Such activity, of course, could not pass unnoticed. The new government had been constituted without disturbance, the Directory chosen, and the legislature installed. Of the five directors—Barras, Rewbell, Carnot, Letourneaux de la Manche, and Larévellière-Lépeaux,—all had voted for the death of Louis XVI, and were so-called regicides; but, while varying widely in character and ability, they were all, excepting Barras, true to their convictions. They scarcely understood how strong the revulsion of popular feeling had been, and, utterly ignoring the impossibility of harmonious action among themselves, hoped to exercise their power with such moderation as to win all classes to the new constitution. They were extremely disturbed by the course of the general commanding their army in seeking intimacy with men of all opinions, but were unwilling to interpret it aright. Under the Convention, the Army of the Interior had been a tool, its commander a mere puppet; now the executive was confronted by an independence which threatened a reversal of rôles. This situation was the more disquieting because Buonaparte was a capable and not unwilling police officer. Among many other invaluable services to the government, he closed in person the great club of the Panthéon, which was the rallying-point of the disaffected.[55] Throughout another winter of famine there was not a single dangerous outbreak. At the same time there were frequent manifestations of jealousy in lower circles, especially among those who knew the origin and career of their young master.
Toward the close of the year the bearing and behavior of the general became constrained, reserved, and awkward. Various reasons were assigned for this demeanor. Many thought it was due to a consciousness of social deficiency, and his detractors still declare that Paris life was too fierce for even his self-assurance, pointing to the change in his handwriting and grammar, to his alternate silence and loquacity, as proof of mental uneasiness; to his sullen musings and coarse threats as a theatrical affectation to hide wounded pride; and to his coming marriage as a desperate shift to secure a social dignity proportionate to the career he saw opening before him in politics and war. In a common man not subjected to a microscopic examination, such conduct would be attributed to his being in love; the wedding would ordinarily be regarded as the natural and beautiful consequence of a great passion.
Men have not forgotten that Buonaparte once denounced love as a hurtful passion from which God should protect his creatures; and they have, for this, among other reasons, pronounced him incapable of disinterested affection. But it is also true that he likewise denounced Buttafuoco for having, among other crimes committed by him, "married to extend his influence"; and we are forced to ask which of the two sentiments is genuine and characteristic. Probably both and neither, according to the mood of the man. Outward caprice is, in great natures, often the mask of inward perseverance, especially among the unprincipled who suit their language to their present purpose, in fine disdain of commonplace consistency. The primitive Corsican was both rude and gentle, easily moved to tears at one time, insensate at another; selfish at one moment, lavish at another; and yet he had a consistent character. Although disliking in later life to be called a Corsican, Napoleon was nevertheless typical of his race: he could despise love, yet render himself its willing slave; he was fierce and dictatorial, yet, as the present object of his passion said, "tenderer and weaker than anybody dreamed."[56]
And thus it was in the matter of his courtship: there were elements in it of romantic, abandoned passion, but likewise of shrewd, calculating selfishness. In his callow youth his relations to the other sex had been either childish, morbid, or immoral. During his earliest manhood he had appeared like one who desired the training rather than the substance of gallantry. As a Jacobin he sought such support as he could find in the good will of the women related to men in power; as a French patriot he put forth strenuous efforts to secure an influential alliance through matrimony. He appears to have addressed Mme. Permon, whose fortune, despite her advanced age, would have been a great relief to his destitution. Refused by her, he was in a disordered and desperate emotional state until military and political success gave him sufficient self-confidence to try once more. With his feet firmly planted on the ladder of ambition, he was not indifferent to securing social props for a further rise, but was nevertheless in such a tumult of feeling as to make him particularly receptive to real passion. He had made advances for the hand of the rich and beautiful Désirée Clary;[57] the first evidence in his correspondence of a serious intention to marry her is contained in the letter of June eighteenth, 1795, to Joseph; and for a few weeks afterward he wrote at intervals with some impatience, as if she were coy. In explanation it is claimed that Napoleon, visiting her long before at the request of Joseph, who was then enamoured of her, had himself become interested, and persuading his brother to marry her sister, had entered into an understanding with her which was equivalent to a betrothal. Time and distance had cooled his ardor. He now virtually threw her over for Mme. Beauharnais, who dazzled and infatuated him. This claim is probably founded on fact, but there is no evidence sufficient to sustain a charge of positive bad faith on the part of Napoleon. Neither he nor Mlle. Clary appears to have been ardent when Joseph as intermediary began, according to French custom, to arrange the preliminaries of marriage; and when General Buonaparte fell madly in love with Mme. Beauharnais the matter was dropped.[Back to Contents]
CHAPTER XXIV.
A Marriage of Inclination and Interest[58].
The Taschers and Beauharnais — Execution of Alexandre Beauharnais — Adventures of His Widow — Meeting of Napoleon and Josephine — The Latter's Uncertainties — Her Character and Station — Passion and Convenience — The Bride's Dowry — Buonaparte's Philosophy of Life — The Ladder to Glory.
1796.
In 1779, while the boys at Brienne were still tormenting the little untamed Corsican nobleman, and driving him to his garden fortalice to seek lonely refuge from their taunts in company with his Plutarch, there had arrived in Paris from Martinique a successful planter of that island, a French gentleman of good family, M. Tascher de la Pagerie, bringing back to that city for the second time his daughter Josephine. She was then a girl of sixteen, without either beauty or education, but thoroughly matured, and with a quick Creole intelligence and a graceful litheness of figure which made her a most attractive woman. She had spent the years of her life from ten to fourteen in the convent of Port Royal. Having passed the interval in her native isle, she was about to contract a marriage which her relatives in France had arranged. Her betrothed was the younger son of a family friend, the Marquis de Beauharnais. The bride landed on October twentieth, and the ceremony took place on December thirteenth. The young vicomte brought his wife home to a suitable establishment in the capital. Two children were born to them—Eugène and Hortense; but before the birth of the latter the husband quarreled with his wife, for reasons that have never been known. The court granted a separation, with alimony, to Mme. de Beauharnais, who some years later withdrew to her father's home in Martinique. Her husband sailed to America with the forces of Bouillé, and remained there until the outbreak of the Revolution, when he returned, and was elected a deputy to the States-General.
Becoming an ardent republican, he was several times president of the National Assembly, and his house was an important center of influence. In 1790 M. Tascher died, and his daughter, with her children, returned to France. It was probably at her husband's instance, for she at once joined him at his country-seat, where they continued to live, as "brother and sister," until Citizen Beauharnais was made commander of the Army of the Rhine. As the days of the Terror approached, every man of noble blood was more and more in danger. At last Beauharnais's turn came; he too was denounced to the Commune, and imprisoned. Before long his wife was behind the same bars. Their children were in the care of an aunt, Mme. Églé, who had been, and was again to be, a woman of distinction in the social world, but had temporarily sought the protection of an old acquaintance, a former abbé, who had become a member of the Commune. The gallant young general was not one of the four acquitted out of the batch of forty-nine among whom he was finally summoned to the bar of the revolutionary tribunal. He died on June twenty-third, 1794, true to his convictions, acknowledging in his farewell letter to his wife a fraternal affection for her, and committing solemnly to her charge his own good name, which she was to restore by proving his devotion to France. The children were to be her consolation; they were to wipe out the disgrace of his punishment by the practice of virtue and—civism!