NAPOLEON LOVER AND HUSBAND BY Frederic Masson TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY J. M. HOWELL - .* . 1907 THE SAALFIELD PUBLISHING COMPANY NEW YORK AKRON, OHIO CHICAGO Copyright 1894 BY THE MERRIAM COMPANY Copyright 1800 BY THE WERNER COMPANY Napoleon CONTENTS. CHAPTER *AGB I. Youth. rrfT. 5 II. Thoughts of Marriage, tttt. 19 III. Josephine de Beauharnais. .i-n-v 82 IV. Citizeness Bonaparte. ."777. 45 V. Madame Foures 61 VI. Reconciliation.. rrr 74 ^VII. La Grassini. . . . 87 VIII. Footlight Beauties 101 IX. Readers 116 \/" X. Josephine's Coronation, rr. 131 XI. Madame * * * * 144 XII. Stephanie de Beauharnais 157 XIII. Eleonore 171 XIV. Hortense 181 ^ XV. Madame Wale wska. rT. 192 ^ XVI. The Divorce, .rr ,-.'. .... 237 C/ XVII. Marie-Louise, .rr. 252 XVIII. Elba 280 XIX. The Hundred Days 298 XX. Summary 310 . they reveal certain phases of his character which might be vainly searched for elsewhere. Aside from Grassini, and perhaps Mme. Branchu, who was so homely that to accuse him of a weakness for her would seem absurd were it not possible that the dilettante in him might have rendered her attrac- tive because of the wonderful talent she displayed in tragic opera ; he never affected the queens of the lyric stage. No dancers visited the Tuileries, although it was the moment when dancers were in vogue ; when Clotide was supported by Prince Pignatelli, who allowed her one hundred thousand francs a month, and was outbid by Admiral Mazaredo, who offered her four hundred thousand ; when Bigottini was showered with favors from all sides, and thereby accumulated a fortune for her numerous progeny, for whom in later years she arranged advantageous marriages. No comediennes, neither Mile. Mars, who was not at all pretty when she made her debut, nor Mile. Devienne, the incomparable soubrette whose bright face betrayed her cleverness and wit, but who was unable to utter a word in answer to the flattering speech the Emperor once made her when en route for a hunt, nor Mile. Mezeray, who was greatly interested in Lucien Bonaparte, nor yet Mile. Gros, who made Joseph happy, NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 103 ever went in at the famous " little door" of the Tuileries. In 1808, Bonaparte may have been interested in Mme. Leverd, for after a single performance at Saint-Cloud she was admitted to the Societe Fran- gaise, and it would scarcely have been at the in- stigation of M. Remusat the manager, for later, despite the Emperor's wishes and orders, he posi- tively persecuted her. Mme. Leverd was an excep- tionally graceful and charming woman, so sprightly, coquettish and bewitching that her lack of real talent was generally condoned ; but if Napoleon had a fancy for her which is not certain she was the sole comedienne who appealed to him, for by nature, temperament and choice he was drawn to tragedians. That was the most glorious period in the history of tragedy and the Theatre Francais, the time, when, before a highly-cultivated audience who would not permit the slightest inaccuracy to pass unnoticed ; before soldiers who were in accord with noble and generous sentiments, a marvellous com- pany kept alive the traditions of epic literature. While Bonaparte favored the actors with his pro- tection, and was not sparing with money, he was severely critical ; he held that the lines which they spoke were precepts for the nation and were of less 104 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. importance for its literary education than for the formation of its morals. He once said to Goethe : " Tragedy should be the school of kings and people, it is the highest point a poet can attain." One evening on retiring he said : " Tragedy warms the heart and elevates the mind ; it does, and should, create heroes," and it was then that he added : " If Corneille was alive I would make him a king." Bonaparte did not care for melodrama, which he claimed had no proper place in dramatic literature, and had little taste for comedy, considering, like Moliere and Beaumarchais, that it was unreal, agreeing with Le Sage that it was repulsive, and with Fabre d'Eglantine that it was pitifully un- J natural ; farce was utterly incomprehensible, and failed to distract him. Jokes, witticisms and cleverly turned phrases, even when they touched upon the main subject, but which were not, as he said, " the spirit of the thing," pretty phrases and graceful couplets all escaped him ; he despised and disdained, or, rather, he ignored them. Tragedy seemed to him strong, serious, noble ; his equals spoke in the kings, heroes and gods of tragedy, in their words he imagined he heard his own voice, for it was in such fashion that he wished to be repre- sented to posterity, when, with the lapse of time, his life should be depicted on the stage. NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 105 Having this passion for tragedy Napoleon was naturally drawn in his hours of leisure to seek those who interpreted it ; the pretty faces of the sou- brettes, the affected innocence of the ingneues, and the airs of the great coquettes could all be met at his court, the whole company of the social comedy were at his beck and call ; but the women who im- personated Phedra, Andromache, Iphigenia and Hermione, were no longer courtesans but beings idealized by the characters they assumed, and view ing them at the play it was not the actress he desired, but the heroine she represented, and the artist's actual presence did not detract from this impression, the satisfaction of a purely sensual desire being hid from his eyes behind the shadow of poetry. Kecalled to reality by the press of business, hav- ing but a moment to give to the creatures of his fancy, unfamiliar with courteous phrases and un- able to dissimulate the scorn he felt for those who, at a message from a valet, would rush to pamper his senses, Napoleon manifested, in both speech and action, a brutality which in another would have been pure cynicism : actually no one was less a cynic than he. " To everything pertaining to sen- suality," says one of his intimate servitors, "he gave a poetic color and name ; " even his brusque- 106 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. ness of speech dissimulated a certain embarrassment which he always felt in the presence of women. He professed a viciousness which he did not possess ; thus, in conversation at Saint Helena, he wished to appear more familiar with sensations than senti- ments, while in reality no one was more sentimental than he. Desire in him did not have its rise in sensuality, but from an over-excited imagination, and it hap- pened not infrequently, that by the time the fair one was at hand the current of his thoughts had changed, that he was occupied with affairs of state and anything which distracted him was a bore. A tap at the door was the signal that the expected guest had arrived: " Bid her wait," the Consul would exclaim. Upon a second, and impatient tap : " Bid her disrobe," the harassed Consul would com- mand. At the third tap he lost all patience and would cry : " Send her away ! " and then would return to his work. Such was the experience, so we are informed, of Mile. Duchesnois, but she was accustomed to such adventures. At the beginning of the consulate a young elegant, who had just inherited a fortune, invited some of his friends to celebrate his good luck at a country house in the environs of Saint Denis ; they breakfasted, sang and played cards, then NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 107 they began to feel bored, and the host sent to a well-known house in the Chaussee d'Antin for some of the gentler sex to enliven his guests. One of the young women remained without a gallant, being too plain to be attractive, although possessed of fine eyes, a svelt figure, an air of amiability and an expres- sion of sadness which rendered her interesting ; the party played at hide-and-seek in the park, and this girl, who was Mile. Duchesnois, ran like a fawn, all her movements being graceful and supple, while her musical voice and clever conversation made her appear more intellectual and cultivated than her companions. Among the company was a young man who took pity upon her, conversed with her, and, finding her clever, cultivated her society and finally spoke of her to Legouve who was curious to meet her, and who, on hearing her read some verses, was astonished at her talent. Legouve gave Mile. Duchesnois advice and in- troduced her at Mme. de Montesson's where she met General Valence ; he in turn became interested in her and promised to interest Mme. Bonaparte in her behalf and arranged for her debut. She made her first appearance in Phedra, and it was not until a year or two later that her adventure at the Tuile- ries took place. Women have certain memories which nothing can obliterate, and Mile. Duchesnois 108 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. guarded throughout her life the apprehension that the words so often heard in her early youth and in the days of servitude, " she is too ugly," would again ring in her ears. Therese Bourgoin was also dismissed in the same unceremonious manner, but she who so insolently answered : ' ' Neither seen nor heard of, " in response to a letter of inquiry from a duchess of the Empire and wife of a marshal of France regarding a lost parrot, was not likely to accept such treatment in a spirit of humility, particularly when the affront to her vanity was augmented by a personal loss that of a rich lover, the minister of the Interior, Chaptal. After Therese Bourgoin's second ap- pearance, in which she had been greatly harassed, Chaptal secured an engagement for her at the Theatre Francais, and to confirm this favor he wrote a public and official letter to Mile. Dumesnil, announcing the bestowal of a ministerial gratuity and thanking her for having profitably used the leisure of her retirement in the formation of such a pupil. Mile. Dumesnil, at his request, gave the debutante some worldly advice, and Chaptal and the young actress were to be seen everywhere together ; he placed the newspapers at her orders, and gave Paris food for scandal. Mile. Bourgoin was just suited to a man of fifty ; she had an in- NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 109 genuous air and roguish smile, clear, infantile eyes, which gave her an appearance of innocence, a ring- ing voice and spiciness of speech, which, combined, gained for her the appellation of " the goddess of joy and pleasure." Chaptal's great mistake lay in disregarding ap- pearances and so compromising himself ; blinded by Mile. Bourgoin's specious manner, he believed im- plicitly in her fidelity ; a belief of which Napoleon was malicious enough to disabuse him. One even- ing, when he had a business engagement with the minister, he also made an appointment with Mile. Bourgoin, and the actress was announced within Chaptal's hearing ; Napoleon sent word that she must wait, and a little later excused himself entirely, but Chaptal, on hearing his mistress announced, had gathered up his papers and departed, and he sent in his resignation that same night. The young woman on her side openly declared war, and at St. Peters- burg, where she went after the peace of Tilsit, she regaled her adorers with all the epigrams and lampoons regarding the Emperor which were amusing Paris. At Erfurt the Emperor took his revenge and entertained the Czar with epigrams on Mile. Bourgoin, warning him against her over- generosity in affairs of the heart, which naturally militated 110 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. against her success. At the restoration she espoused the royalist cause, all the more intensely because she had been presented to the king by the Duke de Berry and had good reasons for clinging to the Bourbons. During the hundred days she did not hesitate to array herself in their colors, for which no one inter- fered with her, but as the Duke de Berry failed to renew their relations on his return, her enthusiasm died a natural death. Although Napoleon's relations with Mesdames Duchesnois and Bourgoin were unimportant, it was not the same with Mile. George. Napoleon was installed at Saint-Cloud when Mile. George visited him for the first time ; she was received in the small apartment opening into the orangery, and it is claimed that it was on this occasion that he stung her pride by saying : " You must have hideous feet for you keep your stockings on. " Her animal beauty was so perfect in every other respect that this defect struck Napoleon's eye and so impressed him that the remark escaped involuntarily. NoTone was more keenly alive to the beauty of well-modelled feet and hands than Bonaparte ; it was one of the first things that he looked at in a woman, and when they were ill- formed he used to say : " Her extremities are common." Such was the case with Mile. George, who, at seventeen, was superbly NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. Ill handsome, whose head, shoulders, arms and body were fit for a painter's model, but whose extremities, particularly the feet, were very ugly ; doubtless the coarse, ill-made shoes which she had worn when sweeping her father's doorsteps at Amiens had helped to deform them. The father was manager of a theatre and led its orchestra. Napoleon passed nearly the whole of that winter at Saint-Cloud, and Mile. George was frequently his guest ; aside from admiring her beauty, he was entertained by her cleverness and aptness at repartee ; she recounted to him all the stories, and imitated for him the actions of the habitues of the Theatre Frangais, and in those days there were lots of good stories going about. Her visits were continued after he returned to Paris, where he received her in an apartment of the entresol at the Tuileries ; he never went to her house, and so never encountered Coster de Saint-Victor, or any other of her lovers. Mile. George claimed that her intimacy with Napo- leon endured for two years, and that during all that time she was absolutely faithful : it was more than was expected of her. Josephine soon learned of this affair, was unusu- ally disquieted by it, and treated her husband to innumerable scenes. ' ' She worries a great deal more than is called for, " wrote Bonaparte ; ' ' she is always 112 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. fearful that I may fall seriously in love ; can she not understand that love is not for me ? Love is a passion which makes one willing to abandon every- thing for the sake of the beloved person ; certainly I am not of a nature to give myself up so completely, and what can it then matter to Josephine that I amuse myself with women for whom I feel no such sentiment ? " No one could reason better, but reason went for nothing with Josephine. She was obliged to ac- knowledge, however, that Napoleon was very discreet; there was no scandal, no favors shown Mile. George as an actress, for when she failed to keep her engagement she was rudely enough men- aced with imprisonment and knew that the threat was not an idle one ; when she played at court she received the same fee as her comrades, and it is said that when she made bold enough to ask Napoleon for his portrait he handed her a double Napoleon, saying : "Here it is, and said to be a good likeness." Probably he gave her money, for on the books of the privy purse the item, " handed to His Majesty the Emperor," is frequently repeated, designating sums of from ten to twenty thousand francs, al- though nothing indicates the uses for which they were destined ; on one occasion only, the 10th of NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 113 August, 1807, does Mile. George's name appear on these books, against a gift of ten thousand francs > but three years had then elapsed since the cessation of her visits to the Tuileries, and this present was doubtless simply a memento presented on her saint's day. Less than a year later, on the 11th of May, 1808, Mile. George left Paris surreptitiously in company with Duport, an opera dancer, who, fearing to be arrested at the barriers, had disguised himself as a woman. Ignoring alike her engagement at the Theatre Frangaisandher creditors, she fled toEussia to rejoin a lover, who, they say, had promised to marry her ; this lover was Benckendorff, brother of the Countess d'Lieven, who came to Paris in the suite of the ambassador Tolstoi ; he had just been recalled and purposed to show off his mistress in St. Petersburg, and above all before the Czar. Underlying all this there was quite an intrigue, the object of which was to win the Czar from Mme. Narishkine, by a brief liaison with the French actress, from which, it was thought, he could be easily lead back to the Empress. Mile. George most assuredly suspected nothing of these fine schemes, and in letters to her mother she expatiated upon the charms of her " good Benckendorff," and signed herself, in August of 1808, " George Benckendorff." She was presented to the Emperor Alexander who 8 114 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. gave her a handsome diamond ornament and had her called to Peterhoff , hut she was never asked the second time ; she claimed that the grand duke, who, after a performance of Phedra, said : "Your Mile. George is not worth as much in her way as my charger in his," visited her daily and " loved her as a sister." According to her, the Kussian nobility and gentry alike were her adorers, but this was not the end the conspirators had in view when they encouraged her going to St. Petersburg, nor was it what Napoleon had permitted them to plan when the plot had been revealed to him ; nevertheless, when, in 1812, Mile. George desired to return to France and rushed to rejoin the principal actors of the Society Frangaise who had been summoned to Dresden during the armistice, the Emperor not only had her reinstated in the society, but ordered that she should receive a salary for the six years of absence ; her comrades never forgave that. During the hundred days Mile. George sent word to Napoleon that she could give him papers which would compromise the Duke d'Otrante, and Napo- leon sent a trusted messenger to her ; on his return he asked : " Did not mademoiselle tell you that her affairs were very much embarrassed ? " " No, sire, " replied the messenger, " she only spoke of her desire NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 115 tc hand those papers personally to your Majesty." " I already know what they refer to, Caulaincourt has mentioned them," returned the Emperor, "and he told me also that Mile. George was in straitened circumstances ; you are to give her twenty thousand francs from my private purse." Mile. George at least was grateful, and undoubt- edly the sentiments which she frankly avowed mili- tated against her. and caused her brutal expulsion from the Theatre Frangais. Even in her old age, when nothing remained either in face or figure of the one time triumphant beauty, her voice trembled when she spoke of Napoleon, and she manifested such unfeigned emotion that she deeply impressed the young men who listened to her, and it was not the lover whom she lauded, but the Emperor. This woman, not from the prudery pf old age, for she spoke freely enough of other lovers, but from a sort of awe, seemed to forget that Napoleon had ever found her beautiful and sought her love, and she spoke not of the man he had been for her, but of the man he had been for France. Mile. George re- minds one of one of those nymphs whom the gods honored by a brief caress, and who, blinded by the heavenly effulgence, failed to see the face of the deity. 116 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. CHAPTER IX. READERS. Tragedians alone climbed the dark staircase, and under the guidance of Constant or Roustam traversed a gloomy corridor, lighted night and day by argand lamps, and finally reached a room in the entresol from which a secret staircase led to Bona- parte's private apartments. Every morning Mme. Bernard, the imperial florist, placed a bouquet in this room, there was an appropriation of six hun- dred francs a year for that express purpose, but the flowers, which were renewed daily, died less quickly than the sentiment which inspired the visitors. As Bonaparte rose in power these visitors the solicitous, the ambitious, the intriguants became so numerous that it would be impossible to keep count of them all. Every man who fills a position of power finds himself solicited by like callers, who await only a sign to give themselves to him, and, keeping themselves constantly in view, beg for a glance, seeking a profitable dishonor. Napoleon NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 11 7 was thirty in 1800, thus, up to 1810, he was in the prime of life, and in vigorous health ; he neither sought nor shunned amours, but, aside from Jose- phine, only two women ever inspired him with deep affection ; he thought but moderately well of the sex, none of them ever interfered with his work, distracted his thoughts, retarded his progress or caused a modification of his plans ; and these little episodes were not unlike the supper which was nightly set out for him upon one end of his writing- table : he would not have taken a step to procure food, but, finding it at hand, very naturally par- took of it, and at once returned to his work. The important fact is not that a few veiled women stole by night into the Emperor's secret apartment, but that no woman, wife or mistress, habitually frequented the study and the ministerial cabinet. If Napoleon were not the person in question, if certain of his liaisons had not been recounted with details invented at pleasure, and if some of his favorites had not become authors, either for the pecuniary profit accruable from their memoirs, or for the pleasure of appearing before the public in a role they had never played, it would hardly be worth while to take note of these transitory love- affairs, but the calumnies have been too widely spread to render the truth unimportant. 118 NAPOLEON, LOVER AN T D HUSBAND. One of the women who have become best known as a writer, and who received innumerable favors from both Consul and Emperor, must still escape censure ; for circumstantial evidence, no matter how convincing, should not replace positive proof, and the study of characters analogous to hers will place her in the rank she should occupy. Another, much less celebrated, but who up to the present time has done good service to pamphleteers, is a certain Mme. de Vaudey, who, when the Em- pire was proclaimed, was named lady-in-waiting on the strong recommendation of M. Lecoulteux de Canteleu. She was well-born, being the daughter of that remarkable soldier, Michaud d'Argon, who invented the floating batteries used at the siege of Gibraltar, furnished the plans for the campaign in Holland in 1793, took Breda without striking a blow, and was one of the most prominent senators of the council ; she was well connected, also, for her husband, M. de Barberot de Vellexon, Lord oi Vaudey and captain in the royal Bourgundians, wa& descended from an old Alsatian family, residents of Gray since the fifteenth century ; moreover, she was an extremely pretty person, sparkling with wit and unusually clever, sang exquisitely, and wrote even better. Mme. de Vaudey was appointed lady- in-waiting in 1814, and as the Empress was about NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 119 starting to take the waters at Aix-la-Chapelle, she accompanied her ; and when Napoleon, early in September, rejoined Josephine at Aix, for the tri- umphal journey on the Rhine, Mme. de Vaudey accompanied them everywhere, and employed her time in amusing His Majesty. On her return to Paris she thought herself in a position to brave the Empress, whose jealousy was aroused, and to set up housekeeping on the footing of a favorite in a pretty little chateau near Auteuil where she enter- tained largely, gave ftes, lived like a princess, and, following her imperial mistress' example, ran deeply into debt. Once, after a prolonged audience, she laid the state of her finances before the Emperor, and her debts were paid ; a second disclosure of her pecuniary embarrassment met with the same suc- cess ; but when she petitioned for a third audience, Napoleon refused downright to see her. " I have not," he said to Duroc, " either sufficient money nor good-nature to pay such a price for what I can get so cheaply ; thank Madame de Vaudey for the kindness she has shown me, and never mention her to me again. " On the receipt of this message Mme. de Vaudey wrote a pathetic letter, declaring that she would poison herself if her debts debts of honor ! were not paid in twenty- four hours. The aide-de-camp 120 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. on duty was hastily dispatched to Auteuil, and found the lady disposed for anything except suicide ; it was immediately requested that she send in her resignation as lady-in-waiting, and that is why her name does not appear on the imperial almanac. Some years later, after her mind had become un- balanced, Mme. de Vaudey called upon M. de Po- lignac and offered to assassinate Napoleon ; later still, reduced to destitution, almost blind and with a paralyzed arm she peddled her Souvenirs du Di- rectoire et de VEmpire as a pretext for asking as- sistance, and it was she who furnished Ladvocat, the librarian, with the greater part of his Me- moires oVune dame du Palais ; but she was in want and mentally unbalanced, others had not the same excuse. It was Josephine who, on the solicitation of Lecoulteux, had introduced Mme. de Vaudey at court, and she had numberless proteges of the same, and of an inferior order, none of whom merited her patronage and who appear to have had no other reason for being at court than their will- ingness to cater to Napoleon's fancies. This state of affairs was not premeditated by Josephine, but her Creole nature had need of com- panionship and distraction ; she liked to surround herself with agreeable and compliant people who were neither her equals nor yet servants, whose NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 121 pretty faces pleased her eye, whose conversation amused, and whose accomplishments helped to dis- tract her, who, in short, peopled pleasantly the palace wherein she claimed she lived in sad and solitary state ; she engaged them without making many inquiries, sometimes touched by a sad story, sometimes attracted by a pretty face or an unex- pectedly bright response. These young women, from some of whom the bloom of innocence had already been rubbed by friction with the world, were all hoping for conquests ; poor and not edu- cated to entertain conscientious scruples, they were thrown suddenly into the midst of a court which was one of the most splendid in history, and in the long idle days which they spent in the Empress' private apartments they had nothing to do but ac- cept the attentions of the officers with whom they constantly came in contact and to angle for hus- bands. Naturally they aspired to find husbands among the officers who thronged the palace, as so many women no better than themselves had done ; women who were then wives of marshals of the Empire ; they saw constantly and familiarly him from whom emanated all favors, who at a sign could make or destroy one's fortune, and put them- selves in his way, ambitious for that sign, ready to risk anything in order to obtain it ; they were com- 122 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. plaisant, presented themselves only when desired, and exerted themselves to please, and as the subal- terns kept a sharp lookout to see if the Emperor admired any of them, arrangements were speedily concluded and affairs followed their natural course without the slightest attempt at seduction on one side, or the least love on the other. But, no matter how carefully concealed the intrigue, Josephine always discovered it ; then there was a scene, and the young person was discharged ; however, she had usually received a good dot and was apt to crown her career by marriage with some gentleman who was not over-scrupulous, and thus become the progenitor of people of some importance. A typical case was that of Felicite Longory, daughter of a petty officer of the cabinet, whom Josephine had called to fill the position of lady usher. As such she was stationed in the salon into which the private apartments opened, and her duties consisted simply of throwing open the double doors for the passage of the Emperor or Empress ; for this service she received three thousand, six hundred francs a year, which sum Josephine supplemented by six hundred francs in 1806. Felicite was a per- sonage of no importance, almost a servant, yet she succeeded in attracting the attention of the Emperor, and, the inevitable scene with the Empress ensu- NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 128 ing, was naturally discharged, and later married well. Mile. Lacoste stood a little higher on the social plane. She was a slight and pretty blonde, an orphan without fortune, who had been brought up by an aunt who was said to be a schemer, and who managed her niece's presentation to Josephine. The Empress, touched by the girl's forlorn state, gave her an ambiguous position, vaguely entitled a reader. Mile. Lacoste certainly did not find her duties fatiguing, for hardly had she assumed the position when the court departed for Milan where the corona- tion was to take place, and she followed the court, without being of it, for she had no clearly defined position. As reader, Mile. Lacoste was denied access to the drawing-room of the ladies-in-waiting; and, too well-bred to associate with the ladies' maids, near to whom, however, she was lodged, she felt isolated and forlorn in her new surroundings. At Stupinitz the Emperor caught sight of her and remarked her pretty face ; at Milan he spoke to her and an understanding was arrived at. Josephine, however, soon became aware of it and there was a terrible scene ; the reader was ordered to leave and her aunt summoned from Paris to escort her home ; but before her departure the Emperor insisted that she should appear once at least among the Empress' retinue. -This created 124 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. a great scandal, for a reader was not supposed to appear outside the private apartments. On return- ing to Paris Napoleon undertook to find a husband for Mile. Lacoste, and married her to a rich finan- cier ; she made an honest wife and devoted mother, and never reappeared at the Tuileries. During this same journey to Italy, in the midst of the fetes given at Genoa in celebration of the union of France and the Ligurian Republic, a lady by name of Gazzani or Gazzana (her name has been written both ways), crossed Napoleon's path ; she was the daughter of a Mme. Bertani, a dancer, or, according to some historians, a singer connected with the Grand- Theatre. Out of compliment to Josephine a number of Italian ladies had gone to Milan, and it had been arranged that La Gazzani should accompany them ; it was a strangely assorted party, comprising ladies of the Negrone, Brignole, Doria and Remedi fam- ilies, and women like Mme. Gazzani and Bianchina La Fleche, who was destined to such a brilliant career in Westphalia. Carlotta Gazzani was tall, rather too slight per- haps, but with a most graceful and elegant car- riage ; her hands and feet were not remarkable for their beauty, indeed she invariably wore gloves, but her features were of the purest type of Italian NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 125 beauty and her eyes large, dark and very brilliant. Even women praised La Gazzani's beauty, which is positive proof that it was great, but also, that she lacked that peculiar and indescribable charm which renders some women so captivating and the envy of all their sex. Mme. Remusat admitted that it was her husband, then first chamberlain, who charged himself with the Italian beauty's introduc- tion at court, and who persuaded the Emperor to nominate her reader to Josephine ; evidently it was not Talleyrand alone who, as Napoleon once said, " always had his pocket full of mistresses." Mme. Gazzani, then called Mme. Gazzani Brentano, and who long afterwards assumed the title of Bar- oness de Brentano, replaced Mile. Lacoste, at a salary of five hundred francs a month ; from 1805 to 1807 little was heard of her, for during that period which comprised the battle of Austerlitz and the campaign in Prussia and Poland the Emperor was little in France, but on his return to Paris and later at Fontainebleau she saw her opportunity and seized it. She was so lodged that she could easily reach the Emperor at all hours, and when summoned by him immediately hastened to obey. She never at- tempted to pose as a favorite, but accepted with modesty her role of occasional mistress, and the Empress, at first inclined to be jealous, was quickly 126 reassured by Napoleon's making her his confidante The Italian retained a respectful and submissive attitude towards the Empress, and remained unpre- tentiously in her place. She was accorded the entree of the drawing-room reserved for the ladies-in-wait- ing, but, that favor bestowed, Napoleon did not pub- licly interest himself in her and permitted the ladies of the palace to treat her as they pleased and shun her if they chose ; their hostility, however, was of a short duration, and soon several of them, and not the least haughty, relented sufficiently to admit her into their circle. Mme. Gazzani obtained something more substantial, however, from her relations with tlie Emperor than the flatteries of the court, as she secured the general receivership at Evreau for her husband. After the imperial divorce Mme. Gazzani re- joined her lord, and being close to Navarre, where Josephine was residing, she became an intimate of the household to which she was strongly attracted by a liaison with M. de Pourtales, a groom of the Empress' household. Her intimacy with the Em- peror terminated at Fontainebleau, after that he only saw her by chance. He never loved her and appears never to have talked of her, but she wa8 consoled for his forgetfulness by the success in life of her daughter, Charlotte- Josephine-Eugenie-Claire, NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 127 self-styled Baroness de Brentano, who made a brill iant match and married M. Alfred Mosselman, by whom she had a daughter who married M. Eugene Le Hon. Although oblivious of Mme. Gazzani, Napoleon often spoke of a certain Mile. Guillebeau, the daughter of a bankrupt banker, who was, in 1808, appointed to assist Mme. Gazzani as reader. Mile. Guillebeau's mother was Irish by birth, and had three daughters, two of whom were grown and con- tributed to the family income by dancing and play- ing the tambourine in the drawing-rooms of the nobility. The eldest compassed an introduction to the Princess Elisa, who assisted her to make a good marriage, and the younger, who the gossips affirmed had not been cruel either to Murat or Junot, was clever enough to secure the protection of Queen Hortense, who was taken with her pretty face and clever dancing. At a masquerade ball, given by Caroline at the Elysee, Hortense, who was to lead a costumed quadrille, took a fancy to dress Mile. Guillebeau as Folly, and to have her, tambourine in hand, lead the procession of her maidens into the ball-room. Caroline had double reasons for jeal- ousy, and as soon as she perceived Mile. Guillebeau she rushed to Hortense's side and a lively scene ensued, which resulted in Folly's dismissal from the 128 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. ball-room. This was an episode in the continual warfare which raged between the Bonapartes and the Beauharnais, and to avenge both herself and her favorite, Hortense presented Mile. Guillebeau to her mother, who, to annoy Caroline, attached the girl to herself in the position of reader. This incident occurred just previous to the journey- to Bayonne, and when the imperial household was installed at Marrac, Mile. Guillebeau found herself in an isolated position ; court etiquette closed the door of the drawing-room against her during the day, and she only entered it occasionally of an even- ing in order to entertain the company with her music and dancing, and was therefore reduced to passing most of the time in her bedroom, which was in reality nothing better than a garret, for the chateau of Marrac was small, and had not been con- structed with a view to lodging an imperial house- hold. Being a great coquette, the girl was fearfully bored, and was well content when a servant a Mamaluke tapped at her door and announced an imperial visit. Matters were progressing quite to her taste when Lavallette, who, by right of his po- sition of postmaster-general, watched the corre- spondence of the household, sent Napoleon a letter written to Mile. Guillebeau by her mother, in which she had clearly traced the role her daughter had to NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 129 play, and recommended her to lose no occasion to make herself agreeable to His Majesty, and to strengthen his fancy for her to the utmost ; point- ing out to the girl how greatly to her interest it was to follow this course, and how she could profit by the imperial weakness. Napoleon was so dis- gusted with the lowness of the intrigue, in which he afterwards discovered that Prince de Benevant was implicated, that he immediately commanded a post chaise for mademoiselle, and she was packed off to Paris escorted only by a valet. Mile. Guillebeau met and married a M. Sourdeau who, thanks to the Emperor, was given a receiver- ship, but he appropriated the funds and prison stared him in the face when the restoration occurred and proved his salvation. Mme. Sourdeau was clever enough to secure an introduction to the Duke de Berry, who found her u charming and possessed of the most beautiful eyes in the world," and as a recompense for favors received appointed her hus- band consul at Tangier. In the life of Napoleon, these passing fancies count for little ; they barely appealed to his senses, never touched his heart ; they give us no insight to the active side of his nature, but demonstrate his hatred of intrigue, his generosity and certain of his habits. It would be easy to relate many adven- ISO i "' i i: -\ "" hi sc \\D. tun ; of the :.iim kind, hul none inoiv int. n 1 ! n : tales ,,f garrison adventures for which, as Kmporor, ho paid two hundred napo Icons where Dim of his captains would ha\ o paid Iwml \ francs ; h. w ., not const Muled differently Mian his man hals and his soldiers ; he was a man. hul ho was not a man whoso senses wcn so imperious Hint he was always forced to \ iold to 1 hem. \1 Vienna he ohser\ ed a yountf ;; irl, who. on her side, was apparently infatuated with him ; he had her followed, and invited her lo visit him in (he evening at Sohoonhrunn ; she accepted, and as she spoke only Italian and (ierman tliey conversed in the former lan-ua^e. Napoleon discovered almost immediately that the :;ul holoiitfod to a most re speotahle lantih and did not coinpreliend in the least what the invitation to meet him implied, and that while she felt a passionate admiration for him it was ingenuous and innocent,; ho ordered that she should he immediately reconducted to her home, and provided for her future, :;i\ in:;- her a dot of twentx thousand florins. , Tins act was far from heim: unique in Napoleon's Isfory, it w.is repeated three times at least in his life ; on tlu> last occasion at Saint Helena. NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 131 CHAPTER X. JOSEPHINE'S CORONATION. In the idleness and disquietude of her daily life, which resembled closely that of an aged sultana, Josephine had ample leisure for reflection, and the outgrowth of her continual agitation, anxiety and jealousy was- the knowledge that by one thing only could her position be secured the birth of a child. Without understanding Napoleon's ambitious pro- jects, she yet knew that he had a consuming desire for male issue, and, as his fortunes rose, gradually comprehended why he so desired an heir, and realized that for her maternity should no longer be a pretext for obtaining favors in the shape of journeys which gave her relaxation from the monot- onous life at the Tuileries but an aim ; that the throne of which her husband was slowly climbing the steps should have an assured heir. To Bonaparte, chief of a republic, Bonaparte re- establishing the Bourbons and content with a life- long place of honor under the restored monarchy, a 132 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. son was not indispensable, but, unfortunately for Josephine, the contingent glory of a role a la Monk did not tempt him, nor the disinterestedness of a life like Washington's satisfy him. A great flood of opinion, one of those popular currents which nothing stems, swept all obstacles from his path and raised him first to a consulate which was republican, later to one which was autocratic and differed from a monarchy only in name, and above all in the in- solvable question of heredity. Around this question of heredity surged the ambitions of some and the projects of others. Jose- phine saw that Bonaparte's brothers already aspired to the succession ; that the sisters debated whether their husbands, too, might not have a chance, and that the nation itself desired, after so much turbulence, a government that would endure more than a lifetime ; but if a monarchal form of govern- ment was established, who was to succeed Napoleon % There were the Consul's brothers, but by what right could they be called to the throne ? An hereditary monarchy in its Christian form is a derivative of the Hebrew form of government, and is supposedly a divine institution, but it applies exclusively to the chief of a dynasty and his descendants, however far removed, provided that they are male and descended in direct line from him. In order that Napoleon's NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 133 brothers should succeed him it would have been necessary to have recourse to an expedient, common enough with the ancients, and proclaim that the late Charles de Buonaparte had been emperor of France, but it was unlikely that the country would accept such a fiction. Another expedient was to abandon the Hebraic law of succession and institute the Koman law of adoption ; under that regime the Consul would be free to choose as his successor whomsoever he judged best fitted to .fill his place ; but it was a question whether the nation would overcome its prejudice in favor of the old monarchal system and accept such a solution of the problem. The simplest, most natural solution, which would both annihilate the ambitions and please the populace, was the birth of a son to Napoleon. In her anxiety to give to her husband the heir so ardently desired Josephine visited innumerable mineral springs whose waters were supposed to cure sterility, consulted various physicians and submitted heroically to any treatment recommended, made pilgrimages, and even had recourse to sorcerers ; whenever she had the least ground for believing l^erself with child she immediately made Bonaparte a sharer in her joyous hopes, and he in turn confided his happiness to his intimates ; as each hope died 134 Napoleon became more and more morose, and indulged in hard and bitter speeches which attested his disappointment. Once at Malmaison, he decided to get up a hunt in the park, when Mme. Bonaparte came to him weeping and said : " How can you think of hunting in the park when all our animals are with young ? " at which he retorted in a loud voice : " Well, then, I suppose it must be abandoned; everything here seems to be prolific except the mis- tress 8 " Publicly he threw all the blame for their child- lessness upon his wife ; but recalling Mme. Foures and many others, none of whom had borne him children, he entertained secret doubts of the justice of the aspersion he cast upon her ; doubts which Josephine stimulated by talking incessantly of her children, and by forcing Eugene and Hortense con- stantly upon his notice ; she harped so much upon the subject that Mme. Bacciochi lost all patience, and one day silenced her by remarking : " There may be something in what you say, but remember, sister, when those children saw the light you were much younger than you are now ! " The majority of the family, however, were pre- vailed upon to accept her view of the situation, and Napoleon himself did not combat it vigorously. On several occasions he said to his brother Joseph : NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 135 "I am childless, you all think me impotent, and Josephine, despite her anxiety, is not likely to bear children now ; so after me the deluge ! " When, on his return from Spain, Lucien preached divorce, and suggested the advisability of a marriage with an Infanta, Napoleon rejected the proposition ; undoubtedly he had diverse motives for so doing, but possibly the strongest of all was of a personal and private nature ; he may have reasoned that while a union with a Bourbon princess would un- questionably further his ambitious schemes, it was foolish to struggle for a throne if unable to transmit his name and glory to a son. The Spanish union was nevertheless urged by Lucien, for whom Josephine had but scant affection, remembering that he had been the first advocate of a divorce, and from that time she made no further effort to conciliate her husband's brothers, but did not hesitate to report any story which might injure them, however false, nor to embellish the truth ; and she was not sorry when a rupture finally occurred. Napoleon often said of Josephine that "she bears no more malice than a pigeon," but this was true only when her personal interests were not at stake. Although the doubt which she had inspired in Napoleon served to avert a divorce in 1801, Josephine knew herself to be at the mercy of chance ; it was 136 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. neither the actresses whose company he frequented, nor the ladies of the court whom she feared, for if one of them happened to bear a child she reasoned that Napoleon could not be assured of his father- hood unless a striking physical resemblance proved it ; what she dreaded was a liaison similar to the one with Mme. Foures, for a child born under such conditions meant the shipwreck of all her hopes and ambitions, as Bonaparte had reached a point where he felt himself upon a level with the old dynasties, and knew that a union with him would not be dis- dained by the purest blood of France, while there was no lack of men like Talleyrand, " the accursed limper," ready to tempt him, suggest advantageous marriages and act as intermediary. In default of a child, which alone, as Napoleon himself said, " could insure Josephine's peace of mind and put a stop to her unceasing jealousy," how could she attach herself to her husband so firmly that he would not dream of breaking the chain ? For years associated with him in his public life, received everywhere as a sovereign, holding her salon at the Tuileries or at Saint-Cloud, obliged by Napoleon himself to take precedence over all other women, even above his mother at family and infor- mal gatherings, presented to the country and to Europe as the first lady in France, she could not be NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 137 repudiated without a scandal, and such a proceed- ing would certainly be badly received by the public. She had been the medium for the distribution of too many favors, had exercised her influence to ob- tain too many pardons, not to have warm and faith- ful adherents ; but, as Napoleon's popularity grew and his power increased, the worldly prestige of his wife diminished, and she realized more and more that no tie could bind him to her save a living token of their union. Josephine finally conceived a most ingenious plan, namely, to constitute a heredity by persuading Napo- leon to adopt his nephew and her grandson, the child of Louis Bonaparte and Hortense de Beauharnais ; such a procedure would conciliate all factions, sat- isfy the Bonapartes, because the heir-presumptive would be one of their name, and assure her own future, and the question of succession would then be settled. She convinced Napoleon of the wisdom of this law and he spoke of it to Louis ; but Louis indignantly refused invoking the rights of his brother Joseph and himself, and before these imaginary and baseless claims, which were without precedent in history and totally at variance with the monarchal doctrine, Napoleon gave way and renounced the sole expedient which would have enabled him to establish an heredity without having recourse to divorce. 138 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. Failing to achieve the adoption of her grandson, Josephine saw no other means of consolidating the tie which linked her to Napoleon and his fortunes, and while suffering the greatest disquietude she was obliged to accept the situation with such fortitude as she could summon to her aid. The First Consul being proclaimed Emperor, she naturally became Empress, received the homage of the ministers of state and was addressed as " Your Majesty," and after the triumphal journey from Aix. la-Chapelle to Mayence, after the cannons of the Invalides had announced her return to the Parisians and, the authorities had defiled before her throne, her position seemed assured, and a divorce highly improbable ; but her own jealousy nearly occasioned the dreaded calamity. At Saint- Cloud she observed that a lady who had called to pay her respects, left the apartment sooner than was strictly in accordance with court etiquette, and having long suspected an undue intimacy be- tween this lady and the Emperor, she herself left the drawing-room and mounted the secret stairway leading to the private apartment in the entresol where he was in the habit of receiving fair visitors, and, recognizing the lady's voice, she insisted upon being admitted and made a scene which provoked Napoleon to violent anger. As a result he declared NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 139 himself weary of such espionage and determined to end it, and saying that he should follow the counsels of his friends and secure a divorce, he sent for Eu- gene to arrange the details. Eugene arrived, hut both for his mother and himself he declined all favors or any pecuniary assistance ; thus several days passed, Eugene remained unapproachable, while Josephine did not recriminate, but wept un- ceasingly, and Napoleon's resolution weakened be- fore her tears ; moreover, he knew himself to be in the wrong, and that it was not thus so grave an act should be accomplished, and a final conversation took place between them. " I have not the courage, " said he at its close, "to carry my threat into execu- tion, and if you will only be affectionate and obe- dient I shall never oblige you to leave me, but I will admit that I wish that you yourself would relieve me from the embarrassment of our present rela- tions." Josephine, however, had no taste for self-sacrifice, and did not propose to decide her fate, Napoleon must be the arbiter ; she was ready to obey, but she intended to await his order to descend the steps of the throne to which he had raised her. Influenced by his habits, political uncertainty, the hope of a possible paternity, affection for his stepchildren, the necessity of ruining the life which he had linked 140 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. with his, of renouncing forever the woman whom he still loved, touched by the resignation of the Beauharnais family, and provoked at the joy mani- fested by Josephine's enemies, Napoleon once more abandoned the idea of divorce, and, as though to pre- vent its return, commanded his wife to give serious attention to the preparations for his coronation, in which she should be associated. Certainly Josephine should have been content ; her most ambitious dreams could never have reached this height ; she, the Creole, who had been brought to France owing to the caprice of a courtesan, was to realize the ambitious dreams of past queens of France, be crowned by the Pope, and participate in the triumphs of the new Charlemagne. She was, however, desirous of forging still another link in the chain which bound Napoleon to her. For eight years she had been perfectly content with the civil ceremony, which alone cemented their union, but it now occurred to her that the benison of the Church would lend additional strength to her position. She did not ignore* the fact that she would have great obstacles to surmount before over- coming. Napoleon's objections to such a step ; she knew he would argue that, as the ceremony had not already taken place, it was useless to call public attention to its omission, that the greater number NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 141 of the men who surrounded him were in the same position as himself, and that by setting them such an example he would cause numerous acts of re- habilitation, which would appear to be in opposition to extant civil laws, and would seemingly indicate that the head of the government did not acknowl- edge the validity of the only mode of marriage which the state recognized, that he would find no lack of reasons to advance for his refusal, any of which might mask a furtive one. Napoleon knew that the Church is accommodating, when she has to deal with the powerful ones of earth, and that when it is advisable she will cut a knot which she had tied, but he felt that if later he was constrained to sunder his marriage relations he would prefer being free to act for himself and not be under obliga- tions to the Holy See. Josephine divined all this, and was fully alive to the fact that she had nothing to gain by appealing to Napoleon, and had no valid reasons to advance for the religious solemnization of their union ; she knew, too, that to assign conscientious scruples as her motive would give not only Napoleon, but the whole court, cause for mirth : but the Pope would not laugh at her. For several years she had been in correspondence with Pius VII. and quietly paving the way for a 142 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. religious marriage, so when the Pope called on her at Fontainebleau, she confessed that her union with Bonaparte had not received the sanction of the Church, and the Holy Father, after felicitating her upon her commendable desire to obey the laws of the Church, promised to insist upon the Sacrament. Thus Napoleon's hand was forced, for the Pope was quite capable of postponing the coronation if he postponed the marriage ; to refuse to anoint the Emperor, if Napoleon refused to obey the canons of the Church. The ceremony had already been thrice adjourned, and each postponement entailed immense expenditures, gave rise to discontent among the people, and provoked distrust. Paris was filled to overflowing with civil and military deputations, it would have created an awful scandal if the Pope, who had come to Paris solely to anoint and crown the Emperor, returned to Eome without having performed the ceremony ; it was absolutely neces- sary to yield, and on the morning of the 9th December, Cardinal Fesch pronounced the nuptial benediction. If ever a marriage was forced that one was, and later Napoleon could truthfully affirm that undue influence had been brought to bear upon him, that his consent having been unfairly obtained the mar- riage was, according to the canons of the Church, NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 14S null and void ; but this Josephine could not foresee, and married by a Cardinal, anointed by a Pope and crowned by the Emperor, she fondly believed her position unassailable. 144 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. CHAPTER XL MADAME ****. Napoleon would not have been the man he was had he never felt the need of a love not purely ani- mal, of a friendship which should satisfy the senti- mental and intellectual side of his nature as well as the physical, and as he advanced in years and his position isolated him more and more from ordinary mortals, the longing for sympathetic companion- ship grew upon him. During the early days of the consulate this long- ing was but faintly felt, but as the fires of youth burned down his intellectual nature assumed the ascendency, and we find ourselves in the presence of a new Napoleon, a man prone to periods of melan- choly, possessed by a feverish desire to be under- stood, and as apt to indulge in dreams of an ideal affection as in ambitious ones, a man delicately tender, who found for the expression of his senti- ments language suitable for a hero of romance. As Napoleon has not previously been presented to NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 145 the world in this light one feels some hesitancy in so doing, but the proofs that his character did thus change, though covering a somewhat later period of his life, are still sufficiently authentic to warrant the assertion. The women to whom Napoleon addressed himself at this time were no longer actresses and adven- turesses, who made capital out of their relations with him, but women of the world who had husbands to deceive and reputations to consider, who were cau- tious in their indiscretions, destroyed all proof of their relations with the Emperor, and whose descend- ants carefully guarded the secret, while those who were indiscreet enough to gossip about these ladies took good care to disguise their names ; even at this late day he who lifts the light veil which con- ceals their identity would be most discourteous ; moreover, one cannot be positive that the veil screens but one woman. Naturally one can identify certain traits of person and character, particularly when retaining from childhood a strong and clear impres- sion of a certain face, but such proofs are not doc- umentary, and even at the risk of being obscure and leaving some points unexplained, one must proceed with the greatest caution. There was at the con- sular court a young woman of twenty, wedded to a man thirty years her senior. The husband was a 10 146 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. most respectable person, a great worker, and left the best of reputations behind him ; he was one of those faithful servants of the state of whom the old regime made head clerks, and the new, general \/ directors ; he possessed wonderful ability as a finan- cier, and it was he who organized and directed a financial institution which is conducted to-day upon the same lines that he laid down. The wife was charming, graceful and amiable ; her features were irregular, but her face was rendered remarkable by an extremely winning smile and the thoughtful expression of her dark blue eyes eyes which, it must be admitted, were somewhat deceptive, as they ex- pressed whatever their mistress willed ; her hands and feet were marvellously small and beautiful, she danced like a fairy, sang like an artist, played the harp like a virtuoso, was an excellent listener, and did not display unduly her most remarkable intel- ligence. This lady lacked neither a strong will, worldly wisdom, ambition nor unscrupulousness, but she concealed her real hardness by a suave manner which enhanced her beauty, and, though of bourgeoise origin, she understood the art of polite- ness better than many a high-born dame, and in- stinctively comprehended the requirements of good society (a knowledge which must be innate and cannot be acquired) ; and she carried herself with NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 147 as haughty and disdainful an air as if she had been born in the purple rather than of middle-class provincials. According to certain authorities it was in November, 1803, that Napoleon fell in love with Mme. ****; but the affair with the woman whom Josephine surprised in the orangery at Saint- Cloud seems to destroy this hypothesis, and it is more likely that Napoleon paid his -first addresses to Mme. * * * * 3 about nine months later, in August, 1804. The child which was born to Mme. * * * * dur- ing that year resembled Bonaparte neither in mind nor feature, a fact which, though it inspired Napo- leon with some doubt as to its parentage, was a safeguard to the wife and confirmed her husband's faith in her. It is not uncommon, however, for features as characteristic as those of the Bonapartes to skip one generation and appear, strongly devel- oped, in a second, and it was such a manifestation, occurring a generation later in this family, which revealed a connection which up to that moment had been kept fairly secret. Was the lady at Saint- Cloud the person who, towards the end of the con- sulate, frequented a little house in the Allee des Veuves where Napoleon also went secretly ? Was she the same woman whom Napoleon, disguised and alone, visited by night at her own house in Paris ? It is impossible to say. The adventure at 148 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. Saint-Cloud seems to have been one of those transi- tory amours which endure but a day ; nocturnal and secret excursions on the part of a man who was ordinarily such a stay-at-home as Napoleon, demonstrate however, an irresistible attraction of which there are few instances in his career. There is some uncertainty regarding the identity of ..- several of the women who played a part in Napo- leon's life about that time which, for the moment, it is not advisable to clear up, and about which, memorialists and their editors have been careful not to enlighten us, out of consideration for the woman about whose memory they surge, and above all, for her descendants ; nevertheless, there are cer- tain facts regarding which all witnesses agree, and which, though not positive proof, are the strongest sort of circumstantial evidence and permit us to fathom the mystery with which these ladies sur- round themselves and to divine their names. A few days before the arrival of the Pope for the coronation, Napoleon, with his whole court, pro- ceeded to Fontainebleau, and his retinue were not slow to perceive that he appeared unusually serene and approachable. One evening, after the Pope had retired to his apartments, the Emperor re- mained with the Empress, chatting with her ladies- in-waiting ; this proceeding did not strike Jose- NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 149 phine as natural ; her jealousy was awakened, and she began to search for proof of a new intrigue ; not knowing exactly whom to suspect, she pounced upon Mine. Ney, who denied emphatically to Hor- tense, her old schoolfellow at Mme. Campan's, that the Emperor was in any way interested in her, but asserted that he was simply curious about one of the ladies of the court whom Eugene de Beauhar- nais found quite to his taste. Eugene was but a screen ; the lady accepted his attentions and appeared to take pleasure in his society solely to avert sus- picion ; she was intimate with Caroline Murat, who lent her assistance to the intrigue in order to spite Josephine, as she did in many other instances. No definite understanding had been arrived at when the court returned to Paris, but Napoleon was captivated by the lady's charms ; he was loath to leave the Empress' apartments when she was on duty, and was always ready to join Josephine at the theatre if that lady accompanied her ; and, though ordinarily he objected to his wife's going to the play except in state, he was then ready to organize little theatre parties, provided always that Madame **** was of the company. Josephine grew more and more uneasy and attempted to remonstrate, but her remonstrances were so ill re- ceived that she dared not insist, and although pub- s 150 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. licly Napoleon seemed more affable and frank than ever before, in reality, unless a certain lady was present, his temper was irritable and uncertain. " Bonaparte makes me a daily and reasonless scene," Josephine wrote a friend about that time ; " he is unbearable. n About that time Napoleon was seized with a vio- lent fancy for playing cards in the evening, and in- variably called his sister Caroline and two ladies of the palace, one of whom was the object of his affec- tion, to be his partners. He played badly, giving but scant attention to the game, which indeed served only as an excuse for remaining in the society of the woman he so admired, and procured him an opportunity to gaze upon her and to ponder over the charms of an ideal and platonic love ; without mentioning names he frequently indulged upon these occasions in long and vehement tirades against jealousy and jealous women ; and poor Josephine, drearily playing whist with court dignitaries, was forced to listen to the invectives which, uttered in his sonorous voice, rang out in the respectful silence of the room and were plainly audible to all. At a fete given by the minister of war, in honor of the coronation, the women, in accordance with the usage of the day, were alone seated at supper, the Empress with several of her ladies and the NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 151 wives of state dignitaries occupying the table of honor. Napoleon refused to seat himself but walked about, chatting with various ladies in an unusually gracious and affable manner ; he was assiduous in his attentions to Josephine, and taking a plate from the hands of a page served her himself. When he fancied that he had manoeuvred enough and had been sufficiently polite to the company in general, he approached Madame * * * * and engaged in con- versation with her neighbor, gradually including his charmer, and, perceiving that she wished some olives which were set upon the table at a little distance, he fetched them to her, saying : " You do wrong to eat olives at night, they will make you ill," then, turning to the other lady, he added, ' and you, madame, do well not to eat them, above all you are wise not to imitate Madame * * * * for in all things she is inimitable." The Emperor's stratagem did not impose upon Josephine, whom nothing escaped, and who, in the middle of the winter, had been obliged to yield to a sudden fancy of his and go to Malmaison, a journey which had upset all her plans and made every one excessively uncomfortable, for the visit had been so suddenly undertaken that there had been no time to light the fires, and the first night was spent in a veritable icehouse ; the cold, however, had mattered 152 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. very little to Napoleon who made a nocturnal visit which he nattered himself had been unobserved, little suspecting that Josephine, after a long station behind a glass door, had learned his secret. After the ministerial fete, the court returned to Malmaison, and the following morning the Empress summoned to her presence the lady who had not partaken of olives, and after an aimless conversa- tion, abruptly asked what the Emperor had said to her on the previous evening, then, what he had said to Madame * * * *. The lady answered that His Majesty advised Madame **** not to eat olives ; " Ah," exclaimed the Empress, " while he was giving her such good advice he might have told her that it is ridiculous for a woman with such a long nose to essay the role of Eoxelane ; " then, taking a book from the chimney-piece, she added : " Here is the book which is turning the heads of all the blonde and thin young women." The volume in question was Mme. de Genlis' novel, "la Duchesse de La Valliere," and the Empress' sarcasm was not idle, for the romance was to be found in the room of every lady-in-wait- ing ; the book had the enormous sale of ten editions, and doubtless the fact that many aspired to a posi- tion similar to La Valliere's had not been detrimen- tal to its success. The Emperor had no intention of installing a NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 153 favorite. " I do not wish women to govern in my court," he said upon one occasion, " their influence was harmful to Henri IV and Louis XIV, my mis- sion is more important than theirs was, and the French have become too serious to pardon scanda- lous liaisons of their sovereigns. " His real mistress, as he often said, was power, and he had worked too hard to attain it, to permit of its being stolen or even coveted. Madame * * * * who was both very astute and very intelligently advised, asked nothing for her- self, indeed, she was not able to accept many favors, as they might have roused the suspicions of her husband, who was far from being indifferent to his wife's good name and conduct ; the most that she was able to secure individually was a position as lady-in-waiting, an appointment which was war- ranted neither by her position, birth or anything in the past which had endeared her to Bonaparte, and which caused some gossip and many malicious smiles ; but little as her relations advantaged her personally, she profited by them to advance the in- terests of others and her one time protectors became her proteges. Murat, already marshal of the Empire, was pro- moted to the dignity of a prince and made admiral- in-chief, which classed him, after Cambaceres and Lebrun, among the serene highnesses; but at the 154 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. same time and of his own accord the Emperor named Eugene de Beauharnais prince and arch-chan- cellor of state, thus placing him upon the same level as Murat, and establishing the balance be- tween the Bonapartes and the Beauharnais, inclining it even in favor of the Beauharnais. There was a marked difference in the terms which he employed in announcing both decisions to the Senate, and he made the positions which his brother-in-law and his stepson held in his affections most evident ; on the one hand it was clear that he yielded to outside pressure and the solicitations of the family, on the other, that he gave freely, actuated by the dictates of his own heart : " In the midst of the anxieties and the bitterness inseparable from the high rank where we are placed, our heart has felt the need of affection and sincere friendship, and its wants have been gratified by this child of our adoption our paternal benediction will accompany this young prince throughout his career and, seconded by Provi- dence, he will one day be deserving the approbation of posterity." Such was the speech which announced Eugene de Beauharnais' aggrandizement to the senate ; and he had asked for nothing, expressed no dissatisfaction with the position of grand officer of the Empire and colonel of chasseurs which had pre- viously been conferred upon him, as he was on the NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 155 way to Milan at the head of the mounted guards. It was in truth a fine command, and it was a strange error on the part of Mme. de Remusat, to represent in the light of a disgrace the greatest favor which the Emperor could bestow upon a general of twenty- three years. At all events this disgrace, which, according to her, was occasioned by an access of jealousy against Eugene, was of singularly short duration, for he left Paris on the 16th of January in obedience to an order dated on the 14th and which was prompted by the necessity for the appearance of the guards at the coronation at Milan, and it was but fifteen days later that he received a personal letter from the Emperor with a copy of the message to the senate and his nomination as prince and arch-chancellor of state. Nothing could prove more clearly that Napoleon was drawn closer to Josephine, that he did not pro- pose to be led by any one, and that the affection inspired by Madame * * * * was already on the wane : satiety comes soon when there is no restraint. It was at Malmaison in the heart of winter that the in- trigue culminated, and at Malmaison, ere spring- flowers had blossomed, that the chains were broken. It was while the court was enjoying a fortnight's sojourn at Malmaison, during which Napoleon en- joyed perfect freedom, and could walk, talk and 156 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. enjoy the society of Madame * * * * to his heart's content, while Josephine mourned and pined in the seclusion of her chamber, that the final rupture occurred. One morning the Emperor went to his wife's apartments and returning to his old confiden- tial manner, admitted that he had been very much in love but was disillusioned, and finished by asking Josephine to aid him to sunder his relations with Madame * * * * The Empress took the matter in hand and summoned the lady, who, perfectly mistress of herself, did not manifest the slightest emotion and opposed to the Empress' remarks a mute disdain and a face as impassive as marble. Although the Emperor never renewed his alle- giance, Madame * * * * always remained tenderly at- tached to him, while he invariably manifested for her the greatest consideration, according her every favor compatible with her husband's position, and desig- nating her among the first for court honors and favors. During his hours of trial she was one of his most faithful adherents, she enhanced the f6tes of the hundred days with her beauty, and when, after Waterloo, the vanquished hero was about to leave his country forever, Madame * * * * was one of the last to visit Malmaison and offer to the dethroned Emperor the tribute of her respectful attachment and unalterable devotion. NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 167 CHAPTER XII. STEPHANIE DE BEAUHARNAIS. Prior even to Austerlitz, Napoleon resolved to establish family relations between his house and the sovereign houses of Europe which would serve to consolidate political alliances ; he was of the opin- ion that his government would never be firmly- established in Europe until the blood of the Napo- leons mingled with that of older reigning families, and not believing himself marriageable, he mobilized around him all who were, boys and girls, with the view of strengthening the only bond to which he attached any value, because he did not think it sub- ject to political hazards. From his point of view nothing was more binding, even to princes, than ties of blood. His first step, on returning from the campaign, was to arrange a marriage between Eugene de Beauharnais and the Princess Augusta of Bavaria ; she was betrothed to the Prince of Baden, but that was of no importance, Napoleon finding another 158 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. wife for the discarded lover in the person of Stepha- nie-Louise- Adrienne de Beauharnais, the daughter of Claude de Beauharnais, Count of Koches-Baritaud, and of Adrienne de Lezay-Marnesia his first wife, and cousin, sixteen degrees removed, to Hortense and Eugene. Stephanie de Beauharnais was born at Paris on the 26th of August, 1789, and, losing her mother at the age of four years, spent some time in the convent of Panthemont; a certain Lady de Bath, an old friend of her mother's, then took the young girl under her protection and, when the convents were closed, con- fided her ward to two of the sisters, Mmes. de Tre- lissac and de Sabatier, who took Stephanie with them, first to Castelsarrasin, then to Perigueux and later to Montauban. Her paternal grandmother, Fanny de Beauharnais, occupied herself at Cubieres with poetry and flirtations, her father was an emigre, and her grandfather, Marquis de Marnesia, was travelling in America, so that, save for the kindness of Lady de Bath, the child would have been left to public charity. One day, in the beginning of the consulate, Josephine happened to speak of her little cousin before her husband, and Bonaparte, who thought so much of ties of blood, was indignant at his wife for leaving one of her name to the care of a stranger and an Englishwoman. He immediately NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 159 sent for the child, but the nuns refused to deliver her to the messenger, whereupon he sent a courier armed with legal authority to take Stephanie de Beauharnais, and the sisters were forced to obey, though not without tears and grave misgivings. Upon her arrival in Paris the child was placed with Mme. Campan, and thenceforth she was one of the little group of young girls who came to Malmaison each decadi (the republican day of rest), and whose white-robed forms and cheery laughter enlivened the park as they flitted about under the shade of the great chestnut trees. Both Josephine and Hor- tense were extremely kind to Stephanie, but she did not appear on gala days, had no rank, was of no importance, and seemed destined to such a marriage as had been arranged for her cousin Emilie de Beau- harnais, Mme. Lavallette ; the little lady, however, did not take that view of the situation, but assumed the airs of a princess and treated those of her relations who were not honored with a lodging in the imperial palace very haughtily. Such was the situation when Eugene married and it became necessary to provide a wife for the Prince of Baden ; Napoleon first thought of another ward of Josephine's, her niece, Stephanie Tascher, but afterwards decided upon Stephanie de Beauharnais, and the arrangements for the marriage were defi- 160 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. nitely concluded by him while on his way to Carls- ruhe, on the 20th of January, 1806, and were con- firmed by an agreement signed at Paris on the 17th of February. Stephanie was at that time seventeen years of age, was clever, bright and gay, with a certain child- ishness of manner which was very taking ; she had rather a pretty face, a fine complexion, sparkling blue eyes and beautiful blonde hair. Upon the Em- peror's return to Paris she was taken from her boarding-school to the Tuileries and installed in an apartment near that of the Empress and became at once the life of the palace ; gay, piquant and agree- able, she enlivened the dreary salons, and not being in the least embarrassed by the Emperor she indulged her mischievousness as freely in his presence as else- where, which greatly pleased and amused him ; she was not long in perceiving this and increased her efforts to divert him, and they were soon engaged in a lively flirtation. Possibly Napoleon hoped for something more, but Mile, de Beauharnais was not so inclined ; she only wished for distraction and to make the most of Napoleon's friendship and admiration without compromising herself ; she was well aware that it was not because she was Mile, de Beauharnais that she was to espouse the Prince of Baden, but because she was a Napoleonite, that the manner of NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 161 her reception by the prince's family depended en- tirely upon the Emperor, and that it was therefore prudent to find out how much he would do for her. Stephanie's struggle was not with the Empress, but with the sisters of Napoleon, who had no inten- tion of yielding her precedence, and who, Caroline Murat particularly, snubbed her mercilessly, but little Stephanie made light of their rudeness and laughed gayly at everything until Caroline, exas- perated, became insolent. One evening, while they were waiting for the Emperor, Stephanie seated herself on a folding chair, upon which the Princess Caroline ordered her to rise, saying, that it was not customary for young persons to remain seated in the presence of the Emperor's sisters ; Stephanie rose immediately, but she no longer laughed, on the contrary, she wept bitterly ; the Emperor, entering at that moment, perceived her tears, and inquired their source. " Is that all ! " he exclaimed when Stephanie told her grievance, "well, come and sit on my knee, and you won't incommode anybody ! " This anecdote is lent an appearance of authen- ticity by a note which is found upon the register of the master of ceremonies : " Our will is, that the Princess Stephanie-Napoleon, our daughter, shall in all circles enjoy all the privileges due her rank, and that at fetes and at table she shall be seated at our 11 162 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. side, and in case we are not present that she shall be placed at the Empress' right hand." This gave Stephanie precedence over the Emperor's sisters, sisters-in-law, Hortense, and even over the Princess Augusta of Bavaria. On the following day a message announced to the senate the adoption of Stephanie de Beauharnais and her approaching marriage with the Prince of Baden, and ordered the State to send a deputation to pay her respects, in which ceremony M. Claude de Beauharnais, the princess's own father, figured conspicuously. M. de Beauharnais, on his return from exile, had entered the senate, and was then a member of some years' standing, with a salary of twenty-five thousand francs a year, and he was about to enjoy the bene- fits accruing from the parentage of a charming daughter. Napoleon appointed him to the senator- ship of Amiens, which brought him an income of twenty-five thousand francs ; in 1807 endowed him with twenty-five thousand eight hundred and eighty- two francs, and in 1810 made him chevalier d' honneur to Marie-Louise, a position which com- manded a salary of thirty thousand francs, and on the 22d of September, 1807, made him a personal present of two hundred thousand francs ; but all this was a mere bagatelle in comparison with what NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 163 the Emperor did for Stephanie. He took a personal interest in her trousseau, ordering for her a tulle dress covered with an embroidery of gold thread and interwoven with precious stones, the cost of which was twenty-four thousand francs ; from Le- normand he commanded twelve dresses, at prices ranging from nineteen hundred to twelve hundred francs ; from Leroy he commanded forty-five thousand, one hundred and seventy-eight francs and ninety-six centimes' worth of millinery and trinkets, and from Koux-Montagnat, two thousand, five hundred and seventy-four francs' worth of artificial flowers ; in addition to all this he gave her a dot of fifteen hundred thousand francs, a superb parure of diamonds, and presented her with a thousand louts from his private purse. Both the civil and religious marriages were celebrated with the utmost pomp and magnificence ; Napoleon could not have done more for his own child, and the festivities were not confined to the palace, but overflowed into the city, which was il- luminated by fireworks set off on the Place de la Concorde. When the last spark had died, the last note of the band had sounded, and the guests had departed, the Emperor and Empress, according to usage, conducted the bride and groom to the bridal chamber, but it was found impossible to induce 164 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. Stephanie to occupy it ; she wept and sobbed, and insisted that her school- fellow, Mile. Nelly Bour- jolly, should sleep with her. The court went to Malmaison on the following day, but Stephanie, in spite of all the arguments brought to bear upon her, still remained obdurate. Some one told the prince that his wife's repugnance arose from the manner in which he dressed his hair, as she detested a cue, thereupon he had his hair cut short ; but as soon as Stephanie perceived him she burst out laughing and declared that he was uglier than before. Night after night the prince went to her door, supplicat- ing and praying for admittance, and at last ex- hausted threw himself upon a couch in the ante- chamber and fell asleep ; in the morning he went and complained to the Empress, while Napoleon smilingly watched the couple who naturally were the talk of the chateau. That this state of affairs gave the Emperor a certain amount of satisfaction, that he bore Stephanie no ill-will was proved by the superb fete which he gave at the Tuileries in honor of her marriage : the first great ball to which not only the court but the gentry of the city were bidden. Nothing equalling the two quadrilles one in the gallery of Diana conducted by the Princess Louise, the other in the Salle des Marechaux, con- NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 165 ducted by the Princess Caroline had ever been seen, while the lavishness of the refreshments set all the world talking : there were sixty entries, sixty roasts and two hundred desserts ; one thousand bottles of Beaune, one hundred of Champagne, one hundred of Bordeaux and one hundred of sweet wines were consumed ; but the festivities did not soften Stephanie's heart. Political reasons intervening, Napoleon saw him- self obliged to interfere. Mile, de Beauharnais' co- queteries had amused him and supplied a pretext for teasing his wife, but he had permitted himself rather too much latitude in according to the young girl a rank disproportionate to her birth and fortune and in celebrating her marriage in princely style ; he now saw that the patience of the ruler of Baden was nearly exhausted, and, as a war with Prussia was imminent, felt it expedient to conciliate all the German princes who might become auxiliaries, or at least give valuable information. Having respected Stephanie previous to her mar- riage, he did not afterwards meditate making her his mistress, and the flirtation which was suitable neither to his dignity, his age nor his temperament, grew wearisome, and it was becoming embarrassing to have her longer at Paris, while she might be of service at Carlsruhe, if only in counterbalancing 166 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. the hostile influence of Markgraf Louis and the little German court. Napoleon hardly took time to investigate the little stories contained in certain intercepted letters, which proved only too plainly what an inhospitable recep- tion awaited his adopted daughter, but hastened her departure. Stephanie left France despairing ; she took with her three of her school-friends : Miles, de Mackau, Bourjolly and Gruau, and as soon as she arrived in her father-in-law's principality, she wrote to the Emperor : " Sire, each day when I am at liberty I think of you and the Empress, of all who are dearest to me ; in imagination, I am in France and near you, and I find a certain pleasure in my sadness." Napoleon responded rather severely, without making use of any paternal or tender ex- pressions. " Carlsruhe," he wrote, " is a charming place of residence. Make yourself agreeable to the Elector, who is now your father, and love your hus- band, who merits your affection by the tenderness he lavishes upon you." When she had answered in a manner which pleased him, saying that she was contented at Carlsruhe, Napoleon wrote more kindly, calling her daughter, but recommending the same line of conduct ; and he did not become thor- oughly amiable until the hereditary grand duke asked him to make the campaign with him, and in NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 167 the same letter announced that Stephanie was about to become a mother ; then he wrote, saying: "I only hear good news of you and hope you will con- tinue to be kind and gentle to all who surround you ; " he then authorized her to rejoin the Empress and Hortense at Mayence, and to remain with them while her husband was with the army, and there- after, to all his letters to Josephine he added a kindly message for Stephanie. In 1807, Stephanie and her husband were invited to Paris on the oc- casion of the marriage of Jerome Bonaparte with Catherine of Wurtemberg, and she hastened to accept ; but if she retained any illusion concerning the Emperor's affection and the exceptional rank which only a year previous he had bestowed upon her, she must have been cruelly disappointed, for the place assigned her was the very last among the princesses, and it was only by courtesy that she took a place in the Imperial family ; by favor that she was given a folding-chair when the family were seated. She had become a princess of the German confederation, and had there been any of the reign- ing German princesses present, they would have taken precedence over her. At first Stephanie did not seem to perceive her downfall, and took pleas- ure in flirting with Jerome, the new King of West- phalia, but her aunt remarking upon her conduct, 168 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. the situation became clear, and realizing that she could only hold her position through her husband, she managed to inspire him with so much affection that he became unsupportably jealous. Did the prince stand by Stephanie in 1814, when, after the Emperor's downfall, he was urged to re- pudiate her and turn out of the palace of Zaehrin- gen this unwelcome witness to broken oaths, whose presence constantly recalled favors whose authors the reigning house of Baden desired to forget? Was it because of his fidelity that at the age of thirty-two, this man, previously in the most vigor- ous health, fell suddenly ill, and after dragging for a year died of a strange malady in 1818 ? Stephanie, although the mother of numerous children, was un- able to preserve one son ; when she lost the second, or believed him dead, she wrote broken-heartedly to the Emperor : " I was so happy to tell your Majesty that I had a son and to beseech your protection for him. A son made me forget my griefs and was necessary to my position which is often a difficult one now I have lost my only hope ! " She grieved unceasingly over the fatality which followed her sons and took from her race, stricken because of her with political sterility, the heredity of the throne of Baden. Ten years after the death of the grand duke, be- NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 1G9 tween four and five o'clock on the morning of the 26th of May, 1828, a bourgeois met a young man of seventeen, who muttered only one or two phrases in low German in the Tallow Market of Nuremberg ; the youth had never walked, his eyes had never seen the sun's light, his stomach was unable to sup- port animal food, but he would never have been thus deformed had he not since babyhood been sequestered in solitude and obscurity. Stephanie was the first to ponder, calculate, and be convinced that the mysterious and unknown youth at Nuren- berg, who was called Kaspar Hauser, was her own son her child, in whose place a dead baby had been substituted, and who, a victim to the hatred of Markgraf Louis, and the ambition of Countess Hochberg, had for nearly sixteen years expiated in darkness and solitude the sin of having a Napoleon- ite for his mother. Poor Stephanie was unable to do anything, for her enemies were triumphant and powerful ; one reigned upon the throne of Baden, and she could tremble for Kaspar Hauser, and weep over his sad fate, when, after escaping three ambus- cades, he was finally assassinated. Was hers one of those illusions with which a mother loves to comfort her heart, or one of those revelations, which, better than all the investigations of justice, sometimes throw light upon a great 170 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. crime? However this may be, Stephanie firmly believed to her last hour (she died on the 29th of January, 1860), that Kaspar Hauser was her lost son, and to the few friends whom she received in the tumble-down palace of Mannheim, she asserted that her son did not die in 1812, but that he had been stolen from her, designating the authors and accomplices in the crime. Some German authors have attempted to demonstrate that the poor mother deceived herself ; for the credit of the reign- ing house of Baden, it is to be hoped she did. NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 171 CHAPTER XIII. ELEONORE. Towards the close of the revolution, Mme. Cam- pan, once a confidential member of Marie Antoi- nette's household, established a school for young ladies at Saint-Germain-en-Laye ; Josephine became the patroness of the institution, and there her daughter and nieces were educated. This group of young girls, so closely allied to the imperial family, drew around them the daughters of those who had, or sought for, some appointment under the Con- sulate, and Mme. Campan's nieces making excel- lent marriages, thanks to their intimacy with Hor- tense, the school was still further augmented by the daughters of intriguing parents who hoped their children might also profit by the acquaintance of their royal school-fellows. Mme. Campan was supposedly an influential per- son, having obtained positions for numerous people, pardons for exiles and the restitution of confiscated property ; her school was the fashionable one of the 172 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. day, and on the list of pupils can be seen, side by side with names of people who had recently at- tained eminence, the old historical ones of Noailles, Talon, Lally-Tollendal, and Kochemond. After the Consulate, the reputation of the school diminished somewhat, and among the scholars there was a young girl of whose origin Mme. Campan was somewhat in ignorance, and who could prob- ably never have been a pupil had the principal then been as strict regarding the parentage of those whom she admitted as she was in the days of the school's great popularity. This young lady was Mile. Louise-Catherine-Eleonore Denuelle de La Plaigne. The father claimed to be a man of wealth, but his business ventures were not always success- ful ; the mother, who was still very pretty, was rather gay, and the family lived in a sumptuous apartment on the Boulevard des Italiens, received a great deal of rather mixed company, and managed as best they could from day to day, awaiting the time when their daughter should make a rich mar- riage. Time passed, Mme. Denuelle aged, the father ran into debt, the quarterly tuition was hard to pay, and, moreover, since the departure of the Beauhar- nais from Mme. Campan's, the chances of meeting a desirable par tie in that establishment, had greatly NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 173 diminished ; so, as Mme. Denuelle had not access to salons where her daughter might have made such acquaintances, she determined to show her at the theatres. One evening at the Gaite, a good-looking officer entered the box where Mme Denuelle and her daughter occupied seats, and took the vacant place ; the ladies were not haughty, the officer was gallant, and an acquaintance grew apace. Mme. Denuelle invited the young man to visit them and he did not fail to do so ; he soon became so enamored of Eleonore as to ask her hand in mar- riage, and the wedding took place on the fifteenth of January, 1805, at Saint-Germain. This officer, Jean-Honore-Frangois Revel, who claimed to be a captain of the 15th regiment of dragoons and the aide-de-camp of General d' Avrange d'Haugeranville, was a knave. He had resigned from the regiment of which he was once quarter- master, and claimed that he expected to get a con- tract for supplying the army with provisions; in the meanwhile he lived on credit. He appears to have counted more upon the beauty of his young wife to extricate him from his embarrassment than upon any efforts of his own, and two months after the wedding he was arrested and imprisoned for at- tempting to pass a forged check. Eleonore then bethought herself that the Princess 174 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. Caroline Murat had been her school- fellow, and, warmly recommended by Mme. Campan, solicited her highness' protection. The princess first placed her in a sort of asylum at Chantilly, where unfor- tunate women like herself were received ; later, in despite of Mme. Campan's advice, she yielded to Eleonore's solicitations and installed her in her own household. Mme. Kevel was an extremely handsome brunette, tall and graceful, with large, dark eyes and a lively, coquettish manner ; she had not been educated to entertain scruples, and she certainly had not ac- quired any in the two months she spent with Eevel. At first her duty was to announce the princess' guests, later she was promoted to the dignity of reader, and when, after the Emperor's return from Austerlitz towards the end of January, 1806, he came to visit his sister, Mme. Eleonore deftly managed to make herself noticeable and as soon as propositions were made to her accepted with en- thusiasm, and allowed herself to be conducted to the Tuileries ; from thenceforth she went there habitually, spending two or three hours in the Emperor's society. Kevel had been condemned by the criminal court to two years' imprisonment, and on the 13th of April his wife asked for a divorce, which was NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 175 granted on the 29th of April, 1806 ; it was high time, for on the 13th of December, 1806, at No. 29 rue de la Yictoire, she was delivered of a male child who was registered as "Leon, son of Mile. Denuelle, property-holder, aged twenty, and of an absent father." There was no doubt as to the child's parentage ; Eleonore who in her prayer for divorce had stated that she was " attached to the person of Mme. la Princess Caroline," had, from the time she returned from Chantilly, lived in a small house in the rue de Provence, which she never left save for her visits to the Tuileries visits of which Caroline knew the secret moreover, the child's resemblance to Napo- leon was so striking as to confute doubt. Thus the event which Josephine so dreaded came to pass ; the charm was broken, for henceforth the Emperor entertained no doubts regarding his ability to pro- vide an heir to the throne. The Emperor was at Pulstuck, when, on the 31st of December, the news of Eleonore's accouchement reached him, and doubtless the birth of this illegiti- mate son was strongly instrumental in the forma- tion of plans which two years later he carried into execution. The child Leon was at first confided to the care of Mme. Loir, foster-mother of Achille Murat ; later, 176 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. in 1812, M. Mathieu de Mauvieres, mayor of the commune of Saint-Forget, baron of the Empire and father-in-law of Meneval, the Emperor's private secretary, was appointed guardian to the boy, and an independent fortune was settled upon him by his imperial father. Not content with this, in January, 1814, when about to leave Paris to join the army, Napoleon authorized the Duke de Bassano to add twelve thousand pounds income, and to this, on the 21st of June, 1815, was added canal stock valued at one hundred thousand francs, and finally, actuated by conscience, the Emperor added a codicil to his will in which he bequeathed to Leon three hundred and twenty thousand francs for the purchase of a country seat, and as long as he lived interested himself in his son's welfare. The thirty-seventh paragraph of his testamentary instructions to his executors, proves that the lad was never forgotten : "If his taste runs in that direction," wrote Napo- leon, " I should be pleased to have little Leon enter the magistracy." To avoid a rupture with Josephine, to whom he was still sincerely attached, and at the same time to comply with the law of heredity in a manner which seemed to him both satisfactory and natural, Napoleon conceived the idea of adopting his natural son, spoke of it to the Empress, sounded many of NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 177 his confidants on the subject, and invoked precedents to justify his inclination. That he did not carry these plans into execution is probably due to the fact that he realized that the days of Louis XIV. were past, and that the country would not permit him to follow the example given by that monarch who had designated the Duke de Maine and the Comte de Toulouse as his heirs to the throne. Napoleon became very much attached to this child, and frequently had him brought either to the Elysee or to his sister Caroline's, sometimes re- ceived him even at the Tuileries while dressing or at breakfast ; he played with him, gave him dainties to eat and was amused by Leon's childish chatter. As time passed Napoleon was necessarily unable to bestow the same personal attention upon Leon, but in 1815 he recommended the boy to the care of his mother and Cardinal Fesch. Mme. Bonaparte was already interested in the boy and seemed disposed to do a great deal for him, but unfortunately Leon's was not a character to inspire warm affection. In 1832 he was then twenty-five Denuelle was already nearly ruined, owing to his passion for gambling, and applied for assistance to Cardinal Fesch, swearing that he would never again lose forty-five thousand francs at a sitting. It was a gambler's oath, for a year later he was as badly off 12 178 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. as ever, attempting to brazen out his affairs, mixing with visionary politicians and engaging right and left in duels, for he was brave and somewhat of a bully. In 1834, by trading on the name of the grand man to whom he owed his existence, he was elected chief of the communal battalion of the national guards of Saint-Denis ; he was soon sus- pended for disobedience to orders, but afterwards reinstated, and attempted to justify himself by the publication of a number of pamphlets, which are, however, so hazy that they could hardly have served to clear his character before the public. In 1840 he was one of the official cortege on the return from Cendres, and, being absolutely ruined, began a series of lawsuits against his mother with the intention of wringing money from her, she having preserved her fortune intact. The Emperor had never renewed his relations with Leon's mother, had, indeed, refused to receive her when, in 1807, she presented herself at Fontaine- bleau, but he acquitted his debt to her by giving her a house in the rue de laVictoire,and a dot of twenty- two thousand pounds, which was not transferable. She married, in 1808, a lieutenant of infantry, M. Pierre-Philippe Augier, who took her to Spain with him, and who died in captivity after the Kussian campaign. Eleonore was not inconsolable, for at NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 179 Seckenheim, on the 25th of May, 1814, she was mar- ried for the third time to M. Charles- Auguste-Emile, Count de Luxbourg, and a major in the service of the king of Bavaria. Eeturning to Paris with her third husband she was obliged to combat the first, for Kevel, profiting by the fall of Napoleon, posed as a victim and essayed to blackmail his ex-wife ; Mme. de Luxbourg resisted, and Eevel, to avenge himself and to make a few pennies, published in- numerable pamphlets whose titles were startling, and admirably combined to attract attention and create a scandal, but he was defeated in everything he attempted against his former wife. Leon was somewhat more fortunate in his suits against his mother, for, although he lost a suit wherein he charged her with swindling and attempted to force her to render an account of her income, he succeeded in having himself acknowledged as her natural son, and on the second of July, 1846, he obtained a lump sum of four thousand francs instead of the yearly allowance which he had sued for. In 1848 he seems to have been somewhat better off financially, for he meditated persenting himself as a candidate for the presidency of the Republic in competition with the Prince Louis Napoleon, with whom, eight years previous, in March, 1840, he had been ambitious to fight a duel. Leon's conduct in this respect was so 180 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. singular that it can only be explained by the sup- position that he was mentally deranged. In 1848 he put forth his claims in a manifesto beginning : " Citizen Leon, ex-count Leon, son of the Emperor Napoleon, director of the Pacific Society, to the French people." The empire re-installed, Denuelle obtained from Napoleon III. a pension of six thousand francs, and the payment of Napoleon's first legacy to him of two hundred and twenty-five thousand, three hundred and nineteen francs, but that did not content him, and in 1853 he reclaimed five hundred and seventy- two thousand, six hundred and seventy francs in virtue of some visionary decree, and in 1857 sued the minister of Public Works for the sum of five hundred thousand francs, which he claimed was due him for draughts made by him for the chemin de fer du Nord. Not a year passed that he did not bring for- ward some claim or petition, and the civil list paid his debts five or six times ; but he was irrepressible and his brain was in a state of perpetual evolution up to the time of his death, which occurred at Pon- toise on the 15th of April, 1881. NAPOLEON, LOVEB AND HUSBAND 181 CHAPTER XIV. HORTENSE. The year 1807 was a decisive one in the life of Napoleon ; the month of January being marked by the birth of Leon, which gave to him the certitude that he could have a direct heir, and May by the death of Napoleon-Charles, eldest son of Louis and Hortense. With him died Napoleon's dream of creating an heredity by adoption, and the child's death was also a sad blow to his affections. Napo- leon-Charles had been doubly dear to the Emperor, being the son of the girl, who, from the moment he met her, had taken such a hold upon his heart that he had accorded to her tears the pardon refused her mother, and to whom he had been both father and guardian. Napoleon-Charles was the child also of his best-loved brother, "the little brother" who had been to him almost as a son, whom he had lodged, fed and educated when he had but a lieu- tenant's scanty pay ; whom he had made his aide-de- camp and the witness of his victories, whom he had 182 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. ennobled as he himself rose in rank, until he stood close to the throne. In his nephew Napoleon saw all the characteristics of the Bonapartes, undis- figured by Louis' blobber-lip and ugly nose, and un- beautified by the slender grace of his mother's family, but a Bonaparte through and through, idealized only by an aureole of golden hair. To this child, the first male of his generation, Napoleon had given his father's name, and he had shown such a lively affection for the boy that gossips had begun by insinuating, and had finally asserted, that he was the child's real father, that his step-daughter had been his mistress before becoming Louis' wife. Hortense's marriage-contract was signed on the 3d of January, 1802, the marriage celebrated on the 4th, and her son was born on the 10th of October, 1802, therefore she was certainly not enceinte when she married, since there were two hundred and eighty days between the time she was wed and the birth of her child. Louis Bonaparte was the most jealous and sus- picious of husbands ; he tyrannized over his wife from the hour of their marriage ; he never left her, had her constantly under surveillance, and forbade her to pass even one night at Saint- Cloud. Suffer- ing from an illness due to youthful indiscretions, he at first essayed to effect a cure by taking tripe baths, NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 183 the stench of which infected the old orangery which stood at the end of the Terrasse des Feuillant ; later, to draw out the humor, he slept in the night-gown and sheets which had previously served a hospital patient afflicted with the itch, and he obliged his wife to sleep on a little bed in the same room with him. Every maid who showed the slightest affec- tion for Hortense was pitilessly discharged ; his mother-in-law was a target for the gravest accusa- tions, yet Louis had never the slightest doubt of his wife's virtue. In his "Documents Historiques sur la Hollande, " he affirms that he was the father of the three children whom his wife and he " loved with equal tenderness ; " this affirmation he repeated both in prose and in verse, for he thought himself a poet ; and when, on the Emperor's proposal to adopt Napoleon-Charles, Louis alluded to the current reports regarding the boy's paternity, it was not be- cause he attached the slightest importance to them, but because they served as a pretext for not yielding to his brother's wishes. Louis-Napoleon had an un- fortunately melancholy and peculiar disposition, but he loved his son as much as he could love any one, and the child's death was a severe trial ; after this loss he was for a time reconciled to Hortense, with whom he previously lived so unhappily that his imperial brother had more than once seen fit to 184 remonstrate with him, and he wrote kind and affec- tionate letters *to Josephine, whom ordinarily he detested. Shortly after the death of her son, Hor- tense, who was in poor health, went to Cauterets accompanied by her husband, and it was there, under circumstances the details of which are well- i known, that she became enceinte with her third son, Charles-Louis-Napoleon, afterwards known as Na- poleon III. ; thus Louis Bonaparte never believed for an instant that Hortense had been his brother's mistress, and not only did he bear witness to his faith in her virtue, but his conduct was an affirma- tion of his convictions ; as for Hortense, until 1809, she remained ignorant that such gossip was afloat. Josephine's marriage with General Bonaparte had wounded her daughter to the quick, for she felt it to be almost a crime for her mother to wed one who was a soldier under the Eepublic, a man whose political principles were similar to those entertained by the men who had caused her father's execution. Previous to her mother's marriage, Hortense lived at Saint- Germain-en-Laye, near her grandfather, the Marquis de Beauharnais and her aunt, Mme. Eenaudin, whom he had recently married. At the beginning of the Consulate she was entered at Mme. Campan's, and she did not go to live at the Tuileries until about the time when the Consul left NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 185 France for Marengo ; thus it was not until Bona- parte returned from Italy that Hortense saw him continually and familiarly. Napoleon always entertained a tender and pa- ternal affection for his wife's daughter, which she returned only with timid respect ; she trembled when addressing him, dared ask nothing of him, and when obliged to make a request employed inter- mediaries. i i The little goose, " Napoleon frequently said, " why don't she speak to me ; why is the child so afraid of me ? " He did not interfere when Josephine arranged the marriage between her daughter and Louis Bonaparte, because he hoped that this marriage might unite his own family and that of his wife, and foresaw that it might be politically judicious, and he also felt a delicacy in interfering with any of Josephine's plans for her children ; but whenever he thought it necessary he did not hesitate to counsel Louis as to his conduct towards Hortense, and with the most admirable tact and delicacy strove to calm his jealous fears and point out to him wherein his conduct was faulty. He pitied his step-daughter, venerated her, and guarded his speech in her presence ; on more than one occasion he said : " Hortense obliges me to believe in virtue." Napoleon was not ignorant of the rumors which 186 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. were afloat regarding his relations with his step- daughter, rumors which some of those who were very near to him were assiduous in spreading and which were amplified by the English papers. In order to put a stop to the calumnies he bethought himself of a plan which does greater credit to his knightly intentions than to his discrimination ; he commanded a ball to be given at Malmaison, and that Hortense, although then in her seventh month, should assist at it ; he invited her to dance, but Hortense declined, alleging that she was weary, although in reality her refusal arose from her knowledge of her stepfather's dislike of seeing women who were enceinte upon the floor of a ball- room, above all, when, as was the fashion of the time, they were clothed in such clinging garments that the outlines of the figure were plainly discern- ible. The Emperor, however, insisted, asking simply for a contredance, and, after persisting for some time in her refusal, she finally yielded. The following morning a newspaper published some gallant verses upon the subject, and Hortense, furious, complained to the Emperor, but received no satisfaction ; the truth being that the ball had been given solely to furnish occasion for the verses, and so force the public to acknowledge that she was not so far ad- vanced in pregnancy as was currently reported ; 187 it was with this view also that the Moniteur, which up to that time had never spoken of the Consul's family, inserted in its edition of October 12th, 1802, the following announcement : "On the 10th inst., at 9 o'clock in the evening, a son was born to Monsieur and Madame Louis Bonaparte." Napoleon did all in his power to crush the cal- umny, but his efforts proved unavailing ; so he grad- ually accustomed himself to look upon the report from a political standpoint and cogitated how he might turn it to account. He felt an almost pa- ternal affection for Napoleon- Charles, and some of the happiest hours of his life were spent in play with him ; it delighted him to hear the child cry : "Long live Nanon the soldier !" when he saw a grenadier pass, and he frequently had the little fellow sit by his side while he dined, being highly amused by the child's desire to touch everything and by the agility with which he seized and upset everything within reach of his baby hands. The Emperor frequently took Napoleon- Charles to the garden to feed tobacco to the gazelles, and, seating him astride one of them, would roar with laughter at the baby's antics ; he often sent for the child when in his dressing-room, and, after caressing him and making the most extraordinary grimaces for his amusement, would end by sitting dowi* upon 188 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. the floor, the better to play with him. Napoleon loved the little nephew, whom the people claimed was his own son, as though he were verily bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh, and therefore the idea of adopting him as his heir was not repugnant, even if by so doing the people were convinced of the truth of their suppositions. In this lad he believed they would find impersonated the characteristics of his race and his own genius, and that they could not claim that the line which he had founded was built upon a fiction. It must be admitted that this plan was contrary to all established ideas, but Napo- leon had no prejudices and believed that his excep- tional destiny placed him above humanity at large, that the nation would not judge him according to accepted moral formulas, and that the people's de- sire to assure the stability of his government would cause them to overlook the unconventionality of the proceeding, the more easily as they could not confirm the existing suspicion. It must not be supposed that it is upon simple supposition only that we accredit the Emperor with these ideas and projects ; we base our statements upon a conversation which he had with Hortense, two years after the death of her son, and which is related at length in her unpublished memoires. He then spoke freely to his step-daughter regarding the NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 189 consequences attendant upon the death of Napoleon- Charles, who, as he said, was thought to be his son as well as hers. " You know," Napoleon said, " how absurd such a supposition is, but you could not convince all Europe that the child was not mine," he stopped a moment, arrested by a move- ment of surprise from Hortense, then continued : " Your reputation does not suffer on this account, as you are generally esteemed ; nevertheless, the idea receives credence everywhere ; it was perhaps best that it was so, and for that reason I regard his death as a great misfortune." a I was so surprised," wrote Hortense, "that I was unable to utter a word, I no longer heard what he said. That reflec- tion, 'it was perhaps best that it was believed,' tore a veil from before my eyes and pierced me to the heart ; was it possible that he who had been so kind and generous, in whom I seemed to find my own lost father, had been actuated throughout by po- litical motives and not by affection ! " Hortense was mistaken, for if Napoleon had been actuated by policy he also was moved by affection, but her indignation was quite natural, considering that she looked upon the situation from a woman's point of view, and was unable to conceive of the profound subtlety of Napoleon's reasoning. If he had showered kindnesses and attentions upon Hor- 190 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. tense it had not been in order to confirm the story that Napoleon-Charles was his son, on the contrary he had made every effort to refute it ; but the gossip persisting and a conviction of its truth being firmly established in the public mind he had sought to utilize it for his own interests and the consolidation of his dynasty ; it was a battlefield inspiration which he had had, for one of his most remarkable faculties was the ability to look situations clearly in the face, to discern at a glance precisely where he stood, make the best of affairs, and act promptly upon his intuitions. It was owing to his belief in a philosophical ac- ceptance of all situations, that, while he felt keenly the loss of Napoleon-Charles, he accepted the inevitable with calmness. The remark, "I have not time to indulge in sentimental regrets like other men," has been accredited him ; it might better be admitted that the death of his poor lit- tle nephew was a grief to him, for he wrote to all his correspondents, at least twenty times to Jose- phine, six or seven to Hortense, and severally to Joseph, Jerome, Fouch and Monge, expressing his sorrow, but adding, " that it was destiny." It was not in Napoleon's nature, nor in accordance with the philosophical formula which the continual spectacle of war and death in all its most terrible forms had NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 191 imposed upon his spirit, to yield to idle tears when a destiny was accomplished. Napoleon-Charles was one of the ties which at- tached Bonaparte to Josephine, and this tie broken there only remained between ,hem those bonds of tenderness which were woven by ten years of wedded life ; years broken by long absences, marred by frequent quarrels and strange misunderstand- ings. Could these bonds resist such a strain as they were subjected to in 1805 by his liaison with Madame * * * * ? 192 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. CHAPTEE XV. MADAME WALEWSKA. On the 1st of January, 1807, the Emperor, on his way from Pulstuck to Warsaw, stopped to change post-horses at the little town of Bronie ; a noisy and enthusiastic crowd awaited the liberator of Poland, and rushed to surround the imperial carriage aa soon as it came in sight. As the carriage stopped before the post-house, General Duroc descended and cleared an entrance ; he was about to pass the door when he heard a cry of entreaty, saw hands lifted in supplication, and a voice addressing him in French, said : " Oh, sir, pray get us out of this crowd, and arrange so that I may obtain even a glimpse of His Majesty ! " Duroc paused and look- ing about saw that the demand came from two ladies, who seemed sadly out of place in the multi- tude of peasants and workmen ; the one who spoke to him seemed almost a child, she was very fair and fragile, with great, blue, innocent-looking eyes which at that moment glowed with patriotic enthusiasm ; NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 193 her skin, of the texture and freshness of a tea-rose, was flushed with embarrassment, and her slender yet supple and graceful form trembled with excite- ment ; she was dressed very simply, and wore a dark hat wound about with a black veil. Duroc took in the situation at a glance, and extri- cating the two ladies from the crowd gave his haod to the blonde and led her to the carriage door. " Sire," he said to Napoleon, " deign to greet these ladies, who braved the dangers of the crowd to see you." The Emperor lifted his hat and leaning towards the lady began to talk to her, but she, as she afterwards recounted, was so excited by the emo- tions which agitated her that she did not permit him to finish his sentence. "Welcome, Sire," she exclaimed, i ' a thousand times welcome to Poland ! Nothing which we can do can sufficiently demon- strate the affection we bear you, nor the pleasure we Poles feel in having you step upon this land which looks to you for deliverance." While the lady spoke, Napoleon watched her closely, and when she ceased, took a bouquet from the carriage, presented it to her and said : "Keep this as a guarantee of my good intentions, we shall meet at Warsaw, I hope, and I shall reclaim a reward from your fair lips." Duroc then took his 13 194 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. seat beside the Emperor, and the carriage drove rapidly off, while Napoleon waved a parting salute to the young woman. The person who had made such an effort to see the Emperor, and welcome him to Polish soil, was Marie Walewska, nee Laczinska. She was the off- spring of a very old but poor and numerous family. M. Laczinski died when Marie was a baby, leaving six children, and the widow, who was absorbed in making the best of the small domain which constituted their fortune, sent her daughters to boarding-school, where they learned to dance, acquired a smattering of French and German, and a slight knowledge of music. Between fifteen and sixteen years of age Marie returned home, with but a mediocre education, but with a pure heart, which knew but two passions religion and country her love for her God was balanced by her love for Poland ; those were the pivots upon which her nature turned, and to arouse her from her usually gentle sweetness it sufficed to say that she would marry a Russian or a Prussian, her country's ene- mies, a Protestant or schismatic. She had hardly returned to her home, when, by a singular chance, she had two excellent opportunities for marriage, and Mme. Laczinski permitted her daughter to choose between the aspirants for her hand. One was a NAPOLEON", LOVER AND HUSBAND. 195 charming young man who seemed to have every- thing in his favor, and who had pleased her from the first ; he was very rich, well-born and remark- ably handsome but he was a Eussian, and a son of one of those generals who had cruelly oppressed Poland. Marie could not consent to become his wife, so her choice fell upon the other suitor, old Anastase Colonna de Walewice- Walewska, who was seventy years of age, a widower for the second time, and whose oldest grandchild was nine years her senior, but he was very rich, the Seigneur of the province which the Laczinskas inhabited, owned most of the land, laid down the laws, inhabited the chateau of the neighborhood, and was the only per- son who invited his poor neighbors to dinner. He had been the late king's chamberlain, and on im- portant occasions decorated his coat with the order of the White Eagle ; he was the head of one of the most illustrious families of Poland, who were authentically connected with the Colonnas of Eome and bore the same coat-of-arms, and he was of more ancient lineage than any other family in the kingdom. It was not strange that Mme. Laczinska was enchanted at the prospect of having so illustri- ous a son-in-law, and Marie made little resistance, for her first appeal to her mother was met with an unanswerable argument ; she fell ill, however, 196 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. of an inflammatory fever, and for four months hovered between life and death. When barely con- valescent she was led to the altar, and the miserable young woman spent three years in the dreary cha- teau of Walewice, finding her only consolation in her religion. At last she gave birth to a son and a desire for life re-awoke in her. She determined to ]ive for her child, who had a right to the happiness which she had missed, but she did not wish that he should live upon annexed land which was no longer a country, that he should be, like her, in servitude, or that, like his father, he should beg of the conqueror his property and title ; she wished her son to be a free man and a Pole, and to attain that end it was necessary that his country should rise and free her- self. Napoleon had already vanquished Austria, meas- ured his strength against Russia at Austerlitz, and was about to strike at Prussia and her allies ; he was a providential adversary of her country's ene- mies and seemed destined to save Poland. When the campaign of 1806 opened and Napo- leon's forces marched with incredible rapidity across France and Germany to Berlin, the Prussians melt- ing like phantoms before them, Mme. Walewska reached such a state of feverish enthusiasm that she could no longer remain at Walewice, to which re- NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 197 mote spot news penetrated but slowly, and her hus- band being as great a patriot as herself, they went to Warsaw, where they established themselves as became their rank. Mme. Walewska, conscious of her lack of education and worldly knowledge, fearing to blunder when she spoke French, unsupported by family or friends, dreaded to go into society, and above all to appear at LaBlacha, the palace of Prince Joseph Poniatow- ski, and the rally in g-place of Warsaw's best society, and though in obedience to her husband's command, she made a few formal and obligatory visits, she held aloof from the gaieties of the capital, thus re- maining, despite her loveliness, almost unknown. The whole city was in a tumult of excitement over the approaching arrival of the Emperor, all being desirous that his reception at Warsaw should outdo the welcome given him at Posen ; the city was turned topsy-turvy by the citizens in their deter- mination to give Napoleon a royal welcome, for they felt that the fate of Poland lay in his hands. Mme. Walewska longed to be the first to greet him, and, without weighing the importance of the step she was taking, persuaded one of her cousins to accompany her and rushed to Bronie. After the meeting which we described in the 198 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HTJSBAND. beginning of the chapter she stood gazing after the imperial carriage until it was lost to view ; then, carefully enveloping the bouquet which the Emperor had given her, she stepped into her carriage and returned to Warsaw. Her intention was to keep her journey a secret, to shun all the ftes and thus avoid a presentation to Napoleon ; but her companion, though sworn to secrecy, was far too elated over the adventure to keep the story to herself, and one morning Prince Joseph Poniatowski sent to inquire at what hour Mme. Walewska could receive him, and, calling in the afternoon, invited her to a ball he was about to give in honor of the Emperor, saying that Napoleon wished particularly to meet her a second time. As she blushingly refused to understand his reference to her first meeting with His Majesty, the prince, laughing heartily over the matter, explained his knowledge of the affair. It appeared that at one of the dinners given in the Emperor's honor, he had been observed to look attentively at the Princess Lubomirska, and she was immediately presented, but after meeting her, Napoleon paid but scant attention to the lady ; this indifference surprised Prince Joseph, but was explained by Duroc, who re- lated the episode of Bronie, and explained that his royal master had fancied that in the princess he NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 199 had discovered the charming unknown. Duroc gave all the details of the meeting at Bronie, describing minutely the face, figure and toilet of the mysteri- ous lady, but Poniatowski was unable to divine who it could have been, and was about to give up his search in despair, when the indiscreet chatter of Mme. Walewska's companion enlightened him, and, knowing the Emperor's desire to cultivate the acquaintance, he determined that she should come to the ball. Mme. Walewska refused absolutely to go, and remained unmoved even by his argument that under Heaven she might perhaps be an instrument towards the rehabilitation of her country. Hardly had the prince departed when the principal representatives of Poland were announced ; they were statesmen, whose authority was based upon public esteem and consideration and the deference due to their irre- proachable conduct and wisdom ; all of these men foresaw what benefit might accrue to Poland from Napoleon's admiration for one of its daughters and they joined in urging her acceptance of the prince's invitation ; their arguments, however, failed to move her and she was still firm in her determination to remain at home, when her husband arrived and came to their rescue. M. Walewska was igno- rant of the adventure at Bronie, and saw in the in- 200 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. sistence of these gentlemen nothing save the con- sideration due his rank and the services he had rendered his country, and promptly accepted for his wife. Marie pleaded, almost with tears, to remain at home, but her husband insisted, ridiculed her fears, and finally commanded that she should go. She made one condition, however, which was, that, as al- most all the other ladies had already been presented, care should be taken that her presentation should not be conspicuous. The great day came, and her husband hurried her toilet, fearing that they would be late and reach the ball-room after the Emperor had departed. M. Walewski would have liked to see his wife magnificently apparelled, and he found great fault with the severely simple dress of white satin which she had selected to wear and with the garland of leaves which was her only ornament ; others, how- ever, were not of his opinion, for a murmur of admiration greeted her entrance into the ball-room. She was installed between two ladies, with whom she was, unacquainted and was feeling strange and uncomfortable, when Prince Poniatowski stationed himself behind her. "Your arrival has been im- patiently awaited, madame," he murmured, u and your entrance to the ball-room greeted with pleasure ; your name has been repeated until it must be known NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 201 by heart, and after scrutinizing your husband some- one said, shrugging his shoulders : ' Poor little victim ; ' and I am commanded to invite you to dance." " I do not dance," she answered, "and have no inclination towards that form of amusement." The prince explained that his invitation, being at the instigation of the Emperor, was paramount to an order, that His Majesty was watching them and that if she refused he should be considered at fault, and also that the success of the ball largely depended upon her ; but persuasion and explanation were alike wasted. Mme. Walewska positively refused to dance, and the prince had but one resource : to find Duroc, who received his confidences and repeated them to Napoleon. Mme. Walewska was soon the centre of a bril- liant circle of staff-officers who were charmed by her beauty and unaffected manners, for her presence, which was an open secret to the Poles, was not un- derstood by the French. Napoleon, however, was not long in effecting the removal of his unconscious rivals ; Louis de Perigord seemed the most devoted of her admirers, so the Emperor made a sign to Berthier and ordered him to send the aide-de-camp at once to the sixth corps on the Passarge, and the next in order was Bertrand, who, on a second sigL\, 202 NAPOLEON, LOVER. AND HUSBAND. was ordered to report to Prince Jerome before Breslau. The Emperor wandered about the ball-room with the intention of making himself generally agreeable, but his preoccupation led him to make singularly mal a propos speeches ; he asked a young girl how many children she had, a homely old maid, if her husband was jealous of her beauty, and inquired of a lady who was enormously stout if she was very fond of dancing. When he arrived before Mme. Walewska her neighbors nudged her as a sign that she should rise, and standing, her eyes fixed on the ground, strangely pale, she awaited the Emperor's pleasure. " White upon white is not becoming, madame," he said aloud, then added in a low tone, i ' This is scarcely the reception I expected " He paused and looked at her attentively, but as she made no response he passed on, and a few moments afterwards left the ball-room. His departure was the signal for greater liberty of action, each recounting to her neighbor what the Emperor had said to her, and all anxious to learn what he said to Mme. Walewska, and to what he re- ferred when saying that he had expected a different greeting, for those nearest had caught his remarks, and the wildest curiosity prevailed regarding it, some daring spirits even going so far as to question NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 203 Marie herself. As soon as possible she made her escape, but on the way home her husband also catechised her, and, receiving unsatisfactory replies, announced that he had accepted an invitation for a dinner at which the Emperor was to be present, and requested her to order a more elegant costume for that occasion. Marie was on the point of telling him of her imprudent trip to Bronie, of its conse- quences up to date and her disquietude ; but he left her brusquely at the door of her room, which she had hardly entered, before her maid handed her a note which she had some difficulty in deciphering : "I HAVE SEEN, ADMIRED AND DESIRED BUT YOU THIS EVENING. A KIND AND PROMPT ANSWER ALONE CAN CALM THE IMPATIENT ARDOR OF " N." Mme. Walewska crushed the note in her hand, disgusted and revolted by its language. " There is no answer ? " she said to her maid, who departed to convey her mistress's reply to the bearer of the note ; but the messenger who waited in the street was no other than Prince Poniatowski, who did not propose to be so easily beaten, and, despite the servant's remonstrances, entered the house and fal- lowed her to her mistress's room with such prompti- tude, that Mme. Walewska had barely time to lock 204 NAPOLEON, LOVEK AND HUSBAND. the door. From behind the closed door yhe informed the prince that her decision was immutable ; and at the risk of a scandal the prince alternately implored and menaced, but was at last obliged to depart, dis- comfited and angry. She was scarcely awake on the following morning, when her maid handed her a second note, which she did not open, but sealing it up in an envelope with the first ordered that both should be handed to the messenger. Before noon her drawing-room was crowded, all the personages of the nation, influential members of the government, Prince Joseph and Grand Mar- shal Duroc, being assembled there, but Marie, pre- texting a sick headache, remained in her own room stretched out upon a lounge. Her husband was furious, and to prove that he was not jealous, as was artfully insinuated, he conducted the prince and his countrymen into his wife's apartment, and in their presence insisted that she should allow her- self to be presented and should attend the dinner, to which she was bidden. To this the Poles agreed in chorus, and one of their number, an old man, who was highly respected, and whose advice was deferentially listened to by the chiefs of the govern- ment, fixed his eyes sharply upon her, and said in an impressive manner : "I hope that between this and the date set for the dinner your indisposition will NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 205 have disappeared, io_r you cannot refuse the invita- tion without laying yourself open to the accusation of lack of love for your country." How could this inexperienced girl of eighteen, alone, without a friend to counsel her, defend her- self against so many ? she did her best, but the pressure was too great. She was obliged to rise, and, obeying her husband's mandate, called upon Mme. de Vauban, who was Prince Joseph's mistress, solicited her advice as to the toilet she should wear, and asked her to be initiated into the mysteries of court etiquette ; thus she was delivered into the hands of the enemy, for Mme. Vauban was deep in the intrigue. N6e Pugot-Barbentane, Mme. de Vauban had lived at Versailles and was familiar with the life of the old court ; at the outbreak of the revolution she fled to Warsaw, and there lived publicly with the prince, who had previously been her lover. She thought that to give a mistress to a sovereign, whether he be Louis XV. or Napoleon, was the most im- portant mission which a courtesan could fill, and as for scruples, purity, duty, or conjugal fidelity it never occurred to her that a woman of the world would balance such virtues against certain advan- tages. Mme. de Vauban was clever enough to per- ceive that the woman with whom she had now to NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. deal could not be tempted by worldly considera- tions, that she must manoeuvre skilfully and make use of weapons with which she was not familiar, before she could overcome Mme. Walewska's scruples, and, feeling unequal to the task, she con- tented herself with paying her visitor numerous compliments, advising as to her dress and conduct, and protesting friendship ; then she turned Marie over to a young woman who lived with her some- what as a companion. This lady, Mme. Abramo- wicz, was a divorcee without fortune, young, gay, and clever, and, being nearer Mme. Walewska's age, possessed every requisite to attract her confidence, even the most exalted sentiments of patriotism real or feigned. She insinuated herself into Mme. "Walewska's confidence and won the affections of the lonely girl, who had never had an intimate friend, and whose heart longed for a confidante. Mme. Abramowicz ingratiated herself with the husband, and was inseparable from the wife, and when she thought that the time was ripe, she read to Mme. Walewska a letter, signed by the most prominent men of the nation, and members of the provisional government : " Madame : " Slight causes sometimes produce great results, NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 207 and women from time immemorial have exercised great influence over the world's politics ; ancient history, as well as modern, bears testimony to this fact, and so long as men are dominated by passion women can sway them. " Had you been a man, you would gladly have given your life to your country ; as a woman you cannot serve as her defender, but there are other sacrifices which you can make for Poland, and which you should gladly impose upon yourself, however painful they may be. ^Do-you- imagine that it was for love that Esther gave herself to Ahasverus ? Does not the fact that he inspired her with such fear, that she swooned when he looked upon her, prove that affection had no part in that union ? She sacrificed herself for her country, and ; to her everlasting honor, she saved it. May history record as much for your glory and our happiness ! " Are you not daughter, sister, wife and mother to zealous Poles who, with us, form the national sheaf, the strength of which can be augmented only by the number and union of those who compose it. Remember, madame, the words of a celebrated man, a saint and pious ecclesiastic, Fenelon, who wrote : ' Men, in whom all public authority is vested, can achieve no effective result from their deliberations, 208 NAPOLEON, LOVEK AND HUSBAND. if women do not aid in the execution of their de- signs.' Heed his voice, which unites with ours, thai you may promote the happiness of your country- men, of twenty million souls." Thus every spring was brought into play to pre- cipitate the downfall of this young woman, who, in- experienced and guileless, had neither a husband in whom she could confide, nor parents to defend her, nor friends anxious to save her ; the family, country and religion were invoked to force her compliance, all conspired against her, and to complete the work, she was made to read the note from Napoleon, which she had once refused to open. "I fear, madame," he wrote, "that I have dis- pleased you ; yet I had a right to hopo the contrary was I so mistaken ? Your enthusiasm has waned while mine has augmented. You have banished sleep from my pillow ! Ah, deign to give a little joy to a poor heart which is ready to adore you. Dc you then find it so difficult to write to me ? You owe me two letters. "K" Her husband, proud of the success of his wife, for which he took all the credit, without understanding NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 209 the situation nor having the slightest suspicion of what was expected of her for he was an honest gentleman insisted upon her going to the much discussed dinner. The poor girl herself understood that the step was a decisive one and committed her ; but all the world wished it, and she yielded. Her drawing-room was constantly filled with visitors, who mutely felicitated her, and in order that she should not change her mind during the time pre- ceding the dinner, Mme. Abramowicz kept her company. On her way to the dinner, Mme. Walewska com- forted herself with the idea that as she did not love Napoleon, she had nothing to fear, and on her arrival the marked attentions of some of the guests, who already had in view the solicitation of her protection, completely disgusted her with her supposed conquest and she was firmly resolved to remain unapproach- able when the Emperor appeared. Napoleon was more self-possessed that evening than at the ball, and better prepared to be generally courteous ; when Marie was presented he said simply : "I thought madame was indisposed, has she quite recovered ? " and this purposely simple speech overthrew her suspicions and even struck her as being extremely delicate. At table she was placed next the grand marshal 14 210 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. and a,l most opposite the Emperor, who, when all were seated, began in his curt fashion to question his neighbors upon the history of Poland ; he ap- peared to listen attentively and to take a deep in- terest in the subject, but whether speaking or listen- ing his eyes never left Mme. Walewska save to ex- change a glance with Duroc, with whom he seemed to have established a sort of optical telegraph. It seemed as though the remarks which Duroc ad- dressed to his neighbor were dictated by a glance or gesture of the Emperor, who kept up all the time a grave discussion upon European politics ; once he lifted his hand to the left side of his coat, Duroc hesitated for a moment, looked attentively at his master, and at last, divining what was required of him, heaved an " Ah ! " of satisfaction. It was the bouquet of Bronie which was in question and Duroc hastened to ask Mme. Walewska what had become of it. Marie responded that she religiously preserved the flowers which the Emperor had given her for her ^on. "Ah! madame," said the grand marshal, "you must permit us to offer you something more worthy of you." Imagining that his speech had a double meaning she retorted loudly, flushed with anger. "I care only for flowers!" Duroc was dura founded, but after a moment recovered his NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 211 presence of mind sufficiently to say: "Very well, madame, we will pluck laurels from your native soil for you ; " and observing that that touched her, knew that his second speech had been a lucky one. When the company rose from the table and re- turned to the drawing-room, the Emperor took ad- vantage of the confusion to approach her and fixing upon her hia_strangely_ piercing eyes, the power of which no human being had ever resisted, he took her hand and pressing it, said in a low tone : " With eyes so sweet and tender, with such an expression of goodness, it cannot possibly be a pleasure to torture a man, or else appearances are deceitful and you are the most coquettish of women, the most cruel of your sex." On the Emperor's departure the party broke up and Mme. Walewska was persuaded to go to Mme. de Vauban's where a number of the dinner guests and those who were initiated into the intrigue, awaited her coming ; upon entering the room she was im- mediately surrounded by those who flattered her and assured her that the Emperor had had eyes only for ner, that she alone could plead the nation's cause, touch his heart and determine him to rehabilitate Poland. Little by little, as if in obedience to some secret understanding, the guests departed, leaving Marie and Mme. Abramowicz alone ; almost im- 212 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. mediately Duroc was announced and when the doors were closed, he seated himself at Mme. Walewska's side and laid a letter on her knee, then taking her hand, said in the gentlest possible manner : "Can you refuse the request of one who has never brooked refusal ? His position, though glorious, is lonely and sad, and it lies in your power to give him some hours, at least, of happiness. " Duroc spoke at great length but she made no answer and hiding her face in her hands wept and sobbed like a child ; the other woman, however, answered for her and guaranteed that she would go to the rendezvous. When Marie indignantly remonstrated, she shamed her with her lack of patriotism, telling her, that she was a rene- gade daughter of Poland, that they should all will- ingly sacrifice anything for him who would be their country's deliverer, and finally bowed the grand marshal out, assuring him that Mme. Walewska would finally comply with his master's wishes ; then opening the note which he had brought, Mme. Abramowicz read it aloud : " There are moments when the weight of my rank seems more than I can bear, and I am now living through such a period. How can I satisfy the de- sires and needs of a hungry heart which longs to throw itself at your feet and is arrested only by weighty considerations which paralyze its most NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 218 ardent desires and deprive me of freedom of action ? Oh, if you would but come to me ! You alone can surmount the obstacles which separate us ; my friend Doroc will arrange everything. ' ( Come_tome, and all your desires shall be fulfilled, and your country will be dearer to me when you have taught me to love it. "N." Thus the fate of Poland lay in her little hands ; it was not her countrymen alone who said so, but the great conqueror himself, who affirmed it ; it de- pended upon her, that her country should be reborn, the shameful divisions abolished, the torn parts re- united, and the White Eagle fly proudly over all. It was no wonder that such a glorious dream almost intoxicated her ; yet she still struggled, claiming that she was not equal to playing such a role, to which they answered, that she should not lack for advisers, and had only to follow their counsel. Her modesty revolting, she was told that the sentiments she entertained were provincial, ridiculous and out of date, that many another woman, quite as virtuous as she, would willingly exchange places with her and lend Poland the aid of their beauty were the chance given them, why, they asked, should she doubt her ability to do good ? Though an Emperor, 214 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. Napoleon was but a man and a man in love ; she would be able to wind him around her finger and achieve the realization of the patriot's brightest dreams. Thus at last they wrung from her a reluc- tant consent. She refused, however, to answer Napoleon's letter, feeling physically incapable of writing, and they left her alone to advise together, taking the precaution, however, to lock her in, lest she might change her mind and run away ; but she was not thinking of such a thing, she reflected, or rather, exhausted by the prolonged struggle, she dreamed. She wondered if she could not without losing her self-esteem have an interview with Napoleon, inspire him with friendship and respect and persuade him to listen to the prayer of her people ; surely he would not force his caresses upon her, knowing that she had no love to give him, for she would tell him that he inspired her only with sentiments of enthusiasm, admiration and gratitude. There was nothing de- praved in the imagination of this girl of eighteen, whose only knowledge of love was derived from the almost platonic affection of her septuagenarian hus- band, and drifting into the world of dreams, where the virtue of woman has nothing to fear from the passions of man, where the senses are abolished and souls speak and understand each other, she dreamed NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 215 of an ideal friendship, which should both comfort Napoleon in his loneliness and benefit Poland. The conspirators, having settled everything, re- turned and Mme. Walewska agreed to comply with all their wishes, only stipulating that she should remain where she was until those who were to conduct her to Napoleon, should call ; she remained all the next day, which dragged by slowly, alternately watching the hands of the clock and the closed door by which her executioner must enter. At half-past ten in the evening some one knocked, and Mme. Abramowicz, hastily arraying Marie in a hat with a thick veil and a long cloak, which com- pletely disguised her figure, led her like one in a dream to a carriage which waited at the street corner, and assisted her to enter it ; a man with a long coat and a slouched hat, who had held the door open, drew up the step and took a seat beside her. Not a word was exchanged on the way, and when the carriage drew up before a private entrance to the grand palace, her silent companion assisted her to leave the carriage and almost carried her to a door which was opened impatiently from within, and, quietly departing, left her alone with Napo- leon. Blinded by tears Mme. Walewska could not dis- cern the features of the Emperor who knelt by her 21 (> NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. side, took her hand, and began speaking to her in a caressing manner ; nor was she clearly conscious of what he said until the words : " Your old husband " escaped him, when the full realization of the ignominy- burst upon her and with a cry of horror she sprang to her feet and looked about for means to escape. Napoleon was momentarily paralyzed with sur- prise, not knowing what to make of this woman, who after so many entreaties had yielded to his solic* itations and granted him a nocturnal rendezvous, yet who now manifested such unmistakable and un- affected horror at her situation. Not holding the key to her presence there, he questioned an instant if she was not acting a part with the intent to increase his desire, but her grief and dismay were too genuine, and determined to solve the riddle of her conduct, he drew her gently away from the door against which she was leaning, seated her in an arm-chair and began to question her kindly regarding her history ; re- solved not to alarm her, he sought to put his ques- tions in a manner which would least wound and shock her sensibilities, but in spite of his kind inten- tions, his habitual masterfulness pierced the veil of gentleness and he could only obtain brief and frag- mentary answers from the trembling woman, but even those he turned to weapons against herself. "Had she voluntarily given herself to the man NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 217 whose name she bore, was it for rank and wealth that she had sacrificed her youth % No ; then who forced her to unite her young life with an old and decrepid man ? Her mother ; then why had she any remorse, since the marriage was not of her chosing ? " Marie stammered between her sobs that it was her duty to be faithful, that that which God had joined together, man should not seek to sunder. Napoleon could not control his mirth, and at the sound of his laughter Mme. Walewska's tears fell all the faster. More and more mystified and correspondingly in- terested by this woman, the like of whom he had never before encountered, he was the more deter- mined to discover the solution to her presence in his apartments. Here was a woman who wished to be a faithful wife, to hold fast to the principles of her religion, a woman who was unquestionably pure and virtuous, and yet, she was there in his apartments at the dead of night, in compliance with his wishes. Never had his curiosity been so aroused, and he pressed his questions, asking about the education she had received, the life she had led in the country and the society she frequented, of her mother and family, he wished to know everything, even to the name she had received at baptism : the sweet name of Marie, by which he ever afterwards called her. 218 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. At two in the morning some one rapped at the door. " What ! " exclaimed Napoleon, " so soon ? Well, my gentle dove, dry your tears and go home to rest ; you need never again fear the Eagle, for he will exert no other influence over you than that of passionate love. You will end by loving him, for he will be everything to you everything." He assisted her to fasten her mantle, put on her veil, and conducted her to the door, but before he let her out he exacted a promise that she would return the following night. She was reconducted to her home and retired almost reassured, it seemed as if her dream might be realized, for as Napoleon had been kind and tender and spared her that time, she fancied it would be the same in the future. At nine o'clock the following morning the confi- dential friend was at her bedside, holding in her hands a large package, which, after prudently lock- ing the door, she carefully unwrapped, and drew forth several jewel-cases in red morocco, a quantity of hothouse flowers intermingled with branches of laurel and a sealed letter ; but scarcely had she ex- posed to view a magnificent brooch and spray of diamonds than Mme. Walewska snatched them from her hands and flung them to the end of the room, furious that they should have been sent her. She ordered that they should be immediately returned ; NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 219 she wished the Emperor to comprehend that she was not for sale, and that if she gave herself to him it would not be from a desire for jewels ; then, unseal- ing the letter, she read : " Marie, my sweet Mane, my first thought is for you, my greatest desire to see you again ; you will keep your promise and return, will you not ? Other- wise the Eagle will fly to you ! Our friend tells me we shall meet at dinner, deign, therefore, to accept this bouquet which shall establish between us a bond by which we may communicate in the midst of the crowd which will surround us, and even under the gaze of others. When I lay my hand over my heart you will know that it is filled with thoughts of you and you can respond by touching your bouquet. Love me, my precious Marie, and never take your hand off your flowers. "N." The letter was all very fine, but it could not make her accept his diamonds, nor even the flowers and laurels. She had an excuse ready : One did not wear flowers on one's dress save at balls, and it was to a dinner she was going. She vainly essayed to excuse herself from this dinner, but she was forced to fulfill her engagement by those whose ambitions 220 NAPOLEON, LOVEB AND HUSBAND. were roused and who firmly believed that, through her, they would see their dearest wish fulfilled. Her husband remained perfectly blind, he never sus- pected for a moment the intrigue which was being carried on about him, and urgently desired her to accept all invitations. On her arrival at the house where the dinner was given, she was immediately surrounded by her ac- quaintances and by those who were anxious to be presented, and it seemed to the poor woman as if all these strangers were cognizant of her adventure of the night previous. The Emperor had already arrived and appeared dissatisfied, he frowned and regarded her with an angry expression, his eyes seeming to read her very soul ; as he advanced towards her she trembled, fearing that he was go- ing to make a public scene, when suddenly recalling the words of his letter, she laid her hand on the place where his flowers should have been, and had the satisfaction of seeing his contracted features re- lax into a smile and his hand respond by a similar sign. Before going to table he called Duroc aside and spoke with him for an instant ; she had barely taken her place at the table, where, as at the pre- ceding dinner, she was seated next the grand mar- shal, when he attacked her about the bouquet ; she responded haughtily that she was insulted by the NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 221 diamonds, and wished it distinctly understood that she would accept no presents of that kind, that the only thing which could repay her devotion was hope for the future of her country. " Has the Emperor not already given you the right to hope ? " retorted Duroc ; then he recalled to her a number of acts which proved his master's good faith, and through- out the dinner he continued to talk of the Emperor's affection for her, the loneliness of his high state, and the need he had of a heart which would love and understand him, and of the glory of the mission which was hers, reminding her, too, of her promise to return to the palace that night. She was conducted to the palace with the same precautions as on the previous evening, and found Napoleon gloomy and thoughtful. ' ' You have come at last," he said, " I had abandoned all hope of see- ing you ! " He assisted her to lay aside her cloak and hat, and when she was seated, stationed him- self before her, and commanded her to explain her conduct. Why did she go to Bronie ? Why had she sought to inspire him with a sentiment which she did not share ? Why had she refused his flowers and even the laurels ? Why had she ever made a ren- dezvous with him ? What were her intentions when she came to the palace ? As she did not answer he gave way to a paroxysm of anger and exclaimed : 222 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. " You led me to hope for everything and you give nothing ; you are a true Pole, and your actions con- firm the opinion I have always held of your nation."' Moved and troubled by her reception, and anxious to know what he thought of her people, she said : " Ah, Sire, forgive me, and tell me what you think of us Poles." He informed her that he considered the Polish race passionate and unstable, emotional and lacking in system ; that their enthusiasm was impetuous and genuine, but short-lived, and that this portrait of her race was her likeness. Had she not flown, like one crazed with enthusiasm, to gain a glimpse of him ? Had she not led him to believe by her earnest and passionate expressions of esteem that she was most kindly disposed towards him ? He had allowed himself to be duped, but she must know that, when anything was withheld from him, it became the object he most coveted, and that nothing could daunt him in the pursuit of it. Whether real or feigned, the violence of his excitement grew apace and Mme. Walewska shrank before him. " I want you to understand," he thundered, " that I will force you to love me ! I have already lifted the name of your country from the dust, thanks to me that it has not been wiped from the face of the earth ! I will do more but, remember, that even as I crush this NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 223 watch in my hand, so shall your country and all your hopes be crushed if you push me to extremes, repulse my love and refuse me yours." Overcome by this violence, Mme. Walewska fainted when she recovered consciousness she no longer belonged to herself. Henceforth it was a liaison, if one can so desig- nate the habit she acquired of going nightly to the palace and passively submitting to caresses which she hoped would some day bring her a great reward. Napoleon established a provisional government, the embryo of an army and several companies of light cavalry were attached to his guard ; but it was not for so little that Mme. Walewska had sacrificed her virtue, the only thing which could content her and condone her conduct in her own eyes, was the re- establishment of Poland as a nation and a state. Incapable of feigning a sentiment which she did not entertain, or a passion which she did not feel, she had none of the requisites for the domination of a lover, and was not even cunning enough to conceal the motive which actuated her. Nightly she referred to the one topic which interested her and was consoled by promises and buoyed by hopes ; but the promises were always for the future, in the present there was only misery which seemed interminable. She met with no censure in her own country j 224 NAPOLEON, LOVEB AND HUSBAND. aside from her husband, whom she had been obliged to leave, all hastened to do her honor, not as a favorite but as a victim, for none were in ignorance of her sacrifice, and by all she was esteemed, re- spected and pitied. Her husband's own sisters, Princess Jablonowska and Countess Birginska, constituted themselves her chaperones ; had she so desired, she could have taken the first place in War- saw's society and maintained almost regal state ; but Mme. Walewska shunned society, lived unpre- tentiously, and gave no cause for enmity ; there- fore, though less flattered, she received greater sym- pathy. To a society which concealed oriental habits under a veneer of French elegance and customs, which still retained the moral code of Catherine the Great, there was nothing shocking in Mme. Walewska's position. There was no fine Polish gentleman of the time who had not an authenticated mistress, of whose existence his wife was well aware and to whom she exhibited no animosity ; scarcely a noble did not | support, at some one of his country seats, one or more Georgian favorites ; consequently, as he did not travel with a harem in his train, Napoleon appeared to the Poles .j a singularly chaste sover- eign ; when he established himself in Warsaw they felt that he should have a female companion to NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 225 divert him, and but natural and right to secure for him the society of the only woman in whom he manifested the least interest. Fortuitously, the Emperor admired a woman of exceptional character and one who could be made politically useful ; virtuous, unaffected, disinterested, animated solely by love of country, incarnating in her person the best traits of her nation, Marie Walewska was capable of inspiring in the heart of her royal lover a deep and lasting affection, and the Poles reasoned that she would become like a second wife to Napoleon, that, without sharing his imperial state and splendor, she would fill a special place in his life and be an ever-present ambassadress for Poland. Napoleon was alive to the fact that Mme. Walew- ska did not love him for himself, that her country held the first place in her heart, indeed, she never essayed to make him think otherwise, but frankly avowed that she had become his mistress in the hope of softening his heart and awakening his sym- pathies towards her unhappy land, and he, who usually mistrusted any one whom he suspected of a desire to make use of him, placed implicit confi- dence in this simple, sincere and earnest girl ; he knew her to be so far above the ordinary ambitions of women that he longed to content her, and keenly 226 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. regretted his inability to bestow the one boon she coveted. " Rest assured," he frequently said to her, " that my promises to you shall be fulfilled. I have already forced Russia to relinquish what she had usurped ; time will do the rest, but you must be patient ; politics is a cord which snaps if subjected to too great a strain, and the time is not yet ripe for the realization of your hopes. In the meanwhile, your politicians must work, the country must be organ- ized ; you are rich in patriots and can command plenty of brave arms honor and courage start from every pore of you Poles but that will not suffice, there must be great unanimity." It was strange how this man, who never discussed politics with a woman, continually recurred to the subject of Poland's future, and discussed with her the best means for the amelioration of her country- men, how to benefit all classes and insure a united movement even if at the expense of the aristocracy. "You well know," he said, "that I love your nation, that my wishes and my political views lead me to desire its entire rehabilitation ; I am most willing to second its efforts and uphold its rights, and all that I can do without endangering the in- terests of France, I will do ; but remember that the distance that separates us is tremendous, that what NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 227 I establish here to-day may be annihilated to-mor- row. My first duty is to France, I cannot shed French blood for a cause which is not theirs, nor arm my people and rush to your succor each time that it may be necessary." From these grave matters he would turn to social gossip, current anecdotes and the tittle-tattle of the drawing-room with a rapidity which amazed his listener. He wanted her to inform him regarding the private life of every personage whom he en- countered, his curiosity was insatiable and went into the minutest details ; it was his way of form- ing an opinion upon the leading class wherever he found himself, and here, where such great interests were at stake, he made use of every means to in- form himself. From the accumulated tales, which engraved themselves upon his memory, bits of in- formation regarding this one and that one, he drew astute conclusions which astonished the woman who listened and showed her that she had furnished him with arms against herself ; she would protest indignantly against the deductions he drew and the judgments he pronounced ; the quarrel usually ending with his giving her a slight tap on the cheek and exclaiming : " Good little Marie, you are worthy to be a Spartan and to have a country ! " Napoleon would not have loved Mme. Walewska 228 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. as he did, had he not taken an interest in her toilet, in which matter he considered himself an excellent judge, having once written to Savary : " You know that I am an authority upon woman's dress. " From the time of the Consulate he had selected the pres- ents sent to any queen, and the dress of the court ladies did not escape his criticism ; even Josephine, whose taste in dress was exquisite, was not exempt. Ahove all he disliked sombre costumes, and Mme. Walewska insisted upon dressing in the most simple fashion and always in black, white or gray, which displeased him extremely, and regarding which he remonstrated with her, and she retorted, that "a Polish woman should wear mourning for her coun- try ; when you resuscitate it I will wear nothing but rose-color." Thus in every way she brought him back to the same subject, but without annoying him, so great was his love for her. It did not suffice him to see his mistress by appointment, he desired that she should attend all the dinners and fetes at which he was obliged to be present, and as he wished to be constantly in communication with her he initiated her into the mysterious system by which he com- municated with Duroc, and she became more expert at it than the grand marshal himself, and at the very instant when Napoleon seemed engrossed in NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 229 some serious subject he would tell her in his sign language that his heart was filled with thoughts of her. "When she expressed her astonishment that so great a general, so shrewd a politician, should con- descend to such boyish means of communication, he said : ' ' Eeflect that I am obliged to fill with dignity the post assigned to me, I have the honor to com- mand nations. I was an acorn, I have become an oak and I am watched on every side ; this situation obliges me to play a role which is not always easy, but which I am obliged to keep up in order to pre- serve the character with which I am invested, and while I must play the monarch for all the world, I love to be your subject, and how can I manage to tell you that I love you at a state dinner (which I want to do every time I look at you), unless I employ the sign language ? " When he removed his headquarters to Fincken- stein Marie was obliged to follow him, and the melancholy existence she led there resembled closely that which she had once led at Walewice with her old husband. The long, quiet days were broken only by the meals which she ate tete-a-tete with the Em- peror, and which were served by a single valet, the rest of the time was spent in reading and embroid- ering, and her only distraction was watching the parade from behind closed blinds. It was the life 230 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. of a recluse subject to the will of a master, without society, pleasure or distraction, and yet it satisfied her better than the brilliant society which she had left at Warsaw. Thus Mme. Walewska realized the type of woman which he had hoped to find in Josephine : sweet, complaisant, timid, attentive, unambitious and seemingly without will, who lived only for him and who, though she asked a favor of him, asked so colossal a one that it became imper- sonal and impossible of conception save by a soul singularly pure and disinterested, and to hope to receive it from the hands of a mortal, was to think of him almost as a god ; all this appealed strongly to Napoleon and augmented his Polish love's hold on him. When the Emperor was about to leave Poland, without having realized the dream for whose sake Mme. Walewska had given herself to him when, despairing and disillusioned, Marie refused to follow him to Paris and announced her intention to retire into the heart of the country, there to await in sad- ness and solitude the fulfilment of his vows, it became his turn to supplicate : " I know," he said, " that you can live without me, that your heart is not mine ; but you are good, kind and generous, can you find it in your heart to deprive me of my only happiness of the few moments that I spend each NAPOLEON, LOVER /*0 HUSBAND. 231 day with you ? You are my sole joy, the one being who brightens my life, and yet I am supposed to be the most highly blessed of mortals." His tone was so bitter, his smile so sad, that, overwhelmed by a new sentiment of pity for this master of the world, she promised to follow him to Paris. Mme. Walewska reached Paris in the beginning of the year 1808, and thenceforth this mysterious liaison, to which Napoleon was sometimes unfaith- ful, but which was nevertheless the grand passion of his life, was established on so strange a footing that, if one could not find its confirmation in isolated details and dates which are authenticated by divers witnesses, it would be difficult to follow the chain of events and one would not dare to affirm the con- tinuity of facts which the best informed contempo- raries ignored. It is known that during the campaign of 1809 Mme. Walewska went to Vienna, where an elegant establishment awaited her near the Palace of Schoen- brunn, that she became enceinte, and after peace was declared went to Walewice for her confinement, and that there, on the 4th of May, 1810, Alexandre-Flo- rian-Joseph Colonna- Walewska, was born. Know- ing so much, have we not a right to question whether Napoleon's hesitation when treating with Austria, his indecision regarding the fate of Poland 232 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. was not due to the presence of her to whom he had solemnly promised the rehabilitation of her country ? What contemporaries do not tell us is that towards the close of 1810, Mine. Walewska, accompanied by her sister-in-law the Princess Jablonowska, and her infant son, returned to Paris, where she lived first in a pretty house on the Chaussee d'Antin, afterwards at No. 2 rue du Houssaie and then at No. 48 rue de la Victoire. Every morning the Emperor sent to ask her orders ; boxes in all the theatres were placed at her disposal ; the doors of the museums opened to her ; Corvisart was charged to look after her health and Duroc to see that her every desire was satisfied and her life made as agreeable and easy as possible. The following anecdote gives an example of her power : At Spa, a young Englishman indulged in a joke of doubtful taste at the expense of the Princess Jablonowska. On her return to Paris the Princess invited him to accompany Mme. Walewska and her- self to the museum of artillery ; in the gallery where armor was displayed the party stopped before the armor worn by Jeanne d' Arc, and while the young man was looking at it the Maid of France opened her arms and, seizing him, pressed him violently to her heart ; suffocating, he struggled to escape, but it NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 233 was only upon the order of Mme. Walewska that Jeanne d'Arc released him. Knowing the jealousy with which Napoleon guarded his museums, is this not a positive proof of her power ? Whenever he could escape from the cares of state the Emperor went to her, or had her come to the chateau with her son, upon whom he had conferred the title of count of the Empire. None in the com- pany, with the exception of the Poles, suspected their relations, and Mme. Walewska went little into society and received only a few compatriots ; her household was mounted upon a modest footing and her conduct extremely circumspect. When she went to take the waters at Spa her sister-in-law ac- companied her, and it was at her sister-in-law's home, a house at Mons-sur-Orge, called the chateau de Bretigny, which was rented from the Duchesse de Richelieu, that she passed the summer. They essayed vainly to draw her into society, but her greatest preoccupation was to hide from the world the relations of which the majority of women would have been proud. Her country home was situated in a secluded spot and conducted in an extremely simple style, but it was her universe, and she left it as seldom as possible ; nevertheless, she was obliged to accept Josephine's repeated invitations to go to Malmaison with her son, whom the Empress loaded 234 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. with presents and playthings, but it does not appear that she mingled in court society before the year 1813, and it is only at that epoch that in her person- al accounts two court-dresses are mentioned ; one was a dress of black velvet with gold-spangled tulle, the other of white tulle ; however recherche her cos- tumes may have appeared she was certainly not an extravagant woman, for her annual bills at Leroy's never exceeded six thousand francs. It was needless for her to appear at court in order to recall herself to Napoleon's memory, proof of which lies in a letter written by him from Nogent, the 8th of February, 1814 ; in the midst of the terrible strain incident to the French campaign, on the day following the battle of Brienne, and on the eve of that of Champaubert, he thought of Mme. Walewska and endeavored to secure her future. He had charged the treasurer-general, M. de La Bouillerie to settle fifty thousand pounds upon the young Count Walewska in such fashion that, in the event of his death, his mother should be his heir, and the idea that all the formalities had not been fulfilled caused him to write this letter : " I have received your letter relative to young Walewska, I give you carte blanche to do whatever is proper ; but act at once. That which preoccupies NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 235 me most at present is first that boy and then his mother. "N." Mme. Walewska knew nothing of all this, and there never was a more disinterested heart than hers. During the last days at Fontainebleau when the Emperor, abandoned by all, had sought to find in death a refuge which destiny refused him, she hastened to his side and spent an entire night in an antechamber awaiting his commands. Napoleon, ab- sorbed in his gloomy reflections, exhausted by the physical crisis through which he had passed, never thought of asking for her until she had already been gone an hour. " Poor woman," he said, "she will believe herself forgotten." He little understood her, for a few months later, at the end of August, 1814, she landed at Elba, ac- companied by her son, her sister and her brother, Colonel Laczinski, and spent a day with the Emper- or at the hermitage of Marciana. From the mo- ment she learned of Napoleon's return to Paris in 1815 she was among the most devoted and assiduous of the women who visited the Elyseo and at Mal- maison, faithful to the Emperor through his fall and misfortunes. But after he had gone to St. Helena she thought 236 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. herself free, and M. Walewska having died in 1814, she married at Liege in 1816, General Count d'Ornano, who had been obliged to take refuge there after the second return of the Bourbons. General d'Ornano had been one of the bravest officers of the Grand Army, and Mme. Walewska's union with him was brief but happy, for she died within the year, expiring in her home in the rue de la Victoire on the 15th of December, 1817. One of the Emperor's companions at St. Helena tells us, that the news of Mme. Walewska's marriage affected His Majesty keenly, as he had preserved a warm affection for her and could not reconcile him- self to the thought that one whom he had loved should care for another. In his will the Emperor had expressed his desire that Alexandre "Walewska should enter the French army ; his career was a brilliant one, and as soldier, writer, diplomat and statesman his life is too intimately associated with the history of his time to render it necessary for us to dwell upon it here. NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 237 CHAPTER XVI. THE DIVORCE. The death of Napoleon-Charles destroyed Napo- leon's dream of creating an heredity hy adoption ; the birth of Leon disabused his mind of all doubts of his inability to create a direct line, and love for Mme. Walewska completed the work by weakening Josephine's influence. It is impossible that at Tilsit the Emperor directly negotiated an alliance with a Russian grand-duchess, but certain that from the moment of his return to France he began paving the way for divorce ; his ordinary method of procedure was to carry a project into operation as soon as it was conceived, but he took two years for the execu- tion of this one. Mentally Napoleon was fully alive to the advan- tages which would accrue to him from a divorce and second marriage, but, though his brain was willing, his heart's dictates were in opposition to his political sagacity, and it was this war within himself which kept him in a state of uncertainty 238 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. from 1807 to 1809, an uncertainty which causes his actions to appear inexplicable to the historian, can- not be accounted for by political reasons, and was due solely to conscientious scruples. Before Napoleon could acquire the energy neces- sary for the rupture of his marital relations with the woman whom he had once passionately loved, and raised to share the throne with him, who was bound to him by ten years of close companionship, and whom, with her children, he had preferred above his own flesh and blood, it was essential that the ties which bound him should break one by one, and a divorce became a necessity. Feeling that he was about to do her a great wrong, Napoleon attributed to Josephine even more amiable qualities than she possessed, and repeatedly said to his advisers : " She will not be able to bear it, it will kill her ! " and possibly he was superstitious enough to believe that his fortunes depended upon her and her star ; yet neither vain superstition, fear of the criticism of his companions in arms nor of public opinion, caused his hesitation, he simply paused for a time, listening to the dictates of his heart. Weary of the Emperor's vacillations some of those who were ardent advocates of the divorce, such as Fouche, essayed to hasten the rupture by adroit insinuations to Josephine, with the view of determin- NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 239 ing her to take the initiative and voluntarily sacri- fice herself. Napoleon understood that this excess of zeal rose from the projects he had formed and allowed to be divined, but the more he realized his weakness the more it irritated him, and, indignant that one of his ministers should fancy he could coerce him, that this police spy should have dared to probe into his domestic life and show his ugly face in the conjugal chamber, he treated Fouche as he had never treated any man before, and Josephine, astutely advised by Talleyrand, who for some reason or another wished to throw an obstacle in Fouche's path, profited by her husband's momentary indigna- tion and boldly accused him of intending to repu- diate her, Napoleon shrinking from the scene which was bound to follow an admission of his intention, hesitated and was reconquered. This renewal of affection for his wife did not render him more faithful, for in the sentiment which he entertained for Josephine, fidelity had no part ; it was a kindly feeling, combined from memory, pity and gratitude, but permitting of no illusions regarding the youth and beauty of his wife, and when he found himself in the society of younger and prettier women he saw no reason why he should not enjoy it without detriment to his marital rela- tions. 240 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. During the sojourn at Paris and Fontainebleau, between August and October of 1807, Mme. Gazzani exercised her influence over Napoleon, and it is said that at Fontainebleau he also fell a victim to the charms of Mme. de B. * * * *, who was a companion to the Princess Pauline. This Mme. de B. * * * 1 whose husband was distantly related to the Beau- harnais and owed his place at court to his kinship with them, was one of the prettiest of women ; she was very tall, and some claim that her head and features were too small for her figure, but she was generally considered a remarkably handsome woman ; she was extremely clever, poor, and morally unprejudiced. The Emperor saw her at first at a hunting-breakfast and signified his admiration for her, going so far, it is said, as to write to her. Her apartment was on the first floor of the chateau, and gave into the garden of Diana, so it was conveniently situated for nocturnal visitors, and His Majesty was always welcome. Mme. de B. **** was well con- tent with her position, and the husband, who was aged and little troubled by scruples, rubbed his hands over it. "My wife," he said one day, in a drawing-room, "is a woman of wonderful re- sources ; we are not rich, yet, thanks to her clever- ness, we appear to be ; she is a perfect treasure." She worked so well that she made him a chamber- NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 241 lain to one of the Emperor's imperial brothers and a baron of the Empire. This liaison, however, was conducted with such secrecy that some have doubted if it really existed, and as it was not continued after the Emperor left Fontainebleau, the complaisant husband's pleasure abated and he had some un- pleasant experiences, for Mme. de B. * * * * quarrel- ing with the princess because of a brilliant young officer, was dismissed from the imperial household and obliged to retire to her country-seat, while the officer was sent to Spain, where he was grievously wounded ; on his return, Mme. de B. * * * * secured a divorce and they were married. Although Bonaparte had allowed Josephine to reassume her sway over him he was still haunted by the thought of divorce, the wisdom of which his counsellors never permitted him to forget, and it was with this step in view that he went to Italy in 1807. One of Josephine's greatest disquietudes in connection with the divorce was the effect it would have upon her son, for although Napoleon had es- tablished Eugene in Italy as viceroy in 1805, and had married him, in 1806, to the Princess Augusta, giving him the title of "Son of France," his promises had not been sanctioned by legislative act ; he wished, therefore, to reassure both his wife and the House of Bavaria, and also to inform himself 16 242 NAPOLEON, LOVEK AND HUSBAND. regarding a union which had been proposed to him, namely, a marriage with the Princess Charlotte of Bavaria, and it was doubtless with this alliance in view that he arranged a meeting at Milan with the Bavarian king, queen and princess. The young girl, however, proved less prepossessing than he had an- ticipated, and discarding the idea of that alliance he left the princess to her strange destiny, and con- sidered the advisability of a family alliance. Although Lucien Bonaparte's first wife, Catherine Boyer, was a woman of most humble origin, the un- educated daughter of an innkeeper at Saint-Max- imin de Var, Napoleon had loved her like a sister, and her young daughter, Lolotte, having reached a marriageable age he seriously considered the advisa- bility of making her his wife. There was an es- trangement between his brother Lucien and himself, and the Emperor, who considered family unity es- sential, was desirous of effecting a reconciliation, and argued that this step might cement Lueien's affection for him ; he reasoned that if the dissimi- larity between Lolotte's age and his proved too great and the young girl showed any repugnance at the idea of becoming his wife, or if, on close ac- quaintance with her, he should alter his intentions, it would be easy to find her a suitable husband from some of the royal houses of Europe. He thought NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 243 that, should the marriage take place, the succession which he would establish in France would be more purely Bonaparte, and hoped that the girl who had been very fond of him as a little child would find it easy to renew the affection of her youth. Lolotte was brought to Paris and placed under the protection of her grandmother, Madame Mere, but she did not remain long. She amused her father with her letters about the doings of the French court, seemingly un- suspicious that her correspondence was watched, and it was soon clear to Napoleon that a union with his niece was not feasible, whereupon he sent her back to Italy. Lolotte Bonaparte never wore a crown, but in 1815, she married the Prince Gabrielli, and lived until 1865. The Italian journey, then, was unproductive as far as Napoleon's matrimonial projects were con- cerned, but Fouche continued to agitate and dissem- inate the idea of divorce, thus exposing himself to wrathful letters from the Emperor, which did not, however, cause him to cease intriguing ; his ordi- narily clear perception seemed obscured, his usual sagacity at fault, for he failed to see that this was not the moment to urge his plans. The perils of Eylau, and the conspiracy which was hatched dur- ing his absence had not made sufficient impression upon the Emperor for him to deem it essential to 244 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. leave a living representative in Paris when war called him away, and in order to decide him to repu- diate Josephine and wed another an extraordinarily desirable alliance must be proposed : such a one was not at hand, the idea of a Russian alliance having long been abandoned, and Austria having no marriageable daughter to offer. Almost immediately following Napoleon's return from Italy, Mme. Walewska arrived in Paris and Napoleon's heart was completely filled with her, while his mind was occupied with affairs of state ; the Spanish question perplexed him greatly, and claiming that that must be settled before he could reopen with Alexander the conference begun at Tilsit, he gave little thought to the question of di- vorce. Talleyrand, however, began to urge the step, and to insist that the Emperor should at least come to some decision upon the subject. Under the press- ure brought to bear upon him Napoleon became so excited and nervous that a serious illness seemed inevitable ; he had frequent attacks of excruciating stomach trouble, and when ill would draw his wife down beside him on the bed and weeping sob out that he could not leave her. It seemed as if Josephine possessed some talisman by which she held her husband's affection, and al- though he sometimes said that she was old and ugly, NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 245 during their sojourn at Marrac his conduct towards her was like that of a youthful lover. In those days he apparently forgot that a divorce had ever been talked of ; they amused themselves like a couple of children let loose from school ; frequently, in the presence of the guard of light cavalry that escorted them, he chased Josephine across the beach and pushed her into the water, laughing like a boy, and when the Empress, in her haste, lost her shoes, he threw them out to sea and forced her to drive home in her stockings, that he might the better see and feel her feet, which he greatly admired. At this period he was more alive to Josephine's worth than ever before, indeed she never appeared to better ad- vantage than upon this journey to Bayonne ; she showed herself intelligent, adroit and full of tact in the strange interview they were obliged to hold with the Spanish sovereigns, and later during the triumphal march across the south and west prov- inces, when the temperature was so high that in order to be at all comfortable they were obliged to travel by night, when at each halting place they were feted and entertained in exactly the same dull manner, when Napoleon was bored in the extreme by the ovations, Josephine, in spite of fatigue and illness, was always punctual and ready with a gracious smile and fitting word for all. It was 246 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. wonderful how she managed to appear interested in everything, in household affairs and children, in all which could best please the women ; how she man- aged to temper Napoleon's dominant power by her gracious smile and caressing manner and to win love where he won admiration. She had wonderful tact in giving a present, and a way of taking a jewel from her own person and offering it to a matron or maid which was simply captivating, and understood how to make the presentation to an official of an obligatory present appear like a token of personal esteem. Although for four months constantly under the charm of Josephine's presence, the desire for divorce again took hold of Napoleon ; doubtless it was the incentive for the journey of Erfurt, to which place he was accompanied by Talleyrand, whose mission it was to insinuate to the Emperor Alexander that Napoleon was ready to share his throne with one of the grand duchesses ; but Talleyrand, instead of serving his royal master, unscrupulously betrayed him ; it was he who furnished the Russian Emperor with a plan for eluding Napoleon's proposal, sug- gested the basis for a new coalition against France, and paved the way for the war of 1809. From Erfurt, Napoleon was obliged to return at once to Paris and the Spanish frontier. He relied NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 247 upon Alexander's good faith, and fancied that when he had quelled the Spanish mutiny, nothing would be easier to arrange than the proposed Russian alliance. However, it was not a mutiny which he had to subdue in Spain but an insurrec- tion, and, instead of taking two months to put it down, as he had anticipated, he was detained three months, and finally achieved but a barren victory. Then came news from Paris of plots in his own family, who were figuring upon his death, that Austria was again in arms, that the archdukes were instigating revolt in Germany, and the sacred war kept alive by secret societies. Leaving Benavente, he spurred to Paris with incredible rapidity, and in three months he unmasked traitors, put his affairs in order, organized an army, and pushed on to the Danube, Austria having attacked and Archduke Charles invaded the territory of the confederation ; but when at Schoenbrunn, after seventeen months of indefatigable action, he had time for reflection, the urgent necessity for divorce was made apparent ; he not only realized clearly the obligation of assur- ing an heredity, but the necessity of having a repre- sentative in Paris during his absence, one around whom his friends would rally in the case of an English invasion or an uprising of the royalists. Josephine was no longer at hand to confuse and 248 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. trouble him by appeals to his conscience, and the memory of the years they had passed together, to startle him by suggesting that, with the sundering of their lives, the star of his destiny would begin to wane ; another woman, as agreeable, younger, and more beautiful, next whose heart lay a child of his, was at his side, and so the question, which for two long years had vexed his spirit and wrung his heart, was finally settled. So long as Napoleon doubted if he could have children he had schemed, planned and invented every imaginable combination for the foundation of an heredity, but now that he knew that he could found a line of kings, that his descend- ants might sit upon the throne of France, it was plain to him that a second marriage was the only practical step, that a direct heir alone could ensure the stability of the Empire. In order to spare both Josephine and himself, and avoid further painful scenes, he wrote from Vienna ordering that the communicating doors between his apartments and the Empress's at Fontainebleau be walled up, and when Josephine joined him at the chateau, he refused to grant her a private interview and remained closeted with his ministers ; from that time, he so arranged that they were never alone to- gether, and thus avoided any explanations or private conversation regarding his intentions. Napoleon NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 249 essayed to make Hortense announce his decision to her mother, and, when she refused, summoned Eu- gene from Italy for the purpose ; but when he knew his stepson to be on the way, he mustered up his courage and provoked the supreme conversation wherein he must declare to his wife his irrevocable determination to divorce her. So at last fell the blow which Josephine had been dreading for years, for the avoidance of which she had deployed all her charms, the fear of which had poisoned her life ; she knew that further effort was futile, and although she wept and fainted when the Emperor finally announced his decision, it was rather with the view of making the best of the situation for herself and children than from excess of feeling ; she wished her son's position firmly established, her own debts paid, and an ample income settled upon her ; she desired to preserve the rank and prerog- atives of an Empress, and above all that she should not be forced to leave Paris. Napoleon granted all that she asked, the Elysee was given her as a town residence, the domain of Malmaison for a country seat, and the chateau of Navarre as a hunting-lodge ; and a yearly income of three millions, the title, the es- cort, and the customary retinue of a reigning Em- press were assured her ; thus he prepared for his divorced wife a place in the state which was unpar- 250 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. alleled in history, unless a like example could be found among the annals of Eome and Byzantium. But Napoleon gave his divorced wife more than money, palaces and titles, he gave her his sympathy and his tears. He sent almost hourly for news of her, desiring to know how she passed her time away from him, and like the most faithful and tender of lovers, wrote her letter after letter, and insisted that all who surrounded her should visit him that he might glean from them every item of interest re- garding the daily life of the woman he had repu- diated ; there was no attention, kindness, or favor that he did not lavish upon her, so conscious was he of the wrong he had done ; what he wished was that she should accept the inevitable with fortitude, and, making the best of her new situation, relieve him of the pain of knowing her unhappy through his will. Nevertheless, when he went to Malmaison to see and console Josephine he never embraced her or entered her private apartments, but so arranged that his visits should have an air of formality, for he wished that both she and the world should know that all was ended. This conduct bears witness to his respect for Josephine, showing that he would not permit any one to think that the wife of yesterday had become the mistress of to-day ; perhaps, too, he doubted of his ability to maintain his distant de- NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 251 meanor save when supported by witnesses, and his conduct shows how strong, powerful and tender was his affection for this woman ; an affection which had outlived youth and beauty, and, in spite of all strains, remained to the last the great love of his life. 252 NAPOLEON, LOVEK AND HUSBAND. CHAPTER XVn. MARIE-LOUISE. Up to this period all the women with whom Na- poleon had been intimately connected had been con- sidered by him as his inferiors, for, surrounded by women of the noblest blood of France, Montmoren- cies, Mortemarts and Lavals, he had learned to es- timate the social worth of the Beauharnais family correctly, and the influence which Josephine had exercised over him through her supposed prestige had long since vanished. None of his mistresses had been sufficiently high-born to flatter his vanity by her rank and worldly position ; indeed, he does not seem to have attempted conquests of that kind, or, if he did, must have been early discouraged ; moreover, in order to satisfy his egotism and ambi- tion something more than a marriage with a noble family of France was necessary. Such an alliance was made possible by the Emperor of Austria's prof- fer of the hand of his eldest daughter Marie-Louise ; this alliance Napoleon believed would assist him to NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 253 I climb the last step towards equality with his prede- I cessors upon the French throne, and the Napoleonic system which he had endeavored to establish and to strengthen by intermarriages between the Bona- partes and the various reigning families of Europe, would, by his marriage, become amalgamated with the house of Austria, even as the Bourbons had been before him, his dynasty would lose its improvised air, and on assuming the quartering of the house of Austria gain the relationships which seemed to him to constitute the only strong and durable political tie. In this alliance Napoleon's ambition found satis- faction, but how could his dominant spirit accommo- date itself to a wife who had from birth the con- sciousness of her rank and worth, and the belief in her own infallibility common to those born in the purple. By a strange hazard the young girl who was offered to him had been so educated as to have no will save that of her father, to realize that her interests were subordinate to those of her nation, that she was destined to play a role in some political combination, and that she must accept without a murmur the marriage which the political interests of her country imposed upon her ; it was with this object in view that Marie-Louise's character had been moulded from earliest infancy. She had been 254 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. taught all languages, German, English, French, Italian, Spanish, Turkish, Bohemian and even Latin, for it was impossible to foresee where her destiny- would lead her ; moreover, it was argued, that the more extended her vocabulary, the greater the number of words at her command for the expres- sion of an idea, the less ideas she was likely to have. Her talents for music and drawing had been en- couraged and cultivated as those accomplishments provided an innocent means of distraction for a princess wherever she might find herself ; the teach- ings of the Church had been given her literally, and minute attention to all its forms inculcated, but all questions of dogma were avoided, for it was possible that fate would give the Austrian princess a heretic for a husband. Her education included a system of morals which only the casuists of Spain could have advised ; the archduchess was kept in ignorance regarding the difference in sex, the barnyard was peopled only by hens, she had no little dogs, only bitches, her riding horse was a mare, her books were pitilessly expurged, pages, lines, even words being cut out, without its occurring to the censor that the gulfs thus created would give the arch- duchess food for thought. The princess was con- tinually under the surveillance of a court lady, who directed the management of her apartments, was NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 255 present at her lessons, invented her games, and watched the servants and teachers ; this lady never left her pupil, either by night or day, and, as politics played an important part in the princess's destiny, the incumbent of this position changed with each new ministry, and Marie-Louise had five governesses in eighteen years ; her education, however, was regu- lated by such rigid laws that, despite all changes in her suite, she remained the same. Marie-Louise's amusements were such as are com- mon to a conventual life ; she had flowers to culti- vate, birds to take care of, and sometimes lunched under the trees with her governess's daughter ; her holidays were spent in the intimacy of the family in pleasant but bourgeois fashion ; she never partici- pated in the gaieties of the court, and had made but one or two short journeys in order that she might have change of air. The event which had made the greatest impression upon her, and which had given her the most distraction, were her flights before the French invasions, when discipline had been relaxed and tasks laid aside ; thus it was not a woman who was offered to Napoleon but a child, accustomed to live under such strict rules that any life would seem sweet by comparison, and for whom the simplest pleasures would possess a charm. Marie-Louise's education was identical with that 256 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. given to the daughters of Marie-Therese and the re- sult of this method, as exemplified by Marie- Antoi- nette at Versailles, Marie-Caroline at Naples and Marie- Amelie at Parma, was not desirable and it was to be dreaded lest the nature of the young Aus- trian princess which had been so repressed would expand in the same way as her aunt's ; Napoleon, however, reasoned that husbands are responsible for their wives' conduct, and laid his plans accordingly. The school-girl who was to pass into his keeping should simply leave the convents of Schoenbrunn and Laxenburg for that of the Tuileries and Saint- Cloud, she should live under the same inflexible rules, the same rigorous surveillance, she should have no freedom in the choice of friendships and read no book which had not been previously scanned ; no masculine visitors should be permitted, and her governess should be replaced by a lady of honor and four ladies-in-waiting who should be perpetually on guard ; the only difference in her life should be the presence of a husband. Thus since the husband was obliged to teach his wife all that her parents had taken pains to conceal from her, he resolved to supplement the enlighten- ment by great precautions, and determined that no man, however high or low his position upon the social ladder, should remain for one instant alone NAPOLEON, LOVEB AND HUSBAND. 257 with the Empress. He re-established the etiquette of Louis XIV. 's time, the rigidity of which had been relaxed through the indifference of Louis XV. and the feebleness of Louis XVI. ; but where royalty veiled its distrust under the disguise of traditional honors, employing the highest ladies in the land to watch the queen under the pretext of keeping her company, Napoleon brought into play undisguised military discipline ; he was not actuated by jealousy, but simply by motives of prudence and precaution ; he had once said at a state's council : " Adultery is the affair of a moment," and he was convinced, perhaps by experience, that a Ute-a-tete between a man and a woman easily became criminal. With such a distrust of woman Napoleon would doubtless have found the Oriental system quite to his taste, but as it was not customary among Europeans to seclude their wives in a harem he was obliged to re- place eunuchs by ladies-in-waiting, and iron bars by etiquette, but, save for the name, the prison was the same. The imprisonment accepted, he in- tended to give to his wife every material pleasure which she could desire ; but the pleasures which he offered her were almost identical with those which a Sultan gives to his favorite odalisque. While at Vienna Marie-Louise ignored the pleas- ure of elegant dresses, exquisite laces, rare shawls 258 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. and dainty linen ; in Paris, provided that no mer- chant approached her and she made her selections through the medium of a lady of the wardrobe, she should have every beautiful thing which French industry could produce, and Napoleon gave her a foretaste of the luxuries which were to be hers in the corbeille which he sent her, of which he inspected each article and had it packed under his super- vision. jThe corbeille included twelve dozen chemise of the'miest batiste, trimmed with embroidery and Valenciennes, twenty-four- dozen handkerchiefs, twenty-four night-dresses, thirty-six skirts, and twenty- four night-caps, at a cost of fifty-one thousand, one hundred and fifty -six francs. In addition the corbeille contained eighty-one thousand, one hundred and ninety-nine francs' worth of laces, exclusive of a point-d'Alen^on shawl, which was valued at three thousand two hundred francs ; sixty -four dresses from Leroy costing one hundred and twenty -six thousand, nine hundred and seventy-six francs ; seventeen cashmere shawls valued at thirty-nine thousand, eight hundred and sixty francs ; twelve dozen stockings, ranging in price from eighteen to seventy-two francs a pair, and sixty pairs of shoes and slippers of all colors and fabrics, which had been made according to measures sent from Vienna, and were so small that Napoleon, NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 259 as he examined them, remarked that it was a good sign. Everything that Paris could produce that was beautiful and rare was presented to her, and yearly she might have almost as much. As for her toilet alone, she was to have an allowance of thirty thousand francs a month. As a girl, Marie-Louise had owned but one or two jewels, whose value was so insignificant that the wife of a Paris shopkeeper would have disdained them ; a couple of hair bracelets, a necklace of seed pearls and another of green beads had comprised her ornaments ; as Empress she was to have diamonds of enormous value ; the thirteen stones which sur- rounded the portrait which the Emperor sent her alone cost six hundred thousand francs, a diamond necklace costing nine hundred thousand francs, and a pair of ear-rings costing four hundred thousand francs, and a still finer parure composed of a diadem, comb, ear-rings, necklace and belt contained two thousand, two hundred and fifty-seven large stones and three hundred and six rose diamonds. She was to have a parure of emeralds and diamonds valued at two hundred and eighty-nine thousand, eight hundred and sixty-five francs ; one of opal and diamonds costing two hundred and seventy-five thousand, nine hundred and fifty-three francs ; one of ruby and diamonds and another of turquoise and 260 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. diamonds, all of immense value, without counting the diamond ornaments furnished by the crown and appraised at three million, three hundred and twenty - five thousand, seven hundred and twenty-four francs. The apartments which she had inhabited in Aus- tria had been furnished in the simplest manner, in France magnificent rooms which had been re-deco- rated and furnished under the Emperor's personal supervision awaited her coming, and in order to spare her any feeling of strangeness the Emperor ordered that all toilet articles and small pieces of furniture likely to be in daily use should be dupli- cated ; thus, in whatever palace she went to reside, the articles to which she was accustomed should be at hand. When the work of the furnishing of the apartments was complete the Emperor was so proud of his success as a decorator that he invited all his guests to view them, and at the Tuileries he himself conducted the king and queen of Bavaria to inspect the rooms, taking them by the way of a dark and narrow staircase which led from his own dressing- room to the Empress's bed-chamber ; the staircase was so narrow that the king, who was extremely corpulent, was obliged to descend sideways, and when they arrived at the foot, the door leading into the apartment destined for the Empress was found NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 261 to be locked and they were obliged to turn about in the dark and narrow space and remount the stair- case a movement which was executed with great difficulty because of his Bavarian Majesty's great size. At Compiegne it was the Emperor also who did the honors of the Empress's bathroom to the Queen of Westphalia, displaying to her the marble bath and furniture and hangings of India stuffs which had cost four hundred thousand francs. For the good of her stomach Marie-Louise's governesses had forbidden all rich food, but the Emperor, foreseeing that, like most Viennese, she would have a taste for goodies, took upon himself the ordering of her table, multiplying the deserts with cakes and ices and bon-bons. Marie-Louise had a generous nature, but up to the time of her marriage had had nothing to give save such samples of her own handicraft as she had been taught to make ; as Empress she was enabled to shower presents upon her family, Napoleon setting her an example by sending handsome presents to her people even before she arrived in France. It was not possible to assert that she had a taste for the theatre, as she had never seen a play, but Napo- leon believed that she would not be of her country and her time if she had not, and planned for her amusement in that way, both when she accompanied 262 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. him to the theatre or preferred to have the actors play in the palace ; in short it was his intention that she should have everything which would distract and amuse her so long as it was in accordance with the secluded life he had planned. It was not his in- tention that she should leave her apartments save for great civil and religious ceremonies, state balls, the theatre, the hunt, and such journeys as might be necessary, and upon these occasions she was to be surrounded by her ladies of honor and officers, and, arrayed in court costume, laden with jewels, she was to remain in haughty isolation, to be wor- shipped by all classes from afar like an idol. Thus he essayed to gild the bars of the prison which he had prepared for the Austrian princess, dreaming to keep her a child, and imagining that she would pass, without feeling the transition, from captive archduchess to captive empress ; thus he sought to assure himself of her fidelity and so to ar- range her life that she should be, like Caesar's wife, above suspicion. The woman whom he thus planned to seclude had in his eyes a mission to fulfil, to be the mother of his children ; she was the mould des- tined to receive and develop the dynastic germ, and it was in order to assure the legitimacy of his de- scendants that he took so many precautions : he acted not unwisely, for the doctrine of monarchical sue- NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 263 cession hinges upon the unquestionable legitimacy of offspring. Napoleon did not doubt that Marie-Louise- would become a mother, having informed himself minute- ly regarding her health and physical being, and knowing her family to be prolific, her mother having had thirteen children, her grandmother seventeen, and her great grandmother twenty-six, and he was impatient for her arrival that he might insure the future of his race. Napoleon had received Marie-Louise's portrait, which represented a young woman with long, blonde hair parted in heavy masses and brushed back on each side from a high forehead, eyes of china blue, a nose slightly indented at the base, thick lips, heavy chin, white but rather prominent teeth and a com- plexion marred by the ravages of smallpox ; the shoulders were large and white, the bust remark- ably full, and the arms, which were long and thin, terminated in small and pretty hands, while her foot was charming. He had been told that she was tall for a woman, and neither graceful nor supple, but an easy carriage Napoleon thought could be acquired, and what he most desired was that her appearance should show the characteristics of her race. When Lejeune, General Berthier's aide-de-camp, 264 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. arrived at Compiegne, preceding Marie-Louise by several days, Napoleon had the portrait which he had received from Vienna brought into the room and proceeded to question the young officer as to the likeness ; happily Lejeune was an artist as well as a soldier, and was able to show the Emperor a sketch in profile which he had himself made of the archduchess. "Ah," exclaimed Napoleon, "she has the real Austrian lip ! " and going to the table upon which lay a number of medals with the heads of various Austrian sovereigns thereon, he compared the various profiles and recognized with pleasure that his future Empress was a true Habsburg. From the moment the negotiations were concluded, that he knew his dream about to be fulfilled, Napoleon burned with impatience for possession ; in vain he essayed to distract his thoughts by hunting, but the idea haunted him ; he spoke of it to every one and he wished the preparations for the reception finished before they had begun. On its being represented to him that it would be difficult to turn the grand salon of the Louvre into a chapel because of the immense pictures which it was difficult to dispose of, he responded: "Well, then, burn them ! " He was preoccupied with the impression which he would make and he ordered from Leger, who was NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 265 Murat's tailor, a court costume literally covered with embroidery, but on trying it on found it so uncomfortable that he was unable to wear it. He ordered boots from a new shoemaker, in order to have liner shoes than those he had hitherto worn and took dancing-lessons, wishing to learn to waltz, but he only succeeded in bringing on an attack of heart trouble, which forced him to abandon the lessons. As Catherine of Westphalia wrote to her father : * ' Neither you nor I would ever have im- agined Napoleon capable of such things." In measure as the cortege from Vienna advanced his impatience increased. At last he could wait no longer. Marie-Louise slept at Vitry on the 26th of March, on the 27th she was due at Soisson, and it was not until the 28th that the Emperor was to join her. The programme of the ceremonial was printed, the pavilion where the meeting was to take place was built and decorated, the troops were commanded and the repast prepared, nevertheless, on the morn- ing of the 27th, in a pouring rain, Napoleon left Compiegne in company with Murat, and without an escort or suite, rode to Courcelles where he awaited Marie-Louise's coming under the shelter of a church porch. At last the coach with its eight horses appeared and stopped for relays, Napoleon advanced to the side of the carriage, the groom of the chambers 266 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. announced him, his sister Caroline, who was con- ducting the bride, presented him to Marie-Louise, and dripping with rain he entered the carriage, which drove rapidly off. They rushed past villages where the mayors, address in hand, waited to receive them, through cities en fSte and at last, at nine o'clock in the evening, without having broken the" day's fast, they arrived at Compiegne. The Emperor cut short the addresses of welcome, presentations and compliments, and, taking Marie-Louise by the hand, conducted her to his private apartment ; there the young girl had reason to remember the lesson which her father had instilled obedience to her husband in all things. The following noon the Emperor had his break- fast served at the Empress's bedside by one of her maids, and during the day he said to one of his generals: " My friend, marry a German, they are the best women in the world, good, amiable, innocent, and fresh as a rose." Napoleon appears to have disregarded or disdained the criticisms which would naturally follow upon his action in assuming that the marriage by proxy was all that was necessary, and his consummation of it before the subsequent ceremonials had taken place, and justified his con- duct by saying : " Henry IV. did the same." NAPOLEOX, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 2ti7 MARIE-LOUISE. PART II. Three months after her marriage Marie-Louise said to Metternich : "I am not afraid of Napoleon, but I begin to think he is of me. " Thus three months had sufficed to banish the terrible fear which from Vienna to Compiegne had caused her such mortal terror that it had affected her physical well-being. But how was it possible that Napoleon should have become timid in the presence of this girl of eighteen ? In taking this Austrian princess to wife he realized the dream of years, and from a purely physical de- sire for the possession of the high-born girl had grown a desire to be the object of her affection, as well as the husband assigned her by the political interests of her country ; he wished to know that he possessed her heart, and desired that she should proclaim her happiness. One morning when they were at the Tuileries the Emperor sent for Metternich and closeted him with the Empress ; at the end of an hour he rejoined them 268 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. and said to the ambassador : " Well, have you had a good talk, has the Empress laughed or cried, had she many complaints to make ? " Then, seeing that the ambassador was embarrassed, he added : "Oh, I do not expect you to give me a detailed account of your conversation ; it is private matter between you and the Empress ; " nevertheless, on the following day, he questioned Metternich minutely, and as the latter was not inclined to enlighten him, he exclaimed : " The Empress has no complaints to make, and I hope you will say so to your sovereign, as he will rely implicitly upon what you say." In reality it was rather himself than the Austrian em- peror whom he sought to reassure ; he wished to be- lieve that his wife was devoted to him, that she was contented with the life he forced her to lead, and hid from him no lingering sentiment of distrust and dislike. Aspiring to domestic peace and happiness, he longed for the assurance of Marie-Louise's affec- tion and the realization of his desires. From childhood the Austrian princess had shared the universal hatred of Bonaparte. When only six years old her mother had told her that Monseigneur Bonaparte, the Corsican, had fled from Egypt, desert- ing his army, and had become a Turk ; she believed firmly that he had been in the habit of beating his ministers, and had slain two of his generals with his NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 269 own hand, and the year preceding her marriage the year which had seen Vienna bombarded, and witnessed the battles of Eckmiihl, Essling and Wagram she had considered him one of the most despicable of beings. After Znaim Marie-Louise wrote to a friend : ' ' I am consumed with fury against Napoleon, yet I am obliged to sit at table with one of his marshals ; " and when his divorce was announced, and the question of a second mar- riage began to be discussed she never admitted for a moment that the French conqueror's choice might fall upon her. " My father," she said, " is too kind to coerce me in a matter of such importance." She pitied Napoleon's possible choice, being sure that it would not be she who would be the victim of polit- ical expediency ; and when the project of her mar- riage was discussed, she wrote to a friend of her childhood : " Pray for me, for, while I am ready to sacrifice my personal happiness for the welfare of my country, I am most unhappy." Though in reality the Austrian princesses had no voice in the disposal of their hands and no opinion save that of their father, for form's sake, Marie-Louise's consent to the marriage was asked, and she resigned herself to the inevitable, while mentally regarding her future husband as an ogre. When one considers the situation her feeling was not unnatural ; fom 270 times the French conqueror had devastated her coun- try, twice he had entered Vienna as a victor ; he had forced her royal father to go to his camp, suing for peace ; every sentiment of patriotism and filial affec- tion, the most sacred of human emotions, the most sensitive chord in noble pride had been outraged by him ; yet, strange as it may appear, Marie- Louise once wed her repugnance was not apparent. Whether this was due to the education which she had received, or whether her natural temperament was awakened and she enjoyed the good things which Napoleon provided for her luxuries to which she was unaccustomed, and found his person- ality not displeasing, or whether her contentment was feigned, it is impossible to affirm ; but it is prob- able that the first supposition is correct, and Napo- leon did all in his power to prove to her that he was, and would remain, a good husband. At the begin- ning of the Consulate he had ceased to share his chamber with Josephine, pretending that his work and duties rendered it necessary, but in reality to insure his own freedom ; he was prepared, however, if Marie-Louise exacted it, to reassume the chain, for he said : " It is a woman's rightful appanage ; " but their temperaments were too dissimilar ; while lie, always chilly, wished a fire kept up all the year round, she, accustomed to a cold climate and a NAPOLEON, LOVEK AND HUSBAND. 271 Spartan-like existence in the immense and glacial palaces of the environs of Vienna, could not stand heated rooms. Frequently, with the uxoriousness of a young husband, he urged Marie-Louise to spend the night with him, but she always responded that he kept his rooms too warm ; while on going to her apartments he would find the temperature too low for him and order a fire lighted, but he invariably deferred to Marie-Louise's contrary opinion with the remark that "Her Majesty's will was law," and, after shivering for a short period, would go away. This difference in their temperaments and indif- ference on her part paved the way for infidelities, but Napoleon does not appear to have thought of such a thing, or, if he did, he hid his amours care- fully and they were but passing. In 1811 he appears to have paid some attention to the Princess Aldo- brandini-Borghese, nee Mile, de Kochefaucauld, to whom he had given a dowry of eight hundred thousand francs and married to the brother-in-law of Pauline Bonaparte, and whom he had just named lady-in-waiting ; but it is probable that he simply admired the manner and elegance of the young woman, who is said to have been charming. There was also some talk, and some gossip in private cor- respondence, regarding the Duchess of Montebello, 272 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. who was one of the Empress's ladies of honor, but there is no proof of a liaison ; such adventures as he did permit himself were obscure and carefully dis- simulated, creating no gossip, simply because no one knew anything about them. The first amour which caused any gossip had its birth at Caen where the Emperor met Mme. Pellapra of the Testa-Cubieres suit. Napoleon again met Mme. Pellapra at Lyons on his return from Elba in 1815, and then pam- phleteers attacked " Mme. Ventreplat " to their hearts' content. At Saint-Cloud there was a little love-affair with a certain Lise B * * * * but it never reached serious proportions ; beyond this his marital behavior towards Marie-Louise was exemplary. Bonaparte imagined that the young Empress felt aggrieved at his visits to Josephine at Malmaison and to Mme. Walewska in the rue de la Victoire, al- though the former had become yearly less frequent in proportion as Josephine's conduct became more and more displeasing, and were made with great privacy, while the latter were so secret that few were cognizant of them. On the officers who com- posed his suite when he visited Malmaison and on those who were aware of his friendship with Mme. Walewska he imposed caution and secrecy, saying on each occasion : "Knowledge of this visit would cause my wife unnecessary pain." After his second NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 273 marriage his entire manner of life changed ; there remained to him from his poor, solitary and melan- choly youth, which was devoid of the amusements natural to his age, a taste for noisy and active sports and in that respect he, with his forty-one years and Marie-Louise with her eighteen, were well matched ; if possible he was the bigger child of the two, and he entered with zest into amusements suitable for a collegian. The young Empress had proposed but one amendment to the cloister-like existence mapped out for her, she desired to ride horseback, which was an exercise habitual with the princesses of Lorraine as soon as they escaped the maternal rule ; Marie- Antoinette had done the same, and there is a record of Marie-Therese's objurgations. Napoleon himself acted as riding-master to his young wife, and during the first lessons ran at her horse's side, bridle in hand, until she had acquired sufficient confidence to ride alone, then daily the horses were ordered im- mediately after breakfast, and, without taking time to put on his boots, the Emperor would throw him- self into the saddle, and in his stocking-feet gallop up and down the Grande Allee after his wife, excit- ing the horses to run and greatly amused by her cries and laughter ; about every ten feet a groom was stationed in order to avoid any accident to the Empress, but it often happened that the Emperor lo 274 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. had the most falls. In the evening, in the intimacy of the household, he organized all kinds of games, such as blind-man's-buff, puss-in-the-corner, cushion- and-keys and games of forfeits in which he took an active part. (Up to this time Marie-Louise's only social accomplishment was the ability to move her ear without moving a muscle of her face, but she now learned to play billiards, for which game she developed such a passion and so much talent, that the Emperor was obliged to take lessons of one of his chamberlains before he could meet her on equal terms ; she also had a fancy for sketching his pro- file and he was always ready to pose for her, although he refused to sit for any painter ; he listened atten- tively, when, seated at the piano, she played German sonatas, although he had but little taste for that style of music, and manifested a proper degree of interest when she showed him the suspenders or sash she was embroidering for him. He was always at her side, devoted and attentive, endeavoring to amuse and distract his " good Marie-Louise, " and his bourgeois habit of addressing her in the second person amazed the court, which had returned to the rigid etiquette of Louis XIV. 's time. Such an exist- ence and such manners did not shock Marie- Louise, she soon accustomed herself to the new manner of life and addressed her husband with the familiar NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 275 " thou, " gave friendly nicknames to her sisters-in-law and called Madame Mere " mamma " ; but all this affability rested upon a condition, that her husband should never leave her, but should always be at her disposition, and he who, up to that moment, had regulated his days according to his occupations and the demands of state, was now constrained to con- ciliate his occupations sometimes to sacrifice them to the tastes and caprices of his wife. It had previously been the Emperor's habit to breakfast' alone and hurriedly, upon the corner of his writing-table (when business permitted him to breakfast at all), but he resigned himself to break- fasting with his wife at a fixed hour, taking from affairs of state the time for an elaborate repast which was most distasteful to him. Between the years of 1810 and 1812 the royal pair took five long journeys, visiting Normandy, Belgium, Holland, the Rhine and Dresden, and it was not she who waited for the Emperor as Josephine had done, it was the hus- , band's turn to cultivate his patience, for Marie- \J Louise was never on time for any social function ; he made all his personal tastes subservient to hers and was not only a faithful but a loving and attentive husband, never missing an occasion to give his wife a pleasure. The magnificent present which he made his wife of a parure of Brazilian rubies, costing V 276 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. four hundred thousand francs, when she had only wished for one valued at forty-six thousand, and the superb necklace, consisting of eight strings of pearls, which cost five hundred thousand francs, which he presented to her after her confinement and which was stolen from Blois, were simply imperial. The fact which shows the lover in the husband were the manifold little presents which he gave her, such as bracelets, bearing the-date of some occasion which had been particularly joyous, loving words or names spelt out in precious stones, and was it not a procla- mation of her affection when she had her own por- trait framed in precious stones whose initial letters formed the words " Louise, je faime" and placed it upon her husband's writing desk. If Napoleon had not loved his young wife he would not have taken umbrage at the slightest reference to his affection in the newspaper or to a verse where- in he was represented as a love-sick shepherd ; as it was, the moment he saw the slightest reference to his affection in print he felt as though its sanctity had been violated, and immediately wrote a furious letter to the minister of police, wherein he did not deny his love, but insisted that the newspapers should not be permitted to comment upon it. Thinking to strengthen his wife's affection, he showered valuable presents of every description upon each member of NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 277 her family, and favors upon all the Austrians at his court. Despite time, the love which Marie-Louise mani- fested, and the precautions for his marital security which he had taken, and which were still carefully observed, he continued to be suspicious, and when the war with Eussia called him from home he arranged that a detailed account of his wife's daily life and actions should be sent him by each courier ; these letters were written by an illiterate person upon the commonest of paper, and upon these wretched scrawls he, who was usually so scrupulous and critical, wrote questions and notes ; and yet in spite of this continual surveillance he dared not openly take his wife to task when anything dis- pleased him, but strove to find an intermediary to express his disapproval. Upon one occasion the Empress, while walking in the park at Saint- Cloud with Mme. de Montebello, allowed the duchess to present one of her relations and spoke with him for some moments ; the follow- ing morning after the levee the Emperor detained the Austrian ambassador and recounted the affair, and upon Metternich's feigning not to comprehend what was wanted of him, Napoleon frankly explained that he wished the ambassador to speak to the Em- press, and the Austrian refusing he insisted, saying : 278 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. '* The Empress is young and might misunderstand my motives, attributing them to jealousy, while what you would say to her would make quite a dif- ferent impression." Napoleon's best beloved mistress, she who had most occupied his thoughts, was power, and this power which he had refused to give to Josephine, of which he had been so jealous that neither his two oldest counsellors, his brothers, nor any living being had he ever even given a shadow of authority, he gave, in 1813, in that time which was most perilous for his empire, to Marie-Louise ; making her regent of the Empire. Doubtless there was more shadow than substance in this abandonment, and that no grave decision could be taken without his consent ; it is probable that a premonition of disaster assailed him even in Kussia, and that by this act he intended to assure the transmission of his crown, but in any case it en- tailed a stripping of some of his dearly loved au- thority, and he had not hesitated. Decrees were signed in his name by the Empress, by her pardons were accorded, nominations made and proclamations issued ; the bulletins by which, since 1800, the master announced his victories, distributed his glory and gave the accounts of his conquests, were things of the past, and it was : "Her Imperial Majesty, NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 27.9 Queen and Regent, who had received from the army information," and the conscripts for the unfortu- nate army were called " Marie-Louise men " by the people. From head to foot of the governmental ladder weaknesses manifested themselves and treachery succeeded. Napoleon was no longer there, even his name had disappeared, while that of Marie-Louise was feared by none and meant nothing to the people ; still, Napoleon would not alter his decree, applauded the step he had taken, and believed that his wife knew more than Cambaceres or than all the Bona- partes put together, and the nearer the catastrophe, the more imminent the peril, the more tenaciously he clung to the idea that she, she alone, would be his salvation. By chance for she was not responsible for his departure from Paris, the capitulation and all the rest Marie-Louise caused his final downfall. Napoleon wrote her a letter, not in cipher, wherein he indicated the movements which he intended to attempt against the allied armies ; this letter fell into the hands of Bluecher's courier, and General Bluecher made haste to lay it, with the seal broken, at the feet of the august daughter of his Imperial Majesty the Emperor of Austria 280 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. CHAPTER XVm. ELBA. It is doubtful if Napoleon was actuated solely by love in the pursuance of the course described in the >i preceding chapter, and highly probable that his actions were entirely due to motives of policy. He probably argued that when the Austrian Emperor found himself face to face with his daughter and grandson as the representatives of France, he would hesitate to strike the blow which would ruin them, and that the sovereigns of Europe, not finding him- self, but one of their own rank seated upon the French throne, would hesitate to overthrow it, and, believing themselves interested in the tranquillity of France, would accept and confirm the substitution, that though he himself might be forced to abdicate, the dynasty which he had established would be assured. In order to admit the truth of this hypothesis one must admit that, from the year 1813, before Liitzen, KAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 281 before the first campaign, wherein he constantly manifested his confidence in his continued success, Napoleon was at heart despairing ; that he had latent doubts about Austria, and considered Marie- Louise as a pledge of coalition, trusted in the bond of paternity, and relied upon the good faith of Francis II., the father. To divine such a conspiracy as the aristocrats of Europe had woven against him, to foresee that the young girl who had been given him as wife was the lure prepared by the allied oligarchies to entrap him, would have required an insight into the depths of royal unscrupulousness which even a Talleyrand and a Fouche might be incapable of. In order to conceive and carry out such a design, to coalesce around a nuptial bed the hate of all the old dynasties, the profound corruption which is met with solely in the highest circles was alone capable ; in these circles education and tradition have rendered men unscrupulous, they become accustomed to dis- regard all laws, human or divine, which militate against their interests and to carry their designs into execution regardless of the means employed, seeing therein no dishonor. In this instance it was not a mistress but a wife which had to be furnished to encompass their object, and what mattered it if the wheels of their triumphant chariot, while crush- \ 282 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. ing the impious being who had outraged the sacred monarchical system, also rolled over the shuddering form and blonde locks of an archduchess. Should she survive the ordeal, means should be found to console her, should she die well, it could not be helped, for the attainment of such an end something must be risked and Marie-Louise was only a woman. Napoleon never suspected such a despicable con- spiracy, never admitted that his wife was the accomplice of his enemies ; nor was she, for care had been taken to conceal from her the role she was destined to play, and she enacted it the better because of her innocence. It was not until much later, at Saint Helena, that Napoleon traced the continuity between his second marriage and the disasters which followed it ; even then he did not sound the plot to its very depth, either because it displeased him to elucidate the principal reason of his downfall, or because it pained him to smirch the memory of his wife by connecting her with so vile a scheme. He frequently remarked : " My marriage was a flower- covered pit which they dug for me ; " and instead of harboring resentment against this woman who had been the cause of his downfall, he showed her more affection and greater confidence, as if to console her for the pain and disillusion caused by the aggressive- ness of her native land and the menacing attitude of NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 283 her father, which he believed she could not fail to regard as treacherous towards her and hers. When the campaign of 1812 opened Napoleon apparently entertained no doubts of his ultimate success, it was his nature to hope even against hope, and it was not until much later that he was forced to admit the possibility of the enemies entering Paris and carrying away the Empress and the King of Rome. He believed that theirs would be but a brief triumph, for the momentary occupation of Paris did not alter his strategic plans, but he could not suffer the thought that his wife and son should be, even momentarily, hostages in the hands of his adversaries, and it was to spare them such an insult that he ordered Joseph to abandon Paris, thus taking from it its statesmen and resisting elements and compromising the entire edifice of his plans, for Talleyrand knew how to avoid the injunction to follow the court. His plans had long been laid, he had ingratiated himself into the confidence of King Joseph, the Empress, the prefecture of the Seine and the police ; he had accomplices everywhere over whom he exercised a strong and inexplicable influence and who seemed bound to him by an infernal pact ; and with them he accomplished, in 1814, the treason which he began to plot at Tilsit in 1807. But the overthrowal of Napoleon's 284 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. government was but half the task the Prince of Benevent had set himself, the whole would be ac- complished only when he had succeeded in breaking the bonds which he himself had helped to forge between Napoleon and Marie-Louise. The Emperor believed that whatever misfortunes fate might have in store for him he should always have the supreme consolation afforded by the pleasures of home and the company of his wife and son, and that he had not secured a formal promise from the Empress to rejoin him at Fontainebleau was because he still imagined that her tears might move the Emperor Francis and her future con- dition be ameliorated. He argued that a certain sovereignty would always be hers by right of birth, that she would be affectionate to him, who would resign himself to the existence of a petty prince, and, believing that she had loved in him rather the man than the sovereign, thought that there might yet be happiness in store for them and for the child whose mental and physical development they would watch over. / Marie-Louise was fond of her husband, disposed V to sympathize with his hopes and plans, and willing to rejoin him when the occasion offered, but she was surrounded by people whose influence was all in a contrary direction, and accustomed from childhood NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 285 to have others think for her, to be guided and ruled, it is not strange that she should have found it hard to follow the dictates of her heart and conscience. The love which she entertained for Napoleon was strong enough to impel her to faithfulness, and it was Talleyrand who took upon himself the task of blighting it. With this object in view he had placed near Marie- Louise a woman who was heart and soul in his schemes, who was naturally an in- triguant, and who, whenever she had been able to introduce herself into a diplomatic project, had been quite in her element ; utterly unscrupulous, ignoring the virtue of gratitude, she was precisely the tool whom he required. As lady-in-waiting this woman had ready access to Marie-Louise's ear, and when the other ladies abandoned their posts and returned to their homes Mme. de Brignole remained with the Empress, and, left almost alone with her, seized the occasion to obey Talleyrand's instructions and to instil the poison of doubt into Marie-Louise's mind. Instigated by her master, Mme. de Brignole firgt insinuated, then affirmed, that Napoleon had never loved his wife, but had constantly deceived her, and when the Empress refused to believe she sent for two valets, who had just abandoned their sovereign and benefactor at Fontainebleau, and had them confirm all her lying tales. 4 286 NAPOLEON, LOVEK AND HUSBAND. There was no one at hand to inspire with courage and confidence the irresolute young girl who was more wounded by the accounts of her husband's in- fidelities than prostrated by the fall of her throne ; and as she had once allowed herself to be sacrificed, like a modern Iphigenia, so now she acquiesced and stood inertly by, while political expedience sundered the domestic ties, which it had soldered. This com- pliance was not won in a day, for Marie-Louise strug- gled nearly a year against overwhelming obstacles, every sentiment was brought into play to alienate her affection from her husband : pride, jealousy, envy, vanity, all were employed, and Bonaparte's enemies triumphed only when they had succeeded in replacing his image in her heart by that of another, when the chaste Emperor of Austria had forced his daughter into a position which publicly compromised her : then monarchal Europe applauded, and the adultress was recompensed by the sovereignty of Parma and Placentia. Napoleon never dreamt of such abjection ; from each of the stopping-places where he rested upon his sad journey he wrote a letter to his wife, as formerly he had written when she was making her triumphal journey towards Paris, greeted by the chiming of' bells, the cannon's thunder, and the military salute of imperial marshals. The defeated Emperor, NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 287 wending his way across Europe under the watchful eyes of the military escort assigned hy the alii s, with the populace's cries of hatred ringing in his ears, never forgot his wife ; but of all the letters which he wrote but two have been published ; they are ad- dressed to " My good, my dear Louise." Forgetful of his own sufferings he wrote to her of the pain she must experience, made tender inquiries regarding her health and urged her to be courageous and brave. Care had been taken to inform Napoleon that Marie- Louise's health rendered it imperative that she should take a course of the waters at Aix ; it was a means of retarding their reunion and, consciously or not, Corvisart had lent his aid to the Emperor's enemies ; but of this, as of all the rest, Napoleon was un- suspicious, and, rejoicing in Corvisart's devotion, he addressed him a letter from Frejus which, if it was merited, is the physician's greatest glory, and far from opposing the journey to Aix the Emperor en- couraged it. He thought that though Marie-Louise might not be able to come immediately to Elba, she would surely hasten to install herself at Parma, and, in order that she should miss none of the accessories of rank to which she was accustomed, he dispatched a detachment of Polish light horse to that city to await her arrival and sent a large supply of carriage horses for her use. 288 NAPOLEON, LOVEK AND HUSBAND. Hardly had Napoleon reached Porto-Ferrajo than he began to arrange the Empress's apartments in the palaces destined for his residence, hastening the work with the idea that she might arrive at any hour. He intended to celebrate her coming with fireworks and a grand ball, awaited her arrival to make various excursions to points of interest about the island, and, although foreign to his nature to give public expression to his sentiments, he ordered the painter who was decorating the drawing-room ceiling to depict there " two pigeons fastened to- gether by a slip-knot which tightened as they sep- arated." It was on Marie-Louise's account that Napoleon kept the visit of Mme. Walewska shrouded in mystery. She had been to Naples to reclaim from Murat the endowment which the Emperor had ac- corded her from the property which he had reserved, and which Murat had confiscated, and profiting from the relaxed surveillance at Porto-Ferrajo she had solicited an interview with the Emperor. Bonaparte was then installed at the hermitage of the Madonna de Marciana which was situated in the heart of a forest of aged chestnuts, in whose shade the intense heat of the Corsican summer was more endurable. The Emperor occupied a small house close to the chapel, and the hermits, whom he had napoleon, Lover and husband. 289 not wished to dispos'sess, were installed in the cellar, while for the accommodation of his suite which con- sisted of a captain of mounted police, named Paoli- Bernotti, an officer of ordinance, several Mamalukes and two valets de chambre, Marchand and Saint Denis, a large tent had been erected under the chestnut trees and close to a little spring which lost itself in a carpet of fresh moss besprinkled with wild lilies of the valley and violets. Dinner was never served at the hermitage, the Emperor descend- ing every evening to Marciana and dining with his mother, who was installed there. On the receipt of Mme. Walewska's letter the Emperor at once prepared for her visit, but the orders regarding the arrangements for her reception were so given that the name of the expected guest was kept a profound secret. She disembarked at Porto-Ferrajo during the night of September 1st, and found awaiting her on the quay a carriage and four, and three saddled horses in charge of Bernotti. Accompanied by her sister and little son she entered the carriage, while her brother, Colonel Laczinski, mounted one of the horses, and in the bright moon- light they set off for Marciana. The Emperor, ac- companied by Paoli and two Mamalukes awaited their coming at Procchio, and there Mme. Walewska was also obliged to mount one of the horses as it 19 290 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. was impossible for the carriage to go further ; Ber- notti took charge of the little boy and the party finally arrived at the summit of the mountain. Dis- mounting before the hermitage the Emperor as- sisted Mme. Walewska from her saddle, and, hat in hand pointed to the house saying : " Madame, there is my palace to which you are heartily welcome ; " and abandoning the house to the ladies he himself went to sleep in the tent which sheltered his suite and servants. The close of the night was stormy, and in the early morning the Emperor, who had been unable to sleep, called Marchand and questioned him as to whether any gossip had been caused by the arrival of his visitors ; he was informed by the valet that it was rumored in Porto-Ferrajo that the mysterious lady was none other than the Empress, and the child the little King of Rome, and that, moved by this rumor, Doctor Foureau had hastened to the hermit- age to offer his services and was at that moment awaiting the Emperor's command. Napoleon dressed and left the tent. The morning was bright and beautiful with no trace of the furi- ous storm of the previous night, and on the mount- ain side in the bright sunshine, the mysterious child was playing happily. The Emperor called the boy and seating himself in a chair which Marchand NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 291 brought, took him upon his knee ; he then sent the valet in search of Dr. Foureau and when the latter appeared said, pointing to the child: ' ' Well, Foureau, what do you think of him ?" "Sire," responded the Doctor, "the king has grown tremendously," at which answer Napoleon laughed heartily, for young Walewski was a year older than the King of Rome, but his beautiful features and the blond curls which fell in profusion over his shoulders caused him to resemble his half-brother closely, or rather, to re- semble Isabey's popular portrait of the King of Rome. Napoleon chatted for some moments with the physician, then, thanking him for the friendship manifested by the prompt offer of his services, dis- missed him and turned to greet Mme. Walewska whom he espied about leaving the hermitage. Breakfast, which had been ordered from Marciana, was served under the chestnut trees ; the meal passed off gaily, and the rest of the day was spent by the Emperor and Mme. Walewska in walking and talking together. At dinner the Emperor desired that the boy, of whom he had seen but little during the day, should sit at his side, and when Mme. Walewska objected on the score of the child's boisterous ways he in- sisted, saying that he did not mind the child's 292 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. roguishness, his own childhood having been a tur- bulent one. When they were seated at table the Emperor recounted anecdotes of his boyhood telling how he used to beat his brother Joseph and force him to do his bidding, and how his mother had punished him by giving him only dry bread to eat bread which he had given to the shepherd boys in exchange for their chestnut bread, or else thrown away and gone to his foster-mother's where he was fed on the best the house afforded and caressed to his heart's content. Young Walewska, who had at first been overawed by the presence of so many grown people at table and had behaved in most ex- emplary manner, was emboldened by the Emperor's stories to give vent to his naturally high spirits, whereupon Napoleon said : " I see, my lad, that you don't fear the whip. . . . well I advise you to ! I never got a beating but once, but I've never forgotten it." He then went on to relate how Pauline and himself had once made sport of their mother and been soundly whipped by her in consequence. The boy listened attentively, and when the Emperor had finished speaking ex- claimed with an air of conviction : "I shall never be whipped for that, I would not make fun of my mother," whereupon the Emperor embraced him tenderly saying, " That was well said." NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 293 At eight o'clock that evening the visitors returned to Ponte-Ferrajo, and re-embarked for Naples ; in indemnification for the confiscations of Murat, Mme. Walewska carried with her a draft on the Emperor's treasurer for sixty-one thousand francs. It is said that her stay at Naples was so prolonged, that March of 1815 still found her there. In spite of all the precautions taken to keep Mme. Walewska's visit to Elba a secret, it became known, for there were too many people interested in the Emperor's movements, too many spies about him, to keep such a visit from being talked of. The islanders insisted that the mysterious lady was Marie-Louise, but the English and Bourbon spies were better in- formed, and their employers believed that this visit heralded the renewal of the Emperor's relations with the Polish woman. In reality, Mme. Walewska's journey to Elba was actuated rather by friendship and sympathy than by love, and the presence of her sister, Mile. Laczinska, at the Hermitage, proves that the visit was a conventional one. If Napoleon had any love-affair while at Elba, it certainly was not with the so-called Countess de Eohan, who was but a vulgar adventuress, and went to the island to reclaim no one knows what, from the Emperor, and to offer him her company in his exile, but rather with a woman who has been .. 294 napoleon, lover and husband. much less discussed ; the same whom he had received 3everal times in his apartments in the orangery, at Saint- Cloud, and who, unsolicited, repaired to Ponte-Ferrajo. Whether this lady was married to Colonel B * * * * when she went to Elba, or mar- ried him there is not known, but, wed or not, her devotion to the fallen Emperor was great, and it is unfortunate that so little is known regarding the details of her life. What we do know is, that, not content with having followed Napoleon to Elba, she went to Rambouillet in 1815 and besought his per- mission to follow him to St. Helena, that she was heart-broken at his refusal, and that with three thousand francs which were given her, she went to the United States, where she hoped to find him. Little attention seems to have been attracted by Napoleon's intimacy with this woman, while certain letters, written by a miserable priest in the pay of the Duke de Blacas, have been republished period- ically ; these letters were written with the view of accrediting calumnious reports which were then afloat, and it is needless to dwell upon them here. While at Elba, Napoleon passed through a moral and political crisis which rendered the greatest re- serve obligatory ; he knew that the slightest indis- cretion would be related to Marie- Louise, and en- larged upon by his enemies who surrounded her, NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 295 and that she would be deeply wounded thereby. He had sent Captain Hurault de Sorbee, the husband of one of her ladies, to Aix-les-Bains, with instruc- tions to essay to speak with the Empress, and deliver his messages in person, and had received news which led him to hope that a regular correspondence would soon be established between them ; thus it was scarcely the moment to become entangled in a scandalous intrigue. Time passed, the month of September dragged its weary length along without bringing the Emperor a word from his wife or son, and at length, worn out by anxiety and unfulfilled hope, he determined to write to the Duke of Tuscany, upon whose friendship he still relied and whom he had designated to his wife as their natural inter- mediary. The letter he sent the duke was not sup- plicatory, from the manner in which he addressed, as " My dear brother and uncle ; " it is evident that Napoleon remembered the favors his highness had received at his hands, and believed that the one-time parasite of Compiegne must also bear them in mind. " Having received no news of my wife since August 10th, nor of my son in six months," he writes, " I beg your royal highness to inform me if you will permit me to send weekly letters to my wife in your care, whether you will undertake to keep me in- formed regarding her health, etc., and to forward 296 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. letters from my son's governess, Mme. de Montee- quiou. I natter myself that, in spite of the events which have changed so many persons, your high- ness still entertains some friendship for me ; if you assure me of this by granting my request, it will be a great consolation and comfort, and, in that case, I beg your highness to show yourself favorably disposed towards this little canton which shares the loyal sentiments of Tuscany for your person. I trust your highness does not doubt the sincerity of the sentiments I have always expressed, nor my esteem and regard : and I beg to be kindly remem- bered to your highness's children." It was simply a question of a friendly service to be rendered one who confessed himself unhappy and admitted himself defeated, and who, to soften the prince's heart, almost avowed himself his subject, yet it was not a supplication, and the old equality, nay, superiority of rank, pierces through the care- fully-worded lines. There was no answer to this letter, for the drama was ended, the imperial house of Austria had succeeded in dishonoring its daughter, and the Empress of France had fallen so low as to become the mistress of her own chamberlain. After such a letter, written to such a man, Napo- leon would not take any further action ; his wife and child had been stolen from him, the Bourbons NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 297 no longer paid the annual sum stipulated for at Fontainebleau, and he saw that he should be forced to disband his guard, and, unable to offer even a semblance of resistance, be killed with his faithful followers, should the allied sovereigns order his transportation to some remote island, the Azores for example, as Talleyrand had suggested on the 13th of October, because, as he then said : "They were five hundred miles from any land." The Emperor foresaw that he must either submit \ to being transported by the sovereigns, or assas- sinated by the bandits in Brulart's pay ; and prefer- ring to make a supreme effort and risk all for Prance, determined upon his return. 298 .NAPOLEON, LOVJfiJ* AND HUSBAND. 4 CHAPTER XIX. THE HUNDRED DAYS. On New Year's day, 1815, Napoleon had received a letter from the Empress, giving him news of their son, telling what a handsome and charming child he was, and that he would soon be able to write him- self to his father. It is impossible to say why this letter was written, possibly it was prompted by re- morse, but whatever actuated Marie-Louise it served to strengthen the tie between herself and Napoleon, and confirmed his conviction that she had never abandoned the intention of rejoining him, that her silence was compulsory, and that, were she free to do so, she would hasten to his side. He was convinced that, had he a throne to offer, Marie-Louise's jailors would set her at liberty, and as soon as he felt assured of the success of his enter- prise he hastened to inform her, writing from Lyons on the 12th of March. Marie-Louise, however, did with this letter, as she had done with all those she had received from Elba, handed it over to her father NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 299 who communicated its contents to the allied pleni- potentiaries, and Napoleon received no answer. Immediately upon re-entering Paris the Emperor ordered that the Empress's apartments should be put in order and re-established her household upon its old footing. Ten days later, upon the 1st of April, he wrote an official letter to the Austrian Emperor wherein he reclaimed the " objects of my tenderest affection, my wife and son." "As," he wrote, " the long separation necessitated by circumstances has caused me the greatest sorrow I have ever ex- perienced, I desire that my wife and child be speedily restored to me, and am assured that our reunion is as earnestly desired by the virtuous princess, whose destiny Your Majesty united with mine, as by my- self ; " and he terminated the letter by saying : " I know too well Your Majesty's principles and the value Your Highness places upon family- ties not to feel assured that, despite the disposition of your cabinet, or questions of political expediency, Your Majesty will accelerate the reunion of a wife with her husband, a son with his father." Like the others this letter remained unanswered, and the obstinate silence, opposed alike to official and family letters, confirmed Napoleon's belief that it was the political attitude of the house of Austria and the pressure brought to bear upon her which 800 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. paralyzed the natural desire of his wife and pre- vented her rejoining him, he therefore determined to employ secret means for communicating with her. With this object he sent to Vienna carefully chosen messengers, Flahaut and Montrond, men who could be trusted and who possessed facilities for approach- ing Marie-Louise. Montrond alone pierced the lines, but when he was about to give to the Empress the letter of which he was the bearer, Meneval inter- posed. The ci-devant secretary of Napoleon, who had become, in 1813, the Empress's secretary and had followed her to Austria, understood only too well the relations existing between his royal mistress and Count Neipperg, and he felt that in burning the Emperor's tender letter which he had written to his wife, he was rendering him a service. Nevertheless, Meneval dared not write directly to Napoleon in- forming him of the real state of affairs, for he real- ized what a terrible blow it would be to his master, and he therefore determined to inform one in whose unwavering fidelity he had implicit confidence of the liaison, and wrote an anonymous letter to La- vallette ; Count de Lavallette, however, saw in this anonymous communication only a political machina- tion, and it is not strange that Napoleon shared his views. They were soon to be enlightened, however, for NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 301 Ballouhey, secretary of expenses for the two Em- presses and a man whose fidelity and honesty were unquestionable, was en route from Vienna by way of Munich, where he was to receive some instruc- tions from Prince Eugene. The Emperor was so impatient to see Ballouhey that he ordered his arrival at Belfort to be telegraphed him, and stationed an orderly at his house in Paris with instructions to conduct the secretary to the Elysee the instant he appeared. Ballouhey reached Paris on the 28th of April and was closeted for two hours with the Emperor, but, though Napoleon received a clear and concise state- ment of Prince Eugene's ideas of the political situa- tion, he failed to obtain definite information upon the subject nearest his heart. Ballouhey was a scrupulously exact accountant ; he had been deeply attached both to Josephine and Marie-Louise ; but he was a timorous man and dared not affirm the truth of the scandalous liaison which was an open secret in Vienna. Meneval, expelled from Vienna, arrived a fort- night later, and from him the whole truth was learned. On taking leave of the Empress she had charged him to say to his imperial master "that, while she would take no step towards securing a divorce, she believed he would offer no objection to 302 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. an amicable separation." " Such a separation," she said, "was indispensable, but it would not impair the sentiments of esteem and gratitude which she en- tertained for him," and she added that " her decision to remain apart from Napoleon was irrevocable, and not even her father had the right to oblige her to return to France. " It was Marie-Louise who, put- ting herself under the protection of the allied pleni- potentiaries in an official letter dated March 12th, provoked the furious declaration which was signed by them on the 13th, and in recompense for her act Count Neipperg was created court chamberlain ; and it was with her consent that, on the 18th of March, the little King of Kome was separated from his gov- erness, Mme. de Montesquiou, and deprived of all his French servants. Undoubtedly, Meneval added other, and more private details, for it was no longer right to conceal the monstrous truth ; possibly Marie-Louise was then in the early stages of one of those pregnancies which were to people the avenues of Burg with adulterous bastards, entitled princes and highnesses to the everlasting shame of the royal house of Austria. When, after the birth of the King of Kome, Dubois, the accoucheur, affirmed that a second child would imperil Marie-Louise's life, Napoleon, NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 303 despite his desire for numerous offspring and a second son to sit on the throne of Italy, had bowed to the physician's decision : M. de Neipperg had no such scruples and proved repeatedly that Baron Dubois had been mistaken. Although the Emperor could no longer doubt the unfaithfulness of Marie- Louise, it was necessary to keep the truth from the nation and essential that the people should conserve their illusions regarding their Empress ; twelve months previous he considered that nothing would appeal more to the people than the thought of that woman and child confided to France ; to-day the captivity in which they were held, the separation which violated all laws, human and divine, the attempted violation of conjugal faith and paternal love committed by the sovereigns in arms for the re-establishment in France of a government like their own, seemed to him of a nature to appeal to every generous and honest instinct in the heart of men and patriots. The grief which the Empress felt when she was torn from the post which it was her duty to fill, the thirty sleepless nights which she had passed in 1814, the real imprisonment to which she had been subjected, the treaty of Fon- tainebleau, violated by the kings who had torn from him his wife and son, the indignant cry of the old Queen Marie-Caroline to her granddaughter : 4 304 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. " Since you are prohibited from going out by the door, escape by the window and fly to rejoin your husband," the King of Rome then called the Prince Imperial separated from his mother, Mme. de Montesquiou driven away and trembling for her pupil's life, the Emperor wished Meneval to recount it all and ordered a report to be prepared in case the Chamber made a motion for the King of Rome. The Chamber ! Not once during the hundred days, not once during the six years of agony at Saint Helena, did a word of censure or bitterness against Marie-Louise escape him ; he invariably spoke of her with affection and kindly pity ; he thought of her only as she was when she first came to France, young, fresh, loyal and unsullied ; there is not one of his companions in captivity who has not reported his conversations regarding her almost in the same terms. If a European ship dropped anchor in Jamestown Bay Napoleon was sure that he was about to receive a letter from the Empress, and nervous, anxious and unable to work, would pass the whole day in expect- ancy; when one of his servants was taken from him his first thought was to send a letter by that sure hand to Marie-Louise, as for example the one he confided to his surgeon in which he said : ' ' Should the bearer of this see you, my good Louise, I beg NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 305 of you to permit him to kiss your hands." In his will, which was dated the 5th of April, 1821, he wrote this phrase : " I never have had any fault to find with my dear wife, the Empress Marie-Louise ; to my last moment I shall retain for her the most tender sentiments, and I heg her to watch over my son and guard against the dangers which still sur- round his childhood ; " and, as if this was not enough, he bequeathed to her from the modest wardrobe which now constituted his sole fortune, all his laces, and on the 28th of April, a week before his death, he instructed Antommarchi to take his heart from his body and send it to her. ' Preserve my heart in alcohol," he said to the physician, " and take it yourself to Parma to my dear Marie-Louise ; tell her that I love her tenderly and have never ceased to love her, recount to her all that you have seen, all that touches my situation and my death." Truly Hudson Lowe did well in obliging Antom- marchi to place the silver vase which contained Napoleon's heart in his coffin : What would Count Keipperg have done with it ? In default of the perfidious Austrian, many other women, from France, Ireland and Poland surrounded the Emperor during the last glorious days of his short reign of three months, encouraging his spirit by their enthusiasm and devotion, pleasing his eye 20 306 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. by their beauty ; while even those who were least fitted for political intrigues became his spies and informants, and by instinct rather than reason, frequently gave counsel which might well have been followed ; for example, George regarding Fouche ; Mme. Pellapra who hastened to return to Paris from Lyons and warned him of the Duke d'Otrante's intentions, and Mme. Walewska, who, hastily returning from Naples, was immediately received with her son at the Elysee, brought messages from Murat. Mme. * * * * was among the first to present herself to the Emperor, and as- suming her title and rank as lady of the palace, was among the faithful ones of the 20th of March, and among those who, in the brilliantly illuminated salon of the Tuileries, impatiently awaited the ar- rival of the exile of Elba. There were many others, Mme. Dulauloy, Mme. Lavallette, Mme. Ney, Mme. Jfcegnauld de Saint-Jean-d'Angely, Mme. de Beauvau -and Mme. de Turenne, all of whom vied with each other in the endeavor to encourage and please him. .At that time there breathed upon these women of ^France that divine afflatus which creates heroines and martyrs, inspires acts of supreme devotion and courage, and strengthens souls to face courageously the severest trials. During that sinister period, which is justly called, NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 807 "the White Terror," a period of atrocities which to-day we vainly seek to palliate, the women of the Empire manifested, amidst the universal cowardli- ness of mankind, a courage, energy and presence of mind which immortalizes them ; at the Tuileries during the hundred days, at Malmaison and after Waterloo, they proved how well they knew how to show their loyalty and honor misfortune. It was not alone the well known and the cele- brated, but the humble and the obscure who showed their devotion ; as, for example, a woman, who, at the review of the confederation, approached the Emperor and handed him a petition, a roll of paper carefully fastened, from which, when it was opened, there fell twenty-five bank notes of a thousand francs each ; and another who, on the 23d of June, the eve of the day upon which Napoleon was to leave the Elysee for Malmaison, wrote to his valet de chambre, requesting him to meet her at the church of Saint- Philippe du Eoule to receive an important communication. Marchand went to the rendezvous, and found at the place indicated a woman engaged in prayer ; she was veiled, but not heavily enough to hide her features, which were exceptionally beautiful ; Marchand approached and asked in what way he could serve her. The mysteri- ous lady hesitated for a moment, then, with extreme 308 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. embarrassment, replied that the misfortunes of the Emperor had touched her deeply, that she wished to see, to console and love him. Napoleon, on hear- ing of her desire, smiled and said : " Hers is an ad- miration which might lead to an intrigue ; it must not be encouraged," but the naive offer of this heart, coming on such a day and at such an hour, touched him profoundly, and later, upon several occasions, he spoke of the mysterious lady of Saint- Philippe du Eoule. Did he find in captivity some woman who gave to him the consolation which only a tender woman can give to a man 1 We know about his childish romps with Miss Elizabeth Balcombe, during her sojourn at Briars ; and we divine a familiarity with a woman whose conduct during the Empire would seemingly have forbidden her to approach him, and who, twice divorced, dismissed from court, had, by the simple fact of his marriage, brought disgrace upon her third husband. But if the testamentary liberality which the Emperor showed this person gives some weight to the reports of the foreign Commissioners, if her presence really occasioned discord among the Emperor's companions, and her departure was one of the painful experiences which he was obliged to live through, one yet knows too little regarding this portion of the drama of Saint NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 309 Helena to expatiate upon it ; the woman plied her role upon the island ; that is all that one can say. Side by side with this retired courtesan, whom interest had taken to Kochefort, and whom interest retained at Saint Helena, we find another woman, who is really worthy of admiration. By birth and by her relationship with the Fitz-James family, Countess Bertrand was entitled to one of the best positions at Court, and, had she remained in Paris, would doubtless have been one of the leaders of society, but she voluntarily shared her husband's devotion to his chief and followed him into exile ; she lived in a cabin infested with rats, within reach of the Emperor, but unable to succor or amuse him. She remained until the end, compassionate, sensible and dignified, guarding her honor like a Koman matron, and like a statue of grief she followed the procession which conducted the captive conqueror to his grave in the valley of Geranium, and she, an Englishwoman by birth, was the only woman who wept over the remains of him whom her country- men had murdered. 310 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. CHAPTER XX. SUMMARY. The sum of the preceding chapters only signified that Napoleon was subject to the same desires, pas- sions and weaknesses as other men, and had taken no vows of continence ; that the amorous side of his nature was twofold, on one side the physical alone reigned, on the other physical and moral united . . . the moral being in the ascendant. We have hidden none of the adventures wherein the animal part of his nature alone predominated ; not because one can glean from them a special in- sight into his character, but because to hide them would give rise to the suspicion that they were wholly unfavorable to his general character. Be- cause he was Napoleon all that he did was known, and no matter how carefully he hid his amorous intrigues they were sure to be discovered ; ladies-in- waiting and ladies'-maids, aides-de-camp and valets were ceaselessly on the watch, and no matter how insignificant the events which transpired they were NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 311 all carefully noted. Everybody at the Tuileries lived in the governmental zone, whether they were soliciting favors or hunting for news, and all took a lively interest in the doings of the Emperor, and each made a note of any incident which came under his observation. As everything, Napoleon did, has an historical interest, as his lightest words, slightest actions, even the trifling ailments which from time to time afflicted him, have been of interest to the public for a hundred years, and as many erroneous tales have been accredited, the sole course for the author of this book to pursue is to establish facts, and relate such adventures as are authenticated by the according narrations of various reliable persons ; if any have been omitted, or simply referred to, it is because they have been related by but one chronicler and it has been impossible to discover documentary proof of their authenticity, or sometimes because they were of so commonplace a nature as to render it useless to dwell upon them. There were women always ready to gratify his desires, whether expressed by himself or made known by his messengers ; he accepted their will- ingly-given caresses, sometimes from physical ne- cessity, sometimes from voluptuousness ; but he never experienced mental exhaustion or fatigue from his adventures, nor did any woman distract 812 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. him from his work ; of all these women none was seduced by him, for if there was a virgin among their number she was one who trafficked on her virtue. In order to judge the men of the Empire, above all, Napoleon, by the narrow and hypocritical stand- ard of contemporaneous times one must place them in similar environments ; their lives were not the humdrum, monotonous lives of the modern business man, they were always in the saddle, death on the crupper, galloping from one end of Europe to the other amidst a rain of bullets, and if some of them, unknown to the Emperor, trailed their mistresses after them, the majority gave little thought to the senses and remained chaste during the campaigns. If, on their return from a long war, or when a city was conquered and there was a lull in the strife, brute passion gained the mastery, does it signify that they were the most debauched of mankind ? To have followed the calling which they selected from preference and clung to from ambition must they not have been, by origin and nature, stronger, more brutal, more like the primitive man, than the men of this generation ? Did not their profession develop, accentuate and foster all that was savage, combative and animal in their natures ? Had they not the same tastes, desires and appetites as other NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 313 men ? Was it to be expected that they would remain scrupulously faithful to wives whom they rarely saw ? Some few, indeed, were faithful, and there are admirable examples of fidelity, tenderness and delicacy given by those men of war, but for the majority the distractions of the camp and garrison intrigues were the rule, and they placed no impor- tance upon them. Side by side with these animal appetites they entertained ingenuously sentimental ideas of con- jugal tenderness, and nothing was too good or too precious for the wife who had almost invariably been married for love and from the most disinter- ested motives ; to satisfy her tastes they pillaged Europe, throwing their spoils at her feet ; to content her caprices and ambitions they deployed an amount of patience and diplomacy which would make one smile were it not so touching. In generosity, in the care for his wife, in letters, presents, and in the wealth showered upon her, Napoleon was not outdone by any of his warriors, but his sentimentalism was of another origin and essence than theirs. The soldiers of the Empire, who had neither by nature nor by education any scruples, fabricated a code of honor for themselves, and although they 314 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. fondly believed the sword had made them the equals of the men of gentle birth whose places they had usurped, and whom they hated, their " soldier's code" differed in many respects from that attri- buted by Montesquieu to gentlemen ; but in their days they could hardly search for the rules regulat- ing that code of honor, and they did not care to take a Lauzun or a Tilly for their model ; they still de- tested those whom they had replaced, and if they laid claim to the title of " gentlemen" it was be- cause they considered themselves the equals of men of noble ancestry. From 1806 everything in France was modeled on the troubadour style, novels, historical works, pict- ures, dress and drama, but it was less a question of the troubadour himself, than of him of whom he sang; the knight who professed the adoration of his lady, who for his exploits in the Holy Land received a scarf embroidered by her fair hands and considered his deeds of valor well rewarded by a glance from her dear eyes. The warriors of the Empire made every effort to model themselves after these ideal cheva- liers, and though they did not gird themselves with the fair one's colors, many a man wore a sword-knot embroidered by her, or wore the beloved one's por- trait over his heart, and decorated himself with some bauble of her giving upon state occasions. NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 315 Napoleon yielded less to this current than his fol- lowers, than Prince Eugene and certain of his mar- shals, but the ambient atmosphere finally affected him also, as certain incidents in his relations with Marie-Louise prove conclusively ; but it was not, however, until the close of the Empire that a senti- ment, until then unexperienced, awoke in him and effaced all others. Up to that time Napoleon's sentimentalism was in no degree influenced by the literature of the time, but greatly by that of a previous era. Eousseau had influenced him, as his letters to Josephine, Mme. * * * * and Mme. Walewska show ; in all of them may be found the same tone, the identical expressions and words which were used by the young Lieutenant Bonaparte when from Valence he complained of his loneliness and poverty. A pupil of Jean- Jacques, Napoleon was so thor- oughly impregnated with the ideas of his master, that he, who had striven for and obtained, even the impossible, in the order of events, encountered only impotence, negation and disgust in the range of sentiments. In Napoleon's continual search for a woman who would love him for himself, whose only thought would be for him, who would live but for him, and with whom he could dwell in a constant interchange of tenderness, he certainly acted in good 816 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. faith ; but who can tell up to what point he was in- fluenced by his literary souvenirs, or how much he forced himself in the effort to experience sensations which he believed to be rare and strange. That which gives us reason to think that he forced his nature is that he soon wearied ; he received less pleasure than he anticipated in the society of the woman he wooed, and the real woman seemed invari- ably inferior to the ideal creature of his imagination ; the sentimentalism which was cultivated found itself in opposition to the positivism which was natural, and he ruptured the much-sought-f or relations ; but only to run in search of a new sensation, a fresh experience, as soon as the occasion offered. In such a man his fidelity, not of the senses, but of the heart, is surprising ; he had mistresses whom he loved sincerely, and he divorced Josephine, yet she held a place apart in his heart and he ever felt a deep and tender affection for her, an affection so strong that he pardoned all her faults and the wrongs she had done him ; nay, more, he forgot them. Josephine's life, of which he did not fail to keep himself informed, must have revolted him, but he shut his eyes to it, and remembered only that the woman whom he had raised to be the first lady in France, who was associated with his destiny, was NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 817 grace itself and elegance personified ; he endowed her with all the virtues and graces which a passion- ate lover showers upon his mistress, and, although he reproached her for her prodigality, he proved his affection by giving her the means to gratify all her desires. To the end of his days Napoleon ignored the true Josephine, and threw over the love of his youth a halo of imaginary charms and virtues which has immortalized her ; if he thus deceived posterity it was because he was himself deceived, and to the very end he persisted in the illusions, holding before his eyes, in his heart and senses, at Saint Helena, the Josephine whom he had seen for the first time in the rue Chantereine, the woman in whose arms he first tasted the sweets of love. Napoleon's love for Josephine was such as a man gives to his mistress, a love without respect, which puts no restraint upon itself, exacts instant satis- faction and does not fear disagreements ; which vol- untarily confesses its infidelities and relates risque anecdotes ; that such was Napoleon's affection for Josephine is proved by the fact that at each evolu- tion of his destiny he realized more forcibly that his interests demanded he should break with her and rupture the union which was not a marriage in his eyes because it had not for eight years been sane- 318 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. tioned by the Church, and because, when it did re- ceive the Church's blessing, he had appeared before the priest by force. Had Josephine given him a child he would have considered the contract valid, but, being childless, he considered himself free, and when he separated himself from her he treated her like a mistress, consoling her by large sums of money and arranging for her existence in an opulent style. One may question whether, in spite of the weak- ness Napoleon had for Josephine, despite his shower- ing favors and presents upon her, adopting her children and elevating her relatives to posts of honor, Napoleon ever regarded her as of his family ; so great was the difference between the sentiments he entertained for her and those inspired by Marie- Louise, particularly after Marie-Louise had borne him a child. Then the conjugal spirit took posses- sion of and dominated him ; undoubtedly he never gave her the passionate love he had bestowed upon his first wife, but he entertained for Marie-Louise a respect which he never gave to Josephine. While he had invariably refused all participation in affairs of state to his first wife he voluntarily accorded it to the second, discovering in her greater intelligence than he accorded to his oldest councillors or even to his brothers. With Josephine the sentimental side NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 319 of his nature as developed by Eousseau was domi- nant, while with Marie-Louise his Corsican atavism and the traditions of his native mountains resumed their supremacy : Marie-Louise was sanctified in his view by her motherhood. Napoleon would never admit that his wife had abandoned him and deceived him ; she was his wife, the mother of his son, and that placed her above the temptations and weakness common to her sex. So dominant was the conjugal spirit in him that, to the hour of his death, he ignored her treachery, and that he, who was so jealous of the woman he had once possessed that he complained bitterly of Mme. Wale w- ska's marriage, never uttered a complaint against his wife. Was his silence occasioned by the desire of securing for her the respect which a monarchal lord requires paid to crowned heads, did it make him happier to ignore her faults, did he find excuses for them in the extraordinary circumstances surround- ing her, or did he hope that the secret he refused to reveal would be better guarded by history ? Possibly he was actuated by all these motives, but his pre- dominant thought was, that she was his wife, and therefore could not fall. Thus, separating the purely sensual liaisons, which were brief, from the deep attachments of his life, we find in Napoleon as great a faculty for love as for 320 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. thought and action, and are obliged to admit that he was as astonishing a husband as he was a war- rior and a statesman. There remains but one point to be considered, whether any of the women with whom Napoleon was closely related ever swayed him sufficiently to affect his political views and moves ; it does not appear that any woman, either wife or mistress, directly in- fluenced him, but doubtless the impressions received from both, the ideas they advanced and the circum- stances accompanying certain of his liaisons gave rise to new ideas in his brain and modified old ones. Dearly loved as Josephine was, she was not among those who were the primary cause of certain politi- cal moves. It has been affirmed that it was her in- fluence which surrounded him with people of noble birth and led him, at times, to sacrifice the spirit of the revolution to the traditions of the old regime, but that is an error ; Josephine sought to draw the old nobility round Napoleon by his order, and it was at his command that she protected then).. An in- sight into the various gradations of society under the old regime, some false impressions, some informa- tion, much of which was inexact, was about all he gleaned from her. The birth of a son to Mile. Denu- elle de la Plaegne doubtless first determined him to divorce Josephine, and that of Mme. Walewska's NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. 821 cemented his resolution, while his political attitude towards Poland is explained if one remembers who was his mistress and close companion from 1807 to 1809, even his long friendship for Bernadotte be- comes comprehensible when one recalls his tender- ness for Desiree. When Napoleon married Marie-Louise and became, through her, a member of the house of Austria, he believed the relationship so formed was close and binding, as the tie which bound him to his own family, and his faith in the Austrian Emperor's friendship, his confidence in his wife's fidelity and discretion is due to his belief in the strength and in- destructibility of ties of blood and his conviction that they alone rendered a political alliance invio- late. Marie-Louise, not because she was unusually intelligent, but because of the role she played in his political combinations and the prestige of her mother- hood, exercised an unprecedented influence over him. Napoleon set a high value upon ties of blood and the obligations entailed by kinship ; he was a true Cor- sican in the strength of his attachment and his ad- herence to family, and it appears as if the very value he placed upon the ties which should be the strongest and most sacred to humanity caused his fall. \ If women had played no role in his life, Napoleon f^ would cease to be the amazing example of mascu- 10 322 NAPOLEON, LOVER AND HUSBAND. line genius that he is, and would become a sexiest being without interest to humanity because not sub- ject to the failings and passions of other men, unin- fluenced by the traditions which sway them, pos- sessed of no sentiment common to mankind. As it was, this man, whose genius was astounding, who, served by an unparalleled fortune, accomplished the greatest task that mortal ever undertook, was pre- cisely the man to whom no emotion was a stranger. It is human to be influenced by, to believe in and to love woman, to experience by her and for her all the sensations and emotions which she inspires, and in that respect, as in all others, Napoleon was superior to mankind. THE END. THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE AN INITIAL FINE OF 25 CENTS WILL BE ASSESSED FOR FAILURE TO RETURN THIS BOOK ON THE DATE DUE. THE PENALTY WILL INCREASE TO 50 CENTS ON THE FOURTH DAY AND TO $1.00 ON THE SEVENTH DAY OVERDUE. \ ,.D SEP 12 1943 HH 10 1944 DSTTrt^ w r ^- r HLC'D LD IDN?0'fi4-l?M E EL \b\ &&- -T - ; i ' N _ j& & YB 584 1 ! U.C. BERKELEY LIBRARIES B00301.bfc.1b VERS.TV OF CAMP ORNIA UBRARy