Napoleon's Egypt: Invading The Middle East - Reenactor.ru

192 NAPOLEON’S EGYPTWives of common soldiers who had been smuggled aboard a transport ship nowoften became mistresses of French officers.Bernoyer wrote that fall that Bonaparte had given several brilliant balls, andhad been imitated by the other generals, so that practically every evening inCairo there was a big party. “The French women play a grand role in thesegatherings. Although they are neither young nor pretty, one is eager to make around with them, if only to have the pleasure of being seen with them, or toconverse with the gallantry that is natural to us in France.” 24 Those Frenchmenwho brought Egyptian girls to such events, he said, had to suffer dreadful ribbingfrom their fellows. Despite a great deal of intimacy between the Frenchand Egyptians in private, there appears to have been a color bar in public thatthe soldiers and officers crossed only at the risk of ridicule. For the most part, aswell, they could not at that point get past the language barrier. “There is nothingmore disagreeable than to be head-to-head with a woman without beingable to make her understand, and to have as the only language in common thatof the eyes and hands. Once these means have been utilized, it is necessary eitherto leave or to sit there like two blocks of wood. Accept, my dear cousin thatthese situations are quite sad, even though there would have been much to do!”At the soirées being held that fall, Bonaparte’s eyes fell on Pauline Fourès,the wife of a captain of the 20th cavalry regiment. 25 Although most accounts sayhe only noticed her on 1 December, the quartermaster Bernoyer wrote his wifea long letter about their affair on 5 December 1798, so the dalliance must havemuch preceded that date. Bonaparte’s stepson also remembered it, painfully, asan issue that broke before mid-October. Niello Sargy recalled her: “MadameFourès was a petite, twenty-year-old woman, kind, plump, and spiritual; she wasnot lacking in a certain education nor in amiability, though she had formerlybeen a dressmaker.” He told the story of how she was much attached to her husbandand had therefore braved the dangers of Egypt for him, disguising herselfas a man so as to gain passage on the ship. Niello Sargy shaped his tale as one oftragic hubris, implying that Lieutenant Fourès sought, by making a brilliant impressionsocially with his wife, to draw the attention of senior officers to himself,hoping the contacts would advance his career.The memoirists agree that Pauline had resisted going to the officer parties,and had been rudely ordered to do so by her vain husband, whose family had oncebeen of higher status before the Revolution. When he saw her at one of these partiesheld in a grand mansion, Bonaparte could not take his eyes off her. Despitethe sensational accounts of the popular historians, who rendered her as a blond,blue-eyed stunner, she was in fact a brunette, as her portrait shows, and Bernoyer,