deserves a p rize fo r its disingenuousness: 'Come to me; all your hopes
will be fulfilled. Your country will be dearer to me when you take pity on
my poor heart... Whenever I have thought a thing impossible or
difficult to obtain, I have desired it all the more. Nothing discourages me
... I am accustomed to seeing my wishes met. Your resistance subjugates
me. I want to fo rce you, yes, force you to love me. Marie, I have brought
back to life your country's name. I will do much more.'
Under virtual siege from the all-powerful French Emperor while being
constantly urged by the patriotic party, and even her own husband, to
dispense with her absurd scruples, Marie finally cracked. She went to
Napoleon's residence one night but when he began caressing her she
changed her mind, provoking an angry outburst from the Emperor. He
told her that if she resisted him, both she and her country would be
ground under heel. He threw his watch on to the floor and ground it into
pieces. What happened next appears to have been half rape, half
seduction: on St Helena Napoleon said Marie put up merely token
resistance while many years later in her memoirs she claimed she fainted
clean away and awoke to find that he had had his way with her. At any
rate, after the first act of sexual intercourse she burst into tears. Napoleon
comforted her by vowing he would make good all his promises to her.
Gradually Marie, against her better judgement, fo und herself falling in
love with him, responding warmly to his attentiveness, charm, gentleness
- fo r he could lay it on with a trowel when he had a mind to. For his part
he fo und himself enraptured by a woman as never since Josephine; like
her, Marie was traditionally feminine, soft, gentle and unchallenging. But
now he had the problem of Josephine to solve. Ever since Duroc first
reported to him that he had found the mystery woman, Napoleon had
been at pains to dissuade Josephine fr om travelling to Warsaw. Letters
written on the third, seventh and eighth of January all said the same
thing: the roads were bad and the countryside unsafe so the best course
for the Empress was an immediate return to Paris. As the relationship
with Marie moved towards consummation, he proved himself once more
a Corsican master of duplicity: 'Paris claims you. It is my wish. I would
have liked to share the long winter nights with you here.' By the end of
January the tired phrases about 'long winter nights' and 'impossible
roads' had become a meaningless litany. Contenting herself with a few
jaundiced remarks about the military tasks ahead of her husband, she
relucantly commenced a long, slow journey back to Paris.
Napoleon's Warsaw idyll with Marie Walewska was meanwhile
interrupted by news that Bennigsen and the Russians had launched an
offensive. What happened was that Ney had winkled the Russians out of