War Office had suddenly discovered that he had ignored an order to report for duty with the Army of La Vendee, so cancelled his permit to go abroad and had his name erased from the list of Generals.
The possibility of improving his fortune by a good marriage had also occupied his imagination. First he had proposed to Desiree Clery, the sister of his elder brother, Joseph's wife, but she had refused him. Then he had produced an extraordinary project for a triple union between the Permon and Buonaparte families. Albert was to marry his pretty young sister Paulette, Laura was to be given to his boy brother Lucien, and he, although the recently widowed Madame Permon was more than twice his age, was to espouse her. They laughed a lot over this crazy notion, but Madame Permon assured them that he had made the proposal to her in all seriousness.
From the evening's talk with the Pennons Roger formed the impression that Buonaparte had inherited from his half-peasant mother the temper, pride and toughness of a Corsican brigand and that his mind was subject to erratic twists sufficiently marked for him to be regarded as a little mad.
Next day, however, to get another intimate opinion he invited Andoche Junot to dine with him, and afterwards he felt that he ought to modify his opinion, at least to the extent that the Corsican's madness generally had method. Making liberal allowances for the young A.D.C.'s passionate devotion, it could not be contested that his idol had frequently displayed a cool head, sound judgment and shrewd foresight.
There had been, for example, the occasion of Buonaparte's arrest and imprisonment after 9th Thermidor. Had he been sent to Paris, as the protege of the elder Robespierre and the bosom friend of the younger, his risk of following them to the guillotine would have been a high one. Knowing that, Junot had offered to collect a few friends, break into the prison and rescue him. But Buonaparte had refused the offer, and the reason he afterwards gave for his refusal was that if— as he did succeed in doing—he could get his case dealt with locally, he would stand a good chance of being acquitted, whereas if he allowed himself to be forcibly rescued he would become an outlaw and have lost his Commission for good.
Again, his having ignored the order to proceed to La Vendee had not been a temperamental act, but a calculated risk. For one thing he had not wanted to have it on his record that he had been engaged in fighting French peasants; for another he felt that, although he was then employed only in the Topographical Section of the War Office, if he remained in Paris, where all appointments of importance were made, luck or intrigue might lead to his securing a far better one.
The handsome Junot, now resplendent in the uniform of a Colonel of Hussars, spoke with glowing admiration of Buonaparte's qualities as a soldier: his eagle eye for a battery position, his instantaneous decisions, and his complete fearlessness in battle; then with a shade of awe in his voice he touched on his General's other qualities: his intenseness, his extraordinary personal magnetism, and his ability, by no more than the direct glance of his eyes, to reduce men who were much older than himself, and in authority over him, to stammering inanity.
After dining well at the Cafe Rampollion they parted, and Roger went on to Madame Tallien's. Tall, graceful, her dark hair cut au Titus, in an aureole of short curls round her shapely head, Theresa Tallien looked as lovely as ever. As Roger edged his way through the court she was holding, to kiss her hand, he thought it by no means surprising that her uncle, whose ward for a time she had been, had gone so mad about her when she was still only fourteen that he had done his utmost to persuade her to marry him. On the other hand, Roger was quite shocked by Tallien's appearance, as he now looked much more than his age, grey-faced and ill. Later in the evening he heard from a fellow guest that his old colleague of the Commune had recently been subjected to a most unpleasant shock, which, no doubt, partially accounted for his lack-lustre eyes and woebegone appearance.
In order to marry Theresa he had divorced his first wife, but as she was still a young and attractive woman, and remained in love with him, he had continued to feel a tenderness for her, and kept her in their old home. However, his treatment of her had been capricious and so much so in recent months that, on his ignoring an invitation to breakfast with her one morning not long since, she had decided that he had at last made up his mind to abandon her for good. Actually that was far from being the case and he had all the time intended to go as a little surprise for her. On arriving at the house he found her being carried downstairs covered with blood. She had just committed suicide from despair.
The affair had shaken him terribly, but Roger could not help feeling that it was only a very small instalment of what was due to him for his many crimes during the Revolution.
After a while Roger got Madame Tallien to himself for a few moments, and, when they had conversed for a little, he remarked: "I have not so far seen General Buonaparte. I had expected to find him here, as he was always a regular attendant at your evenings."
"He comes no more," she replied, then added with a laugh: "He is angry with me. A few weeks ago he suggested that I should divorce poor Tallien, in order to be able to marry him; and when I refused he took great offence. But he consoled himself quickly enough. For the past month he has been dancing attendance on my sweet friend Josephine de Beauharnais." "She has, then, received him more kindly?" Roger hazarded. "Poor dear, she hardly knows what to do. He is pressing her to marry him with the same fierceness as if she were an enemy fortress upon the taking of which the fate of France depended. And his letters, to her! You should but see them. The passion he displays for her is quite frightening, and in parts they would make a grandmother blush. Fortunately, she has a pretty sense of humour, so is able to alleviate her fear of him by keeping her mind on the comic spectacle he presents when he declares his passion for her."
After two more days given mainly to apparently idle chatter with numerous other people many of whom had known Buonaparte for a considerable time, Roger decided that he was now as well briefed as he could hope to be for a meeting with the Corsican. Wishing it to appear a chance one, on the 26th he spent some hours hanging about the Jardin des Plantes as Junot had happened to mention that, either in the morning or afternoon, the General usually took his exercise there; and soon after two o'clock Roger's patience was rewarded. At a brisk walk, coming down one of the paths towards him, was a short, spare figure wearing a grey overcoat and an enormous hat, the brim of which was turned up in the front and at one side, and had a three-inch wide border of gold galon round it
On their greeting one another it transpired that Buonaparte had heard of Roger's return from Barras; so when they had spoken of the South of France and touched on their mutual memories of 13th Vendemiaire, it was quite natural that they should fall into step and continue then walk side by side. Roger had then only to mention the war to set Buonaparte off on a non-stop monologue.
He had an ugly Italian accent and his speech was frequently ungrammatical, but everything he said was lucid, and the trenchant expressions he used were always to the point As he reviewed each battle area in turn he criticized without mercy the Army and Corps commanders, although he had never handled a Brigade himself, and they were the men who in the past three years had gained France a score of victories. He declared that the failure of the campaigns of '95 on both the Italian and Rhine fronts had been due to scandalous incompetence, and proceeded to lay down the law about what each of the generals should have done and when he should have done it.