Читать книгу The Last Love - Thomas B. Costain - Страница 28

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The story that Napoleon told proceeded along some such lines as this.

It was on the great day of 13 Vendemiaire (October 4, 1795) that the fortunes of Napoleon Bonaparte took a turn for the better. By a grim and free use of grapeshot he scattered the rabble of Paris and freed the Convention from the tyranny of the mob. This won him the favorable notice of Barras, the leading figure in the Directory.

These were strange and wild days in Paris. The Terror and the roll of the tumbrils had become a memory. A degree of freedom mounting to license had gone to the heads of the people. Unscrupulous men like Barras, intent on power and wealth, were in control of administration. At the top of the social life of the city was a group of beautiful and immoral women. Napoleon had heard the story, generally believed, that three of the most strikingly lovely of them had been confined together in one cell in the prison of the Carmelites during the final days of the Terror and that they had escaped the guillotine by the narrowest of margins. One was Madame d’Aiguillon, a patrician, and coldly lovely. The second was Theresa Cabarrus, who had been the mistress of Tallien and inspired him to the bold move which overthrew Robespierre and brought the Terror to an end. This made her the heroine of the people of France who called her Our Lady of Thermidor. She was a softly beautiful creature with no morals but, also, no meanness or malice. The third was the widow of an aristocrat from Martinique, the Vicomte de Beauharnais, who had perished under the knife. Her name was Marie Josephine Rose Tascher de la Pagerie.

It was said that even the most gross and cruel of the guards at the Carmelites would peer through the slit in their door and say, “What a pity it is that these beautiful heads must roll in the basket!”

The young Corsican, who was now being called General Vendemiaire by the public, knew there was no truth in this story. All three had been in the Carmelites but in different cells. He had then, as always, an ardent eye for feminine beauty and he knew also that advancement in the service could most easily be won by feminine support. There can be no doubt that he had often thought of Our Lady of Thermidor and the Fair Creole, as the widow Beauharnais was called. He would gladly have married either one of them. But these fair and giddy ladies, alas, were barely aware of the existence of the sallow and still somewhat obscure Corsican.

Napoleon met Josephine at the table of Barras. He went there knowing she had been the mistress of General Hoche but was now enjoying the protection of the great man of the Directory. “Barras listens to this mad coquette,” he said to himself, as he brushed his somewhat threadbare uniform. “I must strive to make a good impression.”

On his way to the Rue Basse-Pierre, he called at the War Office to have a word with Carnot, the Minister of War. An underling required him to repeat his name and none of the officers in the anteroom gave him as much as a nod. “These are not soldiers,” he said to himself. “They are cheap imitations. Why should I worry because they think me of small consequence? Some day—ah, some day—things will be different!”

Carnot, the very efficient and overworked head of military affairs, smiled and laid a hand on a roll of manuscript. “This is excellent,” he said. “I think it would succeed. I said so to the directors yesterday. Of course, they will take some time to make up their minds. Mine is already made up.”

Bonaparte was not surprised. He knew the plan he had drawn up for a fresh campaign in the north of Italy was novel as well as brilliant and practical. How could they fail to approve? He was disappointed that Carnot said nothing about appointing him to command the operations. But that, surely, must come later. As he returned through the crowded outer office, he must have allowed a spark of triumph to light up his dark and usually sombre eyes, for the nonentities who made up the whispering groups sensed a change in him. There was even a lightness in his step which had been lacking before. They watched him with what seemed a new curiosity, even envy.

The Fair Creole was acting as hostess for Barras and Napoleon approached her on diffident feet. But the warm brown eyes of Rose (she was known everywhere as Rose at that time) smiled at him with an unexpected friendliness.

“Ah, General Bonaparte, this is a great honor,” she said. “Do you know that we are all secretly afraid of you? How daringly you dealt with that mob! I wonder—are you as brave and ruthless in all things?”

Napoleon found that his tongue had loosened. Looking straight into her eyes, he said, “Dear lady, I stand in a peril at this moment to which I can bring neither bravery nor ruthlessness.”

He said this with a fervor which was real. He was seeing this beautiful woman, who had scattered her favors so lavishly, in a new light. There was no hint of the wanton in her, no suggestion of calculation in the glance with which she favored him. She was gentle and graceful and, in his eyes, indescribably lovely. Once he had thought of her in terms of the help she might lend him in his advancement; now he was swept away by her charms. He had been in love often enough but never before had he felt such an overwhelming surge of emotion.

He never could tell afterward what manner of dress she wore on this epic occasion. One detail alone remained in his memory. A pair of lions’ heads, wrought beautifully in enamel, served to hold her dress on her shoulders. He thought them in the most pleasant of taste. Afterward, when they had been married for some time, he asked her why she never wore these clips. She seemed at a loss about them, in fact she found it hard to recall them at all. They had, no doubt, been lost, she said. As he was soon to learn, she was very careless about her possessions. Jewelry vanished, money flowed through her hands and dissolved into thin air, nothing was important enough to command a conscientious custody. Josephine could always get what she wanted. Why, then, make a wardrobe mistress of herself?

Josephine had a gift for setting men at their ease, of saying the right things. The young Corsican found other compliments to pay her. He talked of himself, he even boasted a little. Finally he commented on her name.

“I always hear you spoken of as Rose,” he said. “As a name it is not suited to you.”

This came as a surprise to her and she regarded him with a half smile, half frown. He was soon to discern that she had a way of contracting her eyes so that her smiles carried with them the hint of a frown while her frowns were equally suggestive of a palliating approval.

“But, m’sieur le général,” she said, “I have always liked my name. Is it that you think I bear no resemblance to that flower?”

“No, madame,” he responded. “You are more lovely than any flower. But there are so many who bear it. In France it has become almost a fixed habit for parents to name a daughter Rose. And you—ah, madame, you should be called by something more distinctive. You have another name which seems to me more fitting. Josephine.”

She repeated the name in a low tone, almost to herself. “Josephine. Well, m’sieur le général, it is possible you are right, although I must say I have never been fond of it. Josephine!” Suddenly her eyes lost their quizzical half frown. They opened in a wide smile under their dark lashes and she touched his arm with a hint of approval. “Perhaps you are right. It has some—distinction, as you say.”

“I shall always think of you as Josephine,” he said, “even though you may never allow me the privilege of addressing you that way.”

“Consider, M’sieur Vendemiaire, that the privilege is already yours.”

They talked for as long a time as she dared allow him. The guests kept pouring in, mostly men, and she had to greet them all. Napoleon watched her, standing silently at one side and paying no attention to other guests. He saw that she was tall and slender and he thought her graceful beyond compare. “I have fallen in love for the first time,” he said to himself. “What need I care about her past? The present and the future shall be mine.”

She did not look again in his direction and he began to fear he had failed to make a good impression. Before they went in, however, his fears were relieved somewhat. He heard her say to one of the other guests: “No, no, m’sieur, I do not agree with you. General Vendemiaire is not lacking in personality. He has a strange and compelling face. It makes me think of the profile of a Roman emperor.”

“Ha, my lovely lady!” he thought, triumphantly. “Some day, perhaps, this profile of mine will be seen on medals cast in the French mints. An emperor of France! And if this comes to pass, you, my sweet and gentle Josephine, shall be empress!”

She stood at the wide doorway to bid farewell to the guests when the meal came to an end. There had been many wines and the talk at table had been brilliant and exciting; and these causes had combined to bring a slightly pink flush into her usually pale cheeks. She touched his arm again as he filed slowly past her.

“Perhaps the hero who saved the Convention,” she whispered, “will condescend to have luncheon with me tomorrow. At my place on the Rue Chantereine.”