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
THE WIVES OF GENERAL HOUSTON
Sixty or seventy years ago it was considered a great joke to chalk up
on any man's house-door, or on his trunk at a coaching-station, the
conspicuous letters "G. T. T." The laugh went round, and every one
who saw the inscription chuckled and said: "They've got it on you, old
hoss!" The three letters meant "gone to Texas"; and for any man to go to
Texas in those days meant his moral, mental, and financial dilapidation.
Either he had plunged into bankruptcy and wished to begin life over
again in a new world, or the sheriff had a warrant for his arrest.
The very task of reaching Texas was a fearful one. Rivers that overran
their banks, fever-stricken lowlands where gaunt faces peered out from
moldering cabins, bottomless swamps where the mud oozed greasily and
where the alligator could be seen slowly moving his repulsive form--all
this stretched on for hundreds of miles to horrify and sicken the
emigrants who came toiling on foot or struggling upon emaciated horses.
Other daring pioneers came by boat, running all manner of risks upon the
swollen rivers. Still others descended from the mountains of Tennessee
and passed through a more open country and with a greater certainty of
self-protection, because they were trained from childhood to wield the
rifle and the long sheath-knife.
It is odd enough to read, in the chronicles of those days, that amid all
this suffering and squalor there was drawn a strict line between "the
quality" and those who had no claim to be patricians. "The quality" was
made up of such emigrants as came from the more civilized East, or
who had slaves, or who dragged with them some rickety vehicle with
carriage-horses--however gaunt the animals might be. All others--those
who had no slaves or horses, and no traditions of the older states--were
classed as "poor whites"; and they accepted their mediocrity without a
murmur.
Because he was born in Lexington, Virginia, and moved thence with his
family to Tennessee, young Sam Houston--a truly eponymous American
hero--was numbered with "the quality" when, after long wandering, he
reached his boyhood home. His further claim to distinction as a boy came
from the fact that he could read and write, and was even familiar with
some of the classics in translation.
When less than eighteen years of age he had reached a height of
more than six feet. He was skilful with the rifle, a remarkable
rough-and-tumble fighter, and as quick with his long knife as any
Indian. This made him a notable figure--the more so as he never abused
his strength and courage. He was never known as anything but "Sam." In
his own sphere he passed for a gentleman and a scholar, thanks to his
Virginian birth and to the fact that he could repeat a great part of
Pope's translation of the "Iliad."
His learning led him to teach school a few months in the year to the
children of the white settlers. Indeed, Houston was so much taken with
the pursuit of scholarship that he made up his mind to learn Greek and
Latin. Naturally, this seemed mere foolishness to his mother, his six
strapping brothers, and his three stalwart sisters, who cared little
for study. So sharp was the difference between Sam and the rest of the
family that he gave up his yearning after the classics and went to the
other extreme by leaving home and plunging into the heart of the forest
beyond sight of any white man or woman or any thought of Hellas and
ancient Rome.
Here in the dimly lighted glades he was most happy. The Indians admired
him for his woodcraft and for the skill with which he chased the wild
game amid the forests. From his copy of the "Iliad" he would read to
them the thoughts of the world's greatest poet.
It is told that nearly forty years after, when Houston had long led a
different life and had made his home in Washington, a deputation of more
than forty untamed Indians from Texas arrived there under the charge of
several army officers. They chanced to meet Sam Houston.
One and all ran to him, clasped him in their brawny arms, hugged him
like bears to their naked breasts, and called him "father." Beneath the
copper skin and thick paint the blood rushed, and their faces changed,
and the lips of many a warrior trembled, although the Indian may not
weep.
In the gigantic form of Houston, on whose ample brow the beneficent
love of a father was struggling with the sternness of the patriarch and
warrior, we saw civilization awing the savage at his feet. We needed no
interpreter to tell us that this impressive supremacy was gained in the
forest.