THE CORSICAN AND THE CREOLE
Of the many women who succeeded one another with such bewildering
rapidity in the favour of the first Napoleon, from Desirée Clary,
daughter of the Marseilles silk-merchant, the "little wife" of his days
of obscurity, to Madame Walewska, the beautiful Pole, who so fruitlessly
bartered her charms for her country's salvation, only one really
captured his fickle heart--Josephine de Beauharnais, the woman whom he
raised to the splendour of an Imperial crown, only to fling her aside
when she no longer served the purposes of his ambition.
It was one October day in the year 1795 that Josephine, Vicomtesse de
Beauharnais, first cast the spell of her beauty on the "ugly little
Corsican," who had then got his foot well planted on the ladder, at the
summit of which was his crown of empire. At twenty-six, the man who, but
a little earlier, was an out-of-work captain, eating his heart out in a
Marseilles slum, was General-in-Chief of the armies of France, with the
disarmed rebels of Paris grovelling at his feet.
One day a handsome boy came to him, craving permission to retain the
sword his father had won, a favour which the General, pleased by the
boy's frankness and manliness, granted. The next day the young rebel's
mother presented herself to thank him with gracious words for his
kindness to her son--a creature of another world than his, with a
beauty, grace and refinement which were a new revelation to his
bourgeois eyes.
The fair vision haunted him; the music of her voice lingered in his
ears. He must see her again. And, before another day had passed, we find
the pale-faced, grim Corsican, with the burning eyes, sitting awkwardly
on a horse-hair chair of Madame's dining-room in her small house in the
Rue Chantereine, nervously awaiting the entry of the Vicomtesse who had
already played such havoc with his peace of mind. And when at last she
made her appearance, few would have recognised in the man, who made his
shy, awkward bow, the famous General with whose name the whole of France
was ringing.
It was little wonder, perhaps, that the little Corsican's heart went
pit-a-pat, or that his knees trembled under him, for the lady whose
smile and the touch of whose hand sent a thrill through him, was indeed,
to quote his own words, "beautiful as a dream." From the chestnut hair
which rippled over her small, proudly poised head to the arch of her
tiny, dainty feet, "made for homage and for kisses," she was, "all
glorious without." There was witchery in every part of her--in the rich
colour that mantled in her cheeks; the sweet brown eyes that looked out
between long-fringed eyelids; the small, delicate nose; "the nostrils
quivering at the least emotion"; the exquisite lines of the tall, supple
figure, instinct with grace in every moment; and, above all, in the
seductive music of a voice, every note of which was a caress.
Sixteen years earlier, Josephine had come from Martinique to Paris as
bride of the Vicomte de Beauharnais, with whom she had led a more or
less unhappy life, until the guillotine of the Revolution left her a
widow, with two children and an empty purse. But even this crowning
calamity was powerless to crush the sunny-hearted Creole, who merely
laughed at the load of debts which piled themselves up around her. A
little of the wreckage of her husband's fortune had been rescued for her
by influential friends; but this had disappeared long before Napoleon
crossed her path. And at last the light-hearted widow realised that if
she had a card left to play, she must play it quickly.
Here then was her opportunity. The little General was obviously a slave
at her feet; he was already a great man, destined to be still greater;
and if he was bourgeois to his coarse finger-tips, he could at least
serve as a stepping-stone to raise her from poverty and obscurity.
As for Napoleon, he was a vanquished man--and he knew it--before ever he
set foot in Madame's modest dining-room. When he left, he "trod on air,"
for the Vicomtesse had been more than gracious to him. The next day he
was drawn as by a magnet to the Rue Chantereine, and the next and the
next, each interview with his divinity forging fresh links for the
chain that bound him; and at each visit he met under Madame's roof some
of the great ones of that other world in which Josephine moved, the old
_noblesse_ of France--who paid her the homage due to a Queen.
Thus vanity and ambition fed the flames of the passion which was
consuming him; and within a fortnight he had laid his heart and his
fortune, which at the time consisted of "his personal wardrobe and his
military accoutrements" at the feet of the Creole widow; and one March
day in 1796 Napoleon Bonaparte, General, and Josephine de Beauharnais,
were made one by a registrar who obligingly described the bride as
twenty-nine (thus robbing her of three years), and added two to the
bridegroom's twenty-six years.
After two days of rapturous honeymooning Napoleon was on his way to join
his army in Italy, as reluctant a bridegroom as ever left Cupid at the
bidding of Mars. At every change of horses during the long journey he
dispatched letters to the wife he had left behind--letters full of
passion and yearning. In one of them he wrote, "When I am tempted to
curse my fate, I place my hand on my heart and find your portrait there.
As I gaze at it I am filled with a joy unutterable. Life seems to hold
no pain, save that of severance from my beloved."
At Nice, amid all the labours and anxieties of organising his rabble
army for a campaign, his thoughts are always taking wings to her; her
portrait is ever in his hand. He says his prayers before it; and, when
once he accidentally broke the glass, he was in an agony of despair and
superstitious foreboding. His one cry was, "Come to me! Come to my heart
and to my arms. Oh, that you had wings!"
Even when flushed with the surrender of Piedmont after a fortnight's
brilliant fighting, in which he had won half a dozen battles and reaped
twenty-one standards, he would have bartered all his laurels for a sight
of the woman he loved so passionately. But while he was thus yearning
for her in distant Italy, Madame was much too happy in her beloved Paris
to lend an ear to his pleadings. As wife of the great Napoleon she was a
veritable Queen, fawned on and flattered by all the great ones in the
capital. Hers was the place of honour at every fête and banquet; the
banners her husband had captured were presented to her amid a tumult of
acclamation; when she entered a theatre the entire house rose to greet
her with cheers. She was thus in no mood to leave her Queendom for the
arms of her husband, whose unattractive person and clumsy ardour only
repelled her.
When his letters calling her to him became more and more imperative, she
could no longer ignore them. But she could, at least, invent an
excellent excuse for her tarrying. She wrote to tell him that she was
expecting to become a mother. This at least would put a stop to his
importunity. And it did. Napoleon was full of delight--and self-reproach
at the joyful news. "Forgive me, my beloved," he wrote. "How can I ever
atone? You were ill and I accused you of lingering in Paris. My love
robs me of my reason, and I shall never regain it.... A child, sweet as
its mother, is soon to lie in your arms. Oh! that I could be with you,
even if only for one day!"
To his brother Joseph he writes in a similar strain: "The thought of her
illness drives me mad. I long to see her, to hold her in my arms. I love
her so madly, I cannot live without her. If she were to die, I should
have absolutely nothing left to live for."
When, however, he learns that Madame's illness is not sufficient to
interfere with her Paris gaieties, a different mood seizes him. Jealousy
and anger take the place of anxious sympathy. He insists that she shall
join him--threatens to resign his command if she refuses. Josephine no
longer dares to keep up her deception. She must obey. And thus, in a
flood of angry tears, we see her starting on her long journey to Italy,
in company with her dog, her maid, and a brilliant escort of officers.
Arrived at Milan, she was welcomed by Napoleon with open arms; but
"after two days of rapture and caresses," he was face to face with the
great crisis of Castiglione. His army was in imminent danger of
annihilation; his own fate and fortune trembled in the balance. Nothing
short of a miracle could save him; and on the third day of his new
honeymoon he was back again in the field at grips with fate.
But even at this supreme crisis he found time to write daily letters to
the dear one who was awaiting the issue in Milan, begging her to share
his life. "Your tears," he writes, "drive me to distraction; they set my
blood on fire. Come to me here, that at least we may be able to say
before we die we had so many days of happiness." Thus he pleads in
letter after letter until Josephine, for very shame, is forced to yield,
and to return to her husband, who, as Masson tells us, "was all day at
her feet as before some divinity."
Such days of bliss were, however, few and far between for the man who
was now in the throes of a Titanic struggle, on the issue of which his
fortunes and those of France hung. But when duty took him into danger
where his lady could not follow, she found ample solace. Monsieur
Charles, Leclerc's adjutant, was all the cavalier she needed--an Adonis
for beauty, a Hercules for strength, the handsomest soldier in
Napoleon's army, a past-master in all the arts of love-making. There was
no dull moment for Josephine with such a squire at her elbow to pour
flatteries into her ears and to entertain her with his clever tongue.
But Monsieur Charles had short shrift when Napoleon's jealousy was
aroused. He was quickly sent packing to Paris; and Josephine was left to
write to her aunt, "I am bored to extinction." She was weary of her
husband's love-rhapsodies, disgusted with the crudities of his passion.
She had, however, a solace in the homage paid to her everywhere. At
Genoa she was received as a Queen; at Florence the Grand Duke called her
"cousin"; the entire army, from General to private, was under the spell
of her beauty and the graciousness that captivated all hearts. She was,
too, reaping a rich harvest of costly presents and bribes, from all who
sought to win Napoleon's favour through her.
The Italian campaign at last over, Madame found herself back again in
her dear Paris, raised to a higher pinnacle of Queendom than ever,
basking in the splendours of the husband whose glories she so gladly
shared, though she held his love in such light esteem. But for him, at
least, there was no time for dallying. Within a few months he was waving
farewell to her again, from the bridge of the _Océan_ which was carrying
him off to the conquest of Egypt, buoyed by her promise that she would
join him when his work was done. And long before he had reached Malta
she was back again in the vortex of Paris gaiety, setting the tongue of
scandal wagging by her open flirtation with one lover after another.
It was not long before the news of Madame's "goings-on" reached as far
as Alexandria. The dormant jealousy in Napoleon, lulled to rest since
Monsieur Charles had vanished from the scene, was fanned into flame. He
was furious; disillusion seized him, and thoughts of divorce began to
enter his brain. Two could play at this game of falseness; and there
were many beautiful women in Egypt only too eager to console the great
Napoleon.
When news came to Josephine that her husband had landed at Fréjus, and
would shortly be with her, she was in a state bordering on panic. She
shrank from facing his anger; from the revelation of debts and unwifely
conduct which was inevitable. Her all was at stake and the game was more
than half lost. In her desperation she took her courage in both hands
and set forth, as fast as horses could take her, to meet Napoleon, that
she might at least have the first word with him; but as ill-luck would
have it, he travelled by a different route and she missed him.
On her return to Paris she found the door of Napoleon's room barred
against her. "After repeated knocking in vain," says M. Masson, "she
sank on her knees sobbing aloud. Still the door remained closed. For a
whole day the scene was prolonged, without any sign from within. Worn
out at last, Josephine was about to retire in despair, when her maid
fetched her children. Eugène and Hortense, kneeling beside their mother,
mingled their supplications with hers. At last the door was opened;
speechless, tears streaming down his cheeks, his face convulsed with the
struggle that had rent his heart, Bonaparte appeared, holding out his
arms to his wife."
Such was the meeting of the unfaithful Josephine and the husband who had
vowed that he would no longer call her wife. The reconciliation was
complete; for Napoleon was no man of half-measures. He frankly forgave
the weeping woman all her sins against him; and with generous hand
removed the mountain of debt her extravagance had heaped up--debts
amounting to more than two million francs, one million two hundred
thousand of which she owed to tradespeople alone.
But Napoleon's passion for his wife, of whose beauty few traces now
remained, was dead. His loyalty only remained; and this, in turn, was to
be swept away by the tide of his ambition. A few years later Josephine
was crowned Empress by her husband, and consecrated by the Pope, after
a priest had given the sanction of the Church to her incomplete
nuptials.
She had now reached the dazzling zenith of her career. At the Tuileries,
at St Cloud, and at Malmaison, she held her splendid Courts as Empress.
She had the most magnificent crown jewels in the world; and at Malmaison
she spent her happiest hours in spreading her gems out on the table
before her, and feasting her eyes on their many-hued fires. Her
wardrobes were full of the daintiest and costliest gowns of which, we
are told, more than two hundred were summer-dresses of percale and of
muslin, costing from one thousand to two thousand francs each.
Less than six years of such splendour and luxury, and the inevitable end
of it all came. Napoleon's eyes were dazzled by the offer of an alliance
with the eldest daughter of the Austrian Emperor. His whole ambition now
was focused on providing a successor to his crown (Josephine had failed
him in this important matter); and in Marie Louise of Austria he not
only saw the prospective mother of his heir, but an alliance with one of
the great reigning houses of Europe, which would lend a much-needed
glamour to his bourgeois crown.
His mind was at last inevitably made up. Josephine must be divorced. Her
pleadings and tears and faintings were powerless to melt him. And one
December day, in the year 1809, Napoleon was free to wed his Austrian
Princess; and Josephine was left to console herself as best she might,
with the knowledge that at least she had rescued from her downfall a
life-income of three million francs a year, on which she could still
play the rôle of Empress at the Elysée, Malmaison, and Navarre, the
sumptuous homes with which Napoleon's generosity had dowered the wife
who failed.