It is March 1794 in Marseille, and in front of the town hall, the guillotine continues to sever noble heads. Daughter of François Clary, a silk merchant who managed to transform his shop into one of Marseille's most elegant stores, Bernardine Eugénie Désirée would have nothing to fear from those turbulent years following the great revolution. She has bourgeois origins and not a drop of blue blood in her family. However, Etienne, her elder brother, has been accused of obscure misdeeds, and Désirée, along with her sister-in-law Suzanne, has gone to the Maison Commune to clear his name. There she met Joseph Bonaparte, a Corsican possessing enviable qualities: among them, personal acquaintance with Robespierre and, indeed, a general for a brother. Désirée invited Joseph and his brother Napoleon to the Clary home. Before her, the general appears small, wearing nothing that glitters, neither decorations nor cords. Only small golden epaulets. His thin face, with taut, sun-burnt skin, is framed by reddish-brown hair that falls to his shoulders without any trace of powder. When he laughs, his face suddenly takes on a boyish appearance, and he then seems younger than he actually is... Thus begins the novel that narrates the life of Désirée Clary, a girl from Marseille who broke Napoleon Bonaparte's heart and, after marrying Marshal Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, became Queen of Sweden and Norway under the name Desideria.
Désirée
Year
1951
Pages
594
Description
It is March 1794 in Marseille, and in front of the town hall, the guillotine continues to sever noble heads. Daughter of François Clary, a silk merchant who managed to transform his shop into one of Marseille's most elegant stores, Bernardine Eugénie Désirée would have nothing to fear from those turbulent years following the great revolution. She has bourgeois origins and not a drop of blue blood in her family. However, Etienne, her elder brother, has been accused of obscure misdeeds, and Désirée, along with her sister-in-law Suzanne, has gone to the Maison Commune to clear his name. There she met Joseph Bonaparte, a Corsican possessing enviable qualities: among them, personal acquaintance with Robespierre and, indeed, a general for a brother. Désirée invited Joseph and his brother Napoleon to the Clary home. Before her, the general appears small, wearing nothing that glitters, neither decorations nor cords. Only small golden epaulets. His thin face, with taut, sun-burnt skin, is framed by reddish-brown hair that falls to his shoulders without any trace of powder. When he laughs, his face suddenly takes on a boyish appearance, and he then seems younger than he actually is... Thus begins the novel that narrates the life of Désirée Clary, a girl from Marseille who broke Napoleon Bonaparte's heart and, after marrying Marshal Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, became Queen of Sweden and Norway under the name Desideria.
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