And here follows du Bousquier’s biography.—He came of an old Alençon family in a middle rank between the burghers and the country squires. On the death of his father, a magistrate in the criminal court, he was left without resource, and, like most ruined provincials, betook himself to Paris to seek his fortune. When the Revolution broke out, du Bousquier was a man of affairs; and in those days (in spite of the Republicans, who are all up in arms for the honesty of their government), the word “affairs” was used very loosely. Political spies, jobbers, and contractors, the men who arranged with the syndics of communes for the sale of the property of émigrés, and then bought up land at low prices to sell again—all these folk, like ministers and generals, were men of affairs.
From 1793 to 1799 du Bousquier held contracts to supply the army with forage and provisions. During those years he lived in a splendid mansion; he was one of the great capitalists of the time; he went shares with Ouvrard; kept open house and led the scandalous life of the times. A Cincinnatus, reaping where he had not sowed, and rich with stolen rations and sacks of corn, he kept petites maisons and a bevy of mistresses, and gave fine entertainments to the directors of the Republic. Citizen du Bousquier was one of Barras’ intimates; he was on the best of terms with Fouché, and hand and glove with Bernadotte. He thought to be a Minister of State one day, and threw himself heart and soul into the party that secretly plotted against Bonaparte before the battle of Marengo. And but for Kellermann’s charge and the death of Desaix, du Bousquier would have played a great part in the state. He was one of the upper members of the permanent staff of the promiscuous government which was driven by Napoleon’s luck to vanish into the side-scenes of 1793.1
The victory unexpectedly won by stubborn fighting ended in the downfall of this party; they had placards ready printed, and were only waiting for the First Consul’s defeat to proclaim a return to the principles of the Mountain.
Du Bousquier, feeling convinced that a victory was impossible, had two special messengers on the battlefield, and speculated with the larger part of his fortune for a fall in the funds. The first courier came with the news that Mélas was victorious; but the second arriving four hours afterwards, at night, brought the tidings of the Austrian defeat. Du Bousquier cursed Kellermann and Desaix; the First Consul owed him millions, he dared not curse him. But between the chance of making millions on the one hand, and stark ruin on the other, he lost his head. For several days he was half idiotic; he had undermined his constitution with excesses to such an extent that the thunderbolt left him helpless. He had something to hope from the settlement of his claims upon the Government; but in spite of bribes, he was made to feel the weight of Napoleon’s displeasure against army contractors who speculated on his defeat. M. de Fermon, so pleasantly nicknamed “Fermons la caisse,” left du Bousquier without a penny. The First Consul was even more incensed by the immorality of his private life and his connection with Barras and Bernadotte than by his speculations on the Bourse; he erased M. du Bousquier’s name from the list of Receivers-general, on which a last remnant of credit had placed him for Alençon.
Of all his former wealth, nothing now remained to du Bousquier save an income of twelve hundred francs from the funds, an investment entirely due to chance, which saved him from actual want. His creditors, knowing nothing of the results of his liquidation, only left him enough in consols to bring in a thousand francs per annum; but their claims were paid in full after all, when the outstanding debts had been collected, and the Hôtel de Bauséant, du Bousquier’s town house, sold besides. So, after a close shave of bankruptcy, the sometime speculator emerged with his name intact. Preceded by a tremendous reputation due to his relations with former heads of government departments, his manner of life, his brief day of authority, and final ruin through the First Consul, the man interested the city of Alençon, where Royalism was secretly predominant. Du Bousquier, exasperated against Bonaparte, with his tales of the First Consul’s pettiness, of Joséphine’s lax morals, and a whole store of anecdotes of ten years of Revolution, seen from within, met with a good reception.
It was about this period of his life that du Bousquier, now well over his fortieth year, came out as a bachelor of thirty-six. He was of medium height, fat as became a contractor, and willing to display a pair of calves that would have done credit to a gay and gallant attorney. He had strongly marked features; a flattened nose with tufts of hair in the equine nostrils, bushy black brows, and eyes beneath them that looked out shrewd as M. de Talleyrand’s own, though they had lost something of their brightness. He wore his brown hair very long, and retained the side-whiskers (nageoires, as they were called) of the time of the Republic. You had only to look at his fingers, tufted at every joint, or at the blue knotted veins that stood out upon his hands, to see the unmistakable signs of a very remarkable muscular development; and, in truth, he had the chest of the Farnese Hercules, and shoulders fit to bear the burden of the national debt; you never see such shoulders nowadays. His was a luxuriant virility admirably described by an eighteenth century phrase which is scarcely intelligible today; the gallantry of a bygone age would have summed up du Bousquier as a “payer of arrears”—un vrai payeur d’arrérages.
Yet, as in the case of
