11 Ventôse—Croissy.
Chère Madame Bonaparte,
This morning, I spent four hours at Malmaison. If you were as wealthy as is commonly believed, I would tell you only of the charm of the estate—but you require an income property and I am happy to report that Malmaison is just that.
The owner suggested 300,000 francs for the grounds (which she claims General Bonaparte offered her last summer) and an additional 25,000 for the furniture. Add to that 15,000 for the agricultural equipment and about 15,000 in taxes would mean that you would have to pay approximately 360,000 francs. If property had not gone down in value, Malmaison would normally sell for 500,000 francs.
The land has been in the care of a steward for the last thirty years. He told me that there are 387 arpents of grain, vines, woods and open meadows. The park, which is excellent, consists of 75 arpents, with 312 arpents additional for renting. Letting these out for only 30 francs brings in over 9,000 francs, which added to the 3,000 income from the park brings the total to 12,000. This should reassure you. This year alone they made 120 barrels of wine selling at 50 francs each. The twenty-five farm people who live on the grounds are entirely self-sufficient.
The property, which has the advantage of being both practical and pleasant, is one of the nicest I’ve yet seen.
Citoyen Chanorier
March 3.
I’ve instructed Chanorier to make an offer of 325,000 francs for Malmaison—an excellent value, if I get it.
March 4.
Offer accepted! Now all I have to do is come up with the money.
March 7, Paris
Honoured sister,
With respect to the purchase of a country property, I refuse to advance any funds from the Bonaparte Family Trust without direct instruction from my brother. Therefore, if you are to proceed, you will have to do so entirely under your own name.
Familial regards, Joseph Bonaparte
March 9.
Citoyen l’Huillier, the estate steward, has agreed to loan fifteen thousand in exchange for a guarantee on his job.
March 10.
Twenty-two thousand from Ouvrard (thanks to Thérèse, with whom Ouvrard has been “keeping company”) but it’s still not enough.
March 16.
I just found out that Louis Bonaparte (ill apparently) returned to Paris five days ago with Signora Letizia. Why have they not contacted me? Louis will have news of Bonaparte, of Eugène—I am desperate to talk to him.
March 17, late morning.
I’ve invited all the Bonapartes to a dinner party in Signora Letizia’s honour this coming Décadi. My coachman left a few moments ago to deliver invitations. I’m praying this will work.
Shortly after 4:00.
“If one had disturbing news about a friend’s husband, do you think one should tell the friend?” Minerva fanned herself so vigorously the feathers in her hat fluttered.
“It would depend on the nature of the news, I would think,” Madame de Crény said, playing a card.
“Friendship requires honesty, however painful,” Thérèse said.
“Do you have news regarding a friend’s husband?” I asked Minerva, picking up my cards.
“Oh, no.”
We played in uncomfortable silence. When the clocks chimed four, I put down my cards. “Minerva, please …” “It’s false. Just a rumour.” “Told to you by …?”
She winced. “Your sister-in-law, Pauline Leclerc.”
“Oh?” I slapped down a card. “You might as well tell me. I’m bound to hear it eventually, and I’d rather hear it from friends.”
“It’s just the usual sort of rumour, you know, that the General has taken a mistress, that kind of thing.”
The General: my husband. I looked around the table. There was more to it, I knew. “And?”
“And the thing is …” Madame de Crény stammered.
“He’s apparently told her he will marry her …”
“… if she gets pregnant.”
I threw down my cards.
March 19.
The Bonapartes send their regrets—each and every one.
March 24, Easter.
I’ve been three days abed. “Melancholy,” the doctor said, insisting that I be bled twice a day from the foot.
April 9.
This afternoon, shortly after the midday meal, Mimi announced a caller. “Captain Charles?” Returned from Milan!
But before I could even put down my embroidery hoop, he’d come into the room, twirling like a dancer. “Buon giorno, Signora.” He curtsied, holding out his wide Venetian trousers as if he were wearing a skirt.
“If you could bring us some port, Mimi,” I said, laughing, “and something to eat. Are you hungry, Captain?” I removed my embroidery basket from a chair.
“As a bear. You have a new maid?”
“Lisette is no longer with me, Captain.”
“Oh!” He gave me a sly smile. “Might it have something to do with Colonel Junot?”
“That was part of it,” I said, flushing angrily. Had everyone known but me?
“Ah, there’s my monster!” Pugdog appeared at the door. “Have we been good?” the captain asked, stroking the dog’s head. “Been keeping the lurchers away?”
“He’s been sick, in fact.” I motioned to Mimi to put the collations on the table beside me.
“Well, my good fellow,” Captain Charles said, addressing the dog as if it were a man, “you are in the hands of the kindest woman in all of Europe. Many a man would envy you.”
“I regret to say that an international incident has occurred on Pugdog’s account.”
“Oh?” he said, pulling away as the eager dog tried to lick his chin.
I explained to him what had happened, the letters that had been intercepted by the British. I told him what Eugène had said in his letter, some of the things Junot had told Bonaparte.
“But how did Junot know I gave you Pugdog?”
“Lisette must have told him, of course.”
“Ah, so she told Junot, who in turn told your husband.”
“Insinuating to him that you and I are …” I flushed.
“I confess I find it flattering to be accused of cuckolding the great General Bonaparte.” He grinned. “I could go down in history for this.”
How young he was, how ignorant in the ways of the world! “I wish I shared your buoyant humour, Captain, but I fear my husband will demand a divorce.”
“Over the gift of a dog?” he sputtered.
“Please understand, Bonaparte is an exceedingly jealous man. His emotions are volcanic. The least suspicion grows in his imagination until it rules his reason.”
“So, I guess an evening at the Opéra-Comique with your cavaliere servente is out of the question?”
“I go nowhere. I am a prisoner of suspicion. Pauline Leclerc is now my neighbour and she reports to her brothers every move I make. No doubt they will soon be informed of your call. Frankly, if I don’t get out of Paris, I’ll go mad. I’ve been looking into purchasing a country property on the Saint-Germain road, but despair of even raising the down payment.”
“This may help.” Captain Charles withdrew a fat packet from his inside pocket. He twirled it in the air and caught it, presenting it to me formally. “We did rather well on the last delivery.”
I felt its substantial weight. Fifty thousand livres, he said.
April 21.
I’ve signed. Malmaison is mine.
* The article in the London Morning Chronicle read: “It is not very creditable … that the private letters … which were intercepted, should be published. It derogates from the character of a nation to descend to such gossiping. One of these letters is from Bonaparte to his brother, complaining of the profligacy of his wife; another from young Beauharnais, expressing his hopes that his dear Mama is not so wicked as she is represented! Such are the precious secrets which, to breed mischief in private families, is to be published in French and English.”
In whi
ch I retreat
April 23, 1799—Malmaison!
It is late afternoon. I’m writing these words at my little desk in the boudoir of my country château. A spirit of rebelliousness has come over me. I’ve not dressed my hair, not painted my face, I’m wearing old “rags”—a cosy déshabillé. A feeling of peace fills me as I look out over the hills, my four hundred acres of woodland and fields dotted with grazing sheep, cows, a few horses. A bull with a ring through its nose is lowing plaintively next to the cowshed. This morning I’ll ride the bay mare over every dell and glen, and in the afternoon the gardener and I will lay out an herb garden.
And this evening? This evening I’ll listen to the night silence. This evening, I’ll sleep content.
This is my home. I will grow old here, die here.
April 24, morning.
I have just had a report from my steward. With his face turning red as a turkey-cock and his battered straw hat clutched in his hands, he informed me that the chickens haven’t been laying, the clover in the far field is overgrown with hemlock and the winnowing machine is in need of a part (forty francs). Such “problems” are a balm to my battered spirit.
April 27.
More and more I retreat from the civilized world. I rise with the sun, spend my day in the company of the servants, the peasants, the animals. In the early morning I work in the kitchen garden, planting, pulling up weeds, thinning. I think of Paris, of the ferment that is always there, the glitter and wit, with something akin to revulsion.
[Undated]
Twice I have set out to go to Paris; twice I have turned back. I have become a country savage.
May 20.
Frustrated by my absence, the Glories have descended!
“Ah, darling, now you have everything: a harp, a coach and a château. What more is there?”
“My harp lacks three strings, my coach needs a new shaft and as for my château …!” I laughed.
“Don’t despair, you can have it repaired,” Minerva said to comfort me.
“I confess I love it just as it is,” I said, checking under the table to make sure that Pugdog was getting along with my guests’ pets. We were five women, four pugs—a zoo.
“The grounds are lovely.”
“It’s perfect,” Thérèse said, embracing me. She looked a little plump, I thought. “You might as well know. I’m going to have a baby,” she announced sheepishly to the group.
“Oh!”
“Oh?” And Tallien, her husband, in Egypt. And Ouvrard, her lover, married.
“Don’t look at me like that!”
We played cards and talked all afternoon, catching up on the news: the assassination of the French envoys in Germany; the depressing military losses in Italy; how one of the Directors had accused Fesch, Lucien and Joseph Bonaparte of pilfering public funds. But most important, the wonderful news that an attempt was going to be made for an Egyptian rescue.
May 24.
The rescue attempt failed. Our ships were unable to get through the English blockade. I’ve been all day in bed.
June 16.
A courier came cantering into the courtyard this morning. A letter from Bonaparte? I thought hopefully, recalling the early days of the Italian campaign. But no, of course not. The envelope contained a current issue of the journal La Feuille du Jour. Attached to it was a note, unsigned, but in Captain Charles’s tidy script—page 4, top left. I must see you. On page four there was an article reporting the delivery of unsound horses to the Army of Italy—by the Bodin Company. Apparently, the soldiers had been forced to cross the Alps on lame and feeble mounts, cursing the name Bodin.
Captain Charles’s basement rooms at one hundred Rue Honoré are dark. The porter squinted to make out the printing on my card. “Madame Tascher?”
I nodded, giving him my cloak. I was asked to wait in a small drawing room. (I remember wondering whether I heard barking.) I made myself comfortable, taking in the tasteful simplicity of the furnishings—the paintings on the walls, the bouquets of flowers, a side table covered with books (Montesquieu’s Persian Letters open, face down), a bronze sculpture of a horse—the pleasing clutter of a room much lived in.
“He’s receiving,” the porter informed me, then led me down a dark passage. We stopped before an antique oak door with a brass knob. I heard a dog barking again. The porter rapped three times.
“Come on in, Claude,” I heard a voice call out—Captain Charles.
The porter swung the door open. There, in the centre of a mass of dogs was Captain Charles wearing an artist’s frock coat of coarse linen. In his arms was a beagle with one ear missing. “Madame—”
“Tascher.”
Gently he lowered the beagle onto the floor and stepped over a longhaired mutt, wiping his hands on his frock coat. His braids had been tied back with a scarlet and black striped ribbon. “You’ve discovered my secret life,” he said shyly, glancing down at his flock.
“Where did they all come from?” How many were there? Eight? Ten?
“I claim them from the streets,” he said, removing his coat and ushering me out the door. Underneath he was wearing a scarlet wool cutaway coat with white satin lapels. He closed the door behind him, muffling the yelping.
“And then what do you do with them?” I asked, following him back into the drawing room.
“And then I can’t bear to part with them!” he said, pushing forward an upholstered chair. “You’ve come about the article in La Feuille du Jour?”
“It alarmed me.”
“The horses that the Bodin Company bought were sound, I assure you. But the horses that were shipped were apparently slaughterhouse animals. The problem appears to be with the dealer.”
“Louis and Hugo Bodin are both in Lyons?”
The captain nodded. “I just received a letter from them. There is talk of an inquiry.”
This could be the end of us, I thought—the end of me. “There’s only one person who can help us.”
“Grand Dieu,” Barras exclaimed when he saw me. “I was beginning to think we’d never see you in Paris again. You’re just in time for the celebration.” He did a little dance and then winced, his hand on the small of his back. “At last, that braggart Director Treilhard’s out—his election as director has been disqualified.”
“Ha, ha.” The parrot, chuckling like Barras.
“Oh?” Trying to remember who Director Treilhard was. I’d been living in another world. “Why?”
“He’s four days too young to be eligible.” “Only four days?”
“Four, four hundred, what does it matter? The law is the law,” intoned Barras in a mock deep voice. “The irony is that it was your brother-in-law Lucien Bonaparte who discovered the discrepancy and demanded justice. He himself is four hundred days short of being eligible to be a deputy, and he started screaming about Treilhard’s four days. All this at one in the morning. It’s a good thing I have a sense of humour.”
“Barras, please, have you read that article about the Bodin Company in the—”
“La Feuille du Jour? Ah yes, the latest little scandal. The Legislative Councils are outraged, calling for an investigation, of course.” He held his hands up, as if under arrest. “And they’re just dying to pin it on me. This place is as explosive as a powder keg.”
Barras’s secretary Botot appeared at the door. “Another deputation to see you, Director.”
“That’s the third group already today.” Barras took me by the elbow, ushering me out.
“Paul, what’s going on?”
He kissed me on both cheeks. “Just another coup d’état, a little milk-and-water revolution.” He waved gaily, disappearing from view, his words echoing in the vast chamber—coup d’état, coup d’état, coup d’état.
“So he can’t do anything?” Captain Charles asked, keeping his eyes on the six balls he was juggling.
“I never had a chance to ask him. Things are … tense. The last thing he’ll want to align himself with right now is the Bodin Compa
ny. Maybe later.”
“Later will be too late,” the captain said, letting the balls drop.
June 21.
With a sinking heart, I have written to Barras, begging him to defend the interests of the Bodin Company.
June 29.
I was working in the herb garden with Mimi when a hired fiacre pulled through the gates. I squinted to see who it might be. “I think it’s that funny man,” Mimi said, for her eyesight is better than mine.
Captain Charles? I untied my apron.
“And a mess of dogs, sounds like,” she said.
“We’ve been turned out,” the captain explained as his porter picked the dog hairs off his red shooting jacket. The beagle and a spotted dog pressed their damp, black noses out the carriage window, sniffing. From the variety of barks, I suspected he had brought them all.
“Because of the investigation?” Government payments to the Bodin Company had been withheld until the investigation was complete.
He nodded. “I put all the office files in safe keeping, but as for the dogs—I know it is a lot to ask, but …?”
I started to turn him away, thinking of what might be said, fearing the consequences. But then I thought: how can I let down a friend in such desperate need? Were it not for Captain Charles, I wouldn’t even own Malmaison. And who would ever know he was there? I lived in such isolation. “There’s a suite of rooms empty in the farmhouse,” I told him, wondering as I said the words if I were doing the right thing. “My daughter comes only on the weekends. I’ll tell the servants you are my accountant.” In fact, I could use his help.
“It won’t be for long,” he assured me, opening the carriage door and standing back as all the barking, bounding dogs leapt out.
July 7—Paris.
Although the Bodin Company contract is still under review, at least we will not be charged. “That’s the best I can do,” Barras told me. He seemed distant, harassed. I dared not ask him for yet another loan, as I’d intended.