Napoleon (O'Connor 1896)/Chapter 6

by T. P. O'Connor

CHAPTER VI.

NAPOLEON'S CHIEF DETRACTOR^[1]

Napoleon interfered with and ruined many careers; but in the long gallery of those on whom he trampled in his march to greatness, none is so remarkable as Barras.

This Barras was so utter and tremendous a blackguard that one is tempted, in reading these Memoirs of his, to forget that he was also very brave, adroit, resourceful, and that he went within an inch of being a very great man. This book is intended to be a tremendous indictment of Napoleon, but it turns out a tremendous indictment of Napoleon's greatest enemy and assailant. Most of the blows of Barras at the person of Napoleon fall short, and even recoil on himself; but between Barras and Napoleon there was probably less to choose than some critics have said. To read the hot encounters of the two is to be reminded of what a desperate game it was—how unprincipled, how reckless, and how selfish were the men who fought over the body of France. And finally, this book confirms the opinion that Napoleon in real greatness was much superior to all the rivals whom he cast down, and especially to this one, who rises, as it were, from the dead to continue the conflict.

I.

NEARLY A GREAT MAN.

I have said that Barras went very near to being a great man. I base this statement mainly on the part he played against Robespierre. Make what deductions you like—allow for change of circumstances, for the growing disgust and revolt against the cruelties of the Dictator and his universal guillotine—the fact remains that Barras succeeded where other of the mightiest spirits of the French Revolution failed. Instead of following Danton to the scaffold, as everybody would have thought probable, Barras sent Robespierre there, and undoubtedly he was the inspirer, the leader, and the spirit without whom the movement against the omnipotent Dictator would have collapsed. Corrupt, pleasure-loving, unprincipled—all these things Barras was; but, on the other hand, he was capable, fearless, ready-witted, a born leader of men. And while one must loathe his vices, is there not, on the other hand, something singularly human and picturesque in his strange, terrible, and contradictory nature—with love and laughter on the one side, and a struggle on the edge of the precipice and at the foot of the guillotine on the other—with the beautiful Madame Tallien and Josephine Beauharnais on his arm, and on the other hand, the tiger-eyes of Robespierre to face and to subdue?

II.

BARRAS AND ROBESPIERRE—A CONTRAST.

What merit these Memoirs have is not in the least due to grace of style. Barras was not a very articulate man. He was, above all things, a man of action. In the tribune he was rarely effective; his pen is clumsy, cold, uninspired. But to a certain extent that is one of the charms of these Memoirs. I find it thrilling and convincing to read an account such as he gives—dry, unpretentious, matter-of-fact—of some of the wildest and most terrible scenes of the Revolution—notably of that day of days when he and Robespierre were in the death-grip. And indeed, I find something else in the absence of all grace from these accounts. Napoleon used to say that he was always on his guard against generals who made pictures to their imaginations. He wanted the man who saw what was right in front of him without haze or illusion, or thoughts coloured by wishes. Barras made no pictures to his imagination. Around Robespierre he saw none of the halo, either of worshipping reverence or awe-struck horror, with which either admiration or hatred endowed him. Barras simply saw an enemy who would kill if he weren't killed; he went for the enemy with straight, direct, and clear-eyed simplicity, while others paused, vacillated, and debated; and so was successful where others had failed. Of the two men, Robespierre was in private virtuous, spotless, and the other, in private vices, almost unsurpassable. It is, indeed, the revolt of a corrupt, vicious, laughter-loving man of the world against saintly austerities, that is in action in the fight between Barras and Robespierre; but whatever the faults and crimes of Barras, posterity shares the joy of his contemporaries at his victory over the Sea-green Incorruptible, for it was, after all, the victory of humanity over the pitiless cruelty of a fanatic.

III.

THE INCORRUPTIBLE AT HOME.

When Barras returned to Paris after the successful siege of Toulon, where first he and Napoleon were brought into contact, there were already rumours that he had begun that career of peculation in which he was to surpass all his contemporaries. Robespierre had no toleration for any such form of political crime; and, doubtless, he had marked out Barras as one of the "corrupt men" of whom the sanguinary guillotine was to rid the nation. Barras, doubtless, felt this too, and this adds a terrible interest to the account which these Memoirs give of the interview between the two men. One can almost read between its lines the deadly hate, the mutual terror, the severe examination of each other's resources, which these duellists were already feeling before they crossed swords in the fight to the death.

Here is the account Barras gives of the interview:

"I finally resolved on calling upon this almightiness, this representative of Republican purity, the incorruptible one par excellence. I had never had more than a passing glimpse of Robespierre, either on the benches or in the hallways of the Convention; we had never had any personal intercourse. His frigid attitude, his scorn of courtesies, had imposed on me the maintenance of a reserve which my self-pride dictated to me when in face of an equal. Fréron considered our safety depended on this visit, so we wended our way to the residence of Robespierre. It was a little house situated in the Rue Saint-Honoré, almost opposite the Rue Saint-Florentin. I think it no longer exists nowadays, owing to the opening made to create the Rue Dupont just at that spot. This house was occupied and owned by a carpenter, by name Duplay. This carpenter, a member of the Jacobin Club, had met Robespierre at its meetings; with the whole of his household, he had become an enthusiastic worshipper at the shrine of the popular orator, and had obtained for himself the honour of securing him both as boarder and lodger. In his leisure moments Robespierre was wont to comment on the 'Emile' of Jean Jacques Rousseau, and explain it to the children of the carpenter, just as a good village parish priest expounds the Gospel to his flock. Touched and grateful for this evangelistic solicitude, the children and apprentices of the worthy artisan would not suffer his guest, the object of their hero-worship, to go into the street without escorting him to the door of the National Convention, for the purpose of watching over his precious life, which his innate cowardice and the flattery of his courtiers were beginning to make him believe threatened in every possible way by the aristocracy, who were seeking to destroy the incorruptible tribune of the people. It was necessary, in order to reach the eminent guest deigning to inhabit this humble little hole of a place, to pass through a long alley flanked with planks stacked there, the owner's stock-in-trade. This alley led to a little yard from seven to eight feet square, likewise full of planks. A little wooden staircase led to a room on the first floor. Prior to ascending it we perceived in the yard the daughter of the carpenter Duplay, the owner of the house. This girl allowed no one to take her place in ministering to Robespierre's needs. As women of this class in those days freely espoused the political ideas then prevalent, and as in her case they were of a most pronounced nature, Danton had surnamed Cornélie Copeau 'the Cornelia who is not the mother of the Gracchi.' Cornélie seemed to be finishing spreading linen to dry in the yard; in her hand were a pair of striped cotton stockings, in fashion at the time, and which were certainly similar to those we daily saw encasing the legs of Robespierre on his visits to the Convention. Opposite her sat Mother Duplay between a pail and a salad-basket, busily engaged in picking salad-herbs."

IV.

A MEMORABLE INTERVIEW.

But I must hurry on to the interview:

"Robespierre was standing, wrapped in a sort of chemise peignoir; he had just left the hands of his hairdresser, who had finished combing and powdering his hair; he was without the spectacles he usually wore in public, and piercing through the powder covering that face, already so white in its natural pallor, we could see a pair of eyes whose dimness the glasses had until then screened from us. These eyes fastened themselves on us with a fixed stare, expressive of utter astonishment at our appearance. We saluted him after our own way, without any embarrassment, and in the simple fashion of the period. He showed no recognition of our courtesy, going by turns to his toilet-glass hanging to a window looking out on the courtyard, and then to a little mirror, intended, doubtless, as an ornament to his mantelpiece, but which nowadays set it off; taking his toilet-knife, he began scraping off the powder, mindful of observing the outlines of his carefully-dressed hair; then, doffing his peignoir, he flung it on a chair close to us in such a way as to soil our clothes, without apologising to us for his action, and without even appearing to notice our presence. He washed himself in a sort of wash-hand basin which he held with one hand, cleaning his teeth, repeatedly spat on the ground right at our feet, without so much as heeding us, and in almost as direct a fashion as Potemkin, who, it is known, did not take the trouble of turning the other way, but who, without warning or taking any precaution, was wont to spit in the faces of those standing before him. This ceremony over, Robespierre did not even then address a single word to us. Fréron thought it time to speak, so he introduced me, saying, 'This is my colleague, Barras, who has done more than either myself or any military man to bring about the capture of Toulon. Both of us have performed our duty on the field of battle at the peril of our lives, and we are prepared to do likewise in the Convention. It is rather distressing, when men have shown themselves as willing as ourselves, not to receive simple justice, but to see ourselves the object of the most iniquitous charges and the most monstrous calumnies. We feel quite sure that at least those who know us as thou dost, Robespierre, will do us justice, and cause it to be done us.' Robespierre still remained silent; but Fréron thought he noticed, by an almost imperceptible shadow which flitted over his motionless features, that the thou, a continuation of the revolutionary custom, was distasteful to him, so, pursuing the tenor of his speech, he found means of immediately substituting the word you, in order to again be on good terms with this haughty and susceptible personage. Robespierre gave no sign of satisfaction at this act of deference; he was standing, and so remained, without inviting us to take a seat. I informed him politely that our visit to him was prompted by the esteem in which we held his political principles; he did not deign to reply to me by a single word, nor did his face reveal the trace of any emotion whatsoever. I have never seen anything so impassible in the frigid marble of statuary or in the face of the dead already laid to rest. . . . Such was our interview with Robespierre. I cannot call it a conversation, for his lips never parted; tightly closed as they were, he pursed them even tighter; from them, I noticed, oozed a bilious froth boding no good. I had seen all I wanted, for I had had a view of what has since been most accurately described as the tiger-cat."

It would be a waste of the time of the reader to dwell on the points in this narrative which are intensely interesting. The simplicity and even squalor of the surroundings of the mighty master of life and death, his sinister looks, his appalling silence—all these things the most hurried reader can find for himself in the passage. Its sense of reality and of life is overwhelming.

V.

DANTON.

I cannot dwell on the passages in which Barras describes the closing conflicts between Robespierre and the other Revolutionaries, but there is not a line in this portion of the Memoirs which is not intensely vivid; the more so for the reason I have already given—that the narrative has the matter-of-fact unpretentiousness of daily life.

Take as an example this scene, which occurred just a few days before Danton's execution:

"As I was leaving the Convention one day in the company of Danton, Courtois, Fréron, and Panis, we met in the Cour du Carrousel several deputies who were members of the secret committees. Danton, going towards them, said to them, 'You should read the Memoirs of Philippeaux. They will supply you with the means of putting an end to this Vendean war which you have undertaken with the view of rendering your powers necessary.' Vadier, Amar, Vouland, and Barrére charged Danton with having caused these Memoirs to be printed and circulated. Danton merely replied, 'I am not called upon to vindicate myself.' Thereupon an angry discussion ensued, degenerating into personalities. Danton threatened the members of the Committee that he would take the floor in the National Convention, and charge them with malversations and tyranny. The others withdrew without replying, but bearing him no goodwill. I said to Danton, 'Let us at once return to the National Convention; take the floor; you may rest assured of our support, but do not let us wait until tomorrow, for there is a likelihood of your being arrested to-night.' 'They would not dare to,' was Danton's contemptuous rejoinder; then addressing himself to me, he said, 'Come and help us to eat a pullet.' I declined. Brune, the friend, and up to that time the inseparable aide-de-camp of Danton, was present. I remarked to Brune, 'Guard Danton carefully, for he threatened where he should have struck.'" In this "Come and help us to eat a pullet," there is that human touch necessary to remind us that even in those apocalyptic times, men, who were in the very heart of the cyclone, went about their business and their pleasures pretty much as we all do in ordinary times.

VI.

ROBESPIERRE'S LUST FOR BLOOD.

The account of the execution of Danton adds nothing to the details we have already known; but there are some statements about Robespierre which I have not seen anywhere before. They strike me as not like the truth—as mere invention:

"It has been stated that, not content with having seen the victims pass his house, Robespierre had followed them to the place of execution, that he had contemplated them with ferocious satisfaction in the different phases of their agony; lastly, that the insatiable tiger, rendered more bloodthirsty by the sight, appeared to be licking his jaws and gargling his throat with the blood flowing in torrents from the scaffold into the Place de la Révolution. But if his joy was complete at the very moment when Danton's head fell, he is said by some mechanical instinct to have put his hand to his neck, as if to make sure that his own head was on his shoulders. He was making no mistake in believing that his head was now more than ever in jeopardy since that of Danton had fallen. It may be said that at that moment the power of Robespierre renounced its main support—that of the trust reposed in him by the patriots. He sought to conceal himself amid the masses surrounding the guillotine, but, as if already pursued by a celestial vengeance, he was seen to wend his way homewards with tottering steps, as if he had lost his balance."

Here is a small but eloquent proof of the terrible ascendency Robespierre exercised over the Convention:

"Such was the terror produced by Robespierre that a member of the National Convention who thought the gaze of the Dictator was fixed upon him, just as he was putting his hand to his forehead in musing fashion, quickly withdrew it, saying: 'He will suppose that I am thinking of something.'"

VII.

FOUQUIER-TINVILLE.

Finally, from this portion of the Memoirs I must quote the passages in which Barras, with a terrible and grim humour—which gives us some idea of the iron nature of the man, and of its haughty scorn of human nature—describes the obsequiousness of Fouquier-Tinville, and the other wretches who had been the joyous instruments of Robespierre's tyranny.

"When Robespierre, together with Couthon and Saint-Just, were arraigned before the Revolutionary Tribunal, merely for the purpose of having their identity established, since they were outlawed and nothing remained but to-hand them over to the executioner, Fouquier-Tinville, the Public Prosecutor (performing the duties of the officer of the law nowadays called procureur-général), was in a state of agitation hardly to be imagined—he who up to that very moment had gone every day, even but yesterday, to take the orders of Robespierre and Saint-Just in regard to all the unfortunate people whom it pleased them to send to the scaffold, to see himself directly, and by a superior and inevitable will, entrusted with the duty of bringing to the same scaffold the men who had been first chosen, so to speak, as organisers of slaughter, and, to say the very least, actual dictators! Fouquier's embarrassment in so critical a conjunction may be conceived; he doubtless could say to himself with some show of reason and presentiment: 'Mutato nomine de te . . .' I could not blame him for the sort of embarrassment I noticed in his whole person at the moment of fulfilling a like duty. Fouquier-Tinville had already made an attempt to apologise for his behaviour with regard to the condemned men themselves. 'I am well aware that it is not I,' he said, 'who am sentencing ces messieurs' (for this was the only allowable appellation, the word monsieur having been struck out of the language), 'since they are outlaws, and that in the present case the tribunal merely applies the penalty; I am well aware that it is my duty, and even my right, to urge on justice and to guide it; what I am doing to-day is in one respect less than what I was doing yesterday, for yesterday we gave judgments on our own responsibility, while to-day we are merely executing the decree of the National Convention; but yet――'I could not see when this 'but yet' was going to stop, and in what way Fouquier-Tinville would get rid of his hesitation; there was a danger of its increasing during the surrounding confusion. I saw that there was no time to be lost, and that it was necessary to instil courage into the head of the Revolutionary Tribunal. I am thus designating Fouquier-Tinville; I would have called him the soul of it, could one believe such monsters possessed a soul. 'Come now, citizen Fouquier,' I exclaimed in a loud but cold, imperious voice, 'the National Convention have commissioned me to see its orders carried out; I give you the one to proceed without further delay with the fulfilment of your mandate. This is the day to show oneself a patriot by sending the guilty ones forthwith to the scaffold awaiting them.' Fouquier did not require a second warning. He at once took his place on the bench, doffed his little cape, his hat with the brim turned up à la Henri IV., summoned the judges, repeated the fatal formula against Robespierre, Couthon, Saint-Just, and the whole of the frightful band with as much firmness as on the previous day he had pronounced the formula 'by and in the name of Robespierre. All the forms of the ceremonial were completed in short order; in less than half an hour the condemned men had, to use the judge's phraseology, 'their toilet made, their boots greased,' and could go to their destination. . . . So I urged on Fouquier, saying, 'Come now, let us make a start.' 'We will start at once,' replied Fouquier quickly, and even with really triumphant alacrity; 'but where shall we take them to?' 'Why, to the usual place, where so many have preceded them.' 'But,' said Fouquier to me in an undertone, with an air of respectful and intimate confidence, 'for a week, citizen representative, we have been sending our condemned to the Barrière du Trône; we have given up using the Place de la Révolution.' 'Return to it, then,' I said, with a determined gesture; 'the way to it shall be past Robespierre's house; the prophecy must be fulfilled!' 'Poor Danton,' said Fouquier-Tinville, with an air of being moved to pity, 'there was a patriot for you!' believing, the knavish and cruel Fouquier, that he could obliterate by this appearance of regret the fact that he, Fouquier, had been Danton's primary murderer! . . . Fouquier bowed humbly, and said to the Clerk of the Court and the escort of gendarmes, 'To the Place de la Révolution!' In less than two hours, the clerk, the ushers, the gendarmes, with Fouquier-Tinville still at their head, arrived at the Committee of Public Safety, and all, speaking almost together and with combative eagerness, gave me an account of the execution as of a triumph thoroughly accomplished. The terrible Robespierre was at last launched into the eternal night, and slept side by side with Louis XVI. . . . The spectators, impatient of and, it may truly be said, hungering for the death of Robespierre, had not allowed the sigh of deliverance to escape their bodies until after they had convinced themselves of the consummation"of the execution by the unquestionable evidence of the head severed from the trunk and rolling into the basket of the executioner. Well, then, even after the execution there seemed to reign an almost general kind of fear of the possible resurrection of the implacable man whose inexorable speeches and sentences, without appeal,had so cruelly tortured human minds. The newspapers were uncertain whether they should venture to publish even the fact. The Monteur, already more than official (for it has always belonged to the victorious side), especially shrank from this its primary duty; it was only twenty-six days later, i.e. on the 6th Fructidor following, that this Moniteur made up its mind to record the most colossal and decisive fact of modern times, not only for France, but for Europe and the whole human race."

VIII.

TWO NOTORIOUS WOMEN.

Not a member of the whole family of Napoleon is spared by Barras. There is a picture of the mother and sisters of Napoleon which seeks to confirm some of the worst charges made against the Imperial family. It is a squalid and an odious picture, but I am not prepared to say of it, as of other pictures in the book, that it is untrue. A lack of morality of any kind was undoubtedly one of the marked characteristics of the Napoleonic race.

However, it is on poor Josephine that Barras is most severe. The pages which he devotes to her are among the most infamous in literature. But it is my business to let Barras speak for himself.

The two women who were credited with exercising the greatest influence over him at the moment when he was practically Dictator of France, were Madame Tallien and Madame Josephine de Beauharnais. This is how he speaks of them:

"Madame Tallien, since the ninth Thermidor, had shown herself in all public places, even at the theatres, winning undisputed supremacy over her sex. She was the feminine dictator of beauty. 'As I was one of those who had been instrumental in saving her life previous to the ninth Thermidor, I had remained on a footing of intimacy with her, not to be interrupted by my accession to the Directorate. Those who, in all the relations of life, consider only the means which can procure them access to those in power, believed that Madame Tallien, having possibly granted certain favours, consequently exercised a certain sway over me, and appealed to her, some under the cloak of passion, others under that of devotion, friendship, enthusiasm, or admiration. Madame Tallien did not abuse this position to any too great extent, seeking, it is true, in all this a happy way of supplementing her fortune—a very small one at the time, and one she was compelled to share with her husband, who possessed none, either because he had earned little money, or from the reason that he had run through it quickly. Madame Tallien might, therefore, busy herself in good earnest to pick up the money she judged necessary for her maintenance; but it must be admitted that money, in the case of Madame Tallien, was not the main object, but the means of obtaining the pleasures she was fond of or which she procured for others. I must in this connection point out a distinction which the acquaintances of Madame Tallien and Madame Beauharnais agreed on establishing between these two gentlewomen, to wit, that the liaisons of Madame Tallien were for her genuine enjoyment, to which she brought all the ardour and passion of her temperament. As for Madame Beauharnais, it was the general belief that her relations, even with the men whose physical advantages she best appreciated, were not so generous as those of Madame Tallien. Even although the physical basis appeared to be with Madame Beauharnais the origin of her liaison, determined by an involuntary impulse, her libertinism sprang merely from the mind, while the heart played no part in the pleasures of her body; in a word, never loving except from motives of interest, the lewd Creole never lost sight of business, although those possessing her might suppose she was conquered by them and had freely given herself. She had sacrificed all to sordid interests, and, as was said of a disreputable woman who had preceded her in this style of turning matters to account, 'she would have drunk gold in the skull of her lover.' When compared to Madame Tallien, it did not seem possible that Madame Beauharnais could enter into competition with her in the matter of physical charms. Madame Tallien was then in the height of her freshness; Madame Beauharnais was beginning to show the results of precocious decrepitude."

IX.

THE SYMMETRY OF BARRAS'S VILLAINY.

I am sure every reader of this, and of the passages I shall have still to quote, will feel a sentiment of intense disgust. Of all dishonours, there is none so base as that known as "kissing and telling." Barras does more. He not only tells, but he makes the weakness or the affection which women displayed to himself the basis of a charge and an enduring hatred against them. Up to the present he has given no instance of any wrong—either of ingratitude or desertion― which he suffered at the hands of the beautiful Madame Tallien; and yet he not only reveals his relations with her, but goes out of his way to represent her as self-seeking, lewd, and base. In the code of honour among men with any pretence to heart, or even to decency, I should put it as almost the first article that association with a woman had made her ever afterwards― amid change, after separation, even after desertion― a sacred being to be protected, above all things to be respected and to be spared.

But what a light these revelations of Barras throw on the meanness of his dark and cold soul! There is something to me positively appalling in this bit of self-portraiture. When I come across a man complete and perfect in vice, I at once feel as if I were face to face with some terrible portent of nature. And this man—willing to receive the endearments of words and of acts of some of the most beautiful, fascinating, and tender women of the period, and maintaining amid every scene of passion and affection, with the background of the guillotine, and all the horrors and abysses of the time― maintaining amid all this the same coldness of heart, the same frigid outlook of the eye― it is a picture of a human being which makes me at once bewildered and aghast! Robespierre must have been blind in that great interview between him and Barras not to have seen the depths of inflexibility, cruelty, and resolve which were in the eyes of Barras. Or would it not be more correct to say that Robespierre was too clear-sighted, and that his frozen silence― his refusal to utter even one word, to give an indication by one look― was his instinctive sense of the kind of man with whom he was dealing? Robespierre was a highly nervous and sensitive man; his enemies declare that he was an arrant coward. He certainly had not firmness of nerve. In the weeks that preceded the final struggle for his life he went to a shooting-gallery to steady his nerves by pistol practice. He fainted after the first shot!

X.

TWO PORTRAITS― BARRAS AND ROBESPIERRE.

Look at the portraits of the two men which are in these volumes; and, perchance, they may modify, if not revolutionise, your conception of them, and of the events in which they took part. The portrait confirms the feeling of surprise I remember to have experienced when first I saw that authentic likeness of Robespierre of which Lord Rosebery is the owner. I loathe Robespierre, and thus I have to confess that this portrait is unpleasantly startling to me. To my imagination the Sea-green Incorruptible always appeared as having a long face, with straight, regular, icy-cold features. The portrait that looks on one from this book is that of a man with a short, rather chubby face; the cheeks are full and round; the nose is irregular, with broad nostrils, and a slight tendency to the snub; the air is almost boyish, and is gentle, even tender and rather sad. In short, if I had been shown the portrait without knowing the name or the nationality, I should have said it was the portrait of an Irishman; and I might have even gone the length of guessing that it was the portrait of John Philpot Curran, the celebrated Irish orator and patriot, beautified and idealised. And I may mention, as some extenuation of this impression, that I have read somewhere that Robespierre had some Irish blood in his veins.

The portrait of Robespierre faces the first volume of these Memoirs, that of Barras faces the second. And what a contrast! I am convinced that any physiognomist in the world who was asked to say which was the cruel monster and which the kindly and genial nature, would at once reverse the verdict of history, and see in Robespierre the hero of mercy, and in Barras the embodiment of cruelty. There is the distinction of the aristocrat about Barras. He appears tall, shapely, erect; a haughty and hard self-confidence in his attitude. And then, that face! The mouth is large, well-shaped, as tight as a rat-trap; the nose is long, regular, distinguished; and even through the spectral black and white of an engraving, the eyes still seem to burn and stare with brilliant and steel-like glitter. It is a terrible face.

In "A Strange Story"—Bulwer Lytton's best story—there is a spectre that strikes death as it passes. It is called the Scin-læca, if I remember rightly after nearly a quarter of a century, and the doomed one shudders as it passes and strikes. Barras was the Sczz-leca of Robespierre. It was no wonder that he was awed and paralysed into a frozen silence as Barras passed.

XI.

NAPOLEON AND JOSEPHINE.

From Josephine, Barras passes to Napoleon, and he is as severe on the future husband as on the wife:

"Bonaparte, who knew of all her adventures just as well as I did, had often heard the story of them told in my presence; but in consequence of his intention, not to say his eagerness, to reach his goal by all possible means, he had looked upon the two gentlewomen whom I mention in the light of means to this end; and whether it was that Madame Tallien's beauty had, at the same time, captivated him, or whether he believed, as reputed, that she possessed greater influence than Madame Beauharnais, it was to Madame Tallien that he in the first place addressed his vows and respectful attentions. This was soon followed by a declaration of what he called his unconquerable passion. Madame Tallien replied to the little enamoured Corsican in a contemptuous fashion, which left him no hope. She even went so far as to say to him ironically that 'she thought she could do better . . . . ' After such a defeat Bonaparte considered that, beaten in one direction, he might do better in another, so he conceived the idea of paying his court to Madame Beauharnais, and as he had some knowledge of her interested character and her cupidity, that prominent feature of it with which he was acquainted, he bethought himself of opening the door with the key that never finds any door closed. He therefore began to make Madame Beauharnais presents which suited her courtesan's taste in matters of dress and jewellery. Not only did he give her shawls and expensive and elegant jewellery, but diamonds of considerable value. This would have constituted an act of madness had it not been one of speculation. Something of this came to my ears, so censuring the young man, however amiable a personage he might be, for subjecting himself to the necessity of beginning by paying an old woman, I said to Bonaparte, 'It seems that you have taken La Beauharnais for one of the soldiers of the thirteenth Vendemiaire, whom you should have included in the distribution of money. You would have done better to have sent this money to your family, which needs it, and to whom I have just rendered further assistance.' Bonaparte blushed, but did not deny having made presents of considerable value. As I was bantering him about his generosity, wherein I pretended to see the effects of a boundless passion, he himself began to laugh, and said to me, 'I have not made presents to my mistress; I have not sought to seduce a virgin; I am one of those who prefer love ready made than to make it myself. . . . Well, then, in whichever of these states Madame Beauharnais may be, if the relations between us were really serious, if the presents which you blame me for having made were wedding presents, what, then, would you have to find fault with, citizen Director?—"This woman whom you accuse," said Tallien, after the ninth Thermidor, "this woman is mine!"—I do not intend to give you absolutely the same answer just now, but I might say to you, Were this woman to become mine, what would be the objection?' 'I have no objection to make; still, it is a matter deserving some thought.' At the time of the siege of Toulon, 'theeing and thouing' had taken the place of you, from the soldier to the general and from the general to the soldier. Hence it was that I had acquired the habit of 'theeing and thouing' Bonaparte. I said to Bonaparte as familiarly as heretofore: 'Is it seriously meant, what thou hast just told me? I have just thought over thy idea of marriage, and it seems less ridiculous to me than at first sight.' 'In the first place, Madame Beauharnais is rich,' answered Bonaparte with vehemence. He had been deceived by the lady's external luxury, ignorant of the fact that the unfortunate creature depended for her existence on loans contracted in Paris on the imaginary credit of property in Martinique, which she was far from possessing, since her mother still lived; and, as the latter troubled herself very little about her daughter, whose dissoluteness she was acquainted with, she contented herself with sending her a meagre allowance, which she had of late cut down and even suspended remitting, owing to a series of poor harvests. The widow Beauharnais lived at Fontainebleau in a state bordering on misery. The greater part of the year she quartered herself on Madame Doué, a Creole like herself, without whose relief she would have lacked the first necessaries. She would come to Paris by the public stage-coach (petites voitures), her daughter Hortense was apprenticed to a dressmaker, and her son to a carpenter; this was either very philosophical or very unmotherly of her, since she could find means for her toilette, which, at all periods, was ever that of a courtesan. Well,' said I to Bonaparte, 'since you are seriously asking my advice, I will answer you in your own words; why should you not? Your brother Joseph has shown you the way to marriage; the X―― dowry has put an end to his financial straits. You tell me that you are at your wits' end for money, and that you cannot afford to lose any more time over the matter; well, then, marry; a married man has a standing in society, and can better resist the attacks of his enemies; you think you have many of them amongst the Corsicans; if you have luck you will make friends of them, beginning with Saliceti, whom you dread. There is nothing like success to win over everybody to one's side.'"

XII.

JOSEPHINE'S TEARS.

The next passage I shall quote has a certain comic force that almost relieves its black guardism:

"A few days later it was Madame Beauharnais' turn to come and confide in me. Actuated as she was by motives of interest, she did not display any reserve in confessing them to me at the very outset of her visit; she began by laying down in most plain terms that no impulse of the heart was at the bottom of this new bond; that the little 'puss in boots' is assuredly the very last she could have dreamed of loving, as he had no expectations, 'He belongs to a family of beggars,' she said, 'which has failed to win respect wherever it has dwelt; but he has a brother who has married well at Marseilles, who promises to help the others, and him. He seems enterprising, and guarantees he will soon carve his fortune.' Madame Beauharnais confesses to me that he has made her presents of a magnificence which has led her to believe that he is possessed of greater means than people wot of. 'As regards myself,' she says to me, 'I have not seen fit to inform him of my straitened circumstances; he believes I am now in the enjoyment of a certain fortune, and is under the impression that I have great expectations over in Martinique. Do not impart to him anything you know, my good friend; you would be spoiling everything. Since I do not love him, you can understand my going into the business; 'tis you I will ever love, you may depend on it. Rose will always be yours, ever at your disposal, you have only to make a sign; but I know full well that you no longer love me,' she proceeded, suddenly bursting into tears, which she had the power of summoning at pleasure; 'this is what grieves me most; never will I console myself for it, do what I may. When one has loved a man like you, Barras, can one ever know another attachment?' 'How about Hoche?' I replied with very little emotion, and almost laughing; 'you loved him above all others, and yet there was the aide-de-camp, Vanakre, e tutti quanti! . . . Come now, you are a mighty fine cajoler.' This was the mildest and truest word that could be spoken to her; to cajole all who came in contact with her was the trade of Madame Beauharnais, a veritable chevalier d'industrie, so to speak, in town and at Court, from the day she had been imported from her island of Martinique into France. My answer took her breath away, and unable to utter any reply in the face of such positive facts, she contented herself with shedding some more tears, seizing my hands with all her might, and carrying them to her eyes, so as to bedew them with her tears. I was getting tired of this scene, and, not knowing how to put an end to it, I adopted the course of ringing, so as to have my valet as a third party. This compelled her to cease; Madame Beauharnais was a true actress, who knew how to play several parts at one and the same time. She told my valet that she had suddenly felt poorly, that her nerves troubled her, and that on such occasions she could not hold back her tears; that I had just ministered to her as a brother would to his sister, and that she now felt a great deal better. I took advantage of this improvement to order my carriage, to send Madame Beauharnais home in it, and thus I was rid of her. 'In your indisposed state you cannot return home alone,' I said to her. I ordered one of my aides-de-camp to accompany her. Her tears had suddenly dried up; her features so discomposed but a moment ago had resumed their placidity and pretty ways, and their habitual coquettishness. On returning my aide-de-camp told that the lady reached her house in excellent health. A few sighs had escaped her during the drive homeward, and the only words spoken by her had been, 'Why do people have a heart over which they have no control? Why did I ever love a man like Barras? How can I cease loving him? How can I tear myself from him? How can I think of any other but him? Tell him from me, I entreat you, how deeply I am devoted to him; that I will never love but him, whatever happens to me in this world . . . . ' My aide-de-camp further informed me that just as the carriage reached Madame Beauharnais' house, Bonaparte was there waiting for her at the door. Embarrassed at being accompanied by my aide-de-camp, Madame Beauharnais hurriedly steps out of the carriage, asks Bonaparte to give her his arm, and tells him hastily in the presence of my aide-de-camp, whom she called to witness, that she had just 'had a fainting fit at my house; that she had so suffered that I would not hear of her returning home alone, and that she had hardly recovered her strength. Give Barras my best thanks,' she adds, on dismissing my aide-de-camp, 'and tell him that you left me with his best friend.'"

XIII.

HER STORY TO NAPOLEON.

I pass on to some scenes that are so atrocious in language and in thought that I have hesitated for a long time whether I should have them or not; but, after all, the characters of Napoleon and Josephine have passed into history, and there is no room left for any reticence about them. And I believe they will injure most their author:

"My best friend was there waiting impatiently to learn the result of the step he had been the first to advise. Everything had been fully concerted between the pair, but each of them was vying in deceiving the other with astounding readiness. The following is an illustration of the way in which they played their farce. As a consequence of having told Bonaparte of her alleged indisposition, it was necessary to give some reason for this indisposition to the man who was about to become her protector for life. I heard some time afterwards of the story the cajoling courtesan had invented. According to her I had a long while courted her without success; she had constantly repulsed my advances because I was not the man to appeal to her so delicate soul. In consequence of her harsh treatment of me I had sought to console myself with Madame Tallien, whom I had selected out of spite only, remaining attached to her out of amour propre alone; and I so little cared for her, she went on to say, that I had offered to give her up at once for Madame Beauharnais, if the latter would become my mistress; were she to be believed I had been more pressing than ever on this last occasion, and my violence had led to a struggle during the course of which she had fainted; but the recollection of the one she loved, the mere thought of Bonaparte, had restored all her strength to her, and she had come out victorious, desirous of bringing to the near bond to which she had given her consent all the purity of a widow faithful to the memory of her husband, and a virginity often more precious than the first, since it represents a resolution of the heart and the will of reason. Bonaparte listened, with no small emotion, to this lying concoction, worthy, indeed, of the most artful of women, but whom he, artful as he was himself, looked upon as an angel of candour and truth. All this made such an impression on him that he flew into a passion against me, ready in his fury to go to extremes, even to call me out for having attempted an assault on the virtue of his future wife. Madame Beauharnais quieted him with caresses and words, which plainly showed that she dreaded nothing so much as a scandal which would have revealed the secret of the comedy played by her, and proved, besides, that so far from my seeking to do violence to Madame Beauharnais, I was long since tired of and bored with her. 'I am quite sure,' said Bonaparte to her, 'from what you tell me, that Barras failed in his attempts on your virtue, madame, in spite of his not having the reputation of a sentimental lover in the habit of sighing at the feet of cruel beauties. But I have for so long seen you on a certain intimate footing with him that doubts might truly have arisen in any other mind than mine; you will admit, madame, that it is allowable to think, without showing oneself too severe, that women seeking to hold him at arm's length should at least take earlier steps, so as not to be exposed to a scene like the one you have just told me of. There are accidents for which a woman is responsible when she has not taken means to prevent them.' It would be thought that Madame Beauharnais would have been abashed by such excellent reasoning, but it will be seen what ruses were at the service of the courtesan. 'Why,' she argued, 'had she not called at Barras' house would she have been fortunate enough to meet Bonaparte? If she had of late gone there more frequently than before, had it not always been from a desire to meet him more often? If she had perchance overlooked many things repugnant to the elegance and delicacy of her morals, would she ever have done so had it not been for the consideration, ever present to her mind, of rendering some service to her future husband? For, when all is said and done, if Barras' manners are somewhat rough and outspoken, he is, on the other hand, a good sort of fellow, and very obliging; he is a true friend, and if once he takes an interest in you, you may feel sure he will not desert you, but give you a warm support. Let us, therefore, take men and things as we find them. Can Barras be useful to us in his position? Undoubtedly he can, and to good purpose. Let us, therefore, get all we can out of him, and never mind the rest!' 'Oh,' exclaimed Bonaparte with enthusiasm, 'if he will but give me the command of the Army of Italy I will forgive everything. I will be the first to show myself the most grateful of men; I will do honour to the appointment, and our affairs will prosper; I guarantee that ere long we shall be rolling in gold.' Later on, taking a higher stand-point, Bonaparte has called this glory. But 'gold' was the naïve expression uttered in the presence of the woman he considered a meet person to become his partner in life; quite independently of his personal need and desire of making a fortune, the artful Corsican had guessed aright that the means of winning Josephine was money. He had begun his success by giving her presents; this success was assured when he promised that he would make her 'roll in gold were he but commander-in-chief.' 'Let us work together,' they thereupon said mutually; 'let us keep our secret to ourselves, act together, and do our best to obtain the appointment promptly.'"

XIV.

BARRAS'S MOST DEADLY CHARGE.

Barras proceeds to give another scene in which the statements are even more detestable and shocking. His statements amount to this: that Josephine, accompanied by Napoleon, came to see Barras, penetrated into his cabinet, and there invited her own dishonour. And this is followed by the even more atrocious suggestion that Napoleon not only knew, but approved this hideous traffic for the sake of getting the command in Italy. This is the deadliest of all the charges Barras makes against Napoleon; is it true?

I have not a high opinion of the morality of Napoleon, or of any of his family, but I do not believe this charge. It is possible that Josephine was frail—it is the almost universal belief that she was; but I believe the evidence shows that at this moment at least, in his life, Napoleon was really in love with her. I will give later on the love-letters in which Napoleon poured forth from Italy all the passion and tenderness which this woman inspired in him a passion and tenderness largely due, probably, to the fact that she was the first lady he had ever met in the course of his squalid and poverty-stricken youth. It is not in the least likely that Napoleon would have consented to buy even a prize so lofty as the command in Italy at the price of that woman's honour.

And, indeed, Barras is contradictory of his own story. In one page Napoleon figures as a dupe, in the next as a conscious intriguer; now he is madly jealous; the next moment he is more indifferent to the acts of his future wife than the beast in the field.

I agree with the summary of this part of the case which I find in the preface by M. Duruy, the unwilling editor of these Memoirs. It appears to me as true, kind, and judicious.

"True, Bonaparte may have later entertained doubts, suspicions as to Josephine's virtue. And, indeed, it must be confessed that the indiscretions of this most charming, but also most frivolous, of women, furnished matter enough for grievous discoveries. Look at her portrait by Isabey, which dates precisely from that period. This bird-like head, all dishevelled, expresses coquetry, thoughtlessness, an undefinable frailty and inconsistency, characteristic, perhaps, even then, as it had been in the past, of her virtue. It is none the less a certainty that Bonaparte believed in her, and loved her ardently and blindly; that passion alone made him wish for and resolve upon this marriage; and that, if any one calculated in this affair, it might possibly have been Josephine, but at all events it was not the man of genius, desperately smitten, smitten 'like a fool,' who was dying with love at the feet of this pretty doll."

I have sufficiently indicated my opinion of Barras. He was undoubtedly one of the greatest men of his time, but it was a greatness founded on utter baseness. The vindication which he has published of himself only tends to confirm the impression which posterity was inclined to form of him with the materials already at its disposal. It is curious that a man should, under his own hand, have supplied the evidence by which conjecture should be turned into certainty, suspicion into unquestioning conviction.

1. "Memoirs of Barras." (London : Osgood & McIlvaine.)