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Updated: June 24, 2025
He'll just get locked up, and that will be the end of it." Logre and the wine dealer made no remark, but allowed Charvet to talk on without interruption. "And he'd have been locked up long ago," he continued, "if he were anything as dangerous as he fancies he is. The airs he puts on just because he's been to Cayenne are quite sickening.
By the help of politics, however, their chairs had drawn nearer, and they had ended by forming part of the circle. Charvet, in whose eyes they represented "the people," did his best to indoctrinate them with his advanced political theories, while Gavard played the part of the shopkeeper free from all social prejudices by clinking glasses with them.
My father-in-law was very faithful to the interests of these benefactors of his family, and Madame Charvet often acted as private secretary to Madame Bonaparte. Mademoiselle Louise, who became my wife, and Mademoiselle Zoe, her younger sister, were favorites of Madame Bonaparte, especially the latter, who passed more time than Louise at Malmaison.
M. Charvet was charged with organizing the household; and, by orders of the First Consul, he selected from among the old servants of the queen those to whom he gave places as porters, scrubbers, and grooms of the chateau, and he gave pensions to those unable to work.
After having vacillated long between Ris and Malmaison, she decided on the latter, which she bought from M. Lecoulteux-Dumoley, for, I think, four hundred thousand francs. Such were the particulars which Charvet was kind enough to give me when I first entered the service of Madame Bonaparte.
The expenses of the repairs and furnishing were immense, and greatly exceeded the calculations that had been made for him; nevertheless, he was not satisfied either with the furniture or ornaments, and complained to Charvet, the concierge at Malmaison, whom he appointed to the same post in the new palace, and whom he had charged with the general supervision of the furnishing and the placing of the furniture, that he had fitted up apartments suitable only for a mistress, and that they contained only gewgaws and spangles, and nothing substantial.
When the chateau took fire in 1802, as I have related previously, Madame Charvet, being several months pregnant, was terribly frightened; and as it was not thought best to bleed her, she became very ill, and died at the age of thirty years. Louise had been at a boarding-school for several years; but her father now brought her home to keep house for him, though she was then only twelve years old.
By a most fortunate chance, no one was killed; though Madame de Cambis had her leg broken, and Madame Bonaparte was most painfully bruised, without, however, receiving any fracture. Charvet, who was in a room behind the saloon, heard the noise, and at once had a sheep killed and skinned, and Madame Bonaparte wrapped in the skin.
Without saying a word she placed a mug of beer before Charvet and a tray before Clemence, who in a leisurely way began to compound a glass of "grog," pouring some hot water over a slice of lemon, which she crushed with her spoon, and glancing carefully at the decanter as she poured out some rum, so as not to add more of it than a small liqueur glass could contain.
Charvet and Clemence never returned again; and Lacaille one day informed the company that they now frequented a beer-house in the Rue Serpente. He had seen them through the window, gesticulating with great energy, in the midst of an attentive group of very young men. Florent was never able to enlist Claude amongst his supporters.
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