and opportumsttc. A cardsharp who was known to cheat when his
instincts failed him, he ran a house that was little more than a glorified
brothel, full of crooked stockjobbers and ladies of the night.
Napoleon was never so much an opportunist as during this period
under Barras's wing at the Tallien salon. Here was the erstwhile firebrand
Jacobin, friend of the Robespierres, dining at the house of the most
reactionary man of Thermidor, the man who had compassed the downfall
of the 'sea-green incorruptible'. Napoleon had already learned the lesson
that ideology was for fools, that the ambitious man went where the power
was. And whatever his private feelings about Tallien's wife, he kept them
to himself, and tried to charm and cajole her. Although as an officer not
on the active list he was not entitled to a new uniform and was reduced to
wearing his old, threadbare one at her parties, Theresia listened
sympathetically to his tale of woe and used her immense influence to have
a new one issued to him.
Gabriel Ouvrard, the banker, recalled that of all the visitors to the
Chaumiere, Napoleon was the least memorable. How it must have galled
this young man, who wanted always to be first in everything, to have to
take a back seat! He became more and more aware that in Paris, his
exploits at Toulon notwithstanding, he was regarded as just an
insignificant officer with a provincial accent. Received Parisian pronunci
ation was almost becoming a Thermidorian badge of honour, but
Napoleon retained an unwitting Jacobin legacy in the coarseness of his
demotic speech. Having become used to the knee-jerk foulmouthery
appropriate to 'citizen Bonaparte', he found it hard to adjust to the
refined elegance of La Chaumiere, where the finely-turned epigrams of
Germaine de Stael contrasted with the barefaced sexual promiscuity
behind closed doors
Napoleon took a particular dislike to de Stael's close friend Juliette
Recamier, possibly because she was virginal and had a known dislike of
sex, whereas to Napoleon sexuality was woman's destiny. Fortunately,
the nineteen-year-old Creole beauty Fortunee Hamelin, who was reputed
to have paraded up the Champs-Elysees barebreasted for a dare, also
disliked Recamier as a pretentious prude, and made common cause with
Napoleon. She became an admirer and close friend, and the support
Napoleon got from her and Theresia led him to a tactless revelation in a
letter to Desiree that he now admired royalist women; she, on the other
hand, had first known him as a devout Jacobin. 'Beautiful as in old
romances and as learned as scholars ... all these frivolous women have
one thing in common, an astonishing love of bravery and glory ... Most
marcin
(Marcin)
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