Empress Josephine

Out of employment and waiting for something to turn up, he yet had a very self-satisfied manner.

His peculiar way of listening to conversation—absorbing everything and giving nothing out—made one uncomfortable. Josephine, seven years his senior, did not like the youth. She had had a wider experience and been better brought up than he, and she let him know it, but he did not seem especially abashed.

Exactly what the French Revolution was, no one has yet told us. Read "Carlyle" backward or forward and it is grand: it puts your head in a whirl of heroic intoxication, but it does not explain the Revolution.

Suspicion, hate, tyranny, fear, mawkish sentimentality, mad desire, were in the air. One leader was deposed because he did nothing, and his successor was carried to the guillotine because he did too much. Convention after convention was dissolved and re-formed.

On the Fourth of October, Seventeen Hundred Ninety-five, there was a howl and a roar and a shriek from forty thousand citizens of Paris.

No one knew just what they wanted—the forty thousand did not explain. Perhaps it was nothing—only the leaders who wanted power. They demanded that the Convention should be dissolved: certain men must be put out and others put in.

The Convention convened and all the members felt to see if their heads were in proper place—tomorrow they might not be. The room was crowded to suffocation. Spectators filled the windows, perched on the gallery-railing, climbed and clung on the projecting parts of columns.

High up on one of these columns sat the young man Bonaparte, silent, unmoved, still waiting for something to turn up.

The Convention must protect itself, and the call was for Barras. Barras had once successfully parleyed with insurrection—he must do so again. Barras turned bluish-white, for he knew that to deal with this mob successfully a man must be blind and deaf to pity. He struggled to his feet—he looked about helplessly—the Convention silently waited to catch the words of its savior.

High up on a column Barras spied the lithe form of the artillery major, whom he had seen, with face of bronze, deal out grape and canister at Toulon. Barras raised his hand and pointing to the young officer cried, "There, there is the man who can save you!"

The Convention nominated the little man by acclamation as commander of the city's forces. He slid down from his perch, took half an hour to ascertain whether the soldiers were on the side of the mob or against it—for it was usually a toss-up—and decided to accept the command. Next day the mob surrounded the Tuileries in the name of Liberty, Fraternity and Equality. The Terrorists entreated the soldiers to throw down their arms, then they reviled and cajoled and cursed and sang, and the women as usual were in the vanguard. Paris recognized the divine right of insurrection. Who dare shoot into such a throng!

The young artillery major dare. He gave the word and red death mowed wide swaths, and the balls spat against the walls and sang through the windows of the Church of Saint Roche where the mob was centered. Again and again he fired. It began at four by the clock, and at six all good people, and bad, had retired to their homes, and Paris was law-abiding. The Convention named Napoleon, General of the Interior, and the French Revolution became from that moment a thing that was.

Of course, no one in Paris was so much talked of as the young artillery officer. Josephine was a bit proud that she had met him, and possibly a little sorry that she had treated him so coldly. He only wished to be polite!

Josephine was an honest woman, but still, she was a woman. She desired to be well thought of, and to be well thought of by men in power. Her son Eugene was fifteen, and she had ambitions for him; and to this end she saw the need of keeping in touch with the Powers. Josephine was a politician and a diplomat, for all women are diplomats. She arrayed Eugene in his Sunday-best and told him to go to the General of the Interior and explain that his name was Eugene Beauharnais, that his father was the martyred patriot, General Beauharnais, and that this beloved father's sword was in the archives over which Providence had placed the General of the Interior. Furthermore, the son should request that the sword of his father be given him so that it might be used in defense of France if need be.

And it was so done.

The whole thing was needlessly melodramatic, and Napoleon laughed. The poetry of war was to him a joke. But he stroked the youth's curls, asked after his mother, and ordered his secretary to go fetch that sword.

So the boy carried the sword home and was very happy, and his mother was very happy and proud of him, and she kissed him on both cheeks and kissed the sword and thought of the erring, yet generous man who once had carried it. Then she thought it would be but proper for her to go and thank the man who had given the sword back; for had he not stroked her boy's curls and told him he was a fine young fellow, and asked after his mother!

So the next day she went to call on the man who had so graciously given the sword back. She was kept waiting a little while in the anteroom, for Napoleon always kept people waiting—it was a good scheme. When admitted to the presence, the General of the Interior, in simple corporal's dress, did not remember her. Neither did he remember about giving the sword back—at least he said so. He was always a trifler with women, though; and it was so delicious to have this tearful widow remove her veil and explain—for gadzooks! had she not several times allowed the mercury to drop to zero for his benefit?

And so she explained, and gradually it all came back to him—very slowly and after cross-questioning—and then he was so glad to see her. When she went away, he accompanied her to the outer door, bareheaded, and as they walked down the long hallway she noted the fact that he was not so tall as she by three inches. He shook hands with her as they parted, and said he would call on her when he had gotten a bit over the rush.

Josephine went home in a glow. She did not like the man—he had humiliated her by making her explain who she was, and his manner, too, was offensively familiar. And yet he was a power, there was no denying that, and to know men of power is a satisfaction to any woman. He was twenty years younger than Beauharnais, the mourned—twenty years! Then Beauharnais was tall and had a splendid beard and wore a dangling sword. Beauharnais was of noble birth, educated, experienced, but he was dead; and here was a beardless boy being called the Chief Citizen of France. Well, well, well!

Contents