Tales of Passion, Tales of Woe by Sandra Gulland Read Free Book Online

Germinal
    I haven’t spent a day without loving you; not a night has gone by without my taking you in my arms. I haven’t even taken a cup of tea without cursing the glory and ambition that separate me from the soul of my life. As I attend to business, at the head of the troops, while touring the camps, you alone are in my heart.
    And yet you address me formally! How could you write such a letter? And from the 23rd to the 26th, four days passed. What were you doing that you could not write your husband? My spirit is sad; my heart is enslaved; my imagination frightens me.
    Forgive me! My spirit is occupied with vast projects, yet my heart is tormented by fears. —B.P.
    April 9.
    “I can’t tell you what I suffer the moment I take up a quill,” I confessed to the Glories. “My first husband detested my letters, and now Bonaparte.” It seemed to be my fate—my curse.
    “He’s angry because you addressed him formally, as vous?”
    “But that’s how a wife is supposed to address her husband.” The crown of Madame de Crény’s hat was garlanded with tulips secured by a wide bow of black and white striped satin.
    “Unless you’re the baker’s wife.”
    “How egalitarian do we have to become?”
    “He’s ardent, I suppose,” I said with a disheartened sigh.
    Fortunée Hamelin scoffed. “That usually means quick.”
    April 10.
    I’m nineteen days late.
    April 11.
    I’m exhausted and have a pain in my side that the motion of a carriage seems to inflame. Troubling conversations at both schools about the children. Too fatigued to explain. For now, fifteen drops of laudanum * and to bed.
    April 12, 1:00 P.M. , still in my flannels.
    I feel rested, restored (although that pain persists). What happened—
    When we let Hortense down at her school, I was told Madame Campan wished a word with me. I asked Eugène to wait and went inside.
    “My purpose in summoning you, Madame Bonaparte,” Madame Campan informed me, “is to discuss the possible establishment of the flux. Now that your daughter has turned thirteen, things will begin to move quickly. It is best to think ahead.”
    It took me a moment to understand what she was referring to. “In my family, we called it the flowers,” I said, feeling a bit silly.
    “Many do.” The headmistress’s leather chair creaked as she leaned back. “Or the ordinaries. Our dear departed Queen called it the general. The general has come, she would say, or the general is late, or early,depending on his whim.” Her voice betrayed a quaver. The stoic headmistress would invariably weaken recalling her years as lady-in-waiting to Queen Marie Antoinette. She cleared her throat. “What I wish to ask you is this: would you like me to send a courier when the time comes? I flatter myself on the importance of my role in the hearts and minds—the souls!—of my charges, but when the general calls to escort a girl into the realm of womanhood, it is her mother who should be at her side.”
    “Of … of course,” I stuttered.
    Madame Campan smiled and leaned forward. “No doubt you have given thought to the matter of corsets.”
    I nodded, but this time the schoolmistress frowned. “I must advise you to refrain from corsetting your daughter. Such a practice might damage her organs. Your daughter is approaching the age of womb disease—one can’t be too careful. Madame Bonaparte, you look concerned. Have I alarmed you?”
    At Eugène’s school the pattern was repeated: my presence was requested by Citoyen Muestro, the headmaster. Eugène groaned, which gave me fair warning that the news would not be good—and it wasn’t. Eugène was failing all his subjects, I was informed—all but horsemanship. And furthermore, he’d participated in a prank on the cook, causing a “ghost” to rise up in the henhouse, very nearly giving the man apoplexy. I left the schoolmaster’s office shaken, his threat ringing in my ears: “If your son does not begin to apply himself, we will have to ask