death for all of us. The enormity of it shook me, I felt suddenly very dizzy and weak. Spots danced before my eyes. I staggered and only just had time to reach out to my husband before I fainted again. He caught me and cradled me in his arms, and, for the first time in a very long time, I felt safe. How strange that I should feel that way, bleeding and wounded, when we had just come so very close to death.
* * *
He loved me again . . . for a little while. I tried to hold on, to make it last. But Bonaparte couldn’t give up what I called his “two-minute conquests” and I was sorely afraid that one of them would capture his fascination the way I once had. My jealous tears annoyed him and kept him from my bed. He was restless and ill-tempered and itching to embark on another campaign.
I begged him not to go. I ran after him in my nightgown with my hair flowing down and caught desperately at his arm as he climbed into his coach. But he shook me off.
“My power depends on my glory and my glory depends on my victories,” he said. “Conquest alone can maintain me.”
“Please!” I tried again to push my way into the coach, and into his arms again. “Take me with you!”
But he pushed me away.
“Nature has given me a strong and resolute character, but she has made you out of lace and gauze, just like your nightgown,” he said as his fingers plucked disdainfully at the lace.
He closed the door on me. I stood and watched and wept until I could no longer see his carriage.
* * *
I was “Our Lady of Victories” once more with the tattered and burnt flags of the fallen being laid at my feet, drinking champagne toasts and hosting grand balls every time Bonaparte’s latest victory was announced, consoling the widows and wounded, and being feted and celebrated by all Paris in his absence.
My hero returned victorious, drunk with power, and more obsessed with having a child than ever before. I was thirty-seven now, but it was still possible; his own mother had been deep into her thirties when her last child was born and would have likely continued breeding had her husband not died.
“It is the torment of my life not to have a child,” Bonaparte bemoaned his misfortune. “My power will never be firmly established until I have one.”
He sent me to La Plombières again, though I pleaded and wept not to go. I knew it would do no good, and it brought back so many unpleasant memories of how much I had suffered there.
“This time it will work,” Bonaparte confidently asserted. “Believe it will work, and it will. You must set your mind to giving me a son.”
As I was climbing into my carriage, about to drive away to the detested place, his brother Lucien sidled up to me and whispered in my ear that I should get a child if I could off another man and palm it off on Bonaparte. I knew it was a trick; my in-laws would like nothing better than to prove me guilty of such duplicity. I was not about to walk into their trap. Besides, if it hadn’t worked with Hippolyte, the most passionate affair of my life, then it was doubtful to work with any other man playing the role of stud.
* * *
I was desperate and I knew my days were numbered. The waters of La Plombières failed to wake my womb and every time my “little red sea” began to flow Bonaparte brooded and wept with disappointment. Everywhere I turned was the word “divorce” being whispered loud enough to make sure I heard it. I had to do something, so, to my great and eternal shame, I sacrificed my sweet daughter to try to save myself.
One night in bed, after I had been particularly zealous in pleasuring him, I suggested to Bonaparte that his brother Louis, the mad invalid, might marry Hortense. If they had a child it would be Bonaparte’s blood united with mine flowing in its veins, just the same as if it were our very own child, and, provided it was a boy, it could be his heir. My husband thought it was a most ingenious idea and ordered me to start planning the wedding without delay.
Hortense wept when I told her—I let her believe it was all Bonaparte’s idea; I couldn’t bear to have my daughter hate me—but she stoically accepted her fate.
“My stepfather is a comet of which we are but the tail, and we must follow him everywhere without knowing where it carries us—for our happiness or for our grief,” she said bravely.
I tried to atone with gifts—a beautiful white satin wedding dress covered with pearls, a diamond diadem, necklace, and earrings, and ropes of magnificent pearls. But Hortense wasn’t me; she merely smiled and, like the dutiful daughter she always was, thanked me for my gifts, but I could tell they meant nothing to her and her heart was breaking. Whenever she looked at Louis, I had a feeling she was seeing prison doors slamming shut in front of her and hearing the clank and rattle of phantom locks.
I lied to myself, even as I lied to Hortense, trying vainly to reassure her that perhaps Louis would be kind. After all, they had so much in common—they were both fond of music and liked to read. But I knew Louis would make her miserable, he hated me just as much as his siblings and mother did, and he would seek to hurt me through Hortense. He would never be kind to her. But I had no choice. I was fighting for my survival; if Hortense and Louis failed to give Bonaparte an heir I was certain to be set aside. The whispers were just too loud to ignore; there had to be more than a grain of truth in them. Bonaparte must have said something to someone.
* * *
Luck was with me once again. Hortense quickly conceived and gave birth to a healthy son. They named him Napoleon Louis Charles. My husband was elated; now if my womb failed to flourish, there was this child waiting in the wings to assume the mantle of heir. I thought now, whatever happened, I would be safe. My daughter had done what I could not; she had given my husband an heir.
* * *
Bonaparte was inching ever closer to a crown. He became more pompous and pretentious every day. He began wearing gold-embroidered red velvet suits and a jeweled sword, more ornament than weapon, and declared his birthday a national holiday. He had coins minted with his profile, wearing a crown of laurel leaves just like Julius Caesar. He decided that the people missed the awe and grandeur of the Catholic Church, so he restored the religion that the Revolution had abolished. On Easter Sunday, for the first time in years, church bells rang in France, summoning the people to Mass. In Notre Dame, I knelt beside my husband, stumbling over the long-forgotten prayers. Afterward, my husband stood and nodded his approval. “Now everything is just like before.”
As he gave me his arm and we walked back down the aisle, to wave to the people from the church steps, I could not help but wonder, Was it all for nothing? The Revolution and all those thousands of lives lost in Liberty’s name, what had it all been for?
I knew better than to try to talk to Bonaparte about it. I knew exactly what he would say if I tried: Women should stick to knitting and not meddle in politics! But he would not leave it at that. He would feel the need to punish me for forgetting my place. He had cruelly devised the perfect method: He would summon his latest mistress and order her to be stripped and ready, scrubbed clean of perfume, as it always gave him headaches, and waiting naked in the bedroom across the hall from mine. When he was finished, he would come to me and tell me all about it, describing the lady’s anatomy and everything they had done together. He spared me nothing! As I sat weeping, he would come to me and kiss the top of my head and say, “You are a fool, Josephine; you always weep and are afraid that I will fall in love. Do you not know by now that I am not made for love?” And then he would leave me to sleep alone that night, though I very rarely slept, I was so tormented.
Scoff though he might, I thought my fears justified. Bonaparte had loved me once; it was not inconceivable that he could love again, another, in the same mad, passionate manner. If a woman ever came along who fascinated him as much as I once had, everything would be over for me.
I was fighting harder than ever now to hold on to my husband’s affections. I was desperate to please him, to keep him interested and satisfied. I was dyeing my hair regularly with dark coffee to keep the encroaching gray at bay, wearing more rouge than ever before, and lining my amber eyes with kohl and shading them with a mixture of elderberries and soot to create a mysterious smoky effect, sometimes enhanced by a shimmer of silver or gold paint.
I appeared in a series of fascinating and exotic gowns that would be endlessly talked about and fill pages in the popular fashion magazines and make Bonaparte proud. One night I was all in gold net in which jeweled and enameled sea creatures were ensnared. Another night my black silk gown was covered in toucan feathers encrusted with pearls. I even had the new gold coins minted with my husband’s profile made into a dress; I sparkled and jingled every time I moved, liquid nude silk peeping out between where the coins were joined. I imagined it was almost like wearing a knight’s chain mail. Another night I was diamonds and pearls from décolletage to hem and the next I appeared in a sheer black gown encrusted with rubies and sapphires, and after that it was lilac silk overlaid with white netting covered with sparkling amethysts from the palest hue to the deepest regal purple. Hoping to remind my husband of the first night we spent together as lovers, I appeared at our anniversary ball in a sheer, body-hugging blush-pink gown sewn all over with real pink rose petals, a creation so delicate I could not sit down and hardly dared move lest I split a seam or the petals fall away and reveal that I was wearing nothing underneath.
But it was all in vain. I appealed to Bonaparte’s vanity, not his heart. He was proud of me—sometimes—but he no longer loved me. The dream had died; Josephine was just a pretense, a role I played, only make-believe on the world’s stage. Unfortunately, where my husband was concerned, I now lacked the appeal of other actresses.
All Paris was being titillated by tales of the two actresses currently dueling for his affections—the mature, well-seasoned, and very dignified tragedienne Madame Duchesnois and the fifteen-year-old in-génue Mademoiselle Weimar. While the former delighted Bonaparte with her sensual prowess, the latter coaxed the little boy in him out to play. Whenever Mademoiselle Weimar was visiting him at the Tuileries the corridor outside my rooms would ring with Bonaparte’s laughter and her girlish shrieks as they romped in and out of his bedroom and played hide-and-seek amongst the bronze and marble statues. She skipped about quite shamelessly in her shift and bare feet with her long blond hair down in pigtails. He would sit her on his knee and feed her sweets right in front of me; sometimes he even gave her my candied violets.
Bonaparte insisted I accompany him to the theater whenever one of them was appearing in a new play. I had to sit there, smile and applaud, and pretend nothing was wrong and I didn’t already know more than I cared to about their more intimate performances. Sometimes Bonaparte made me wait while he visited his actress amours in their dressing rooms backstage. “I’ll only be a few minutes,” he always said; to him it was a boast that he could “get the job done in three or four minutes.” Just because it was true didn’t make it any easier to bear. I suppose this humiliation was a just penance for my own infidelities.