The Reinvention of Love

decorated with bees, one of the emblems from Bonaparte’s coat of arms. The bee is the sovereign symbol of immortality and resurrection.
    Princess Mathilde has as many lapdogs as servants, and it is impossible not to trip over them when one is walking from the front hall into the drawing room. They nip at my ankles and are constantly underfoot. I have to restrain the impulse to kick at them. Needless to say, Princess Mathilde thinks very highly of these spoiled balls of fur, and I have to pretend to admire them whenever I am at the house.
    Our friendship started when I began to attend her salons. At first I was just another guest, but I would often stay later than the others, engaging the Princess in conversation about her famous uncle. I told her of my early memory of seeing Napoleon, and of how I had a special fondness for Bonapartism, and for the genius of the man. This endeared me to her, and Princess Mathilde began to seek my opinion on whom to invite to her salon. She wanted a mix of generations and relied on me to keep her informed as to who among the younger writers was of particular interest. She called me her
literary adviser
, but soon she began to seek my advice on love as well as literature.
    Why do women confide in me, confess to me? Do they sense perhaps that I have something of the woman in me? It must be so. And, as our friendship progressed, I told Princess Mathilde of my secret condition. Later I regretted this, for when I eventually betrayed her, she used this information to hurt me.
I am a real woman, and you are only a half man. A friendship between us was never possible
.
    But the betrayal comes later. For now, my friendship with Princess Mathilde pleases us both. I visit her at her Paris house, and she comes to dine with me in mine. Adèle, my cook, always thrills at seeing the Princess’s fancy four-wheeled carriage pull up outside our humble dwelling on rue du Montparnasse.
    Princess Mathilde tells me about her love for the Director of the Louvre, a man who has gold buttons on his garters, and is a Count. He is also utterly unfaithful to Princess Mathilde, which causes her much distress.
    We talk mostly of her struggles with her lover, although once the Princess asked me about my heart.
    “What of your loves?” she said.
    “Love,” I replied, “is a box I dare not open.”
    Am I an ambitious man? There are some, like Balzac, who would say that I am, that I insinuate myself with greatness. There is the opinion that my friendship with Victor was about the advancement of my own career. No one, no one at all, seems to remember that it was I who first made Victor famous. This galls me.
    Anyway, I would say that I am not ambitious, but rather that, as is natural in life, the older I get, the more comfortable I wish to be. Having an ease of circumstance when one is at an advanced age is compensation for the burdens of ageing.
    I have the ear of one of the most influential people in Paris. I have a direct line to the throne.
    Do I use it to better my situation?
    Of course.
    I do not come from a wealthy family. When Mother died she left me the house on rue du Montparnasse, but little else. The house is really quite small. The income I make from my writing is unreliable. There is no comfort in not being able to depend on one’s salary, in having to struggle constantly to be paid. I am always working with an eye to how I can earn money from what I am writing. And, as I get older, the insecurity of this weighs heavily on me.
    So I lobby the Princess to lobby the Emperor to make me a Senator. If I was a Senator I would be paid the fantastic sumof 30,000 francs a year simply to attend Senate meetings. This would be enough to keep me very comfortably in my old age.
    When I first propose the idea to Princess Mathilde, she suggests that I come to the country house of the Emperor at Compiègne and dine with him and Empress Eugénie. She decides it will help my cause if the Emperor meets me.
    And so I go, reluctantly. I am not a man used to being presented at court. I do not have the clothes or the manner for such things. But Princess Mathilde loans me a pair of court shoes and a footman to be my valet for the weekend. We travel down together in the same carriage, and I must admit that I do like the feeling of importance the occasion generates.
    I look out the window of the carriage as we drive through the impressive oak and beech forests at Compiègne. The sight of the château at the end of the path