The Second Empress (37 page)

Villa Lozère, southern France

“
My destiny is the opposite of other men’s. Other men are lowered by their downfall, my own raises me to infinite heights
.”

—NAPOLEON

B
ECAUSE IT’S IMPOSSIBLE TO BELIEVE
, I
SIT IN THE SALON
of the Villa Lozère and ask Paul to describe it again.

He leans forward, then puts his head in his hands. “I’ve already told you twice.”

“I want to hear it again!” I tighten the silk robe de Canouville bought for me, and shiver.

“He signed the Treaty of Fontainebleau,” he repeats. “I was there. I know he signed it.”

“And Paris is filled with Cossacks?”

“Yes.”

Then it’s the first foreign army in Paris since the Hundred Years’ War. I close my eyes and can hear Paul sigh.

“Do you know when you and I were supposed to leave France?” he asks quietly.

God, not this.

“Two years ago,” he says.

I open my eyes. “And the world has descended into war since then!”

“Europe has. Not Haiti.” He rises, and I panic.

“Where are you going?”

“To prepare for your brother’s arrival. And unless you would like to greet him in your robe, I suggest you do the same.”

“You can’t speak to me like this!” I shout. “I’m the Princess Borghese. You love me.” But he’s already gone. “You owe everything to the Bonapartes!” I scream after him.
And if not for me, you’d be at the bottom of some nameless grave with your parents
.

I go to the armoire and wonder if maybe I really should greet him in my robe. What does it matter anymore? The Bonapartes have fallen, just as our most bitter enemies predicted. Who will see if I’m dressed in a batiste gown or a silk robe now? He’s the emperor of Elba! In Europe, I hear they’re rejoicing in the streets, and this morning some ungrateful traitor left a British newspaper on my doorstep. It was open to a cartoon of my brother on a mule, and beneath it was a poem:

A lesson to mortals regarding my fall:

He grasps at a shadow, by grasping at all
.

My course it is finish’d, my race it is run
,

My career it is ended just where it begun
.

The Empire of France no more it is mine
.

Because I can’t keep it, I freely resign
.

He should have punished French dissidents harder. Robespierre would never have allowed such freedom of the press. It obviously wasn’t enough to exile the likes of Madame de Staël or to ban Tacitus. I reach for my simplest muslin dress and a few pearls for my neck. I study myself in the mirror when I’m finished, and don’t recognize the woman I’ve become. She’s so small and thin, with nails that are bitten down to the quick. When did that habit start? Probably when de Canouville died.

I take up my white shawl and fasten it around my shoulders. If only Napoleon had marched on Egypt instead. In Egypt, I would have
made a magnificent queen. I reach for my
réticule. How did it come to this
? There’s the sound of a horse and carriage outside, then a small commotion as soldiers shout in German. I pinch my cheeks to give them some color, then bend double with pain.

This will not be our last meeting. I will
never
agree to abandon my brother to some island in the Tyrrhenian Sea. But as I descend the stairs, my confidence falters. He is dressed in a stained green uniform, with faded epaulettes and blue pantaloons, his hair uncombed, his beard unshaven …

“Paoletta,” he whispers.

He is standing with Paul. Behind them is assembled every courtier who came with me to Villa Lozère. I take the last steps slowly, and when he reaches out to embrace me, it is all I can do to remain standing. We weep in each other’s arms. How pitiable the Bonapartes have become. He smells of snuff, and I imagine I smell heavily of wine. The angels themselves would weep if they could see us. “Let me go with you,” I beg him.

“You will return to Italy,” he says bravely, “and you will take Maman with you.”

“What is there for me in Italy?” I cry.

“Camillo.”

“He is at Château de Neuilly, searching for the Borghese family paintings and jewels.”

Napoleon raises his brows. “Will he find them?”

I smile through my tears. “What do you think?”

We look at each other in our miserable states, and there is something almost comical in our wretchedness. For more than a decade, we ruled the world. No family rose higher than the Bonapartes. And then came Russia—frozen, powerless, meaningless Russia. “What will I do without you?” I ask, and my tears come fresh.

“Write. Perform.”

“Then in six months,” I say, “when everything is settled, I will come to Elba and bring Maman.”

He hesitates. This exile is real, and it won’t last for a week, or two months, but a lifetime. “Six months then,” he replies, and I hold him tighter. My God, what will we do without him?

“Have something to eat,” I encourage, but he looks back. Soldiers have filled the hall, and I can see them outside, surrounding the villa.

“No,” he says sadly. “It’s an eight-day trip from Paris to Fréjus, and my ship is waiting.” He is trying for humor, but I can’t bear it.

“I will come to the port.”

“Absolutely not. Pauline, they are rioting. It is Marseilles all over again.”

When the Revolution came to Corsica, our little island had been ruled by the French for only twenty years—it wanted no part in the French king’s execution. Corsican leaders declared the island’s secession, and they accused our family of not loving Corsica enough. We were too French. So we fled to Marseilles, where different horrors awaited. For a year we watched the guillotine at work, and no one was safe from the anger of the mobs. “
This is what happens when a government fails,
” Napoleon said. Now it is his government failing.

“I know what it is to be in danger,” I tell him, “and I am coming.”

I do not wait for a reply. I return to my room and gather what I can. Paul helps me pack a small trunk. “I want you to sell everything,” I tell him in the privacy of my chamber, “exactly as we planned. Even the paintings.”

“And if they ask—”

“I have as much right to them as Camillo.”

He lifts my trunk and moves toward the door, but I step in front of him. There isn’t the same look of adoration in his eyes as he once had for me. “Have I changed?”

He watches me carefully. “How?”

“Do you think I’ve lost my looks?”

He narrows his eyes and moves to step around me, but I won’t let him.

“You can be honest!” I exclaim. “I know you don’t see me the same way—”

“Because you’re
not
.”

I inhale. “What do you mean?”

“Have you changed? Yes. From a wide-eyed girl in sandals and flowers to a woman in diamonds and furs.”

I hold up my hands. “There’s not a single diamond on my body!”

“Maybe not today. But how about yesterday, and all the days before that?”

“But it isn’t my looks?”

He breathes deeply. “You can’t help it, can you?”

“What?” A German soldier appears in the doorway. It’s time to leave, but I want to know what it is that I can’t help.

“Your selfishness is unbearable,” Paul says, and the soldier steps aside to let him pass.

I look at the young German. There is definite admiration in his gaze.
Selfishness
? There is no greater act of kindness than this! Even Hortense would agree.

I join my brother downstairs. Once I’ve retrieved Aubree, he escorts me into his coach. This will be the last time I will ever ride in an imperial carriage. I look up at the pale silk lining and run my fingers over the velvet cushions. The long procession of military carriages rolls out the gates, and my brother looks tense. “Prepare yourself” is all he says.

We ride through the streets, and nothing seems changed to me.

The women have white cockades on their breasts, and the men have pinned their support on their hats. The country is calling for Bourbon rule; they are afraid and want to find comfort in the past. And then I see it. In the park, where a great equestrian statue of my brother once stood, there is now a pile of rubble. They are breaking his statues and destroying his monuments.

“
Vivent les Alliés
!” a woman shouts as we pass, and people all along the roads take up this chant as they recognize our carriage. “Down
with the tyrant!” someone screams, and a rock hits the side of the coach. Aubree buries her head in my neck.

“They have turned,” my brother says with resignation. Another rock hits the carriage.

“A small mutiny. Nothing to worry about. The Allies won’t let them hurt me. They want to see me impotent on Elba.”

When we stop in Millau, more than a hundred men surround our carriage, and even my brother is cautious.

“TYRANT! TYRANT!”

Napoleon opens the door. He steps out and shouts loudly, “The tyrant!” and there is sudden silence. The men exchange looks, then one steps forward. “You are the Emperor Bonaparte?”

“I am.”

“The same emperor who sent our sons to be murdered in Russia?”

My brother takes off his hat and bows his head. “I mourn for those men. Every one of them.”

“You left Moscow like a dog in the night!” someone shouts.

“To defend my kingdom. What would you do with your sons dying upstairs and your wife about to be ravaged below? Whom do you choose? The dying, or the living?”

He steps forward, and the crowd of angry men step back.

“I walked with vanity and ambition once. But those devils did not ride with me into Russia. I went east to teach Czar Alexander a lesson, because a man who will trade with the British would just as soon ally himself with them against us!”

He mounts a stone bench and declares, “For every man, woman, and child who has died under my reign, I am sorry.” He touches his heart. “Deeply, deeply sorry. But they have not died in vain. Cossacks are marching down the Champs-Élysées, but Paris will survive. Prussians are in the streets, and Austrians are in Fontainebleau, but no foreign army can take away France’s spirit. I forged this nation in the fires of revolution, and even Russians in the Tuileries can’t keep us from our destiny!”

The men cheer, raising their hats in the air.

I have never seen anything like it. He is magnificent.

“We are the finest nation in the world,” he adds passionately, “and without me, France will continue to be great. She will never forget her dignity and pride.” He leaps from the stone bench and demands a horse from one of the Austrian soldiers. “I will ride these two days to Fréjus,” he tells them. “A leader should ride willingly to his fate.”

There are actually tears as we leave, and one of the men hands the emperor a Bible. “For your journey,” he explains. “May God keep you safe.”

The rest of the journey to the coast is the same. There are dozens of angry, threatening mobs, and as the Allied soldiers watch in awe, my brother charms them all. When we finally reach the port, thousands of people are waiting at the pier, all wearing cockades in my brother’s blue and gold.

Napoleon climbs into my carriage, and Aubree leaps into his arms. She has never done this before. I put my hand to my mouth to keep from crying out.

“I suppose this is farewell,” he says.

“Six months,” I remind him. He doesn’t protest; he simply hands Aubree back to me. I look out at the large British frigate that will take him to Elba. Her name is
The Undaunted
. “It isn’t the end,” I tell him. “Look at these people.”

The pier is so crowded that the soldiers are having difficulty keeping order. The women want to catch a glimpse of their Bony—that’s what they call him here—and the men want to lay eyes on a tragic hero.

I reach for my
réticule
and hand him the heavy silk purse. “I want you to have these,” I say. “It’s enough to buy an army.”

He tries to hand the Borghese family jewels back to me, but I refuse to accept them. “When you are alone, sew them into the lining of your coat. You don’t know what might happen.”

He takes a letter from his pocket and hands it to me. It’s addressed to Joséphine. “I wrote it in Fontainebleau,” he says.

I read the letter and my hands begin to tremble.

My head and spirit are freed from an enormous weight. My fall is great, but it may, as men say, prove useful. In my retreat I shall substitute the pen for the sword. The history of my reign will be curious. The world has as yet seen me only in profile—I shall show myself in full. How many things have I to disclose; how many are there of whom a false estimate is entertained. I have heaped benefits upon millions of ingrates, and they have all betrayed me—yes, all. I except from this number the good Eugène so worthy of you and of me. Adieu, my dear Joséphine. Be resigned as I am and never forget him who never forgot and who never will forget you. Farewell, Joséphine
.

Napoleon

P.S. : I expect to hear from you at Elba. I am not very well
.

“ ‘I am not very well,’ ” I repeat. His eyes fill with tears, and my heart beats wildly. I have never seen Napoleon cry, not even when we were children. He opens the carriage door and offers me his hand. The cheer that goes up at his reappearance is deafening. The soldiers escort us to the docks, where he once stood after all of Egypt had fallen.

“Goodbye, Paoletta.” His presses my hand to his heart. “Tell Maman I love her.”