Constituent Assembly, and had been made Archbishop of Paris by the
Emperor, Napoleon was very much in love with his young wife. "It would
be impossible," he wrote to the Duchesa of Abrantes, "to make you
understand how much the Emperor loves our charming Empress. It is love,
but a good love this time. He is in love with her, I tell you, and as he
never was with Josephine; for, after all, he never knew her when she was
young. She was over thirty when they married, while this wife is young
and as fresh as the spring. You will see her, and you will be delighted
with her.... And then if you knew how gay she is, how pleasant, and,
above all, how thoroughly at her ease with all those whom the Emperor
honors with his intimacy! You will see how lovable she is. People used
to talk about the _soirées_ of the Queen of Holland. I assure you the
Empress is very charming for those whom the Emperor admits informally
into the Tuileries. They go there of an evening to pay their court, they
play with Their Majesties reversis or billiards; and the Empress is so
charming, so fascinating, that it is easy to see from the Emperor's eyes
that he is dying to kiss her."
Probably there is some exaggeration in Cardinal Maury's enthusiasm.
Doubtless Marie Louise pleased Napoleon very much, but had she been a
young woman of humble rank, he probably would not have noticed her. What
he especially admired in her was the Archduchess, the daughter of the
German Caesars, and in the feeling she aroused in him there was perhaps
more gratified vanity than real love. He certainly was not attracted
to her by one of those tempests of passion which had drawn him towards
Josephine; he would not have written to his second wife burning letters
like those he wrote to Josephine during the first campaign in Italy. In
his affection for Marie Louise there was something calm and reasonable,
almost paternal; it was the reflection of maturity succeeding to the
impetuous ardor of youth. Yet he had more deference and regard for the
second Empress than for the first. Shortly after her marriage Marie
Louise said to Metternich: "I am sure that in Vienna people think a
great deal about me, and imagine that I live in continual anguish. The
truth often seems improbable. I am not afraid of Napoleon, but I am
beginning to think that he is afraid of me."
It has been said that the Emperor was not perfectly constant to Marie
Louise; but even if he was ever unfaithful, he kept the fact from her
knowledge, and never made his second wife as unhappy as he had made his
first. He used to boast that he cared only for honest men and virtuous
women, and he was anxious that no one should be able to charge him with
setting a bad example. His court had become very strict, at least in
appearance. Decorum prevailed there as rigidly as etiquette.
Marie Antoinette had in fact known less happiness than Marie Louise.
From the moment she entered France she encountered a sullen enmity which
Marie Louise never experienced. The Empress was never denounced for her
Austrian birth as the Queen had been by the opposition. Marie Antoinette
was surrounded by snares and pitfalls which were never prepared for
Marie Louise. Who would have dared to treat Napoleon's wife as the
Cardinal de Rohan treated the wife of Louis XVI.? What could there have
been under the Empire to compare with the affair of the necklace? The
Queen was attacked by pamphlets of all sorts. The Empress was not once
insulted or slandered. The bitterest foes of her husband respected her.
Moreover, Napoleon was far more attractive than Louis XVI., and Marie
Louise was soon a mother, while Marie Antoinette long endured a
barrenness for which she was not to blame.
The happiness of Marie Louise lasted but little more than two years, but
it was all without a cloud. The mistake that historians always make
in discussing celebrities is that they try to make a single portrait
instead of a series of portraits, according to the different ages and
circumstances. What was true in 1812 was no longer true in 1813, still
less so in 1814. Human life has its seasons like the year. Is anything
less like a brilliant spring day than a gloomy winter's day? In his
history of the Restoration, Lamartine has drawn a picture of the Empress
Marie Louise which seems tolerably exact for the period after the
calamities that befell the Empire, but inapplicable to the happy days
of the mother of the King of Rome. "Marie Louise," he writes, "sought
refuge in ceremony, in retreat and silence from the ill-will that
pursued her at every step.... Napoleon loved her from a feeling of
superiority and pride. She was a sign of his alliance with great races;
the mother of his son; and thus she perpetuated his ambition. ... The
public did wrong to demand of Marie Louise passionate returns and
devotion when her nature could inspire her only with a feeling of duty
and respect for a soldier who had regarded her only as a German hostage
and a pledge of posterity. Her constraint lessened her natural charms,
darkened her expression, dimmed her wit, and burdened her heart. She
was looked upon as a foreign decoration attached to the columns of the
throne. Even history, written in ignorance of the truth, and inspired by
the resentment of Napoleon's courtiers, has slandered this sovereign.
Those who knew her will restore, not the stoical, theatric glory which
was demanded of her, but her real nature.... The alleged emptiness
of her silence hid feminine thoughts and mysteries of feeling which
transported her far from this court. Magnificent though cruel exile!...
She could not pretend anything, either during the days of her grandeur,
nor after her husband's overthrow; that was her crime. The
theatrical world of the court wanted to see a pretence of conjugal
affection in a victor's captive. She was too natural to simulate love
where she felt only obedience, terror, and resignation. History will
blame her; nature will pity her.... She was expected to play a part; she
failed as an actress, but as a woman she has survived."
The Marie Louise who is thus described by Lamartine is not the Marie
Louise of the beginning of 1812; then the young Empress did not regard
herself as "a victor's captive," nor as "a foreign decoration attached
to the columns of the throne." Napoleon did not inspire her with terror,
and she knew none of the constraint which "lessened her natural charms,
darkened her expression, dimmed her wit, and burdened her heart." She
did not look upon her court as a "magnificent but rude exile." These
thoughts may have occurred to her in misfortune, but hardly, we think,
before the Russian campaign. If Lamartine had read the letters which she
wrote to her father in 1810, 1811, and the beginning of 1812, he would
doubtless have acknowledged that for some time Napoleon's second wife
was happy on the French throne.
To this portrait drawn by the great poet we prefer the one we find in
Méneval's Memoirs: "The better Napoleon learned to know the Empress, the
more he applauded his choice. Her character seemed made for him; she
brought him happiness and consolation amid the cares of his stormy
career. In ordinary life she was simple and kindly, yet with no loss of
dignity. No word of complaint or blame ever crossed her lips. Gentle,
but reserved and discreet, she never expressed her feelings with any
vivacity. She was kind and generous, simple and astute at the same time;
her gayety was gentle, her wit without malice. Though well-informed, she
made no parade of her acquirements, fearing to be accused of pedantry.
Her wifely devotion had won the Emperor's affection, and her unfailing
gentleness had attracted all his friends. In this estimate I am
confirmed by my recollections, and I am not inspired by any partiality,
by what has happened, or by any present interest. It would be a mistake
to suppose that her duty and her inclinations were at variance; she was
perfectly natural and could not conceal her real impressions; but events
have shown that while she inclined to virtue when it was easy, she yet
lacked the strength to practise it when it was hard."
Marie Louise did not have the character of her great-grandmother
Marie Thérèse, or that of her great-aunt Marie Antoinette. She rather
resembled the wife of Louis XIV. or that of Louis XV. She would have led
a calm, modest, harmless life, like those two queens, if her fate had
not placed her amid unforeseen and terrible events, the shock of which
she could not endure. In 1812 we see her a loving mother, a faithful
wife, a worthy sovereign. If Napoleon had adopted a less imprudent
policy, all that would have lasted. Doubtless that is what he said to
himself when, at Saint Helena, he impartially examined his career, and
he had no angry thought, no bitter word, for the woman who has been so
severely judged by others.
XXVI.
THE EMPRESS'S HOUSEHOLD.
We have just tried to draw a picture of the appearance and character of
Marie Louise in 1812, when at the summit of her fortune; let us turn our
attention to the organization of her household at this epoch, and to
the details of her daily life. Her first almoner was Count Ferdinand de
Rohan, formerly Archbishop of Cambrai; her knight-of-honor was the Count
of Beauharnais, who had held the same position to the Empress Josephine,
a relative of his. Napoleon had at first meant to appoint the Count of
Narbonne to this place, but Marie Louise had dissuaded him. M. Villemain
says in his _Life_ of M. de Narbonne: "The Empress Marie Louise,
generally so yielding to her husband, on this occasion manifested great
opposition. Whether through womanly kindness or through her pride as a
sovereign, possibly through some superstitious scruple as a second wife,
she insisted on the retention in this post of the Count of Beauharnais;
she was unwilling on any terms to seem to exclude, in the person of this
relative of Josephine, the first name of the Princess whom she succeeded
on the French throne. On the other hand, it is fair to suppose that in
the dashing and attractive Count of Narbonne she was willing to keep
away certain things which were unfamiliar and so alarming to her,
such as the lighter graces, the jesting spirit of the old court, and
doubtless too the melancholy presentiments attached, in her mind, to
everything that recalled Versailles and the daughters of Louis XV., who
had become the aunts of Marie Antoinette. In a word, Marie Louise, cold
and calm, was inflexible in her opposition to the choice which the
Emperor announced to her. He at once yielded the point, and smoothed
matters over by appointing M. de Narbonne one of his aides, an odd favor
for a man fifty-five years old, a relic of the former court, suddenly
made a member of the most warlike and most active staff in Europe." For
first equerry Marie Louise had Prince Aldobrandini, and for master of
ceremonies, the Count de Seyssel d'Aix.
The maid-of-honor was Madame Lannes, Duchess of Montebello, the widow of
the famous marshal who was killed in Austria in the first war. Méneval
tells us that Napoleon in making this appointment hesitated between this
lady and the Princess of Beauvau. "The fear of introducing into his
court influences hostile to the national ideas, such as a German
princess might have favored, with the prejudices of her birth and
position, made him give up this idea. He decided for the Duchess,
thinking this an honor due to the memory of one of his oldest and
bravest comrades." It was a most happy choice. Madame de Montebello
was ten years older than the Empress; very handsome, stately, above
reproach, of whom the Emperor said when he appointed her, "I give the
Empress a real lady-of-honor."
In the purity of her features, the Duchess of Montebello recalled
Raphael's Virgins. There was in her appearance, and in her life, a
quality of calmness, of regularity, which greatly pleased Marie Louise,
who was also much touched by her untiring devotion at the time of her
child's birth, when for nine whole days Madame de Montebello remained
in the Empress's room, sleeping at night on a sofa, and the Empress was
grateful to her for having rigorously performed what could be demanded
only of affection or devotion.
Madame Durand says that Marie Louise felt the need of a friend, and that
the Duchess won her confidence and good graces to such an extent that
the Empress could not do without her; she got to love her like a sister,
and tried to prove her affection by great confidence to her and to her
children. She was always delighted to choose presents that the Duchess
would like, and offered them to her with charming amiability. Naturally
a preference of this sort aroused a great deal of jealousy, especially
among the ladies of the palace, most of whom belonged to older families
than did the Duchess, and were somewhat annoyed that she was preferred
to them. Whenever the Emperor was away, Madame de Montebello used to
stay with the Empress, and every morning Marie Louise used to go to
her room to chat with her, and in order to avoid passing through the
drawing-room, where the other ladies had assembled, she used to go
through a dark passage, which greatly offended these ladies. According
to Madame Durand, Madame de Montebello scorned to hide her real opinions
about any one of whom she was talking, and gave her opinion clearly and
frankly. This openness--a virtue rare in courts--inspired the Empress's
confidence, but earned her many enemies; but they, in spite of their
ill-will, could not injure her reputation. The lady of the bedchamber to
the Empress was the Countess of Luçay, who had been a lady-in-waiting
since the beginning of the Consulate. She was a gentle, modest,
distinctly virtuous person, who enjoyed general esteem and sympathy.
The Emperor set great store by her. "In private life," says General
de Ségur, "Napoleon was gentle and confiding, and especially fond of
honorable people, whose delicacy and uprightness were above suspicion,
and of women of the best reputation; he was a good judge, and he
demanded a great deal. This was undeniably true, and the exceptions were
very few: the way he chose his council and the officers attached to his
person, shows it. In corroboration I will quote first the Grand Marshal
Duroc with all the household of the palace, whose affairs were managed
more honestly and better than those of any private house that can be
named. As to the ladies of the court, it will be enough to name Madame
de Luçay, my mother-in-law, the Lady of the Bedchamber, and Madame de
Montesquiou, governess of the King of Rome, whom the Emperor chose when
my mother declined the position from ill-health. His confidence, when
once given, was unlimited."
The Countess of Montesquiou, the governess of the King of Rome, was
the wife of the Emperor's Grand Chamberlain. The Baron de Méneval thus
speaks of her: "Madame de Montesquiou, who was of high birth, received
the highest consideration and thoroughly deserved it. She was forty-six
years old when she was appointed governess of the Imperial children;
her reputation was above reproach. She was a woman of great piety, yet
indifferent to petty formalities; her manners had a noble simplicity,
her whole nature was dignified but benevolent, her character was firm,
and her principles were excellent. She combined all the qualities that
were required for the important position which the Emperor, of his
own choice, had given her." Madame Durand speaks as warmly about the
Countess of Montesquiou: "It would have been hard to make a better
choice. This lady, who belonged to an illustrious family, had received
an excellent education; to the manners of the best society she added a
piety too firmly fixed and too wise to run into bigotry. Her life had
been so well ordered that she escaped any breath of calumny. Some were
inclined to call her haughty, but this haughtiness was tempered by
politeness and the most gracious consideration for others. She took the
most tender and constant care of the young Prince, and there could be
nothing nobler and more generous than the devotion which led her later
to leave the country and her friends, to follow the lot of this young
Prince whose hopes had been destroyed. Her sole reward was bitter sorrow
and unjust persecution.
"The Duchess of Montebello and the Countess of Montesquieu had little
sympathy for each other, but they never betrayed any coolness. Even had
they desired it, they would have been held in awe by fear of
Napoleon, who insisted on harmony in his court. Still, there could
be distinguished at the Tuileries two parties in occult opposition,
belonging respectively to the old and to the new nobility. At the head
of the first stood the Count and the Countess of Montesquieu; of the
second, the Duchess of Montebello, to whom the Empress's preference gave
great authority. Madame Durand says that all the influence which the
Grand Chamberlain and his wife, the governess of the King of Rome,
enjoyed was exercised in obtaining pardon, favors, pensions, and places
for the nobles, whether they had left France or not; they assured the
Emperor that this was the best way of attaching them to his person, of
making them love his government. They said this because they really
thought it; and since they believed that the destiny of France was
firmly fixed, they were anxious to secure for the ruler of this Empire
those men whom they regarded as its strongest support. Since he had seen
Madame de Montesquiou's unwearying devotion to his son, it was seldom
that he refused her whatever she asked."
The new nobility, which was jealous of the old, had a representative in
the Duchess of Montebello, who was very proud, and did not admit the
superiority of the old aristocracy to the illustrious plebeians,
who, like her husband, had no ancestors, but were destined to become
ancestors themselves. She thought that the title of Duke was not enough
for her valiant husband, and that the Emperor, in not making him a
prince like Davout, Masséna, and Berthier, had been unjust, and that
Marshal Lannes was of more account than all the dukes and marquises of
the Versailles court.
There was at court, between these two groups of the old and the new
nobility, a third party, the military party, headed by the Grand Marshal
of the Palace, Duroc, Duke of Frioul, who, seeing honor and glory only
in the career of a soldier, looked down on all other occupations. The
Emperor secretly favored him, but he nevertheless remained true to his
usual system of neutralizing all opinions, by trying to balance their
forces. Each one of the three rival parties kept an eye on the other
two, and thus everything of interest came to the Emperor's ears.
In 1812, the ladies-in-waiting were the Duchess of Bassano, the
Countess Victor de Mortemart, the Duchess of Rovigo, the Countesses
of Montmorency, Talhouet, Law de Lauriston, Duchâtel, of Bouillé,
Montalivet, Perron, Lascaris Vintimiglia, Brignole, Gentile, Canisy, the
Princess Aldobrandini, the Duchesses of Dalberg, Elchingen, Bellune,
Countesses Edmond de Périgord and of Beauvau, Mesdames de Trasignies,
Vilain XIV., Antinori, Rinuccini, Pandolfini Capone, and the Countesses
Chigi and Bonacorsi. They accompanied the Empress in her walks and
drives and at the theatre. They were real women-chamberlains, always
at her side when she appeared in public, but they had no part in her
domestic life and did not reside in the Imperial palaces. This privilege
belonged to only six other women, who occupied a humbler position in the
court hierarchy, but yet saw much more of the Empress.
In her time Josephine had four other ladies who held a position of
something like female ushers, and whose duty it was to announce the
persons who came to her apartments. These four ladies had numerous
squabbles with the ladies-in-waiting over points in etiquette; and
Napoleon, to put a stop to these heart-burnings, decided to substitute
for them four new ladies, who should be chosen from those who had charge
of Madame Campan's school at Ecouen for the daughters of members of the
Legion of Honor.
Among those thus appointed was the widow of a general, Madame Durand,
whose curious Memoirs we have often consulted. Some months later the
Emperor raised their number to six, and appointed two of the pupils
of this school, a daughter and a sister of distinguished officers,
Mesdemoiselles Malerot and Rabusson.
These six ladies had an important position. Not only did they announce
all the Empress's visitors; they also had actual charge of the domestic
service, with six chambermaids under their orders, who only entered
the Empress's rooms when she rang for them, while they, four, being in
attendance every day, spent all their time with Marie Louise. They went
to the Empress as soon as she was up, and did not leave her till she
had gone to bed. Then all the doors of the Empress's room were locked,
except one, leading into the next room, where slept the one of the
ladies in charge, and Napoleon himself could not go into Marie Louise's
room at night without passing through this room. No man, with the
exception of the Empress's private secretary, her keeper of the purse,
and her medical attendants, could enter her apartment without an order
from the Emperor. Even ladies, other than the Lady of Honor and the Lady
of the Bedchamber, were not received there except by appointment. The
six ladies we have mentioned had charge of the enforcement of these
rules, and were responsible for their observance. One of them was
present at the Empress's drawing, music, and embroidery lessons.
They wrote at her dictation, or under her orders. The same etiquette
prevailed when the court was on its travels. Always one of these six
ladies slept in the next room to the Empress, and that was the only
approach to her chamber.
Madame Durand tells vis the goldsmith Biennais had made for the Empress
a letter-case with a good many secret drawers which she alone could
know, and he asked to be allowed to explain it to her. Marie Louise
spoke about it to the Emperor, who gave her permission to receive him.
Biennais was consequently summoned to Saint Cloud and admitted into the
music-room, where he stood at one end with the Empress, while Madame
Durand was in the same room, but so far off that she could not overhear
his explanation. Just when this was finished the Emperor came in, and
seeing Biennais, he asked who that man was; the Empress hastened to tell
him, to explain the reason of his coming, mentioning that he had himself
given him permission. This the Emperor absolutely denied, and pretended
that the lady-in-waiting was to blame; he scolded her so severely that
the Empress could scarcely stop him, although she said, "But, my dear,
it is I who ordered Biennais to come." The Emperor laughed, and told her
that she had nothing to do about it; that the lady was responsible for
every one she admitted, and was alone to blame; and that he hoped that
nothing of the sort would ever happen again.
Another time, when M. Paër was giving Marie Louise a music-lesson, the
lady, who was present as usual at the lesson, had an order to give.
She opened the door and was leaning half out to give the order, when
Napoleon came in. At first he did not see her, and thought she was not
present. The music-master went out. "Where were you when I came in?" the
Emperor asked. She called his attention to the fact that she had not
left the room. He refused to believe her, and gave her a long sermon
in the course of which he said that he was unwilling that any man, no
matter what his rank, should be able to flatter himself that he had been
two seconds alone with the Empress. He added with some warmth: "Madame,
I honor and respect the Empress; but the sovereign of a great empire
must be placed above any breath of suspicion."
The gynæceum of Marie Louise was thus guarded with the greatest care and
submitted to a very severe discipline. Napoleon entered freely into his
wife's room whenever he pleased, and she never complained; for having
absolutely nothing to conceal from him, she had no desire to be
unfaithful to him even in her thoughts.
Madame Durand tells us that the Emperor, who desired to rule in
important matters, endured, and even liked to be contradicted on minor
matters. "When he was with Marie Louise, he used to be forever teasing
her ladies about a thousand things; it often happened that they stood
up against him, and he would carry on the discussion and laugh heartily
when he had succeeded in vexing the young girls, who, in their frankness
and ignorance of the ways of the world and the court, made very lively
and unaffected answers which were amusing for those to whom they were
addressed."