Napoleon: His Wives and Women. Christopher Hibbert

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       15 ‘LA PUTANA’

      ‘I would rather die than lead a life

      that cannot be devoted to you.’

      A FREQUENT GUEST at the Bonapartes’ dinner parties, Barras was closer to Napoleon than ever, far closer than any of the other Directors (all of whom, in varying degrees, were wary of him). Barras was also as intimate as ever with Josephine: one evening, when she had planned to have dinner at his house, her husband returned unexpectedly early from a visit to the Channel ports. ‘Bonaparte came back last night,’ she wrote to Barras’s secretary. ‘I beg you, my dear Botot, to tell Barras how much I regret not being able to dine with him tonight. Tell him not to forget me! You know, my dear Botot, my delicate position better than anyone else.’

      Josephine also wrote, and in far more intimate terms, to Hippolyte Charles:^*

      Joseph [her brother-in-law] had a long conversation yesterday with Bonaparte and afterwards he asked me if I knew Citizen Bodin and if I had procured for him the purveyor’s contract with the Army of Italy and if it was true that Charles was living at Citizen Bodin’s house at 100 faubourg St Honoré and if I went there every day. I answered that I knew nothing at all of what he was talking about and that, if he wanted a divorce, he only had to ask me…Yes, my Hippolyte, I hate all of them [the Bonaparte family]. You alone have my loving tenderness…They must see my despair at not being able to see you as often as I would like. Hippolyte, I will kill myself. I would rather die than lead a life that cannot be devoted to you. What have I done to these monsters?…They must see how I abhor them…I hate them all…But however much they torment me, they shall never part me from my Hippolyte…You alone have my love…Please tell Bodin to say he doesn’t know me, and that it wasn’t through me that he got the Army contract…

      I will do my very best to see you during the day. I will send Blondin [a trusted manservant] to tell you what time I can get away to see you in the Parc Monceau. Goodbye, my Hippolyte, a thousand kisses as passionate and loving as my heart…My life is a constant torment. You only can restore me to happiness. Tell me that you love me, that you love only me. Send me 50,000 livres by Blondin out of the funds in hand. Collot [ Jean-Pierre Collot, a corrupt banker] is asking me for the money. Adieu, I send you a thousand tender kisses. I am yours, all yours.

      Napoleon’s brother, Joseph, was not the only member of his family who had come to Paris. His wife, Julie, had come with him from Rome, where he had served for a time as ambassador; so had Julie’s sister, Désirée Clary, and so had packing-cases full of treasures and money which enabled Joseph to buy a fine country estate, the Château de Mortefontaine, as well as a splendid house in Paris, designed by Jacques-Ange Gabriel, architect of the Petit Trianon at Versailles.

      Joseph’s brother, Lucien, a tall, pretentious man equally antagonistic to Josephine, was able to buy an extensive estate in the country from which he wrote long letters to Napoleon detailing Josephine’s real and supposed indiscretions. All their three sisters were, and continued to be, equally antagonistic; Elisa and Caroline frequently expressing their dislike and spreading malicious gossip, Pauline displaying similar animosity between visits to Josephine’s couturíères and bijoutiers, and the occasional enjoyment of the ‘old woman’s’ former lovers.

      Napoleon’s mother was now also living in comfort in France, having abandoned the family house in Corsica, which, after returning to the island for a time, she had rebuilt, redecorated and refurnished with money sent to her by her son. She did not speak against Josephine so openly as her daughters did; and, presumably at Napoleon’s behest and probably at his dictation, wrote to her to say, ‘My son has told me of his happiness, which is enough to secure my approval.’ In private, however, she referred to Josephine as ‘La putana’, ‘the whore’.

      The Bonapartes were far from alone in endeavouring to make trouble between Napoleon and Josephine. One day, Louise Compoint, Josephine’s maid who had accompanied her from Italy, came to see the General. She had lost her place, she told him, because Mme Bonaparte had objected to her sharing a bed with General Junot when they stopped for the night at inns. This, she said, was most unfair since Mme Bonaparte herself had seen to it that Captain Charles was with her in her carriage and he had spent the nights at the same inns.

      Bonaparte questioned his wife about this. In an attempt to get her to confess, he remarked that of course if a man and a woman slept in the same inn it did not necessarily follow that they shared a bed. ‘No, no,’ Josephine repeated, bursting into tears which, for the moment, ended the questioning. Her husband, who seems to have paid little attention to Joseph’s accusations, seems not to have pursued Louise Compoint’s either, turning his attention to the next step in his career, an invasion of Egypt, proposed by Talleyrand, as a means of striking at one of the main sources of England’s wealth and threatening her route to India.

      The time had not yet come, Bonaparte thought, to take steps nearer to power in France. He had attempted to enlist Barras’s help in getting himself elected a Director and then mounting a coup d’état, but Barras had not been encouraging. At the same time, Bonaparte was beginning to believe СКАЧАТЬ