Such is the girl
who, on reaching Paris, wrote to Marat in these words:
Citizen, I have just arrived from Caen.
who, on reaching Paris, wrote to Marat in these words:
Citizen, I have just arrived from Caen.
Orr - Famous Affinities of History, Romacen of Devotion
But he was good-looking and stalwart, and
when he had half a dozen robust comrades by his side he could assume
a very manly appearance. Such was George IV. in his regency and in
his prime. He made that period famous for its card-playing, its deep
drinking, and for the dissolute conduct of its courtiers and noblemen no
less than for the gallantry of its soldiers and its momentous victories
on sea and land. It came, however, to be seen that his true achievements
were in reality only escapades, that his wit was only folly, and his
so-called "sensibility" was but sham. He invented buckles, striped
waistcoats, and flamboyant collars, but he knew nothing of the
principles of kingship or the laws by which a state is governed.
The fact that he had promiscuous affairs with women appealed at first
to the popular sense of the romantic. It was not long, however, before
these episodes were trampled down into the mire of vulgar scandal.
One of the first of them began when he sent a letter, signed "Florizel,"
to a young actress, "Perdita" Robinson. Mrs. Robinson, whose maiden
name was Mary Darby, and who was the original of famous portraits
by Gainsborough and Reynolds, was a woman of beauty, talent, and
temperament. George, wishing in every way to be "romantic," insisted
upon clandestine meetings on the Thames at Kew, with all the stage
trappings of the popular novels--cloaks, veils, faces hidden, and armed
watchers to warn her of approaching danger. Poor Perdita took this
nonsense so seriously that she gave up her natural vocation for the
stage, and forsook her husband, believing that the prince would never
weary of her.
He did weary of her very soon, and, with the brutality of a man of such
a type, turned her away with the promise of some money; after which he
cut her in the Park and refused to speak to her again. As for the money,
he may have meant to pay it, but Perdita had a long struggle before she
succeeded in getting it. It may be assumed that the prince had to borrow
it and that this obligation formed part of the debts which Parliament
paid for him.
It is not necessary to number the other women whose heads he turned.
They are too many for remembrance here, and they have no special
significance, save one who, as is generally believed, became his wife so
far as the church could make her so. An act of 1772 had made it
illegal for any member of the English royal family to marry without the
permission of the king. A marriage contracted without the king's consent
might be lawful in the eyes of the church, but the children born of it
could not inherit any claim to the throne.
It may be remarked here that this withholding of permission was strictly
enforced. Thus William IV. , who succeeded George IV. , was married,
before his accession to the throne, to Mrs. Jordan (Dorothy Bland).
Afterward he lawfully married a woman of royal birth who was known as
Queen Adelaide.
There is an interesting story which tells how Queen Victoria came to
be born because her father, the Duke of Kent, was practically forced
to give up a morganatic union which he greatly preferred to a marriage
arranged for him by Parliament. Except the Duke of Cambridge, the Duke
of Kent was the only royal duke who was likely to have children in the
regular line. The only daughter of George IV. had died in childhood.
The Duke of Cumberland was for various reasons ineligible; the Duke of
Clarence, later King William IV. , was almost too old; and therefore, to
insure the succession, the Duke of Kent was begged to marry a young and
attractive woman, a princess of the house of Saxe-Coburg, who was ready
for the honor. It was greatly to the Duke's credit that he showed deep
and sincere feeling in this matter. As he said himself in effect:
"This French lady has stood by me in hard times and in good times,
too--why should I cast her off? She has been more than a wife to me. And
what do I care for your plans in Parliament? Send over for one of the
Stuarts--they are better men than the last lot of our fellows that you
have had! "
In the end, however, he was wearied out and was persuaded to marry, but
he insisted that a generous sum should be settled on the lady who had
been so long his true companion, and to whom, no doubt, he gave many a
wistful thought in his new but unfamiliar quarters in Kensington Palace,
which was assigned as his residence.
Again, the second Duke of Cambridge, who died only a few years ago,
greatly desired to marry a lady who was not of royal rank, though of
fine breeding and of good birth. He besought his young cousin, as
head of the family, to grant him this privilege of marriage; but Queen
Victoria stubbornly refused. The duke was married according to the rites
of the church, but he could not make his wife a duchess. The queen never
quite forgave him for his partial defiance of her wishes, though the
duke's wife--she was usually spoken of as Mrs. FitzGeorge--was received
almost everywhere, and two of her sons hold high rank in the British
army and navy, respectively.
The one real love story in the life of George IV. is that which tells of
his marriage with a lady who might well have been the wife of any king.
This was Maria Anne Smythe, better known as Mrs. Fitzherbert, who was
six years older than the young prince when she first met him in company
with a body of gentlemen and ladies in 1784.
Maria Fitzherbert's face was one which always displayed its best
advantages. Her eyes were peculiarly languishing, and, as she had
already been twice a widow, and was six years his senior, she had the
advantage over a less experienced lover. Likewise, she was a Catholic,
and so by another act of Parliament any marriage with her would be
illegal. Yet just because of all these different objections the prince
was doubly drawn to her, and was willing to sacrifice even the throne if
he could but win her.
His father, the king, called him into the royal presence and said:
"George, it is time that you should settle down and insure the
succession to the throne. "
"Sir," replied the prince, "I prefer to resign the succession and let my
brother have it, and that I should live as a private English gentleman. "
Mrs. Fitzherbert was not the sort of woman to give herself up readily to
a morganatic connection. Moreover, she soon came to love Prince George
too well to entangle him in a doubtful alliance with one of another
faith than his. Not long after he first met her the prince, who was
always given to private theatricals, sent messengers riding in hot haste
to her house to tell her that he had stabbed himself, that he begged
to see her, and that unless she came he would repeat the act. The lady
yielded, and hurried to Carlton House, the prince's residence; but she
was prudent enough to take with her the Duchess of Devonshire, who was a
reigning beauty of the court.
The scene which followed was theatrical rather than impressive. --The
prince was found in his sleeping-chamber, pale and with his ruffles
blood-stained. He played the part of a youthful and love-stricken wooer,
vowing that he would marry the woman of his heart or stab himself
again. In the presence of his messengers, who, with the duchess,
were witnesses, he formally took the lady as his wife, while Lady
Devonshire's wedding-ring sealed the troth. The prince also acknowledged
it in a document.
Mrs. Fitzherbert was, in fact, a woman of sound sense. Shortly after
this scene of melodramatic intensity her wits came back to her, and she
recognized that she had merely gone through a meaningless farce. So
she sent back the prince's document and the ring and hastened to
the Continent, where he could not reach her, although his detectives
followed her steps for a year.
At the last she yielded, however, and came home to marry the prince
in such fashion as she could--a marriage of love, and surely one of
morality, though not of parliamentary law. The ceremony was performed
"in her own drawing-room in her house in London, in the presence of the
officiating Protestant clergyman and two of her own nearest relatives. "
Such is the serious statement of Lord Stourton, who was Mrs.
Fitzherbert's cousin and confidant. The truth of it was never denied,
and Mrs. Fitzherbert was always treated with respect, and even regarded
as a person of great distinction. Nevertheless, on more than one
occasion the prince had his friends in Parliament deny the marriage in
order that his debts might be paid and new allowances issued to him by
the Treasury.
George certainly felt himself a husband. Like any other married prince,
he set himself to build a palace for his country home. While in search
of some suitable spot he chanced to visit the "pretty fishing-village"
of Brighton to see his uncle, the Duke of Cumberland. Doubtless he found
it an attractive place, yet this may have been not so much because
of its view of the sea as for the reason that Mrs. Fitzherbert had
previously lived there.
However, in 1784 the prince sent down his chief cook to make
arrangements for the next royal visit. The cook engaged a house on the
spot where the Pavilion now stands, and from that time Brighton began to
be an extremely fashionable place. The court doctors, giving advice that
was agreeable, recommended their royal patient to take sea-bathing at
Brighton. At once the place sprang into popularity.
At first the gentry were crowded into lodging-houses and the
accommodations were primitive to a degree. But soon handsome villas
arose on every side; hotels appeared; places of amusement were opened.
The prince himself began to build a tasteless but showy structure,
partly Chinese and partly Indian in style, on the fashionable promenade
of the Steyne.
During his life with Mrs. Fitzherbert at Brighton the prince held what
was practically a court. Hundreds of the aristocracy came down from
London and made their temporary dwellings there; while thousands who
were by no means of the court made the place what is now popularly
called "London by the Sea. " There were the Duc de Chartres, of France;
statesmen and rakes, like Fox, Sheridan, and the Earl of Barrymore; a
very beautiful woman, named Mrs. Couch, a favorite singer at the opera,
to whom the prince gave at one time jewels worth ten thousand pounds;
and a sister of the Earl of Barrymore, who was as notorious as her
brother. She often took the president's chair at a club which George's
friends had organized and which she had christened the Hell Fire Club.
Such persons were not the only visitors at Brighton. Men of much more
serious demeanor came down to visit the prince and brought with them
quieter society. Nevertheless, for a considerable time the place was
most noted for its wild scenes of revelry, into which George frequently
entered, though his home life with Mrs. Fitzherbert at the Pavilion was
a decorous one.
No one felt any doubt as to the marriage of the two persons, who seemed
so much like a prince and a princess. Some of the people of the place
addressed Mrs. Fitzherbert as "Mrs. Prince. " The old king and his wife,
however, much deplored their son's relation with her. This was partly
due to the fact that Mrs. Fitzherbert was a Catholic and that she had
received a number of French nuns who had been driven out of France at
the time of the Revolution. But no less displeasure was caused by the
prince's racing and dicing, which swelled his debts to almost a million
pounds, so that Parliament and, indeed, the sober part of England were
set against him.
Of course, his marriage to Mrs. Fitzherbert had no legal status; nor is
there any reason for believing that she ever became a mother. She had
no children by her former two husbands, and Lord Stourton testified
positively that she never had either son or daughter by Prince George.
Nevertheless, more than one American claimant has risen to advance
some utterly visionary claim to the English throne by reason of alleged
descent from Prince George and Mrs. Fitzherbert.
Neither William IV. nor Queen Victoria ever spent much time at Brighton.
In King William's case it was explained that the dampness of the
Pavilion did not suit him; and as to Queen Victoria, it was said that
she disliked the fact that buildings had been erected so as to cut
off the view of the sea. It is quite likely, however, that the queen
objected to the associations of the place, and did not care to be
reminded of the time when her uncle had lived there so long in a
morganatic state of marriage.
At length the time came when the king, Parliament, and the people at
large insisted that the Prince of Wales should make a legal marriage,
and a wife was selected for him in the person of Caroline, daughter of
the Duke of Brunswick. This marriage took place exactly ten years after
his wedding with the beautiful and gentle-mannered Mrs. Fitzherbert.
With the latter he had known many days and hours of happiness. With
Princess Caroline he had no happiness at all.
Prince George met her at the pier to greet her. It is said that as he
took her hand he kissed her, and then, suddenly recoiling, he whispered
to one of his friends:
"For God's sake, George, give me a glass of brandy! "
Such an utterance was more brutal and barbaric than anything his bride
could have conceived of, though it is probable, fortunately, that she
did not understand him by reason of her ignorance of English.
We need not go through the unhappy story of this unsympathetic,
neglected, rebellious wife. Her life with the prince soon became one
of open warfare; but instead of leaving England she remained to set the
kingdom in an uproar. As soon as his father died and he became king,
George sued her for divorce. Half the people sided with the queen,
while the rest regarded her as a vulgar creature who made love to her
attendants and brought dishonor on the English throne. It was a sorry,
sordid contrast between the young Prince George who had posed as a sort
of cavalier and this now furious gray old man wrangling with his furious
German wife.
Well might he look back to the time when he met Perdita in the moonlight
on the Thames, or when he played the part of Florizel, or, better still,
when he enjoyed the sincere and disinterested love of the gentle woman
who was his wife in all but legal status. Caroline of Brunswick was
thrust away from the king's coronation. She took a house within sight of
Westminster Abbey, so that she might make hag-like screeches to the
mob and to the king as he passed by. Presently, in August, 1821, only
a month after the coronation, she died, and her body was taken back to
Brunswick for burial.
George himself reigned for nine years longer. When he died in 1830 his
executor was the Duke of Wellington. The duke, in examining the late
king's private papers, found that he had kept with the greatest care
every letter written to him by his morganatic wife. During his last
illness she had sent him an affectionate missive which it is said George
"read eagerly. " Mrs. Fitzherbert wished the duke to give up her letters;
but he would do so only in return for those which he had written to her.
It was finally decided that it would be best to burn both his and hers.
This work was carried out in Mrs. Fitzherbert's own house by the lady,
the duke, and the Earl of Albemarle.
Of George it may be said that he has left as memories behind him only
three things that will be remembered. The first is the Pavilion at
Brighton, with its absurdly oriental decorations, its minarets and
flimsy towers. The second is the buckle which he invented and which
Thackeray has immortalized with his biting satire. The last is the story
of his marriage to Maria Fitzherbert, and of the influence exercised
upon him by the affection of a good woman.
CHARLOTTE CORDAY AND ADAM LUX
Perhaps some readers will consider this story inconsistent with those
that have preceded it. Yet, as it is little known to most readers and as
it is perhaps unique in the history of romantic love, I cannot forbear
relating it; for I believe that it is full of curious interest and
pathetic power.
All those who have written of the French Revolution have paused in
their chronicle of blood and flame to tell the episode of the peasant
Royalist, Charlotte Corday; but in telling it they have often omitted
the one part of the story that is personal and not political. The
tragic record of this French girl and her self-sacrifice has been told a
thousand times by writers in many languages; yet almost all of them have
neglected the brief romance which followed her daring deed and which was
consummated after her death upon the guillotine. It is worth our while
to speak first of Charlotte herself and of the man she slew, and then
to tell that other tale which ought always to be entwined with her great
deed of daring.
Charlotte Corday--Marie Anne Charlotte Corday d'Armand--was a native of
Normandy, and was descended, as her name implies, from noble ancestors.
Her forefathers, indeed, had been statesmen, civil rulers, and soldiers,
and among them was numbered the famous poet Corneille, whom the French
rank with Shakespeare. But a century or more of vicissitudes had reduced
her branch of the family almost to the position of peasants--a fact
which partly justifies the name that some give her when they call her
"the Jeanne d'Arc of the Revolution. "
She did not, however, spend her girlish years amid the fields and woods
tending her sheep, as did the other Jeanne d'Arc; but she was placed
in charge of the sisters in a convent, and from them she received such
education as she had. She was a lonely child, and her thoughts turned
inward, brooding over many things.
After she had left the convent she was sent to live with an aunt. Here
she devoted herself to reading over and over the few books which
the house contained. These consisted largely of the deistic writers,
especially Voltaire, and to some extent they destroyed her convent
faith, though it is not likely that she understood them very fully.
More to her taste was a copy of Plutarch's Lives. These famous stories
fascinated her. They told her of battle and siege, of intrigue and
heroism, and of that romantic love of country which led men to throw
away their lives for the sake of a whole people. Brutus and Regulus were
her heroes. To die for the many seemed to her the most glorious end that
any one could seek. When she thought of it she thrilled with a sort
of ecstasy, and longed with all the passion of her nature that such a
glorious fate might be her own.
Charlotte had nearly come to womanhood at the time when the French
Revolution first broke out. Royalist though she had been in her
sympathies, she felt the justice of the people's cause. She had seen the
suffering of the peasantry, the brutality of the tax-gatherers, and all
the oppression of the old regime. But what she hoped for was a
democracy of order and equality and peace. Could the king reign as a
constitutional monarch rather than as a despot, this was all for which
she cared.
In Normandy, where she lived, were many of those moderate republicans
known as Girondists, who felt as she did and who hoped for the same
peaceful end to the great outbreak. On the other hand, in Paris, the
party of the Mountain, as it was called, ruled with a savage violence
that soon was to culminate in the Reign of Terror. Already the
guillotine ran red with noble blood. Already the king had bowed his head
to the fatal knife. Already the threat had gone forth that a mere breath
of suspicion or a pointed finger might be enough to lead men and women
to a gory death.
In her quiet home near Caen Charlotte Corday heard as from afar the
story of this dreadful saturnalia of assassination which was making
Paris a city of bloody mist. Men and women of the Girondist party came
to tell her of the hideous deeds that were perpetrated there. All these
horrors gradually wove themselves in the young girl's imagination around
the sinister and repulsive figure of Jean Paul Marat. She knew nothing
of his associates, Danton and Robespierre. It was in Marat alone that
she saw the monster who sent innocent thousands to their graves, and who
reveled like some arch-fiend in murder and gruesome death.
In his earlier years Marat had been a very different figure--an
accomplished physician, the friend of nobles, a man of science and
original thought, so that he was nearly elected to the Academy of
Sciences. His studies in electricity gained for him the admiration
of Benjamin Franklin and the praise of Goethe. But when he turned to
politics he left all this career behind him. He plunged into the very
mire of red republicanism, and even there he was for a time so much
hated that he sought refuge in London to save his life.
On his return he was hunted by his enemies, so that his only place
of refuge was in the sewers and drains of Paris. A woman, one Simonne
Evrard, helped him to escape his pursuers. In the sewers, however,
he contracted a dreadful skin-disease from which he never afterward
recovered, and which was extremely painful as well as shocking to
behold.
It is small wonder that the stories about Marat circulated through the
provinces made him seem more a devil than a man. His vindictiveness
against the Girondists brought all of this straight home to Charlotte
Corday and led her to dream of acting the part of Brutus, so that she
might free her country from this hideous tyrant.
In January, 1793, King Louis XVI. met his death upon the scaffold; and
the queen was thrust into a foul prison. This was a signal for activity
among the Girondists in Normandy, and especially at Caen, where
Charlotte was present at their meetings and heard their fervid oratory.
There was a plot to march on Paris, yet in some instinctive way she felt
that such a scheme must fail. It was then that she definitely formed
the plan of going herself, alone, to the French capital to seek out the
hideous Marat and to kill him with her own hands.
To this end she made application for a passport allowing her to
visit Paris. This passport still exists, and it gives us an official
description of the girl. It reads:
Allow citizen Marie Corday to pass. She is twenty-four years of age,
five feet and one inch in height, hair and eyebrows chestnut color, eyes
gray, forehead high, mouth medium size, chin dimpled, and an oval face.
Apart from this verbal description we have two portraits painted while
she was in prison. Both of them make the description of the passport
seem faint and pale. The real Charlotte had a wealth of chestnut hair
which fell about her face and neck in glorious abundance. Her great
gray eyes spoke eloquently of truth and courage. Her mouth was firm yet
winsome, and her form combined both strength and grace.
Such is the girl
who, on reaching Paris, wrote to Marat in these words:
Citizen, I have just arrived from Caen. Your love for your native place
doubtless makes you wish to learn the events which have occurred in that
part of the republic. I shall call at your residence in about an hour.
Be so good as to receive me and give me a brief interview. I will put
you in such condition as to render great service to France.
This letter failed to gain her admission, and so did another which she
wrote soon after. The fact is that Marat was grievously ill. His disease
had reached a point where the pain could be assuaged only by hot water;
and he spent the greater part of his time wrapped in a blanket and lying
in a large tub.
A third time, however, the persistent girl called at his house and
insisted that she must see him, saying that she was herself in danger
from the enemies of the Republic. Through an open door Marat heard her
mellow voice and gave orders that she should be admitted.
As she entered she gazed for a moment upon the lank figure rolling in
the tub, the rat-like face, and the shifting eyes. Then she approached
him, concealing in the bosom of her dress a long carving-knife which she
had purchased for two francs. In answer to Marat's questioning look she
told him that there was much excitement at Caen and that the Girondists
were plotting there.
To this Marat answered, in his harsh voice:
"All these men you mention shall be guillotined in the next few days! "
As he spoke Charlotte flashed out the terrible knife and with all her
strength she plunged it into his left side, where it pierced a lung and
a portion of his heart.
Marat, with the blood gushing from his mouth, cried out:
"Help, darling! "
His cry was meant for one of the two women in the house. Both heard it,
for they were in the next room; and both of them rushed in and succeeded
in pinioning Charlotte Corday, who, indeed, made only a slight effort to
escape. Troops were summoned, she was taken to the Prison de l'Abbaye,
and soon after she was arraigned before the revolutionary tribunal.
Placed in the dock, she glanced about her with an air of pride, as
of one who gloried in the act which she had just performed. A written
charge was read. She was asked what she had to say. Lifting her head
with a look of infinite satisfaction, she answered in a ringing voice:
"Nothing--except that I succeeded! "
A lawyer was assigned for her defense. He pleaded for her earnestly,
declaring that she must he regarded as insane; but those clear, calm
eyes and that gentle face made her sanity a matter of little doubt.
She showed her quick wit in the answers which she gave to the rough
prosecutor, Fouquier-Tinville, who tried to make her confess that she
had accomplices.
"Who prompted you to do this deed? " roared Tinville.
"I needed no prompting. My own heart was sufficient. "
"In what, then, had Marat wronged you? "
"He was a savage beast who was going to destroy the remains of France in
the fires of civil war. "
"But whom did you expect to benefit? " insinuated the prosecutor.
"I have killed one man to save a hundred thousand. "
"What? Did you imagine that you had murdered all the Marats? "
"No, but, this one being dead, the rest will perhaps take warning. "
Thus her directness baffled all the efforts of the prosecution to trap
her into betraying any of her friends. The court, however, sentenced her
to death. She was then immured in the Conciergerie.
This dramatic court scene was the beginning of that strange, brief
romance to which one can scarcely find a parallel. At the time there
lived in Paris a young German named Adam Lux. The continual talk about
Charlotte Corday had filled him with curiosity regarding this young girl
who had been so daring and so patriotic. She was denounced on every hand
as a murderess with the face of a Medusa and the muscles of a Vulcan.
Street songs about her were dinned into the ears of Adam Lux.
As a student of human nature he was anxious to see this terrible
creature. He forced his way to the front of the crowded benches in the
court-room and took his stand behind a young artist who was finishing a
beautiful sketch. From that moment until the end of the trial the
eyes of Adam Lux were fastened on the prisoner. What a contrast to the
picture he had imagined!
A mass of regal chestnut hair crowned with the white cap of a Norman
peasant girl; gray eyes, very sad and serious, but looking serenely
forth from under long, dark lashes; lips slightly curved with an
expression of quiet humor; a face the color of the sun and wind, a
bust indicative of perfect health, the chin of a Caesar, and the whole
expression one of almost divine self-sacrifice. Such were the features
that the painter was swiftly putting upon his canvas; but behind them
Adam Lux discerned the soul for which he gladly sacrificed both his
liberty and his life.
He forgot his surroundings and seemed to see only that beautiful, pure
face and to hear only the exquisite cadences of the wonderful voice.
When Charlotte was led forth by a file of soldiers Adam staggered from
the scene and made his way as best he might to his lodgings. There he
lay prostrate, his whole soul filled with the love of her who had in an
instant won the adoration of his heart.
Once, and only once again, when the last scene opened on the tragedy,
did he behold the heroine of his dreams.
On the 17th of July Charlotte Corday was taken from her prison to the
gloomy guillotine. It was toward evening, and nature had given a setting
fit for such an end. Blue-black thunder-clouds rolled in huge masses
across the sky until their base appeared to rest on the very summit of
the guillotine. Distant thunder rolled and grumbled beyond the river.
Great drops of rain fell upon the soldiers' drums. Young, beautiful,
unconscious of any wrong, Charlotte Corday stood beneath the shadow of
the knife.
At the supreme moment a sudden ray from the setting sun broke through
the cloud-wrack and fell upon her slender figure until she glowed in the
eyes of the startled spectators like a statue cut in burnished bronze.
Thus illumined, as it were, by a light from heaven itself, she
bowed herself beneath the knife and paid the penalty of a noble, if
misdirected, impulse. As the blade fell her lips quivered with her last
and only plea:
"My duty is enough--the rest is nothing! "
Adam Lux rushed from the scene a man transformed. He bore graven upon
his heart neither the mob of tossing red caps nor the glare of the
sunset nor the blood-stained guillotine, but that last look from
those brilliant eyes. The sight almost deprived him of his reason. The
self-sacrifice of the only woman he had ever loved, even though she had
never so much as seen him, impelled him with a sort of fury to his own
destruction.
He wrote a bitter denunciation of the judges, of the officers, and
of all who had been followers of Marat. This document he printed,
and scattered copies of it through every quarter in Paris. The last
sentences are as follows:
The guillotine is no longer a disgrace. It has become a sacred altar,
from which every taint has been removed by the innocent blood shed
there on the 17th of July. Forgive me, my divine Charlotte, if I find
it impossible at the last moment to show the courage and the gentleness
that were yours! I glory because you are superior to me, for it is
right that she who is adored should be higher and more glorious than her
adorer!
This pamphlet, spread broadcast among the people, was soon reported to
the leaders of the rabble. Adam Lux was arrested for treason against
the Republic; but even these men had no desire to make a martyr of this
hot-headed youth. They would stop his mouth without taking his life.
Therefore he was tried and speedily found guilty, but an offer was
made him that he might have passports that would allow him to return to
Germany if only he would sign a retraction of his printed words.
Little did the judges understand the fiery heart of the man they had
to deal with. To die on the same scaffold as the woman whom he had
idealized was to him the crowning triumph of his romantic love. He gave
a prompt and insolent refusal to their offer. He swore that if released
he would denounce his darling's murderers with a still greater passion.
In anger the tribunal sentenced him to death. Only then he smiled and
thanked his judges courteously, and soon after went blithely to the
guillotine like a bridegroom to his marriage feast.
Adam Lux! Spirit courtship had been carried on silently all through that
terrible cross-examination of Charlotte Corday. His heart was betrothed
to hers in that single gleam of the setting sun when she bowed beneath
the knife. One may believe that these two souls were finally united
when the same knife fell sullenly upon his neck and when his life-blood
sprinkled the altar that was still stained with hers.
NAPOLEON AND MARIE WALEWSKA
There are four women who may be said to have deeply influenced the life
of Napoleon. These four are the only ones who need to be taken into
account by the student of his imperial career. The great emperor was
susceptible to feminine charms at all times; but just as it used to be
said of him that "his smile never rose above his eyes," so it might as
truly be said that in most instances the throbbing of his heart did not
affect his actions.
Women to him were the creatures of the moment, although he might seem to
care for them and to show his affection in extravagant ways, as in his
affair with Mlle. Georges, the beautiful but rather tiresome actress.
As for Mme. de Stael, she bored him to distraction by her assumption
of wisdom. That was not the kind of woman that Napoleon cared for. He
preferred that a woman should be womanly, and not a sort of owl to sit
and talk with him about the theory of government.
When it came to married women they interested him only because of
the children they might bear to grow up as recruits for his insatiate
armies. At the public balls given at the Tuileries he would walk about
the gorgeous drawing-rooms, and when a lady was presented to him he
would snap out, sharply:
"How many children have you? "
If she were able to answer that she had several the emperor would look
pleased and would pay her some compliment; but if she said that she had
none he would turn upon her sharply and say:
"Then go home and have some! "
Of the four women who influenced his life, first must come Josephine,
because she secured him his earliest chance of advancement. She met him
through Barras, with whom she was said to be rather intimate. The young
soldier was fascinated by her--the more because she was older than he
and possessed all the practised arts of the creole and the woman of the
world. When she married him she brought him as her dowry the command of
the army of Italy, where in a few months he made the tri-color, borne by
ragged troops, triumphant over the splendidly equipped hosts of Austria.
She was his first love, and his knowledge of her perfidy gave him the
greatest shock and horror of his whole life; yet she might have held him
to the end if she had borne an heir to the imperial throne. It was her
failure to do so that led Napoleon to divorce Josephine and marry the
thick-lipped Marie Louise of Austria. There were times later when he
showed signs of regret and said:
"I have had no luck since I gave up Josephine! "
Marie Louise was of importance for a time--the short time when she
entertained her husband and delighted him by giving birth to the little
King of Rome. Yet in the end she was but an episode; fleeing from her
husband in his misfortune, becoming the mistress of Count Neipperg, and
letting her son--l'Aiglon--die in a land that was far from France.
Napoleon's sister, Pauline Bonaparte, was the third woman who comes to
mind when we contemplate the great Corsican's career. She, too, is an
episode. During the period of his ascendancy she plagued him with her
wanton ways, her sauciness and trickery. It was amusing to throw him
into one of his violent rages; but Pauline was true at heart, and when
her great brother was sent to Elba she followed him devotedly and gave
him all her store of jewels, including the famous Borghese diamonds,
perhaps the most superb of all gems known to the western world. She
would gladly have followed him, also, to St. Helena had she been
permitted. Remaining behind, she did everything possible in conspiring
to secure his freedom.
But, after all, Pauline and Marie Louise count for comparatively little.
Josephine's fate was interwoven with Napoleon's; and, with his Corsican
superstition, he often said so. The fourth woman, of whom I am writing
here, may be said to have almost equaled Josephine in her influence on
the emperor as well as in the pathos of her life-story.
On New-Year's Day of 1807 Napoleon, who was then almost Emperor of
Europe, passed through the little town of Bronia, in Poland. Riding with
his cavalry to Warsaw, the ancient capital of the Polish kingdom, he
seemed a very demigod of battle.
True, he had had to abandon his long-cherished design of invading and
overrunning England, and Nelson had shattered his fleets and practically
driven his flag from the sea; but the naval disaster of Trafalgar had
speedily been followed by the triumph of Austerlitz, the greatest and
most brilliant of all Napoleon's victories, which left Austria and
Russia humbled to the very ground before him.
Then Prussia had dared to defy the over-bearing conqueror and had put
into the field against him her armies trained by Frederick the Great;
but these he had shattered almost at a stroke, winning in one day the
decisive battles of Jena and Auerstadt. He had stabled his horses in
the royal palace of the Hohenzollerns and had pursued the remnant of the
Prussian forces to the Russian border.
As he marched into the Polish provinces the people swarmed by thousands
to meet him and hail him as their country's savior. They believed down
to the very last that Bonaparte would make the Poles once more a free
and independent nation and rescue them from the tyranny of Russia.
Napoleon played upon this feeling in every manner known to his artful
mind. He used it to alarm the Czar. He used it to intimidate the Emperor
of Austria; but more especially did he use it among the Poles themselves
to win for his armies thousands upon thousands of gallant soldiers, who
believed that in fighting for Napoleon they were fighting for the final
independence of their native land.
Therefore, with the intensity of patriotism which is a passion among the
Poles, every man and every woman gazed at Napoleon with something like
adoration; for was not he the mighty warrior who had in his gift what
all desired? Soldiers of every rank swarmed to his standards. Princes
and nobles flocked about him. Those who stayed at home repeated
wonderful stories of his victories and prayed for him and fed the flame
which spread through all the country. It was felt that no sacrifice was
too great to win his favor; that to him, as to a deity, everything that
he desired should be yielded up, since he was to restore the liberty of
Poland.
And hence, when the carriage of the emperor dashed into Bronia,
surrounded by Polish lancers and French cuirassiers, the enormous crowd
surged forward and blocked the way so that their hero could not pass
because of their cheers and cries and supplications.
In the midst of it all there came a voice of peculiar sweetness from the
thickest portion of the crowd.
"Please let me pass! " said the voice. "Let me see him, if only for a
moment! "
The populace rolled backward, and through the lane which they made a
beautiful girl with dark blue eyes that flamed and streaming hair that
had become loosened about her radiant face was confronting the emperor.
Carried away by her enthusiasm, she cried:
"Thrice welcome to Poland! We can do or say nothing to express our joy
in the country which you will surely deliver from its tyrant. "
The emperor bowed and, with a smile, handed a great bouquet of roses to
the girl, for her beauty and her enthusiasm had made a deep impression
on him.
"Take it," said he, "as a proof of my admiration. I trust that I may
have the pleasure of meeting you at Warsaw and of hearing your thanks
from those beautiful lips. "
In a moment more the trumpets rang out shrilly, the horsemen closed up
beside the imperial carriage, and it rolled away amid the tumultuous
shouting of the populace.
The girl who had so attracted Napoleon's attention was Marie Walewska,
descended from an ancient though impoverished family in Poland. When she
was only fifteen she was courted by one of the wealthiest men in Poland,
the Count Walewska. He was three or four times her age, yet her dark
blue eyes, her massive golden hair, and the exquisite grace of her
figure led him to plead that she might become his wife. She had accepted
him, but the marriage was that of a mere child, and her interest still
centered upon her country and took the form of patriotism rather than
that of wifehood and maternity.
It was for this reason that the young Countess had visited Bronia. She
was now eighteen years of age and still had the sort of romantic feeling
which led her to think that she would keep in some secret hiding-place
the bouquet which the greatest man alive had given her.
But Napoleon was not the sort of man to forget anything that had given
him either pleasure or the reverse. He who, at the height of his cares,
could recall instantly how many cannon were in each seaport of France
and could make out an accurate list of all his military stores; he who
could call by name every soldier in his guard, with a full remembrance
of the battles each man had fought in and the honors that he had won--he
was not likely to forget so lovely a face as the one which had gleamed
with peculiar radiance through the crowd at Bronia.
On reaching Warsaw he asked one or two well-informed persons about
this beautiful stranger. Only a few hours had passed before Prince
Poniatowski, accompanied by other nobles, called upon her at her home.
"I am directed, madam," said he, "by order of the Emperor of France,
to bid you to be present at a ball that is to be given in his honor
to-morrow evening. "
Mme. Walewska was startled, and her face grew hot with blushes. Did the
emperor remember her escapade at Bronia? If so, how had he discovered
her? Why should he seek her out and do her such an honor?
"That, madam, is his imperial majesty's affair," Poniatowski told her.
"I merely obey his instructions and ask your presence at the ball.
Perhaps Heaven has marked you out to be the means of saving our unhappy
country. "
In this way, by playing on her patriotism, Poniatowski almost persuaded
her, and yet something held her back. She trembled, though she was
greatly fascinated; and finally she refused to go.
Scarcely had the envoy left her, however, when a great company of nobles
entered in groups and begged her to humor the emperor. Finally her own
husband joined in their entreaties and actually commanded her to go; so
at last she was compelled to yield.
It was by no means the frank and radiant girl who was now preparing
again to meet the emperor. She knew not why, and yet her heart was full
of trepidation and nervous fright, the cause of which she could not
guess, yet which made her task a severe ordeal. She dressed herself in
white satin, with no adornment save a wreath of foliage in her hair.
As she entered the ballroom she was welcomed by hundreds whom she had
never seen before, but who were of the highest nobility of Poland.
Murmurs of admiration followed her, and finally Poniatowski came to her
and complimented her, besides bringing her a message that the emperor
desired her to dance with him.
"I am very sorry," she said, with a quiver of the lips, "but I really
cannot dance. Be kind enough to ask the emperor to excuse me. "
But at that very moment she felt some strange magnetic influence; and
without looking up she could feel that Napoleon himself was standing by
her as she sat with blanched face and downcast eyes, not daring to look
up at him.
"White upon white is a mistake, madam," said the emperor, in his
gentlest tones. Then, stooping low, he whispered, "I had expected a far
different reception. "
She neither smiled nor met his eyes. He stood there for a moment and
then passed on, leaving her to return to her home with a heavy heart.
The young countess felt that she had acted wrongly, and yet there was an
instinct--an instinct that she could not conquer.
In the gray of the morning, while she was still tossing feverishly, her
maid knocked at the door and brought her a hastily scribbled note. It
ran as follows:
I saw none but you, I admired none but you; I desire only you. Answer at
once, and calm the impatient ardor of--N.
These passionate words burned from her eyes the veil that had hidden
the truth from her. What before had been mere blind instinct became an
actual verity. Why had she at first rushed forth into the very streets
to hail the possible deliverer of her country, and then why had she
shrunk from him when he sought to honor her! It was all clear enough
now. This bedside missive meant that he had intended her dishonor and
that he had looked upon her simply as a possible mistress.
At once she crushed the note angrily in her hand.
"There is no answer at all," said she, bursting into bitter tears at the
very thought that he should dare to treat her in this way.
But on the following morning when she awoke her maid was standing beside
her with a second letter from Napoleon. She refused to open it and
placed it in a packet with the first letter, and ordered that both of
them should be returned to the emperor.
She shrank from speaking to her husband of what had happened, and there
was no one else in whom she dared confide. All through that day there
came hundreds of visitors, either of princely rank or men who had won
fame by their gallantry and courage. They all begged to see her, but to
them all she sent one answer--that she was ill and could see no one.
After a time her husband burst into her room, and insisted that she
should see them.
"Why," exclaimed he, "you are insulting the greatest men and the
noblest women of Poland! More than that, there are some of the most
distinguished Frenchmen sitting at your doorstep, as it were.
when he had half a dozen robust comrades by his side he could assume
a very manly appearance. Such was George IV. in his regency and in
his prime. He made that period famous for its card-playing, its deep
drinking, and for the dissolute conduct of its courtiers and noblemen no
less than for the gallantry of its soldiers and its momentous victories
on sea and land. It came, however, to be seen that his true achievements
were in reality only escapades, that his wit was only folly, and his
so-called "sensibility" was but sham. He invented buckles, striped
waistcoats, and flamboyant collars, but he knew nothing of the
principles of kingship or the laws by which a state is governed.
The fact that he had promiscuous affairs with women appealed at first
to the popular sense of the romantic. It was not long, however, before
these episodes were trampled down into the mire of vulgar scandal.
One of the first of them began when he sent a letter, signed "Florizel,"
to a young actress, "Perdita" Robinson. Mrs. Robinson, whose maiden
name was Mary Darby, and who was the original of famous portraits
by Gainsborough and Reynolds, was a woman of beauty, talent, and
temperament. George, wishing in every way to be "romantic," insisted
upon clandestine meetings on the Thames at Kew, with all the stage
trappings of the popular novels--cloaks, veils, faces hidden, and armed
watchers to warn her of approaching danger. Poor Perdita took this
nonsense so seriously that she gave up her natural vocation for the
stage, and forsook her husband, believing that the prince would never
weary of her.
He did weary of her very soon, and, with the brutality of a man of such
a type, turned her away with the promise of some money; after which he
cut her in the Park and refused to speak to her again. As for the money,
he may have meant to pay it, but Perdita had a long struggle before she
succeeded in getting it. It may be assumed that the prince had to borrow
it and that this obligation formed part of the debts which Parliament
paid for him.
It is not necessary to number the other women whose heads he turned.
They are too many for remembrance here, and they have no special
significance, save one who, as is generally believed, became his wife so
far as the church could make her so. An act of 1772 had made it
illegal for any member of the English royal family to marry without the
permission of the king. A marriage contracted without the king's consent
might be lawful in the eyes of the church, but the children born of it
could not inherit any claim to the throne.
It may be remarked here that this withholding of permission was strictly
enforced. Thus William IV. , who succeeded George IV. , was married,
before his accession to the throne, to Mrs. Jordan (Dorothy Bland).
Afterward he lawfully married a woman of royal birth who was known as
Queen Adelaide.
There is an interesting story which tells how Queen Victoria came to
be born because her father, the Duke of Kent, was practically forced
to give up a morganatic union which he greatly preferred to a marriage
arranged for him by Parliament. Except the Duke of Cambridge, the Duke
of Kent was the only royal duke who was likely to have children in the
regular line. The only daughter of George IV. had died in childhood.
The Duke of Cumberland was for various reasons ineligible; the Duke of
Clarence, later King William IV. , was almost too old; and therefore, to
insure the succession, the Duke of Kent was begged to marry a young and
attractive woman, a princess of the house of Saxe-Coburg, who was ready
for the honor. It was greatly to the Duke's credit that he showed deep
and sincere feeling in this matter. As he said himself in effect:
"This French lady has stood by me in hard times and in good times,
too--why should I cast her off? She has been more than a wife to me. And
what do I care for your plans in Parliament? Send over for one of the
Stuarts--they are better men than the last lot of our fellows that you
have had! "
In the end, however, he was wearied out and was persuaded to marry, but
he insisted that a generous sum should be settled on the lady who had
been so long his true companion, and to whom, no doubt, he gave many a
wistful thought in his new but unfamiliar quarters in Kensington Palace,
which was assigned as his residence.
Again, the second Duke of Cambridge, who died only a few years ago,
greatly desired to marry a lady who was not of royal rank, though of
fine breeding and of good birth. He besought his young cousin, as
head of the family, to grant him this privilege of marriage; but Queen
Victoria stubbornly refused. The duke was married according to the rites
of the church, but he could not make his wife a duchess. The queen never
quite forgave him for his partial defiance of her wishes, though the
duke's wife--she was usually spoken of as Mrs. FitzGeorge--was received
almost everywhere, and two of her sons hold high rank in the British
army and navy, respectively.
The one real love story in the life of George IV. is that which tells of
his marriage with a lady who might well have been the wife of any king.
This was Maria Anne Smythe, better known as Mrs. Fitzherbert, who was
six years older than the young prince when she first met him in company
with a body of gentlemen and ladies in 1784.
Maria Fitzherbert's face was one which always displayed its best
advantages. Her eyes were peculiarly languishing, and, as she had
already been twice a widow, and was six years his senior, she had the
advantage over a less experienced lover. Likewise, she was a Catholic,
and so by another act of Parliament any marriage with her would be
illegal. Yet just because of all these different objections the prince
was doubly drawn to her, and was willing to sacrifice even the throne if
he could but win her.
His father, the king, called him into the royal presence and said:
"George, it is time that you should settle down and insure the
succession to the throne. "
"Sir," replied the prince, "I prefer to resign the succession and let my
brother have it, and that I should live as a private English gentleman. "
Mrs. Fitzherbert was not the sort of woman to give herself up readily to
a morganatic connection. Moreover, she soon came to love Prince George
too well to entangle him in a doubtful alliance with one of another
faith than his. Not long after he first met her the prince, who was
always given to private theatricals, sent messengers riding in hot haste
to her house to tell her that he had stabbed himself, that he begged
to see her, and that unless she came he would repeat the act. The lady
yielded, and hurried to Carlton House, the prince's residence; but she
was prudent enough to take with her the Duchess of Devonshire, who was a
reigning beauty of the court.
The scene which followed was theatrical rather than impressive. --The
prince was found in his sleeping-chamber, pale and with his ruffles
blood-stained. He played the part of a youthful and love-stricken wooer,
vowing that he would marry the woman of his heart or stab himself
again. In the presence of his messengers, who, with the duchess,
were witnesses, he formally took the lady as his wife, while Lady
Devonshire's wedding-ring sealed the troth. The prince also acknowledged
it in a document.
Mrs. Fitzherbert was, in fact, a woman of sound sense. Shortly after
this scene of melodramatic intensity her wits came back to her, and she
recognized that she had merely gone through a meaningless farce. So
she sent back the prince's document and the ring and hastened to
the Continent, where he could not reach her, although his detectives
followed her steps for a year.
At the last she yielded, however, and came home to marry the prince
in such fashion as she could--a marriage of love, and surely one of
morality, though not of parliamentary law. The ceremony was performed
"in her own drawing-room in her house in London, in the presence of the
officiating Protestant clergyman and two of her own nearest relatives. "
Such is the serious statement of Lord Stourton, who was Mrs.
Fitzherbert's cousin and confidant. The truth of it was never denied,
and Mrs. Fitzherbert was always treated with respect, and even regarded
as a person of great distinction. Nevertheless, on more than one
occasion the prince had his friends in Parliament deny the marriage in
order that his debts might be paid and new allowances issued to him by
the Treasury.
George certainly felt himself a husband. Like any other married prince,
he set himself to build a palace for his country home. While in search
of some suitable spot he chanced to visit the "pretty fishing-village"
of Brighton to see his uncle, the Duke of Cumberland. Doubtless he found
it an attractive place, yet this may have been not so much because
of its view of the sea as for the reason that Mrs. Fitzherbert had
previously lived there.
However, in 1784 the prince sent down his chief cook to make
arrangements for the next royal visit. The cook engaged a house on the
spot where the Pavilion now stands, and from that time Brighton began to
be an extremely fashionable place. The court doctors, giving advice that
was agreeable, recommended their royal patient to take sea-bathing at
Brighton. At once the place sprang into popularity.
At first the gentry were crowded into lodging-houses and the
accommodations were primitive to a degree. But soon handsome villas
arose on every side; hotels appeared; places of amusement were opened.
The prince himself began to build a tasteless but showy structure,
partly Chinese and partly Indian in style, on the fashionable promenade
of the Steyne.
During his life with Mrs. Fitzherbert at Brighton the prince held what
was practically a court. Hundreds of the aristocracy came down from
London and made their temporary dwellings there; while thousands who
were by no means of the court made the place what is now popularly
called "London by the Sea. " There were the Duc de Chartres, of France;
statesmen and rakes, like Fox, Sheridan, and the Earl of Barrymore; a
very beautiful woman, named Mrs. Couch, a favorite singer at the opera,
to whom the prince gave at one time jewels worth ten thousand pounds;
and a sister of the Earl of Barrymore, who was as notorious as her
brother. She often took the president's chair at a club which George's
friends had organized and which she had christened the Hell Fire Club.
Such persons were not the only visitors at Brighton. Men of much more
serious demeanor came down to visit the prince and brought with them
quieter society. Nevertheless, for a considerable time the place was
most noted for its wild scenes of revelry, into which George frequently
entered, though his home life with Mrs. Fitzherbert at the Pavilion was
a decorous one.
No one felt any doubt as to the marriage of the two persons, who seemed
so much like a prince and a princess. Some of the people of the place
addressed Mrs. Fitzherbert as "Mrs. Prince. " The old king and his wife,
however, much deplored their son's relation with her. This was partly
due to the fact that Mrs. Fitzherbert was a Catholic and that she had
received a number of French nuns who had been driven out of France at
the time of the Revolution. But no less displeasure was caused by the
prince's racing and dicing, which swelled his debts to almost a million
pounds, so that Parliament and, indeed, the sober part of England were
set against him.
Of course, his marriage to Mrs. Fitzherbert had no legal status; nor is
there any reason for believing that she ever became a mother. She had
no children by her former two husbands, and Lord Stourton testified
positively that she never had either son or daughter by Prince George.
Nevertheless, more than one American claimant has risen to advance
some utterly visionary claim to the English throne by reason of alleged
descent from Prince George and Mrs. Fitzherbert.
Neither William IV. nor Queen Victoria ever spent much time at Brighton.
In King William's case it was explained that the dampness of the
Pavilion did not suit him; and as to Queen Victoria, it was said that
she disliked the fact that buildings had been erected so as to cut
off the view of the sea. It is quite likely, however, that the queen
objected to the associations of the place, and did not care to be
reminded of the time when her uncle had lived there so long in a
morganatic state of marriage.
At length the time came when the king, Parliament, and the people at
large insisted that the Prince of Wales should make a legal marriage,
and a wife was selected for him in the person of Caroline, daughter of
the Duke of Brunswick. This marriage took place exactly ten years after
his wedding with the beautiful and gentle-mannered Mrs. Fitzherbert.
With the latter he had known many days and hours of happiness. With
Princess Caroline he had no happiness at all.
Prince George met her at the pier to greet her. It is said that as he
took her hand he kissed her, and then, suddenly recoiling, he whispered
to one of his friends:
"For God's sake, George, give me a glass of brandy! "
Such an utterance was more brutal and barbaric than anything his bride
could have conceived of, though it is probable, fortunately, that she
did not understand him by reason of her ignorance of English.
We need not go through the unhappy story of this unsympathetic,
neglected, rebellious wife. Her life with the prince soon became one
of open warfare; but instead of leaving England she remained to set the
kingdom in an uproar. As soon as his father died and he became king,
George sued her for divorce. Half the people sided with the queen,
while the rest regarded her as a vulgar creature who made love to her
attendants and brought dishonor on the English throne. It was a sorry,
sordid contrast between the young Prince George who had posed as a sort
of cavalier and this now furious gray old man wrangling with his furious
German wife.
Well might he look back to the time when he met Perdita in the moonlight
on the Thames, or when he played the part of Florizel, or, better still,
when he enjoyed the sincere and disinterested love of the gentle woman
who was his wife in all but legal status. Caroline of Brunswick was
thrust away from the king's coronation. She took a house within sight of
Westminster Abbey, so that she might make hag-like screeches to the
mob and to the king as he passed by. Presently, in August, 1821, only
a month after the coronation, she died, and her body was taken back to
Brunswick for burial.
George himself reigned for nine years longer. When he died in 1830 his
executor was the Duke of Wellington. The duke, in examining the late
king's private papers, found that he had kept with the greatest care
every letter written to him by his morganatic wife. During his last
illness she had sent him an affectionate missive which it is said George
"read eagerly. " Mrs. Fitzherbert wished the duke to give up her letters;
but he would do so only in return for those which he had written to her.
It was finally decided that it would be best to burn both his and hers.
This work was carried out in Mrs. Fitzherbert's own house by the lady,
the duke, and the Earl of Albemarle.
Of George it may be said that he has left as memories behind him only
three things that will be remembered. The first is the Pavilion at
Brighton, with its absurdly oriental decorations, its minarets and
flimsy towers. The second is the buckle which he invented and which
Thackeray has immortalized with his biting satire. The last is the story
of his marriage to Maria Fitzherbert, and of the influence exercised
upon him by the affection of a good woman.
CHARLOTTE CORDAY AND ADAM LUX
Perhaps some readers will consider this story inconsistent with those
that have preceded it. Yet, as it is little known to most readers and as
it is perhaps unique in the history of romantic love, I cannot forbear
relating it; for I believe that it is full of curious interest and
pathetic power.
All those who have written of the French Revolution have paused in
their chronicle of blood and flame to tell the episode of the peasant
Royalist, Charlotte Corday; but in telling it they have often omitted
the one part of the story that is personal and not political. The
tragic record of this French girl and her self-sacrifice has been told a
thousand times by writers in many languages; yet almost all of them have
neglected the brief romance which followed her daring deed and which was
consummated after her death upon the guillotine. It is worth our while
to speak first of Charlotte herself and of the man she slew, and then
to tell that other tale which ought always to be entwined with her great
deed of daring.
Charlotte Corday--Marie Anne Charlotte Corday d'Armand--was a native of
Normandy, and was descended, as her name implies, from noble ancestors.
Her forefathers, indeed, had been statesmen, civil rulers, and soldiers,
and among them was numbered the famous poet Corneille, whom the French
rank with Shakespeare. But a century or more of vicissitudes had reduced
her branch of the family almost to the position of peasants--a fact
which partly justifies the name that some give her when they call her
"the Jeanne d'Arc of the Revolution. "
She did not, however, spend her girlish years amid the fields and woods
tending her sheep, as did the other Jeanne d'Arc; but she was placed
in charge of the sisters in a convent, and from them she received such
education as she had. She was a lonely child, and her thoughts turned
inward, brooding over many things.
After she had left the convent she was sent to live with an aunt. Here
she devoted herself to reading over and over the few books which
the house contained. These consisted largely of the deistic writers,
especially Voltaire, and to some extent they destroyed her convent
faith, though it is not likely that she understood them very fully.
More to her taste was a copy of Plutarch's Lives. These famous stories
fascinated her. They told her of battle and siege, of intrigue and
heroism, and of that romantic love of country which led men to throw
away their lives for the sake of a whole people. Brutus and Regulus were
her heroes. To die for the many seemed to her the most glorious end that
any one could seek. When she thought of it she thrilled with a sort
of ecstasy, and longed with all the passion of her nature that such a
glorious fate might be her own.
Charlotte had nearly come to womanhood at the time when the French
Revolution first broke out. Royalist though she had been in her
sympathies, she felt the justice of the people's cause. She had seen the
suffering of the peasantry, the brutality of the tax-gatherers, and all
the oppression of the old regime. But what she hoped for was a
democracy of order and equality and peace. Could the king reign as a
constitutional monarch rather than as a despot, this was all for which
she cared.
In Normandy, where she lived, were many of those moderate republicans
known as Girondists, who felt as she did and who hoped for the same
peaceful end to the great outbreak. On the other hand, in Paris, the
party of the Mountain, as it was called, ruled with a savage violence
that soon was to culminate in the Reign of Terror. Already the
guillotine ran red with noble blood. Already the king had bowed his head
to the fatal knife. Already the threat had gone forth that a mere breath
of suspicion or a pointed finger might be enough to lead men and women
to a gory death.
In her quiet home near Caen Charlotte Corday heard as from afar the
story of this dreadful saturnalia of assassination which was making
Paris a city of bloody mist. Men and women of the Girondist party came
to tell her of the hideous deeds that were perpetrated there. All these
horrors gradually wove themselves in the young girl's imagination around
the sinister and repulsive figure of Jean Paul Marat. She knew nothing
of his associates, Danton and Robespierre. It was in Marat alone that
she saw the monster who sent innocent thousands to their graves, and who
reveled like some arch-fiend in murder and gruesome death.
In his earlier years Marat had been a very different figure--an
accomplished physician, the friend of nobles, a man of science and
original thought, so that he was nearly elected to the Academy of
Sciences. His studies in electricity gained for him the admiration
of Benjamin Franklin and the praise of Goethe. But when he turned to
politics he left all this career behind him. He plunged into the very
mire of red republicanism, and even there he was for a time so much
hated that he sought refuge in London to save his life.
On his return he was hunted by his enemies, so that his only place
of refuge was in the sewers and drains of Paris. A woman, one Simonne
Evrard, helped him to escape his pursuers. In the sewers, however,
he contracted a dreadful skin-disease from which he never afterward
recovered, and which was extremely painful as well as shocking to
behold.
It is small wonder that the stories about Marat circulated through the
provinces made him seem more a devil than a man. His vindictiveness
against the Girondists brought all of this straight home to Charlotte
Corday and led her to dream of acting the part of Brutus, so that she
might free her country from this hideous tyrant.
In January, 1793, King Louis XVI. met his death upon the scaffold; and
the queen was thrust into a foul prison. This was a signal for activity
among the Girondists in Normandy, and especially at Caen, where
Charlotte was present at their meetings and heard their fervid oratory.
There was a plot to march on Paris, yet in some instinctive way she felt
that such a scheme must fail. It was then that she definitely formed
the plan of going herself, alone, to the French capital to seek out the
hideous Marat and to kill him with her own hands.
To this end she made application for a passport allowing her to
visit Paris. This passport still exists, and it gives us an official
description of the girl. It reads:
Allow citizen Marie Corday to pass. She is twenty-four years of age,
five feet and one inch in height, hair and eyebrows chestnut color, eyes
gray, forehead high, mouth medium size, chin dimpled, and an oval face.
Apart from this verbal description we have two portraits painted while
she was in prison. Both of them make the description of the passport
seem faint and pale. The real Charlotte had a wealth of chestnut hair
which fell about her face and neck in glorious abundance. Her great
gray eyes spoke eloquently of truth and courage. Her mouth was firm yet
winsome, and her form combined both strength and grace.
Such is the girl
who, on reaching Paris, wrote to Marat in these words:
Citizen, I have just arrived from Caen. Your love for your native place
doubtless makes you wish to learn the events which have occurred in that
part of the republic. I shall call at your residence in about an hour.
Be so good as to receive me and give me a brief interview. I will put
you in such condition as to render great service to France.
This letter failed to gain her admission, and so did another which she
wrote soon after. The fact is that Marat was grievously ill. His disease
had reached a point where the pain could be assuaged only by hot water;
and he spent the greater part of his time wrapped in a blanket and lying
in a large tub.
A third time, however, the persistent girl called at his house and
insisted that she must see him, saying that she was herself in danger
from the enemies of the Republic. Through an open door Marat heard her
mellow voice and gave orders that she should be admitted.
As she entered she gazed for a moment upon the lank figure rolling in
the tub, the rat-like face, and the shifting eyes. Then she approached
him, concealing in the bosom of her dress a long carving-knife which she
had purchased for two francs. In answer to Marat's questioning look she
told him that there was much excitement at Caen and that the Girondists
were plotting there.
To this Marat answered, in his harsh voice:
"All these men you mention shall be guillotined in the next few days! "
As he spoke Charlotte flashed out the terrible knife and with all her
strength she plunged it into his left side, where it pierced a lung and
a portion of his heart.
Marat, with the blood gushing from his mouth, cried out:
"Help, darling! "
His cry was meant for one of the two women in the house. Both heard it,
for they were in the next room; and both of them rushed in and succeeded
in pinioning Charlotte Corday, who, indeed, made only a slight effort to
escape. Troops were summoned, she was taken to the Prison de l'Abbaye,
and soon after she was arraigned before the revolutionary tribunal.
Placed in the dock, she glanced about her with an air of pride, as
of one who gloried in the act which she had just performed. A written
charge was read. She was asked what she had to say. Lifting her head
with a look of infinite satisfaction, she answered in a ringing voice:
"Nothing--except that I succeeded! "
A lawyer was assigned for her defense. He pleaded for her earnestly,
declaring that she must he regarded as insane; but those clear, calm
eyes and that gentle face made her sanity a matter of little doubt.
She showed her quick wit in the answers which she gave to the rough
prosecutor, Fouquier-Tinville, who tried to make her confess that she
had accomplices.
"Who prompted you to do this deed? " roared Tinville.
"I needed no prompting. My own heart was sufficient. "
"In what, then, had Marat wronged you? "
"He was a savage beast who was going to destroy the remains of France in
the fires of civil war. "
"But whom did you expect to benefit? " insinuated the prosecutor.
"I have killed one man to save a hundred thousand. "
"What? Did you imagine that you had murdered all the Marats? "
"No, but, this one being dead, the rest will perhaps take warning. "
Thus her directness baffled all the efforts of the prosecution to trap
her into betraying any of her friends. The court, however, sentenced her
to death. She was then immured in the Conciergerie.
This dramatic court scene was the beginning of that strange, brief
romance to which one can scarcely find a parallel. At the time there
lived in Paris a young German named Adam Lux. The continual talk about
Charlotte Corday had filled him with curiosity regarding this young girl
who had been so daring and so patriotic. She was denounced on every hand
as a murderess with the face of a Medusa and the muscles of a Vulcan.
Street songs about her were dinned into the ears of Adam Lux.
As a student of human nature he was anxious to see this terrible
creature. He forced his way to the front of the crowded benches in the
court-room and took his stand behind a young artist who was finishing a
beautiful sketch. From that moment until the end of the trial the
eyes of Adam Lux were fastened on the prisoner. What a contrast to the
picture he had imagined!
A mass of regal chestnut hair crowned with the white cap of a Norman
peasant girl; gray eyes, very sad and serious, but looking serenely
forth from under long, dark lashes; lips slightly curved with an
expression of quiet humor; a face the color of the sun and wind, a
bust indicative of perfect health, the chin of a Caesar, and the whole
expression one of almost divine self-sacrifice. Such were the features
that the painter was swiftly putting upon his canvas; but behind them
Adam Lux discerned the soul for which he gladly sacrificed both his
liberty and his life.
He forgot his surroundings and seemed to see only that beautiful, pure
face and to hear only the exquisite cadences of the wonderful voice.
When Charlotte was led forth by a file of soldiers Adam staggered from
the scene and made his way as best he might to his lodgings. There he
lay prostrate, his whole soul filled with the love of her who had in an
instant won the adoration of his heart.
Once, and only once again, when the last scene opened on the tragedy,
did he behold the heroine of his dreams.
On the 17th of July Charlotte Corday was taken from her prison to the
gloomy guillotine. It was toward evening, and nature had given a setting
fit for such an end. Blue-black thunder-clouds rolled in huge masses
across the sky until their base appeared to rest on the very summit of
the guillotine. Distant thunder rolled and grumbled beyond the river.
Great drops of rain fell upon the soldiers' drums. Young, beautiful,
unconscious of any wrong, Charlotte Corday stood beneath the shadow of
the knife.
At the supreme moment a sudden ray from the setting sun broke through
the cloud-wrack and fell upon her slender figure until she glowed in the
eyes of the startled spectators like a statue cut in burnished bronze.
Thus illumined, as it were, by a light from heaven itself, she
bowed herself beneath the knife and paid the penalty of a noble, if
misdirected, impulse. As the blade fell her lips quivered with her last
and only plea:
"My duty is enough--the rest is nothing! "
Adam Lux rushed from the scene a man transformed. He bore graven upon
his heart neither the mob of tossing red caps nor the glare of the
sunset nor the blood-stained guillotine, but that last look from
those brilliant eyes. The sight almost deprived him of his reason. The
self-sacrifice of the only woman he had ever loved, even though she had
never so much as seen him, impelled him with a sort of fury to his own
destruction.
He wrote a bitter denunciation of the judges, of the officers, and
of all who had been followers of Marat. This document he printed,
and scattered copies of it through every quarter in Paris. The last
sentences are as follows:
The guillotine is no longer a disgrace. It has become a sacred altar,
from which every taint has been removed by the innocent blood shed
there on the 17th of July. Forgive me, my divine Charlotte, if I find
it impossible at the last moment to show the courage and the gentleness
that were yours! I glory because you are superior to me, for it is
right that she who is adored should be higher and more glorious than her
adorer!
This pamphlet, spread broadcast among the people, was soon reported to
the leaders of the rabble. Adam Lux was arrested for treason against
the Republic; but even these men had no desire to make a martyr of this
hot-headed youth. They would stop his mouth without taking his life.
Therefore he was tried and speedily found guilty, but an offer was
made him that he might have passports that would allow him to return to
Germany if only he would sign a retraction of his printed words.
Little did the judges understand the fiery heart of the man they had
to deal with. To die on the same scaffold as the woman whom he had
idealized was to him the crowning triumph of his romantic love. He gave
a prompt and insolent refusal to their offer. He swore that if released
he would denounce his darling's murderers with a still greater passion.
In anger the tribunal sentenced him to death. Only then he smiled and
thanked his judges courteously, and soon after went blithely to the
guillotine like a bridegroom to his marriage feast.
Adam Lux! Spirit courtship had been carried on silently all through that
terrible cross-examination of Charlotte Corday. His heart was betrothed
to hers in that single gleam of the setting sun when she bowed beneath
the knife. One may believe that these two souls were finally united
when the same knife fell sullenly upon his neck and when his life-blood
sprinkled the altar that was still stained with hers.
NAPOLEON AND MARIE WALEWSKA
There are four women who may be said to have deeply influenced the life
of Napoleon. These four are the only ones who need to be taken into
account by the student of his imperial career. The great emperor was
susceptible to feminine charms at all times; but just as it used to be
said of him that "his smile never rose above his eyes," so it might as
truly be said that in most instances the throbbing of his heart did not
affect his actions.
Women to him were the creatures of the moment, although he might seem to
care for them and to show his affection in extravagant ways, as in his
affair with Mlle. Georges, the beautiful but rather tiresome actress.
As for Mme. de Stael, she bored him to distraction by her assumption
of wisdom. That was not the kind of woman that Napoleon cared for. He
preferred that a woman should be womanly, and not a sort of owl to sit
and talk with him about the theory of government.
When it came to married women they interested him only because of
the children they might bear to grow up as recruits for his insatiate
armies. At the public balls given at the Tuileries he would walk about
the gorgeous drawing-rooms, and when a lady was presented to him he
would snap out, sharply:
"How many children have you? "
If she were able to answer that she had several the emperor would look
pleased and would pay her some compliment; but if she said that she had
none he would turn upon her sharply and say:
"Then go home and have some! "
Of the four women who influenced his life, first must come Josephine,
because she secured him his earliest chance of advancement. She met him
through Barras, with whom she was said to be rather intimate. The young
soldier was fascinated by her--the more because she was older than he
and possessed all the practised arts of the creole and the woman of the
world. When she married him she brought him as her dowry the command of
the army of Italy, where in a few months he made the tri-color, borne by
ragged troops, triumphant over the splendidly equipped hosts of Austria.
She was his first love, and his knowledge of her perfidy gave him the
greatest shock and horror of his whole life; yet she might have held him
to the end if she had borne an heir to the imperial throne. It was her
failure to do so that led Napoleon to divorce Josephine and marry the
thick-lipped Marie Louise of Austria. There were times later when he
showed signs of regret and said:
"I have had no luck since I gave up Josephine! "
Marie Louise was of importance for a time--the short time when she
entertained her husband and delighted him by giving birth to the little
King of Rome. Yet in the end she was but an episode; fleeing from her
husband in his misfortune, becoming the mistress of Count Neipperg, and
letting her son--l'Aiglon--die in a land that was far from France.
Napoleon's sister, Pauline Bonaparte, was the third woman who comes to
mind when we contemplate the great Corsican's career. She, too, is an
episode. During the period of his ascendancy she plagued him with her
wanton ways, her sauciness and trickery. It was amusing to throw him
into one of his violent rages; but Pauline was true at heart, and when
her great brother was sent to Elba she followed him devotedly and gave
him all her store of jewels, including the famous Borghese diamonds,
perhaps the most superb of all gems known to the western world. She
would gladly have followed him, also, to St. Helena had she been
permitted. Remaining behind, she did everything possible in conspiring
to secure his freedom.
But, after all, Pauline and Marie Louise count for comparatively little.
Josephine's fate was interwoven with Napoleon's; and, with his Corsican
superstition, he often said so. The fourth woman, of whom I am writing
here, may be said to have almost equaled Josephine in her influence on
the emperor as well as in the pathos of her life-story.
On New-Year's Day of 1807 Napoleon, who was then almost Emperor of
Europe, passed through the little town of Bronia, in Poland. Riding with
his cavalry to Warsaw, the ancient capital of the Polish kingdom, he
seemed a very demigod of battle.
True, he had had to abandon his long-cherished design of invading and
overrunning England, and Nelson had shattered his fleets and practically
driven his flag from the sea; but the naval disaster of Trafalgar had
speedily been followed by the triumph of Austerlitz, the greatest and
most brilliant of all Napoleon's victories, which left Austria and
Russia humbled to the very ground before him.
Then Prussia had dared to defy the over-bearing conqueror and had put
into the field against him her armies trained by Frederick the Great;
but these he had shattered almost at a stroke, winning in one day the
decisive battles of Jena and Auerstadt. He had stabled his horses in
the royal palace of the Hohenzollerns and had pursued the remnant of the
Prussian forces to the Russian border.
As he marched into the Polish provinces the people swarmed by thousands
to meet him and hail him as their country's savior. They believed down
to the very last that Bonaparte would make the Poles once more a free
and independent nation and rescue them from the tyranny of Russia.
Napoleon played upon this feeling in every manner known to his artful
mind. He used it to alarm the Czar. He used it to intimidate the Emperor
of Austria; but more especially did he use it among the Poles themselves
to win for his armies thousands upon thousands of gallant soldiers, who
believed that in fighting for Napoleon they were fighting for the final
independence of their native land.
Therefore, with the intensity of patriotism which is a passion among the
Poles, every man and every woman gazed at Napoleon with something like
adoration; for was not he the mighty warrior who had in his gift what
all desired? Soldiers of every rank swarmed to his standards. Princes
and nobles flocked about him. Those who stayed at home repeated
wonderful stories of his victories and prayed for him and fed the flame
which spread through all the country. It was felt that no sacrifice was
too great to win his favor; that to him, as to a deity, everything that
he desired should be yielded up, since he was to restore the liberty of
Poland.
And hence, when the carriage of the emperor dashed into Bronia,
surrounded by Polish lancers and French cuirassiers, the enormous crowd
surged forward and blocked the way so that their hero could not pass
because of their cheers and cries and supplications.
In the midst of it all there came a voice of peculiar sweetness from the
thickest portion of the crowd.
"Please let me pass! " said the voice. "Let me see him, if only for a
moment! "
The populace rolled backward, and through the lane which they made a
beautiful girl with dark blue eyes that flamed and streaming hair that
had become loosened about her radiant face was confronting the emperor.
Carried away by her enthusiasm, she cried:
"Thrice welcome to Poland! We can do or say nothing to express our joy
in the country which you will surely deliver from its tyrant. "
The emperor bowed and, with a smile, handed a great bouquet of roses to
the girl, for her beauty and her enthusiasm had made a deep impression
on him.
"Take it," said he, "as a proof of my admiration. I trust that I may
have the pleasure of meeting you at Warsaw and of hearing your thanks
from those beautiful lips. "
In a moment more the trumpets rang out shrilly, the horsemen closed up
beside the imperial carriage, and it rolled away amid the tumultuous
shouting of the populace.
The girl who had so attracted Napoleon's attention was Marie Walewska,
descended from an ancient though impoverished family in Poland. When she
was only fifteen she was courted by one of the wealthiest men in Poland,
the Count Walewska. He was three or four times her age, yet her dark
blue eyes, her massive golden hair, and the exquisite grace of her
figure led him to plead that she might become his wife. She had accepted
him, but the marriage was that of a mere child, and her interest still
centered upon her country and took the form of patriotism rather than
that of wifehood and maternity.
It was for this reason that the young Countess had visited Bronia. She
was now eighteen years of age and still had the sort of romantic feeling
which led her to think that she would keep in some secret hiding-place
the bouquet which the greatest man alive had given her.
But Napoleon was not the sort of man to forget anything that had given
him either pleasure or the reverse. He who, at the height of his cares,
could recall instantly how many cannon were in each seaport of France
and could make out an accurate list of all his military stores; he who
could call by name every soldier in his guard, with a full remembrance
of the battles each man had fought in and the honors that he had won--he
was not likely to forget so lovely a face as the one which had gleamed
with peculiar radiance through the crowd at Bronia.
On reaching Warsaw he asked one or two well-informed persons about
this beautiful stranger. Only a few hours had passed before Prince
Poniatowski, accompanied by other nobles, called upon her at her home.
"I am directed, madam," said he, "by order of the Emperor of France,
to bid you to be present at a ball that is to be given in his honor
to-morrow evening. "
Mme. Walewska was startled, and her face grew hot with blushes. Did the
emperor remember her escapade at Bronia? If so, how had he discovered
her? Why should he seek her out and do her such an honor?
"That, madam, is his imperial majesty's affair," Poniatowski told her.
"I merely obey his instructions and ask your presence at the ball.
Perhaps Heaven has marked you out to be the means of saving our unhappy
country. "
In this way, by playing on her patriotism, Poniatowski almost persuaded
her, and yet something held her back. She trembled, though she was
greatly fascinated; and finally she refused to go.
Scarcely had the envoy left her, however, when a great company of nobles
entered in groups and begged her to humor the emperor. Finally her own
husband joined in their entreaties and actually commanded her to go; so
at last she was compelled to yield.
It was by no means the frank and radiant girl who was now preparing
again to meet the emperor. She knew not why, and yet her heart was full
of trepidation and nervous fright, the cause of which she could not
guess, yet which made her task a severe ordeal. She dressed herself in
white satin, with no adornment save a wreath of foliage in her hair.
As she entered the ballroom she was welcomed by hundreds whom she had
never seen before, but who were of the highest nobility of Poland.
Murmurs of admiration followed her, and finally Poniatowski came to her
and complimented her, besides bringing her a message that the emperor
desired her to dance with him.
"I am very sorry," she said, with a quiver of the lips, "but I really
cannot dance. Be kind enough to ask the emperor to excuse me. "
But at that very moment she felt some strange magnetic influence; and
without looking up she could feel that Napoleon himself was standing by
her as she sat with blanched face and downcast eyes, not daring to look
up at him.
"White upon white is a mistake, madam," said the emperor, in his
gentlest tones. Then, stooping low, he whispered, "I had expected a far
different reception. "
She neither smiled nor met his eyes. He stood there for a moment and
then passed on, leaving her to return to her home with a heavy heart.
The young countess felt that she had acted wrongly, and yet there was an
instinct--an instinct that she could not conquer.
In the gray of the morning, while she was still tossing feverishly, her
maid knocked at the door and brought her a hastily scribbled note. It
ran as follows:
I saw none but you, I admired none but you; I desire only you. Answer at
once, and calm the impatient ardor of--N.
These passionate words burned from her eyes the veil that had hidden
the truth from her. What before had been mere blind instinct became an
actual verity. Why had she at first rushed forth into the very streets
to hail the possible deliverer of her country, and then why had she
shrunk from him when he sought to honor her! It was all clear enough
now. This bedside missive meant that he had intended her dishonor and
that he had looked upon her simply as a possible mistress.
At once she crushed the note angrily in her hand.
"There is no answer at all," said she, bursting into bitter tears at the
very thought that he should dare to treat her in this way.
But on the following morning when she awoke her maid was standing beside
her with a second letter from Napoleon. She refused to open it and
placed it in a packet with the first letter, and ordered that both of
them should be returned to the emperor.
She shrank from speaking to her husband of what had happened, and there
was no one else in whom she dared confide. All through that day there
came hundreds of visitors, either of princely rank or men who had won
fame by their gallantry and courage. They all begged to see her, but to
them all she sent one answer--that she was ill and could see no one.
After a time her husband burst into her room, and insisted that she
should see them.
"Why," exclaimed he, "you are insulting the greatest men and the
noblest women of Poland! More than that, there are some of the most
distinguished Frenchmen sitting at your doorstep, as it were.
