"It is unfortunate that some private worry should be distracting her mind at this particular time,' Roger remarked. "However, it is good news that where previously she made a mock of the little Corsican you have now persuaded her to consider him seriously. What is the next move to be?"
"I shall see her again, of course, and continue to press her. It might help now, though, if she could be encouraged to it from some other angle. Do you know her well enough to call on her and, apropos of nothing in particular, sing Buonaparte's praises?"
"With that very object in mind I got her to invite me to take tea with her this evening."
"Excellent!" Barras smiled. "Keep in touch with me, and I will inform you of any fresh developments."
At six o'clock Roger had himself driven to the house that Barras had lent La Belle Creole. It was a small two-storey villa at the end of a long passage and its entrance was flanked by two stone lions. On arriving there he recognized it as the petite Maison that the wife of Talma, the famous actor, had formerly been given by one of her rich lovers; so it had a somewhat dubious reputation, which matched Josephine's own. Roger had already learned that, although quite a number of ci-devant nobles frequented her twice-monthly 'drawing-room', very few of their wives did so, and he wondered again why a woman of her age and circumstances should hesitate to make a marriage which would both restore her respectability and secure her future.
He was shown into a drawing-room at the back of the house with two french windows opening on to a little garden. There a few moments later Josephine, accompanied by her pet poodle Fortune, joined him.
She received him with the unaffected grace that was one of her principal assets, and in the intimacy of her own apartment he soon began to realize more strongly than he had previously done the peculiar quality of her attraction. It lay in a melting expression, languorous grace of movement, and a mysterious suggestion that her body, if embraced, would be found to be quite exceptionally soft and yielding. After a few minutes she called in her children and presented them to him. The girl, Hortense, promised to be a beauty, as she had a good skin, a profusion of fair hair and a pair of large dark-blue eyes. The boy, Eugene, who was getting on for fifteen, was a fine manly lad, and it was obvious that both of them adored their mother.
While Roger had served on Barras's staff during the previous October, he had seen quite a lot of Buonaparte at the War Office; so, in due course, it was easy for him to bring the General's name into the conversation, and speak of his fine qualities. Josephine did no more than murmur polite agreement, and began to fiddle a little self-consciously with the tea things; but young Eugene took up the tale with unrestrained enthusiasm. The Corsican was now his hero; the episode of the sword was told in glowing phrases, and it transpired that, when old enough, he had been promised a commission.
"If you are to become one of General Buonaparte's officers you will also need pistols," Roger remarked. "Have you any?"
"Alas, no, Monsieur," came the quick reply. 'After my father's death, my poor mother was compelled to part with nearly all his things in order to feed us."
"Then Madame," Roger bowed to Josephine, "permit me, I pray, the pleasure of presenting your charming son with a brace of weapons to go with his sword."
At first Josephine demurred, but she was quite used to accepting gifts from men; so she needed only a little pressing to agree on behalf of her boy.
The matter had only just been settled when the Deputy Freron was announced. Roger had got to know him well at the siege of Toulon and had met him on many occasions since. He was now a man of thirty, and after the coup d'etat of 9th Thermidor, in which he had played a vigorous part, he had become more strongly reactionary than any other of the ex-Terrorists. As Fouché had told Roger some months before, Freron, with extraordinary astuteness, had used his paper, L’Orateur du Peuple, to make himself the leader of the jeunesse doree; but his past was far from having been forgotten by Roger.
It was Freron who, while Representant en Mission at Marseilles, had ordered a volley to be fired into a mass of Royalist prisoners; and. when they had fallen in a screaming, bloody heap, called out: 'All of you who are not dead, stand up, and you shall be spared.' Then, when the survivors took him at his word and staggered to their feet, he had ordered a second volley to be fired.
To find such a man in the house of a woman whose husband had been guillotined was no more than a symptom of the times, and Roger had no reason to believe Josephine to be particularly high principled; but he was slightly nauseated by what followed. Freron had not come there to pay his respects to Madame de Beauharnais; almost at once he began openly to ogle pretty little Hortense. Then he produced some tickets for a public ball at the Hotel de Richelieu and asked if he might take the mother and daughter to it; upon which the young girl jumped for joy. Roger made suitable excuses and took his leave.
Having allowed a day to elapse, so that he should not appear to have an ulterior motive in his visits, on March the 2nd, somewhat later in the evening, Roger called on Josephine again. With him he brought a case containing two fine silver-mounted pistols, which he had bought the day before. Eugene was delighted with them, as they were far more beautiful and expensive than anything he had expected. At the sight of them Josephine became somewhat thoughtful; then after a while she sent her children out of the room. When they had made their adieux she said to Roger:
"Monsieur, please tell me why, since we have no claim on you other than the honour of a slight acquaintance, you have made my son this magnificent gift?"
He smiled. "Madame, I will at least take the credit for a genuine wish to give so promising a young man pleasure; but, since you ask me, I will confess to having also had the hope that should General Buonaparte come to hear of it, he too will be pleased by this small attention to a family in which he is so deeply interested."
"You have, then, heard of the attentions with which he has honoured me?"
"More, Madame. When I was last with him he positively raved to me about you. In fact, unless you take pity on him I really fear that from unrequited love of you he will be driven out of his mind; and that would be a great loss to France, for I am convinced that a splendid future lies before him."
"So others also tell me; and I have formed the greatest respect for his character. But, at times, he makes me almost afraid of him."
"You have no need to be. Look at the affection with which your children speak of him. Young people have an instinct for judging the true disposition of their elders. And for them you could not find a better stepfather in the whole length and breadth of France."
"There is much in what you say, Monsieur."
"Indeed there is. Once married to him you would have no more anxieties. As his wife all Paris will bow before you. When little Hortense becomes of an age to marry, a score of rich and titled suitors will be contending for her hand. You will be able to make a match for her such as her beauty deserves. As for Eugene, since it is his wish to be a soldier, to rob him of the chance to attach himself to one who promises to become the first soldier of the day would be little less than cruel."
Josephine nodded. "I have thought much upon the same lines, and these arguments weigh greatly with me. Should I accept him it will be because the interests of my children are so near to my heart. But there are other considerations. For one, it would be childish of me to attempt to hide the fact that I am past my first youth. So volatile a man might soon turn to other distractions, and..."