Ambition and Desire: The Dangerous Life of Josephine Bonaparte by Kate Williams Page B

Nothing could have prepared the young wife for its contents.
    Marie-Josèphe read and learned that her husband had been gathering evidence against her, and he was quite sure of her depravity. “In spite of the despair in my soul and the fury which overwhelms me, I will contain myself,” Alexandre wrote. “I will tell you coldly, that you are in my eyes the vilest of creatures and my period in this country has revealed to me your abominable behavior.” The Creole heritage that had been such an attraction was now evidence of a propensity to vice that she had enthusiastically indulged. He told her he knew all about her affairs with other men. “As to repentance, I do not even ask it of you, you are incapable of it,” he wrote. “A woman, on the eve of her departure, who can take a lover into her arms when she knew that she is affianced to another, has no conscience; she is beneath all the sluts in the world.” And he believed that she had continued her dreadful licentiousness in France. What, he wondered, “shall I think of this last child, arriving eight months and a few days after my return from Italy?” He was, he puffed, “forced to accept her, but I swear to all the heavens that shebelongs to another; it is a stranger’s blood that courses through her veins!” Alexandre was merciless. “Never, never shall I put myself in danger of being so abused again. Remove yourself to a convent as soon as you receive this letter.” His letter left her no choice. “I will see you once and once only on my return to Paris, to discuss practicalities … but, I repeat, no scenes and no protestations.” 1
    Madame de Longpré glided away, smiling in victory. Marie-Josèphe was sick with shock. Her husband hated her. She was about to lose everything: her marriage, her home, and since men typically took the custody of children, Hortense and Eugène as well. Edmée and the marquis were horrified by the letter. Entirely dependent on Alexandre, since his inheritance paid for the house where they lived, they promised her they would try to intervene. But the letters from his father and stepmother only angered him. When he arrived in France in September, he was incensed to hear that Marie-Josèphe had not yet left their house. Writing from a property owned by Laure, he said that it would be quite impossible for them to live together because he would be forever “tortured by the perpetual images of the wrongs of which you know I am aware.” She had two alternatives: go to a convent or return to the Caribbean. And he was not going to listen to his family: “[T]ell my father and your aunt that their efforts will be useless.” 2 He could not divorce her, but he would exile her and then proceed to live as he pleased. At twenty, Marie-Josèphe’s future looked bleak.
    “Come back to your little country,” begged her mother, “our arms are always open to welcome you … and console you for the injustice you have suffered.” 3 But Marie-Josèphe knew that if she left for La Pagerie, she would have to leave her children with Edmée. And she would be nothing on Martinique but a burdensome daughter on a struggling plantation, unable to marry again even if any man were to take an interest in her. At the end of November 1783, she took up residence in the Panthémont Convent in the rue de Grenelle in Saint-Germain. Eugène and Euphémie went with her. Hortense was left behind, as she was too young to be separated from her wet nurse. In nearly four years of marriage, Alexandre had spent a mere ten months with his wife.
    Marie-Josèphe, with the assistance of her aunt Edmée, chose a particularly fashionable convent, dedicated to housing women of aristocraticbackground. Thomas Jefferson sent his two daughters to attend the attached convent school, after assurances that the girls would be exempt from religious instruction. Ladies of great hauteur lived side by side with the nuns, some staying temporarily within the walls because their