Chapter IV: Napoleon’s Courtship and Marriage—his Devotion to Josephine

In the five months spent in Paris before the 13th Vendémiaire, Bonaparte saw something of society. One interesting company which he often joined, was that gathered about Madame Permon at a hotel in the Rue des Filles Saint-Thomas. This Madame Permon was the same with whom he had taken refuge frequently in the days when he was in the military school of Paris, and whom he had visited later, in 1792, when lingering in town with hope of recovering his place in the army. On this latter occasion he had even exposed himself to aid her and her husband to escape the fury of the Terrorists and to fly from the city. Madame Permon had returned to Paris in the spring of 1795 for a few weeks, and numbers of her old friends had gathered about her as before the Terror, among them, Bonaparte.

Another house—and one of very different character—at which he was received, was that of Barras. The 9th Thermidor, as the fall of Robespierre is called, released Paris from a strain of terror so great that, in reaction, she plunged for a time into violent excess. In this period of decadence Barras was sovereign. Epicurean by nature, possessing the tastes, culture, and vices of the old _régime_, he was better fitted than any man in the government to create and direct a dissolute and luxurious society. Into this set Napoleon was introduced, and more than once he expressed his astonishment to Joseph at the turn things had taken in Paris.

“The pleasure-seekers have reappeared, and forget, or, rather,
remember only as a dream, that they ever ceased to shine. Libraries
are open, and lectures on history, chemistry, astronomy, etc.,
succeed each other. Everything is done to amuse and make life
agreeable. One has no time to think; and how can one be gloomy in
this busy whirlwind? Women are everywhere—at the theatres, on the
promenades, in the libraries. In the study of the _savant_ you meet
some that are charming. Here alone, of all places in the world, they
deserve to hold the helm. The men are mad over them, think only of
them, live only by and for them. A woman need not stay more than six
months in Paris to learn what is due her and what is her empire....
This great nation has given itself up to pleasure, dancing, and
theatres, and women have become the principal occupation. Ease,
luxury, and _bon ton_ have recovered their throne; the Terror is
remembered only as a dream.”

Bonaparte took his part in the gayeties of his new friends, and was soon on easy terms with most of the women who frequented the _salon_ of Barras, even with the most influential of them all, the famous Madame Tallien, the great beauty of the Directory.

Among the women whom he met in the _salon_ of Madame Tallien and at Barras’s own house, was the Viscountess de Beauharnais (_née_ Tascher de la Pagerie), widow of the Marquis de Beauharnais, guillotined on the 5th Thermidor, 1794. At the time of the marquis’s death his wife was a prisoner. She was released soon after and had become a intimate friend of Madame Tallien. All Madame Tallien’s circle had, indeed, become attached to Josephine de Beauharnais, and with Barras she was on terms of intimacy which led to a great amount of gossip. Without fortune, having two children to support, still trembling at the memory of her imprisonment, indolent and vain, it is not remarkable that Josephine yielded to the pleasures of the society which had saved her from prison and which now opened its arms to her, nor that she accepted the protection of the powerful Director Barras. She was certainly one of the regular _habitués_ of his house, and every week kept court for him at her little home at Croissy, a few miles from Paris. The Baron Pasquier, afterwards one of the members of Napoleon’s Council of State, was at that moment living in poverty at Croissy—and was a neighbor of Josephine. In his “Memoirs” he has left a paragraph on the gay little outings taken there by Barras and his friends.

“Her house was next to ours,” says Pasquier. “She did not come out often at that time, rarely more than once a week, to receive Barras and the troop which always followed him. From early in the morning we saw the hampers coming. Then mounted _gendarmes_ began to circulate on the route from Nanterre to Croissy, for the young Director came usually on horseback.

“Madame de Beauharnais’s house had, as is often the case among creoles, an appearance of luxury; but, the superfluous aside, the most necessary things were lacking. Birds, game, rare fruits, were piled up in the kitchen (this was the time of our greatest famine), and there was such a want of stewing-pans, glasses, and plates, that they had to come and borrow from our poor stock.”

There was much about Josephine de Beauharnais to win the favor of such a man as Barras. A creole past the freshness of youth—Josephine was thirty-two years old in 1795—she had a grace, a sweetness, a charm, that made one forget that she was not beautiful, even when she was beside such brilliant women as Madame Tallien and Madame Récamier. It was never possible to surprise her in an attitude that was not graceful. She was never ruffled or irritable. By nature she was perfection of ease and repose. Artist enough to dress in clinging stuffs made simply, which harmonized perfectly with her style, and skilful enough to use the arts of the toilet to conceal defects which care and age had brought, the Viscountess de Beauharnais was altogether one of the most fascinating women in Madame Tallien’s circle.

BONAPARTE, GENERAL OF THE ARMY IN ITALY.

Profile in plaster. By David d’Angers. Collection of Monsieur Paul le
Roux. This energetic profile presents considerable artistic and
iconographic interest. It is the first rough cast of the face of
Bonaparte on the pediment of the Pantheon at Paris. Some months ago,
Baron Larrey told me an interesting anecdote regarding this statue.
The Baron, son of the chief surgeon to Napoleon I., and himself
ex-military surgeon to Napoleon III., happening to be with the
emperor at the camp of Châlons conceived the noble idea of trying to
save the pediment of the Pantheon, then about to be destroyed to
satisfy the Archbishop of Paris, who regarded with lively
displeasure the image of Voltaire figuring on the façade of a
building newly consecrated to religion. At the emperor’s table,
Baron H. Larrey adroitly turned the conversation to David, and
informed the sovereign, to his surprise, that the proudest effigy of
Napoleon was to be seen on this pediment. Bonaparte, in fact, is
represented as seizing for himself the crowns distributed by the
Fatherland, while the other personages receive them. On hearing
this, Napoleon III. was silent; but the next day the order was given
to respect the pediment. The plaster cast I reproduce here is signed
_J. David_, and dates from 1836. The Pantheon pediment was
inaugurated in 1837.—A. D.]

The goodness of Josephine’s heart undoubtedly won her as many friends as her grace. Everybody who came to know her at all well, declared her gentle, sympathetic, and helpful. Everybody except, perhaps, the Bonaparte family, who never cared for her, and whom she never tried to win. Lucien, indeed, draws a picture of her in his “Memoirs” which, if it could be regarded as unprejudiced, would take much of her charm from her:

“Josephine was not disagreeable, or perhaps I better say, _everybody
declared that she was very good_; but it was especially when
goodness cost her no sacrifice.... She had very little wit, and no
beauty at all; but there was a certain creole suppleness about her
form. She had lost all natural freshness of complexion, but that the
arts of the toilet remedied by candle-light.... In the brilliant
companies of the Directory, to which Barras did me the honor of
admitting me, she scarcely attracted my attention, so old did she
seem to me, and so inferior to the other beauties which ordinarily
formed the court of the voluptuous Directors, and among whom the
beautiful Tallien was the true Calypso.”

But if Lucien was not attracted to Josephine, Napoleon was from the first; and when, one day, Madame de Beauharnais said some flattering things to him about his military talent, he was fairly intoxicated by her praise, followed her everywhere, and fell wildly in love with her; but by her station, her elegance, her influence, she seemed inaccessible to him, and then, too, he was looking elsewhere for a wife. When he first knew her, he was thinking of Désirée Clary; and he had known Josephine some time when he sought the hand of the widow Permon.

Though he dared not tell her his love, all his circle knew of it, and Barras at last said to him, “You should marry Madame de Beauharnais. You have a position and talents which will secure advancement; but you are isolated, without fortune and without relations. You ought to marry; it gives weight,” and he asked permission to negotiate the affair.

Josephine was distressed. Barras was her protector. She felt the wisdom of his advice, but Napoleon frightened and wearied her by the violence of his love. In spite of her doubts she yielded at last, and on the 9th of March, 1796, they were married. Shortly before, Napoleon had been appointed commander-in-chief of the Army of Italy, and two days later he left his wife for his post.

From every station on his route he wrote her passionate letters:

“Every moment takes me farther from you, and every moment I feel
less able to be away from you. You are ever in my thoughts; my fancy
tires itself in trying to imagine what you are doing. If I picture
you sad, my heart is wrung and my grief is increased. If you are
happy and merry with your friends, I blame you for so soon
forgetting the painful three days separation; in that case you are
frivolous and destitute of deep feeling. As you see, I am hard to
please; but, my dear, it is very different when I fear your health
is bad, or that you have any reasons for being sad; then I regret
the speed with which I am being separated from my love. I am sure
that you have no longer any kind feeling toward me, and I can only
be satisfied when I have heard that all goes well with you. When any
one asks me if I have slept well, I feel that I cannot answer until
a messenger brings me word that you have rested well. The illnesses
and anger of men affect me only so far as I think they may affect
you. May my good genius, who has always protected me amid great
perils, guard and protect you! I will gladly dispense with him. Ah!
don’t be happy, but be a little melancholy, and, above all, keep
sorrow from your mind and illness from your body. You remember what
Ossian says about that. Write to me, my pet, and a good long letter,
and accept a thousand and one kisses from your best and most loving
friend.”

Arrived in Italy he wrote:

“I have received all your letters, but none has made such an
impression on me as the last. How can you think, my dear love, of
writing to me in such a way? Don’t you believe my position is
already cruel enough, without adding to my regrets and tormenting my
soul? What a style! What feelings are those you describe! It’s like
fire; it burns my poor heart. My only Josephine, away from you there
is no happiness; away from you, the world is a desert in which I
stand alone, with no chance of tasting the delicious joy of pouring
out my heart. You have robbed me of more than my soul; you are the
sole thought of my life. If I am worn out by all the torments of
events, and fear the issue, if men disgust me, if I am ready to
curse life, I place my hand on my heart; your image is beating
there. I look at it, and love is for me perfect happiness; and
everything is smiling, except the time that I see myself absent from
my love. By what art have you learned how to captivate all my
faculties, to concentrate my whole being in yourself? To live for
Josephine! That’s the story of my life. I do everything to get to
you; I am dying to join you. Fool! Do I not see that I am only going
farther from you? How many lands and countries separate us! How long
before you will read these words which express but feebly the
emotions of the heart over which you reign!...”

* * * * *

“Don’t be anxious; love me like your eyes—but that’s not enough—like
yourself; more than yourself, than your thoughts, your mind, your
life, your all. But forgive me, I’m raving. Nature is weak when one
loves....”

* * * * *

“I have received a letter which you interrupt to go, you say, into
the country; and afterwards you pretend to be jealous of me, who am
so worn out by work and fatigue. Oh, my dear!... Of course, I am in
the wrong. In the early spring the country is beautiful; and then
the nineteen-year old lover was there, without a doubt. The idea of
wasting another moment in writing to the man three hundred leagues
away, who lives, moves, exists only in memory of you; who reads your
letters as one devours one’s favorite dishes after hunting for six
hours!”

JUNOT (1771–1813).]