The Last Great Dance on Earth Read Free

smiled—his
lumbering
walk, Bonaparte and I call it.
    Overall, the recital went well—Hortense performed brillantly. Eugène and I were so proud! Even Caroline and Joachim managed, although Joachim made too many circles and ended up at the wrong end of the room—a common error, certainly, but one Citoyen Despréaux unfortunately felt called upon to note.
    After, Caroline, Joachim, Hortense and Eugène went out for ices. I pleaded fatigue and returned to the Tuileries Palace, only to find Bonaparte in a temper, pacing back and forth in front of a blazing fire. The Minister of Foreign Affairs was sitting in front of the fire screen, watching him with a bored expression.
    “Madame Bonaparte,” Talleyrand said with a catlike purr. “It is always a pleasure to see you, but especially this evening. The First Consul is in need of your calming influence.”
    “Do not mock me, Talleyrand,” Bonaparte barked. “It’s not
your
life on the line.”
    I put my hands on Bonaparte’s shoulders (to calm, yes) as I kissed each cheek. “The meeting with Citoyen Cadoudal did not go well?”
    “He would strangle me with his own hands given half the chance.”
    “I don’t know why this comes as a surprise to you, First Consul,” Talleyrand said. “Citoyen Cadoudal wants a Bourbon king back on the throne and you’re rather inconveniently in the way.”
    “The French people are standing in the way—not
me.
Two hundred years of Bourbon rule was two hundred years too many.” Bonaparte threw himself into the chair closest to the fire, his chin buried in his hand.
    “The Bourbons, of course, argue that two hundred years of rule confers permanence,” Talleyrand said, lacing his long fingers together with a fluid motion. “They created that red-velvet-upholstered symbol of power in the throne room; they consider it
theirs.
And so long as it remains empty, I venture they will do everything in their power to get it back.”
    “And England will do everything in
its
power to help them.” “Correct.”
    “You both make it sound so hopeless,” I said, taking up my basket of needlework. “Is peace an impossibility?”
    “‘Impossible’ is not a French word,” Bonaparte said.
    “There is peace, and there is lasting peace,” Talleyrand observed philosophically. “History has proven that the only lasting peace is a blood knot, the mingling of enemy blood—and not on the battlefield, First Consul, but in the boudoir. Peace through marriage: a time-honoured tradition.”
    “What are you getting at, Minister Talleyrand?” Bonaparte demanded. “You know I don’t have a son or daughter to marry off to some lout.”
    “You have a stepson, the comely and honourable Eugène Beauharnais—”
    “A boy yet, only eighteen.”
    “—and
a stepdaughter, the virtuous and accomplished Mademoiselle Hortense.” Talleyrand tipped his head in my direction. “Who, being female and nearing her seventeenth birthday, is at an ideal age to marry.”
    “I’m beginning to think you are serious, Minister Talleyrand,” Bonaparte said. “Marry Hortense to an Englishman? The English would never condescend to join one of their blue-blooded ilk to anyone even remotely related to me. Have you not read the English journals?” He grabbed a paper from a pile on the floor and tossed it to the Minister of Foreign Affairs. “Top right. It will tell you who I am in the eyes of ‘Les Goddamns.’”
    “Ah, yes. ‘An indefinable being,’” Talleyrand read out loud in English, a hint of a smile playing about his mouth, ‘“half-African, half-European, a Mediterranean mulatto.’”
    “Basta!” Bonaparte grabbed the news-sheet and threw it into the fire, watching as it burst into flames.
    “I wasn’t thinking of mating your daughter to the English, frankly,” the Minister of Foreign Affairs said evenly. “I was thinking of Georges Cadoudal.”
    “Oh, Minister Talleyrand, I trust you jest,” I said faintly, my embroidery thread knotting.

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