Not all octogenarians are equal. Among the many aberrations noted in the nullissime Napoleon by Ridley Scott (86 years old), we found this one in particular: the deposed emperor fled the island of Elba on February 26, 1815 out of love for his ex-wife Joséphine, whom he wanted to reunite with. A moving theory which does not hold up when we know that the latter had died almost a year earlier, on May 29, 1814. Although we do not have the legitimacy of Jean Tulard, let us recall the historical truth: during his exile, Napoleon was married Marie-Louise, who remained in France, and still had a crush on Marie Walewska, who had briefly come to visit him on the island with Alexandre, their natural son. But this Polish lover is not the subject of The Italian Mistresswhere Jean-Marie Rouart (80 years old), at his best, tells the story of a much less known but much more decisive woman…
Napoleon’s favorite sister, Pauline Bonaparte, said: “If Countess Miniaci’s nose had been longer, the fate of the world would have been changed.” Countess Miniaci? Her beauty was then proverbial in Tuscany, from the balls of Lucca to her house in Florence. He was credited with having adventures with Prince Orsini or Hyde de Neuville. In 1814, she turned the head of a third thief: Colonel Campbell. Problem for Campbell: he is not supposed to gossip to young women but to hold the great outlaw closely. His lack of vigilance could cost the allies, gathered at the Congress of Vienna, dearly. As soon as he can, the English colonel relaxes his surveillance of the Palazzina dei Mulini and the bay of Portoferraio to find the countess in Florence…
In a lively and lively book, tight like an Italian café or a Morand novel, Rouart recounts this little-known page of imperial history, which according to him made Napoleon’s flight and therefore the epic Hundred Days possible. He paints impeccable portraits of Napoleon, Louis XVIII, Talleyrand and Murat, but also of secondary characters, including Mariotti, Charles de Flahaut and the former chouan Louis Guérin de Bruslart. If the subject is two centuries old, the narration is very modern: Rouart connects short chapters, changing the setting each time, taking us from the island of Elba (magnificently painted) to Vienna and Paris. Intrigues are brewing everywhere. We feel like we’re in Stendhal for the speed, Dumas for the adventure and Benjamin Constant for the intermittences of the heart – references which are incredibly good when you’ve just read the latest Marie Darrieussecq.
Rouart brings Napoleon alive
Ten years ago, when the Don’t leave before mehis book on Jean d’Ormesson, Rouart was shot in The World of Books by Eric Chevillard, then a serial writer there. The (lazy) angle of his descent was as follows: an academician can only write academically – followed by taunts about Rouart’s style. We advise Chevillard, a pseudo-avant-garde novelist published by Editions de Minuit, to review his judgment: there is more breath and inventiveness in The Italian Mistress than in his own little formalist fictions. The Minuit school is academic in its own way, old-fashioned and caricatured, while the French Academy counts different authors in its ranks, some of them singular. By defending Omar Raddad in 1994, Rouart took himself for Voltaire and Zola – not really what we expect from a so-called right-wing writer.
More recently, during the inauguration of the Cité internationale de la langue française in Villers-Cotterêts, the academician published in Le Figaro a scathing column, very funny and rightly argued against Emmanuel Macron, which ended like this: “Great initiative, worthy of Tartuffe, to put the French language in a museum so as not to have to worry about its slow destruction which we are facing. -even participated.” Rouart thundered with Chateaubriand-style tunes against our president who is fond of Franglais. His approach here is contrary to that of Villers-Cotterêts: he takes a heritage figure out of the museum and brings Napoleon to life, while showing that French classicism, brought up to date, can still be aesthetically relevant. There is no age when you are a writer, and The Italian Mistress displays a panache worthy of a young recruit to the Grande Armée. “Amazing,” Jean d’O would have said.
The Italian Mistress, by Jean-Marie Rouart. Gallimard, 170 p., €19.
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