Second Empire after the 1848 Revolution. Theatres flourished as never
before, conspicuous consumption was the order of the day as women
spent fortunes on gowns and men on coaches, fine wines and their losses
at the card table. Sensualists found new avenues to explore, and the
Thermidorian period is even credited with the invention of lunch, as the
old-style dinner hour was pushed back and back and a new 'forked' meal
took its place. Needless to say, all this ostentatious luxury at the top
contrasted with the most crippling poverty and destitution in the Parisian
slums. For the common man, it seemed, five years of Revolution had
been in vain.
Most of all, the new order was a 'permissive society' with sexuality and
hence the role of women underlined. In July Napoleon wrote to Joseph:
'Everywhere in Paris you see beautiful women. Here alone of all places on
earth they appear to hold the reins of government, and the men are crazy
about them, think of nothing else and love only for and through them ...
A woman needs to come to Paris for six months to learn what is her due,
and to understand her own power. Here only, they deserve to have such
influence.'
Apparently Desiree read this letter, for she wrote an incoherent letter
to Napoleon containing the following: 'A friend of Joseph's, a deputy, has
arrived. He says that everyone enjoys themselves immensely in Paris. I
hope that the noisy pleasures there will not allow you to forget the
peaceful country ones of Marseilles, and that walks in the Bois de
Boulogne with Madame Tallien will not allow you to forget the riverside
ones with your bonne petite Eugenie.' Napoleon wrote a reassuring letter
to say that when he last dined with Madame Tallien, her looks seemed to
have faded. Whether Desiree was taken in by this transparent lie about a
glowing twenty-two-year-old beauty is unlikely, but she can hardly fail to
have noticed that one of Napoleon's subsequent letters was scarcely the
effusion of a man madly in love: 'Tender Eugenie, you are young. Your
feelings are going to weaken, then falter; later you will find yourself
changed. Such is the dominion of time ... I do not accept the promise of
eternal love you give in your latest letter, but I substitute for it a promise
of inviolable frankness. The day you love me no more, swear to tell me. I
make the same promise.'
Napoleon's new patron, Paul comte de Barras, typified the post
Thermidor and Directory regime. A former career soldier and voluptuary
from Provence, who had been bankrupted in 1789, Barras had a career as
an ex-Jacobin - he was one of the regicides of 1793 - and turncoat. A
deeply unpleasant man even by the not very elevated standards of the
Thermidorian regime, he was corrupt, amoral, cynical, venal, sardonic
marcin
(Marcin)
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