instance of gross insensitivity on sexual matters. It seems quite clear that
Napoleon never forgot the two linked incidents, for when marshal's
batons were handed out to old friends six years later, Junot's name was
conspicuously absent. For the repeat overture Napoleon put his trust in
the faithful Michel Duroc, with whom he sent not just his apology for
Junot's behaviour but the gift of an Egyptian bracelet studded with
precious stones and diamonds.
Duroc performed his task well, though we may take leave to doubt the
story that he called every day for two weeks with a different present. In a
comic opera subterfuge that can scarcely have fooled Pauline, she was
invited to dine on 19 December with General Dupuy, the military
commandant of Cairo. As the coffee was being served, Napoleon burst
into the room and 'accidentally' tipped a cup of the liquid over her dress.
He departed with her into Dupuy's private suite to 'remove the stains'; it
was two hours before the couple emerged. At least this is the story.
Napoleon's strategy for getting the lady into the bedroom so unds like the
kind of ploy used by a cad from the 1940s rather than the action of a great
conqueror, but the circumstantial detail about the coffee cup rings true.
The latent hostility a misogynist like Bonaparte would have felt because
Pauline kept him waiting before succumbing to his overtures may well
have found expression in just this way; it is well known that a favourite
form of aggression by men who do not really like women is to try to
impair their beauty or that of their clothes.
By all accounts Pauline was extremely pretty and very accomplished at
lovemaking. Napoleon's next task was to get rid of the inconvenient
husband. He sent him to France with dispatches, but the troublesome
Foures wanted to take his wife with him and was only prevented from
doing so by an express order. Laure Abrantes, who had the story from
Junot, reported that she said goodbye to her husband 'with one eye
streaming with tears and the other wet with laughter' and that, after
going to bed with her husband for a farewell marital embrace, she
'buttered the bun' by going straight to Napoleon's quarters and spending
the night with him.
It is clear that Pauline's charms had affected the great leader, for he
sent orders to Admiral Villeneuve at Malta to provide a warship to
convey Foures to Paris; dalliance with la Foures was evidently worth the
sacrifice of a man-o' -war. But now came a case of history repeating itself,
the first time as comedy, the second as farce. Just as Junot had been
mixed up in both the case of Josephine's infidelity and the tryst with
Pauline, so the British lent a hand in both cases to make life difficult for
Bonaparte. Scarcely had the dispatch-boat Le Chasseur cleared from
marcin
(Marcin)
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