Жюльетта Бенцони - Marianne and The Masked Prince

'Why should you think that?'

Duroc took out his snuff-box, helped himself to a pinch and nicked the fallen grains off his splendid suit of purple velvet and silver. Then he gave another laugh.

'The best answer to that question, my dear, is in the fragments of one of the finest Sèvres vases in the palace, shattered by his majesty's own hand on the day he learned of your marriage.'

'Are you trying to frighten me?' Marianne said. 'Far from it, you cannot think how happy you have made me! I was frightened, I confess, but that was just now…'

It was true. She had been frightened of his formal politeness, his social smile, his indifference. The worst of his rages, yes, but not that! It was the one thing before which Marianne felt helpless.

The Emperor's office at Saint-Cloud opened directly on to the great terrace, gay with roses and geraniums. Striped awnings were stretched outside the windows and ancient lime trees cast a gentle shade which made the sunlight that lay full on the wide lawns seem more dazzling by contrast. The furnishings were little different from those in the Tuileries, but the businesslike atmosphere was softened by the summery scents and the beauty of the green and golden gardens, laid out for a pleasure-loving age.

Dropping her shawl over the arm of a chair, Marianne walked over to one of the tall french windows, seeking in the view before her a distraction from what she imagined would prove a long wait. In fact, she had hardly reached the window before the Emperor's brisk step was heard on the tiled floor of the corridor outside. The door opened, clicked shut, and Marianne sank once again into her curtsey.

'There is no one who can curtsey like you,' observed Napoleon.

He was still standing by the door, hands clasped in the familiar way behind his back, watching her. But there was no smile on his face. As before, he was merely stating a fact, not paying a compliment designed to please. In any case, before Marianne could think of an answer, he had crossed the room and seated himself at his desk, motioning her to a chair as he did so.

'Sit down,' he said briefly, 'and tell me.'

Feeling a little breathless, Marianne sat down mechanically while he rummaged among the heaps of maps and papers that cluttered his desk, apparently paying no further attention to her. Now that she could see him better, it seemed to her that he was looking both fatter and tired. His smooth, pale skin had a yellowish tinge, like old ivory. His cheeks had filled out, stressing the dark shadows under his eyes, the rather weary curl to his lip.

That royal progress through the northern provinces must have been terribly tiring, Marianne thought, resolutely putting away the memory of Talleyrand's hints about the principal occupation of the imperial pair. But his eyes had glanced up at her for a moment.

'Well? I am waiting...'

'What should I tell?' she asked quietly.

'Everything, of course. This astonishing marriage! I do not ask the reason. I know it.'

'Your majesty – knows it?'

'Naturally. It appears that Constant has a fondness for you. When I heard of this marriage, he told me everything, meaning, I am sure, to spare you the chief part of my anger.' It may have been the remembrance of this anger that made Napoleon bring his fist down suddenly on the desk. 'Why did you say nothing to me? I believe I had a right to be told, and that at once.'

'Certainly, sire, but may I ask your majesty what difference it would have made?'

'Difference to what?'

'To the course of events, shall we say? And after the way we parted, on the night of the concert, I can hardly see how I could have approached your majesty for another audience to tell you the news. I should have feared to intrude on the festivities attending your marriage. It was better for me to disappear and make my own arrangements in view of the coming event.'

'Your arrangements would appear to have been adequate to the occasion,' he said with a sneer. 'A Sant'Anna! Confound it! No mean achievement for a —'

'Permit me to interrupt you, sire,' Marianne said coldly. 'Your majesty seems in danger of forgetting that the character of Maria Stella was no more than a mask. It was not she who married the Prince Sant'Anna but the daughter of the Marquis d'Asselnat. Among our kind, such a union was merely natural. Indeed, your majesty is the only person to express surprise at it, to judge what I have heard since my return. Paris society has been much more surprised by —'

Again the imperial fist came down with a crash.

'Enough, madame! You are not here to teach me what may or may not be the opinions of the Faubourg Saint-Germain. I know them better than you! What I wish to hear is how your choice came to fall on a man whom no one has ever seen, who lives shut up on his estates, hidden even from his own servants, like a kind of living mystery? I do not imagine he came here to find you?'

Marianne could feel the anger in him throbbing in her own veins. She lifted her chin and clasped her gloved hands together in her lap as she always did in moments of stress. Outwardly calm, despite the alarm within her, she answered him: 'A kinsman of mine arranged the match, for the honour of the family.'

'A kinsman? But I thought – oh, I see! I'll wager by that you mean the Cardinal San Lorenzo, that impertinent fellow to whom the fool Clary gave his carriage to please you, against my expressed commands. A plotter, like all the rest.'

Marianne permitted herself a smile. Gauthier de Chazay was out of reach of the imperial wrath. The admission she was about to make could do him no harm.

'Wager, by all means, sire, for you will win. It is quite true that it was my godfather who, as head of my family, made the choice for me. That, too, was natural.'

'There I cannot agree with you.' Napoleon rose abruptly and began to stride up and down the carpet of his office in one of his characteristic nervous pacings. 'I cannot agree with you at all,' he said again. 'It was for me, the father, to choose the future of my child. Unless,' he added cruelly, 'unless I am mistaken in thinking myself the child's father!'

Instantly Marianne was on her feet, her cheeks on fire, her eyes blazing.

'I never gave you the right to insult me, or to doubt me either! And I should like to know what arrangements your majesty could have made for the child other than to have forced his mother into some marriage or other!'

There was silence. The Emperor coughed and shifted his eyes away from the sparkling gaze fixed on him in almost insolent interrogation.

'Naturally. Unfortunately, it could not have been otherwise, since it was not possible for me to acknowledge the child. At least I could have entrusted you to one of those I trust, a man I knew intimately and could be sure of.'

'Someone who would shut his eyes and take Caesar's mistress – and the dowry that went with her. For you would have given me a dowry, would you not, sire?'

'Naturally.'

'In other words: a complaisant husband! Don't you understand,' Marianne cried passionately, 'that that was precisely what I could not have borne: to be given away, sold would be more accurate, by you to one of your people! To be obliged to accept a man from your hands!'

'Your noble blood would have rebelled, I take it,' he said, scowling, 'against giving your hand to one of those upstart heroes who make up my court, men who owe everything to their gallantry, to the blood they have shed…'

'And to your generosity! No, sire, as Marianne d'Asselnat I should not have blushed to wed one such, but I would have died rather than that you, whom I loved, should give me to another. By obeying the cardinal, I did no more than follow the noble custom which requires a girl to accept blindly the husband chosen for her by her family. In that way I suffered less.'