Dennis Wheatley - The wanton princess

She had not the least interest in politics and thought only of the well-being of her children, maintaining always that she loved best, at any time, the one who was suffering most. Put it could not be doubted that Lucien was her favourite son and she intensely resented Napoleon's having deprived him of his office.

The only sympathy that Roger felt for Lucien was that he had lost his simple, sweetnatured wife Catherine in the pre­ceding Spring. Otherwise he regarded him as a dangerous fanatic who might, if given the chance, endanger the First Consul's regeneration of France. Further, Roger despised him as the worst possible type of pseudo 'Friend of the People' for he had used his position as Minister of the Interior to amass a great fortune at their expense and to persuade or blackmail into sleeping with him many pretty women.

Napoleon's oldest sister, Eliza, was also a great partisan of Lucien's. After Brumaire her ineffective husband, Bacciocchi, had been packed off to attend to certain administrative matters in Corsica and Marseilles, upon which she had hap­pily settled down, Lucien's wife being ill, to take charge of his menage in the Grande Rue Verte. They regarded themselves as spiritual affinities and both looked on the other as an astute literary critic. On the money that they owed to the First Consul's liberality they had a happy time gathering distinguished writers round them and encouraging them to write articles criticizing Napoleon.

When Roger called upon Eliza he found her dressed in an unbelievably ugly garb of her own design which she told him was to serve as the uniform of a new Literary Society she was forming and, knowing him to be an educated man, she invited him to become a member. Having pleaded that his military commitments were, at the moment, too onerous to permit him that pleasure, he bowed himself out of the pre­sence of Napoleon's blue-stocking sister.

Young Caroline Murat he found equally discontented with the way things were going. She alone of Madame Letizia's children possessed the individuality and determination which, had she been a man, could have made her another Napoleon. As things were she could achieve her boundless ambitions only through her husband. As a girl of seventeen, when at Bonaparte's headquarters in Italy after his victorious cam­paign of '96, she had fallcn in love with Murat. and he with her. To her fury she had then been sent to Madame Campan's Academy to acquire a finishing education. She had sullenly refused to take advantage of this opportunity: but those years of boredom had not deflected her from her pur­pose of acquiring Murat for a husband, and he had con­tinued to regard her, as his General's sister, as a good catch. So much so that, on the night of 18th Brumaire, he had sent a couple of his Hussars to pound on the door of the Academy and shout the news to her that he and Bonaparte had saved the Revolution.

Immediately she had been freed from Madame Campan's tutelage she had badgered her brother to let her marry Murat. Bonaparte had demurred because by then he had good cause to dislike and distrust his brilliant cavalry leader.

Murat preferred to hobnob with junior officers because to them he could boast of his exploits without fear of contradic­tion and not long since he had given a party for a number of them. At this party he had introduced a special Punch which, he said, could only be made with Rum from Martinique. He added that he had been shown how to mix it by a charming lady in whose company he had spent the whole day. Then he produced a new type of silver lemon squeezer which, he said, she had given him. On examining the squeezer one of his guests announced to the raucous laughter of the by then drunken company that on its base were engraved the initials J.B. This, and the connections with Martinique, plainly implied that it was the First Consul's wife with whom Murat had spent a whole day, and that he had enjoyed Josephine's favours.

Such was Caroline's doggedness of purpose that she had bullied Napoleon into letting her marry Murat; but when the story of the drinking party came to his ears, he had, after Marengo, sent Murat off to subdue southern Italy, and Caroline did not disguise from Roger her intense bitterness that Napoleon should have deprived her of her husband for so long.

Roger also called upon Pauline Leclerc. He knew that as a young girl, when Bonaparte was no more than a promising junior General who had never conducted a campaign, she had fallen desperately in love with the ex-Terrorist Freron, and that Napoleon had firmly vetoed her marrying this un­savoury character, then old enough to be her father. His selection a little later of Leclerc for her as a husband had been due to the fact that Leclerc was outstanding among his officers as a gentleman, well educated and would prove an asset to the Bonaparte family. Pauline, who was extremely highly sexed. and by then eager to be allowed to get into bed with any good-looking man, had been attracted by Leclerc and readily agreed to accept him as her husband.

The marriage had been a great success, but not to the extent that Pauline was content to remain sighing for Leclerc when he had been sent off to the Army of the Rhine. Since then, rumour had it she had indulged in a triple affaire with the Generals Moreau, Macdonald and Beurnonville simul­taneously when they had been in Paris at the same time. She had early become conscious of her great beauty and her power to attract men. So now her greatest pleasure was to adorn herself in magnificent toilettes—the bills for which were nearly ruining the unfortunate Leclerc—and, reclining elegantly on a sofa, excite the admiration and desire of her male visitors.

The only other thing with which she concerned herself was her intense hatred of Josephine. The First Consul's wife had the advantage of her that, although she had never been presented at Court, she had been brought up as a demoiselle of the ancien regime. Her taste in clothes and decor was impeccable, she received her husband's guests with charm and dignity and she was now his greatest asset in helping him to bridge the gap between the societies of the old France and that which had arisen as a result of the Revolution. Pauline, on the other hand, was a vulgar little parvenue; but that did not detract from her beauty.

And there was another thing which attracted Roger to her. Greedy though she might be to get all she could out of Napoleon, she was the only one of his family who respected and loved him. He had always been her favourite brother and she placed his interests above all else.

With her Roger considerably outstayed the accepted formal call of twenty minutes. Reclining on a couch, clad in rich but revealing draperies, she was a sight to stir any man's desire, and she made no secret of the fact that she was enjoying Roger's undisguised admiration. When he at length rose to make his devoirs, she fluttered her long eyelashes at him provocatively and said, 'I find you most sympathetic, Colonel Breuc; I pray you come to see me soon again.'

But Roger was not destined to see her again for a long time to come. During the past few days he had been giving much thought to his future. On one matter he was fully deter­mined—he was not going with the expedition to India. To avoid doing so he intended to pretend a relapse. It would be accepted without question that, with his normally weak chest and a lung wound scarcely healed, he had acted most rashly in leaving the South of France in mid-winter for the cold and windy streets of Paris.

What then, though? He had not the least desire to return to St. Maxime. His affaire with little Jeanne had been a pleasant interlude but her kisses had already begun to cloy before he left. If resumed it would soon become most wearisome to him; yet, if he went back there and broke it off, she would be terribly hurt. Besides, he had vegetated for more than long enough. Returning to Paris had brought home to him how greatly, if subconsciously, he had missed being au courant with events, privy to secret matters of importance, and the companionship of men and women of his world.