Tales of Passion, Tales of Woe Read Online Free PDF

answered my question,” she said, holding up a finger.
    “Madame Bonaparte is just fine, thank you. I already got a letter from my husband, in fact,” I told her. “But there are parts I can’t make out.” I pulled the letter out of a desk cubby and showed it to her, pointing out the indecipherable passage.
    “Mon Dieu, I see what you mean. What a mess,” she said, squinting. “I think it’s ‘perpetual.’ ‘You are the perpetual object of my thoughts.’ He signs himself B.P.?”
    “For Buona Parte … I think.”
    “Oh la la,” she said, reading on. “He’s madly in love with you.” “That’s just the way Corsicans are,” I said (flushing), taking the letter back.
    “No doubt,” Thérèse said with a teasing look. “And your children?” she asked, helping herself to an aniseed-zested licorice comfit. “What do they think of their new papa?”
    I made a face. “Hortense burst into tears.”
    “Because you married?”
    “Just because she saw me with Bonaparte!”
    “If you like, I could have a word with your daughter.”
    “Madame Campan already did,” I quickly assured her. My oh-so-proper daughter disapproved of my friend Thérèse, separated from her husband. A nd Barras. And any number of others, for that matter, including her own godmother! *
    “Speaking of your daughter, I had a brilliant idea. What about Director Reubell’s eldest son?”
    I looked at her blankly.
    “As a husband—for Hortense.”
    “But she’s not yet even thirteen, Thérèse. And since when have you become a matchmaker?”
    “Since I suggested you to the Corsican. Seriously,” she said, “the Reubells may be a merchant family, but they’re wealthy. And, of course, Reubell being a Director … that counts for something, I suppose? They’d likely be willing. Hortense has a noble bloodline, after all.”
    “Director Reubell is a radical Jacobin,” I said, checking to see whether we had everything we needed: quills, ink, a folio of paper, the files. “An aristocratic genealogy wouldn’t make any difference to him one way or—”
    Thérèse laughed. “You’re joking?”
    “Well, in any case she’s going to need a dowry.”
    “How much do you have?”
    “Five.”
    “Five thousand? That’s all?”
    Five thousand in debts was more like it.
    “But what about the Island property?”
    I shrugged. “With Martinico in British hands, I don’t stand to inherit a sou.”
    Thérèse pinched her cheeks together, considering. “Mind you, anyone can make a million these days. Why don’t you get into military supplies? If the Revolutionaries can do it, anybody can.” She looked at me. “You find that amusing?”
    “Making the small deal now and then is one thing; supplying the military is on another scale altogether.”
    “The concept is the same—all you need is nerve. I noticed that you beat those two bankers at billiards the other night—the wealthiest men in the French Republic and you humbled them. That’s nerve, if you ask me.”
    I smiled. Well
    “And look at your Masonic connections, your government connections, your financial connections.” “Those are social connections.”
    “I think you’re underrating yourself. You’re in an ideal position to make a small fortune, if not a large one. And face it, a fortune is not such a terrible thing. The Revolutionaries are raking it in as fast as they can. They figure it’s time for a feast after such a long famine, and you have to admit, they’ve got a point. Barras says anyone who doesn’t get into military supplies is a fool. It’s fast money, it’s big money, and there’s virtually no gamble involved.”
    “So long as one has the contacts and the money to invest.”
    “Really, Rose—Josephine! Sorry!—I doubt very much that that wouldbe a problem. After all, you have dear Père Barras, don’t you? King of the Profiteers.”
    I raised my eyebrows. King of the Rotten was what most people called him. “Very well, Mama Tallita, I’ll