He had also begun to fear that his life itself was in danger from an assassin’s knife in Paris. It was noticed that, as though in readiness for flight, he never took off his spurs, and that at public dinners his own servant kept a careful eye on the food he ate and the wine he drank.
He was depressed by the lack of encouragement received for Talleyrand’s proposal for a campaign in Egypt. Of the Directors only Barras supported him and he did so without enthusiasm. There was a risk, it was argued, that it might entail a war with Russia, as well as with the Ottoman Empire of which Egypt was a province. When Bonaparte gave his opinion to the Directors that the French navy was not strong enough for an invasion of England and that the great sum of money needed for it was not available, the Directors promised him more money. Exasperated by their reluctance to consider an invasion of Egypt, he threatened to resign. The Director, Jean-François Reubell, offered him a pen, inviting him to write there and then his letter of resignation. But the Directors well knew that he would not resign and, in the end, they submitted to his demands for the Egyptian adventure which he himself hoped would end in a speedy and decisive victory and enable him to return home with his reputation even further enhanced and the time ripe for the next step towards the fulfilment of his destiny.
While the preparations for the campaign were being made with the secrecy which was essential if Admiral Nelson’s fleet were to be kept in the English Channel, and while a Commission of Arts and Sciences, including artists and all manner of scholars from astronomers to cartographers and geologists, was being formed to accompany the expedition, Napoleon took Josephine to look for a suitable country house to which they could return when the campaign was over.
He could well afford to buy one. He protested publicly that, while commanding the Army of Italy, he had nothing but his general’s pay. But in addition to the large dowries he had given his two elder sisters and the money for the purchase of the rented house in the rue de la Victoire, he had found the means for the education of his youngest sister as well as his youngest brother at schools which were among the most expensive in France. Yet, even so, when Josephine was much taken with one of the country houses they saw, the Château de Malmaison – a house built on the bank of the Seine just outside Paris near Bougival in the early seventeenth century on the site of one burned down by the Black Prince, son of King Edward III – Napoleon decided he could not afford the price asked for it.
He had not yet made up his mind whether or not to take Josephine to Egypt with him. There were those who thought she did not want to go, that her professed desire to accompany him was characteristic make-believe. Yet there were also those who supposed that she was beginning to realize what a remarkable man her husband was and what a splendid future lay in front of him, even that, since she had grown to know him better, she was growing fond of him. Certainly, she pressed him to allow her to go with him to Egypt, all the more insistently when she saw how well his flagship, the Orient, had been fitted up and supplied (even to the extent of having his bed provided with casters so that he should not be troubled by the mal de mer from which he habitually suffered when at sea); and when General Alexandre Dumas called to see Bonaparte one morning while he and his wife, obviously naked beneath the sheet, were still in bed, he found her in tears. Bonaparte explained that she was upset because he had still not made up his mind whether or not to take her with him. In the end, he decided not to do so, at least until the convoy had managed to evade the enemy fleet: in the meantime she was to go to Plombières in Lorraine, to take a course of the waters of the spa which were said to be efficacious in cases of sterility.
Her husband set sail on 19 May 1798. The crossing to Egypt was expected to take about six weeks, allowing for the acquisition of the island of Malta and the treasure of the Knights Hospitallers on the way. For most of that time, Bonaparte rarely left his cabin. He did not suffer from seasickness as badly as he had feared he might; but most of the soldiers cramped below did so, their plight made worse by the stale water and weevil-infested biscuits of their daily fare.
He had brought an extensive library with him, and on most days his friend and secretary, Louis-Antoine de Bourrienne, read to him, generally from books of history, particularly of the history of the Islamic world. One day he asked Eugène de Beauharnais and General Berthier what they themselves were reading and was annoyed to discover they were both enjoying a novel. ‘Reading fit for chambermaids!’ he told them angrily. ‘Men should only read history.’ In the evenings, he talked about all manner of other subjects with his senior officers, discussing politics and French foreign policy, warfare and religion, the interpretation of dreams, the age of the world and how it might be destroyed, and whether or not there was life elsewhere in the universe.
When not talking of such matters, reading, or being read to he spoke about Josephine. ‘Passionately as he loved glory – both France’s and his own,’ Bourrienne commented, Josephine was almost constantly in his thoughts. ‘His fondness for her was close to idolatry.’
‘I was astonished to discover, that he was capable
of the most bitter jealousy.’
A FEW DAYS AFTER SETTING SAIL, Bonaparte decided to make arrangements to send a frigate to fetch Josephine to join him. He was missing her, and she, so she told Barras, was missing him. ‘I am so distressed at being separated from him,’ she wrote to Barras, ‘that I cannot get over my sadness…You know him and you understand how upset he would be at not hearing from me regularly. The last letter I had from him was very affectionate…He says that I am to rejoin him as soon as possible and I am making haste to finish the cure [at Plombières] so that I can be with him again very soon. I am very fond of him despite his little faults.’
But then the balcony of the pension where she was staying at Plombières collapsed into the street and she fell with it, injuring herself badly. Compresses and leeches were applied; she was given enemas and soaked in hot baths; but for weeks she remained in severe pain – unable, so she said, to ‘remain standing or sitting for ten minutes’ without causing agony in her kidneys and lower back. She told Barras that all she did was cry, and that he had no idea how much she suffered.
There was even worse to come. On 19 July 1798, as they walked together beside an oasis in the desert, General Junot confirmed to Bonaparte that Josephine was having an affair with Hippolyte Charles. Bourrienne, who had overheard Junot’s confidences, saw Bonaparte’s already pale face turn almost white. ‘If you had cared for me,’ Bonaparte said, striding up to him, ‘you would have told me about this before now… Josephine!…Divorce, yes, divorce. I will have a public and sensational divorce. I will write to Joseph and have it arranged…I can’t bear to be the laughing-stock of Paris…I love that woman so much I would give anything to have what Junot has just told me pronounced untrue.’ For years afterwards, thoughts of Josephine’s infidelity returned to distress him:
Napoleon never uttered Monsieur Charles’s name [Laure Junot wrote in her Mémoíres]. And he never allowed anyone else to mention it in his presence. He hated Charles; and I was astonished to discover that he was capable of the most bitter jealousy…One day when he was out walking with General Duroc, he squeezed his companion’s arm. His face had paled even beyond its usual pallor. Duroc was about to fetch help when Napoleon silenced him: ‘There’s nothing wrong with me, be quiet!’ A carriage had overtaken them and Napoleon had glimpsed Monsieur Charles inside. It was the first time he had caught sight of him since the Italian campaign.
Soon after learning about Josephine’s betrayal, Napoleon wrote to Joseph, asking him to have a country house ready for him to move into upon his return. He intended to be shut away in seclusion there for the winter. He needed to be alone, he said. He was ‘tired of grandeur’; he no longer cared about glory. At the age of twenty-nine he had ‘exhausted everything’.
This letter was intercepted