Alexandre Dumas - The Last Cavalier - Being the Adventures of Count Sainte-Hermine in the Age of Napoleon

“You’ll never know,” Bourrienne answered, “how happy I am that you yourself have brought up this subject. This morning, as you were impatiently waiting for me to appear, Madame Bonaparte asked me to talk to you about the difficult position in which she finds herself.”

“Difficult position, Bourrienne! What do you mean by that, monsieur?” Bonaparte asked, suddenly reverting back to more formal speech.

“I mean that she is being harassed.”

“By whom?”

“By her creditors.”

“Her creditors! I thought I had got rid of her creditors.”

“A year ago, yes.”

“Well?”

“Well, in the past year, things have totally changed. One year ago she was the wife of General Bonaparte. Today she is the wife of the First Consul.”

“Bourrienne, that’s enough. My ears have heard enough of prattle.”

“That’s my opinion, General.”

“It is up to you to take care of paying everything.”

“I would be happy to. Give me the necessary sum, and I shall quickly take care of it, I guarantee.”

“How much do you need?”

“How much do I need? Well, yes.…”

“Well?”

“Well, Madame Bonaparte doesn’t dare tell you.”

“What? She doesn’t dare tell me? And how about you?”

“Nor do I, General.”

“Nor do you! Then it must be a colossal amount!”

Bourrienne sighed.

“Let’s see now,” Bonaparte continued. “If I pay for this year like last year, and give you three hundred thousand francs.…”

Bourrienne didn’t say a word. Bonaparte looked at him worriedly. “Say something, you imbecile!”

“Well, if you give me three hundred thousand francs, General, you would be giving me only half of the debt.”

“Half!” shouted Bonaparte, getting to his feet. “Six hundred thousand francs! … She owes … six hundred thousand francs?”

Bourrienne nodded.

“She admitted she owed that amount?”

“Yes, General.”

“And where does she expect me to get the money to pay these six hundred thousand francs? From my five-hundred-thousand-franc salary as consul?”

“Oh, she assumes you have several thousand franc bills hid somewhere in reserve.”

“Six hundred thousand francs!” Bonaparte repeated. “And at the same time my wife is spending six hundred thousand francs on clothing, I’m giving one hundred francs as pension to the widow and children of brave soldiers killed at the Pyramids or Marengo! And I can’t even give money to all of them! And they have to live the whole year on those one hundred francs, while Madame Bonaparte wears dresses worth one hundred louis and hats worth twenty-five. You must have heard incorrectly, Bourrienne, it surely cannot be six hundred thousand francs.”

“I heard perfectly well, General, and Madame Bonaparte realized what her situation was only yesterday when she saw a bill for gloves that came to forty thousand francs.”

“What are you saying?” shouted Bonaparte.

“I’m saying forty thousand francs for gloves, General. What do you expect? That is how things are. Yesterday she went over her accounts with Madame Hulot. She spent the night in tears, and she was still weeping this morning when I saw her.”

“Well, let her cry! Let her cry with shame, or even out of remorse! Forty thousand francs for gloves! Over how many months?”

“Over one year,” Bourrienne answered.

“One year! That’s enough food for forty families! Bourrienne, I want to see all those bills.”

“When?”

“Immediately. It’s eight o’clock, and I don’t see Cadoudal until nine, so I have the time. Immediately, Bourrienne. Immediately!”

“You’re quite right, General. Now that we have started, let’s get to the end of this business.”

“Go get all the bills, all of them, you understand. We shall go through them together.”

“I’m on my way, General.” And Bourrienne ran down the stairway leading to Madame Bonaparte’s apartment.

Left alone, the First Consul began to pace up and down, his hands clasped behind his back, his shoulder and mouth twitching. He started mumbling to himself: “I ought to have remembered what Junot told me at the fountains in Messoudia. I ought to have listened to my brothers Joseph and Lucien who told me not to see her when I got back. But how could I have resisted seeing my dear children Hortense and Eugene? The children brought me back to her! Divorce! I shall keep divorce legal in France, if only so I can leave that woman. That woman who gives me no children, and she’s ruining me!”

“Well,” said Bourrienne as he reentered the study, “six hundred thousand francs won’t ruin you, and Madame Bonaparte is still young enough to give you a son who in another forty years will succeed you as consul for life!”

“You have always taken her side, Bourrienne!” said Bonaparte, pinching his ear so hard the secretary cried out.

“What do you expect, General? I’m for everything that is beautiful, good, and feeble.”

In a rage, Bonaparte grabbed up the handful of papers from Bourrienne and twisted them back and forth in his hands. Then, randomly, he picked up a bill and read: “‘Thirty-eight hats’ … in one month! What’s she doing, wearing two hats a day? And eighteen hundred francs worth of feathers! And eight hundred more for ribbons!” Angrily, he threw down the bill and picked up another. “Mademoiselle Martin’s perfume shop. Three thousand three hundred and six francs for rouge. One thousand seven hundred forty-nine francs during the month of June alone. Rouge at one hundred francs a jar! Remember that name, Bourrienne. She’s a hussy who should be sent to prison in Saint-Lazare. Mademoiselle Martin, do you hear?”

“Yes, General.”

“Oh, now we come to the dresses. Monsieur Leroy. Back in the old days there were seamstresses, now we have tailors for women—it’s more moral. One hundred fifty dresses in one year. Four hundred thousand francs worth of dresses! If things keep going like this, it won’t be six hundred thousand francs, it’ll be a million. Twelve hundred thousand francs at the least that we’ll have to deal with.”

“Oh, General,” Bourrienne hastily said, “there have been some down payments made.”

“Three dresses at five thousand francs apiece!”

“Yes,” said Bourrienne. “But there are six at only five hundred each.”

“Are you making fun of me?” said Bonaparte with a frown.

“No, General, I’m not making fun of you. All I’m saying is that it’s beneath you to get so upset for nothing.”

“How about Louis XVI? He was a king, and he got upset. And he had a guaranteed income of twenty-five million francs.”

“You are—or at least when you want to be, you will be—more of a king than Louis XVI ever was, General. Furthermore, Louis XVI was an unfortunate man, you’ll have to admit.”

“A good man, monsieur.”

“I wonder what the First Consul would say if people said he was a good man.”

“For five thousand francs at least they could give us one of those beautiful gowns from Louis XVI’s days, with hoops and swirls and panniers, gowns that needed fifty meters of cloth. That I could understand. But with these new, simple frocks—women look like umbrellas in a case.”

“They have to follow the styles, General.”

“Exactly, and that is what makes me so angry. We’re not paying for cloth. At least if we were paying for the cloth, it would mean business for our factories. But no, it’s the way Leroy cuts the dress. Five hundred francs for cloth and four thousand five hundred francs for Leroy. Style! … So now we have to find six hundred thousand francs to pay for style.”

“Do we not have four million?”

“Four million? Where?”