Napoleonic Literature
Memoirs of Constant - Vol. I
Chapter V
Return to Milan, on march to Paris— The Singer Marchesi arid the First Consul— Impertinence and several days in prison— Madame Grassini— Entering France by way of Mont Cenis— Triumphal arches— Procession of young girls— Entry of Lyons— Couthon and the demolishers— The First Consul causes the houses on the Place Belcour to be rebuilt— The overset carriage— Illuminations at Paris— Kléber— Calumnies against the First Consul— Fall of Constant's horse— Kindness of the First Consul and Madame Bonaparte toward Constant— Generosity of the First Consul— The author's emotion— The Emperor outrageously misunderstood— The First Consul, Jérôme Bonaparte, and Colonel Lacuée— The First Consul's love for Madame D.— Madame Bonaparte's jealousy and the First Consul's precautions— Indiscreet curiosity of a chambermaid— Threats and forced discretion— The small house in the Allée des Veuves— The First Consul's consideration for his wife— The First Consul's morals and his manners with women.

THIS victory of Marengo had assured the conquest of Italy; hence the First Consul, judging his presence more necessary in Paris than at the head of his army, gave the chief command to General Masséna and made ready to recross the mountains. We returned to Milan, where the First Consul was received with still more enthusiasm than during our first visit. The establishment of a republic crowned the wishes of the majority of the Milanese, and they styled the First Consul their saviour for having delivered them from the Austrian yoke. Nevertheless there was a party which detested equally the changes, the French army which had been the instrument of them, and the young chief who was their author. In this party figured a celebrated artist, Marchesi the singer; when we first went through, the First Consul had sent for him, and the musician had begged to be excused from inconveniencing himself; he finally came, but with all the importance of a man who felt his dignity wounded. The very simple costume of the First Consul, his short figure and his pale and not very good-looking visage, were not calculated greatly to impress the heroes of the theatre. Hence the Commander-in-Chief having received him well and very politely asked him to sing an air, he had responded by this bad pun, delivered in an impertinent tone which his Italian accent heightened: "Signor Zeneral, if it is a good air you want, you will find an excellent one by taking a little turn in ze zarden." For this pretty performance Signor Marchesi was instantly turned out of doors and that very evening an order had been sent to put him into prison. On his return, when the cannonading of Marengo had doubtless silenced his resentment against Marchesi, and when he thought, moreover, that the artist's penance for a wretched quibble had been long enough, the First Consul sent for him and again begged him to sing. This time Marchesi was polite and modest, and sang in an enchanting manner. After the concert, the First Consul applauded him, shook his hand warmly, and complimented him in the most affectionate tone. From that moment peace was concluded between the two powers, and Marchesi did nothing but chant the praises of the First Consul thereafter.

At this same concert, the First Consul was struck by the beauty of a famous songstress, Madame Grassini. He did not find her cruel, and at the end of a few hours the conqueror of Italy counted an additional conquest. She breakfasted next morning with the First Consul and General Berthier in the chamber of the former. General Berthier was commissioned to provide for the journey of Madame Grassini, who was sent to Paris, and attached to the concerts of the court. . . .

The First Consul left Milan June 24, and we re-entered France by way of Mont Cenis. We travelled with the greatest rapidity. The First Consul was received everywhere with an enthusiasm difficult to describe. Triumphal arches had been erected at the entrance of every town, and in each canton a deputation of notables came to harangue and compliment him. Long files of young girls, dressed in white and crowned with flowers, with flowers in their hands and throwing flowers into the First Consul's carriage, were his only escort, surrounding, following, and preceding him until he had passed, or, whenever he alighted, until he set foot to the ground. Hence this journey was throughout a perpetual festival. At Lyons it was a delirium: the whole city came out to meet him. He entered it in the midst of an immense crowd and the noisiest acclamations, and alighted at the Hôtel des Célestins. During the Terror, and when the Jacobins had wreaked their whole fury on the city of Lyons, which they had sworn to ruin, the fine edifices which ornamented the Place Belcour had been razed from top to bottom, and the hideous cripple Couthon had been the first to carry the sledge- hammer thither, at the head of the vilest rabble of the clubs. The First Consul detested the Jacobins, who, on their side, hated and feared him, and it was his most unceasing care to destroy their work, or, better, to raise up again the ruins with which they had covered France. He thought then, and rightly, that he could not better respond to the affection of the Lyonnese than by encouraging with all his might the reconstruction of the buildings on the Place Belcour, and he laid the first stone himself before his departure. The city of Dijon gave the First Consul a reception not less brilliant.

Between Villeneuve and Sens, at the descent of the bridge of Montereau, the eight horses plunged forward at a gallop, dragging the carriage very swiftly (the First Consul already travelled in royal style), and the screw of one of the front wheels came out. The people living along the road, witnessing this accident and foreseeing what would be the result of it, shouted with all their might to the postilions to stop; but the latter could not manage it. The carriage was rudely overturned. The First Consul received no damage; General Berthier's face was somewhat scratched by the broken glass of the windows; two footmen who were on the seat were thrown violently to a distance and rather badly bruised. The First Consul came out, or rather was hauled out through one of the doors; however, this accident did not stop him; he got at once into another carriage and reached Paris without any further mishap. He alighted at the Tuileries in the night of July 2; and when the news of his return had gone the rounds of Paris the next day, the entire population thronged the courts and garden. They crowded beneath the windows of the Pavilion of Flora, hoping to get a glimpse of the saviour of France, the liberator of Italy. In the evening there was neither rich nor poor who did not illuminate his mansion or his garret.

It was shortly after his arrival in Paris that the First Consul learned the death of General Kléber. Suleyman's poniard had immolated this great captain the same day that the cannon of Marengo brought low another hero of the army of Egypt. This assassination afflicted the First Consul very keenly. I witnessed this and can affirm it, and yet his calumniators have dared to say that he rejoiced at an event which, even to consider it merely on its political side, caused him the loss of a conquest which had cost him so many efforts and France so much expense and blood. Other wretches, still more infamous and stupid, have gone so far as to imagine and to circulate the rumor that the First Consul had commanded the assassination of his companion in arms, of him whom he had put in his own place at the head of the army of Egypt. I know of but one answer to make to such people, if any answer is needed: it is that they never knew the Emperor.

After his return the First Consul often went with his wife to Malmaison, where he sometimes remained for several days. At this period the valet on duty followed the carriage on horseback. One day as he was going to Paris, the First Consul perceived, when about a hundred paces from the château, that he had forgotten his snuff-box; he told me to go and find it. I wheeled and set off at a gallop, and having found the snuff-box on the First Consul's bureau, I set off at the same pace on his track. I did not come up with his carriage till we reached Ruelle. But just as I was about to do so, my horse's foot slipped on a pebble; he fell and threw me over into a ditch. The fall was severe; I remained stretched out on the spot, a shoulder dislocated and an arm badly bruised. The First Consul had his horses stopped at once, gave himself the orders necessary for taking me up, and indicated the attentions which must be given me in my condition; I was carried, in his presence, to the Ruelle barracks, and before continuing his route he assured himself that I was in no danger. The family doctor was summoned to Ruelle, where he set my shoulder and dressed my arm. From there I was taken, as gently as possible, to Malmaison.

The excellent Madame Bonaparte was so kind as to visit me, and had all possible attentions lavished on me.

On the day when I resumed my service, after my recovery, I was in the First Consul's antechamber just as he was leaving his cabinet. He came up to me and asked with much interest how I was. I answered him that, thanks to the care my excellent masters had caused to be given me, I was completely cured. "So much the better," said the First Consul to me. " Constant, make haste to regain your former strength. Continue to serve me well, and I will take care of you. Here," added he, putting three little papers in my hand, "this is to replenish your wardrobe;" and he passed on without listening to the thanks I was addressing to him with much emotion, far more for the benevolence and the interest he had deigned to display, than for his present; for I did not know in what that consisted. When he was gone, I unrolled my chiffons; they were three bank-notes of a thousand francs each! I was affected to tears by so perfect a kindness. It must be remembered that at this time the First Consul was not rich, although he was the first magistrate of the Republic. Hence the recollection of this generous deed still moves me profoundly even now. I do not know whether any one will be interested by details so personal to me; but I think them calculated to make known the character of the Emperor, so outrageously misapprehended, and his habitual manner with the people of his household; they will at the same time afford grounds for a conclusion as to whether the rigid economy he required in his family, and of which I shall myself have occasion to speak elsewhere, was, as it has been called, a sordid avarice, or not rather a rule of prudence which he willingly departed from when urged to do so by his kindness or his humanity.

I do not know whether my memory deceives me in making me set down here a circumstance that proves the esteem the First Consul had for the heroes of his army, and which he liked to display to them on every occasion. I was in his bedroom one day, at the usual hour for his toilet, and was on that day fulfilling the duties of first valet de chambre, Hambert being either absent or in some way hindered. There was no one in the apartment, apart from the attendants, except the brave and modest Colonel Gerard Lacuée, one of the First Consul's aides-de-camp. M. Jérôme Bonaparte, then hardly seventeen years old, was introduced. This young man was giving his family frequent subjects for complaint, and feared nobody but his brother Napoleon, who reprimanded, preached to, and scolded him as if he had been his son. There was a question at the time of making him a sailor less for the sake of a career than to remove him from the seductive temptations which the lofty fortune of his brother caused to spring up under his feet, and which he was very far from resisting. One can understand that it cost him something to relinquish pleasures so easy and so intoxicating to a young man. Hence he never failed to proclaim his inaptitude for the naval service on every occasion, going so far, it was said, as to allow himself to be rejected by the marine examiners, although, with a little study and good will, it would have been easy for him to answer their questions. However, the will of the First Consul had to be obeyed, and M. Jérôme was obliged to embark. On the day I am speaking of, after some minutes of conversation and of grumbling, always on the subject of the marine, M. Jérôme said to his brother: "Instead of sending me to die of ennui at sea, you ought to take me for aide-de-camp." "You greenhorn!" his brother responded briskly; "wait until a ball shall have ploughed up your face, and then we will see;" and at the same time he glanced toward Colonel Lacuée, who reddened and cast down his eyes like a young girl. To understand how flattering to him this answer was, one should know that his face was scarred by a ball. This brave colonel was killed in 1805, before Guntzbourg. The Emperor keenly regretted him. He was one of the most intrepid, most learned men in the army.

It was, I think, about this epoch that the First Consul was smitten with a strong passion for a young lady full of wit and grace, Madame D——. Madame Bonaparte, suspecting this intrigue, showed that she was jealous of it, and her husband did all he could to allay the conjugal suspicions. He waited until everybody was asleep before going to his mistress, and even carried precaution so far as to make the transit between the two apartments in night-drawers, minus either shoes or stockings. I once saw the day break before he returned, and, dreading scandal, I went, according to the orders given me by the First Consul himself, in case such a thing should happen, to warn Madame D——'s waiting-woman, so that, on her part, she could go and tell her mistress the hour. Hardly five minutes after this prudent warning had been given, I saw the First Consul returning in considerable agitation, of which I presently learned the cause: he had caught sight, as he was coming back, of one of Madame Bonaparte's women, who was spying on him through the window of a cabinet opening on the corridor. The First Consul, after a vigorous outburst against the curiosity of the fair sex, sent me to the young scout of the enemy's camp, to notify her of the order to hold her tongue if she did not want to be dismissed, and not to repeat her indiscretion in future. I do not know whether he did not add some gentler argument to these terrible threats, in order to buy her silence; but whether through fear or favor, she had the good sense to keep quiet. Nevertheless the successful lover, fearing some new surprise, ordered me to hire a little house in the Allée des Veuves, where he and Madame D—— met from time to time.

This was the way in which the First Consul always acted toward his wife. He was full of consideration for her, and took every imaginable means of preventing his infidelities from reaching her knowledge. Moreover, these passing infidelities detracted nothing from his tenderness for her, and although other women may have inspired him with love, none had his confidence and friendship to the same extent as Madame Bonaparte. It is the same with the Emperor's severity and brutality toward women as it is with the thousand and one other calumnies of which he was the object. He was not always courtly, but no one ever saw him coarse, and however singular this observation may appear after what I have just narrated, he professed the greatest veneration for a well-conducted woman, praised faithful marriages, and did not like indecency either in morals or language. Although he had several secret liaisons, it was not his fault that they were not carefully concealed.
 


(If you surfed directly to this page, please go to the Napoleonic Literature Home Page to see the wealth of information that's available on this website.)