not of noble birth but are talented shall have equal rights to your
consideration and to office, so that there may be an end, once and for
all, to any kind of subordination, and to all intermediaries between the
ruler and the lowest classes of the population. The advantages brought
by the Code Napoléon, publicity of legal procedure, and trial by jury,
will be characteristics of your monarchy. To lay my whole thought before
you: for the consolidation of this monarchy, I look more to the effects
just named than to the results of the greatest victories. Your people
must have a liberty, an equality, and a prosperity hitherto unknown in
Germany. This way of ruling will be a stronger barrier between you and
Prussia than the Elbe, than fortresses, than the protection of France.
What nation would ever wish to go back to Prussian rule when it had once
experienced the advantages of a liberal government?”
In these sentences (which are written as a private lesson, and are
not penned with an eye to public effect), the Emperor expounds to his
youngest brother the great mission that is being entrusted to the latter
when he takes charge of the new kingdom of Westphalia. Jerome’s task
was to plant the fundamental ideas of the revolution on German soil, a
pioneer work, this introduction of the first glimmer of self-government
in a part of western Europe where hitherto the inhabitants had known
only how to obey. In Holland and Italy, ideas of self-government were by
no means new. But as far as concerned the princes of the Confederation
of the Rhine, although, acting under orders, they could introduce the
new legal codes, they lacked the traditions and the talents that might
have made it possible to initiate such changes from within. We can now
understand the historic mission of the youngest of the Bonapartes. He was
to make a great experiment in democracy; he was to transform four million
Germans from subjects into citizens. Had this impetus been successful,
the whole nation might have been spared resubjugation to princely
arrogance after the War of Liberation.
But the young man of twenty-three who, coming at the end of this long
family, had been reared as a prince, regarded his kingship as a gallant
adventure, in which money and vital energy could be squandered. Youth
was like champagne, which bubbles when the cork is drawn. He forsook the
arms of his Württemberg consort for those of innumerable mistresses; ran
into debt, became involved in manifold scandals, and procreated children
all over the place; amused himself more than his subjects; and, by this
traditional deportment of one born in the purple, succeeded for decades
to come in discrediting the fine notion of the choice of the fittest.
There was something to be said for the German view that, if they must
have a prince to ride across fields and men, they would like him to be
one who had inherited the position. Jerome, however, laughed at the
world’s mockery, and even laughed at his great brother’s exhortations.
Napoleon had a predilection for his youngest brother, the sort of
weakness that fathers are apt to have for the latest born of their sons.
The brio of the young man’s life was in keeping with his own tempo.
Besides, Jerome was always amiable, took nothing amiss. For instance, on
one occasion he asked Napoleon to make him commander-in-chief, and showed
no offence at a refusal couched in the following terms: “Are you serious?
After you have been through six campaigns, and after you have had a half
a dozen horses shot under you, you can ask me again!”
When Jerome went to war, he took his whole court with him—not the queen,
indeed, but all the prettiest of her ladies. He issued proclamations in
the style of the Roi Soleil. But he was not mortified to receive the
following imperial admonition:
“I have read an order of the day issued by you, in which you make
yourself ridiculous. You are king, and the Emperor’s brother! Fine
qualities in war! In war, a man must be a soldier before everything. When
I am in camp, I need neither ministers nor luxury. You must camp with the
advance guard, be in the saddle day and night, march with the advance
guard, so that you may get all the news without delay. If you don’t like
that, you had better stay at home in your palace! You make war like a
satrap! God in heaven, you never learned that from me! I ride in front of
the skirmishers, and do not allow even my minister for foreign affairs to
follow me.... You make vast claims; you have a certain amount of talent
and a few good qualities, but these are put quite in the shade by your
follies. Furthermore, you are insufferably conceited, and know absolutely
nothing of public affairs.”
The king sticks the letter into his jabot with a laugh. But the Emperor?
Cannot he realise, while he talks to his brother like a father, that
every one to whom he gives unmerited power endangers the very essence of
power? That these golden crowns and the extemporised coats-of-arms he
provides for them create very unstable kings and princes? That homunculus
escapes from the phial and makes fun of his master? This perennial
weakness where his relatives are concerned leads him, at times, to assume
what is a very unusual role for him, that of the good-natured man;
for, though he begins by issuing orders to his brothers, he very often
gives way to them in the end. “My brother, inclosed you will find the
constitution of your kingdom”—thus he begins a missive of instruction in
matters of high politics, with a sentence that might have been taken out
of a comic opera. When he is in a friendly humour, he will end a letter
full of reproaches with a paternal smile: “Mon ami, I love you, but you
are so frightfully young!”
Napoleon is no longer young. Inevitably, as his plans grow, there must
be an increase in that harshness which, in him, is mainly the outcome
of overwork. When, twelve years earlier, he had come down from the Alps
as a conqueror and his fame had spread before him across the plain of
Lombardy, his youth had endowed the novelty of this campaign with a
sort of romantic innocence which carried his contemporaries off their
feet. Now, when the mountain torrent has long since widened into a
river, bearing on its broad bosom ships freighted with the treasures
of the world, and when the river is drawing near to the ocean in which
its waters will soon mingle with all the waters of the earth; now,
the gravity of this labour of Atlas has stamped its imprint upon his
features, has written its message in his heart. Rare have become the
hours of tranquillity, few the moments of merriment and sportive humour;
and the heroical cynicism of his mission moulds him before the eyes of
the world into a statue of bronze.
True, he had sent for his Polish countess. She was installed in the
very street where Josephine had first charmed him, and where, again and
again, a quaint superstition led him to house his lady friends. Walewska
is munificently provided for, and Napoleon’s physician visits her every
day. But, though there is no secret about the matter, she leads a retired
life, does not use the box at the opera he has reserved for her, and
seldom sees him now that she has come to Paris. This is an interlude
between one idyll and the next. He has made up his mind that the child
she is to bear him will be a son; and the event may have still greater
consequences to-day than it would have had yesterday.
For the first of his illegitimate children, the one of whose birth he
had received tidings in Berlin (when he had been reassured to learn that
there was no justification for the common belief that he was sterile),
has been put out of court by the mother’s unwise importunity. Shortly
after his return to Paris, she had called. He would not see her, sending
a message to say that he received no one whom he had not summoned. He
provided her with a house and an income, and would have nothing more to
do with her. But he had the boy brought to him, and playfully teased
the little chap. For a moment, he even thought of adopting him. All had
to be done secretly. The invisible master, whom he called the “nature
of things” and on rare occasions “fate,” forbade him the unconcealed
enjoyment of this most natural of scenes in our human life, one in which
Napoleon could not play his part until he was nearly forty. At length he
had a son of his body, who might become his heir. Yet he, Emperor of the
West, could not step forward and say: “This is my son!” Wishing to give
the boy at least half his own name, he called him Léon.
But the mother had become completely estranged from him, and Napoleon
soon ceased to have any serious thought of making the child his
successor. Perhaps he thought that the boy came of a bad stock; maybe he
had a foreboding that this half Napoleon would become a half criminal and
an outright ne’er-do-well.
All the more vigorously does his advance in years urge him towards a new
marriage. There are long conversations between Napoleon and Josephine,
between reason and sorrow; and after them it is not Josephine alone
in whom the servants note the traces of tears. “How terrible to die
childless!” he says on one occasion. Nevertheless his fondness for his
helpmate increases. We know how difficult he found it to break with
any of his collaborators; and his temperamental conservatism makes him
cling to this first companion of his rise. “If I were to divorce her,”
he says to Talleyrand who advises him to take this step, “the witchery
of my home would be gone. I should have to go to school again in order
to understand the ways and fancies of a young wife. The empress adapts
herself to me perfectly, and understands me so well. Besides, it would be
very ungrateful to divorce a woman who has done so much for me.” Such are
the motives, tender and reasonable, respectable and convenient—in a word,
thoroughly middle class—which make the man cleave to his wife.
But the difficulties grow in number, and the need for a decisive step
becomes more urgent. While he ponders the moral impression which his
divorcing Josephine will make in France (where she inspires far more
personal affection than he does), he, as his manner is, lays his
plans deliberately, that, at last, he may make an advance which no
one anticipates, and will enable him to fulfil two wishes at once. He
arranges for an interview with a man whom he has long needed, and whom he
may now need more than ever. His mother is always interceding with him
on Lucien’s behalf; now, Napoleon, who is travelling in Italy, sends for
Lucien.
The conversation between the brothers is the most interesting of all
Napoleon’s recorded conversations, and has been reported by Lucien with
fidelity and picturesqueness. Napoleon is there portrayed to the life.
XVIII
Lucien was now just thirty-two. It was on a December evening when he had
reached the castle of Mantua, after a journey during which the dread of
imprisonment, aroused by his brother’s summons, had been continually
present to his mind. On entering a room extravagantly lighted by
numerous candelabra, he was blinded for a moment by the glare. Then he
heard Rustam’s voice announcing him: “Sire, your brother Lucien!”
The man to whom the announcement is made does not stir. He is seated
at a large round table, which is covered by a huge map of Europe, the
biggest Lucien has ever seen. Supporting his head on his left hand, with
the other hand he is thrusting coloured pins into the map, pins which
presumably represent army corps or whole armies. It is so many years
since Lucien has seen his brother, and Napoleon has changed so much, that
the visitor is not quite sure whether he is looking at the Emperor, and
he remains motionless for several minutes. At length the man sits up,
yawns, rubs his back against the chair, takes up a small bell from the
table, and rings it with one strong movement. The visitor advances a step
or two:
“Sire, I am Lucien.”
The Emperor jumps up from his chair, dismisses the servant, and takes
his brother by the hand affectionately, though with a certain amount of
reserve. Lucien feels called upon to embrace Napoleon, who does not repel
the advance, but accepts it with a passive coldness, as if no longer used
to such intimacies. Then, taking the visitor by the hand once more, he
pushes Lucien gently away to scrutinise him the better:
“So it’s you, is it? How are you? How is your family? When did you leave
Rome? Have you had a pleasant journey? What about the pope? How is he?
Does he like you?”
[Illustration: Bonaparte as First Consul. Painting by J. D. A. Ingres.
Musée de Liége.
(Photograph by Braun, Paris and Dornach.)]
Lucien notes the nervousness masked by this flood of questions, turns
them off lightly, and says he is glad to find his brother in good health.
“Yes, I’m very well.” He pats his waistcoat, and adds: “I’m getting fat,
and I’m afraid I shall get fatter still.” He looks keenly at Lucien,
takes a pinch of snuff, and says: “As for you! Do you know that you are
looking uncommonly well? You used to be rather too thin. Now, you are
almost handsome.”
“Your Majesty is good enough to make fun of me.”
“No, no, it’s quite true. But let’s sit down and have a talk.” They seat
themselves opposite the huge map, the Emperor fidgets with the pins, and
Lucien waits for him to begin. But, since Napoleon does not open the
ball, the younger man says, hesitatingly: “Sire....” At this moment, the
Emperor sweeps all the pins flat, and says abruptly: “Well, what have you
to say to me?”
Lucien replies that he hopes his brother has forgiven him.
“You can have my pardon soon enough. It depends entirely on yourself.”
Lucien expresses his willingness to do anything compatible with his
honour.
“Well and good, but what sort of things will square with your honour?”
Lucien speaks of nature and religion.
“But politics, Sire; do politics mean nothing to you?”
Lucien demurs, saying that he has retired into private life.
“It rested entirely with yourself. You could have been a king just as
well as your brothers.”
“Sire, my wife’s honour, my children’s position....”
“You keep on speaking of your wife, when you know perfectly well that she
has never been your wife. Is not, and never will be, for I shall never
recognise her.”
“Ah, Sire!”
“No, never, though the heavens should fall! Since you are my brother, I
can forgive the wrong you have done me. But upon her my curse will rest!”
There is a long tirade, until at length Lucien intervenes, laughing
nervously, and saying:
“Moderate your words, Sire. There is a proverb: ‘La processione torna,
dove esce,’” and Lucien thinks it expedient to add a French translation.
When Napoleon continues to talk of his brother’s wife as a woman of bad
reputation, and Lucien shows signs of taking offence, the Emperor tries
to mollify him by admitting that these reports may be calumnious, but
adds that nothing will induce him to recognise her. Besides, it is now
a fundamental law, as firmly fixed as the Salic law, that no marriage
in the Emperor’s family is valid without the Emperor’s consent. Lucien
reminds him of the date of the marriage, and Napoleon answers: “Yes, but
the law was passed because of what you had done!” This Napoleonic logic
makes Lucien smile.
“What are you laughing at? I don’t see anything laughable in it! I know
what you and your wife and my enemies say about the matter. You choose
your friends from among my enemies. But no good Frenchman approves of
what you have done. The only way in which you can regain popular esteem
is by espousing my cause, like Jerome.”
Lucien, who is in the Emperor’s hands, has absolutely determined to let
nothing affront him. But he is spurred into opposition, springs to his
feet, and does not sit down again:
“Your Majesty is mistaken! When your courtiers approve your attitude
towards me as thanks for the services I was so happy to render you, they
are only acting after their kind. On my side, too, my servants tell me
that I am right!”—At these words, Napoleon’s brow is furrowed, his eyes
flash, and his nostrils work, “an unmistakable sign of rage in members
of our family.” But Lucien has taken the bit between his teeth, and goes
on: “What ought the nation to do for me? What gratitude does it owe me?
It ought to look upon me as the saviour of the man who has saved it.... I
am proud to think that it will rather be inclined to compare me with you
than with Jerome. No, Sire, public opinion, which is mightier by far than
all the kings in the world, assigns every one to his true place, whatever
courtiers may say.”
Napoleon grows calmer. Instead of flying into a passion, as Lucien
dreaded for a moment, he controls himself, and says quietly:
“Talleyrand is right. You speak of the affair with an ardour worthy of
a political club. Such eloquence, Citoyen, is, believe me, long since
out of fashion. I am well aware that you did me good service on the
Nineteenth Brumaire; but as for having been my ‘saviour,’ of that proof
is lacking. This much I remember clearly, that you disputed with me the
unity of power which I needed for the saving of France, and that I and
Joseph spent half a night before we could get you to pledge yourself to
silence when these questions should be touched upon.... Finally, after
the victory, you were inclined to oppose my personal elevation, and this
conduct on your part releases me from all obligation to show gratitude.
“But you, do you owe me no gratitude? When you ‘saved’ me at Saint-Cloud,
were not you yourself in mortal peril? I sent my grenadiers to save you
from the hands of assassins. And if you, a bad brother, an unnatural
brother, had really allowed that vote of my outlawry to be taken, do
you imagine that I should have been such a fool as to accept the decree
unresistingly? Had I not adherents enough, with God’s aid, to defend this
head that was destined to wear so many crowns?” He goes on to speak for a
whole hour of those days, and of Corsican compatriots who had helped him;
suddenly gives the conversation an intimate turn; speaks of his generals
and the extent of their devotion; refers to political conflicts in which
the brothers had held divergent views, and shows how his view had been
right. Then he changes the subject, saying abruptly:
“Enough. That is all ancient history, like your great day of the
Nineteenth Brumaire. I did not summon you that we might deliver lectures
to one another.” A long pause.
“Listen to me, Lucien, and weigh my words carefully, for, above all,
let us avoid getting heated.... I am too powerful to have any desire to
lose my temper. You have come to me trustfully. Corsican hospitality
shall never be violated by the Emperor of the French. This virtue of
our forefathers and fellow-countrymen is a guarantee for your absolute
safety.” The Emperor strides up and down the hall for a long time,
pulling himself together, and then turns to Lucien, whose hand he takes
and presses:
“We are alone here. You see? We are alone. No one can overhear us. I am
wrong about your marriage.... Knowing your wilfulness as I did, knowing
your self-love—for everything, you know, depends on self-love, which
regards itself as a virtue, just as we princes dignify by the name
of policy everything which turns on our passions—I ought not to have
interfered with your union. People slandered your wife to me, though some
ventured to speak well of her, especially Mamma, who loves her, saying
she makes you happy and is a good mother.... Lebrun, indeed, has sung
her praises so often that Josephine once told the good fellow he must
be in love with her himself. I was very much amused at my wife, who has
more of a temper than people fancy. Still, I must say that Josephine
never shows her claws to me! Well, I have no disrespect for your wife,
but I detest her because this passion of yours for her has robbed me of
the most capable of my brothers. However, her beauty will pass; you will
be disillusioned; then, returning to political life, you will oppose my
policy, and I shall have to take measures against you whether I like it
or not; for—let me say this to you—unless you are on my side, Europe is
too small for the pair of us!”
“You are making fun of me.”
“No, I’m in earnest; friend or foe! It is easier for you to-day than
ever before. You need not be surprised: there has been a change in my
family policy. You will see soon enough. Your children, which hitherto I
have wanted to exclude, can now be of great use to me, but they must be
dynastically recognised. The offspring of a marriage I do not recognise
can have no right to the throne. Tell me, then, what would you do in my
place?”
Lucien advises him to make the Senate pass a simple resolution to the
effect that the children come within the right of succession.
“Of course I know that I can do that, but I must not. As you said just
now, public opinion has to be conciliated. What would the family, the
court, France, which all watch my slightest movements, say about such a
step? A recantation of that kind would do me more harm than the loss of a
battle.”
Lucien points out that he cannot possibly ask pardon for a marriage which
had been entered into long before Napoleon’s accession to the throne.
“Grant my request, Sire. You will have no more faithful servant than I.
All the rest of my life will be an expression of my gratitude.”
The younger man goes on talking for a long time, and throughout his
speech Napoleon is incessantly taking snuff, but spilling most of
the tobacco, so nervous is he, growing more and more anxious; in his
perplexity exclaiming at length: “Good God, you press me hard, and I
am weak. But I shall not be so weak as to move the Senate to pass the
resolution you ask for. I cannot recognise your wife!”
Thereupon Lucien, who is now almost beside himself, says: “Well, then,
Sire, what do you really want of me?”
“What do I want? Simply that you should divorce your wife.”
“But you have always maintained that we are not married, so how can we
get a divorce?”
“I expected you to say that. What do you think I can mean by asking you
to procure a divorce? Obviously, thereby I recognise your marriage, but
not your wife. The divorce will be the best thing for your children, just
like all that you have hitherto refused to do, all that I have so much
wanted you to do: to annul the marriage and divorce her.”
“That would be a dishonour for me and my children, and I will never do
it!”
“Why is it, that with all your mother wit, you cannot see the difference
between my earlier proposals and my present ones. In the former case, if
your marriage had been declared null, your children would have become
bastards!”
Lucien points out the difference between his children’s dynastic rights
and their civic rights. “You can bestow your thrones upon whom you will,
Sire, for you won them at the point of the sword. But no one shall cheat
my children out of their share in the modest heritage of Carlo Bonaparte,
for they are as legitimate as any one else’s both by canon law and by
State law. The pope has even given one of my daughters the name of his
mother!”
“Calm yourself!... Of course the divorce I ask for implies the
recognition of your marriage. Nor do I wish to force an actual separation
from your wife. She shall be honoured in accordance with her merits if
she will make this sacrifice to my policy and to the future interests of
France. I would even pay her a visit. But if she refuses, you and she
will both be blamed for having sacrificed the true greatness of your
children to your own egoism, and your children will curse your memory!”
Lucien answers mournfully.
“You are really incorrigible,” rejoins Napoleon. “You take everything so
tragically. I am not asking for any tragedies! Think it over.”
After Lucien has again and again insisted upon his point of honour, and
has several times wished to take leave, the Emperor once more brings up
the distribution of the thrones. Eugene’s position in Italy is merely
provisional, and he would much rather see Lucien installed there.
Napoleon complains about Hortense, too. None of them are satisfied.
“Pauline is naturally the most reasonable in the matter of ambition, for
she is the queen of fashion. Besides, she grows more lovely day by day.
Josephine is ageing, and is greatly distressed about a divorce.”
Lucien pricks up his ears. Napoleon goes on as if he were talking at
random: