The Last Great Dance on Earth Read Online Free PDF Page B

Saint-Germain sends us a fresh bouquet every day,” Aunt Désirée said, her taffeta skirts swishing with a voluptuous languor I found disconcerting, under the circumstances. “Monsieur Pierre, we call him. He and the Marquis played piquet together every evening—until the Marquis ate all those strawberries and started dying, that is,” she said, coming to a stop in front of the Marquis’s bedchamber, catching her breath. “Monsieur Pierre won every game, and so that’s why he sends flowers.”
    “Oh,” I said, trying to figure out the logic.
    “The doctor applied leeches to the Marquis’s stomach and then a laxative blister, which very nearly carried him off right then and there,” Aunt Désirée hissed, so that a maid dusting the wainscotting should not hear. “Frankly, the doctor is a simpleton! He objects to the turpentine enemas I give the Marquis, when it’s perfectly obvious that I’ve been keeping my husband alive all these years with them.”
    Turpentine?
    “Mixed with snail water,” she assured me, her hand on the crystal doorknob, “which I make with sweet wine from the Canary Islands—but where am I supposed to buy Canary wine now? If I’d known there was going to be war with England again, I’d have bought a supply. Maybe next time your husband decides to make war, he can let me know ahead of time.”
    Aunt Désirée had so many misconceptions, I didn’t know where to
    begin. “Bonaparte tried to get England to agree to a peace, but—”
    “The solution is plain to see, my dear. If we gave the Pretender his rightful throne back, England would leave us alone.”
    Put a Bourbon king back on the throne? Had we gone through the Revolution for nothing? “Aunt Désirée, it’s not—”
    “I don’t care what people say,” Aunt Désirée said with conviction. “Too much freedom is not a good thing. What’s wrong with feudalism? It’s impossible to get good help these days, for one thing. Marquis de Beauharnais,” she yelled, throwing open the door. “It’s Rose to see you. You remember:
Yeyette.
Or Josephine, as she’s calling herself now.”
    The Marquis, sunk deep into the centre of a thick feather bed, turned his head slowly. “You know—Madame
Bonaparte,”
Aunt Désirée yelled in his ear.
    “Bon à Part Té!” the dear man croaked.
    June 18—still in Saint—Germain.
    I’m taking a quiet moment to reflect (strengthen). The Marquis went quietly—”Like a lamp without oil,” Aunt Désirée said—in the arms of his wife and his son François. Even dear old Aunt Fanny managed to arrive “in time,” dressed for the occasion in a sequined ball gown of tattered ruffles.
    The Marquis’s last words were whispered to me: “Marry Hortense to a man with good teeth.” I told Aunt Désirée that he said, “I married a good woman.”
    I’m surprised, frankly, to feel so overcome. The Marquis had a good long life, and he didn’t suffer. May God be with him, may he rest in peace.
    June 21
—
back in Paris.
    A mounted courier sent by the Minister of Police brought me back to Paris in a state of alarm. “You look pale,” Fouché observed, on greeting me.
    “I’m anxious, I confess.” Paris seemed deserted. “Why are the streets so empty?” And why had he sent for me?
    “Everyone has headed south in the expectation of hearing news fromItaly,” he said, tugging at his stained cuffs. My friend was expensively attired, but even so the effect managed to be shoddy.
    “What news?”
    “The city is rife with rumours. In every café in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine idlers are claiming that your husband’s army has been defeated in Italy. The opposition is openly making plans to snatch the Republic from the grasp of ‘the Corsican’—as they call the First Consul.”
    “Bonaparte has been defeated?” How was that possible?
    “As well, there are rumours—false, no doubt—of the First Consul’s death.”
    I put my hand to my heart.
Rumours,
he’d said. “Is nothing