Two Empresses Read online

  Recognizing that the aged and ailing were poor company for a “pretty young thing” like myself and sensing that Aunt Edmée’s persistent attempts to help me improve myself only made me feel worse, Papa de Beauharnais urged me to attend the Friday night salons of Alexandre’s cousin, Fanny de Beauharnais, where I was sure to meet many interesting people and make friends. “Fanny and her crowd are not as exacting as Alexandre,” he assured me. “By all accounts they are a fun and lively lot.”

  Fanny was a lady novelist, subsisting extravagantly on inherited wealth, not the fruits of her pen. Her latest novel was called Blinded by Love. Its entire plot was literally condensed and contained in its title—the hero was blinded by the heroine in a riding accident, but, as is always the way in such books, love conquers all. Fanny was a tall, gregarious woman possessed of a gargantuan appetite for novelty and change in constant motion. Her hair color, her décor, her passions, and her lovers seemed to change every five minutes; it was maddeningly difficult to keep up with any of them.

  I never knew when the butler opened the door whether I would walk into faux medieval splendor or the imagined tomb of a long-dead Egyptian king. Another Friday I might find a funereal black room in which all the guests wore shrouds and lay in coffins contemplating death, or a stark white room devoid of furniture where everyone was barefoot and draped in diaphanous white sheets, sitting on the floor in a circle hand in hand communing with the spirits of ancient Greek philosophers or standing up and striking poses, pretending to be statues. After that fad had run its course each guest would be greeted at the door and presented with a palette of paints and urged to choose a blank patch of wall and make it their own immortal masterpiece, which would be papered over with gold-striped champagne silk before the week was out when Fanny had a yen for regal splendor again.

  One simply never knew with Fanny; that was the fun of her. Palmistry, pirates, pagans, pottery, painting, confectionary, fairy tales, farm animals, dragons, midwifery, nature foods, astrology, knitting, mesmerism, music, murder, demonology, the mysticism of the ancients, wild Indians, Americans, medieval history, the mysteries of Catholicism, tropical birds, botany, Shakespeare’s plays, and mythology all consumed her soul, devoured her hours, dictated her décor, and filled the pages of her novels before she was on to something new.

  One Friday all she wanted to do was dress as a shepherdess and dance on the dew-dampened grass in her bare feet, so she had the lawn uprooted and rolled up like a carpet and carried into the ballroom where white-wigged footmen stood by to drench it regularly with gilded pails filled with rosewater, to keep it delightfully damp and sweet for the guests’ dancing feet.

  All her guests were said to be brilliant, and at every salon they would rise and regale us with readings from their novels and essays, recitations of their poems, or performances of music they had composed, or unveil their artwork, and everyone would stand and applaud and shower them with extravagant praise; even the man who presented a stark, blank white canvas framed in gilt was pronounced an “immortal genius whose art would be adored through the ages.” Most of their “brilliance” sailed hopelessly over my head. I understood none of their prose, poetry and philosophy, and though I always smiled and clapped politely along with the rest, I was often bored to tears and happy to plead an unfeigned headache and go home to my bed.

  I found only acquaintances in Fanny’s drawing room, never friends, and I knew in my heart I didn’t really belong there. I went only to please Papa de Beauharnais, to prove I was making an effort to ease my lonely plight.

  * * *

  To escape the tedium and ennui of my life, I began going for a daily walk or carriage ride. Like a fairy-tale princess emerging from a hundred-year slumber, I was slowly awakening to the charms of Paris. Spring seemed to bring out its best. The trees were in full fragrant flower, festooned with blossoms of white and delicate pink, and people strolled leisurely beneath them arm-in-arm and smiled like they were in love. I saw beauty now wherever I looked.

  One day I saw a turquoise silk gown in the window of a dressmaker’s shop. The color sent my heart sailing right back to Martinique and the clear warm blue waters I had so often swum in. Impulsively I went in and inquired the price, knowing full well it would be too dear for my purse. Alexandre begrudgingly allotted me only a pittance of pocket money each month; it was barely enough to keep me in candied violets. But the modiste was ambitious and new; she said the “Vicomtesse de Beauharnais”—it still thrilled my heart to be called that, it made me feel so important and grown-up!—had only to select whatever she wished, the goods would be delivered to me, and a bill would be sent to my husband.

  It seemed such a sensible and simple thing to do; I marveled that I had not thought of it before. So I bought the turquoise gown, and another of sunset-orange satin, and a third of gold lace. And of course I must have hats and gloves, stockings and shoes, fans, shawls, and parasols to match, and pretty things to wear underneath my new dresses, the modiste said, and I happily agreed. The next day I went back for a softly flowing rose satin negligee to accent my womanly curves and the day after that I fancied a frock the color of wet violets.

  I soon found the milliners, corset-makers, perfumers, fan-makers, and jewelers of Paris were all equally obliging to the Vicomtesse de Beauharnais. No one expected me to have ready cash; it didn’t matter at all that I didn’t have enough money. I could still have whatever I wished! I felt like I had just discovered a new world!

  Alexandre was irate when he saw the bills, but his indifference and his absorption with the mysterious Laura had helped me grow a backbone, and I calmly reminded him that without me he would have no money at all and surely that entitled me to a few trinkets and trifles. Henceforth, he paid my bills with ill will, but in blessed silence.

  And there were many more bills to come. I had discovered that spending money was a balm to my hurt feelings and pride. It relieved my boredom, provided thrills, and, at least for a time, all my feelings of inadequacy melted away beneath the modiste’s or the milliner’s praise and cunning fingers and the meaty caress of the stay-maker’s pink palm against my tightly corseted torso as he stared at me with smitten eyes.

  My promise to send half my allowance back to Martinique for Papa each month crumbled away like piecrust and I guiltily swept the crumbs underneath the carpet. I dreaded his letters so much, and the angry or wounded words of reproach they would surely contain. Whenever one arrived I always delayed opening it for several days.

  * * *

  And so life went on. Overall, it wasn’t all that different from my life in Martinique, except the Paris winters were beastly cold, but I had my furs now—cloaks, coats, and muffs of sable, fox, and ermine—and could endure it while looking ravishing at the same time.

  Every time I passed a window and saw something I liked I went in and bought it. I never bothered to ask the price; that was Alexandre’s problem, not mine.

  I slept until noon, played with my little son, lounged about eating candied violets, and went out to promenade beneath my parasol or ride in my carriage or, in snowy winter, my bell-spangled sleigh. If I felt fatigued, I could always stop at a café for a cup of chocolate. And there was always more shopping to do. At night there were private balls and supper parties, the opera and plays, or a public ballroom to go to where I could be seen and admired, drink until I was giddy and giggly, and dance till dawn. I still had a weakness for soldiers and Paris was full of them, and they all, with the notable exception of my husband, seemed to find me irresistible. Everyone it seemed, except Alexandre, wanted to make love to me.

  In Paris I found that being married was never a hindrance. Half the husbands and wives I discovered despised or were indifferent to each other; rare indeed was the marriage founded on actual love or even fleeting passion. But I never did much more than kiss and flirt. In my own stubborn way, I was still besotted with Alexandre, waiting for, and dreaming of, the day when he would turn to look at me with desire instead of contempt in his eyes.r />
  All in all, it wasn’t a bad life. It was a way to pass the time while waiting for the crown Euphemia David had seen in my palm.

  CHAPTER 5

  One morning, in the fourth year of our marriage, I awoke to the hard, stinging slap of a sheaf of papers in my face and Alexandre’s voice bellowing, “I’m done with you and paying your bills!”

  By the time I could rouse myself, blot the blood blossoming from the paper cut on my nose, and get my window open the hooves of Alexandre’s horse were clattering loudly across the courtyard and the back of his cloak was waving good-bye to me.

  The next news I had of him was that he had sailed away to Martinique with his true love, his mistress, Laure de Girardin—at last I knew the haughty blonde’s name—and the infant son she had recently borne him. The ship they sailed upon was ironically called Venus.

  This sudden callous abandonment left me reeling and made me so sick I took to my bed. For weeks I could not lift my head. I felt like such a failure. Every time I tried to eat I felt like I was vomiting my heart out.

  I had tried so hard to please Alexandre. I had given him a son almost right away instead of making him wait and hope for years like many men had to do. I thought with my new clothes I was acquiring the elegance and sophistication he considered essential. And I had hoped that if he saw how much other men admired me he would begin to see me with new, and more appreciative, and interested, eyes, the way little boys always saw other boys’ toys as infinitely more desirable. But it wasn’t enough. All my efforts were in vain; my husband still left me.

  Soon all Paris would know if they didn’t already. And time would soon reveal that it was more than Alexandre’s betrayal that had sickened me. One of our rare, dispassionate, cold couplings had left me with child again. I impetuously sent a messenger racing after Alexandre, chartering a fast ship to catch the Venus. Foolishly I imagined that if Alexandre knew about the child he would come back to me.

  Stone-cold silence was his only answer. I heard nothing for months. I was still in bed recovering from the birth of our daughter, Hortense, when a letter finally arrived. In a torrent of fierce, ugly words overflowing with hate Alexandre disowned our newborn child, claiming the seed that had sown it was not his own. I was horrified! One had only to look at my lovely flaxen-haired little girl to know that she was Alexandre’s daughter.

  Alexandre branded me a whore, “the vilest creature I know,” and “beneath all the sluts of the world.” He said he could barely hold his head up in Martinique because everyone was calling him a cuckold and a fool and laughing at him. He had heard so many stories about my wild, wanton ways as a young girl on the island—midnight rendezvous, naked swims, and frenzied couplings on the warm white sands in the silver moonlight. I had played him for a fool, he said; I was not a virgin on our wedding night. I had doubtlessly resorted to some harlot’s tricks in order to deceive him, a bladder filled with pig’s blood surreptitiously inserted inside of me or something of the kind.

  He informed me that he was in the process of collecting a series of notarized statements to prove my depravity to the lawcourts so he could divorce me and marry his true love—Laure de Girardin—and acknowledge their son as his rightful heir. As for me, I could take my pair of bastards and my whorish self and go straight to Hell for all Alexandre cared.

  Gossip would soon inform me that they had been in love for years, but Laure had been married to a much older man who doted upon her and gave her everything she desired; she was beautiful, rich, and adored. Alexandre, desperate to come into his inheritance so he could compete with Monsieur de Girardin’s bounty in wooing the fair Laure, had finally given up on waiting for his elderly rival to die and had married me instead. Then, mere months after our marriage, Laure had become a widow. It made Alexandre hate me all the more; he believed that I had ruined everything for him.

  But it was not my fault! I had married Alexandre in good faith. I knew nothing of Laure; he was the faithless one! And while it was all too true that I had flirted and dallied in my lazy, carefree island youth and many times I had been reckless and imprudent, I had never bestowed the ultimate favor on any of my beaus; I had preserved my virginity for my future husband. Nor had I, since the day I said, “I do,” to Alexandre, taken any other man into my body or bed. I had been flirtatious, but I had been faithful.

  * * *

  In his wrath, Alexandre sold the house on the rue Thévenot right out from under us and withdrew all financial support, even the allowance he had given his father, because Papa de Beauharnais loved me and took my side. Alexandre ordered me to a convent since he lacked the authority to send me to prison, where he thought I truly belonged.

  Aunt Edmée and Papa de Beauharnais, with only his meager pension to fall back on, withdrew to a small rented house in Fontainebleau. His pension was barely enough to support two ailing gentlefolk and I could not bear to burden them with myself and the children, so I had no choice but to do as my husband said and seek shelter with the nuns.

  I feared I would be shamed and judged, but, to my surprise, I found a safe haven. Instead of a dour, bleak, gray prison, I found a place of loveliness and light, embraced by ivy and beautiful gardens, and a world filled with welcoming arms, understanding hearts, and clever heads all ready and willing to help me.

  The convent of Panthémont was full of kind, worldly wise, and sympathetic women: steel-willed dowagers, widows not inclined to remarry, spurned wives, dowerless daughters and sisters, inconvenient spinsters, plain, disfigured, independent-minded, or abhorring the male sex, women who could not or would not marry. The nuns, far from being sour and strict, were kindly and lax. Their only rule was that we must attend Mass once a day; otherwise we were left to do as we pleased. We weren’t even required to stay inside the convent walls; we could come and go as we wished and even receive visitors. Some ladies even snuck lovers into their beds or crept out to spend the night in theirs.

  The ladies of Panthémont took a special interest in us. They doted upon my two precious, sweet golden-haired tots, and, like sophisticated mother hens, they took me under their wing. For the first time in my life I was inclined to study and learn. I became their most apt pupil, more industrious and attentive than I had ever been at the convent school in Fort Royal. I daresay if they had wanted me to I could even have learned to spell under their tutelage.

  They taught me how to dress and to apply cosmetics like a real lady. The changes in fashion favored me as though they had been made for me. The heavy brocades, yards of embroidered ribbons and laces, billowing hoops, and cumbersome, jutting panniers, tight lacing, and steep mountains of ornately bedecked and powdered hair garnished with gauze poufs, flowers, feathers, tassels, and pompoms, and even model ships were just not for me. Fortunately, Queen Marie Antoinette had begun to feel the same way. Now gowns had more graceful, flowing lines and light and airy muslins and silks replaced the hot and heavy velvets and gilt-encrusted satins and brocades. Pure white and delicate, sweet pastels comprised fashion’s palette, complemented by straw hats and shawls, and women let their hair fall down loose in cascades of curls, eschewing powder except on the most formal occasions.

  My new friends urged me to work on my voice, noting, as I often had, how it tended to grow louder when I was nervous and ill at ease. They suggested I slow and lower it to a husky, sultry drawl and keep just enough of my Creole charm to fascinate and lend me an exotic air. I remembered the way the colored women on Martinique had walked with baskets balanced atop their heads, hips swaying and sashaying languidly to a sensual rhythm only they seemed to hear, and made it my own, practicing for hours alone in my room at night.

  These clever ladies taught me how to flatter and flirt like a true Parisian, to recognize the right people to wile and beguile, to seduce or to let seduce me. “You can either use men or be used by them.” They advised me to live my life with those words always in mind.

  Amongst my new friends there were the wives and widows, sisters and daughters of lawyers and judg
es who gave me legal advice so I could best Alexandre at his own game. I discovered that I was not unique or alone in my humiliating plight. I was not the first, nor would I be the last, wife to be cast aside with evil aspersions hurled like stones against her reputation. I found it both comforting and reassuring that several of the ladies who lived at Panthémont had stood before judges on trumped-up charges, falsehoods concocted by fickle husbands not content with the casual adulteries so common in aristocratic circles but desiring instead a legal severance of the marital bond, and with it all financial responsibilities to their spouse.

  My aristocratic patronesses introduced me to powerful and influential men who could help me, and soon I had a lawyer, and the means, to fight Alexandre.

  I sent letters back to Martinique soliciting testimonials to my good character and contradicting the charges made against me. When my lawyer discovered that many of Alexandre’s informants were illiterate slaves, I wrote to plantation owners and Creoles residing in Paris who could affirm that slaves were like children and words easily put into their mouths, that they would unquestioningly sign their mark, a crude X in lieu of an actual signature, on any document if a Grand Blanc told them to. And many of Alexandre’s informants had been mere children, five years old and even younger, when I left the island, hardly of age to produce such damning evidence against me; one, Petit Sebastian, had barely been out of his cradle when I sailed away. Men who were named as participants in my youthful dalliances gallantly denounced the tales as spiteful gossip, lies spun out of playful and innocent ballroom banter and harmless strolls in gardens or on beaches. Not a one of them admitted to ever having carnal knowledge of me or to ever having been alone with me without a chaperone.