But it wasn’t all. When I pressed him for details Count Brahe painted a frightening picture of cliques, intrigues and murder, of poverty and decay. Between the younger officers who were enthusiastic about Jean-Baptiste ‘s ideas, and those represented by men like Count Fersen – at one time lover of Queen Marie Antoinette, whom he had tried unsuccessfully to get out of France with King Louis XVI and her family – a man abhorrent of anything the French Revolution and men like Jean-Baptiste stood for, there was a furious tug-of-war. It was complicated by the general economic deterioration of the country, and it ended on the day of the funeral of the Prince in the murder of Count Fersen of Augustenburg, by the mob outside the royal castle, with Army detachments passively looking on. After his disappearance the whole of Sweden agreed to the young officers’ choice of Jean-Baptiste as successor to the King, the aristocracy because they realised that a strong man was needed, the middle and lower classes because they thought that a man who was on good terms with Napoleon might manage to keep Sweden out of Napoleon’s Continental Blockade and put trade and industry on their feet again. Besides, said Brahe, the traders and peasants disliked the Vasas because they were so poor that they could hardly pay their gardeners, and when they were told that the Prince of Ponte Corvo was rich their last hesitations vanished.
Murder, intrigue, poverty, and on top of that life in a castle inside which the nobility had murdered an unpopular Count: no no, it was too much. ‘No, Jean-Baptiste,’ I thought, ‘not that,’ and covering my face with my hands I cried helplessly.
‘Mama, dear Mama!’ Oscar pressed his arms round my neck and clung to me.
I wiped away my tears and turned to see Brahe’s grave face. Did this young man understand at all why I was weeping?
‘Perhaps I should not have told you all that,’ he said, ‘but I thought, Your Highness, that it would be better if you knew.’
‘So the whole Swedish people chose my husband. And what about His Majesty the King?’
‘The King, Your Highness, is a Vasa and a man of over sixty who has had several strokes already, is plagued by gout and not very lucid in his brain. He put up opposition to the very last, suggested one North German cousin after the other and all the Danish Princes. In the end he had to give in.’
‘So in the end he had to give in and adopt Jean-Baptiste as his beloved son,’ I thought. ‘The Queen is younger than His Majesty, isn’t she?’
‘Her Majesty is slightly over fifty years of age now, a very energetic and intelligent woman.’
‘How she will hate me!’
‘Her Majesty is looking forward very much to seeing the little Duke of Södermanland,’ said Count Brahe, unperturbed.
At the door of the house Mörner appeared, freshly washed, beaming and wearing a gala uniform. Oscar ran up to him to admire the armorial insignia on the buttons on his uniform. ‘Look, Mama, look!’ he shouted.
Mörner paid no attention to Oscar, but, noting the traces of tears on my face and the young Count’s gravity, looked thoughtfully from one to the other.
‘Her Royal Highness wanted me to tell her about developments in Sweden and the history of our royal family during recent years,’ said Brahe, embarrassed.
‘Are we now members of the Vasa family too?’ asked Oscar eagerly.
‘Nonsense, Oscar, you stay what you are, a Bernadotte,’ I said sharply, and got up. ‘Did you want me, Baron Mörner?’
‘His Royal Highness asked Your Royal Highness to come to his study.’
Jean-Baptiste’s study was a strange sight. Next to his desk, where as usual documents were piled high, someone had placed the big mirror from my dressing-room. In front of it Jean-Baptiste was trying on a new uniform. Three tailors were kneeling around him, their mouths full of pins. Very attentively the Swedes followed the fitting manoeuvres.
I glanced at the new dark blue tunic. Its high collar did not have the heavy gold braid of the Marshal’s uniform, only a plain gold trimming. Jean-Baptiste examined himself very slowly in the mirror. ‘It pinches,’ he said, as grave as a judge, ‘it pinches under the right arm.’
The three tailors shot up in a bunch, undid the seam under the armpit and did it up again.
‘Can you find a fault anywhere, Count von Essen?’ asked Jean-Baptiste.
Essen shook his head, but Friesendorff put his hand on Jean-Baptiste’s shoulders – ‘Pardon me, Your Highness,’ he said – moved it along his back and then declared that there was a crease under the collar.
All the three tailors felt for the crease but could not spot it. Fernand finally settled the matter: ‘Sir, the uniform fits.’
‘Your sash, Count von Essen!’ And before the sour-looking Count had realised what he wanted Jean-Baptiste had taken the Count’s blue-and-yellow sash from him and tied it round himself. ‘You will have to go back to Sweden without your sash, Count. I need it for to-morrow’s audience. There are none to be had in Paris. Send me three Swedish Marshal’s sashes as soon as you arrive in Stockholm.’
Only now he noticed my presence. ‘The Swedish uniform. Do you like it?’
I nodded.
‘We are to go to the Emperor to-morrow morning at eleven o’clock. I asked for the audience, and I want you to accompany me. Essen, is the sash meant to be worn about the belt or to cover the belt?’
‘To cover the belt, Your Royal Highness.’
‘Good. Then I need not borrow your belt as well. I shall wear the belt of my French Marshal’s uniform. No one will notice it. Désirée, do you really think the uniform fits properly?’
At that moment Madame La Flotte announced Julie. Leaving the room I heard Jean-Baptiste say: ‘I shall also need a Swedish ceremonial sword.’
Julie, standing by the window and gazing pensively down into the garden, looked sad and lost in the heavy folds of her purple velvet coat. ‘I am sorry, Julie, to have kept you waiting,’ I said.
Julie started. Then, stretching her neck forward and widening her eyes as if she had never seen me before, she made a solemn curtsey.
‘Don’t poke fun at me,’ I shouted furiously, ‘I’ve got enough to put up with as it is.’
But Julie remained solemn: ‘Your Royal Highness, I am not poking fun at you.’
‘Get up, get up and don’t annoy me. Since when does a Queen bow to a Crown Princess?’
Julie got up. ‘If it is a Queen without a country, whose subjects rose against her and her husband from the very first day onwards, and if it is a Crown Princess whose husband was unanimously elected by the representatives of their future subjects, then it is the right thing for that Queen to bow to that Crown Princess. I congratulate you, my dear, I congratulate you from my heart.’
‘But how did you get to know it all? We only learnt about it last night.’ I sat down with her on the little sofa.
‘All Paris talks about nothing else. People like us were simply placed by the Emperor on the thrones he had conquered, as his representatives, so to speak. But in Sweden Parliament meets and voluntarily – no, Désirée, it’s beyond me.’ She laughed. ‘I had lunch in the Tuileries to-day. Napoleon talked about it a lot and chaffed me dreadfully.’
‘Chaffed you?
‘Yes. Imagine him wanting to make me believe that Jean-Baptiste would now ask to be discharged from the French Army and to become Swedish! Oh, how we laughed!’
I stared at her in amazement. ‘Laughed? What is there to laugh at? I could cry when I think of it.’
‘But, darling, for heaven’s sake, it isn’t true, is it?’
I said nothing.
‘But none of us has ever heard of such a thing,’ she stammered. ‘Joseph is King of Spain, but he is a Frenchman all the same. And Louis is King of Holland, but he wouldn’t thank you for calling him a Dutchman. And Jerome and Eliza and—’
‘That is just the difference,’ I said. ‘You yourself pointed out a moment ago the great difference there was between your case and ours.’
‘Tell me, are you really going to settle in Sweden?’
‘Jean-Baptiste says so. As far as I’m concerned it depends.’
‘Depends on what?’
‘I shall go, of course. But, you know,’ I said, dropping my voice, ‘they want me to call myself Desideria. That’s Latin and means “The longed-for one”, “the wanted one”. I shall stay there only if they really want me in Stockholm.’
‘The nonsense you talk! Of course you’re wanted.’
‘I am not so certain of that. The old aristocratic families and my new mother-in-law—’
‘Don’t be stupid. Mothers-in-law only hate you because you take their son from them,’ Julie argued, thinking probably of Madame Letitia. ‘But Jean-Baptiste is not the real son of the Swedish Queen. Besides, there is Persson in Stockholm. He won’t have forgotten how good Mama and Papa were to him, and all you need do is to raise him to the peerage and then at once you have a friend at court.’
‘You have the wrong idea of it.’ I sighed, realising that Julie did not really understand what had happened.
And, to be sure, her thoughts were off on another tack once more. ‘Listen, something incredible has happened. The Empress is pregnant! What do you think of that! The Emperor is beside himself with joy. The son is going to be known as the King of Rome. Napoleon, you know, has no doubt whatever that it will be a boy.’
‘How long has the Empress been pregnant? For the last twenty-four hours again or what?’
‘No, for the last three months, and—’
There came a knock on the door. Madame La Flotte announced that the Swedish gentlemen who were leaving for Stockholm to-night asked to be allowed to take their leave of Her Royal Highness.
‘Show the gentlemen in.’
I don’t suppose any of them could tell by my face how afraid I was of the future. I shook hands with Field-Marshal Count von Essen, the most loyal subject of the House of Vasa, and he said: ‘We shall meet again in Stockholm, Your Highness.’
Seeing Julie out to the hall I was amazed to meet young Brahe there. ‘Aren’t you going back to Stockholm to-night?’
‘I have asked to be appointed provisionally Your Royal Highness’s gentleman-in-waiting. My request has been granted. I am reporting for duty, Your Royal Highness.’
Tall, slim, nineteen years of age, dark eyes shining with enthusiasm, curly hair like my Oscar, that was Count Magnus Brahe, scion of one of the oldest and proudest families of Sweden, gentleman-in-waiting now to former Mademoiselle Clary, daughter of a silk merchant from Marseilles.
‘I should like Your Royal Highness to grant me the honour of accompanying you to Stockholm.’ I dare them to look down their noses at our new Crown Princess with a Count Brahe by her side, was the thought written all over his face.
I smiled. ‘Thank you, Count Brahe. But, you see, I’ve never before had a gentleman-in-waiting, and I really don’t know what I could give him to do.’
‘Your Royal Highness will think of something. And meanwhile I could play ball with Oscar – I am sorry, the Duke of Södermanland.’
‘Provided you don’t smash any more windows!’ I laughed. For the first time my anxiety about the future weakened a bit. Perhaps it wouldn’t be quite so bad after all.
We were ordered to appear before the Emperor at eleven o’clock in the morning.
At five minutes to eleven we entered the ante-chamber where Napoleon keeps diplomats, Generals, foreign Princes and French ministers waiting for hours. When we entered a hush fell on the assembly. Everybody stared at Jean-Baptiste’s Swedish uniform and shrank back from us, shrank back literally. Jean-Baptiste requested one of the adjutants of the Emperor to announce ‘The Prince of Ponte Corvo, Marshal of France, with wife and son’.
Among these people we felt as if we were sitting on an island. Nobody spoke to us, nobody congratulated us. Oscar clung to me tightly. They all knew what was going on. A foreign people had, of its own accord, without any compulsion, offered its crown to Jean-Baptiste. And now in there, on the Emperor’s desk, lay his application for permission to relinquish French citizenship, to be discharged from the Army. Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte no longer wanted to be a French citizen. They looked as if we were an apparition, something weird and uncanny.
Everybody at court knew that we were in for a dreadful scene in the Emperor’s room, one of those scenes of Imperial hysterics which make the walls shake and everybody tremble. ‘Thank God,’ I thought, ‘that he gave you a good long waiting time outside to collect yourself.’ Giving Jean-Baptiste a side-long glance, I saw him staring at one of the two sentries by the door to the Emperor’s apartments. It was the bear-skin cap which attracted his attention. He studied it as if he were seeing it for the first time, or for the last time.
The clock struck eleven. Meneval, the Emperor’s private secretary, appeared and called us.
The Emperor’s study is almost as big as a ballroom. His desk is at the very end of this huge room, and the way from the door to the desk seems endless. For that reason the Emperor receives his friends mostly in the middle of the room. We, however, had to cross the whole of it.
Like a statue, immovable, Napoleon sat behind his desk, stooping forward a bit as if he were lying in wait for us. Talleyrand, Prince of Benevento, and the present Foreign Minister, the Duke of Cadore, stood behind him whilst we, I in front with Oscar’s hand in mine and Jean-Baptiste behind me, followed by Meneval, walked up to him. When I came near enough I saw that the Emperor had affected the stony Cæsarean pose. Only his eyes seemed alive.
The three of us, Oscar in the middle, ranged ourselves before his desk. I curtsied.
The Emperor did not move but kept staring viciously at Jean-Baptiste. All of a sudden he jumped up, pushed back his chair and came out from behind the desk, yelling: ‘In what kind of attire dare you appear before your Emperor and Commander-in-Chief, Marshal?’
Jean-Baptiste answered in a low, rather jerky voice: ‘This uniform is a copy of the Swedish Marshal’s uniform, Sire.’
‘And you dare appear here in a Swedish uniform? You, a Marshal of France?’ He screamed like a madman.
‘I thought it was a matter of indifference to Your Majesty what uniforms the Marshals wore,’ said Jean-Baptiste quietly. ‘I have repeatedly seen Marshal Murat, the King of Naples, appear at court in some very curious uniforms.’
That went home. Napoleon’s childish brother-in-law Murat loves flamboyant uniforms and the Emperor laughs at them without ever calling him to order.
‘As far as I am informed my royal brother-in-law’s uniforms are – his own inventions.’ A fugitive smile played round the corners of his mouth and vanished at once, as he stamped the floor and started screaming again: ‘But you dare to appear before your Emperor in a Swedish uniform!’ Oscar almost crept behind me in fear. ‘Well, Marshal, what have you to say to that?’
‘I thought it right to appear at this audience in Swedish uniform. It was not my intention to insult Your Majesty. Part of the uniform, by the way, is my own invention, too. If Your Majesty would like to see—’
He pulled up the sash to show the belt. ‘I am wearing the belt of my old Marshal’s uniform, Sire.’
‘Stop these disrobing scenes, Prince! Let us get down to business!’
His voice sounded different, as if he were in a hurry now. The introductory scene which was meant to intimidate us was over. ‘He acts like a prima donna,’ I thought, and felt quite exhausted. Wasn’t he going to offer us a chair?
He certainly wasn’t. He remained standing behind his desk looking down at a document, Jean-Baptiste’s application.
‘You send me a very strange application, Prince. In it you express your intention to let yourself be adopted by the King of Sweden, and request permission to resign your French nationality. A strange document. An almost incomprehensible document if one thinks back – But you probably do not think back, Marshal of France?’
Jean-Baptiste compressed his lips in order to keep silent.
‘Don’t you really think back? For example to the time when you
went out as a young recruit to defend the frontiers of France? Or to the battlefields where this young soldier fought first as a Sergeant, then as a Lieutenant, then as a Colonel and finally as a General of the French Army? Or to the day when the Emperor of the French made you a Marshal of France?’
Still Jean-Baptiste was silent.
‘It is not so very long ago that you defended the frontiers of your fatherland without my knowledge.’ His old winning smile appeared unexpectedly. ‘Perhaps at that time you saved France. I told you once before – it is a very long time ago, and as unfortunately you do not remember the past you will probably have forgotten that too – yes, I told you once before that I cannot do without the services of a man like you. It was during those days in Brumaire. Perhaps you remember it after all? If at that time the Government had given you the authority, you and Moreau would have had me shot. The Government of the Republic did not give you the authority. Bernadotte, I repeat, I cannot do without you.’
He sat down and pushed the application a bit to one side. Then he looked up and remarked with forced casualness: ‘Since the people of Sweden have chosen you—’ he shrugged his shoulders and smiled ironically, ‘you of all men, to be Heir to their Throne, I as your Emperor and Supreme Commander herewith give you permission to accept their offer, but as a Frenchman and a Marshal of France. That is all!’
‘In that case I shall have to inform the King of Sweden that I cannot assume the succession to his throne. The people of Sweden want a Swedish Crown Prince, Sire.’
Napoleon jumped to his feet. ‘But that is nonsense, Bernadotte! Look at my brothers, Joseph, Louis, Jerome. Has any one of them resigned his citizenship? Or my stepson Eugene in Italy?’
Jean-Baptiste didn’t answer. Napoleon came out from behind his desk and began to pace the floor backwards and forwards like a madman. I caught Talleyrand’s eye and he winked at me almost imperceptibly. What did he mean? That Jean-Baptiste would win through in the end? It certainly didn’t look like it now.
Abruptly the Emperor stopped in front of me. ‘Princess,’ he said, ‘I believe you do not know that the Swedish royal family is insane. The present King is incapable of enunciating clearly a single sentence, and his nephew had to be deposed because he is a lunatic. Because he is really – cuckoo!’ He tapped his forehead. ‘Princess, tell me, is your husband crazy too? I mean, is he so crazy that he wants to stop being a Frenchman for the sake of the Swedish succession?’