echoed round St-Cloud. Josephine and the consular valets rushed
upstairs to find Napoleon in the grip of an epileptic-like seizure, and
'Georgina' (as Josephine dubbed her) in a state of undress, terrified that
her lover was dead and she would be accused of murdering him. When
Napoleon came to and realized the situation he fell into such a rage that
onlookers thought he was going to have a second fit.
Marguerite George's attraction dipped after this scandalous incident
and for a while Napoleon kept her at arm's length. But he was always
generous with his women and when he departed for Boulogne in r8o3 to
oversee the preparations fo r a descent on England, he shoved 40, 000
francs down the front of her dress. By this time he was interested in a
third actress, Catherine Josephine Raffin, known as Mlle Duchesnois.
This was another brief affair, which ended when Napoleon insulted her
as a woman. Busy with affairs of state, he asked his valet Constant to tell
her to wait in a room adjoining his study. After an hour she knocked on
his door and Napoleon asked Constant to tell her to get undressed.
Duchesnois did so and shivered fo r another hour before knocking a
second time. This time a disgruntled Napoleon barked that she should go
home, thus making yet another unnecessary enemy.
The final woman in the bevy of actresses 'entertained' by the Consul
was Mlle Bourgoin, the mistress of Chaptal, Ministe� of the Interior.
Indulging his taste for the humiliation of others, Napoleon arranged to
have la Bourgoin brought to him while he was in conclave with Chaptal;
he thus gratuitously made another mortal enemy. But this affair did not
last long either, fo r Bourgoin had a taste for coarse jokes which Napoleon
did not like in women. By the end of r8o4 this liaison too had fizzled out.
Bourgoin went on to a notable career as grande horizontale, specializing in
sleeping with men in some way close to her greatest conquest: she was the
mistress of Czar Alexander and also of Jerome, when he was King of
Westphalia, in r8r2.
Yet, despite his philandering, Napoleon's attitude to women was
basically contemptuous and even boorish. He took the conqueror's line
that women were there fo r him to avail himself of when the fancy took
him, and became irritated if he encountered opposition. Laure Permon,
who first observed Napoleon when she was eleven, married Androche
Junot, the general who had been an early Bonaparte favourite but who
never really came back into favour after his indiscretions in Egypt. In
r8o3 the Junots came to stay at Malmaison, and the First Consul decided
that he did after all find Laure physically appealing. He sent Junot away
on an errand.
The sequel was bizarre. At 5 a.m. one morning Napoleon entered her
marcin
(Marcin)
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