Meanwhile, as one of the personal entourage, he saw Napoleon and Josephine every day and sometimes was invited to spend the evening with them. The former never tired of hearing more about Egypt and India, and the latter found him an asset to the family's amusements. She loved amateur theatricals, charades and childish games, and in private the great man was by no means averse to looking on or joining in the games, provided always that he was allowed to be the winner.
It was some ten days after Roger's arrival at the Chateau Montebello that chance revealed to him that childish games were by no means the only ones played there by the General-in-Chief. Having woken early one morning, he went down from his attic in a chamber robe and soft slippers to Bourrienne’s office to collect some papers with the intention of reading them in bed. As he walked noiselessly along a corridor on the first floor, he passed a door that was not quite closed, and heard someone on the other side of it say:
'You saw the General come out of her room. Do not deny it.'
He recognised the voice as that of Constant, the General's valet, and, halting in his tracks, he listened intently to catch the rest of the conversation. From it he learned that Boneparte was having an affaire with one of Josephine's ladies-in-waiting and going to her room by stealth at night. On this occasion they had fallen asleep so Constant had gone to her door and tapped on it to wake him. Some minutes later, he had hurried back to his own apartments and had caught sight of a housemaid watching him from a window that overlooked the corridor. Believing her to be a spy placed there by his wife, he had sent Constant to warn her that if she breathed a word she would be instantly dismissed.
Roger had soon discovered that the immorality rampant in the Paris of the Directory had arrived with the dozens of beautiful and fashionable women who now graced the General-in-Chief's court at Montebello, and that nearly all of them had become the mistress of one, if not more, of the gallant blades who trailed their sabres in its splendid salons. Several of them had, in fact, made him quite open overtures; but he still wore the rope of Clarissa's golden hair round his neck, and had taken a vow not to kiss another woman until he had revenged her. Yet, in this gilded brothel, Napoleon and Josephine appeared to be a couple apart, and a model of connubial bliss; so he was both surprised and intrigued to find that this was not so.
During the day he made tactful enquiries of several men with whom he had become fairly intimate and soon learned what he would have learned much earlier had his mind not been too occupied with other matters.
The intensity of Boneparte's first passion for Josephine could not be doubted and only the glamour of at last having an army to command had caused him to tear himself away from her within a few days of their marriage. That marriage, to her, had so far been only an episode into which she had been persuaded to secure a promising future for her children; so on his departure she had swiftly slid back into her old way of life.
She was a voluptuous, lazy creature and without being in the least vicious quite naturally accepted the immoral way of life led by her friends. Boneparte had written again and again, covering reams of paper with passionate pleas for her to join him, but she had lingered on for many months in Paris before at last doing so, and he had had ample grounds for believing that during them she was being unfaithful to him.
His love for her had not cooled, but his physical passion could at times be as demanding as his craving for glory; so quite early in their separation he had spent occasional nights with other women.
When she had eventually arrived at Mantua the violence of his passion had again frightened her, and to such a degree that she had become cold towards him. Feeling certain that she had given herself freely to other lovers, this had driven him into a frenzy of fury, and a climax had been reached when he intercepted a letter to her from Lazare Hoche whom he knew to have paid her marked attention in Paris. As that brilliant young General was his only serious rival to fame, and the letter was decidedly more than affectionate, his rage had known no bounds. He kicked a pug-dog that Hoche had given her to death before her eyes, and the fact that he had later had a memorial erected to it in the garden was small consolation in view of her passionate love of animals.
From that point the urgency of his physical desire for her appeared to have cooled somewhat, but she still inspired in him a strong affection, and he showed great kindness and thoughtfulness towards her. It was this which caused him to exercise caution in his amours, as both of them continued to be jealous where the other was concerned, and he went to great lengths to spare her knowledge of his infidelities.
All this gave Roger much food for thought, and that night a plan evolved in his mind by which he might both serve his country well and bring Malderini to book in a highly suitable manner. He had to bide his time for a further day and a half until chance left him alone with Boneparte in the map-room and the General was not engaged on any matter of importance. Then he said, casually:
'Mon General. In view of the great interest you take in all things connected with the East, I have been wondering if it would amuse you to dine, tete-a-tete, one night with a very beautiful Indian Princess?
Chapter 26
The Rape of Venice
An Indian Princess,' Boneparte repeated. 'That would certainly be an experience. But surely there is not such a woman here in Milan, or I would have heard of her?': 'No. She lives in Venice. I thought perhaps when you next go on one of your tours of inspection…'
'Yes, I could arrange to spend a night there. Tell me more of her. Would she prove readily complaisant?'
'That I cannot guarantee,' Roger smiled. 'But I should have thought, mon General, that you would have found women as easy to conquer as enemy fortresses. I can only vouch for it that she is in her early twenties, has beauty and a noble carriage, speaks Italian and French fluently, and hates her husband.'
'Presumably, then, she has had numerous lovers.'
'I doubt that. Her husband is a Venetian ex-Senator and he keeps her like a bird in a gilded cage. The poor lady has had no more chance to succumb to temptation than if she had continued to live as the inmate of a seraglio in her native India.'
'Pst!' Boneparte exclaimed with annoyance. 'That makes her ten times more alluring, yet rules her out for me. Why arouse my interest when you must know well enough that it means the sort of adventure which can so easily end in scandal and that, for the sake of Madame my wife, I am determined to have no scandal attaching to my name.'
'There will be no scandal if you leave the matter to me.'
'How can you be sure of that? Husbands have an uncanny knack of returning unexpectedly when a lover has been introduced into the house.'
"I should get her out of it to sup with you in some place where there was no risk of your being disturbed.'
'Since she is so jealously guarded, even if she were willing, that savours of abduction. Were it discovered that I had connived at the abduction of an ex-Senator's wife for my pleasure, it would set all Venice by the ears. Policy made it necessary for ms to despoil Venice of all her mainland territories, but I have brought freedom to the people of the city, and they bless me for it. They rely upon me now to maintain their independence, and look on me as their protector. To have raped the Serene Republic politically was one thing. To as good as rape the wife of one of its leading citizens is quite another. Did it become known, I would at once lose their esteem and be accounted a villain.'