Note Back to Main Text — Chapter XXIII

And thus it was in the matter of his courtship: there were elements in it of romantic, abandoned passion, but likewise of shrewd, calculating selfishness. In his callow youth his relations to the other sex had been either childish, morbid, or immoral. During his earliest manhood he had appeared like one who desired the training rather than the substance of gallantry. As a Jacobin he sought such support as he could find in the good will of the women related to men in power; as a French patriot he put forth strenuous efforts to secure an influential alliance through matrimony. He appears to have addressed Mme. Permon, whose fortune, despite her advanced age, would have been a great relief to his destitution. Refused by her, he was in a disordered and desperate emotional state until military and political success gave him sufficient self-confidence to try once more. With his feet firmly planted on the ladder of ambition, he was not indifferent to securing social props for a further rise, but was nevertheless in such a tumult of feeling as to make him particularly receptive to real passion. He had made advances for the hand of the rich and beautiful Désirée Clary;[57] the first evidence in his correspondence of a serious intention to marry her is contained in the letter of June eighteenth, 1795, to Joseph; and for a few weeks afterward he wrote at intervals with some impatience, as if she were coy. In explanation it is claimed that Napoleon, visiting her long before at the request of Joseph, who was then enamoured of her, had himself become interested, and persuading his brother to marry her sister, had entered into an understanding with her which was equivalent to a betrothal. Time and distance had cooled his ardor. He now virtually threw her over for Mme. Beauharnais, who dazzled and infatuated him. This claim is probably founded on fact, but there is no evidence sufficient to sustain a charge of positive bad faith on the part of Napoleon. Neither he nor Mlle. Clary appears to have been ardent when Joseph as intermediary began, according to French custom, to arrange the preliminaries of marriage; and when General Buonaparte fell madly in love with Mme. Beauharnais the matter was dropped.[Back to Contents]