The decision to invade Egypt had been a mistake. Eugene Beauharnais had realized that the moment he came ashore.
The people from France experienced suffering here unlike anything they had known before. It was different from the hardship of crossing the Alps. They had to endure a land without shade—and, above all, without drinking water.
The sand and stones beneath their feet were scorching, the Sun blinding. During the day, the hot wind was suffocating; at night, it was as cold as an ice cellar. Yet compared with what Eugene had endured as a child, all this was still bearable—or so he had thought, at least until the Black Death began spreading through the camp.
Eugene's father, Viscount Beauharnais, had severe violent tendencies. He deeply despised Eugene's mother, Rose, an almost uneducated Creole woman born on a Caribbean island. When she married the viscount, she had not even brought a substantial dowry. Rose's grandfather, Gaspard Tascher, had gone from France to Martinique intending to grow rich from its sugar plantations, but he encountered hurricanes and was lazy by nature. In the end, not only did he fail to make a fortune, he nearly went bankrupt like Alexandre Dumas's grandfather. Fortunately, they still had an estate in Saint-Domingue.
That land produced little besides sugar. Rose had loved sweets since childhood; they were the only thing in her not-so-prosperous life as a noble young lady that could be called an "enjoyment." Yet this blackened her teeth, and her father, who had once served at the court of Louis XVI, taught her never to show her teeth when she smiled.
Viscount Beauharnais was Rose's cousin, and their engagement had been entirely arranged by their parents. Rose, who had come from an island, knew neither art nor literature and could not compare at all