'Seven in the morning. I awaken full of you... The memory of
yesterday's intoxicating evening has left no rest to my senses ... Sweet
and incomparable Josephine, I draw from your lips, from your heart, a
flame which consumes me ... A thousand kisses, but do not give me any
for they burn my blood.'
Josephine had set out quite cynically and calculatedly to snare
Napoleon. She needed a powerful protector and she needed money, and
General Bonaparte seemed to fit the bill under both heads. There are
hints that Barras was becoming tired of her and thought that an ingenious
solution would be to get rid of her on to Napoleon, so that his two
proteges would be bound to each other by sex and to him by gratitude.
Yet it was Josephine who took the decision, and the deciding factor seems
to have been her old lover Lazare Hoche.
Having defeated the Vendee rebels, Hoche returned to Paris to take
over command of the projected invasion of Ireland - the one which came
within an ace of success in 1796. Reluctant to return to his wife in
Lorraine, Hoche stayed on in Paris, apparently having regrets about his
intemperate outburst to Josephine the year before. He did not mind
sharing her with the powerful Barras but he was angry to find the very
general who had refused to serve under him not only his superior in rank
but installed in the rue Chantereine as her lover. Josephine, it seems,
would have been willing to take Hoche back, but two things worked
against this. First, she made a false move by telling him she would use all
her arts and influence to get him a top command. Hoche, however, was a
proud man who was determined to achieve his ambitions on his own
merits, and not through the machinations of a woman. Second, word
came through that his wif e had given birth to a daughter. On 3 January
1796 Hoche reluctantly left Paris. He later rationalized with bitterness his
failure to get Josephine back and wrote to a friend: 'I have asked Mme
Bonaparte to return my letters. I did not wish her husband to read my
love letters to that woman ... who I despise.'
Once it became clear that she could never become Madame Barras,
Josephine decided her interests were best served by marriage to
Napoleon, but there were a few early hiccups in the relationship.
Apparently each of the lovers thought the other had money. Josephine
begged Barras not to tell Bonaparte the true situation. There was one
contretemps before the marriage when Napoleon visited her lawyer to
enquire about her allegedly extensive property in Martinique. The
mixture of panic and anger drew from her a stern reproof which brought
him to heel, for he hastened to reassure her that he was no fortune
hunter: 'You thought I did not love you for yourself alone.'
marcin
(Marcin)
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