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II How the Free City of Hamburg Paid Josephine’s Debts

WHEN BOURRIENNE RETURNED to the study, the First Consul was reading the morning mail that the secretary had laid out for him on his desk. He was wearing the uniform of a Republican division general, a frock coat without epaulettes with a simple gold laurel branch, buckskin pants, a red vest with wide lapels, and boots with their tops turned down. At the sound of his secretary’s footsteps, Bonaparte turned his head.

“Oh, it’s you, Bourrienne,” he said. “I was just ringing Landoire to have him call you.”

“I had gone down to Madame Bonaparte’s room, thinking I would find you there, General.”

“No, I slept in the large bedroom.”

“Ah,” said Bourrienne. “In the bed that belonged to the Bourbons!”

“Well, yes.”

“And how did you sleep?”

“Poorly. And the proof is that I’m already here and you did not have to awaken me. It’s all too comfortable for me.”

“Have you read the three letters I set aside for you, General?”

“Yes, the wife of a sergeant-major in the consular guard who was killed at Marengo is asking me to be the godfather of her child.”

“How should I answer her?”

“Tell her I accept. Duroc can stand in for me. The child’s name will be Napoleon. The mother will receive an annuity of five hundred francs that will revert to her son. Answer her in those terms.”

“And how about the woman who, believing in your good luck, asks you for three lottery numbers?”

“She’s crazy. But since the woman believes in my star and is sure she’ll win if I send her three numbers, though she has never won before, tell her that you can only win the lottery on those days you don’t bet anything. As proof tell her that she has never won anything when she has bought tickets, but on the day that she has not bought a ticket she has won three hundred francs.”

“So, I am to send her three hundred francs?”

“Yes.”

“And the last letter, General?”

“I was just beginning to read it when you came in.”

“Keep reading; you will find it interesting.”

“Read it to me. The writing is scribbly and difficult to read.”

With a smile, Bourrienne picked up the letter. “I know why you’re smiling,” said Bonaparte.

“Ah, I don’t think you do, General,” replied Bourrienne.

“You’re no doubt thinking that someone with handwriting like mine should be able to read anyone’s, even the scribbling of cats and public prosecutors.”

“Well, you’re right.”

Bourrienne began to read:

“‘Jersey, February 26, 1801

“‘I believe, General, that since you are back from your extensive voyages, I can now, without being indiscreet, interrupt your daily occupations by reminding you who I am. However, you may be surprised that such a feeble excuse is the subject of the letter I have the honor of addressing you. You will remember, General, that when your father was forced to take your brothers out of the school in Autun and came to see you in Brienne, he found himself penniless. He asked me to lend him twenty-five louis, which I was pleased to do. Since his return, he has not had the opportunity to pay me back, and when I left Ajaccio, your good mother offered to give up some of her silver to reimburse me. I rejected her offer and told her that I would leave the promissory note signed by your father with Monsieur Souires and that she should pay it when she was able and it convenient. I judge that she had not yet found the appropriate time to do so when the Revolution took place.

“‘You may find it strange, General, that for such a modest sum I am willing to trouble your occupations. But my situation is very difficult just now, and even such a small amount seems large to me. Exiled from my country, forced to find refuge on this island I abhor, where everything is so expensive that one has to be rich to live even simply, I would deem it a great kindness on your part if you would enable me to have that tiny sum which in earlier days would have been meaningless to me.’”

Bonaparte nodded. Bourrienne noticed his reaction.

“Do you remember this good man, General?” he asked.

“Perfectly well,” said Bonaparte. “As if it were yesterday. The sum was counted out in Brienne before my very eyes. His name must be Durosel.”

Bourrienne looked down at the signature. “That’s right,” he said. “But there’s another name, one more illustrious than the first.”

“What is his full name, then?”

“Durosel Beaumanoir.”

“We must find out if he’s from the Beaumanoir family in Brittany. That’s a good name to have.”

“Shall I keep reading?”

“Go ahead.”

Bourrienne continued:

“‘You will understand, General, that when a man is eighty-six years old and has served his country for more than sixty years without the slightest interruption, it is difficult to be sent away and forced to find refuge on Jersey, where I try to subsist on the government’s feeble attempts to help French émigrés.

“‘I use the word “émigrés” because that is what I was forced to become. Leaving France had never been in my plans, and I had committed no crime except for being the most senior general in the canton and being decorated with the great cross of Saint-Louis.

“‘One evening they came to kill me. They broke down my door. I was alerted by my neighbors’ shouts and barely had the time to escape with nothing but the clothes I had on my back. Seeing that I risked death in France, I abandoned all that I owned, real estate and furniture, and since I had no place to put my feet in my own country, I joined one of my older brothers here. He had been deported and was senile, and now I wouldn’t leave him for anything in the world. My mother-in-law is eighty years old, and they have refused to give her a portion of my estate, on the pretext that everything I owned had been confiscated. Thus, if things don’t change, I shall die bankrupt, and that saddens me greatly.

“‘I admit, General, that I have not adapted to the new style, but according to former customs,

“‘I am your humble servant.

“‘Durosel Beaumanoir’”

“Well, General, what do you say?”

“I say,” the First Consul replied with a slight catch in his voice, “that I am profoundly moved to hear such things. This is a sacred debt, Bourrienne. Write to General Durosel, and I shall sign the letter. Send him ten thousand francs and say that he can expect more, for I would like to do more for this man who helped my father. I shall take care of him. But, speaking of debts, Bourrienne, I have some serious business to talk about with you.” Bonaparte sat down with a frown.

Bourrienne remained standing near his chair. Bonaparte said, “I want to talk to you about Josephine’s debts.”

Bourrienne gave a start. “Very well,” he said. “And where do you get your information?”

“From what I hear in public.”

Like a man who has not fully understood but who dares ask no questions, Bourrienne leaned forward.

“Just imagine, my friend”—Bonaparte sometimes forgot himself and dropped formal address—“that I went out with Duroc to find out for myself what people are saying.”

“And are they saying many negative things about the First Consul?”

“Well,” Bonaparte answered with a laugh, “I nearly got myself killed when I said something bad about him. Without Duroc, who used his club, I believe we might have been arrested and taken to the Château-d’Eau guardhouse.”

“Still, that fails to explain how, in the midst of all the praise for the First Consul, the question of Madame Bonaparte’s debts came up.”

“In fact, in the midst of all that praise for the First Consul, people were saying horrible things about his wife. They’re saying that Madame Bonaparte is ruining her husband with all the clothes she’s buying; they’re saying she has debts everywhere, that her cheapest dress cost one hundred louis and her least expensive hat two hundred francs. I don’t believe a word of that, Bourrienne, you understand. But where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Last year I paid debts of three hundred thousand francs; she reminded me that I had not sent her any money from Egypt. All well and good. But now things are different; I’m giving Josephine six thousand francs a month for clothes. That should be enough. People used the same kinds of words against Marie-Antoinette. You must check with Josephine, Bourrienne, and set things straight.”

“You’ll never know,” Bourrienne answered, “how happy I am that you yourself have brought up this subject. This morning, as you were impatiently waiting for me to appear, Madame Bonaparte asked me to talk to you about the difficult position in which she finds herself.”

“Difficult position, Bourrienne! What do you mean by that, monsieur?” Bonaparte asked, suddenly reverting back to more formal speech.

“I mean that she is being harassed.”

“By whom?”

“By her creditors.”

“Her creditors! I thought I had got rid of her creditors.”

“A year ago, yes.”

“Well?”

“Well, in the past year, things have totally changed. One year ago she was the wife of General Bonaparte. Today she is the wife of the First Consul.”

“Bourrienne, that’s enough. My ears have heard enough of prattle.”

“That’s my opinion, General.”

“It is up to you to take care of paying everything.”

“I would be happy to. Give me the necessary sum, and I shall quickly take care of it, I guarantee.”

“How much do you need?”

“How much do I need? Well, yes.…”

“Well?”

“Well, Madame Bonaparte doesn’t dare tell you.”

“What? She doesn’t dare tell me? And how about you?”

“Nor do I, General.”

“Nor do you! Then it must be a colossal amount!”

Bourrienne sighed.

“Let’s see now,” Bonaparte continued. “If I pay for this year like last year, and give you three hundred thousand francs.…”

Bourrienne didn’t say a word. Bonaparte looked at him worriedly. “Say something, you imbecile!”

“Well, if you give me three hundred thousand francs, General, you would be giving me only half of the debt.”

“Half!” shouted Bonaparte, getting to his feet. “Six hundred thousand francs! … She owes … six hundred thousand francs?”

Bourrienne nodded.

“She admitted she owed that amount?”

“Yes, General.”

“And where does she expect me to get the money to pay these six hundred thousand francs? From my five-hundred-thousand-franc salary as consul?”

“Oh, she assumes you have several thousand franc bills hid somewhere in reserve.”

“Six hundred thousand francs!” Bonaparte repeated. “And at the same time my wife is spending six hundred thousand francs on clothing, I’m giving one hundred francs as pension to the widow and children of brave soldiers killed at the Pyramids or Marengo! And I can’t even give money to all of them! And they have to live the whole year on those one hundred francs, while Madame Bonaparte wears dresses worth one hundred louis and hats worth twenty-five. You must have heard incorrectly, Bourrienne, it surely cannot be six hundred thousand francs.”

“I heard perfectly well, General, and Madame Bonaparte realized what her situation was only yesterday when she saw a bill for gloves that came to forty thousand francs.”

“What are you saying?” shouted Bonaparte.

“I’m saying forty thousand francs for gloves, General. What do you expect? That is how things are. Yesterday she went over her accounts with Madame Hulot. She spent the night in tears, and she was still weeping this morning when I saw her.”

“Well, let her cry! Let her cry with shame, or even out of remorse! Forty thousand francs for gloves! Over how many months?”

“Over one year,” Bourrienne answered.

“One year! That’s enough food for forty families! Bourrienne, I want to see all those bills.”

“When?”

“Immediately. It’s eight o’clock, and I don’t see Cadoudal until nine, so I have the time. Immediately, Bourrienne. Immediately!”

“You’re quite right, General. Now that we have started, let’s get to the end of this business.”

“Go get all the bills, all of them, you understand. We shall go through them together.”

“I’m on my way, General.” And Bourrienne ran down the stairway leading to Madame Bonaparte’s apartment.

Left alone, the First Consul began to pace up and down, his hands clasped behind his back, his shoulder and mouth twitching. He started mumbling to himself: “I ought to have remembered what Junot told me at the fountains in Messoudia. I ought to have listened to my brothers Joseph and Lucien who told me not to see her when I got back. But how could I have resisted seeing my dear children Hortense and Eugene? The children brought me back to her! Divorce! I shall keep divorce legal in France, if only so I can leave that woman. That woman who gives me no children, and she’s ruining me!”

“Well,” said Bourrienne as he reentered the study, “six hundred thousand francs won’t ruin you, and Madame Bonaparte is still young enough to give you a son who in another forty years will succeed you as consul for life!”

“You have always taken her side, Bourrienne!” said Bonaparte, pinching his ear so hard the secretary cried out.

“What do you expect, General? I’m for everything that is beautiful, good, and feeble.”

In a rage, Bonaparte grabbed up the handful of papers from Bourrienne and twisted them back and forth in his hands. Then, randomly, he picked up a bill and read: “‘Thirty-eight hats’ … in one month! What’s she doing, wearing two hats a day? And eighteen hundred francs worth of feathers! And eight hundred more for ribbons!” Angrily, he threw down the bill and picked up another. “Mademoiselle Martin’s perfume shop. Three thousand three hundred and six francs for rouge. One thousand seven hundred forty-nine francs during the month of June alone. Rouge at one hundred francs a jar! Remember that name, Bourrienne. She’s a hussy who should be sent to prison in Saint-Lazare. Mademoiselle Martin, do you hear?”

“Yes, General.”

“Oh, now we come to the dresses. Monsieur Leroy. Back in the old days there were seamstresses, now we have tailors for women—it’s more moral. One hundred fifty dresses in one year. Four hundred thousand francs worth of dresses! If things keep going like this, it won’t be six hundred thousand francs, it’ll be a million. Twelve hundred thousand francs at the least that we’ll have to deal with.”

“Oh, General,” Bourrienne hastily said, “there have been some down payments made.”

“Three dresses at five thousand francs apiece!”

“Yes,” said Bourrienne. “But there are six at only five hundred each.”

“Are you making fun of me?” said Bonaparte with a frown.

“No, General, I’m not making fun of you. All I’m saying is that it’s beneath you to get so upset for nothing.”

“How about Louis XVI? He was a king, and he got upset. And he had a guaranteed income of twenty-five million francs.”

“You are—or at least when you want to be, you will be—more of a king than Louis XVI ever was, General. Furthermore, Louis XVI was an unfortunate man, you’ll have to admit.”

“A good man, monsieur.”

“I wonder what the First Consul would say if people said he was a good man.”

“For five thousand francs at least they could give us one of those beautiful gowns from Louis XVI’s days, with hoops and swirls and panniers, gowns that needed fifty meters of cloth. That I could understand. But with these new, simple frocks—women look like umbrellas in a case.”

“They have to follow the styles, General.”

“Exactly, and that is what makes me so angry. We’re not paying for cloth. At least if we were paying for the cloth, it would mean business for our factories. But no, it’s the way Leroy cuts the dress. Five hundred francs for cloth and four thousand five hundred francs for Leroy. Style! … So now we have to find six hundred thousand francs to pay for style.”

“Do we not have four million?”

“Four million? Where?”

“The money the Hamburg senate has just paid us for allowing the extradition of those two Irishmen whose lives you saved.”

“Oh, yes. Napper – Tandy and Blackwell.”

“I believe there may in fact be four and half million francs, not just four million, that the senate sent to you directly through Monsieur Chapeau-Rouge.”

“Well,” said Bonaparte with a laugh, delighted by the trick he had played on the free city of Hamburg, “I don’t know if I really had the right to do what I did, but I had just come back from Egypt, and that was one of the little tricks I’d taught the pashas.”

Just then the clock struck nine. The door opened, and Rapp, who was on duty, announced that Cadoudal and his two aides-de-camp were waiting in the official meeting room.

“Well, then, that’s what we’ll do,” said Bonaparte to Bourrienne. “That’s where you can get your six hundred thousand francs, and I don’t want to hear another word about it.” And Bonaparte went out to receive the Breton general.

Scarcely had the door closed than Bourrienne rang the bell. Landoire rushed in. “Go tell Madame Bonaparte that I have some good news for her, but since I don’t dare leave my office, where I am alone—you understand, Landoire; where I am alone—I would like to ask her to come see me here.”

When he realized it was good news, Landoire hurried to the staircase.

Everyone, from Bonaparte on down, adored Josephine.

III The Companions of Jehu

IT WAS NOT THE FIRST TIME that Bonaparte tried to bring Cadoudal back to the side of the Republic in order to gain that formidable partisan’s support.

An incident that had occurred on Bonaparte’s return from Egypt was imprinted deeply in his memory.

On the 17th Vendémiaire of the year VIII (October 9, 1799), Bonaparte had, as everyone knows, disembarked in Fréjus without going through quarantine, although he was coming from Alexandria.

He had immediately gotten into a coach with his trusted aide-de-camp, Roland de Montrevel, and left for Paris.

The same day, around four in the afternoon, he reached Avignon. He stopped about fifty yards from the Oulle gate, in front of the Hôtel du Palais-Egalité, which was just beginning again to use the name Hôtel du Palais-Royal, a name it had held since the beginning of the eighteenth century and that it still holds today. Urged by the need all mortals experience between four and six in the afternoon to find a meal, any meal, whatever the quality, he got down from the coach.

Bonaparte was in no particular way distinguishable from his companion, save for his firm step and his few words, yet it was he who was asked by the hotel keeper if he wished to be served privately or if he would be willing to eat at the common table.

Bonaparte thought for a moment. News of his arrival had not yet spread through France, as everyone thought he was still in Egypt. His great desire to see his countrymen with his own eyes and hear them with his own ears won out over his fear of being recognized; besides, he and his companion were both wearing clothing typical for the time. Since the common table was already being served and he would be able to dine without delay, he answered that he would eat at the common table.

He turned to the postilion who had brought him. “Have the horses harnessed in one hour,” he said.

The hotelier showed the newcomers the way to the common table. Bonaparte entered the dining room first, with Roland behind him. The two young men—Bonaparte was then about twenty-nine or thirty years old, and Roland twenty-six—sat down at the end of the table, where they were separated from the other diners by three or four place settings.

Whoever has traveled knows the effect created by newcomers at a common table. Everyone looks at them, and they immediately become the center of attention.

At the table were some regular customers, a few travelers en route by stagecoach from Marseille to Lyon, and a wine merchant from Bordeaux who was staying temporarily in Avignon.

The great show the newcomers had made of sitting off by themselves increased the curiosity of which they were the object. Although the man who’d entered second was dressed much the same as his companion—short leather pants and turned-down boots, a coat with long tails, a traveler’s overcoat and a wide-brimmed hat—and although they appeared to be equals, he seemed to show a noticeable deference to his companion. The deference was obviously not due to any age difference, so no doubt it was owed by a difference in social position. Furthermore, he addressed the first man as “citizen,” while his companion called him simply Roland.

What usually happens in such situations happened here. After a moment of interaction with the newcomers, everyone soon looked away, and the conversation, interrupted for a moment, resumed as before.

The subject of the conversation greatly interested the newly arrived travelers, as their fellow guests were talking about the Thermidorian Reaction and the hopes that lay in now reawakened Royalist feelings. They spoke openly of a coming restoration of the House of Bourbon, which surely, with Bonaparte being tied up as he was in Egypt, would take place within six months.

Lyon, one of the cities that had suffered hardest during the Revolution, naturally stood at the center of the conspiracy. There a veritable provisional government—with its royal committee and royal administration, a military headquarters and a royal army—had been set up.

But, in order to pay these armies and support the permanent war effort in the Vendée and Morbihan, they needed money; and lots of it. England had provided a little but was not overly generous, so the Republic was the only source of money available to its Royalist enemies. Instead of trying to open difficult negotiations with the Republic, which would have refused assistance in any case, the royal committee had organized roving bands of brigands who were charged with stealing tax revenues and with attacking the vehicles used for transporting public funds. The morality of civil wars, very loose in regard to money, did not consider stealing from Treasury stagecoaches as real theft, but rather as a military operation.

One of these bands had chosen the route between Lyon and Marseille, and as the two travelers were taking their place at the common table, the subject of conversation was the hold-up of a stagecoach carrying sixty thousand francs of government funds. The hold-up had taken place the day before on the road from Marseille to Avignon, between Lambesc and Port-Royal.

The thieves, if we can use that word for such nobly employed stagecoach robbers, had even given the coachman a receipt for what they took. They had made no attempt, either, to hide the fact that the money would be crossing France by more secure means than his stagecoach and that it would buy supplies for Cadoudal’s army in Brittany.

Such actions were new, extraordinary, and almost impossible for Bonaparte and Roland to believe, for they had been absent from France for two years. They did not suspect what deep immorality had found its way into all classes of society under the Directory’s bland government.

This particular incident had taken place on the very same road Bonaparte and his companion had just traveled, and the person telling the story was one of the principal actors in that highway drama: the wine merchant from Bordeaux.

Those who seemed to be most interested in all the details, aside from Bonaparte and his companion, who were happy simply to listen, were the people traveling in the stagecoach that had just arrived and was soon to leave. As for the other guests, the people who lived nearby, they had become so accustomed to these episodes that they could have been giving the details instead of listening to them.

Everyone was looking at the wine merchant, and, we must say, he was up to the task as he courteously answered all the questions put to him.

“So, Citizen,” asked a heavyset man whose tall, skinny, shriveled-up wife was pressing up against him, pale and trembling in fear, so much so that you could almost hear her bones knocking together. “You say that the robbery took place on the road we’ve just taken?”

“Yes, Citizen. Between Lambesc and Pont-Royal, did you notice a place where the road climbs between two hills, a place where there are many rocks?”

“Oh, yes, my friend,” the woman said, holding tight to her husband’s arm. “I did see it, and I even said, as you must remember, ‘This is a bad place. I’m glad we’re coming through during the day and not at night.’”

“Oh, madame,” said a young man whose voice exaggerated the guttural pronunciation of the time and who seemed to exercise a royal influence on the conversation of the common table, “you surely know that for the gentlemen called the Companions of Jehu there is no difference between day and night.”

“Indeed,” said the wine merchant, “it was in full daylight, at ten in the morning, that we were stopped.”

“How many of them were there?” the heavyset man asked.

“Four of them, Citizen.”

“Standing in the road?”

“No, they appeared on horseback, armed to the teeth and wearing masks.”

“That is their custom, that is their custom,” said the young man with the guttural voice. “And then they must have said, did they not?, ‘Don’t try to defend yourselves, and no harm will come to you. All we are after is the government’s money.’”

“Word for word, Citizen.”

“Yes,” continued the man who seemed to have all the information. “Two of them got down, handed their bridles to their companions, and asked the coachman to give them the money.”

“Citizen,” the large man said in amazement, “you’re telling the story as if you had witnessed it yourself!”

“Perhaps the gentleman was there,” said Roland.

The young man turned sharply toward the officer. “I don’t know, Citizen, if you intend to be impolite with me. We can speak about that after dinner. But, in any case, I am pleased to say that my political opinions are such that, unless you were intending to insult me, I would not consider your suspicion as an offense. However, yesterday morning at ten o’clock, when those gentlemen were stopping the stagecoach four leagues away, these gentlemen here can attest to the fact that I was having lunch at this very table, between the same two citizens who at this moment are doing me the honor of sitting at my right and my left.”

“And,” Roland continued, speaking this time to the wine merchant, “how many of you were in the stagecoach?”

“There were seven men and three women.”

“Seven men, not counting the coachman?” Roland repeated.

“Of course,” the man from Bordeaux answered.

“And with eight men you let yourself be robbed by four bandits? I congratulate you, monsieur.”

“We knew whom we were dealing with,” the wine merchant answered, “and we were not about to try to defend ourselves.”

“What?” Roland replied. “But you were dealing with brigands, with bandits, with highway robbers.”

“Not at all, since they had introduced themselves.”

“They had introduced themselves?”

“They said, ‘We are not brigands; we are the Companions of Jehu. It is useless to try to defend yourselves, gentlemen; ladies, don’t be afraid.’”

“That’s right,” said the young man at the common table. “It is their custom to let people know, so there can be no mistake.”

“Well,” Roland continued, while Bonaparte kept silent, “who is this citizen Jehu who has such polite companions? Is he their captain?”

“Sir,” said a man whose clothing looked very much like that of a secular priest, and who seemed to be a resident of the city as well as a regular at the common table, “if you were more acquainted than you seem to be in reading Holy Scripture, you would know that this citizen Jehu died some two thousand six hundred years ago, so that consequently, at the present time, he is unable to stop stagecoaches on the highway.”

“Sir priest,” Roland said, “since, in spite of the sour tone you are currently using with me, you seem to be well educated, allow a poor ignorant man to ask for some details about this Jehu who died twenty-six hundred years ago but is nevertheless honored by having companions who carry his name.”

“Sir,” the man of the church answered in the same clipped tone, “Jehu was a king of Israel, consecrated by Elisha on the condition that he punish the crimes of the house of Ahab and Jezebel and that he put to death all the priests of Baal.”

“Sir priest,” the young officer laughed, “thank you for the explanation. I have no doubt that it is accurate and certainly very scholarly. Except I have to admit that it has taught me very little.”

“What do you mean, Citizen?” said the regular customer at the table. “Don’t you understand that Jehu is His Majesty Louis XVIII, may God preserve him, consecrated on the condition that he punish the crimes of the Republic and that he put to death all the priests of Baal—that is, all the Girondins, the Cordeliers, the Jacobins, the Thermidorians; all those people who have played any part over the last seven years in this abominable state of affairs that we call the Revolution!”

“Well, sure enough!” said Roland. “Indeed, I am beginning to understand. But among those people the Companions of Jehu are supposed to be fighting, do you include the brave soldiers who pushed the foreigners back out of France and the illustrious generals who led the armies in the Tyrol, the Sambre-et-Meuse, and Italy?”

“Yes. Those men, and especially those men.”

Roland’s eyes grew hard, his nostrils dilated, he pinched his lips and started to stand up. But his companion grabbed his coat and pulled him back down, and the word “fool,” which he was about to throw in the face of his interlocutor, stayed between his teeth.

Then, with a calm voice, the man who had just demonstrated his power over his companion spoke for the first time. “Citizen,” he said, “please excuse two travelers who have just come from the ends of the earth, as far away as America or India, who have been out of France for two years, who don’t know what’s happening here, and who are eager to learn.”