Napoleon: A Biography

but surely seldom in such an indirect, convoluted and comical way as
this.
According to contemporary witnesses, the Directors virtually had to
bundle a sobbing Josephine on to the Milan-bound carriage. Her friend
Antoine Arnault noted: 'She wept as though she were going to a torture
chamber instead of Italy to reign as a sovereign.' A bizarre six-carriage
convoy wound its way south. In the first of them sat Josephine with the
dreaded pug Fortune, together with Junot, Joseph and Hippolyte
Charles. Joseph had spent his time in Paris in the corridors of power,
making new friends among the powerful, lobbying for an ambassadorship
and extending his impressive portfolio of real estate investments in the
environs of Paris. Charles was returning to his post as aide-de-camp
to Colonel Victor Emmanuel Leclerc, another of Bonaparte's Toulon
'finds', who repaid Napoleon's patronage by seducing the beautiful
Pauline.
Josephine went out of her way to make the journey south as protracted
as possible. At night she and Charles would contrive to end up in the
same bedroom. Joseph, egomaniacal as ever, and reportedly suffering
from gonorrhea after an encounter in Paris, worked on a new novel. Only
the faithful Junot properly consulted Napoleon's interests but Josephine
solved that problem by flirting outrageously with him, often in front of
Charles, to the cynical amusement of that most depraved Hussar. After
an eighteen-day journey, during which she and Charles had made love
several times each day, Josephine and entourage arrived in Milan early in
July, to Napoleon's great relief. His letters to and about his wife had
previously been full of suicidal despair.
In Milan Napoleon was installed in the glittering and gorgeous Palazzo
Serbelloni. For forty-eight hours he slaked the pent-up passions of the
past four months. Junot told him about the liaison with Charles and was
surprised to find that his chief, instead of having Charles shot on the
spot, allowed him to depart for Brescia on his official duties. Only later
did he cashier him and send him packing back to Paris. Here is yet one
more piece of circumstantial evidence that, consciously or unconsciously,
Napoleon actually liked the fact that Josephine was habitually unfaithful;
what he hated was overt evidence of the fact, which would bring him into
ridicule and contempt as a cuckolded husband.
Having set his mind at rest about Josephine, Napoleon could now turn
to urgent military matters. On paper his pos ition was good, since only the
fortress of Mantua held out against him, but his situation was fraught
with potential peril. Already the Austrians were switching reinforcements
to the Austrian front to start a counter offensive, and meanwhile French