My profound emotion distressed Mme. Bonaparte. She had great faith in all Bonaparte’s views, and, owing to her natural levity and fickleness, she excessively disliked painful or lasting impressions. Her feelings were quick, but extraordinarily evanescent. Being convinced that the death of the Duc d’Enghien was inevitable, she wanted to get rid of an unavailing regret; but I would not allow her to do so. I importuned her all day long, without ceasing. She listened to me with extreme gentleness and kindness, but in utter dejection; she knew Bonaparte better than I. I wept while talking to her; I implored her not to allow herself to be put down, and, as I was not without influence over her, I succeeded in inducing her to make a last attempt.
“Mention me to the First Consul, if necessary,” said I. “I am of very little importance, but at least he will be able to judge of the impression he is about to make by the effect upon me, and I am more attached to him than other people are. I, who would ask nothing better than to find excuses for him, can not see even one for what he intends to do.”
We saw very little of Bonaparte during the whole of that second day. The Chief Judge, the Prefect of Police, and Murat all came to Malmaison, and had prolonged audience of the First Consul; I augured ill from their countenances. I remained up a great part of the night; and when at length I fell asleep my dreams were frightful. I fancied that I heard constant movements in the château, and that a fresh attempt was about to be made upon our lives. I was possessed with a strong desire to go and throw myself at Bonaparte’s feet, and implore him to take pity upon his own fame, which I then believed to be very pure and bright, and I grieved heartily over the tarnishing of it. The hours of that night can never be effaced from my memory.
On the Tuesday morning Mme. Bonaparte said to me, “All is useless. The Duc d’Enghien arrives this evening. He will be taken to Vincennes and tried to-night. Murat has undertaken the whole. He is odious in this matter; it is he who is urging Bonaparte on, by telling him that his clemency will be taken for weakness, that the Jacobins will be furious, and one party is now displeased because the former fame of Moreau has not been taken into consideration, and will ask why a Bourbon should be differently treated. Bonaparte has forbidden me to speak to him again on the subject. He asked me about you,” she added, “and I acknowledged that I had told you everything. He had perceived your distress. Pray try to control yourself.”
At this I lost all self-restraint, and exclaimed, “Let him think what he likes of me. It matters very little to me, madame, I assure you; and if he asks me why I am weeping, I will tell him that I weep for him.” And, in fact, I again burst into tears.
Mme. Bonaparte was thrown into utter consternation by the state I was in—she was almost a stranger to any strong mental emotion; and when she tried to calm me by reassuring words I could only say to her, “Ah, madame, you do not understand me!” After this event, she said, Bonaparte would go on just as he had done before. Alas! it was not the future which was troubling me. I did not doubt his power over himself and others. The anguish that filled my whole being was interior and personal.
Dinner hour came, and she had to go down with a composed face. Mine was quite beyond my control. Again Bonaparte was playing chess: he had taken a fancy to that game. Immediately on perceiving me he called me to him, saying that he wanted to consult me. I was not able to speak. He addressed me in a tone of kindness and interest, which increased my confusion and distress. When dinner was served, he placed me near himself, and asked me a number of questions about the affairs of my family. He seemed bent on bewildering me, and hindering me from thinking. Little Napoleon (the son of Louis and Hortense) Had been brought down from Paris; and his uncle placed the child in the middle of the table, and seemed much amused when he pulled the dishes about, and upset everything within his reach.
After dinner he sat on the floor, playing with the boy, and apparently in very high spirits, but, it seemed to me, assumed. Mme. Bonaparte, who was afraid that he would have been angry at what she had told him about me, looked from him to me, smiling sweetly, as if she would have said, “You see, he is not so bad after all; we may make our minds easy.”
I hardly knew where I was. I felt as though I were dreaming a bad dream; no doubt I looked bewildered. Suddenly, fixing a piercing gaze on me, Bonaparte said, “Why have you no rouge on? You are too pale.” I answered that I had forgotten to put on any. “What!” said he, “a woman forget to put on her rouge?” And then, with a loud laugh, he turned to his wife and added, “That would never happen to you, Josephine.” I was greatly disconcerted, and he completed my discomfiture by remarking, “Two things are very becoming to women—rouge and tears.”
When General Bonaparte was in high spirits, he was equally devoid of taste and moderation, and on such occasions his manners smacked of the barrack-room. He went on for some time jesting with his wife with more freedom than delicacy, and then challenged me to a game of chess. He did not play well, and never would observe the correct “moves.” I allowed him to do as he liked; every one in the room kept silence. Presently he began to mutter some lines of poetry, and then repeated a little louder, “Soyons amis, Cinna,” and Guzman’s lines in Act v. Scene vii. of “Alzire”: