Désirée (11 page)

I tried to smile but the tears were in my way and I sniffled. I was at the door before I remembered that I hadn't thanked him. I turned. The Colonel was standing beside his desk, looking gloomily at the parcel. "Thank you very much, Citizen Colonel," I whispered.

He glanced up, cleared his throat and said, "Listen to me, Citizeness Clary, I will tell you two things in confidence. First, this will not cost this Jacobin general his head. Second, a Buonaparte is not a suitable match for a daughter of François Clary. Good-by, citizeness.

" Paulette walked part of the way home with me. She babbled like a waterfall. Rose-coloured silk. Mme Tallien always wears flesh-coloured silk stockings. Napoleone will be pleased to have the cake. There are almonds in it. Do I like almonds? Is it true that Julie's dowry is large enough for her to buy a villa for herself and Joseph? When will I ask Etienne about the silk, and when can she come to the shop to fetch it . . . ?

I didn't really listen to her. Like a rhyme it went through my head: A Buonaparte is no match for a daughter of François Clary.

When I reached home I learned that Julie had got her way. Her wedding is not to be postponed. I sat with her in the garden and helped her embroider initials on her napkins. A beautifully rounded
B—

B, B,
and again
B.

Marseilles, end of Fructidor
(Middle of September)

I don't know how Julie spent her wedding night. The night before, at any rate, was terribly exciting, at least for me.

Julie's wedding was to be a very quiet affair, only our family and the innumerable Buonapartes had been asked. Mama and Marie had, naturally, been baking cakes and stirring fruit creams for days; and the evening before the wedding Mama almost collapsed, she was worried that it wouldn't go well. Mama always worries before a big party but so far everything always has gone well. It was decided that we should all go to sleep early, and before going to bed Julie was to take a bath. We bathe oftener than other people because Papa had very modern ideas, and Mama want us to conduct our lives according to his ideas. So we have a bath almost every month in a large wooden tub which Papa installed especially for this purpose in the laundry. And since it was the evening before Julie's wedding, Mama decided to pour some jasmine scent into the water; and Julie felt like Mme Pompadour herself.

We went to bed but neither Julie nor I could sleep, so we discussed Julie's new home. It's outside Marseilles, but no more than half an hour by carriage from our villa. Suddenly we stopped talking and listened. ". . .
Le jour de gloire est arrivé,"
someone was whistling underneath our window, I sat up. The second line of our Marseilles song. And also —Napoleone's signal. Whenever he comes to see us he announces his approach to me from afar by this whistle. I jumped out of bed, pulled aside the curtains, tore open the window and leaned out. It was a dark and oppressively sultry night. A storm hung in the air. I pursed my lips and whistled. Very few girls can whistle well. I'm one of them, but unfortunately people don't appreciate this gift much and even consider it ill bred.

"Le jour de gloire
..." I whistled.

"...
est arrivé,"
came from below. A figure which had been standing close to the house emerged from the darkness and stepped out onto the gravel path.

I forgot to close the window, I forgot to put on my bedroom slippers, I forgot to take a coat with me, I forgot that I was wearing only a nightgown, I forgot what's proper and what isn't—I ran down the stairs like one possessed, opened the house door, felt the gravel under my bare feet, and felt his mouth on the tip of my nose. It was so dark, and in the darkness one can't be sure where a kiss will land! In the distance it thundered, and he held me close and whispered, "Aren't you cold,
carissima"—
And I said, "Only my feet—I have no slippers on." He lifted me up and carried me to our doorstep. We sat there and he took off his coat and wrapped it around me. "When did you get back?" I asked.

And he said that he hadn't actually been home yet, he was on the way then to his mother's. I put my cheek against his shoulder, felt the rough material of his uniform and was very happy. "Was it very bad?" I asked.

"No, not at all. However, many thanks for the parcel. It reached me along with a letter from Colonel Lefabre. He wrote he was sending it only to please you." I could feel lips on my hair.

Suddenly he said, "I asked to be tried by a court martial, but they would not grant me even this."

I raised my head and looked at him, but it was so dark that i could see only the outlines of his face. "Court martial?" I asked. "But wouldn't that have been terrible!"

"Why so? Then I would have had an opportunity to explain my plans to some senior officers. The plans I allowed to be submitted to this idiot of a War Minister through Robespierre. A court martial would at least have attracted attention to me. But as it is—" he moved away from me and rested his head on his hand— "But as it is, my plans are collecting dust in some archive or other, and Citizen Carnot continues to be proud and satisfied because our armies are able, with a great effort, to defend our frontiers."

"And what will you do now?" I inquired.

"They released me because there is no evidence against me. But I am very unpopular with the gentlemen at the Ministry of War. Unpopular, do you understand? And they will send me off to one of the dullest sectors of the front and . . ."

"It's raining," I interrupted. The first heavy drops of rain were falling on my face.

"That doesn't matter!" he said and went right on explaining to me what can happen to a general whom the authorities want out of the way. I tucked up my legs and wrapped the general's coat more closely around me. We could hear thunder again, and a horse was neighing. "My horse. I tied him to your garden fence," he remarked casually.

It began to rain harder. There was a flash of lightning. The thunder was frightening and the horse was neighing desperately. Napoleone shouted at the horse.

Above us a window rattled. "Is anyone there?" Etienne called down.

"Come in the house, we'll get so wet," I whispered to Napoleone.

"Who is there?" Etienne shouted. At the same time we could hear Suzanne's voice, "Shut the window, Etienne, and come to me—I'm frightened—" Etienne's again: "There is someone in the garden. I must go down and look."

Napoleone got up, stood under the window and said, M. Clary—it's me." There was a flash of lightning. For a fraction of a second I could see the small slender figure in the tight- fitting uniform. Then it was pitch dark again. Thunder crashed, the horse neighed wildly, the rain splashed.

"Who is there?" Etienne shouted into the rain.

"General Buonaparte!" Napoleone called back.

"But you are still in prison!" Etienne roared. "And and anyway what are you doing in the middle of the night, in this weather, in our garden, General?"

I jumped up, clutching the uniform coat which went down to my ankles, and stood next to Napoleone. "Sit down again and wrap your feet in the coat. Do you want to be sick?" Napoleone whispered to me.

"With whom are you talking?" Etienne called down.

The rain was slackening, so I could hear well enough now to tell that Etienne's voice was trembling with rage.

"He's talking to me," I called. "Etienne—it's I, Eugénie"

It had stopped raining. To my horror, because of my compromising situation, a very pale moon shone timidly between the clouds and showed us Etienne, his nightcap on his head.

"General—you owe me an explanation." The nightcap fairly quivered.

I have the honour to request the hand of your younger sister in marriage, M. Clary," Napoleone called up to him. He had put his arm around my shoulder.

" Eugénie, come into the house at once," commanded Etienne. Behind him Suzanne's head appeared. She was wearing a lot of curlers in her hair and this made her look very weird.

"Good night,
carissima,
we'll meet tomorrow at the wedding party," Napoleone said and kissed my cheek. His spurs clanked down the gravel path. I slipped into the house, forgetting to return his coat to him. At the open door of his bedroom stood Etienne in his nightgown and holding a lighted candle. I crept past him, barefooted and wrapped in
Napoleone's coat.

"If Papa had lived to see this—" snarled Etienne.

In our room Julie sat straight up in bed. "I heard everything," she said.

"I must wash my feet, they're muddy," I said. And I took the jug and poured water into the washbasin. When I had washed I went to bed and spread the uniform coat over me. "It's his coat," I said to Julie, "and I'm sure I'll have happy dreams because I'm covered up with his coat."

"Mme General Buonaparte," Julie murmured thoughtfully.

"If I'm lucky, he'll be dismissed from the Army," I said.

"That would be perfectly terrible," Julie answered.

"Do you think I want a husband who'll spend his life roaming about at some front or other, who comes home only now and then and always wants to talk to me about battles? No, I'd much rather they made him leave the Army and then perhaps I could persuade Etienne to give him a job in the shop."

"You'll never persuade Etienne to do that," Julie declared, and blew out the candle.

"I don't think so either. A shame, because Napoleone a genius," I said thoughtfully. "But I fear he's not very interested in the silk trade. . . . Good night, Julie."

Julie was almost too late at the registry office. We couldn't find her new gloves and Mama says that one can't be married without gloves. When Mama was young everyone was married in church, but since the Revolution people must be married in a registry office, and not many couples have a church ceremony afterward; it's not easy to find one of the few priests who have taken the oath of allegiance to the Republic. Julie and Joseph didn't want a priest; and for days Mama had talked of nothing but her own white bridal veil which she would like Julie to wear, and about the organ music which "in her day" was part of every wedding service. Julie has a rose-coloured dress with real Brussels lace, and she wore red roses, and Etienne managed to get her some rose-coloured gloves from a business acquaintance in Paris. And we could not find these gloves. The marriage was arranged for ten o'clock in the morning, and just five minutes before ten I found the gloves under Julie's bed. At last Julie hurried off, and in her wake followed Mama and Julie's two witnesses, Etienne and Uncle Somis. Uncle Somis is Mama's brother, who appears whenever there is a family funeral or a wedding. At the registry office Joseph and his two witnesses, Napoleone and Lucien, were waiting for Julie.

I hadn't really had time to dress for I had been off on the g
love hunt. So I stood at the window of our room and shouted "Good luck" after Julie, but she didn't hear me. The carriage, decorated with fading white roses from the garden, didn't look in the least like an ordinary hired carriage.

I successfully begged Etienne for some sky-blue satin for a
new dress from the shop. And then I insisted that Mlle Lisette, the dressmaker who makes all our clothes, was not to cut the skirt too full. But I'm sorry to say the skirt is not as close-fitting as the skirts in the Paris fashion plates, and I'm laced around the waist and not under my bosom like Mme Tallien in the pictures of her as "Mme de Thermidor," the Goddess of the Revolution. But I think my new dress is very grand; I felt like the Queen of Sheba, dressed up to impress King Solomon. But after all, I'm almost a bride, too, though so far Etienne acts as if my betrothal were merely a disturbance in our garden in the middle of last night.

The guests came before I was ready. Mme Letizia in dark green, her hair, without a trace of white, combed straight back like a peasant's and caught at the nape of her neck; Elisa, thick-set, painted like a tin soldier and wearing all the ribbons she's been wangling out of Etienne for weeks. Beside her Paulette looked like a dainty ivory carving in rose muslin. (Heaven knows why Etienne gave her this material, the most fashionable in the shop.) And Louis, unkempt and obviously in a bad temper; Caroline clean and with her hair carefully done for once; and that dreadful child
Jérôme, who immediately demanded something to eat. Suzanne and I served liqueurs to every Buonaparte over fourtee
n, and Mme Letizia said she had a surprise for us all.

Wedding present for Julie?" Suzanne asked quickly. For so
far, Mme Letizia had not given Julie anything. Of course
she is terribly poor, but I think she might at least have done
a bit of embroidery for her. However, Mme Letizia shook
her head, smiled mysteriously and said, "Oh, no."

We guessed this and that, wondering what she could have brought. At last the secret was out, the surprise was yet another member
of the Buonaparte family! Mme Letizia's stepbro
ther, an uncle called Fesch, only thirty years old,
formerly a priest. But this Uncle Fesch is not a martyr, and in these anticlerical times he has left religion and has become a businessman. "Does he do well in business?" I inquired. Mme Letizia shook her head regretfully and intimated that if Etienne made a great effort, her brother might be willing to consider a post with the firm of Clary.

Soon afterward Uncle Fesch arrived. He had a row merry face and a clean but shabby coat. He kissed Suzanne's hand and mine and praised our liqueur.

Then they came! First the carriage with the white roses, and Julie and Joseph and Mama and Napoleone got out
.
In the second carriage were Etienne, Lucien and Uncle Somis. Julie and Joseph ran over to us, Joseph embraced his mother, and all the other Buonapartes rushed over to Julie. Uncle Fesch hugged our mama, who had no idea who he was, and Uncle Somis gave me a resounding kiss on the cheek, and patted Elisa; and all the Clarys, and all the Buonapartes formed such a confused cluster of people that Napoleone and I had a chance to kiss each other very thoroughly until someone cleared his throat indignantly near us —Etienne, of course.