Notre Dame and all the church bells sounded, bidding the faithful spend
the night in prayer and to invoke the blessings of Heaven on their
Empress and the child which was about to enter the world. With Marie
Louise there were M. Dubois, the Duchess of Montebello, the Countess of
Luçay, Mesdames Durand and Ballant, ladies-in-waiting, ladies of the
bedchamber, etc., and Madame Blaise. The Emperor, his mother and
sisters, and two physicians, Drs. Corvisart and Bourdier, were in
the next room. Napoleon kept going in and out of his wife's chamber,
encouraging her with kind and cheery words. At five in the morning
Dubois thought that the birth was not immediate, and the Emperor sent
away the princesses, and, tired out by anxiety and his prolonged watch,
went to take a bath. But Dubois soon found that he was mistaken, and ran
to get Napoleon. He was trembling with anxiety when he burst open the
door of the Emperor's room, finding him in his bath, and told him that
he feared that he should not be able to save both the mother and the
child. "Come, come, Mr. Dubois," exclaimed Napoleon, "don't lose your
head; save the mother; think only of the mother.... Imagine she's some
shopkeeper's wife in the Rue Saint Denis, that's all I ask of you; and,
in any case,--I repeat it,--save the mother.... I shall be with you in
a moment." Thereupon he sprang out of his bath, threw himself into a
dressing-gown, and hastened to Marie Louise's bedside. He found her in
great suffering, and grew very pale. Never on the field of battle had he
displayed such emotion; but he tried to hide his anguish, and kissed
his wife very gently, reassuring her with tender words. But, unable to
control himself, and fearful of adding to her already excessive alarm,
he hurriedly went into the next room, and there, listening to every
sound, as pale as death, trembling from head to foot, he passed a
quarter of an hour in intense anxiety. At last, and with difficulty,
the child was born; at first it was supposed to be dead, and for seven
minutes it gave no sign of life. The Emperor hastened to Marie Louise
and kissed her most tenderly. He thought only of her; he did not give
a look to the child. He had decided to care for nothing if only the
Empress was saved. A few drops of brandy were poured into the prince's
mouth; he was gently slapped all over and wrapped in hot towels, and he
came to life with a little cry. Napoleon, wild with joy, kissed him. The
thought that he had a son filled him with rapture such as none of his
triumphs had given him. "Well, gentlemen," he said, when he went back
to his own room, "we have got a fine, healthy boy. We had to urge him a
little, to persuade him to come, but there he is at last!" And then he
added, with deep emotion: "My dear wife! What courage she has, and how
she has suffered! I had rather never have any more children than see her
suffer so much again."
All this while the people of Paris were in a state of expectancy,
wondering whether the child was to be a boy or a girl. If a boy, he
would have a fine-sounding name. According to a decree calling the
Eternal City the second city of the French Empire, which had become the
capital of a simple department,--the department of the Tiber,--and in
accordance with old usages of the Holy German Empire, by which the
prince destined to succeed the Germanic Caesar, was called King of the
Romans before bearing the title of Emperor, Napoleon's son was to be
called the King of Rome. But would Napoleon have a son? Would Heaven
crown his unexampled prosperity with this new favor? That was the
subject of conversation everywhere, in the grandest mansions as in the
humblest garrets. From daybreak of March 20th the Tuileries garden was
crowded with people of all ages and conditions. The courtyards and quays
were thronged. In the garden, along the terrace, in front of the palace,
a rope was stretched from the grating by the Pont Royal to the Pavilion
de l'Horloge. The crowd was so fearful of disturbing the Empress that
this frail barrier, this simple rope, was more respected than would have
been a lofty wall. The assemblage, which had been growing ever since six
o'clock, remained at some distance from the rope, and only spoke in a
low voice. They waited in extreme impatience, yet in perfect quiet,
for the sound of the cannon of the Invalides. If it was a girl, only
twenty-one guns would be fired; if a boy, there would be a hundred and
one.... Every window was opened; in the squares and streets everything
stood still,--foot-passengers, horses, carriages. The cannon of the
Invalides was heard, and the anxious multitudes in deep emotion began to
count, at first very low, but gradually louder--one, two, three, four,
and so on up to twenty. Then the excitement was tremendous. Twenty-one.
Is that all? No; there is the twenty-second, and the rest of the hundred
and one are to follow; but there was no more need of counting: Napoleon
had a son! At once the enthusiasm of the multitude broke forth like a
volcano. Cheers, hats tossed in the air, loud cries of joy, universal,
noisy delight, what a sight for the Emperor, as he stood at one of the
Empress's windows, gazing in silence at the rapturous crowd! Tears
flowed down his cheeks. "Never had his glory brought a tear to his
eyes," Constant informs us; "but the happiness of fatherhood softened
this soul which the most brilliant victories, the sincerest tributes
of public adoration, had left untouched. Indeed, if Napoleon ever had
reason to believe in his good fortune, it was on the day when the
Archduchess of Austria made him the father of a king, him who had begun
as the younger son of a Corsican family. In a few hours the event which
France and Europe had been awaiting was a festival in every family."
At half-past ten the aeronaut, Madame Blanchard, set forth in a balloon
from the Champ de Mars, to throw down papers announcing the great news
to the populace. The telegraph, unimpeded by any mist,--for it was a
lovely spring day,--began to work in every direction, and by two o'clock
answers had been received from Lyons, Brussels, Antwerp, Brest, and
other large towns of the Empire. All of course gave expression to the
wildest enthusiasm. In the course of the day Napoleon wrote to his
father-in-law, the Emperor of Austria, to inform him of the happy event.
"These are very good letters," he said; "I have never written better
ones." Officers of the Emperor's household, pages, and couriers were
despatched with letters and messages for the great bodies of the State,
for the towns and cities, for the Ambassadors and Ministers of France
and other powers. The Empress Josephine was not forgotten; Napoleon sent
a page to her in her castle of Navarre, in Normandy.
On the very day of his birth the King of Rome was privately christened
at nine o'clock in the evening, in the chapel of the Tuileries,
surrounded by his family and the court; the Emperor took his place in
the middle of the chapel, on a chair with a prayer desk before it,
beneath a canopy. Between the altar and the rail, on a granite base
covered with white velvet, had been set a superb vermilion vase which
served for the baptismal font. When Napoleon approached to present his
son, there was a moment of religious silence, which contrasted with the
noisy gayety of the vast crowd which had gathered near the Tuileries
from every quarter of the city to see the fireworks and the magnificent
illumination. "The houses," Constant says in his Memoirs, "were
illuminated voluntarily. Those who try to make out from the outside
appearance the real thoughts of a people on occasions like this,
observed that the highest stories in the remotest quarters were as
bright as the most sumptuous mansions. The public buildings, which
are generally most brilliant in contrast with the darkness of the
neighboring houses, now were scarcely to be distinguished in the
profusion of lights which the rejoicing public had set in every window.
The boatmen improvised a festival which lasted nearly all night, and
attracted a huge and happy crowd to the banks of the river. The populace
who had been through so many emotions, had celebrated so many victories
in the last thirty years, displayed as much enthusiasm as if this were
the first of its festivities in honor of a happy change in its destiny,"
March 22, Napoleon received in the throne-room at the Tuileries the
great bodies of the State.
"Your people," said the President of the Senate, "greet with unanimous
applause this new star rising above the horizon of France, whose first
ray scatters every shadow of future gloom."
When we think of the end of this matter, and reflect that this King of
Rome was to be deprived not merely of his title of Prince Imperial and
of King, but of the name of Napoleon and of Bonaparte, that he was
destined to be known as Francis, Duke of Reichstadt, and to be buried
in the Church of the Capuchins in Vienna, in Austrian uniform, is it
possible to repress a sad smile at the simple optimism of courts? In
1811 illusions were universal. "Amid all our triumphs," says General de
Ségur, "when even our enemies, at last resigning themselves to their
fate, seemed hopeless, or had rallied to the side of our Emperor, what
pretext was there for gloom, or for any foreboding of a total or partial
eclipse? It was pleasanter to trust in his star, which dazzled us from
its height, so many wonders had it wrought!... And how many of us,
despite the ever-shifting sky of France, when we see it clear, are
tempted to think that no change threatens, and are every day surprised
by some sudden storm! Who, when he hears that some apparently healthy
person has dropped dead, is not astonished? We were in just such case,
when, March 20, 1811, Heaven, feeding our pride to make our humiliation
deeper, vouchsafed the conclusion of the fairy-show and completed the
illusion with the birth of the King of Rome." Napoleon, in the enjoyment
of every happiness and of every triumph, had reached the lofty summit of
glory and prosperity; from this he was soon to fall in a swift, giddy
flight, at the end of which opened a terrible abyss, full of blood and
tears.
XX.
THE RECOVERY.
Marie Louise made a quick recovery, and her restoration to health
delighted both her husband and herself. Her father, the Emperor of
Austria, sympathized with their happiness, as is shown by the following
letter of his to Napoleon, dated March 27, 1811: "My Dear Brother and
Son-in-Law,--It is impossible for me to express in a formal letter of
this sort the satisfaction I feel at the good news you have sent to me
about my daughter. Your Majesty must already know my keen interest in an
event of such importance, both for her and for France, as the birth of a
prince, and the fact that this is safely over only augments my joy. May
Heaven preserve this new pledge of the ties uniting us! Nothing could be
more precious or surer to unite firmly the happy bonds existing between
the two Empires."
Napoleon, on the 20th of March, had despatched to Vienna Count Nicolai,
who arrived there on the 28th. On that day Francis wrote to his
son-in-law: "My Brother and Dear Son-in-Law,--Count Nicolai has this
moment delivered to me the two letters of Your Majesty. Since I am
unwilling to delay a courier, who is on the point of departure, and will
carry to Your Majesty and to the Empress the first expressions of
my delight at the happy event, I postpone my formal answer to Your
Majesty's invitation to hold his son at the baptismal font, but I hasten
to take this opportunity to say that I accept so agreeable a duty.
"All the details which Your Majesty gives me about the birth of the
prince arouse my sincerest interest. Your letter proves your kindness
towards a wife who returns it with affection as deserved as it is
sincere, and for this I hereby express all my gratitude. I thank you,
too, for the full details you have written to me. I know the Empress
well enough to be sure that, though her sufferings were great, the
happiness of satisfying the wishes of Your Majesty and of your people is
an ample compensation. I am sure that Your Majesty's presence must
have given her strength and her attendant confidence in difficult
circumstances. Your Majesty has already so many claims upon my
friendship that these details were not needed to induce me to cherish
more and more the bonds that unite us, and which I charge my daughter
and her son to make even closer."
The health of Marie Louise and of the King of Rome was perfect. In order
to respond to the eagerness of the crowd that was ever thick at the
doors of the Tuileries in search of news about the Empress and the young
prince, it had been decided that one of the chamberlains should be
present all day in the first drawing-room of the grand apartment, to
receive all who came and report to them the bulletin issued twice a day
by the physicians. But soon that was stopped, and there were no more
bulletins, the mother and child being perfectly well. April 6, Marie
Louise got up and wrote six lines to her father. The 17th she walked on
the terrace by the water, amid the applause of the crowd. The next day
Prince Clary, whom the Emperor of Austria had sent from Vienna, was
received. Napoleon spoke for a long time about the courage, the virtue,
the kindness, the excellent education, the exquisite tact, and the
perfect dignity of the Empress. "Moreover," he added, "every one admires
her." The same day, April 18, the Empress drove in the Bois de Boulogne,
and was present at a reception to receive the congratulations of the
Diplomatic Body. The churching took place the next day, the 19th, in the
chapel of the Tuileries. Prince Rohan officiated.
April 21, Marie Louise and the Emperor went to Saint Cloud, whence, two
days later, she wrote to her father the following letter, published by
M. von Helfert in German: "My dear Father,--You may imagine my great
bliss. I never could have imagined that I could be so happy. My love
for my husband has grown, if that is possible, since my son's birth. I
cannot think of his tenderness without tears. It would make me love him
now, if I had never loved him before, for all his kind qualities. He
tells me to speak to you about him. He often asks after you, and says,
'Your father ought to be very happy to have a grandson.' When I tell him
that you already love my child, he is delighted. I am going to send you
a portrait of the boy. I think you will see how much he looks like the
Emperor. He is very strong for only five weeks. When he was born he
weighed nine pounds. He is very well, and is in the garden all day long.
The Emperor takes the greatest interest in him. He carries him about in
his arms, plays with him, and tries to give him his bottle, but he does
not succeed. You know from my uncle's letter how much I suffered for
twenty-two hours, but my happiness in being a mother makes me forget it.
The baptism is set for the month of June. I am sorry that you are too
busy to come. Heaven grant that you may come soon! I was glad to hear
from Prince Clary that you are well. I hope that God will hear my
prayers, and that dear mamma will soon be quite recovered. You may
imagine how many questions I asked about you; for talking about you,
about your kindness, is my greatest pleasure."
The return of summer induced Napoleon to go to Rambouillet for a few
days with the Empress, for the hunt. In this residence, which was
simpler and smaller than the other Imperial castles, the Emperor had a
taste of domestic life. He reached there May 13, and left on the 22d, to
make a trip through Normandy. Marie Louise was so urgent that at last he
decided to take her with him. The departments of Calvados and La Manche
greeted them with the utmost enthusiasm. The Emperor celebrated his stay
at Caen by granting favors and conferring benefits. Many young men of
good family were appointed ensigns; one hundred and thirty thousand
francs were distributed in charity. From Caen the Emperor and Empress
went to Cherbourg to visit the works in the harbor, which had just been
dug out of the granite rocks to the depth of fifty feet.
"What delight," General de Ségur writes in his Memoirs concerning this
trip, "What delight, what admiration was ours! Great must have been
Napoleon's pride, judging from our own satisfaction which we received as
old and trusted companions of so great a man!... I saw Cherbourg for the
first time. This port, which Louis XVI. had designed simply for one of
refuge, had been transformed by Napoleon into one from which an attack
could be made. In those days of prodigies, however incapable of
amazement I might have been, this roadstead, won by superhuman exertion
from the ocean, this vast basin hewn to a depth of fifty feet in the
granite, with accommodations for fifty men-of-war, for their building,
for their repair, for their armament, filled me with an admiration such
as I had felt at the first sight of the grandeur of the Alps."
The day after his arrival at Cherbourg, Napoleon rode out early, visited
the heights about the town and inspected different ships. The next day
he presided at several meetings and visited the works of the navy-yard;
then he went down to the bottom of the basin hewn out of the rock, which
was to contain the ships-of-the-line, and to be covered by the water to
a depth of fifty-five feet. "During our stay," says M. de Bausset, "the
Emperor wanted to breakfast on the dyke, or jetty, which had been begun
in the unhappy reign of the most virtuous of kings. I got there before
Their Majesties, on a most lovely day, and had everything arranged. The
table was set in view of the sea; the English ships were plainly
visible on the distant horizon; certainly they were far from suspecting
Napoleon's presence. There was still a strong battery on the breakwater
to protect the roadstead and the harbor. I do not think that our
neighbors would have ventured to salute us at closer quarters, even if
they had been better informed. At a signal from the Emperor the squadron
lying in the roadstead, consisting of three large ships, under the
command of Admiral Tronde, put out under full sail and passed in front
of the jetty on which we were.... The Admiral's ship came up as close as
it could; the Rear-Admiral came in his gig to fetch Their Majesties and
their suite, and took us on board, amid the cheers of the crew, who were
all in full uniform. While the Empress and her ladies were resting in
the ward-room, Napoleon inspected the rest of the ship. Just when we
least expected it, he ordered all the cannon to be fired together; never
in my life did I hear such a noise: I thought that the ship was blowing
up."
Napoleon and Marie Louise were back at Saint Cloud June 4, 1811. The
Empress, then in the full flower of her beauty, and radiant with
happiness, had responded to the profuse manifestations of public
enthusiasm by her gracious reception of the authorities and the people
of the departments.
It would be hard to imagine all the homage paid at this time to the
Imperial pair. Dithyrambs upon the birth of the King of Rome were
composed in every language of Europe except the English. There was a
real avalanche of poems, odes, epistles; in less than a week the Emperor
received more than two thousand of these tributes. Probably he read very
few of these extravagant compositions, which were crammed panegyrics
and allegories of the Greek mythology. The sum of one hundred thousand
francs was divided among the authors of these official poems. "Of all
these memorials, the most curious that flattery ever elevated," Madame
Durand writes, "is a collection of French and Latin verses, entitled,
'The Marriage and the Birth,' which was printed at the Imperial press,
and appointed by the University to be given as a prize to the pupils
of the four grammar schools of Paris, and of those in the provinces,
thereby assuring a ready sale. In this heap of trash figures the names
of all the authors who, when the giant had fallen, insulted his remains
and burned their incense before the new deity who took his place.
"As Béranger said about those poets:--
"They are, like the confectioners,
Friends of every baptism."
The _Moniteur_, in its number of June 9, 1811, the day of the King of
Rome's baptism, spoke as follows: "The happy event which, at the moment
of writing these lines, is throughout this vast Empire the object of the
thanksgivings which a great people can offer to Heaven; which inspire
songs of happiness in our temples, our public places, our peaceful
cities, our fertile fields, and in the camps of our invincible warriors;
which fulfils at once the wishes of the people for the happiness of
their Sovereign, and those of the Sovereign for the firm establishment
of the institutions he has consecrated to the prosperity of his people,
ought more than any other to kindle the fervor of our poets and fill
them with a lively and noble inspiration. Yet no one of them has been
able to disguise the difficulty of his task; all have recognized that
their greatest efforts would be required, not only to rise to the height
of a subject of which its greatness is the first peril, but even to
attune their lyre to the pitch of the enthusiasm that fires us, an
enthusiasm of which the mighty voice, filling all France and heard in
the remotest corner of Europe, is itself the grandest hymn of poetry and
the most harmonious music. But no such obstacle has discouraged their
muse; admiration, gratitude, love, furnish a happy inspiration, and our
poets have felt it; they have faithfully transcribed the language of the
populace in the language ascribed to the gods."
In proof of this we quote some of the verses inserted in the official
organ:--
"Sion, rejoice! The voice of the prophets
Announces again the days of the Eternal One.
Before a young child, dear hope of Israel,
The cedars of Lebanon will bow their heads.
Of the oppressed he will become the support:
He will punish crime, and will brand vice;
His words will be the voice of justice,
And the Spirit of the Lord will march before him."
That is the Biblical style, which was used freely a few years later
to celebrate the baptism of the Duke of Bordeaux. Mythology, too, was
called in:--
"Do you see the leopard, weary of carnage,
Sated with blood, towards his savage lair
Run roaring?
Seized by an invincible, unknown terror,
He announces his death, and flees at the sight
Of a new-born Alcides."
The poet Millevoye exclaimed:--
"With your head encircled with laurel and flowers,
Come to reopen henceforth the progress of the year,
Month long since consecrated to the lover of Venus!
Triumph, and seize again thy faded garland,
Which the friend of Egeria placed
On the double brow of Janus."
M. Le Sur spoke about the Tiber in these terms:--
"The Tiber, too long drowsing on its urn,
Lets grow in its bosom the silent reed.
It awakens at the resonant noise of brass,
And with a proud wave washing its shore'
Of its old heritage
It offers the remains to the Young Sovereign."
A poet who was destined to become famous, and at that time was a scholar
in the Lycée Napoléon, Casimir Delavigne, tried his muse, a youthful
muse, according to the _Moniteur_:--
"Receive, royal child, the vows of the country.
May thy father's laurel shadow thy cradle!
May glory and the arts, adorning thy life,
Consecrate forever the happiest reign!
Child beloved of heaven, awaited by the earth,
Promised to posterity,
May thou, under the eyes of thy August father,
Grow to immortality!"
A professor famous for his Latin verses, M. Lemaire, was so fired by his
lyrical enthusiasm that he compared Marie Louise to another Mary, the
Queen of Heaven. Of the two queens,--one, he said, rules in Heaven; the
other on earth:--
"Haec coelo regina micat; micat altera terris."
XXI.
THE BAPTISM.
The baptism of the King of Rome was celebrated with great pomp, Sunday,
June 7, 1811, at Notre Dame. The festivities began the evening before,
when, at seven o'clock, Napoleon and Marie Louise and their son arrived
from Saint Cloud with a grand retinue. The courtyard of the palace, the
garden, and the terraces were filled with applauding spectators. Free
performances were given at all the theatres, at which songs referring
to the event were loudly cheered. Paris was illuminated, and in all the
public places food was given away to the populace. Wine flowed in the
fountains, and everywhere was drunk the health of the young king and of
his happy parents.
The baptism took place at seven o'clock the next evening; at two in the
afternoon troops of the line and the Imperial Guard formed a double row
from the Tuileries to Notre Dame. Many public buildings and private
houses were decorated with tapestry, leaves, and designs.
At four the Senate started from the Luxembourg, the Council of State
from the Tuileries, the Court of Appeal, the Court of Accounts, the
Council of the University, from their respective places of meeting. From
the Hôtel de Ville started the Prefect of the Seine, the Mayors and the
Municipal Council of Paris, the Mayors and Deputies of forty-nine more
or less important cities of the Empire. It was said that the Mayor of
Rome and the Mayor of Hamburg happened to be placed side by side, and
greeted one another with, "Good day, neighbor!"