The Last Cavalier: Being the Adventures of Count Sainte-Hermine in the Age of Napoleon. Alexandre Dumas
along the quay. Beneath those intriguingly scented canopies, colored lamps were burning, and whiffs of perfume and snatches of song wafted from the open windows, while on the drawn curtains the guests cast moving shadows.
Among the guests were the most elegant people in Paris. There were the government officials, that marvelous staff of generals, the oldest of whom was no more thirty-five: Murat, Marmont, Junot, Duroc, Lannes, Moncey, Davout—already heroes at an age when one is normally only a captain. There were poets: Lemercier, still proud of the recent success of his Agamemnon; Chénier, who had written Timoléon, then given up theater and thrown himself into politics; Chateaubriand, who had just discovered God at Niagara Falls and in the depths of America’s virgin forests. There were famous dancers without whom grand balls could not be held: Trénis, Laffitte, Dupaty, Garat, Vestris. And there were the new century’s splendid stars who had appeared in the East: Madame Récamier, Madame Méchin, Madame de Contades, Madame Regnault de Saint-Jean-d’Angély. Finally, there was the brilliant young crowd, made up of men like Caulaincourt, Narbonne, Longchamp, Matthieu de Montmorency, Eugène de Beauharnais, and Philippe de Ségur.
From the moment the word got out that the First Consul and Madame Bonaparte not only were attending the wedding celebration but also would be signing the marriage contract, all society sought an invitation. Guests filled the ground floor and the first story of Madame de Sourdis’s spacious hotel, and they spread out onto the terraces, there to seek relief from the hot, stuffy rooms in the cool evening air.
At quarter to eleven, a mounted escort was seen leaving the Tuileries gates, with each man carrying a torch. Once they had crossed the bridge, the First Consul’s carriage, rolling at a triple gallop, surrounded by torches, swept by in the thunder of hoofbeats and a whirlwind of sparks before it disappeared into the hotel courtyard.
In the midst of a crowd so dense that it seemed impossible for anyone to penetrate, a passage magically opened and, inside the ballroom, widened into a circle that allowed Madame de Sourdis and Claire to approach the First Consul and Josephine. Hector de Sainte-Hermine walked behind Claire and her mother, and though he paled visibly on seeing Bonaparte, he nonetheless stood nobly before him.
Madame Bonaparte embraced Mademoiselle de Sourdis and placed on her arm a pearl necklace worth fifty thousand francs. Bonaparte greeted the two women, then moved toward Hector. Not suspecting that Bonaparte indeed meant to address him, Hector began to step aside. But Bonaparte stopped to face him.
“Monsieur,” said Bonaparte, “if I had not been afraid you would refuse it, I would have brought a gift for you as well, an appointment to the consular guard. But I understand that some wounds need time to heal.”
“For such cures, General, no one has a more skillful hand than you. However.…” Hector sighed and raised his handkerchief to his eyes. “Excuse me, General,” said the young man, after a pause. “I would like to be more worthy of your kindness.”
“That is what comes from having too much heart, young man,” said Bonaparte. “It is always the heart that suffers.”
Turning again to Madame de Sourdis, the First Consul exchanged a few words with her, and complimented Claire. Then he noticed Vestris.
“Oh, there’s young Vestris,” he said. “He lately did me a kindness for which I shall be eternally grateful. He was coming back to perform at the Opera after a short illness, and the performance happened to fall on a day that I was having a reception at the Tuileries. He changed his performance date so as not to conflict with my reception.… Come, Monsieur Vestris, please demonstrate your inimitable courteousness by asking two of these ladies to dance a gavotte for us.”
“Citizen First Consul,” answered this son to the god of dance in an Italian accent that the family had never been able to eradicate, “we are pleased to have just the dance for you, a gavotte I composed for Mademoiselle de Coigny. Madame Récamier and Mademoiselle de Sourdis dance it like angels. All we need is a harp and a horn,” he said, rolling his “r”s, “if Mademoiselle de Sourdis is willing to play the tambourine as she dances. As for Madame Récamier, you know that she is unbeatable in the shawl dance.”
“Come, my ladies,” said the First Consul. “You surely cannot refuse the request that Monsieur Vestris has made and which I support with all my power.”
Mademoiselle de Sourdis would have been happy to escape the ovation given to her, but once her dancing master Vestris had chosen her, and after the First Consul had added his bidding, she did not wait to be asked again.
She was dressed perfectly for this dance. Her white dress, accented by her dark skin, had two clusters of grapes on the shoulders, while grape leaves in reddish autumn colors ran the length of her gown. She also wore grape leaves in her hair.
Madame Récamier was wearing her customary white dress and her red Indian cashmere shawl. The creator of the shawl dance, which had so successfully been taken from the ballroom to the theater, Madame Récamier performed her invention with no want of modesty yet without a hint of constraint as no theater bayadère or professional actress has demonstrated since. Beneath the undulations of the supple cashmere cloth, she was able to reveal her charms at the same time she was pretending to hide them.
The dance lasted nearly a quarter of an hour and ended in a crescendo of applause, to which the First Consul added his own. At his signal, the entire room exploded in bravos. Amidst the boisterous praise, Vestris seemed to be walking on air as he took full credit for all that poetry of form and movement, of expression and attitude.
Once the gavotte had finished, a servant in livery whispered a few words to the Comtesse de Sourdis, to which she responded, “Open the drawing room.”
Two doors slid open, and in the marvelously elegant drawing room, brightly lit, two men of the law were seated at a table lit by two candelabras, between which the marriage contract was awaiting the signatures with which it would soon be honored. The only people authorized to enter the drawing room were the twenty or so who would be signing the contract, which would first be read aloud for the benefit of the other wedding guests.
As the contract was being read, a second lackey in livery entered. As unobtrusively as he could, he slipped over to the Comte de Sainte-Hermine and in a whisper said, “Monsieur le Chevalier de Mahalin asks to speak to you at this very moment.”
“Have him wait,” said Sainte-Hermine, who was standing attendant in the small study at one side of the drawing room.
“Monsieur le Comte, he says that he must see you at this very instant. Even if you were to have the pen in your hand, he would request that you lay it down on the table and come to see him before you sign … oh, there he is at the door.”
With what looked like a gesture of despair, the count joined the Chevalier outside the drawing room. Few people noticed the discreet exit, and those who did were unaware of its unfortunate significance.
After the contract had been read, Bonaparte, always in a hurry to finish what was under way, as eager to leave the Tuileries when he was there as he was to return when he was out, picked up the pen that was lying on the table. Without wondering whether he should be the first to sign, he hastily placed his signature on the contract, and then, just as four years later he would take the crown from the pope’s hands and place it himself on Josephine’s head, he handed his wife the pen.
Josephine signed, then passed the pen to Mademoiselle de Sourdis, who instinctively looked around worriedly, but in vain, for the Comte de Sainte-Hermine. Filled with anxiety, she signed her name and tried to hide her concern. But it was the Comte’s turn next to sign.
A murmur disturbed the drawing room as heads turned in search of the bridegroom. Soon there was no choice but to call out for him. Only there was no answer.
For a long moment, in surprised silence, the guests looked at each other, all of them, wondering what could have happened to the count at the very moment his presence was indispensable and his absence a complete lapse of etiquette.
Finally someone mentioned that during the reading of the contract, a young well-dressed stranger had appeared in the dorway to the drawing room