The Second Empress (38 page)

He walks the gangway, and I weep while the frigate’s cannons fire twenty-one shots: a salute to the man who once ruled an empire.

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30

PAUL MOREAU

Villa Lozère May 1814

T
HE ART DEALER SHAKES HIS HEAD AND GIVES A LOW
whistle, walking around the collection for a second time. It takes up the entire salon of the Villa Lozère. “These are rare.” He takes a slow drag on his pipe. “Very rare. The Princess Borghese left them with you?”

“You saw the letter,” I say sharply. “It’s written in her hand.”

He strokes his dark beard and considers the collection: marble statues, paintings, Grecian urns, and alabaster vessels carved in ancient Egypt. These last are Pauline’s most prized possessions. Monsieur Dion sold her some of these works, and now he will buy them back again.

“And what is she hoping to receive for all of this?”

I hand him a second letter. This one is sealed with her initials in wax. She intends to go to Elba—an island eighteen miles wide and twelve miles long—and if I know Pauline, she is hoping she can incite Napoleon to fight again. But to do it, he’ll need money. She can’t see a cause that’s already lost.

He opens the letter and makes a noise in his throat. “Is she mad? This is an outrageous sum!” I don’t respond. “Fifty thousand livres? She’s can’t be serious.”

“Her Highness rarely jokes.”

He looks over the collection again, this time running his hands over a marble Isis. With fifty thousand livres, Pauline could change the face of Saint-Domingue. The poorest sections of the island could be rebuilt, and every child given schooling in some trade. But instead this money will be squandered on Napoleon’s brutal wars. It will be used to fund death instead of life. “Fifty thousand livres then,” Dion repeats, thinking I will haggle. But this isn’t my collection, and soon it won’t even be my concern. I have my own money with the Eubard Banking House. When I retrieve it, I’ll be returning to Haiti.

He takes out his pipe and seats himself on her best chaise. “You must have seen quite a show as Her Highness’s chamberlain.”

“Front-row seat,” I reply.

He laughs. “She’s an eccentric, isn’t she? Milk baths in the morning, a different lover every week. I hear she wants to join her brother on Elba. I guess that’s why she’s selling.”

He doesn’t expect me to reply, and I don’t.

“Tell me something,” he says, and I know this will be an invitation to violate some confidence or another. “Did the emperor really say he’d rather see his own son killed than raised by Austrians?”

But I don’t see how this is any great secret. “Yes.”

He takes out his pipe and thinks. “Where does that kind of ambition come from?”

I sit on the opposite chaise. “I believe they were born with it, monsieur.”

“The entire family? Or were they fashioned that way by their father or Madame Mère?”

I imagine Madame Mère, stalking the palace halls in black, and can’t imagine her molding young children into fierce political warriors. But her husband died of cancer when Napoleon was sixteen. Perhaps after his death she became something different. “I believe the father was a desperate gambler,” I say. “He left them utterly penniless. It was the emperor who had to support his family.”

“Poverty can drive a man to many things.” He looks back at the
handsome collection of treasures waiting to be sold, and there is conflict in his face. “She took great care of these antiques, didn’t she?”

“They’re her passion.”

“And she’s willing to give it all up for Napoleon?” he asks me.

“That, and much more.”

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31

MARIE-LOUISE

Tuileries Palace, Paris

“
The Allied powers cannot take from me hereafter the great public works I have executed, the roads which I made over the Alps, and the seas which I have united. They cannot place their feet to improve where mine have not been before. They cannot take from me the code of laws which I formed, and which will go down to posterity
.”

—NAPOLEON

F
ROM A DISTANCE, THE PARADE MIGHT ACTUALLY BE A
carnival. I can see children dancing in the streets and women laughing beneath the warm afternoon sun. The people are overjoyed by the man who will take Napoleon’s place on the throne of France. They have a new Bourbon king, the grandson of King Louis XV. They believe he will save them from endless wars and death. He has signed the Charter of 1814, agreeing that under his reign there shall be freedom of religion, freedom of the press, and chambers of both deputies and peers to vote on taxation. There is nothing more for me in France.

My father holds out his arm for me to take, and I look one last time on King Louis XVIII.
May this throne bring you more joy than it ever brought me
, I wish for him.

I take my son’s hand, and we walk as a small Austrian procession through the halls of the palace. I look down at Franz, and my heart aches. He was born here, and Paris is all he’s ever known. I bend down to kiss his cheek and feel a selfish delight that he looks nothing like his father. In Schönbrunn, he will be received with great joy. When the people see him, there will be no reminder of the emperor who killed nearly four hundred thousand of our people.

“Farewell, Your Majesty.” The courtiers bow deeply to me as I pass. Some of the women are weeping. I stop before one of my ladies-in-waiting who is particularly distraught and promise her tenderly, “Her Royal Highness, the Countess of Provence, will be a lovely queen. My father has told me about her. She is a good woman, and her crown has come unexpectedly.”

In the courtyard outside, Monsieur Laurent is waiting near the imperial carriage. He has brought something for my son. As soon as Franz sees him, he runs to his tutor and embraces his leg. “Will you come to Austria?” he begs. He doesn’t understand that we are moving between countries, not palaces.

“I’m afraid that isn’t possible, Your Highness. But I brought something for you.” He hands my son a package wrapped in silver tissue. “Open it.”

Franz tears at the package, and inside there’s a wooden duck with a working bill.

“Do you remember what this kind of duck is called?”

My son thinks for a moment, then nods. “A mallard.”

Monsieur Laurent looks misty-eyed, then rubs the head of his pupil and sighs. “A very good trip to Vienna, Your Highness. Don’t forget Monsieur Laurent back in Paris,” he says.

My son hurries over to show me his gift. I thank Monsieur Laurent for everything he’s done these many years. “I thought, when I met you, we would have great battles. I was wrong.”

Adam comes up beside me, and Franz holds up his duck. “From Monsieur!” he exclaims.

“Very nice.” Adam makes a great show of inspecting Monsieur Laurent’s gift. “Does he have a name?”

Franz purses his lips and thinks. “Simon?”

“Simon the Duck,” Adam repeats admiringly, returning the new toy. “Would you and Simon like to get into the coach?”

My son runs off, and Adam holds out his arm to me. We will be returning to Vienna with an escort of more than seven hundred soldiers. In two months, my father will follow with the rest of his army. “It’s a long journey,” he warns as I step into the carriage.

“Yes.” Five years ago I undertook it under very different circumstances, not knowing if I would ever return. Now, I think of the improbability of it all: Napoleon’s invasion of Russia, his decimated army, the sixth Allied war against him—and this one successful.

A soldier brings Franz and Simon to the carriage, and I think of all of the men who sacrificed their lives for my husband’s throne.
My throne
. Yet if not for so many French deaths, I would not be going home. How does anyone make sense of this? Of feeling joy at the cost of so much misery?

“Is there anyone else you’d like to bid goodbye?” Adam asks me.

“Only my father.”

He approaches the imperial carriage with its high glass windows and golden trim, and I pass my hand through the window. He came. Just as he promised he would.

“Keep her safe,” my father tells Adam firmly. “I don’t plan to lose her for a second time.”

Adam draws a heavy breath and smiles. “Me neither.”

A whip cracks in the air, and my father squeezes my hand. “
Auf Wiedersehen
.”

“
Auf Wiedersehen
!” my son calls as the carriage rolls away.

I sit back against the velvet cushions and look out on Paris for the last time. We pass by Napoleon’s unfinished arch at the head of the Champs-Élysées, and my son points to it eagerly.

“Look, Maman!”

Yes. In all fairness to Napoleon, he took a city ravaged by war and created something truly beautiful. Not just in this arch, which is celebrating his victory over Austria, but in the Pont d’Austerlitz, the Palais Brongniart, and Rue de Rivoli, whose construction isn’t finished. Though it was all meant to glorify himself, he succeeded in what he came here to do—fashion something eternal.

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