The excursions he made in almost every direction, once his power was established, often aroused indescribable enthusiasm. Each of them resembled a honeymoon, in which France and her idol exchanged their first effusions of love.
Illuminations, fireworks, banquets, gala performances at the theatre - enough to excite the provinces for weeks on end, to set Normandy rejoicing next to the Lyonnais, Reims next to Lille and Amiens. Everywhere the flower of the city's youth formed a guard of honour, offering flowers and gifts to Josephine; the great man was greeted with addresses, often a bit flat, with verses, often a bit foolish, but expressing genuine adoration. At the Theatre des Arts in Rouen there was such a throng that people were literally nearly crushed. At Amiens, while Bonaparte was visiting a factory, a young girl belonging to one of the first families in the district fell on her knees at his feet, murmuring, c Ah ? I swear that I love you!'
She had no petition to make. "She was', said the newspapers, 'simply in love/ Touched by such an unexpected scene, the First Consul addressed this young lady with great kindness. That evening Madame Bonaparte sent her, in a box, a very fine medallion decorated with a portrait of her husband, painted on enamel by Isabey and enriched with fine pearls. We might almost be reading the Queen's words in the last scene of Carmosine: 'Give that kiss, my child ... I am not jealous!' And who knows whether, later on, Musset did not light on this tale of the girl of Amiens?
But the Consular travels did not only produce sentimental incidents suited to a young lady's album. Wherever he went, Bonaparte gave orders for useful undertakings and entrusted the prefects with their execution. He left behind him these representatives of the central power, to become the moving spirits of each region.
They were splendid workers, these missi dominici> whose enormous role has been so well described by Louis Madelin: Beugnot, who succeeded in developing Normandy; Ram-buteau, who designed the road over the Simplon Pass; Jean-bon de Saint-Andre, to whom we owe that of the Rhine — men belonging to every party, but recognizing only one, that of France, from the moment they were singled out by Bonaparte.
Following on the colourless administrators of the Directory, the prefects were not content merely to govern, they set themselves to build. Old towns reconstructed from their ruins, like Lyons, or modernized, like Cherbourg; new towns created out of nothing-sometimes in too great haste, like Napoleon-Vendee; 1 roads improved, canals dug, marshes drained, bridges thrown over the rivers, dykes built to keep out the sea — so much for the material effort*
But the presence of these high officials in our provinces was to have a further result, The prestige that surrounded them, the uniform they wore, and soon, the title of Count or Baron that would reward their labours, would make each of them a powerful personage, around whom social life would be organized. Where up to now there had only been a population, there would henceforth be a society, a little official world, with its ceremonial, its festivals, its receptions, which would give the provinces the illusion that they were becoming a little like Paris. No doubt their daily existence would remain only moderately gay, but it would nevertheless have improved a bit since the days of Picard's comedy and General Cervonfs games of bouillotte.
On the fringe of this new society, however, especially in the Midi, there would still be a France that was difficult to
1 Napoleon-Vendee - La Roche-sur-Yon of today, intended for 60,000 inhabitants, had only 300 to begin with. The town was built of puddled clay, which dissolved in the first shower of rain. When the Emperor paid it a visit in 1808 he drove his sword into the wall of a barracks. 'You've made a town of mud!* he said. The engineer was discharged, but Napoleon-Vendee was none the better for that.
tame: that of the nobles whom the Revolution had more or less ruined, but who, careful of their traditions, were making the best of a dull existence on the small plot of land still remaining to them. The memoirs of Leontine de Villeneuve, Chateaubriand's enigmatic correspondent, whom he dubbed the Occitanienne, afford a curious picture of one of these pockets of resistance.
The girl's whole childhood had been spent with her father, mother and sisters in the chateau of Hauterive, near Castres. The house, which had been pillaged, had only the scantiest furniture left out of its former grandeur. The drawing-room had been refurbished as best it could with a white wallpaper decorated with garlanded hearts, chintz curtains in the windows, no clock on the mantelpiece. Here and there, however, a few remnants of the past, such as the armchairs upholstered in petit-pointy and in the dowager Marchioness's room an enormous bed 'a la polonaise 9 , with its four tufts of feathers 'not too badly worm-eaten'.
The other bedrooms were much simpler, with c angel beds 5 to sleep on, rush-seated chairs and bare brick floors.
The estate, still extensive, was managed by M. de Villeneuve himself. In the saddle at dawn, he woke his servants, allotting them their tasks, and then rode all round his property; lived, in short, the life of a big farmer whom people would refer to as Monsieur le Marquis. It was not till dinnertime that he changed his clothes, became a gentleman again and presented himself in the drawing-room.
There he found his mother and his wife, usually surrounded by a few friends; for in spite of their modest way of life, they entertained a good deal. In this society of small fortunes, hospitality was the one remaining luxury. The extreme cheapness of foodstuffs and the insignificant wages demanded by domestics made these liberal habits possible. There was no butler, but there was still a cook, and places were always laid for country neighbours, inviting themselves without ceremony, and cadets from Tarbes or Toulouse arriving on horseback, often followed by their portmanteau. Some of these might stay at the chateau for weeks at a time. They were given a warm welcome if they were pleasant people, a civil one even if they were not; but if the visitor was an emigre, this gave him every privilege, "even that of being a bore'.
So that round the table at Hauterive there were always a few odd characters, worthy of a place in Balzac's gallery, from the old Abbe, brother to the Marquis, lost in meditation, to the hare-brained Vicomte, twice or thrice ruined, married no one quite knew to whom, deserted by his wife and deprived of all Ms possessions except an enormous nose, a taste for popular songs and an impulsive temperament.
At dessert there was much talk of politics, and this sort of conversation cannot have been very entertaining for the little girl, but her upbringing had taught her patience.
Neither she nor her sisters were spoilt children. c We slept in big bedrooms where no fire was ever lighted', she wrote later. 'Our winter dresses were mere cotton sheaths; a fairly thick shawl and good heavy shoes were all we were given, with which to brave snow, fog and icy winds. When we came in shivering, we were forbidden to go near the fire, except for a moment, to restore circulation to our hands.'
During meals, the young people were trained to be silent. Nobody cared to know whether the fare was to their liking. In the matter of tit-bits it was a family joke that 'Leontine had a right to sugar because she was born before the Continental System'. But rare fruits, such as the luscious pears of Saint-Pons, were reserved for the grown-ups, and the lower form thought it quite natural to expect only the scraps.