It was said of Napoleon long ago that he could govern emperors and kings, but that not even he could rule his relatives. He himself once declared:
"My family have done me far more harm than I have been able to do them good."
It would be an interesting historical study to determine just how far the great soldier's family aided in his downfall by their selfishness, their jealousy, their meanness, and their ingratitude.
There is something piquant in thinking of Napoleon as a domestic sort of person. Indeed, it is rather difficult to do so. When we speak his name we think of the stern warrior hurling his armies up bloody slopes and on to bloody victory. He is the man whose steely eyes made his haughtiest marshals tremble, or else the wise, far-seeing statesman and lawgiver; but decidedly he is not a household model. We read of his sharp speech to women, of his outrageous manners at the dinner-table, and of the thousand and one details which Mme. de Remusat has chronicled—and perhaps in part invented, for there has always existed the suspicion that her animus was that of a woman who had herself sought the imperial favor and had failed to win it.
But, in fact, all these stories relate to the Napoleon of courts and palaces, and not to the Napoleon of home. In his private life this great man was not merely affectionate and indulgent, but he even showed a certain weakness where his relatives were concerned, so that he let them prey upon him almost without end.
He had a great deal of the Italian largeness and lavishness of character with his family. When a petty officer he nearly starved himself in order to give his younger brother, Louis, a military education. He was devotedly fond of children, and they were fond of him, as many anecdotes attest. His passionate love for Josephine before he learned of her infidelity is almost painful to read of; and even afterward, when he had been disillusioned, and when she was paying Fouche a thousand francs a day to spy upon Napoleon's every action, he still treated her with friendliness and allowed her extravagance to embarrass him.
He made his eldest brother, Joseph, King of Spain, and Spain proved almost as deadly to him as did Russia. He made his youngest brother, Jerome, King of Westphalia, and Jerome turned the palace into a pigsty and brought discredit on the very name of Bonaparte. His brother Louis, for whom he had starved himself, he placed upon the throne of Holland, and Louis promptly devoted himself to his own interests, conniving at many things which were inimical to France. He was planning high advancement for his brother Lucien, and Lucien suddenly married a disreputable actress and fled with her to England, where he was received with pleasure by the most persistent of all Napoleon's enemies.
So much for his brothers—incompetent, ungrateful, or openly his foes. But his three sisters were no less remarkable in the relations which they bore to him. They have been styled "the three crowned courtesans," and they have been condemned together as being utterly void of principle and monsters of ingratitude.
Much of this censure was well deserved by all of them—by Caroline and Elise and Pauline. But when we look at the facts impartially we shall find something which makes Pauline stand out alone as infinitely superior to her sisters. Of all the Bonapartes she was the only one who showed fidelity and gratitude to the great emperor, her brother. Even Mme. Mere, Napoleon's mother, who beyond all question transmitted to him his great mental and physical power, did nothing for him. At the height of his splendor she hoarded sous and francs and grumblingly remarked:
"All this is for a time. It isn't going to last!"
Pauline, however, was in one respect different from all her kindred. Napoleon made Elise a princess in her own right and gave her the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. He married Caroline to Marshal Murat, and they became respectively King and Queen of Naples. For Pauline he did very little—less, in fact, than for any other member of his family—and yet she alone stood by him to the end.
This feather-headed, languishing, beautiful, distracting morsel of frivolity, who had the manners of a kitten and the morals of a cat, nevertheless was not wholly unworthy to be Napoleon's sister. One has to tell many hard things of her; and yet one almost pardons her because of her underlying devotion to the man who made the name of Bonaparte illustrious for ever. Caroline, Queen of Naples, urged her husband to turn against his former chief. Elise, sour and greedy, threw in her fortunes with the Murats. Pauline, as we shall see, had the one redeeming trait of gratitude.
To those who knew her she was from girlhood an incarnation of what used to be called "femininity." We have to-day another and a higher definition of womanhood, but to her contemporaries, and to many modern writers, she has seemed to be first of all woman—"woman to the tips of her rosy finger-nails," says Levy. Those who saw her were distracted by her loveliness. They say that no one can form any idea of her beauty from her pictures. "A veritable masterpiece of creation," she had been called. Frederic Masson declares:
She was so much more the typical woman that with her the defects common to women reached their highest development, while her beauty attained a perfection which may justly be called unique.
No one speaks of Pauline Bonaparte's character or of her intellect, but wholly of her loveliness and charm, and, it must be added, of her utter lack of anything like a moral sense.
Even as a child of thirteen, when the Bonapartes left Corsica and took up their abode in Marseilles, she attracted universal attention by her wonderful eyes, her grace, and also by the utter lack of decorum which she showed. The Bonaparte girls at this time lived almost on charity. The future emperor was then a captain of artillery and could give them but little out of his scanty pay.
Pauline—or, as they called her in those days, Paulette—wore unbecoming hats and shabby gowns, and shoes that were full of holes. None the less, she was sought out by several men of note, among them Freron, a commissioner of the Convention. He visited Pauline so often as to cause unfavorable comment; but he was in love with her, and she fell in love with him to the extent of her capacity. She used to write him love letters in Italian, which were certainly not lacking in ardor. Here is the end of one of them:
I love you always and most passionately. I love you for ever, my beautiful idol, my heart, my appealing lover. I love you, love you, love you, the most loved of lovers, and I swear never to love any one else!
This was interesting in view of the fact that soon afterward she fell in love with Junot, who became a famous marshal. But her love affairs never gave her any serious trouble; and the three sisters, who now began to feel the influence of Napoleon's rise to power, enjoyed themselves as they had never done before. At Antibes they had a beautiful villa, and later a mansion at Milan.
By this time Napoleon had routed the Austrians in Italy, and all France was ringing with his name. What was Pauline like in her maidenhood? Arnault says:
She was an extraordinary combination of perfect physical beauty and the strangest moral laxity. She was as pretty as you please, but utterly unreasonable. She had no more manners than a school-girl—talking incoherently, giggling at everything and nothing, and mimicking the most serious persons of rank.
General de Ricard, who knew her then, tells in his monograph of the private theatricals in which Pauline took part, and of the sport which they had behind the scenes. He says:
The Bonaparte girls used literally to dress us. They pulled our ears and slapped us, but they always kissed and made up later. We used to stay in the girls' room all the time when they were dressing.
Napoleon was anxious to see his sisters in some way settled. He proposed to General Marmont to marry Pauline. The girl was then only seventeen, and one might have had some faith in her character. But Marmont was shrewd and knew her far too well. The words in which he declined the honor are interesting:
"I know that she is charming and exquisitely beautiful; yet I have dreams of domestic happiness, of fidelity, and of virtue. Such dreams are seldom realized, I know. Still, in the hope of winning them—"
And then he paused, coughed, and completed what he had to say in a sort of mumble, but his meaning was wholly clear. He would not accept the offer of Pauline in marriage, even though she was the sister of his mighty chief.
Then Napoleon turned to General Leclerc, with whom Pauline had for some time flirted, as she had flirted with almost all the officers of Napoleon's staff. Leclerc was only twenty-six. He was rich and of good manners, but rather serious and in poor health. This was not precisely the sort of husband for Pauline, if we look at it in the conventional way; but it served Napoleon's purpose and did not in the least interfere with his sister's intrigues.
Poor Leclerc, who really loved Pauline, grew thin, and graver still in manner. He was sent to Spain and Portugal, and finally was made commander-in-chief of the French expedition to Haiti, where the famous black rebel, Toussaint l'Ouverture, was heading an uprising of the negroes.
Napoleon ordered Pauline to accompany her husband. Pauline flatly refused, although she made this an occasion for ordering "mountains of pretty clothes and pyramids of hats." But still she refused to go on board the flag-ship. Leclerc expostulated and pleaded, but the lovely witch laughed in his face and still persisted that she would never go.
Word was brought to Napoleon. He made short work of her resistance.
"Bring a litter," he said, with one of his steely glances. "Order six grenadiers to thrust her into it, and see that she goes on board forthwith."
And so, screeching like an angry cat, she was carried on board, and set sail with her husband and one of her former lovers. She found Haiti and Santo Domingo more agreeable than she had supposed. She was there a sort of queen who could do as she pleased and have her orders implicitly obeyed. Her dissipation was something frightful. Her folly and her vanity were beyond belief.
But at the end of two years both she and her husband fell ill. He was stricken down by the yellow fever, which was decimating the French army. Pauline was suffering from the results of her life in a tropical climate. Leclerc died, the expedition was abandoned, and Pauline brought the general's body back to France. When he was buried she, still recovering from her fever, had him interred in a costly coffin and paid him the tribute of cutting off her beautiful hair and burying it with him.
"What a touching tribute to her dead husband!" said some one to Napoleon.
The emperor smiled cynically as he remarked:
"H'm! Of course she knows that her hair is bound to fall out after her fever, and that it will come in longer and thicker for being cropped."
Napoleon, in fact, though he loved Pauline better than his other sisters—or perhaps because he loved her better—was very strict with her. He obliged her to wear mourning, and to observe some of the proprieties; but it was hard to keep her within bounds.
Presently it became noised about that Prince Camillo Borghese was exceedingly intimate with her. The prince was an excellent specimen of the fashionable Italian. He was immensely rich. His palace at Rome was crammed with pictures, statues, and every sort of artistic treasure. He was the owner, moreover, of the famous Borghese jewels, the finest collection of diamonds in the world.
Napoleon rather sternly insisted upon her marrying Borghese. Fortunately, the prince was very willing to be connected with Napoleon; while Pauline was delighted at the idea of having diamonds that would eclipse all the gems which Josephine possessed; for, like all of the Bonapartes, she detested her brother's wife. So she would be married and show her diamonds to Josephine. It was a bit of feminine malice which she could not resist.
The marriage took place very quietly at Joseph Bonaparte's house, because of the absence of Napoleon; but the newly made princess was invited to visit Josephine at the palace of Saint-Cloud. Here was to be the triumph of her life. She spent many days in planning a toilet that should be absolutely crushing to Josephine. Whatever she wore must be a background for the famous diamonds. Finally she decided on green velvet.
When the day came Pauline stood before a mirror and gazed at herself with diamonds glistening in her hair, shimmering around her neck, and fastened so thickly on her green velvet gown as to remind one of a moving jewel-casket. She actually shed tears for joy. Then she entered her carriage and drove out to Saint-Cloud.
But the Creole Josephine, though no longer young, was a woman of great subtlety as well as charm. Stories had been told to her of the green velvet, and therefore she had her drawing-room redecorated in the most uncompromising blue. It killed the green velvet completely. As for the diamonds, she met that maneuver by wearing not a single gem of any kind. Her dress was an Indian muslin with a broad hem of gold.
Her exquisite simplicity, coupled with her dignity of bearing, made the Princess Pauline, with her shower of diamonds, and her green velvet displayed against the blue, seem absolutely vulgar. Josephine was most generous in her admiration of the Borghese gems, and she kissed Pauline on parting. The victory was hers.
There is another story of a defeat which Pauline met from another lady, one Mme. de Coutades. This was at a magnificent ball given to the most fashionable world of Paris. Pauline decided upon going, and intended, in her own phrase, to blot out every woman there. She kept the secret of her toilet absolutely, and she entered the ballroom at the psychological moment, when all the guests had just assembled.
She appeared; and at sight of her the music stopped, silence fell upon the assemblage, and a sort of quiver went through every one. Her costume was of the finest muslin bordered with golden palm-leaves. Four bands, spotted like a leopard's skin, were wound about her head, while these in turn were supported by little clusters of golden grapes. She had copied the head-dress of a Bacchante in the Louvre. All over her person were cameos, and just beneath her breasts she wore a golden band held in place by an engraved gem. Her beautiful wrists, arms, and hands were bare. She had, in fact, blotted out her rivals.
Nevertheless, Mme. de Coutades took her revenge. She went up to Pauline, who was lying on a divan to set off her loveliness, and began gazing at the princess through a double eye-glass. Pauline felt flattered for a moment, and then became uneasy. The lady who was looking at her said to a companion, in a tone of compassion:
"What a pity! She really would be lovely if it weren't for THAT!"
"For what?" returned her escort.
"Why, are you blind? It's so remarkable that you SURELY must see it."
Pauline was beginning to lose her self-composure. She flushed and looked wildly about, wondering what was meant. Then she heard Mme. Coutades say:
"Why, her ears. If I had such ears as those I would cut them off!"
Pauline gave one great gasp and fainted dead away. As a matter of fact, her ears were not so bad. They were simply very flat and colorless, forming a contrast with the rosy tints of her face. But from that moment no one could see anything but these ears; and thereafter the princess wore her hair low enough to cover them.
This may be seen in the statue of her by Canova. It was considered a very daring thing for her to pose for him in the nude, for only a bit of drapery is thrown over her lower limbs. Yet it is true that this statue is absolutely classical in its conception and execution, and its interest is heightened by the fact that its model was what she afterward styled herself, with true Napoleonic pride—"a sister of Bonaparte."
Pauline detested Josephine and was pleased when Napoleon divorced her; but she also disliked the Austrian archduchess, Marie Louise, who was Josephine's successor. On one occasion, at a great court function, she got behind the empress and ran out her tongue at her, in full view of all the nobles and distinguished persons present. Napoleon's eagle eye flashed upon Pauline and blazed like fire upon ice. She actually took to her heels, rushed out of the ball, and never visited the court again.
It would require much time to tell of her other eccentricities, of her intrigues, which were innumerable, of her quarrel with her husband, and of the minor breaches of decorum with which she startled Paris. One of these was her choice of a huge negro to bathe her every morning. When some one ventured to protest, she answered, naively:
"What! Do you call that thing a MAN?"
And she compromised by compelling her black servitor to go out and marry some one at once, so that he might continue his ministrations with propriety!
To her Napoleon showed himself far more severe than with either Caroline or Elise. He gave her a marriage dowry of half a million francs when she became the Princess Borghese, but after that he was continually checking her extravagances. Yet in 1814, when the downfall came and Napoleon was sent into exile at Elba, Pauline was the only one of all his relatives to visit him and spend her time with him. His wife fell away and went back to her Austrian relatives. Of all the Bonapartes only Pauline and Mme. Mere remained faithful to the emperor.
Even then Napoleon refused to pay a bill of hers for sixty-two francs, while he allowed her only two hundred and forty francs for the maintenance of her horses. But she, with a generosity of which one would have thought her quite incapable, gave to her brother a great part of her fortune. When he escaped from Elba and began the campaign of 1815 she presented him with all the Borghese diamonds. In fact, he had them with him in his carriage at Waterloo, where they were captured by the English. Contrast this with the meanness and ingratitude of her sisters and her brothers, and one may well believe that she was sincerely proud of what it meant to be la soeur de Bonaparte.
When he was sent to St. Helena she was ill in bed and could not accompany him. Nevertheless, she tried to sell all her trinkets, of which she was so proud, in order that she might give him help. When he died she received the news with bitter tears "on hearing all the particulars of that long agony."
As for herself, she did not long survive. At the age of forty-four her last moments came. Knowing that she was to die, she sent for Prince Borghese and sought a reconciliation. But, after all, she died as she had lived—"the queen of trinkets" (la reine des colifichets). She asked the servant to bring a mirror. She gazed into it with her dying eyes; and then, as she sank back, it was with a smile of deep content.
"I am not afraid to die," she said. "I am still beautiful!"
There is one famous woman whom history condemns while at the same time it partly hides the facts which might mitigate the harshness of the judgment that is passed upon her. This woman is Marie Louise, Empress of France, consort of the great Napoleon, and archduchess of imperial Austria. When the most brilliant figure in all history, after his overthrow in 1814, was in tawdry exile on the petty island of Elba, the empress was already about to become a mother; and the father of her unborn child was not Napoleon, but another man. This is almost all that is usually remembered of her—that she was unfaithful to Napoleon, that she abandoned him in the hour of his defeat, and that she gave herself with readiness to one inferior in rank, yet with whom she lived for years, and to whom she bore what a French writer styled "a brood of bastards."
Naturally enough, the Austrian and German historians do not have much to say of Marie Louise, because in her own disgrace she also brought disgrace upon the proudest reigning family in Europe. Naturally, also, French writers, even those who are hostile to Napoleon, do not care to dwell upon the story; since France itself was humiliated when its greatest genius and most splendid soldier was deceived by his Austrian wife. Therefore there are still many who know little beyond the bare fact that the Empress Marie Louise threw away her pride as a princess, her reputation as a wife, and her honor as a woman. Her figure seems to crouch in a sort of murky byway, and those who pass over the highroad of history ignore it with averted eyes.
In reality the story of Napoleon and Marie Louise and of the Count von Neipperg is one which, when you search it to the very core, leads you straight to a sex problem of a very curious nature. Nowhere else does it occur in the relations of the great personages of history; but in literature Balzac, that master of psychology, has touched upon the theme in the early chapters of his famous novel called "A Woman of Thirty."
As to the Napoleonic story, let us first recall the facts of the case, giving them in such order that their full significance may be understood.
In 1809 Napoleon, then at the plenitude of his power, shook himself free from the clinging clasp of Josephine and procured the annulment of his marriage to her. He really owed her nothing. Before he knew her she had been the mistress of another. In the first years of their life together she had been notoriously unfaithful to him. He had held to her from habit which was in part a superstition; but the remembrance of the wrong which she had done him made her faded charms at times almost repulsive. And then Josephine had never borne him any children; and without a son to perpetuate his dynasty, the gigantic achievements which he had wrought seemed futile in his eyes, and likely to crumble into nothingness when he should die.
No sooner had the marriage been annulled than his titanic ambition leaped, as it always did, to a tremendous pinnacle. He would wed. He would have children. But he would wed no petty princess. This man who in his early youth had felt honored by a marriage with the almost declassee widow of a creole planter now stretched out his hand that he might take to himself a woman not merely royal but imperial.
At first he sought the sister of the Czar of Russia; but Alexander entertained a profound distrust of the French emperor, and managed to evade the tentative demand. There was, however, a reigning family far more ancient than the Romanoffs—a family which had held the imperial dignity for nearly six centuries—the oldest and the noblest blood in Europe. This was the Austrian house of Hapsburg. Its head, the Emperor Francis, had thirteen children, of whom the eldest, the Archduchess Marie Louise, was then in her nineteenth year.
Napoleon had resented the rebuff which the Czar had given him. He turned, therefore, the more eagerly to the other project. Yet there were many reasons why an Austrian marriage might be dangerous, or, at any rate, ill-omened. Only sixteen years before, an Austrian arch-duchess, Marie Antionette, married to the ruler of France, had met her death upon the scaffold, hated and cursed by the French people, who had always blamed "the Austrian" for the evil days which had ended in the flames of revolution. Again, the father of the girl to whom Napoleon's fancy turned had been the bitter enemy of the new regime in France. His troops had been beaten by the French in five wars and had been crushed at Austerlitz and at Wagram. Bonaparte had twice entered Vienna at the head of a conquering army, and thrice he had slept in the imperial palace at Schonbrunn, while Francis was fleeing through the dark, a beaten fugitive pursued by the swift squadrons of French cavalry.
The feeling of Francis of Austria was not merely that of the vanquished toward the victor. It was a deep hatred almost religious in its fervor. He was the head and front of the old-time feudalism of birth and blood; Napoleon was the incarnation of the modern spirit which demolished thrones and set an iron heel upon crowned heads, giving the sacred titles of king and prince to soldiers who, even in palaces, still showed the swaggering brutality of the camp and the stable whence they sprang. Yet, just because an alliance with the Austrian house seemed in so many ways impossible, the thought of it inflamed the ardor of Napoleon all the more.
"Impossible?" he had once said, contemptuously. "The word 'impossible' is not French."
The Austrian alliance, unnatural though it seemed, was certainly quite possible. In the year 1809 Napoleon had finished his fifth war with Austria by the terrific battle of Wagram, which brought the empire of the Hapsburgs to the very dust. The conqueror's rude hand had stripped from Francis province after province. He had even let fall hints that the Hapsburgs might be dethroned and that Austria might disappear from the map of Europe, to be divided between himself and the Russian Czar, who was still his ally. It was at this psychological moment that the Czar wounded Napoleon's pride by refusing to give the hand of his sister Anne.
The subtle diplomats of Vienna immediately saw their chance. Prince Metternich, with the caution of one who enters the cage of a man-eating-tiger, suggested that the Austrian archduchess would be a fitting bride for the French conqueror. The notion soothed the wounded vanity of Napoleon. From that moment events moved swiftly; and before long it was understood that there was to be a new empress in France, and that she was to be none other than the daughter of the man who had been Napoleon's most persistent foe upon the Continent. The girl was to be given—sacrificed, if you like—to appease an imperial adventurer. After such a marriage, Austria would be safe from spoliation. The reigning dynasty would remain firmly seated upon its historic throne.
But how about the girl herself? She had always heard Napoleon spoken of as a sort of ogre—a man of low ancestry, a brutal and faithless enemy of her people. She knew that this bold, rough-spoken soldier less than a year before had added insult to the injury which he had inflicted on her father. In public proclamations he had called the Emperor Francis a coward and a liar. Up to the latter part of the year Napoleon was to her imagination a blood-stained, sordid, and yet all-powerful monster, outside the pale of human liking and respect. What must have been her thoughts when her father first told her with averted face that she was to become the bride of such a being?
Marie Louise had been brought up, as all German girls of rank were then brought up, in quiet simplicity and utter innocence. In person she was a tall blonde, with a wealth of light brown hair tumbling about a face which might be called attractive because it was so youthful and so gentle, but in which only poets and courtiers could see beauty. Her complexion was rosy, with that peculiar tinge which means that in the course of time it will become red and mottled. Her blue eyes were clear and childish. Her figure was good, though already too full for a girl who was younger than her years.
She had a large and generous mouth with full lips, the lower one being the true "Hapsburg lip," slightly pendulous—a feature which has remained for generation after generation as a sure sign of Hapsburg blood. One sees it in the present emperor of Austria, in the late Queen Regent of Spain, and in the present King of Spain, Alfonso. All the artists who made miniatures or paintings of Marie Louise softened down this racial mark so that no likeness of her shows it as it really was. But take her all in all, she was a simple, childlike, German madchen who knew nothing of the outside world except what she had heard from her discreet and watchful governess, and what had been told her of Napoleon by her uncles, the archdukes whom he had beaten down in battle.
When she learned that she was to be given to the French emperor her girlish soul experienced a shudder; but her father told her how vital was this union to her country and to him. With a sort of piteous dread she questioned the archdukes who had called Napoleon an ogre.
"Oh, that was when Napoleon was an enemy," they replied. "Now he is our friend."
Marie Louise listened to all this, and, like the obedient German girl she was, yielded her own will.
Events moved with a rush, for Napoleon was not the man to dally. Josephine had retired to her residence at Malmaison, and Paris was already astir with preparations for the new empress who was to assure the continuation of the Napoleonic glory by giving children to her husband. Napoleon had said to his ambassador with his usual bluntness:
"This is the first and most important thing—she must have children."
To the girl whom he was to marry he sent the following letter—an odd letter, combining the formality of a negotiator with the veiled ardor of a lover:
MY COUSIN: The brilliant qualities which adorn your person have inspired in me a desire to serve you and to pay you homage. In making my request to the emperor, your father, and praying him to intrust to me the happiness of your imperial highness, may I hope that you will understand the sentiments which lead me to this act? May I flatter myself that it will not be decided solely by the duty of parental obedience? However slightly the feelings of your imperial highness may incline to me, I wish to cultivate them with so great care, and to endeavor so constantly to please you in everything, that I flatter myself that some day I shall prove attractive to you. This is the end at which I desire to arrive, and for which I pray your highness to be favorable to me.
Immediately everything was done to dazzle the imagination of the girl. She had dressed always in the simplicity of the school-room. Her only ornaments had been a few colored stones which she sometimes wore as a necklace or a bracelet. Now the resources of all France were drawn upon. Precious laces foamed about her. Cascades of diamonds flashed before her eyes. The costliest and most exquisite creations of the Parisian shops were spread around her to make up a trousseau fit for the princess who was soon to become the bride of the man who had mastered continental Europe.
The archives of Vienna were ransacked for musty documents which would show exactly what had been done for other Austrian princesses who had married rulers of France. Everything was duplicated down to the last detail. Ladies-in-waiting thronged about the young archduchess; and presently there came to her Queen Caroline of Naples, Napoleon's sister, of whom Napoleon himself once said: "She is the only man among my sisters, as Joseph is the only woman among my brothers." Caroline, by virtue of her rank as queen, could have free access to her husband's future bride. Also, there came presently Napoleon's famous marshal, Berthier, Prince of Neuchatel, the chief of the Old Guard, who had just been created Prince of Wagram—a title which, very naturally, he did not use in Austria. He was to act as proxy for Napoleon in the preliminary marriage service at Vienna.
All was excitement. Vienna had never been so gay. Money was lavished under the direction of Caroline and Berthier. There were illuminations and balls. The young girl found herself the center of the world's interest; and the excitement made her dizzy. She could not but be flattered, and yet there were many hours when her heart misgave her. More than once she was found in tears. Her father, an affectionate though narrow soul, spent an entire day with her consoling and reassuring her. One thought she always kept in mind—what she had said to Metternich at the very first: "I want only what my duty bids me want." At last came the official marriage, by proxy, in the presence of a splendid gathering. The various documents were signed, the dowry was arranged for. Gifts were scattered right and left. At the opera there were gala performances. Then Marie Louise bade her father a sad farewell. Almost suffocated by sobs and with her eyes streaming with tears, she was led between two hedges of bayonets to her carriage, while cannon thundered and all the church-bells of Vienna rang a joyful peal.
She set out for France accompanied by a long train of carriages filled with noblemen and noblewomen, with ladies-in-waiting and scores of attendant menials. The young bride—the wife of a man whom she had never seen—was almost dead with excitement and fatigue. At a station in the outskirts of Vienna she scribbled a few lines to her father, which are a commentary upon her state of mind:
I think of you always, and I always shall. God has given me power to endure this final shock, and in Him alone I have put all my trust. He will help me and give me courage, and I shall find support in doing my duty toward you, since it is all for you that I have sacrificed myself.
There is something piteous in this little note of a frightened girl going to encounter she knew not what, and clinging almost frantically to the one thought—that whatever might befall her, she was doing as her father wished.
One need not recount the long and tedious journey of many days over wretched roads, in carriages that jolted and lurched and swayed. She was surrounded by unfamiliar faces and was compelled to meet at every town the chief men of the place, all of whom paid her honor, but stared at her with irrepressible curiosity. Day after day she went on and on. Each morning a courier on a foaming horse presented her with a great cluster of fresh flowers and a few lines scrawled by the unknown husband who was to meet her at her journey's end.
There lay the point upon which her wandering thoughts were focused—the journey's end! The man whose strange, mysterious power had forced her from her school-room, had driven her through a nightmare of strange happenings, and who was waiting for her somewhere to take her to himself, to master her as he had mastered generals and armies!
What was marriage? What did it mean? What experience still lay before her! These were the questions which she must have asked herself throughout that long, exhausting journey. When she thought of the past she was homesick. When she thought of the immediate future she was fearful with a shuddering fear.
At last she reached the frontier of France, and her carriage passed into a sort of triple structure, the first pavilion of which was Austrian, while the middle pavilion was neutral, and the farther one was French. Here she was received by those who were afterward to surround her—the representatives of the Napoleonic court. They were not all plebeians and children of the Revolution, ex-stable boys, ex-laundresses. By this time Napoleon had gathered around himself some of the noblest families of France, who had rallied to the empire. The assemblage was a brilliant one. There were Montmorencys and Beaumonts and Audenardes in abundance. But to Marie Louise, as to her Austrian attendants, they were all alike. They were French, they were strangers, and she shrank from them.
Yet here her Austrians must leave her. All who had accompanied her thus far were now turned back. Napoleon had been insistent on this point. Even her governess, who had been with her since her childhood, was not allowed to cross the French frontier. So fixed was Napoleon's purpose to have nothing Austrian about her, that even her pet dog, to which she clung as a girl would cling, was taken from her. Thereafter she was surrounded only by French faces, by French guards, and was greeted only by salvos of French artillery.
In the mean time what was Napoleon doing at Paris. Since the annulment of his marriage with Josephine he had gone into a sort of retirement. Matters of state, war, internal reforms, no longer interested him; but that restless brain could not sink into repose. Inflamed with the ardor of a new passion, that passion was all the greater because he had never yet set eyes upon its object. Marriage with an imperial princess flattered his ambition. The youth and innocence of the bride stirred his whole being with a thrill of novelty. The painted charms of Josephine, the mercenary favors of actresses, the calculated ecstasies of the women of the court who gave themselves to him from vanity, had long since palled upon him. Therefore the impatience with which he awaited the coming of Marie Louise became every day more tense.
For a time he amused himself with planning down to the very last details the demonstrations that were to be given in her honor. He organized them as minutely as he had ever organized a conquering army. He showed himself as wonderful in these petty things as he had in those great strategic combinations which had baffled the ablest generals of Europe. But after all had been arranged—even to the illuminations, the cheering, the salutes, and the etiquette of the court—he fell into a fever of impatience which gave him sleepless nights and frantic days. He paced up and down the Tuileries, almost beside himself. He hurried off courier after courier with orders that the postilions should lash their horses to bring the hour of meeting nearer still. He scribbled love letters. He gazed continually on the diamond-studded portrait of the woman who was hurrying toward him.
At last as the time approached he entered a swift traveling-carriage and hastened to Compiegne, about fifty miles from Paris, where it had been arranged that he should meet his consort and whence he was to escort her to the capital, so that they might be married in the great gallery of the Louvre. At Compiegne the chancellerie had been set apart for Napoleon's convenience, while the chateau had been assigned to Marie Louise and her attendants. When Napoleon's carriage dashed into the place, drawn by horses that had traveled at a gallop, the emperor could not restrain himself. It was raining torrents and night was coming on, yet, none the less, he shouted for fresh horses and pushed on to Soissons, where the new empress was to stop and dine. When he reached there and she had not arrived, new relays of horses were demanded, and he hurried off once more into the dark.
At the little village of Courcelles he met the courier who was riding in advance of the empress's cortege.
"She will be here in a few moments!" cried Napoleon; and he leaped from his carriage into the highway.
The rain descended harder than ever, and he took refuge in the arched doorway of the village church, his boots already bemired, his great coat reeking with the downpour. As he crouched before the church he heard the sound of carriages; and before long there came toiling through the mud the one in which was seated the girl for whom he had so long been waiting. It was stopped at an order given by an officer. Within it, half-fainting with fatigue and fear, Marie Louise sat in the dark, alone.
Here, if ever, was the chance for Napoleon to win his bride. Could he have restrained himself, could he have shown the delicate consideration which was demanded of him, could he have remembered at least that he was an emperor and that the girl—timid and shuddering—was a princess, her future story might have been far different. But long ago he had ceased to think of anything except his own desires.
He approached the carriage. An obsequious chamberlain drew aside the leathern covering and opened the door, exclaiming as he did so, "The emperor!" And then there leaped in the rain-soaked, mud-bespattered being whose excesses had always been as unbridled as his genius. The door was closed, the leathern curtain again drawn, and the horses set out at a gallop for Soissons. Within, the shrinking bride was at the mercy of pure animal passion, feeling upon her hot face a torrent of rough kisses, and yielding herself in terror to the caresses of wanton hands.
At Soissons Napoleon allowed no halt, but the carriage plunged on, still in the rain, to Compiegne. There all the arrangements made with so much care were thrust aside. Though the actual marriage had not yet taken place, Napoleon claimed all the rights which afterward were given in the ceremonial at Paris. He took the girl to the chancellerie, and not to the chateau. In an anteroom dinner was served with haste to the imperial pair and Queen Caroline. Then the latter was dismissed with little ceremony, the lights were extinguished, and this daughter of a line of emperors was left to the tender mercies of one who always had about him something of the common soldier—the man who lives for loot and lust.... At eleven the next morning she was unable to rise and was served in bed by the ladies of her household.
These facts, repellent as they are, must be remembered when we call to mind what happened in the next five years. The horror of that night could not be obliterated by splendid ceremonies, by studious attention, or by all the pomp and gaiety of the court. Napoleon was then forty-one—practically the same age as his new wife's father, the Austrian emperor; Marie Louise was barely nineteen and younger than her years. Her master must have seemed to be the brutal ogre whom her uncles had described.
Installed in the Tuileries, she taught herself compliance. On their marriage night Napoleon had asked her briefly: "What did your parents tell you?" And she had answered, meekly: "To be yours altogether and to obey you in everything." But, though she gave compliance, and though her freshness seemed enchanting to Napoleon, there was something concealed within her thoughts to which he could not penetrate. He gaily said to a member of the court:
"Marry a German, my dear fellow. They are the best women in the world—gentle, good, artless, and as fresh as roses."
Yet, at the same time, Napoleon felt a deep anxiety lest in her very heart of hearts this German girl might either fear or hate him secretly. Somewhat later Prince Metternich came from the Austrian court to Paris.
"I give you leave," said Napoleon, "to have a private interview with the empress. Let her tell you what she likes, and I shall ask no questions. Even should I do so, I now forbid your answering me."
Metternich was closeted with the empress for a long while. When he returned to the ante-room he found Napoleon fidgeting about, his eyes a pair of interrogation-points.
"I am sure," he said, "that the empress told you that I was kind to her?"
Metternich bowed and made no answer.
"Well," said Napoleon, somewhat impatiently, "at least I am sure that she is happy. Tell me, did she not say so?"
The Austrian diplomat remained unsmiling.
"Your majesty himself has forbidden me to answer," he returned with another bow.
We may fairly draw the inference that Marie Louise, though she adapted herself to her surroundings, was never really happy. Napoleon became infatuated with her. He surrounded her with every possible mark of honor. He abandoned public business to walk or drive with her. But the memory of his own brutality must have vaguely haunted him throughout it all. He was jealous of her as he had never been jealous of the fickle Josephine. Constant has recorded that the greatest precautions were taken to prevent any person whatsoever, and especially any man, from approaching the empress save in the presence of witnesses.
Napoleon himself underwent a complete change of habits and demeanor. Where he had been rough and coarse he became attentive and refined. His shabby uniforms were all discarded, and he spent hours in trying on new costumes. He even attempted to learn to waltz, but this he gave up in despair. Whereas before he ate hastily and at irregular intervals, he now sat at dinner with unusual patience, and the court took on a character which it had never had. Never before had he sacrificed either his public duty or his private pleasure for any woman. Even in the first ardor of his marriage with Josephine, when he used to pour out his heart to her in letters from Italian battle-fields, he did so only after he had made the disposition of his troops and had planned his movements for the following day. Now, however, he was not merely devoted, but uxorious; and in 1811, after the birth of the little King of Rome, he ceased to be the earlier Napoleon altogether. He had founded a dynasty. He was the head of a reigning house. He forgot the principles of the Revolution, and he ruled, as he thought, like other monarchs, by the grace of God.
As for Marie Louise, she played her part extremely well. Somewhat haughty and unapproachable to others, she nevertheless studied Napoleon's every wish. She seemed even to be loving; but one can scarcely doubt that her obedience sprang ultimately from fear and that her devotion was the devotion of a dog which has been beaten into subjection.
Her vanity was flattered in many ways, and most of all by her appointment as regent of the empire during Napoleon's absence in the disastrous Russian campaign which began in 1812. It was in June of that year that the French emperor held court at Dresden, where he played, as was said, to "a parterre of kings." This was the climax of his magnificence, for there were gathered all the sovereigns and princes who were his allies and who furnished the levies that swelled his Grand Army to six hundred thousand men. Here Marie Louise, like her husband, felt to the full the intoxication of supreme power. By a sinister coincidence it was here that she first met the other man, then unnoticed and little heeded, who was to cast upon her a fascination which in the end proved irresistible.
This man was Adam Albrecht, Count von Neipperg. There is something mysterious about his early years, and something baleful about his silent warfare with Napoleon. As a very young soldier he had been an Austrian officer in 1793. His command served in Belgium; and there, in a skirmish, he was overpowered by the French in superior numbers, but resisted desperately. In the melee a saber slashed him across the right side of his face, and he was made prisoner. The wound deprived him of his right eye, so that for the rest of his life he was compelled to wear a black bandage to conceal the mutilation.
From that moment he conceived an undying hatred of the French, serving against them in the Tyrol and in Italy. He always claimed that had the Archduke Charles followed his advice, the Austrians would have forced Napoleon's army to capitulate at Marengo, thus bringing early eclipse to the rising star of Bonaparte. However this may be, Napoleon's success enraged Neipperg and made his hatred almost the hatred of a fiend.
Hitherto he had detested the French as a nation. Afterward he concentrated his malignity upon the person of Napoleon. In every way he tried to cross the path of that great soldier, and, though Neipperg was comparatively an unknown man, his indomitable purpose and his continued intrigues at last attracted the notice of the emperor; for in 1808 Napoleon wrote this significant sentence:
The Count von Neipperg is openly known to have been the enemy of the French.
Little did the great conqueror dream how deadly was the blow which this Austrian count was destined finally to deal him!
Neipperg, though his title was not a high one, belonged to the old nobility of Austria. He had proved his bravery in war and as a duelist, and he was a diplomat as well as a soldier. Despite his mutilation, he was a handsome and accomplished courtier, a man of wide experience, and one who bore himself in a manner which suggested the spirit of romance. According to Masson, he was an Austrian Don Juan, and had won the hearts of many women. At thirty he had formed a connection with an Italian woman named Teresa Pola, whom he had carried away from her husband. She had borne him five children; and in 1813 he had married her in order that these children might be made legitimate.
In his own sphere the activity of Neipperg was almost as remarkable as Napoleon's in a greater one. Apart from his exploits on the field of battle he had been attached to the Austrian embassy in Paris, and, strangely enough, had been decorated by Napoleon himself with, the golden eagle of the Legion of Honor. Four months later we find him minister of Austria at the court of Sweden, where he helped to lay the train of intrigue which was to detach Bernadotte from Napoleon's cause. In 1812, as has just been said, he was with Marie Louise for a short time at Dresden, hovering about her, already forming schemes. Two years after this he overthrew Murat at Naples; and then hurried on post-haste to urge Prince Eugene to abandon Bonaparte.
When the great struggle of 1814 neared its close, and Napoleon, fighting with his back to the wall, was about to succumb to the united armies of Europe, it was evident that the Austrian emperor would soon be able to separate his daughter from her husband. In fact, when Napoleon was sent to Elba, Marie Louise returned to Vienna. The cynical Austrian diplomats resolved that she should never again meet her imperial husband. She was made Duchess of Parma in Italy, and set out for her new possessions; and the man with the black band across his sightless eye was chosen to be her escort and companion.
When Neipperg received this commission he was with Teresa Pola at Milan. A strange smile flitted across his face; and presently he remarked, with cynical frankness:
"Before six months I shall be her lover, and, later on, her husband."
He took up his post as chief escort of Marie Louise, and they journeyed slowly to Munich and Baden and Geneva, loitering on the way. Amid the great events which were shaking Europe this couple attracted slight attention. Napoleon, in Elba, longed for his wife and for his little son, the King of Rome. He sent countless messages and many couriers; but every message was intercepted, and no courier reached his destination. Meanwhile Marie Louise was lingering agreeably in Switzerland. She was happy to have escaped from the whirlpool of politics and war. Amid the romantic scenery through which she passed Neipperg was always by her side, attentive, devoted, trying in everything to please her. With him she passed delightful evenings. He sang to her in his rich barytone songs of love. He seemed romantic with a touch of mystery, a gallant soldier whose soul was also touched by sentiment.
One would have said that Marie Louise, the daughter of an imperial line, would have been proof against the fascinations of a person so far inferior to herself in rank, and who, beside the great emperor, was less than nothing. Even granting that she had never really loved Napoleon, she might still have preferred to maintain her dignity, to share his fate, and to go down in history as the empress of the greatest man whom modern times have known.
But Marie Louise was, after all, a woman, and she followed the guidance of her heart. To her Napoleon was still the man who had met her amid the rain-storm at Courcelles, and had from the first moment when he touched her violated all the instincts of a virgin. Later he had in his way tried to make amends; but the horror of that first night had never wholly left her memory. Napoleon had unrolled before her the drama of sensuality, but her heart had not been given to him. She had been his empress. In a sense it might be more true to say that she had been his mistress. But she had never been duly wooed and won and made his wife—an experience which is the right of every woman. And so this Neipperg, with his deferential manners, his soothing voice, his magnetic touch, his ardor, and his devotion, appeased that craving which the master of a hundred legions could not satisfy.
In less than the six months of which Neipperg had spoken the psychological moment had arrived. In the dim twilight she listened to his words of love; and then, drawn by that irresistible power which masters pride and woman's will, she sank into her lover's arms, yielding to his caresses, and knowing that she would be parted from him no more except by death.
From that moment he was bound to her by the closest ties and lived with her at the petty court of Parma. His prediction came true to the very letter. Teresa Pola died, and then Napoleon died, and after this Marie Louise and Neipperg were united in a morganatic marriage. Three children were born to them before his death in 1829.
It is interesting to note how much of an impression was made upon her by the final exile of her imperial husband to St. Helena. When the news was brought her she observed, casually:
"Thanks. By the way, I should like to ride this morning to Markenstein. Do you think the weather is good enough to risk it?"
Napoleon, on his side, passed through agonies of doubt and longing when no letters came to him from Marie Louise. She was constantly in his thoughts during his exile at St. Helena. "When his faithful friend and constant companion at St. Helena, the Count Las Casas, was ordered by Sir Hudson Lowe to depart from St. Helena, Napoleon wrote to him:
"Should you see, some day, my wife and son, embrace them. For two years I have, neither directly nor indirectly, heard from them. There has been on this island for six months a German botanist, who has seen them in the garden of Schoenbrunn a few months before his departure. The barbarians (meaning the English authorities at St. Helena) have carefully prevented him from coming to give me any news respecting them."
At last the truth was told him, and he received it with that high magnanimity, or it may be fatalism, which at times he was capable of showing. Never in all his days of exile did he say one word against her. Possibly in searching his own soul he found excuses such as we may find. In his will he spoke of her with great affection, and shortly before his death he said to his physician, Antommarchi:
"After my death, I desire that you will take my heart, put it in the spirits of wine, and that you carry it to Parma to my dear Marie Louise. You will please tell her that I tenderly loved her—that I never ceased to love her. You will relate to her all that you have seen, and every particular respecting my situation and death."
The story of Marie Louise is pathetic, almost tragic. There is the taint of grossness about it; and yet, after all, there is a lesson in it—the lesson that true love cannot be forced or summoned at command, that it is destroyed before its birth by outrage, and that it goes out only when evoked by sympathy, by tenderness, and by devotion.
END OF VOLUME TWO