Desiree

  I was interrupted by loud howls; the door flew open, and little Jerome, Napoleone’s ten-year-old brother, burst in; behind him ran twelve-year-old Caroline, shouting at him the most picturesque quayside curses and trying to get something he was cramming into his mouth. Madame Buonaparte gave Jerome a box on the ear, and screamed at Caroline in Italian. She took away Jerome’s tit-bit. It proved to be a stick of marzipan; she broke it into two and gave half each to the combatants. Then she shouted:

  ‘Quiet! We have a visitor!’

  That drew Caroline’s attention to me, and she exclaimed:

  ‘Oh la, la, one of the rich Clarys!’

  She came up to the table and sat on Lucien’s knee.

  ‘What a dreadful family,’ I said to myself, and then I was sorry for saying it. They cannot help being so many or so poor. And they have nothing but their kitchen to live in.

  Joseph asked question after question. ‘Who arrested Napoleone? Were they really soldiers? Not police?’

  ‘No, soldiers,’ I replied.

  ‘Then he won’t be in prison, but under military arrest somewhere,’ said Joseph.

  ‘What difference does that make?’ groaned Madame Buonaparte.

  ‘A tremendous difference,’ Joseph explained. ‘The military authorities will not let a General be simply executed; first they will court-martial him.’

  ‘You have no idea, Signorina,’ said Madame Buonaparte, ‘how dreadful this is for us.’ She brought a kitchen stool and sat down close to me, and put her damp work-worn hand on my arm. ‘Napoleone is the only one of us who is earning regularly, and he always worked so hard, and saved every centime and gave me half his pay for the other children. It is dreadful, dreadful.’

  ‘Anyhow, now he can’t make me go into the army,’ growled fat Louis. He was quite triumphant.

  ‘Shut your mouth,’ Lucien shouted.

  The fat boy was now seventeen, and he had never done any work. Napoleone wanted to make him a soldier, so that there should be at least one mouth less for his mother to feed. I cannot imagine how Louis could march with his flat feet, but perhaps Napoleone meant to put him into the cavalry.

  ‘But why,’ Madame Buonaparte asked, ‘why have they arrested him?’

  ‘Napoleone knew Robespierre,’ Joseph murmured. ‘And he had let his plans be transmitted to the Minister of War by Robespierre.’

  ‘Always those politics,’ Madame Buonoparte complained. ‘I tell you, Signorina, politics have been the ruin of my family! My children’s poor papa was always mixed up with politics, and he was always losing his clients’ cases, and he left us nothing but debts. And what did my sons talk about all day long? About getting acquainted with prominent people, getting to know Robespierre, getting an introduction to Barras – they go on like that all the time. And look at the result!’ She banged the table in vexation.

  I looked down. ‘Your son Napoleone, Madame, is a genius,’ I said.

  ‘Yes – unluckily,’ she retorted, looking at the flickering candle.

  I looked up at her and Joseph. ‘We must find out where Napoleone is,’ I said, ‘and then we must try to help him.’

  ‘But we are so poor, and we don’t know anybody with influence,’ Madame Buonaparte moaned.

  ‘The Military Commandant of Marseilles,’ said Lucien, ‘must know where Napoleone has been taken.’ The family look upon Lucien as a poet and an unpractical dreamer, but it was from him that the first useful suggestion came.

  ‘Who is the Commandant of Marseilles?’ I asked.

  ‘Colonel Lefabre,’ said Joseph. ‘And he cannot bear Napoleone. Quite recently Napoleone told the old Colonel what he thought about the fortifications here: they are in shocking disrepair.’

  ‘To-morrow,’ I heard myself saying, ‘I’ll go to see him. Madame Buonaparte, would you get together some underclothing, and perhaps some food, and do it up into a parcel and send it to me early to-morrow? I’ll ask the Colonel to give it to Napoleone. And then—’

  ‘Thank you so much, Signorina,’ said Madame Buonaparte excitedly, ‘tante grazie!’

  At that moment we heard a splash, a shriek and a long howl, and Caroline cried out happily, ‘Mama, Jerome has fallen into the wash-tub.’

  As Madame Buonaparte lifted the boy out of the tub and cuffed him, I got up to go. Joseph disappeared to get his coat and see me home. Lucien murmured, ‘It is very good of you, Mademoiselle Eugenie; we shall never forget it.’

  I felt rather frightened at the prospect of going to see that Colonel. As I said good-bye to Madame Buonaparte, she told me that she would send Polette to me with the parcel next morning. She started at the name. ‘Polette!’ she said. ‘Where is she? She went out with Eliza to a friend over the way, and was going to be back in half an hour. And the two girls have been out the whole evening!’

  I remembered Eliza’s rouged face. No doubt she was enjoying herself with her partner in some tavern. But what about Polette? She is just my age.

  Joseph and I went silently through the town. I was thinking of the evening when he first saw me home. Was that really four months ago? That was when it all began. Until then I had been a child, although I thought I was grown up. To-day I know that you are not really grown up till you fall in love.

  ‘They can’t possibly guillotine him,’ said Joseph, as we came to the villa. ‘The most they will do is to shoot him.’

  ‘Joseph!’

  So that was what he had been thinking about on our long silent walk. ‘He doesn’t love him,’ I said to myself, ‘he actually hates him.’

  ‘But we belong together,’ he said, ‘Napoleone and I and the others. We stick together.’

  ‘Good night, Joseph!’

  ‘Good night, Eugenie!’

  I slipped in without being noticed. Julie was in bed already, but the candle was burning on her bedside table. She had been waiting for me.

  ‘I suppose you were with the Buonapartes!’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ I replied, as I undressed. ‘They live in a cellar, and Madame Letitia was washing shirts at that late hour, and Jerome, that dreadful imp, fell into the wash-tub. It looks as if the two girls, Eliza and Polette, go out at night with men. Good night, Julie – sleep well!’

  At breakfast Etienne told us that Julie must put off her wedding, as he was not going to have a prisoner’s brother as a brother-in-law. It would be a humiliation for the family, and very bad for the firm’s reputation.

  ‘I’ll never let my wedding be postponed!’ said Julie, in tears. Then she locked herself in our room.

  Nobody spoke to me about the affair, because nobody but Julie has any idea that I belong to Napoleone. Except Marie; I feel sure she knows everything.

  After breakfast Marie came into the dining-room and beckoned to me, and I followed her into the kitchen. Polette was there with the parcel.

  ‘Quick, let’s go before anybody sees us,’ I said to her. Etienne would have had a fit if he had known I was going with a parcel for Napoleone.

  I have lived all my life in Marseilles, and Polette only came here a year ago, but she knows her way about much better than I do. She knew exactly where to go to find the Colonel Commandant. She talked all the way. Her hips swayed so that her scanty blue dress swung to and fro. She walked very erect, and thrust out her breast; it is much bigger than mine, though we are of the same age. She kept passing the tip of her tongue over her lips, to keep them damp and shiny. Polette has the same narrow nose as Napoleone; her dark hair is twisted into a thousand little curls and tied up with a blue ribbon; her eyebrows are thinned and picked out with charcoal. I think Polette is lovely, but Mama doesn’t like me to be seen with her.

  Polette talked all the time about the Marquise de Fontenay, the new Madame Tallien. ‘The Parisians are all wild about her and call her Notre-Dame de Thermidor; she was brought away in triumph from the prison on the ninth of Thermidor, and Deputy Tallien married her there and then, and just imagine—’ Polette opened her eyes wide, breathless with excitement – ‘ju
st imagine, she is wearing dresses without any petticoat! She goes about in a quite transparent dress, and you can see everything! Everything, I tell you!’

  ‘Where did you hear that?’ I asked, but Polette took no notice.

  ‘She has raven-black hair and raven-black eyes, and she lives in a house in Paris called the Thatched Cottage. The walls inside are covered with silk. There she receives all the famous politicians every afternoon, and I have been told that if you want anything from the Government all you need do is to tell her. I have been talking to a gentleman who only arrived yesterday from Paris, and this gentleman—’

  ‘And this gentleman?’ I repeated, in suspense.

  ‘I made his acquaintance. The way you do make people’s acquaintance, don’t you? He was looking at the Town Hall, and I happened to be passing, so we got into conversation. But not a word about it – do you swear you’ll say nothing?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Good,’ said Polette. ‘You swear to it by all the saints in heaven. Napoleone cannot bear my talking to strange gentlemen. He is a regular old maid on that subject. Tell me, do you think your brother Etienne would give me some material for a new dress? Something pink and transparent. That’s the Command Office. Shall I come in with you?’

  ‘I think I had better see him alone. Wait for me, won’t you? Promise!’

  She nodded gravely, and crossed the fingers of her right hand over the thumb. ‘I’ll say a Paternoster. It can’t do any harm.’

  I went in with the parcel. In the Command Office I heard myself asking the orderly to announce me to Colonel Lefabre. My voice sounded hoarse and strange.

  The Colonel was sitting at a big desk in a big, bare room. At first, in my agitation, I could not speak a word. The Colonel had a red-faced cube of a head, with a stubbly grey beard, and he wore an old-fashioned peruke. I laid the parcel on the desk, and gulped in desperation. I just could not think what to say.

  ‘What is that parcel, Citoyenne? And who exactly are you?’

  ‘Pants, Citoyen Colonel Lefabre, and my name is Clary.’

  His pale blue eyes looked me up and down. ‘A daughter of the late silk merchant François Clary?’

  I nodded.

  ‘I’ve played cards with your papa. Very respectable man, your papa.’ He kept his eyes on me. ‘And what am I to do with the pants, Citoyenne Clary?’

  ‘The parcel is for General Napoleone Buonaparte. He has been arrested. We don’t know where he is. But you, Colonel, will know. I think there’s a cake in the parcel. Underclothing and a cake.’

  ‘And what has the daughter of François Clary to do with the Jacobin Buonaparte?’ the Colonel asked slowly and solemnly.

  I flushed up. ‘His brother Joseph,’ I said, ‘is betrothed to my sister Julie.’

  ‘But why does not his brother Joseph come here? Or your sister Julie?’ His pale blue eyes looked gravely at me. I felt sure he knew everything.

  ‘Joseph is afraid. The families of arrested persons are always afraid,’ I managed to say. ‘And Julie now has other troubles. She is crying because Etienne, our big brother, has decided not to allow her to marry Joseph Buonaparte. All,’ I said with indignation, ‘all because you have arrested the General, Citoyen Colonel!’

  ‘Sit down,’ was all he said.

  I sat on the edge of a divan by his desk. The colonel took snuff, and looked out of the window. He seemed to have forgotten me. Then suddenly he turned back to me.

  ‘Listen, Citoyenne,’ he said. ‘Your brother Etienne is quite right. Of course he is. A Buonaparte is no match for a Clary, for a daughter of François Clary. A very respectable man he was, your poor papa.’

  I said nothing.

  ‘I don’t know this Joseph Buonaparte. He’s not in the army, is he? As for the other man, that Napoleone Buonaparte—’

  ‘General Napoleone Buonaparte,’ I said, looking straight at him.

  ‘As for that General, it was not I who arrested him; I only obeyed an order from the Ministry. Buonaparte has Jacobin sympathies, and all officers of his way of thinking – I mean all extremists – have been arrested.’

  ‘What will they do to him?’

  ‘I have no information as to that.’

  The Colonel seemed to consider that the interview was over, so I got up. ‘The underclothing and the cake,’ I said, pointing to the parcel. ‘Could you give them to him?’

  ‘Nonsense! Buonaparte is no longer here. He has been taken to Fort Carré, near Antibes.’

  I was not prepared for that. They had taken him away, and I could not get to him.

  ‘But he must have a change of underclothing,’ I insisted.

  The Colonel’s face swam before my eyes; I wiped away the tears, but others came. ‘Can’t you send the parcel to him, Colonel?’

  ‘Now tell me, little lady, do you imagine that I have nothing to do but look after the underclothing of a scamp who is allowed to call himself General?’

  I began to sob. He took snuff again; the scene seemed to upset him a good deal. ‘Do stop crying,’ he said.

  ‘No,’ I sobbed.

  He came away from his desk and stood in front of me. ‘I told you to stop crying,’ he roared.

  ‘No!’ I sobbed again. Then I wiped the tears away and looked at him. He was standing close to me, in obviously sympathetic perplexity. That made me cry again.

  ‘Stop!’ he shouted, ‘stop! Well, as you won’t leave me in peace, and as you – very well, I’ll send one of my men to Fort Carré with the parcel, and ask the Commandant to give it to that Buonaparte. Now are you satisfied?’

  I gave him a tearful smile.

  I was just going out when it occurred to me that I had not thanked him. I turned round. The Colonel was looking doubtfully at the parcel.

  ‘Thank you very much, Colonel,’ I whispered.

  He looked up, cleared his throat, and said, ‘Listen, Citoyenne Clary. I’ll tell you two things, in confidence. To begin with, this Jacobin General won’t have his head chopped off. Secondly, a Buonaparte is no match for a daughter of François Clary. Goodbye, Citoyenne.’

  Polette came back part of the way with me. She poured out a flood of trivial talk. Pink silk she wanted, transparent. Madame Tallien, they said, was wearing flesh-coloured silk stockings. Napoleone would enjoy the cake. It had almonds in it. Did I like almonds? Was Julie really getting such a huge dowry that she could buy a villa for herself and Joseph? When should I be talking to Etienne about the silk, and when would she be able to go to the shop to fetch it?

  I hardly listened. What the Colonel had told me was running in my head like a jingle.

  ‘A Buonaparte has no right at all

  To wed a daughter of François Clary.’

  When I got home I learned that Julie had got her way. Her wedding is not to be put off. I sat with her in the garden and helped her to embroider monograms on serviettes – a prettily curving B.

  Marseilles, end of Fructidor. (Middle of September)

  I don’t know how Julie spent her wedding night. Anyhow, the night before was terribly exciting, for me at any rate.

  Julie’s wedding was to be very quiet, with nobody present but our family and all the Buonapartes. Mama and Marie had been busy, of course, for days, making cakes and fruit creams, and on the night before the wedding Mama nearly broke down, she was so afraid things might go wrong. Mama is always worried before a party, but they have always been a great success.

  It was decided that we should all go early to bed, and that Julie should have a bath. We have baths much more often than other people, because Papa had such modern ideas, and Mama makes sure that we go on doing what he wanted. So we have a bath almost every month, in a tremendous wooden wash-tub which Papa had made for the purpose in the laundry cellar. And as it was the night before Julie’s wedding, Mama shook some jasmine scent into the bath water, and Julie felt like the late Madame Pompadour herself.

  We went to bed, but neither Julie nor I could sleep, and so we talked about Julie’s new hom
e. It is outside Marseilles, but no more than half an hour’s drive from us.

  Suddenly we kept quiet and listened. Under the window somebody was whistling ‘Le jour de gloire est arrivé!’

  I sat up. It was the second verse of our Marseilles song. And after it came at once Napoleone’s signal. When he came to see us he always gave me that signal when he was still a long way off.

  I jumped out of bed, pulled back the curtains, threw the window up, and leant out. It was a very dark night, sultry and oppressive. There was a storm brewing.

  I screwed up my lips and whistled. There are very few young ladies who can whistle; I am one, but unluckily people don’t approve of the gift, thinking it is ill-bred.

  ‘Le jour de gloire—’ I whistled.

  ‘—est arrivé!’ came from below.

  A figure that had been standing close to the wall of the house moved out of the darkness and stepped on to the gravel path.

  I forgot to shut the window, forgot to put on my slippers, forgot to put something round me, forgot that I had only my nightdress on, forgot what is proper and what isn’t proper! I ran like mad down the stairs, opened the front door, and felt the gravel under my bare feet.

  Then I could feel somebody’s lips on my nose. It was so dark, and in the dark it’s no good trying to see where to kiss.

  There was thunder in the distance.

  He pressed me to himself and whispered:

  ‘Aren’t you cold, carissima?

  ‘Only my feet,’ I replied, ‘I haven’t any slippers on.’

  At that he lifted me up and carried me to the steps leading up to the front door. There we sat, and he wrapped his cloak round me.

  ‘How long have you been back?’ I asked.

  ‘I have not got back yet, I am only on my way,’ he said. I leaned against him, and felt the roughness of his uniform on my cheek. How happy I was!

  ‘Was it very horrid?’ I asked.

  ‘No, not at all. How good of you to take the parcel!’ he said, stroking my hair with his lips. ‘It reached me with a covering note from Colonel Lefabre. He told me he had only sent it for your sake. I demanded to be brought before a court-martial, but I was not allowed that right.’