This, however, proved no easy task. When he offered her to his favourite General, Marmont, he was met with a polite refusal. "She is indeed charming and lovely," said Marmont; "but I fear I could not make her happy." Then, waxing bolder, he continued: "I have dreams of domestic happiness, of fidelity, virtue; and these dreams I can scarcely hope to realise in your sister." Albert Permon, Napoleon's old schoolfellow, next declined the honour of Pauline's hand, although it held the bait of a high office and splendid fortune.
The explanation of these refusals is not far to seek if we believe Arnault's description of Pauline—"An extraordinary combination of the most faultless physical beauty and the oddest moral laxity. She had no more manners than a schoolgirl—she talked incoherently, giggled at everything and nothing, mimicked the most serious personages, put out her tongue at her sister-in-law.... She was a good child naturally rather than voluntarily, for she had no principles."
But Pauline was not to wait long, after all, for a husband. Among the many men who fluttered round her, willing to woo if not to wed the empty-headed beauty, was General Leclerc, young and rich, but weak in body and mind, "a quiet, insignificant-looking man," who at least loved her passionately, and would make a pliant husband to the capricious little autocrat. And we may be sure Napoleon heaved a sigh of relief when his madcap sister was safely tied to her weak-kneed General.
Pauline was at last free to conduct her flirtations secure from the frowns of the brother she both feared and adored, and she seems to have made excellent use of her opportunities; and, what was even more to her, to encourage to the full her passion for finery. Dress and love filled her whole life; and while her idolatrous husband lavishly supplied the former, he turned a conveniently blind eye to the latter.
Remarkable stories are told of Pauline's extravagant and daring costumes at this time. Thus, at a great ball in Madame Permon's Paris mansion, she appeared in a dress of classic scantiness of Indian muslin, ornamented with gold palm leaves. Beneath her breasts was a cincture of gold, with a gorgeous jewelled clasp; and her head was wreathed with bands spotted like a leopard's skin, and adorned with bunches of gold grapes.
When this bewitching Bacchante made her appearance in the ballroom the sensation she created was so great that the dancing stopped instantly; women and men alike climbed on chairs to catch a glimpse of the rare and radiant vision, and murmurs of admiration and envy ran round the salon. Her triumph was complete. In the hush that followed, a voice was heard: "Quel dommage! How lovely she would be, if it weren't for her ears. If I had such ears, I would cut them off, or hide them." Pauline heard the cruel words. The flush of mortification and anger flamed in her cheeks; she burst into tears and walked out of the room. Madame de Coutades, her most jealous rival, had found a rich revenge.
General Leclerc did not live long to play the slave to his little autocrat; and when he died at San Domingo, the beautiful widow returned to France, accompanied by his embalmed body, with her glorious hair, which she had cut off for the purpose, wreathing his head! She had not, however, worn her weeds many months before she was once more surrounded by her court of lovers—actors, soldiers, singers, on each of whom in turn she lavished her smiles; and such time as she could spare from their flatteries and ogling she spent at the card-table, with fortune-tellers, or, chief joy of all, in decking her beauty with wondrous dresses and jewels.
But the charming widow, sister of the great Napoleon, was not long to be left unclaimed; and this time the choice fell on Prince Camillo Borghese, a handsome, black-haired Italian, who allied to a head as vain and empty as her own the physical graces and gifts of an Admirable Crichton, and who, moreover, was lord of all the famed Borghese riches.
Pauline had now reached dizzy heights, undreamed of in the days, only ten short years earlier, when she was coquetting in home-made finery with the young tradesmen of Marseilles. She was a Princess, bearing the greatest name in all Italy; and to this dignity her gratified brother added that of Princess of Gustalla. All the world-famous Borghese jewels were hers to deck her beauty with—a small Golconda of priceless gems; there was gold galore to satisfy her most extravagant whims; and she was still young—only twenty-five—and in the very zenith of her loveliness.
Picture, then, the pride with which, one early day of her new bridehood, she drove to the Palace of St Cloud in the gorgeous Borghese State carriage, behind six horses, and with an escort of torch-bearers, to pay a formal call on her sister-in-law, Josephine, Empress-to-be. She had decked herself in a wonderful creation of green velvet; she was ablaze from head to foot with the Borghese diamonds. Such a dazzling vision could not fail to fill Josephine with envy—Josephine, who had hitherto treated her with such haughty patronage.