Désirée by Annemarie Selinko

Author:Annemarie Selinko [Selinko, Annemarie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Historical
ISBN: 9781402258800
Google: aO0P96jSWegC
Amazon: 1402244029
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.
Published: 2010-09-30T16:00:00+00:00

Villa la Grange, near Paris. Autumn, 1809

I have very little time to write anything in my diary. I spend the whole day with Jean-Baptiste and try to cheer him up.

Fouché didn't exaggerate the danger back in July. The English really did land on the Channel coast and took Vlissingen. Within a few days Jean-Baptiste accomplished a miracle. He fortified Dunkerque and Antwerp so well that not only were all the English attacks beaten off, but countless English soldiers and quantities of booty fell into his hands. But the English rallied with courage and dispatch and got their ships out of Dunkerque.

This news reached the Emperor at Schonbrunn and infuriated him. In his absence, a minister had dared to call up the National Guard, and to name as supreme commander the very marshal who was under police supervision. At the same time Napoleon had to acknowledge publicly that Fouché with the help of Jean-Baptiste had defended France. Without this unanticipated mobilization and without the foresight of a marshal who made an army out of untrained peasant boys who for over ten years had never handled firearms, France would have been lost.

Fouché has been elevated to the aristocracy, and is now Duke of Otranto. That sounds almost as romantic as Ponte Corvo and Fouché is about as familiar with his duchy as we are with our Italian principality. The Emperor of course couldn't forgo the pleasure of personally designing Fouché coat of arms: a gold column with a snake coiled around it

The gold column caused great merriment. The former president of the Jacobin Club, who used to confiscate as anti-Republican every fortune he heard about, is today one of the richest men in France. One of his best friends is Thérèse Tallien's former lover, Ouvrard, the arms contractor. Ouvrard is also a banker, and often goes security for Fouché Under the circumstances, no one mentions the snake coiling around the column. Napoleon is indebted to his Minister of Police and he's also seized this opportunity to tell him what he thinks of him.

Naturally everyone waited to see if Jean-Baptiste would be honoured, and perhaps given a new high command. But Emperor didn't even write him a word of thanks.

"Why should he? I didn't save France for him," said Jean-Baptiste.

We now live in La Grange, a great big beautiful villa near Paris, which Jean-Baptiste has bought. He hates the house in the rue d'Anjou. Even though I had the rooms freshly papered, he says "shadows" lurk in every corner.

"Is it all right with you to put Moreau's bust in the hall? I asked cautiously when Jean-Baptiste first saw the house.

Jean-Baptiste looked at me. "You couldn't have found a better place. I want all our guests to realize as soon as they enter that we will never forget we live in Moreau's former house. Strange that you always anticipate my every wish, little one."

"Why strange? I love you." I enjoy each single day that Jean-Baptiste is out of favour and we can be together quietly in the country.

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