Napoleon’s gaucheness with women was on display at a reception thrown by Talleyrand in his honour on January 3, 1798, at which the celebrated intellectual Madame Germaine de Staël, as Josephine’s daughter Hortense later remembered, ‘kept following the General [Napoleon] about all the time, boring him to a point where he could not, and perhaps did not, sufficiently attempt to hide his annoyance’.
The daughter of the stupendously rich banker and Louis XVI’s finance minister Jacques Necker, and a leading Parisian salonnière in her own right, Madame de Staël hero-worshipped Napoleon at the time, refusing to leave a dinner before Lavalette after the Fructidor purge, simple because he was Napoleon’s aide-de-camp.
At Talleyrand’s fête she asked Napoleon: ‘Whom do you consider the best kind of woman?’ clearly expecting a compliment of some kind to her own famed intelligence and writing ability, whereupon Napoleon answered: ‘She who has had the most children.’
Source:
Roberts, Andrew. "Peace." Napoleon: A Life. New York: Penguin, 2014. 157-58. Print.
Original Source(s) Listed:
ed. Hanoteau, Memories of Queen Hortense I p. 33.
Rovigo, Mémoires I p. 26.
Further Reading:
Napoleone di Buonaparte / Napoleon Bonaparte / Napoleon I
Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord
Anne Louise Germaine de Staël-Holstein / Madame de Staël
Joséphine de Beauharnais (née Tascher de la Pagerie) / Empress Joséphine
Hortense Eugénie Cécile Bonaparte (née de Beauharnais), Queen consort of Holland
Louis-Auguste / Louis XVI of France / Louis Capet
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