When he escaped from Elba and began the campaign of 1815
she presented him with all the Borghese diamonds.
she presented him with all the Borghese diamonds.
Orr - Famous Affinities of History, Romacen of Devotion
I cannot
shed French blood in a foreign cause. "
By this time, however, Marie Walewska had learned to love Napoleon for
his own sake. She could not resist his ardor, which matched the ardor
of the Poles themselves. Moreover, it flattered her to see the greatest
soldier in the world a suppliant for her smiles.
For some years she was Napoleon's close companion, spending long hours
with him and finally accompanying him to Paris. She was the mother of
Napoleon's only son who lived to manhood. This son, who bore the name of
Alexandre Florian de Walewski, was born in Poland in 1810, and later
was created a count and duke of the second French Empire. It may be said
parenthetically that he was a man of great ability. Living down to 1868,
he was made much of by Napoleon III. , who placed him in high offices
of state, which he filled with distinction. In contrast with the Duc
de Morny, who was Napoleon's illegitimate half-brother, Alexandre de
Walewski stood out in brilliant contrast. He would have nothing to do
with stock-jobbing and unseemly speculation.
"I may be poor," he said--though he was not poor--"but at least I
remember the glory of my father and what is due to his great name. "
As for Mme. Walewska, she was loyal to the emperor, and lacked the greed
of many women whom he had made his favorites. Even at Elba, when he
was in exile and disgrace, she visited him that she might endeavor to
console him. She was his counselor and friend as well as his earnestly
loved mate. When she died in Paris in 1817, while the dethroned emperor
was a prisoner at St. Helena, the word "Napoleon" was the last upon her
lips.
THE STORY OF PAULINE BONAPARTE
It was said of Napoleon long ago that he could govern emperors and
kings, but that not even he could rule his relatives. He himself once
declared:
"My family have done me far more harm than I have been able to do them
good. "
It would be an interesting historical study to determine just how far
the great soldier's family aided in his downfall by their selfishness,
their jealousy, their meanness, and their ingratitude.
There is something piquant in thinking of Napoleon as a domestic sort of
person. Indeed, it is rather difficult to do so. When we speak his name
we think of the stern warrior hurling his armies up bloody slopes and on
to bloody victory. He is the man whose steely eyes made his haughtiest
marshals tremble, or else the wise, far-seeing statesman and lawgiver;
but decidedly he is not a household model. We read of his sharp speech
to women, of his outrageous manners at the dinner-table, and of the
thousand and one details which Mme. de Remusat has chronicled--and
perhaps in part invented, for there has always existed the suspicion
that her animus was that of a woman who had herself sought the imperial
favor and had failed to win it.
But, in fact, all these stories relate to the Napoleon of courts and
palaces, and not to the Napoleon of home. In his private life this great
man was not merely affectionate and indulgent, but he even showed a
certain weakness where his relatives were concerned, so that he let them
prey upon him almost without end.
He had a great deal of the Italian largeness and lavishness of character
with his family. When a petty officer he nearly starved himself in
order to give his younger brother, Louis, a military education. He was
devotedly fond of children, and they were fond of him, as many anecdotes
attest. His passionate love for Josephine before he learned of her
infidelity is almost painful to read of; and even afterward, when he had
been disillusioned, and when she was paying Fouche a thousand francs
a day to spy upon Napoleon's every action, he still treated her with
friendliness and allowed her extravagance to embarrass him.
He made his eldest brother, Joseph, King of Spain, and Spain proved
almost as deadly to him as did Russia. He made his youngest brother,
Jerome, King of Westphalia, and Jerome turned the palace into a pigsty
and brought discredit on the very name of Bonaparte. His brother Louis,
for whom he had starved himself, he placed upon the throne of Holland,
and Louis promptly devoted himself to his own interests, conniving
at many things which were inimical to France. He was planning high
advancement for his brother Lucien, and Lucien suddenly married a
disreputable actress and fled with her to England, where he was received
with pleasure by the most persistent of all Napoleon's enemies.
So much for his brothers--incompetent, ungrateful, or openly his foes.
But his three sisters were no less remarkable in the relations which
they bore to him. They have been styled "the three crowned courtesans,"
and they have been condemned together as being utterly void of principle
and monsters of ingratitude.
Much of this censure was well deserved by all of them--by Caroline and
Elise and Pauline. But when we look at the facts impartially we shall
find something which makes Pauline stand out alone as infinitely
superior to her sisters. Of all the Bonapartes she was the only one who
showed fidelity and gratitude to the great emperor, her brother. Even
Mme. Mere, Napoleon's mother, who beyond all question transmitted to him
his great mental and physical power, did nothing for him. At the height
of his splendor she hoarded sous and francs and grumblingly remarked:
"All this is for a time. It isn't going to last! "
Pauline, however, was in one respect different from all her kindred.
Napoleon made Elise a princess in her own right and gave her the Grand
Duchy of Tuscany. He married Caroline to Marshal Murat, and they
became respectively King and Queen of Naples. For Pauline he did very
little--less, in fact, than for any other member of his family--and yet
she alone stood by him to the end.
This feather-headed, languishing, beautiful, distracting morsel of
frivolity, who had the manners of a kitten and the morals of a cat,
nevertheless was not wholly unworthy to be Napoleon's sister. One has to
tell many hard things of her; and yet one almost pardons her because
of her underlying devotion to the man who made the name of Bonaparte
illustrious for ever. Caroline, Queen of Naples, urged her husband to
turn against his former chief. Elise, sour and greedy, threw in
her fortunes with the Murats. Pauline, as we shall see, had the one
redeeming trait of gratitude.
To those who knew her she was from girlhood an incarnation of what
used to be called "femininity. " We have to-day another and a higher
definition of womanhood, but to her contemporaries, and to many modern
writers, she has seemed to be first of all woman--"woman to the tips of
her rosy finger-nails," says Levy. Those who saw her were distracted
by her loveliness. They say that no one can form any idea of her beauty
from her pictures. "A veritable masterpiece of creation," she had been
called. Frederic Masson declares:
She was so much more the typical woman that with her the defects common
to women reached their highest development, while her beauty attained a
perfection which may justly be called unique.
No one speaks of Pauline Bonaparte's character or of her intellect, but
wholly of her loveliness and charm, and, it must be added, of her utter
lack of anything like a moral sense.
Even as a child of thirteen, when the Bonapartes left Corsica and took
up their abode in Marseilles, she attracted universal attention by her
wonderful eyes, her grace, and also by the utter lack of decorum which
she showed. The Bonaparte girls at this time lived almost on charity.
The future emperor was then a captain of artillery and could give them
but little out of his scanty pay.
Pauline--or, as they called her in those days, Paulette--wore unbecoming
hats and shabby gowns, and shoes that were full of holes. None the
less, she was sought out by several men of note, among them Freron, a
commissioner of the Convention. He visited Pauline so often as to cause
unfavorable comment; but he was in love with her, and she fell in love
with him to the extent of her capacity. She used to write him love
letters in Italian, which were certainly not lacking in ardor. Here is
the end of one of them:
I love you always and most passionately. I love you for ever, my
beautiful idol, my heart, my appealing lover. I love you, love you, love
you, the most loved of lovers, and I swear never to love any one else!
This was interesting in view of the fact that soon afterward she fell in
love with Junot, who became a famous marshal. But her love affairs never
gave her any serious trouble; and the three sisters, who now began to
feel the influence of Napoleon's rise to power, enjoyed themselves as
they had never done before. At Antibes they had a beautiful villa, and
later a mansion at Milan.
By this time Napoleon had routed the Austrians in Italy, and all France
was ringing with his name. What was Pauline like in her maidenhood?
Arnault says:
She was an extraordinary combination of perfect physical beauty and the
strangest moral laxity. She was as pretty as you please, but utterly
unreasonable. She had no more manners than a school-girl--talking
incoherently, giggling at everything and nothing, and mimicking the most
serious persons of rank.
General de Ricard, who knew her then, tells in his monograph of the
private theatricals in which Pauline took part, and of the sport which
they had behind the scenes. He says:
The Bonaparte girls used literally to dress us. They pulled our ears and
slapped us, but they always kissed and made up later. We used to stay in
the girls' room all the time when they were dressing.
Napoleon was anxious to see his sisters in some way settled. He proposed
to General Marmont to marry Pauline. The girl was then only seventeen,
and one might have had some faith in her character. But Marmont was
shrewd and knew her far too well. The words in which he declined the
honor are interesting:
"I know that she is charming and exquisitely beautiful; yet I have
dreams of domestic happiness, of fidelity, and of virtue. Such dreams
are seldom realized, I know. Still, in the hope of winning them--"
And then he paused, coughed, and completed what he had to say in a sort
of mumble, but his meaning was wholly clear. He would not accept the
offer of Pauline in marriage, even though she was the sister of his
mighty chief.
Then Napoleon turned to General Leclerc, with whom Pauline had for
some time flirted, as she had flirted with almost all the officers of
Napoleon's staff. Leclerc was only twenty-six. He was rich and of good
manners, but rather serious and in poor health. This was not precisely
the sort of husband for Pauline, if we look at it in the conventional
way; but it served Napoleon's purpose and did not in the least interfere
with his sister's intrigues.
Poor Leclerc, who really loved Pauline, grew thin, and graver still
in manner. He was sent to Spain and Portugal, and finally was made
commander-in-chief of the French expedition to Haiti, where the famous
black rebel, Toussaint l'Ouverture, was heading an uprising of the
negroes.
Napoleon ordered Pauline to accompany her husband. Pauline flatly
refused, although she made this an occasion for ordering "mountains of
pretty clothes and pyramids of hats. " But still she refused to go on
board the flag-ship. Leclerc expostulated and pleaded, but the lovely
witch laughed in his face and still persisted that she would never go.
Word was brought to Napoleon. He made short work of her resistance.
"Bring a litter," he said, with one of his steely glances. "Order
six grenadiers to thrust her into it, and see that she goes on board
forthwith. "
And so, screeching like an angry cat, she was carried on board, and set
sail with her husband and one of her former lovers. She found Haiti and
Santo Domingo more agreeable than she had supposed. She was there a
sort of queen who could do as she pleased and have her orders implicitly
obeyed. Her dissipation was something frightful. Her folly and her
vanity were beyond belief.
But at the end of two years both she and her husband fell ill. He was
stricken down by the yellow fever, which was decimating the French
army. Pauline was suffering from the results of her life in a tropical
climate. Leclerc died, the expedition was abandoned, and Pauline
brought the general's body back to France. When he was buried she, still
recovering from her fever, had him interred in a costly coffin and paid
him the tribute of cutting off her beautiful hair and burying it with
him.
"What a touching tribute to her dead husband! " said some one to
Napoleon.
The emperor smiled cynically as he remarked:
"H'm! Of course she knows that her hair is bound to fall out after her
fever, and that it will come in longer and thicker for being cropped. "
Napoleon, in fact, though he loved Pauline better than his other
sisters--or perhaps because he loved her better--was very strict
with her. He obliged her to wear mourning, and to observe some of the
proprieties; but it was hard to keep her within bounds.
Presently it became noised about that Prince Camillo Borghese was
exceedingly intimate with her. The prince was an excellent specimen of
the fashionable Italian. He was immensely rich. His palace at Rome was
crammed with pictures, statues, and every sort of artistic treasure.
He was the owner, moreover, of the famous Borghese jewels, the finest
collection of diamonds in the world.
Napoleon rather sternly insisted upon her marrying Borghese.
Fortunately, the prince was very willing to be connected with Napoleon;
while Pauline was delighted at the idea of having diamonds that would
eclipse all the gems which Josephine possessed; for, like all of the
Bonapartes, she detested her brother's wife. So she would be married and
show her diamonds to Josephine. It was a bit of feminine malice which
she could not resist.
The marriage took place very quietly at Joseph Bonaparte's house,
because of the absence of Napoleon; but the newly made princess was
invited to visit Josephine at the palace of Saint-Cloud. Here was to be
the triumph of her life. She spent many days in planning a toilet that
should be absolutely crushing to Josephine. Whatever she wore must be a
background for the famous diamonds. Finally she decided on green velvet.
When the day came Pauline stood before a mirror and gazed at herself
with diamonds glistening in her hair, shimmering around her neck, and
fastened so thickly on her green velvet gown as to remind one of a
moving jewel-casket. She actually shed tears for joy. Then she entered
her carriage and drove out to Saint-Cloud.
But the Creole Josephine, though no longer young, was a woman of great
subtlety as well as charm. Stories had been told to her of the green
velvet, and therefore she had her drawing-room redecorated in the most
uncompromising blue. It killed the green velvet completely. As for the
diamonds, she met that maneuver by wearing not a single gem of any kind.
Her dress was an Indian muslin with a broad hem of gold.
Her exquisite simplicity, coupled with her dignity of bearing, made
the Princess Pauline, with her shower of diamonds, and her green velvet
displayed against the blue, seem absolutely vulgar. Josephine was most
generous in her admiration of the Borghese gems, and she kissed Pauline
on parting. The victory was hers.
There is another story of a defeat which Pauline met from another lady,
one Mme. de Coutades. This was at a magnificent ball given to the most
fashionable world of Paris. Pauline decided upon going, and intended,
in her own phrase, to blot out every woman there. She kept the secret of
her toilet absolutely, and she entered the ballroom at the psychological
moment, when all the guests had just assembled.
She appeared; and at sight of her the music stopped, silence fell upon
the assemblage, and a sort of quiver went through every one. Her costume
was of the finest muslin bordered with golden palm-leaves. Four bands,
spotted like a leopard's skin, were wound about her head, while these in
turn were supported by little clusters of golden grapes. She had copied
the head-dress of a Bacchante in the Louvre. All over her person were
cameos, and just beneath her breasts she wore a golden band held in
place by an engraved gem. Her beautiful wrists, arms, and hands were
bare. She had, in fact, blotted out her rivals.
Nevertheless, Mme. de Coutades took her revenge. She went up to Pauline,
who was lying on a divan to set off her loveliness, and began gazing at
the princess through a double eye-glass. Pauline felt flattered for a
moment, and then became uneasy. The lady who was looking at her said to
a companion, in a tone of compassion:
"What a pity! She really would be lovely if it weren't for THAT! "
"For what? " returned her escort.
"Why, are you blind? It's so remarkable that you SURELY must see it. "
Pauline was beginning to lose her self-composure. She flushed and looked
wildly about, wondering what was meant. Then she heard Mme. Coutades
say:
"Why, her ears. If I had such ears as those I would cut them off! "
Pauline gave one great gasp and fainted dead away. As a matter of fact,
her ears were not so bad. They were simply very flat and colorless,
forming a contrast with the rosy tints of her face. But from that moment
no one could see anything but these ears; and thereafter the princess
wore her hair low enough to cover them.
This may be seen in the statue of her by Canova. It was considered a
very daring thing for her to pose for him in the nude, for only a bit of
drapery is thrown over her lower limbs. Yet it is true that this
statue is absolutely classical in its conception and execution, and its
interest is heightened by the fact that its model was what she afterward
styled herself, with true Napoleonic pride--"a sister of Bonaparte. "
Pauline detested Josephine and was pleased when Napoleon divorced her;
but she also disliked the Austrian archduchess, Marie Louise, who was
Josephine's successor. On one occasion, at a great court function, she
got behind the empress and ran out her tongue at her, in full view of
all the nobles and distinguished persons present. Napoleon's eagle eye
flashed upon Pauline and blazed like fire upon ice. She actually took to
her heels, rushed out of the ball, and never visited the court again.
It would require much time to tell of her other eccentricities, of her
intrigues, which were innumerable, of her quarrel with her husband, and
of the minor breaches of decorum with which she startled Paris. One of
these was her choice of a huge negro to bathe her every morning. When
some one ventured to protest, she answered, naively:
"What! Do you call that thing a MAN? "
And she compromised by compelling her black servitor to go out and
marry some one at once, so that he might continue his ministrations with
propriety!
To her Napoleon showed himself far more severe than with either Caroline
or Elise. He gave her a marriage dowry of half a million francs when she
became the Princess Borghese, but after that he was continually checking
her extravagances. Yet in 1814, when the downfall came and Napoleon was
sent into exile at Elba, Pauline was the only one of all his relatives
to visit him and spend her time with him. His wife fell away and went
back to her Austrian relatives. Of all the Bonapartes only Pauline and
Mme. Mere remained faithful to the emperor.
Even then Napoleon refused to pay a bill of hers for sixty-two
francs, while he allowed her only two hundred and forty francs for the
maintenance of her horses. But she, with a generosity of which one would
have thought her quite incapable, gave to her brother a great part of
her fortune.
When he escaped from Elba and began the campaign of 1815
she presented him with all the Borghese diamonds. In fact, he had them
with him in his carriage at Waterloo, where they were captured by the
English. Contrast this with the meanness and ingratitude of her sisters
and her brothers, and one may well believe that she was sincerely proud
of what it meant to be la soeur de Bonaparte.
When he was sent to St. Helena she was ill in bed and could not
accompany him. Nevertheless, she tried to sell all her trinkets, of
which she was so proud, in order that she might give him help. When
he died she received the news with bitter tears "on hearing all the
particulars of that long agony. "
As for herself, she did not long survive. At the age of forty-four her
last moments came. Knowing that she was to die, she sent for Prince
Borghese and sought a reconciliation. But, after all, she died as she
had lived--"the queen of trinkets" (la reine des colifichets). She asked
the servant to bring a mirror. She gazed into it with her dying eyes;
and then, as she sank back, it was with a smile of deep content.
"I am not afraid to die," she said. "I am still beautiful! "
THE STORY OF THE EMPRESS MARIE LOUISE AND COUNT NEIPPERG
There is one famous woman whom history condemns while at the same time
it partly hides the facts which might mitigate the harshness of the
judgment that is passed upon her. This woman is Marie Louise, Empress
of France, consort of the great Napoleon, and archduchess of imperial
Austria. When the most brilliant figure in all history, after his
overthrow in 1814, was in tawdry exile on the petty island of Elba,
the empress was already about to become a mother; and the father of her
unborn child was not Napoleon, but another man. This is almost all that
is usually remembered of her--that she was unfaithful to Napoleon, that
she abandoned him in the hour of his defeat, and that she gave herself
with readiness to one inferior in rank, yet with whom she lived for
years, and to whom she bore what a French writer styled "a brood of
bastards. "
Naturally enough, the Austrian and German historians do not have much
to say of Marie Louise, because in her own disgrace she also brought
disgrace upon the proudest reigning family in Europe. Naturally, also,
French writers, even those who are hostile to Napoleon, do not care
to dwell upon the story; since France itself was humiliated when its
greatest genius and most splendid soldier was deceived by his Austrian
wife. Therefore there are still many who know little beyond the bare
fact that the Empress Marie Louise threw away her pride as a princess,
her reputation as a wife, and her honor as a woman. Her figure seems to
crouch in a sort of murky byway, and those who pass over the highroad of
history ignore it with averted eyes.
In reality the story of Napoleon and Marie Louise and of the Count von
Neipperg is one which, when you search it to the very core, leads you
straight to a sex problem of a very curious nature. Nowhere else does
it occur in the relations of the great personages of history; but in
literature Balzac, that master of psychology, has touched upon the theme
in the early chapters of his famous novel called "A Woman of Thirty. "
As to the Napoleonic story, let us first recall the facts of the
case, giving them in such order that their full significance may be
understood.
In 1809 Napoleon, then at the plenitude of his power, shook himself free
from the clinging clasp of Josephine and procured the annulment of his
marriage to her. He really owed her nothing. Before he knew her she had
been the mistress of another. In the first years of their life together
she had been notoriously unfaithful to him. He had held to her from
habit which was in part a superstition; but the remembrance of the wrong
which she had done him made her faded charms at times almost repulsive.
And then Josephine had never borne him any children; and without a
son to perpetuate his dynasty, the gigantic achievements which he
had wrought seemed futile in his eyes, and likely to crumble into
nothingness when he should die.
No sooner had the marriage been annulled than his titanic ambition
leaped, as it always did, to a tremendous pinnacle. He would wed. He
would have children. But he would wed no petty princess. This man who in
his early youth had felt honored by a marriage with the almost declassee
widow of a creole planter now stretched out his hand that he might take
to himself a woman not merely royal but imperial.
At first he sought the sister of the Czar of Russia; but Alexander
entertained a profound distrust of the French emperor, and managed to
evade the tentative demand. There was, however, a reigning family far
more ancient than the Romanoffs--a family which had held the imperial
dignity for nearly six centuries--the oldest and the noblest blood in
Europe. This was the Austrian house of Hapsburg. Its head, the Emperor
Francis, had thirteen children, of whom the eldest, the Archduchess
Marie Louise, was then in her nineteenth year.
Napoleon had resented the rebuff which the Czar had given him. He
turned, therefore, the more eagerly to the other project. Yet there were
many reasons why an Austrian marriage might be dangerous, or, at any
rate, ill-omened. Only sixteen years before, an Austrian arch-duchess,
Marie Antionette, married to the ruler of France, had met her death
upon the scaffold, hated and cursed by the French people, who had always
blamed "the Austrian" for the evil days which had ended in the flames
of revolution. Again, the father of the girl to whom Napoleon's fancy
turned had been the bitter enemy of the new regime in France. His troops
had been beaten by the French in five wars and had been crushed at
Austerlitz and at Wagram. Bonaparte had twice entered Vienna at the head
of a conquering army, and thrice he had slept in the imperial palace
at Schonbrunn, while Francis was fleeing through the dark, a beaten
fugitive pursued by the swift squadrons of French cavalry.
The feeling of Francis of Austria was not merely that of the vanquished
toward the victor. It was a deep hatred almost religious in its fervor.
He was the head and front of the old-time feudalism of birth and blood;
Napoleon was the incarnation of the modern spirit which demolished
thrones and set an iron heel upon crowned heads, giving the sacred
titles of king and prince to soldiers who, even in palaces, still showed
the swaggering brutality of the camp and the stable whence they sprang.
Yet, just because an alliance with the Austrian house seemed in so many
ways impossible, the thought of it inflamed the ardor of Napoleon all
the more.
"Impossible? " he had once said, contemptuously. "The word 'impossible'
is not French. "
The Austrian alliance, unnatural though it seemed, was certainly quite
possible. In the year 1809 Napoleon had finished his fifth war with
Austria by the terrific battle of Wagram, which brought the empire of
the Hapsburgs to the very dust. The conqueror's rude hand had stripped
from Francis province after province. He had even let fall hints that
the Hapsburgs might be dethroned and that Austria might disappear from
the map of Europe, to be divided between himself and the Russian Czar,
who was still his ally. It was at this psychological moment that the
Czar wounded Napoleon's pride by refusing to give the hand of his sister
Anne.
The subtle diplomats of Vienna immediately saw their chance.
Prince Metternich, with the caution of one who enters the cage of a
man-eating-tiger, suggested that the Austrian archduchess would be a
fitting bride for the French conqueror. The notion soothed the wounded
vanity of Napoleon. From that moment events moved swiftly; and before
long it was understood that there was to be a new empress in France, and
that she was to be none other than the daughter of the man who had been
Napoleon's most persistent foe upon the Continent. The girl was to be
given--sacrificed, if you like--to appease an imperial adventurer. After
such a marriage, Austria would be safe from spoliation. The reigning
dynasty would remain firmly seated upon its historic throne.
But how about the girl herself? She had always heard Napoleon spoken of
as a sort of ogre--a man of low ancestry, a brutal and faithless enemy
of her people. She knew that this bold, rough-spoken soldier less than a
year before had added insult to the injury which he had inflicted on
her father. In public proclamations he had called the Emperor Francis a
coward and a liar. Up to the latter part of the year Napoleon was to
her imagination a blood-stained, sordid, and yet all-powerful monster,
outside the pale of human liking and respect. What must have been her
thoughts when her father first told her with averted face that she was
to become the bride of such a being?
Marie Louise had been brought up, as all German girls of rank were then
brought up, in quiet simplicity and utter innocence. In person she was
a tall blonde, with a wealth of light brown hair tumbling about a face
which might be called attractive because it was so youthful and so
gentle, but in which only poets and courtiers could see beauty. Her
complexion was rosy, with that peculiar tinge which means that in the
course of time it will become red and mottled. Her blue eyes were clear
and childish. Her figure was good, though already too full for a girl
who was younger than her years.
She had a large and generous mouth with full lips, the lower one
being the true "Hapsburg lip," slightly pendulous--a feature which has
remained for generation after generation as a sure sign of Hapsburg
blood. One sees it in the present emperor of Austria, in the late Queen
Regent of Spain, and in the present King of Spain, Alfonso. All the
artists who made miniatures or paintings of Marie Louise softened down
this racial mark so that no likeness of her shows it as it really was.
But take her all in all, she was a simple, childlike, German madchen
who knew nothing of the outside world except what she had heard from her
discreet and watchful governess, and what had been told her of Napoleon
by her uncles, the archdukes whom he had beaten down in battle.
When she learned that she was to be given to the French emperor her
girlish soul experienced a shudder; but her father told her how vital
was this union to her country and to him. With a sort of piteous dread
she questioned the archdukes who had called Napoleon an ogre.
"Oh, that was when Napoleon was an enemy," they replied. "Now he is our
friend. "
Marie Louise listened to all this, and, like the obedient German girl
she was, yielded her own will.
Events moved with a rush, for Napoleon was not the man to dally.
Josephine had retired to her residence at Malmaison, and Paris was
already astir with preparations for the new empress who was to assure
the continuation of the Napoleonic glory by giving children to her
husband. Napoleon had said to his ambassador with his usual bluntness:
"This is the first and most important thing--she must have children. "
To the girl whom he was to marry he sent the following letter--an odd
letter, combining the formality of a negotiator with the veiled ardor of
a lover:
MY COUSIN: The brilliant qualities which adorn your person have inspired
in me a desire to serve you and to pay you homage. In making my request
to the emperor, your father, and praying him to intrust to me the
happiness of your imperial highness, may I hope that you will understand
the sentiments which lead me to this act? May I flatter myself that it
will not be decided solely by the duty of parental obedience? However
slightly the feelings of your imperial highness may incline to me, I
wish to cultivate them with so great care, and to endeavor so constantly
to please you in everything, that I flatter myself that some day I shall
prove attractive to you. This is the end at which I desire to arrive,
and for which I pray your highness to be favorable to me.
Immediately everything was done to dazzle the imagination of the girl.
She had dressed always in the simplicity of the school-room. Her only
ornaments had been a few colored stones which she sometimes wore as a
necklace or a bracelet. Now the resources of all France were drawn upon.
Precious laces foamed about her. Cascades of diamonds flashed before her
eyes. The costliest and most exquisite creations of the Parisian shops
were spread around her to make up a trousseau fit for the princess who
was soon to become the bride of the man who had mastered continental
Europe.
The archives of Vienna were ransacked for musty documents which would
show exactly what had been done for other Austrian princesses who had
married rulers of France. Everything was duplicated down to the last
detail. Ladies-in-waiting thronged about the young archduchess; and
presently there came to her Queen Caroline of Naples, Napoleon's sister,
of whom Napoleon himself once said: "She is the only man among my
sisters, as Joseph is the only woman among my brothers. " Caroline, by
virtue of her rank as queen, could have free access to her husband's
future bride. Also, there came presently Napoleon's famous marshal,
Berthier, Prince of Neuchatel, the chief of the Old Guard, who had just
been created Prince of Wagram--a title which, very naturally, he did not
use in Austria. He was to act as proxy for Napoleon in the preliminary
marriage service at Vienna.
All was excitement. Vienna had never been so gay. Money was lavished
under the direction of Caroline and Berthier. There were illuminations
and balls. The young girl found herself the center of the world's
interest; and the excitement made her dizzy. She could not but be
flattered, and yet there were many hours when her heart misgave her.
More than once she was found in tears. Her father, an affectionate
though narrow soul, spent an entire day with her consoling and
reassuring her. One thought she always kept in mind--what she had said
to Metternich at the very first: "I want only what my duty bids me
want. " At last came the official marriage, by proxy, in the presence of
a splendid gathering. The various documents were signed, the dowry was
arranged for. Gifts were scattered right and left. At the opera
there were gala performances. Then Marie Louise bade her father a sad
farewell. Almost suffocated by sobs and with her eyes streaming with
tears, she was led between two hedges of bayonets to her carriage, while
cannon thundered and all the church-bells of Vienna rang a joyful peal.
She set out for France accompanied by a long train of carriages filled
with noblemen and noblewomen, with ladies-in-waiting and scores of
attendant menials. The young bride--the wife of a man whom she had never
seen--was almost dead with excitement and fatigue. At a station in the
outskirts of Vienna she scribbled a few lines to her father, which are a
commentary upon her state of mind:
I think of you always, and I always shall. God has given me power to
endure this final shock, and in Him alone I have put all my trust. He
will help me and give me courage, and I shall find support in doing my
duty toward you, since it is all for you that I have sacrificed myself.
There is something piteous in this little note of a frightened girl
going to encounter she knew not what, and clinging almost frantically
to the one thought--that whatever might befall her, she was doing as her
father wished.
One need not recount the long and tedious journey of many days over
wretched roads, in carriages that jolted and lurched and swayed. She was
surrounded by unfamiliar faces and was compelled to meet at every town
the chief men of the place, all of whom paid her honor, but stared at
her with irrepressible curiosity. Day after day she went on and on. Each
morning a courier on a foaming horse presented her with a great cluster
of fresh flowers and a few lines scrawled by the unknown husband who was
to meet her at her journey's end.
There lay the point upon which her wandering thoughts were focused--the
journey's end! The man whose strange, mysterious power had forced her
from her school-room, had driven her through a nightmare of strange
happenings, and who was waiting for her somewhere to take her to
himself, to master her as he had mastered generals and armies!
What was marriage? What did it mean? What experience still lay before
her! These were the questions which she must have asked herself
throughout that long, exhausting journey. When she thought of the past
she was homesick. When she thought of the immediate future she was
fearful with a shuddering fear.
At last she reached the frontier of France, and her carriage passed into
a sort of triple structure, the first pavilion of which was Austrian,
while the middle pavilion was neutral, and the farther one was French.
Here she was received by those who were afterward to surround her--the
representatives of the Napoleonic court. They were not all plebeians and
children of the Revolution, ex-stable boys, ex-laundresses. By this time
Napoleon had gathered around himself some of the noblest families of
France, who had rallied to the empire. The assemblage was a brilliant
one. There were Montmorencys and Beaumonts and Audenardes in abundance.
But to Marie Louise, as to her Austrian attendants, they were all alike.
They were French, they were strangers, and she shrank from them.
Yet here her Austrians must leave her. All who had accompanied her thus
far were now turned back. Napoleon had been insistent on this point.
Even her governess, who had been with her since her childhood, was not
allowed to cross the French frontier. So fixed was Napoleon's purpose
to have nothing Austrian about her, that even her pet dog, to which
she clung as a girl would cling, was taken from her. Thereafter she was
surrounded only by French faces, by French guards, and was greeted only
by salvos of French artillery.
In the mean time what was Napoleon doing at Paris. Since the annulment
of his marriage with Josephine he had gone into a sort of retirement.
Matters of state, war, internal reforms, no longer interested him; but
that restless brain could not sink into repose. Inflamed with the ardor
of a new passion, that passion was all the greater because he had
never yet set eyes upon its object. Marriage with an imperial princess
flattered his ambition. The youth and innocence of the bride stirred his
whole being with a thrill of novelty. The painted charms of Josephine,
the mercenary favors of actresses, the calculated ecstasies of the women
of the court who gave themselves to him from vanity, had long since
palled upon him. Therefore the impatience with which he awaited the
coming of Marie Louise became every day more tense.
For a time he amused himself with planning down to the very last details
the demonstrations that were to be given in her honor. He organized
them as minutely as he had ever organized a conquering army. He showed
himself as wonderful in these petty things as he had in those great
strategic combinations which had baffled the ablest generals of
Europe. But after all had been arranged--even to the illuminations, the
cheering, the salutes, and the etiquette of the court--he fell into a
fever of impatience which gave him sleepless nights and frantic days. He
paced up and down the Tuileries, almost beside himself. He hurried off
courier after courier with orders that the postilions should lash their
horses to bring the hour of meeting nearer still. He scribbled love
letters. He gazed continually on the diamond-studded portrait of the
woman who was hurrying toward him.
At last as the time approached he entered a swift traveling-carriage and
hastened to Compiegne, about fifty miles from Paris, where it had been
arranged that he should meet his consort and whence he was to escort her
to the capital, so that they might be married in the great gallery
of the Louvre. At Compiegne the chancellerie had been set apart for
Napoleon's convenience, while the chateau had been assigned to Marie
Louise and her attendants. When Napoleon's carriage dashed into the
place, drawn by horses that had traveled at a gallop, the emperor could
not restrain himself. It was raining torrents and night was coming
on, yet, none the less, he shouted for fresh horses and pushed on to
Soissons, where the new empress was to stop and dine. When he reached
there and she had not arrived, new relays of horses were demanded, and
he hurried off once more into the dark.
At the little village of Courcelles he met the courier who was riding in
advance of the empress's cortege.
"She will be here in a few moments! " cried Napoleon; and he leaped from
his carriage into the highway.
The rain descended harder than ever, and he took refuge in the arched
doorway of the village church, his boots already bemired, his great coat
reeking with the downpour. As he crouched before the church he heard the
sound of carriages; and before long there came toiling through the
mud the one in which was seated the girl for whom he had so long been
waiting. It was stopped at an order given by an officer. Within it,
half-fainting with fatigue and fear, Marie Louise sat in the dark,
alone.
Here, if ever, was the chance for Napoleon to win his bride. Could he
have restrained himself, could he have shown the delicate consideration
which was demanded of him, could he have remembered at least that he was
an emperor and that the girl--timid and shuddering--was a princess, her
future story might have been far different. But long ago he had ceased
to think of anything except his own desires.
He approached the carriage. An obsequious chamberlain drew aside the
leathern covering and opened the door, exclaiming as he did so, "The
emperor! " And then there leaped in the rain-soaked, mud-bespattered
being whose excesses had always been as unbridled as his genius. The
door was closed, the leathern curtain again drawn, and the horses set
out at a gallop for Soissons. Within, the shrinking bride was at the
mercy of pure animal passion, feeling upon her hot face a torrent of
rough kisses, and yielding herself in terror to the caresses of wanton
hands.
At Soissons Napoleon allowed no halt, but the carriage plunged on, still
in the rain, to Compiegne. There all the arrangements made with so much
care were thrust aside. Though the actual marriage had not yet taken
place, Napoleon claimed all the rights which afterward were given in the
ceremonial at Paris. He took the girl to the chancellerie, and not to
the chateau. In an anteroom dinner was served with haste to the imperial
pair and Queen Caroline. Then the latter was dismissed with little
ceremony, the lights were extinguished, and this daughter of a line of
emperors was left to the tender mercies of one who always had about him
something of the common soldier--the man who lives for loot and lust. . . .
At eleven the next morning she was unable to rise and was served in bed
by the ladies of her household.
shed French blood in a foreign cause. "
By this time, however, Marie Walewska had learned to love Napoleon for
his own sake. She could not resist his ardor, which matched the ardor
of the Poles themselves. Moreover, it flattered her to see the greatest
soldier in the world a suppliant for her smiles.
For some years she was Napoleon's close companion, spending long hours
with him and finally accompanying him to Paris. She was the mother of
Napoleon's only son who lived to manhood. This son, who bore the name of
Alexandre Florian de Walewski, was born in Poland in 1810, and later
was created a count and duke of the second French Empire. It may be said
parenthetically that he was a man of great ability. Living down to 1868,
he was made much of by Napoleon III. , who placed him in high offices
of state, which he filled with distinction. In contrast with the Duc
de Morny, who was Napoleon's illegitimate half-brother, Alexandre de
Walewski stood out in brilliant contrast. He would have nothing to do
with stock-jobbing and unseemly speculation.
"I may be poor," he said--though he was not poor--"but at least I
remember the glory of my father and what is due to his great name. "
As for Mme. Walewska, she was loyal to the emperor, and lacked the greed
of many women whom he had made his favorites. Even at Elba, when he
was in exile and disgrace, she visited him that she might endeavor to
console him. She was his counselor and friend as well as his earnestly
loved mate. When she died in Paris in 1817, while the dethroned emperor
was a prisoner at St. Helena, the word "Napoleon" was the last upon her
lips.
THE STORY OF PAULINE BONAPARTE
It was said of Napoleon long ago that he could govern emperors and
kings, but that not even he could rule his relatives. He himself once
declared:
"My family have done me far more harm than I have been able to do them
good. "
It would be an interesting historical study to determine just how far
the great soldier's family aided in his downfall by their selfishness,
their jealousy, their meanness, and their ingratitude.
There is something piquant in thinking of Napoleon as a domestic sort of
person. Indeed, it is rather difficult to do so. When we speak his name
we think of the stern warrior hurling his armies up bloody slopes and on
to bloody victory. He is the man whose steely eyes made his haughtiest
marshals tremble, or else the wise, far-seeing statesman and lawgiver;
but decidedly he is not a household model. We read of his sharp speech
to women, of his outrageous manners at the dinner-table, and of the
thousand and one details which Mme. de Remusat has chronicled--and
perhaps in part invented, for there has always existed the suspicion
that her animus was that of a woman who had herself sought the imperial
favor and had failed to win it.
But, in fact, all these stories relate to the Napoleon of courts and
palaces, and not to the Napoleon of home. In his private life this great
man was not merely affectionate and indulgent, but he even showed a
certain weakness where his relatives were concerned, so that he let them
prey upon him almost without end.
He had a great deal of the Italian largeness and lavishness of character
with his family. When a petty officer he nearly starved himself in
order to give his younger brother, Louis, a military education. He was
devotedly fond of children, and they were fond of him, as many anecdotes
attest. His passionate love for Josephine before he learned of her
infidelity is almost painful to read of; and even afterward, when he had
been disillusioned, and when she was paying Fouche a thousand francs
a day to spy upon Napoleon's every action, he still treated her with
friendliness and allowed her extravagance to embarrass him.
He made his eldest brother, Joseph, King of Spain, and Spain proved
almost as deadly to him as did Russia. He made his youngest brother,
Jerome, King of Westphalia, and Jerome turned the palace into a pigsty
and brought discredit on the very name of Bonaparte. His brother Louis,
for whom he had starved himself, he placed upon the throne of Holland,
and Louis promptly devoted himself to his own interests, conniving
at many things which were inimical to France. He was planning high
advancement for his brother Lucien, and Lucien suddenly married a
disreputable actress and fled with her to England, where he was received
with pleasure by the most persistent of all Napoleon's enemies.
So much for his brothers--incompetent, ungrateful, or openly his foes.
But his three sisters were no less remarkable in the relations which
they bore to him. They have been styled "the three crowned courtesans,"
and they have been condemned together as being utterly void of principle
and monsters of ingratitude.
Much of this censure was well deserved by all of them--by Caroline and
Elise and Pauline. But when we look at the facts impartially we shall
find something which makes Pauline stand out alone as infinitely
superior to her sisters. Of all the Bonapartes she was the only one who
showed fidelity and gratitude to the great emperor, her brother. Even
Mme. Mere, Napoleon's mother, who beyond all question transmitted to him
his great mental and physical power, did nothing for him. At the height
of his splendor she hoarded sous and francs and grumblingly remarked:
"All this is for a time. It isn't going to last! "
Pauline, however, was in one respect different from all her kindred.
Napoleon made Elise a princess in her own right and gave her the Grand
Duchy of Tuscany. He married Caroline to Marshal Murat, and they
became respectively King and Queen of Naples. For Pauline he did very
little--less, in fact, than for any other member of his family--and yet
she alone stood by him to the end.
This feather-headed, languishing, beautiful, distracting morsel of
frivolity, who had the manners of a kitten and the morals of a cat,
nevertheless was not wholly unworthy to be Napoleon's sister. One has to
tell many hard things of her; and yet one almost pardons her because
of her underlying devotion to the man who made the name of Bonaparte
illustrious for ever. Caroline, Queen of Naples, urged her husband to
turn against his former chief. Elise, sour and greedy, threw in
her fortunes with the Murats. Pauline, as we shall see, had the one
redeeming trait of gratitude.
To those who knew her she was from girlhood an incarnation of what
used to be called "femininity. " We have to-day another and a higher
definition of womanhood, but to her contemporaries, and to many modern
writers, she has seemed to be first of all woman--"woman to the tips of
her rosy finger-nails," says Levy. Those who saw her were distracted
by her loveliness. They say that no one can form any idea of her beauty
from her pictures. "A veritable masterpiece of creation," she had been
called. Frederic Masson declares:
She was so much more the typical woman that with her the defects common
to women reached their highest development, while her beauty attained a
perfection which may justly be called unique.
No one speaks of Pauline Bonaparte's character or of her intellect, but
wholly of her loveliness and charm, and, it must be added, of her utter
lack of anything like a moral sense.
Even as a child of thirteen, when the Bonapartes left Corsica and took
up their abode in Marseilles, she attracted universal attention by her
wonderful eyes, her grace, and also by the utter lack of decorum which
she showed. The Bonaparte girls at this time lived almost on charity.
The future emperor was then a captain of artillery and could give them
but little out of his scanty pay.
Pauline--or, as they called her in those days, Paulette--wore unbecoming
hats and shabby gowns, and shoes that were full of holes. None the
less, she was sought out by several men of note, among them Freron, a
commissioner of the Convention. He visited Pauline so often as to cause
unfavorable comment; but he was in love with her, and she fell in love
with him to the extent of her capacity. She used to write him love
letters in Italian, which were certainly not lacking in ardor. Here is
the end of one of them:
I love you always and most passionately. I love you for ever, my
beautiful idol, my heart, my appealing lover. I love you, love you, love
you, the most loved of lovers, and I swear never to love any one else!
This was interesting in view of the fact that soon afterward she fell in
love with Junot, who became a famous marshal. But her love affairs never
gave her any serious trouble; and the three sisters, who now began to
feel the influence of Napoleon's rise to power, enjoyed themselves as
they had never done before. At Antibes they had a beautiful villa, and
later a mansion at Milan.
By this time Napoleon had routed the Austrians in Italy, and all France
was ringing with his name. What was Pauline like in her maidenhood?
Arnault says:
She was an extraordinary combination of perfect physical beauty and the
strangest moral laxity. She was as pretty as you please, but utterly
unreasonable. She had no more manners than a school-girl--talking
incoherently, giggling at everything and nothing, and mimicking the most
serious persons of rank.
General de Ricard, who knew her then, tells in his monograph of the
private theatricals in which Pauline took part, and of the sport which
they had behind the scenes. He says:
The Bonaparte girls used literally to dress us. They pulled our ears and
slapped us, but they always kissed and made up later. We used to stay in
the girls' room all the time when they were dressing.
Napoleon was anxious to see his sisters in some way settled. He proposed
to General Marmont to marry Pauline. The girl was then only seventeen,
and one might have had some faith in her character. But Marmont was
shrewd and knew her far too well. The words in which he declined the
honor are interesting:
"I know that she is charming and exquisitely beautiful; yet I have
dreams of domestic happiness, of fidelity, and of virtue. Such dreams
are seldom realized, I know. Still, in the hope of winning them--"
And then he paused, coughed, and completed what he had to say in a sort
of mumble, but his meaning was wholly clear. He would not accept the
offer of Pauline in marriage, even though she was the sister of his
mighty chief.
Then Napoleon turned to General Leclerc, with whom Pauline had for
some time flirted, as she had flirted with almost all the officers of
Napoleon's staff. Leclerc was only twenty-six. He was rich and of good
manners, but rather serious and in poor health. This was not precisely
the sort of husband for Pauline, if we look at it in the conventional
way; but it served Napoleon's purpose and did not in the least interfere
with his sister's intrigues.
Poor Leclerc, who really loved Pauline, grew thin, and graver still
in manner. He was sent to Spain and Portugal, and finally was made
commander-in-chief of the French expedition to Haiti, where the famous
black rebel, Toussaint l'Ouverture, was heading an uprising of the
negroes.
Napoleon ordered Pauline to accompany her husband. Pauline flatly
refused, although she made this an occasion for ordering "mountains of
pretty clothes and pyramids of hats. " But still she refused to go on
board the flag-ship. Leclerc expostulated and pleaded, but the lovely
witch laughed in his face and still persisted that she would never go.
Word was brought to Napoleon. He made short work of her resistance.
"Bring a litter," he said, with one of his steely glances. "Order
six grenadiers to thrust her into it, and see that she goes on board
forthwith. "
And so, screeching like an angry cat, she was carried on board, and set
sail with her husband and one of her former lovers. She found Haiti and
Santo Domingo more agreeable than she had supposed. She was there a
sort of queen who could do as she pleased and have her orders implicitly
obeyed. Her dissipation was something frightful. Her folly and her
vanity were beyond belief.
But at the end of two years both she and her husband fell ill. He was
stricken down by the yellow fever, which was decimating the French
army. Pauline was suffering from the results of her life in a tropical
climate. Leclerc died, the expedition was abandoned, and Pauline
brought the general's body back to France. When he was buried she, still
recovering from her fever, had him interred in a costly coffin and paid
him the tribute of cutting off her beautiful hair and burying it with
him.
"What a touching tribute to her dead husband! " said some one to
Napoleon.
The emperor smiled cynically as he remarked:
"H'm! Of course she knows that her hair is bound to fall out after her
fever, and that it will come in longer and thicker for being cropped. "
Napoleon, in fact, though he loved Pauline better than his other
sisters--or perhaps because he loved her better--was very strict
with her. He obliged her to wear mourning, and to observe some of the
proprieties; but it was hard to keep her within bounds.
Presently it became noised about that Prince Camillo Borghese was
exceedingly intimate with her. The prince was an excellent specimen of
the fashionable Italian. He was immensely rich. His palace at Rome was
crammed with pictures, statues, and every sort of artistic treasure.
He was the owner, moreover, of the famous Borghese jewels, the finest
collection of diamonds in the world.
Napoleon rather sternly insisted upon her marrying Borghese.
Fortunately, the prince was very willing to be connected with Napoleon;
while Pauline was delighted at the idea of having diamonds that would
eclipse all the gems which Josephine possessed; for, like all of the
Bonapartes, she detested her brother's wife. So she would be married and
show her diamonds to Josephine. It was a bit of feminine malice which
she could not resist.
The marriage took place very quietly at Joseph Bonaparte's house,
because of the absence of Napoleon; but the newly made princess was
invited to visit Josephine at the palace of Saint-Cloud. Here was to be
the triumph of her life. She spent many days in planning a toilet that
should be absolutely crushing to Josephine. Whatever she wore must be a
background for the famous diamonds. Finally she decided on green velvet.
When the day came Pauline stood before a mirror and gazed at herself
with diamonds glistening in her hair, shimmering around her neck, and
fastened so thickly on her green velvet gown as to remind one of a
moving jewel-casket. She actually shed tears for joy. Then she entered
her carriage and drove out to Saint-Cloud.
But the Creole Josephine, though no longer young, was a woman of great
subtlety as well as charm. Stories had been told to her of the green
velvet, and therefore she had her drawing-room redecorated in the most
uncompromising blue. It killed the green velvet completely. As for the
diamonds, she met that maneuver by wearing not a single gem of any kind.
Her dress was an Indian muslin with a broad hem of gold.
Her exquisite simplicity, coupled with her dignity of bearing, made
the Princess Pauline, with her shower of diamonds, and her green velvet
displayed against the blue, seem absolutely vulgar. Josephine was most
generous in her admiration of the Borghese gems, and she kissed Pauline
on parting. The victory was hers.
There is another story of a defeat which Pauline met from another lady,
one Mme. de Coutades. This was at a magnificent ball given to the most
fashionable world of Paris. Pauline decided upon going, and intended,
in her own phrase, to blot out every woman there. She kept the secret of
her toilet absolutely, and she entered the ballroom at the psychological
moment, when all the guests had just assembled.
She appeared; and at sight of her the music stopped, silence fell upon
the assemblage, and a sort of quiver went through every one. Her costume
was of the finest muslin bordered with golden palm-leaves. Four bands,
spotted like a leopard's skin, were wound about her head, while these in
turn were supported by little clusters of golden grapes. She had copied
the head-dress of a Bacchante in the Louvre. All over her person were
cameos, and just beneath her breasts she wore a golden band held in
place by an engraved gem. Her beautiful wrists, arms, and hands were
bare. She had, in fact, blotted out her rivals.
Nevertheless, Mme. de Coutades took her revenge. She went up to Pauline,
who was lying on a divan to set off her loveliness, and began gazing at
the princess through a double eye-glass. Pauline felt flattered for a
moment, and then became uneasy. The lady who was looking at her said to
a companion, in a tone of compassion:
"What a pity! She really would be lovely if it weren't for THAT! "
"For what? " returned her escort.
"Why, are you blind? It's so remarkable that you SURELY must see it. "
Pauline was beginning to lose her self-composure. She flushed and looked
wildly about, wondering what was meant. Then she heard Mme. Coutades
say:
"Why, her ears. If I had such ears as those I would cut them off! "
Pauline gave one great gasp and fainted dead away. As a matter of fact,
her ears were not so bad. They were simply very flat and colorless,
forming a contrast with the rosy tints of her face. But from that moment
no one could see anything but these ears; and thereafter the princess
wore her hair low enough to cover them.
This may be seen in the statue of her by Canova. It was considered a
very daring thing for her to pose for him in the nude, for only a bit of
drapery is thrown over her lower limbs. Yet it is true that this
statue is absolutely classical in its conception and execution, and its
interest is heightened by the fact that its model was what she afterward
styled herself, with true Napoleonic pride--"a sister of Bonaparte. "
Pauline detested Josephine and was pleased when Napoleon divorced her;
but she also disliked the Austrian archduchess, Marie Louise, who was
Josephine's successor. On one occasion, at a great court function, she
got behind the empress and ran out her tongue at her, in full view of
all the nobles and distinguished persons present. Napoleon's eagle eye
flashed upon Pauline and blazed like fire upon ice. She actually took to
her heels, rushed out of the ball, and never visited the court again.
It would require much time to tell of her other eccentricities, of her
intrigues, which were innumerable, of her quarrel with her husband, and
of the minor breaches of decorum with which she startled Paris. One of
these was her choice of a huge negro to bathe her every morning. When
some one ventured to protest, she answered, naively:
"What! Do you call that thing a MAN? "
And she compromised by compelling her black servitor to go out and
marry some one at once, so that he might continue his ministrations with
propriety!
To her Napoleon showed himself far more severe than with either Caroline
or Elise. He gave her a marriage dowry of half a million francs when she
became the Princess Borghese, but after that he was continually checking
her extravagances. Yet in 1814, when the downfall came and Napoleon was
sent into exile at Elba, Pauline was the only one of all his relatives
to visit him and spend her time with him. His wife fell away and went
back to her Austrian relatives. Of all the Bonapartes only Pauline and
Mme. Mere remained faithful to the emperor.
Even then Napoleon refused to pay a bill of hers for sixty-two
francs, while he allowed her only two hundred and forty francs for the
maintenance of her horses. But she, with a generosity of which one would
have thought her quite incapable, gave to her brother a great part of
her fortune.
When he escaped from Elba and began the campaign of 1815
she presented him with all the Borghese diamonds. In fact, he had them
with him in his carriage at Waterloo, where they were captured by the
English. Contrast this with the meanness and ingratitude of her sisters
and her brothers, and one may well believe that she was sincerely proud
of what it meant to be la soeur de Bonaparte.
When he was sent to St. Helena she was ill in bed and could not
accompany him. Nevertheless, she tried to sell all her trinkets, of
which she was so proud, in order that she might give him help. When
he died she received the news with bitter tears "on hearing all the
particulars of that long agony. "
As for herself, she did not long survive. At the age of forty-four her
last moments came. Knowing that she was to die, she sent for Prince
Borghese and sought a reconciliation. But, after all, she died as she
had lived--"the queen of trinkets" (la reine des colifichets). She asked
the servant to bring a mirror. She gazed into it with her dying eyes;
and then, as she sank back, it was with a smile of deep content.
"I am not afraid to die," she said. "I am still beautiful! "
THE STORY OF THE EMPRESS MARIE LOUISE AND COUNT NEIPPERG
There is one famous woman whom history condemns while at the same time
it partly hides the facts which might mitigate the harshness of the
judgment that is passed upon her. This woman is Marie Louise, Empress
of France, consort of the great Napoleon, and archduchess of imperial
Austria. When the most brilliant figure in all history, after his
overthrow in 1814, was in tawdry exile on the petty island of Elba,
the empress was already about to become a mother; and the father of her
unborn child was not Napoleon, but another man. This is almost all that
is usually remembered of her--that she was unfaithful to Napoleon, that
she abandoned him in the hour of his defeat, and that she gave herself
with readiness to one inferior in rank, yet with whom she lived for
years, and to whom she bore what a French writer styled "a brood of
bastards. "
Naturally enough, the Austrian and German historians do not have much
to say of Marie Louise, because in her own disgrace she also brought
disgrace upon the proudest reigning family in Europe. Naturally, also,
French writers, even those who are hostile to Napoleon, do not care
to dwell upon the story; since France itself was humiliated when its
greatest genius and most splendid soldier was deceived by his Austrian
wife. Therefore there are still many who know little beyond the bare
fact that the Empress Marie Louise threw away her pride as a princess,
her reputation as a wife, and her honor as a woman. Her figure seems to
crouch in a sort of murky byway, and those who pass over the highroad of
history ignore it with averted eyes.
In reality the story of Napoleon and Marie Louise and of the Count von
Neipperg is one which, when you search it to the very core, leads you
straight to a sex problem of a very curious nature. Nowhere else does
it occur in the relations of the great personages of history; but in
literature Balzac, that master of psychology, has touched upon the theme
in the early chapters of his famous novel called "A Woman of Thirty. "
As to the Napoleonic story, let us first recall the facts of the
case, giving them in such order that their full significance may be
understood.
In 1809 Napoleon, then at the plenitude of his power, shook himself free
from the clinging clasp of Josephine and procured the annulment of his
marriage to her. He really owed her nothing. Before he knew her she had
been the mistress of another. In the first years of their life together
she had been notoriously unfaithful to him. He had held to her from
habit which was in part a superstition; but the remembrance of the wrong
which she had done him made her faded charms at times almost repulsive.
And then Josephine had never borne him any children; and without a
son to perpetuate his dynasty, the gigantic achievements which he
had wrought seemed futile in his eyes, and likely to crumble into
nothingness when he should die.
No sooner had the marriage been annulled than his titanic ambition
leaped, as it always did, to a tremendous pinnacle. He would wed. He
would have children. But he would wed no petty princess. This man who in
his early youth had felt honored by a marriage with the almost declassee
widow of a creole planter now stretched out his hand that he might take
to himself a woman not merely royal but imperial.
At first he sought the sister of the Czar of Russia; but Alexander
entertained a profound distrust of the French emperor, and managed to
evade the tentative demand. There was, however, a reigning family far
more ancient than the Romanoffs--a family which had held the imperial
dignity for nearly six centuries--the oldest and the noblest blood in
Europe. This was the Austrian house of Hapsburg. Its head, the Emperor
Francis, had thirteen children, of whom the eldest, the Archduchess
Marie Louise, was then in her nineteenth year.
Napoleon had resented the rebuff which the Czar had given him. He
turned, therefore, the more eagerly to the other project. Yet there were
many reasons why an Austrian marriage might be dangerous, or, at any
rate, ill-omened. Only sixteen years before, an Austrian arch-duchess,
Marie Antionette, married to the ruler of France, had met her death
upon the scaffold, hated and cursed by the French people, who had always
blamed "the Austrian" for the evil days which had ended in the flames
of revolution. Again, the father of the girl to whom Napoleon's fancy
turned had been the bitter enemy of the new regime in France. His troops
had been beaten by the French in five wars and had been crushed at
Austerlitz and at Wagram. Bonaparte had twice entered Vienna at the head
of a conquering army, and thrice he had slept in the imperial palace
at Schonbrunn, while Francis was fleeing through the dark, a beaten
fugitive pursued by the swift squadrons of French cavalry.
The feeling of Francis of Austria was not merely that of the vanquished
toward the victor. It was a deep hatred almost religious in its fervor.
He was the head and front of the old-time feudalism of birth and blood;
Napoleon was the incarnation of the modern spirit which demolished
thrones and set an iron heel upon crowned heads, giving the sacred
titles of king and prince to soldiers who, even in palaces, still showed
the swaggering brutality of the camp and the stable whence they sprang.
Yet, just because an alliance with the Austrian house seemed in so many
ways impossible, the thought of it inflamed the ardor of Napoleon all
the more.
"Impossible? " he had once said, contemptuously. "The word 'impossible'
is not French. "
The Austrian alliance, unnatural though it seemed, was certainly quite
possible. In the year 1809 Napoleon had finished his fifth war with
Austria by the terrific battle of Wagram, which brought the empire of
the Hapsburgs to the very dust. The conqueror's rude hand had stripped
from Francis province after province. He had even let fall hints that
the Hapsburgs might be dethroned and that Austria might disappear from
the map of Europe, to be divided between himself and the Russian Czar,
who was still his ally. It was at this psychological moment that the
Czar wounded Napoleon's pride by refusing to give the hand of his sister
Anne.
The subtle diplomats of Vienna immediately saw their chance.
Prince Metternich, with the caution of one who enters the cage of a
man-eating-tiger, suggested that the Austrian archduchess would be a
fitting bride for the French conqueror. The notion soothed the wounded
vanity of Napoleon. From that moment events moved swiftly; and before
long it was understood that there was to be a new empress in France, and
that she was to be none other than the daughter of the man who had been
Napoleon's most persistent foe upon the Continent. The girl was to be
given--sacrificed, if you like--to appease an imperial adventurer. After
such a marriage, Austria would be safe from spoliation. The reigning
dynasty would remain firmly seated upon its historic throne.
But how about the girl herself? She had always heard Napoleon spoken of
as a sort of ogre--a man of low ancestry, a brutal and faithless enemy
of her people. She knew that this bold, rough-spoken soldier less than a
year before had added insult to the injury which he had inflicted on
her father. In public proclamations he had called the Emperor Francis a
coward and a liar. Up to the latter part of the year Napoleon was to
her imagination a blood-stained, sordid, and yet all-powerful monster,
outside the pale of human liking and respect. What must have been her
thoughts when her father first told her with averted face that she was
to become the bride of such a being?
Marie Louise had been brought up, as all German girls of rank were then
brought up, in quiet simplicity and utter innocence. In person she was
a tall blonde, with a wealth of light brown hair tumbling about a face
which might be called attractive because it was so youthful and so
gentle, but in which only poets and courtiers could see beauty. Her
complexion was rosy, with that peculiar tinge which means that in the
course of time it will become red and mottled. Her blue eyes were clear
and childish. Her figure was good, though already too full for a girl
who was younger than her years.
She had a large and generous mouth with full lips, the lower one
being the true "Hapsburg lip," slightly pendulous--a feature which has
remained for generation after generation as a sure sign of Hapsburg
blood. One sees it in the present emperor of Austria, in the late Queen
Regent of Spain, and in the present King of Spain, Alfonso. All the
artists who made miniatures or paintings of Marie Louise softened down
this racial mark so that no likeness of her shows it as it really was.
But take her all in all, she was a simple, childlike, German madchen
who knew nothing of the outside world except what she had heard from her
discreet and watchful governess, and what had been told her of Napoleon
by her uncles, the archdukes whom he had beaten down in battle.
When she learned that she was to be given to the French emperor her
girlish soul experienced a shudder; but her father told her how vital
was this union to her country and to him. With a sort of piteous dread
she questioned the archdukes who had called Napoleon an ogre.
"Oh, that was when Napoleon was an enemy," they replied. "Now he is our
friend. "
Marie Louise listened to all this, and, like the obedient German girl
she was, yielded her own will.
Events moved with a rush, for Napoleon was not the man to dally.
Josephine had retired to her residence at Malmaison, and Paris was
already astir with preparations for the new empress who was to assure
the continuation of the Napoleonic glory by giving children to her
husband. Napoleon had said to his ambassador with his usual bluntness:
"This is the first and most important thing--she must have children. "
To the girl whom he was to marry he sent the following letter--an odd
letter, combining the formality of a negotiator with the veiled ardor of
a lover:
MY COUSIN: The brilliant qualities which adorn your person have inspired
in me a desire to serve you and to pay you homage. In making my request
to the emperor, your father, and praying him to intrust to me the
happiness of your imperial highness, may I hope that you will understand
the sentiments which lead me to this act? May I flatter myself that it
will not be decided solely by the duty of parental obedience? However
slightly the feelings of your imperial highness may incline to me, I
wish to cultivate them with so great care, and to endeavor so constantly
to please you in everything, that I flatter myself that some day I shall
prove attractive to you. This is the end at which I desire to arrive,
and for which I pray your highness to be favorable to me.
Immediately everything was done to dazzle the imagination of the girl.
She had dressed always in the simplicity of the school-room. Her only
ornaments had been a few colored stones which she sometimes wore as a
necklace or a bracelet. Now the resources of all France were drawn upon.
Precious laces foamed about her. Cascades of diamonds flashed before her
eyes. The costliest and most exquisite creations of the Parisian shops
were spread around her to make up a trousseau fit for the princess who
was soon to become the bride of the man who had mastered continental
Europe.
The archives of Vienna were ransacked for musty documents which would
show exactly what had been done for other Austrian princesses who had
married rulers of France. Everything was duplicated down to the last
detail. Ladies-in-waiting thronged about the young archduchess; and
presently there came to her Queen Caroline of Naples, Napoleon's sister,
of whom Napoleon himself once said: "She is the only man among my
sisters, as Joseph is the only woman among my brothers. " Caroline, by
virtue of her rank as queen, could have free access to her husband's
future bride. Also, there came presently Napoleon's famous marshal,
Berthier, Prince of Neuchatel, the chief of the Old Guard, who had just
been created Prince of Wagram--a title which, very naturally, he did not
use in Austria. He was to act as proxy for Napoleon in the preliminary
marriage service at Vienna.
All was excitement. Vienna had never been so gay. Money was lavished
under the direction of Caroline and Berthier. There were illuminations
and balls. The young girl found herself the center of the world's
interest; and the excitement made her dizzy. She could not but be
flattered, and yet there were many hours when her heart misgave her.
More than once she was found in tears. Her father, an affectionate
though narrow soul, spent an entire day with her consoling and
reassuring her. One thought she always kept in mind--what she had said
to Metternich at the very first: "I want only what my duty bids me
want. " At last came the official marriage, by proxy, in the presence of
a splendid gathering. The various documents were signed, the dowry was
arranged for. Gifts were scattered right and left. At the opera
there were gala performances. Then Marie Louise bade her father a sad
farewell. Almost suffocated by sobs and with her eyes streaming with
tears, she was led between two hedges of bayonets to her carriage, while
cannon thundered and all the church-bells of Vienna rang a joyful peal.
She set out for France accompanied by a long train of carriages filled
with noblemen and noblewomen, with ladies-in-waiting and scores of
attendant menials. The young bride--the wife of a man whom she had never
seen--was almost dead with excitement and fatigue. At a station in the
outskirts of Vienna she scribbled a few lines to her father, which are a
commentary upon her state of mind:
I think of you always, and I always shall. God has given me power to
endure this final shock, and in Him alone I have put all my trust. He
will help me and give me courage, and I shall find support in doing my
duty toward you, since it is all for you that I have sacrificed myself.
There is something piteous in this little note of a frightened girl
going to encounter she knew not what, and clinging almost frantically
to the one thought--that whatever might befall her, she was doing as her
father wished.
One need not recount the long and tedious journey of many days over
wretched roads, in carriages that jolted and lurched and swayed. She was
surrounded by unfamiliar faces and was compelled to meet at every town
the chief men of the place, all of whom paid her honor, but stared at
her with irrepressible curiosity. Day after day she went on and on. Each
morning a courier on a foaming horse presented her with a great cluster
of fresh flowers and a few lines scrawled by the unknown husband who was
to meet her at her journey's end.
There lay the point upon which her wandering thoughts were focused--the
journey's end! The man whose strange, mysterious power had forced her
from her school-room, had driven her through a nightmare of strange
happenings, and who was waiting for her somewhere to take her to
himself, to master her as he had mastered generals and armies!
What was marriage? What did it mean? What experience still lay before
her! These were the questions which she must have asked herself
throughout that long, exhausting journey. When she thought of the past
she was homesick. When she thought of the immediate future she was
fearful with a shuddering fear.
At last she reached the frontier of France, and her carriage passed into
a sort of triple structure, the first pavilion of which was Austrian,
while the middle pavilion was neutral, and the farther one was French.
Here she was received by those who were afterward to surround her--the
representatives of the Napoleonic court. They were not all plebeians and
children of the Revolution, ex-stable boys, ex-laundresses. By this time
Napoleon had gathered around himself some of the noblest families of
France, who had rallied to the empire. The assemblage was a brilliant
one. There were Montmorencys and Beaumonts and Audenardes in abundance.
But to Marie Louise, as to her Austrian attendants, they were all alike.
They were French, they were strangers, and she shrank from them.
Yet here her Austrians must leave her. All who had accompanied her thus
far were now turned back. Napoleon had been insistent on this point.
Even her governess, who had been with her since her childhood, was not
allowed to cross the French frontier. So fixed was Napoleon's purpose
to have nothing Austrian about her, that even her pet dog, to which
she clung as a girl would cling, was taken from her. Thereafter she was
surrounded only by French faces, by French guards, and was greeted only
by salvos of French artillery.
In the mean time what was Napoleon doing at Paris. Since the annulment
of his marriage with Josephine he had gone into a sort of retirement.
Matters of state, war, internal reforms, no longer interested him; but
that restless brain could not sink into repose. Inflamed with the ardor
of a new passion, that passion was all the greater because he had
never yet set eyes upon its object. Marriage with an imperial princess
flattered his ambition. The youth and innocence of the bride stirred his
whole being with a thrill of novelty. The painted charms of Josephine,
the mercenary favors of actresses, the calculated ecstasies of the women
of the court who gave themselves to him from vanity, had long since
palled upon him. Therefore the impatience with which he awaited the
coming of Marie Louise became every day more tense.
For a time he amused himself with planning down to the very last details
the demonstrations that were to be given in her honor. He organized
them as minutely as he had ever organized a conquering army. He showed
himself as wonderful in these petty things as he had in those great
strategic combinations which had baffled the ablest generals of
Europe. But after all had been arranged--even to the illuminations, the
cheering, the salutes, and the etiquette of the court--he fell into a
fever of impatience which gave him sleepless nights and frantic days. He
paced up and down the Tuileries, almost beside himself. He hurried off
courier after courier with orders that the postilions should lash their
horses to bring the hour of meeting nearer still. He scribbled love
letters. He gazed continually on the diamond-studded portrait of the
woman who was hurrying toward him.
At last as the time approached he entered a swift traveling-carriage and
hastened to Compiegne, about fifty miles from Paris, where it had been
arranged that he should meet his consort and whence he was to escort her
to the capital, so that they might be married in the great gallery
of the Louvre. At Compiegne the chancellerie had been set apart for
Napoleon's convenience, while the chateau had been assigned to Marie
Louise and her attendants. When Napoleon's carriage dashed into the
place, drawn by horses that had traveled at a gallop, the emperor could
not restrain himself. It was raining torrents and night was coming
on, yet, none the less, he shouted for fresh horses and pushed on to
Soissons, where the new empress was to stop and dine. When he reached
there and she had not arrived, new relays of horses were demanded, and
he hurried off once more into the dark.
At the little village of Courcelles he met the courier who was riding in
advance of the empress's cortege.
"She will be here in a few moments! " cried Napoleon; and he leaped from
his carriage into the highway.
The rain descended harder than ever, and he took refuge in the arched
doorway of the village church, his boots already bemired, his great coat
reeking with the downpour. As he crouched before the church he heard the
sound of carriages; and before long there came toiling through the
mud the one in which was seated the girl for whom he had so long been
waiting. It was stopped at an order given by an officer. Within it,
half-fainting with fatigue and fear, Marie Louise sat in the dark,
alone.
Here, if ever, was the chance for Napoleon to win his bride. Could he
have restrained himself, could he have shown the delicate consideration
which was demanded of him, could he have remembered at least that he was
an emperor and that the girl--timid and shuddering--was a princess, her
future story might have been far different. But long ago he had ceased
to think of anything except his own desires.
He approached the carriage. An obsequious chamberlain drew aside the
leathern covering and opened the door, exclaiming as he did so, "The
emperor! " And then there leaped in the rain-soaked, mud-bespattered
being whose excesses had always been as unbridled as his genius. The
door was closed, the leathern curtain again drawn, and the horses set
out at a gallop for Soissons. Within, the shrinking bride was at the
mercy of pure animal passion, feeling upon her hot face a torrent of
rough kisses, and yielding herself in terror to the caresses of wanton
hands.
At Soissons Napoleon allowed no halt, but the carriage plunged on, still
in the rain, to Compiegne. There all the arrangements made with so much
care were thrust aside. Though the actual marriage had not yet taken
place, Napoleon claimed all the rights which afterward were given in the
ceremonial at Paris. He took the girl to the chancellerie, and not to
the chateau. In an anteroom dinner was served with haste to the imperial
pair and Queen Caroline. Then the latter was dismissed with little
ceremony, the lights were extinguished, and this daughter of a line of
emperors was left to the tender mercies of one who always had about him
something of the common soldier--the man who lives for loot and lust. . . .
At eleven the next morning she was unable to rise and was served in bed
by the ladies of her household.
