Madame Récamier--Childhood of Madame Récamier described by M. Benjamin
Constant--Letter to Madame Récamier from Lucien Bonaparte--Continuation
of M. Benjamin Constant's narrative: Madame de Staël--Madame
Récamier's journey to England--Madame de Staël's first journey to
Germany--Madame Récamier in Paris--Plans of the generals--Portrait
of Bernadotte--Trial of Moreau--Letters from Moreau and Masséna to
Madame Récamier--Death of M. Necker--Return of Madame de Staël--Madame
Récamier at Coppet--Prince Augustus of Prussia--Madame de Staël's
second journey to Germany--The Château de Chaumont--Letter from
Madame de Staël to Bonaparte--Madame Récamier and M. Mathieu de
Montmorency exiled--Madame Récamier at Châlons--Madame Récamier at
Lyons--Madame de Chevreuse--Spanish prisoners--Madame Récamier in
Rome--Albano-Canova: his letters--The Albano fisherman--Madame Récamier
in Naples--The Duc de Rohan-Chabot--King Murat: his letters--Madame
Récamier returns to France--Letter from Madame de Genlis--Letters from
Benjamin Constant--Articles by Benjamin Constant on Bonaparte's return
from Elba--Madame de Krüdener--The Duke of Wellington--I meet Madame
Récamier again--Death of Madame de Staël--The Abbaye-aux-Bois.
We pass to the embassy to Rome, to Italy, the dream of my life. Before
continuing my story, I must speak of a woman of whom we shall not lose
sight again till the end of these Memoirs. A correspondence is about to
open between us from Rome to Paris: it is necessary, therefore, to know
to whom I am writing, how and at what period I became acquainted with
Madame Récamier.
She met, in the different ranks of society, persons, more or less
celebrated, engaged upon the stage of the world: all offered her their
worship. Her beauty mingles its ideal existence with the material facts
of our history: a placid light illuminating a stormy picture.
Let us resume once more the consideration of times gone by; let us
endeavour, by the light of my setting sun, to trace a portrait on the
sky where my night, which approaches, will soon spread its shadows.
A letter published in the _Mercure_ after my return to France, in 1800,
had attracted the attention of Madame de Staël. I was not yet struck
off the list of Emigrants; _Atala_ drew me from my obscurity. Madame
Bacciocchi (Élisa Bonaparte), at the request of M. de Fontanes, applied
for and obtained my erasure. Madame de Staël had interested herself in
this matter: I went to thank her. I cannot remember if it was Christian
de Lamoignon or the author of _Corinne_[337] who introduced me to
Madame Récamier, her friend; the latter was then living at her house
in the Rue du Mont-Blanc. On emerging from my woods and the obscurity
of my life, I was still quite timid; I scarce dared lift my eyes to a
woman surrounded by adorers.
One morning, about a month later, I was at Madame de Staël's; she had
received me at her toilet; she let Mademoiselle Olive dress her, while
she talked, twisting a little green branch between her fingers. Entered
suddenly Madame Récamier, dressed in a white gown; she sat down in
the middle of a sofa covered in blue silk. Madame de Staël, remaining
standing, continued her very animated conversation, and talked
eloquently; I hardly answered, my eyes fixed on Madame Récamier. I had
never imagined anything like her, and was more than ever discouraged:
my admiration changed into ill-humour against my person. Madame
Récamier went out, and I did not see her again till twelve years later.
Twelve years! What adverse power thus cuts and fritters away our
days, squandering them ironically on all the indifferences called
attachments, on all the miseries styled felicities! Then, by a further
derision, when it has blighted and spent the most precious part, it
brings you back to the starting-point of your career. And how does it
bring you back? With your mind possessed with the foreign ideas, the
importunate phantoms, the deluded or incomplete feelings of a world
which has left you no happiness. Those ideas, those phantoms, those
feelings place themselves between you and the bliss which you might
still enjoy. You return with your heart sick with regret, afflicted by
those errors of youth so painful to the memory in the modesty of years.
That is how I returned, after having been to Rome, to Syria, after
seeing an empire go by, after becoming the man of noise, after ceasing
to be the man of silence. What had Madame Récamier done? What had been
her life?
I have not known the greater portion of the existence at once brilliant
and retired of which I am about to talk to you: I am obliged,
therefore, to betake myself to authorities other than mine; but they
shall be unexceptionable. First, Madame Récamier has described to me
facts which she has witnessed and communicated to me valuable letters.
She has written, on what she has seen, notes of which she has permitted
me to consult the text and, too rarely, to quote it. Next, Madame de
Staël in her correspondence, Benjamin Constant in his recollections,
some printed, the others in manuscript, M. Ballanche in a notice on our
common friend, Madame la Duchesse d'Abrantès in her sketches, Madame
de Genlis in hers have furnished abundant materials for my narrative:
I have only knotted all these fine names together, filling up the gaps
with my own statement, when some links of the chain of events were
overlooked or broken.
Montaigne says that men go gaping after future things[338]: I have the
passion for gaping after past things. All is pleasure, particularly
when we turn our eyes to the early years of those we love; we spin out
a cherished life; we extend the affection which we feel over days which
we never knew and which we revive; we adorn that which was with that
which is; we recompose youthfulness.
[Sidenote: Madame Récamier.]
At Lyons, I have seen the Jardin des Plantes laid down on the ruins of
the ancient amphitheatre and in the gardens of the old Abbaye de la
Déserte, now pulled down; the Rhone and the Saône flow at its feet;
far away rises the highest mountain in Europe, the first mile-post
of Italy, with its white board above the clouds. Madame Récamier was
placed in this abbey; she there passed her childhood behind a grill
which opened upon the outer church only at the elevation of the Mass.
Then one saw young girls bowing down in the inner chapel of the
convent. The saint's-day of the abbess was the principal festival of
the community; the prettiest boarder paid the customary compliment:
her dress was arranged, her hair plaited, her head veiled and crowned
by the hands of her playmates; and all this in silence, for the hour
of rising was one of those which were called "grand silence" in the
monasteries. It goes without saying that Juliette[339] had the honours
of the day. Her father and mother, having settled in Paris, sent to
fetch their child. From some rough drafts written by Madame Récamier, I
gather this note:
"On the eve of the day on which my aunt was to come to fetch
me, I was taken to the room of Madame the Abbess to receive
her blessing. The next day, bathed in tears, I went out
through the door, which I did not remember seeing opened to
admit me, found myself in a carriage with my aunt, and we
drove off for Paris.
"I leave with regret a time so calm and so pure to enter upon
that of excitement. It often comes back to me as in a vague,
sweet dream, with its clouds of incense, its numberless
ceremonies, its processions in the gardens, its singing and
its flowers."
Those hours which have left a pious desert now rest in another
religious solitude, without having lost anything of their freshness and
their harmony.
Benjamin Constant, the wittiest man after Voltaire, strives to give
an idea of Madame Récamier's early youth: he has drawn from the model
whose features he aimed at tracing a grace which was not natural to him.
"Among the women of our time," he says, "whom advantages of
feature, mind, or character have rendered famous, there is
one whom I wish to depict. Her beauty made her admired at
first; her soul next made itself known, and her soul appeared
even superior to her beauty. The habit of society supplied
her mind with the means to display itself, and her mind
remained below neither her beauty nor her soul.
"At the age of barely fifteen[340], married to a man[341]
who, occupied by an immense amount of business, could not
guide her extreme youthfulness, Madame Récamier found herself
left almost entirely to herself in a country which was still
in a state of chaos.
"Several women of the same period have filled Europe with
their diverse fames. The majority have paid tribute to their
century, some through indelicate loves, others by guilty
condescensions towards the successive tyrannies.
"She whom I am describing emerged radiant and pure from
that atmosphere which blighted all that it did not corrupt.
Childhood was at first a safeguard for her, thanks to the
Author of this beautiful work, who made everything turn to
her advantage. Far removed from the world, in a solitude
beautified by the arts, she formed for herself a gentle
occupation out of all those attractive and poetic studies
which remain the charm of another age.
"Often also, surrounded by young companions, she indulged
with them in clamorous sports. Slender and light of foot,
she outstripped them in the race; she covered with a bandage
her eyes which were one day to penetrate every soul. Her
glance, to-day so expressive and so profound, which seems to
us to reveal mysteries unknown to herself, sparkled then only
with a lively and playful gaiety. Her beautiful hair, which
cannot become undone without filling us with perturbation,
then fell, without danger to any, over her white shoulders.
Laughter loud and long often interrupted her childish
conversation; but already one could perceive in her that nice
and quick observation which seizes upon the ridiculous, that
gentle malice which is amused by it without ever wounding,
and particularly that exquisite sentiment of eloquence,
purity and good taste, a real inborn nobility, the titles to
which are stamped upon privileged beings.
[Illustration: madame Récamier.]
[Sidenote: Her girlhood.]
"The great world of that time was too uncongenial to her
nature that she should not prefer retirement. She was
never seen in the houses open to all comers, the only
meeting-places possible when every closed company was
suspected; where all classes rushed, because there they could
talk and say nothing, meet and not be compromised; where ill
manners took the place of wit and disorder of gaiety. She was
never seen at the Court of the Directory, where the power
was at once terrible and familiar, inspiring dread without
escaping contempt.
"However, Madame Récamier sometimes issued from her retreat
to go to the play or to the public walks and, in those places
frequented by all, her rare appearances were real events.
Every other object of those vast assemblies was forgotten,
and all flung themselves in her way. The man fortunate
enough to escort her had to overcome admiration as it were
an obstacle; his steps were at every moment delayed by the
onlookers crowding around her; she delighted in this success
with the gaiety of a child and the shyness of a young girl;
but her graceful dignity, which in her home distinguished
her from her young friends, abroad restrained the exuberant
throng. It was as though she reigned by her mere presence
over her companions and the public. Thus passed the first
years of Madame Récamier's marriage, between poetical
occupations, childish sports at home, and short and brilliant
appearances in the world."
Interrupting the narrative of the author of _Adolphe_[342], I will say
that, in this society following upon the Terror, everybody feared to
have the air of possessing a home. People met in the public places,
especially in the Pavillon de Hanovre[343]: when I saw that pavilion,
it was deserted like the hall of a yesterday's feast, or like a stage
from which the actors had descended for ever. There were wont to come
together young women escaped from prison, whom André Chénier had made
to say:
Je ne veux point mourir encore[344].
Madame Récamier had met Danton on his road to execution and, soon
after, she saw some of the fair victims snatched from men who had
themselves become victims of their own fury.
I come back to my guide Benjamin Constant:
"Madame Récamier's mind had need of another food. The
instinct for the beautiful caused her to delight beforehand,
without knowing them, in men distinguished by a reputation
for talent and genius.
"M. de La Harpe was one of the first to appreciate this woman
who was destined one day to group around herself all the
celebrities of her age. He had met her in her childhood, he
saw her again married, and the conversation of this young
person of sixteen years possessed a thousand attractions
for a man whom his excessive self-esteem and the habit of
intercourse with the most intelligent men in France rendered
extremely difficult and hard to please.
"M. de La Harpe divested himself, in the presence of Madame
Récamier, of most of the defects which made commerce with
him laborious and almost insupportable. He took pleasure in
acting as her guide: he admired the swiftness with which
her mind made good her want of experience and grasped all
that he revealed to her concerning the world and mankind.
It was at the time of the famous conversion which so many
people have qualified as hypocrisy. I have always regarded
that conversion as sincere. The sentiment of religion is an
inherent faculty in man; it is absurd to pretend that fraud
and falsehood have created that faculty. Nothing is put
into the human soul except what nature has put there. The
persecutions, the abuses of authority in favour of certain
dogmas can delude us personally and revolt us against what we
should feel if it were not imposed upon us; but, so soon as
the external causes have ceased, we return to our primitive
tendency: when there is no more courage in resisting, we
no longer applaud ourselves for our resistance. Now, the
Revolution having taken this merit from unbelief, the men
whom vanity alone had rendered unbelieving were able to
become religious in good faith.
"M. de La Harpe was of that number; but he retained his
intolerant character and that bitterness of disposition which
made him conceive new hatreds without abjuring the old ones.
All those thorns of his devotion disappeared, however, when
he was with Madame Récamier."
[Sidenote: M. de La Harpe.]
Here are a few fragments of the letters from M. de La Harpe to Madame
Récamier of which Benjamin Constant speaks:
"SATURDAY, 28 _September._
"What, madame, you carry your kindness so far as to wish to
honour a poor outlaw like myself with a visit! This time I
might say, like the ancient patriarchs, whom I resemble so
little otherwise, that 'an angel has come into my house.' I
well know that you like to do works of mercy; but, as things
go nowadays, all good is difficult, and this like the rest.
I must inform you, to my great regret, that to come alone
is first of all impossible, for many reasons: among others
that, with your youth and your face, the splendour of which
will follow you everywhere, you could not travel without a
waiting-maid, to whom prudence forbids me to confide the
secret of my retreat, which is not mine alone. You would
therefore have only one means of carrying out your generous
resolution, which would be to take counsel with Madame de
Clermont, who would bring you one day to her little sylvan
castle, and from there it would be very easy for you to
come with her. You are both made to appreciate and love one
another.... I am writing many verses at this moment. In
writing them, I often reflect that I shall one day be able
to read them to the fair and charming Juliet, whose mind is
as penetrating as her glance, and her taste as pure as her
soul. I would also willingly send you the fragment of Adonis
which you like, although it has become a little profane for
me; but I would want a promise that it shall not leave your
hands....
"Farewell, madame; I indulge with you in ideas which anyone
but yourself would think very extraordinary addressed to a
person of sixteen years; but I know that your sixteen years
are only in your face[345]."
"SATURDAY[346].
"It is long indeed, madame, since I had the pleasure of
talking with you, and, if you be sure, as you must be,
that this is one of my privations, you will make me no
reproaches....
"You have read in my soul; you have seen there that I wore
in it the mourning for the public misfortunes and for my own
faults, and I could not but feel that this sad disposition
formed too strong a contrast with all the brilliancy that
encompasses your age and your charms. I even fear lest it
should sometimes have made itself felt in the few moments
which I have been permitted to spend with you, and I entreat
your indulgence therefore. But now, madame, when Providence
seems to show us a better future very near at hand, to whom
could I better than to yourself confide the joy which I
derive from hopes so sweet and, to my belief, so near? Who
will fill a greater place than you in the private pleasures
which will be mingled with the public joy? I shall then be
more susceptible and less unworthy of the delights of your
charming company, and how happy I shall deem myself still
to count for something in it! If you deign to attach the
same value to the fruit of my labour, you shall always be
the first to whom I shall hasten to present it. Then no
more contradictions nor obstacles; you shall always find me
at your orders, and none, I hope, will be able to blame me
for this preference. I shall say, 'Here is she who, at the
age of illusions and with all the brilliant advantages that
can excuse them, has known all the nobility and delicacy of
proceedings of the purest friendship and, in the midst of
every homage, has remembered an outlaw!' I shall say, 'Here
is she whose youth and grace I have seen grow amid a general
corruption which was never able to overtake them, she whose
reason at sixteen years has often put mine to shame!' and I
am sure that none will be tempted to contradict me."
The sadness of events, of age and of religion, hidden under a melting
expression, present in these letters a singular admixture of thought
and style. Let us return once more to Benjamin Constant's narrative:
"We come to the time when Madame Récamier saw herself for the
first time the object of a strong and regular passion. Till
then she had received unanimous worship from all who had met
her, but her manner of life nowhere offered centres of union
where one could be sure of finding her. She never received
at home and she had not yet formed a society where one could
penetrate every day to see her and try to please her.
[Sidenote: Lucien Bonaparte.]
"In the summer of 1799, Madame Récamier came to live at the
Château de Clichy, a quarter of a league from Paris. A man
since celebrated through different sorts of pretensions, and
even more celebrated through the advantages which he has
refused than through the successes which he has won, Lucien
Bonaparte, obtained an introduction to her.
"He had not, till then, aspired to any save facile conquests
and, to obtain these, had studied only the romancing methods
which his want of knowledge of the world represented to him
as infallible. It is possible that he was enticed at first
by the idea of captivating the loveliest woman of his time.
Young, the leader of a party in the Council of the Five
Hundred, the brother of the first general of the age, he was
gratified at uniting the triumphs of a statesman and the
successes of a lover in his person.
"He conceived the idea of having recourse to a fiction to
declare his love to Madame Récamier; he imagined a letter
from Romeo to Juliet, and sent it as a work of his to her who
bore the same name."
Here is this letter from Lucien, known to Benjamin Constant; in the
midst of the revolutions which have stirred the world of reality, it is
racy to see a Bonaparte plunge into the world of fictions:
LETTER FROM ROMEO TO JULIET by the author of the _Tribu
indienne_[347]
"VENICE, 29 _July._
"Romeo writes to you, Juliet: if you refuse to read me, you
will be crueller than our parents whose long strife has at
last been appeased; no doubt that horrid strife will not
revive. ... A few days since, I knew you only by repute. I
had sometimes seen you in the temples and at feasts; I knew
you were the most beautiful; a thousand lips repeated your
praises, and your charms had struck but not dazzled me....
Why has peace delivered me to your empire? Peace! It reigns
in our families, but trouble reigns in my heart....
"Recall to yourself the day when I was first presented
to you. We were celebrating at a large banquet the
reconciliation of our fathers. I had come from the Senate,
where the troubles raised against the Republic had created a
lively impression.... You arrived; then all flocked round:
"'How lovely she is!' they cried....
"The throng in the evening filled the gardens of Bedmar.
Importunate people, who are everywhere, took possession
of me. This time I had neither patience with them nor
affability: they kept me from you!... I wished to account for
the emotion that was overcoming me. I knew love and wished
to master it.... I was carried away, and with you left the
festive spot.
"I have seen you since: love has seemed to smile upon me.
One day, seated at the water's edge, motionless and pensive,
you were stripping a rose of its leaves; alone with you,
I spoke.... I heard a sigh... vain illusion! Recovering
from my mistake, I saw indifference with its placid brow
seated between us two.... The passion which masters me found
utterance in my discourse, and yours bore the amiable and
cruel impress of childhood and pleasantry.
"Each day I would wish to see you, as though the dart were
not fixed deep enough in my heart. The moments at which I see
you are very rare, and those young Venetians who surround you
and talk insipid gallantry to you are hateful to me. How is
it possible to talk to Juliet as to other women!
"I have wanted to write to you; you will know me, you will
no longer refuse to believe me; my soul is ill at ease; it
thirsts for sentiment. If love has not stirred yours; if
Romeo in your eyes is but an ordinary man, oh, I conjure you
by the bonds which you have laid upon me, be severe with me
from kindness; do not smile to me again, do not speak to me
again, thrust me far from you. Tell me to go away and, if I
can execute that rigorous order, remember at least that Romeo
will ever love you; that none has ever reigned over him as
Juliet has; and that he can no longer cease to live for her,
at least in remembrance."
For a sober-minded man, all this is rather laughable: the Bonapartes
used to live on theatres, novels and verses; is the life of Napoleon
himself aught else than a poem?
[Sidenote: Lucien's passion.]
Benjamin Constant continues, while commenting upon this letter:
"The style of this letter is evidently imitated from all the
novels that have depicted the passions, from _Werther_ to the
_Nouvelle Héloïse._ Madame Récamier easily discovered, from
several circumstances of detail, that she herself was the
object of the declaration offered as though simply for her
perusal. She was not sufficiently accustomed to the language
of love to be warned by experience that everything in the
expressions was, perhaps, not sincere; but a true and sure
instinct warned her; she replied with simplicity and even
gaiety, and showed much more indifference than disquietude or
fear. It needed no more for Lucien really to experience the
passion which he had at first somewhat exaggerated.
"Lucien's letters grew truer, more eloquent, in proportion
as he grew more impassioned; certainly they always show the
ambition for ornamentation, the desire to attitudinize; he
cannot go to sleep without 'flinging himself into the arms of
Morpheus.' In the midst of his despair, he describes himself
as surrendered to the great occupations which surround him;
he is astonished that a man like him sheds tears; but, in all
this alloy of declamation and phrases, there is nevertheless
eloquence, sensibility and grief. At last, in a letter full
of passion in which he wrote to Madame Récamier, 'I cannot
hate you, but I can kill myself,' he suddenly makes a general
reflection: 'I am forgetting that love is not snatched, but
won,' and then adds, 'After receiving your note, I received
many of a diplomatic character; I learnt some news of which
public rumour has no doubt informed you. Congratulations
surround, deafen me... people talk to me of what is not you!
'Then another exclamation:
"'How weak is nature compared to love!'
"And yet this news which found Lucien unconcerned was an
immense piece of news: Bonaparte's disembarkation on his
return from Egypt.
"A new destiny had landed with its promises and its threats;
the 18 Brumaire was not more than three weeks distant.
"Barely escaped from the dangers of that day, which will
always fill so great a place in history, Lucien wrote to
Madame Récamier:
"'I have seen your image!... You will have had my last
thought!'...
"Madame Récamier contracted a friendship, which became daily
more intimate and which still endures, with a woman who was
illustrious in a very different way from that in which M. de
La Harpe was famous.
"M. Necker, having been struck off the list of Emigrants,
charged Madame de Staël, his daughter, to sell a house which
he had. Madame Récamier bought it, and this was an occasion
for her to see Madame de Staël[348].
"The sight of this celebrated woman at first filled her with
excessive timidity. The face of Madame de Staël has been
very widely discussed. But a proud glance, a sweet smile,
an habitual expression of kindliness, the absence of any
minute affectation and of any embarrassing reserve, caressing
words, praises somewhat direct but seeming to escape from
enthusiasm, an inexhaustible variety of enthusiasm surprise,
attract and conciliate almost all who approach her. I know
no woman, nor even any man, who is more convinced of her
own vast superiority to all the world and who makes this
conviction bear less hard upon others.
"Nothing could be more engaging than the conversations of
Madame de Staël and Madame Récamier. The quickness of the
one in expressing a thousand new thoughts, the quickness of
the other in grasping and perceiving them; that masculine
and powerful mind which disclosed all, that delicate and
subtle mind which understood all; those revelations made by a
trained genius to a youthful intelligence worthy to receive
them: all this formed a union which it is impossible to
describe without having had the happiness to witness it one's
self.
"The friendship of Madame Récamier for Madame de Staël was
strengthened by a sentiment which they both entertained:
filial love. Madame Récamier was fondly attached to her
mother, a woman of rare merit, whose health was already
giving rise to fears and whose loss her daughter has never
since ceased to regret. Madame de Staël had vowed a worship
to her father which his death has rendered but the more
exalted. Always overpowering in her manner of expressing
herself, she becomes still more so, above all, when speaking
of him. Her earnest voice, her eyes ready to grow wet with
tears, the sincerity of her enthusiasm moved the soul of even
those who did not share her opinion of that celebrated man.
Ridicule has frequently been cast on the praises which she
has awarded him in her writings; but, when you have heard her
on that subject, it is not possible to make it an object of
mockery, for nothing that is true is ridiculous."
[Sidenote: Madame de Staël.]
The letters of Corinne to her friend Madame Récamier began at the
period here recalled by Benjamin Constant: they have a charm which is
almost akin to love; I will set forth a few:
"COPPET, 9 _September._
"Do you recollect, fair Juliet, a person whom you loaded
with marks of interest last winter and who is bold enough to
invite you to do twice as much in the winter to come? How
do you govern the empire of beauty? One awards it you with
pleasure, that empire, because you are eminently good, and it
seems natural that so gentle a soul should have a charming
face to express it. Of all your admirers you know that I
prefer Adrien de Montmorency[349]. I have received letters
from him, remarkable for wit and grace, and I believe in the
solidity of his affections, notwithstanding the charm of his
manners. For the rest, that word 'solidity' suits me, who
claim to play but a very secondary part in his heart. But
you, who are the heroine of every sentiment, are exposed to
the great events out of which tragedies and novels are made.
Mine[350] is progressing at the foot of the Alps. I hope you
will read it with interest. I like this occupation. . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
"Amid all those successes, what you are and what you will
remain is an angel of purity and beauty, and you will have
the worship of the devout as well as of the worldly....
Have you seen the author of _Atala_ again? Are you still at
Clichy? In short, I ask for details of yourself. I love to
know what you are doing, to represent to myself the places in
which you dwell. Is not all a picture in the memories which
one retains of you? I add to this natural enthusiasm for your
rare advantages a great inclination for your company. Pray
accept kindly all that I offer you, and promise me that we
shall meet often in the coming winter."
"COPPET, 30 _April._
"Do you know, fair Juliet, that my friends have been
flattering me somewhat with the notion that you might come
here? Could you not give me that great pleasure? It is some
time since happiness spoilt me, and your arrival would be a
return of luck and would give me hopes for all that I desire.
Adrien and Mathieu say they will come. If you came with them,
a month's stay here would serve to show you our splendid
nature. My father says that you ought to choose Coppet for
your residence and that we should make our excursions from
there. My father is very eager in his desire to see you. You
know what they said of Homer:
"Par la voix des vieillards tu louais la beauté[351].
"And independently of that beauty you are charming."
During the short Peace of Amiens[352], Madame Récamier took a journey
to London with her mother. She had letters of introduction from the
old Duc de Guignes, who had been Ambassador to England thirty years
before. He had kept up a correspondence with the most brilliant women
of the time: the Duchess of Devonshire[353], Lady Melbourne[354], the
Marchioness of Salisbury[355], the Margravine of Anspach, with whom he
had been in love. His embassy was still celebrated, his memory green
among those respectable ladies.
[Sidenote: Madame Récamier in London.]
Such is the power of novelty in England that, on the morning after
her arrival, the newspapers were full of the foreign beauty. Madame
Récamier received visits from nearly all the persons to whom she had
sent letters. Among these persons, the most remarkable was the Duchess
of Devonshire, then between forty-five and fifty years of age. She was
still in vogue and beautiful, although she had lost one eye, which
she concealed behind a lock of her hair. The first time that Madame
Récamier appeared in public, it was in her company. The duchess took
her to the Opera in her box, in which were the Prince of Wales, the Duc
d'Orléans and his brothers the Duc de Montpensier[356] and the Comte
de Beaujolais[357]: the first two were to become kings; one was on
the verge of the throne, the other was still separated from it by an
abyss[358].
Eyes and opera-glasses were turned on the duchess' box. The Prince
of Wales said to Madame Récamier that, if she did not want to be
suffocated, she must leave before the end of the performance.
Scarcely was she on her feet, before the doors of the boxes opened
precipitously; she escaped nothing, and was carried by the tide of the
crowd to her carriage.
The next day, Madame Récamier went to Kensington Gardens, accompanied
by the Marquess of Douglas, later Duke of Hamilton[359], who has since
received Charles X. at Holyrood[360], and by his sister the Duchess
of Somerset[361]. The crowd flung itself on the fair foreigner's
footsteps. This effect was repeated each time she showed herself in
public; the newspapers resounded with her name; her portrait, engraved
by Bartolozzi[362], was spread broadcast through England. The author
of Antigone, M. Ballanche, adds that ships carried it as far as the
isles of Greece: beauty returned to the spots where its image had been
invented. We have a sketch of Madame Récamier by David, a full-length
portrait by Gérard, a bust by Canova. The portrait is Gérard's
master-piece; but it does not please me, because I recognise the
model's features in it without recognising the expression.
On the eve of Madame Récamier's departure, the Prince of Wales and the
Duchess of Devonshire asked leave to call on her and to bring with them
some persons of their society. Music was performed. Together with the
Chevalier Marin, the first harper of the time, she played variations on
a theme by Mozart. This evening was mentioned in the public press as
a concert which the beautiful foreigner had given, on leaving, to the
Prince of Wales.
The next day, she set sail for the Hague and took three days to make
a crossing of sixteen hours. She has told me that, during those days
dashed with storms, she read the _Génie du Christianisme_ straight
through; I was "revealed" to her, to use her kind expression: I
recognise in this the good-will which the winds and the sea have always
had for me.
Near the Hague, she visited the country-house of the Prince of Orange.
The Prince, having made her promise to go to see that residence, wrote
her several letters in which he speaks of his reverses and of his hope
to conquer them: William I. has, in fact, become a monarch[363]; at
that time one intrigued to become king as nowadays to become a deputy,
and those candidates for the sovereignty used to throng round the feet
of Madame Récamier as though she had crowns in her gift.
The following note from Bernadotte, who reigns to-day over Sweden[364],
ended Madame Récamier's journey to England: . . . . . . . . . .
"The English papers, while calming my apprehensions for
your health, have informed me of the dangers to which you
have been exposed. I at first blamed the people of London
for their too great assiduity, but, I confess to you, I
soon excused them, for I am an interested party when it is
necessary to justify persons who become indiscreet in order
to admire the charms of your celestial countenance.
"Amid the lustre which surrounds you and which you deserve by
such manifold rights, deign sometimes to remember that the
being most devoted to you in nature is
"BERNADOTTE."
[Sidenote: Madame de Staël's exil.]
Madame de Staël, threatened with exile, attempted to settle down at
Maffliers, a country-place eight leagues from Paris. She accepted the
proposal made to her by Madame Récamier, on her return from England, to
spend a few days with her at Saint-Brice; afterwards she went back to
her first refuge. She relates what happened then, in the _Dix années
d'exil_:
"I was at table," she says, "with three of my friends in a
room from which one saw the high road and the entrance-door.
It was at the end of September[365], at four o'clock: a man
in grey, on horseback, stopped and rang; I was sure of my
fate; he asked for me; I received him in the garden. As I
went towards him, I was struck by the scent of the flowers
and the beauty of the sun. The sensations that come to us
through the combinations of society are so different from
those of nature! The man told me that he was the commandant
of the Versailles Gendarmery.... He showed me a letter,
signed by Bonaparte, which contained the order to remove me
to forty leagues from Paris, with an injunction to make me
leave within twenty-four hours, while treating me, however,
with all the consideration due to a woman whose name was
known.... I replied to the officer of gendarmes that to set
out within twenty-four hours might suit conscripts, but not
a woman and children. Consequently I proposed that he should
accompany me to Paris, where I had need of three days to make
the necessary arrangements for my journey. I therefore got
into my carriage with my children and this officer, who had
been selected as being the most literary of the gendarmes. In
fact, he paid me compliments on my writings.
"'You see, monsieur,' I said to him, 'what comes of being an
intellectual woman. I beg you, dissuade the members of your
family from it, if you have occasion to do so.'
"I tried to rouse myself with pride, but I felt the clutching
at my heart.
"I stopped for a few moments at Madame Récamier's. I there
found General Junot[366], who, out of devotion for her,
promised to go the next day to speak to the First Consul. He
did so in fact with the greatest warmth....
"On the eve of the last day given me, Joseph Bonaparte made
yet one attempt....
"I was obliged to await the answer in an inn at two leagues
from Paris, not daring to return to my own home in town. A
day passed without the answer reaching me. Not wishing to
attract attention by remaining longer at the inn where I was,
I made the circuit of the walls of Paris to go to look for
another, also at two leagues from Paris, but on a different
road. This wandering life, at four steps from my friends and
my home, caused me a grief which I cannot recall without
shuddering[367]."
Madame de Staël, instead of returning to Coppet, set out on her first
journey to Germany. At that time she wrote me the letter on the death
of Madame de Beaumont which I quoted when writing of my first journey
to Rome.
Madame Récamier gathered round her in Paris all that was most
distinguished in the oppressed parties and in the opinions which had
not yielded to victory. One saw there the lights of the old Monarchy
and the new Empire: the Montmorencys, the Sabrans[368], the Lamoignons,
Generals Masséna, Moreau and Bernadotte; one destined for exile,
another for the throne. Illustrious foreigners also visited there: the
Prince of Orange, the Prince of Bavaria[369], the brother[370] of the
Queen of Prussia surrounded her, just as in London the Prince of Wales
was proud to carry her shawl. So irresistible was the attraction that
Eugène de Beauharnais[371] and the Emperor's very ministers went to
these assemblies. Bonaparte could not suffer success, even when it was
a woman's. He used to say:
"Since how long has the Council been held at Madame Récamier's?"
[Sidenote: General Bernadotte.]
I now return to Benjamin Constant:
"For a long time, Bonaparte, who had seized upon the
government, had been progressing towards tyranny. The most
opposite parties became incensed against him and, while
the bulk of the citizens were still allowing themselves to
be enervated by the tranquillity which was promised them,
the Republicans and the Royalists desired an inversion. M.
de Montmorency belonged to the latter by his birth, his
connections and his opinions. Madame Récamier cared for
politics only through her generous interest in the vanquished
of all parties. The independence of her character made her
averse to the Court of Napoleon, of which she had refused to
form part M. de Montmorency conceived the idea of confiding
his hopes to her, painted the restoration of the Bourbons
to her in colours calculated to arouse her enthusiasm,
and charged her to bring together two men at that time of
importance in France, Moreau and Bernadotte, to see if they
could unite against Bonaparte. She was intimately acquainted
with Bernadotte, who has since become Prince Royal of Sweden.
Something chivalrous in his appearance, something noble in
his manners, something very subtle in his intelligence,
something declamatory in his conversation make him a
remarkable man. Courageous in battle, bold in speech, but
timid in actions which are not military, irresolute in all
his designs, he has one thing which makes him very seductive
at first sight, but which, at the same time, places an
obstacle to any combination of plans with him, and that is a
habit of haranguing, a relic of his revolutionary education
which does not leave him. He sometimes has movements of real
eloquence; he knows it, he loves this kind of success and,
when he has entered upon the development of some general idea
connected with what he has heard in the clubs or the rostrum,
he loses sight of all that occupies him and is no longer
anything but an impassioned orator. That is what he appeared
in France during the early years of the reign of Bonaparte,
whom he always hated and by whom he was suspected, and that
again is what he has shown himself in these later days, amid
the disorder of Europe, of which, nevertheless, we owe the
liberation to him, because he reassured the foreigners by
showing them a Frenchman ready to march against the tyrant of
France and knowing how to say only such things as could have
an influence for his nation's good.
"Anything that offers a woman the means of exercising power
is always agreeable to her. Moreover, in the idea of rousing
against the despotism of Bonaparte men important through
their dignities and their glory there was something generous
and noble which was bound to tempt Madame Récamier. She
therefore lent herself to M. de Montmorency's wishes. She
often threw Bernadotte and Moreau together at her house.
Moreau wavered, Bernadotte spouted. Madame Récamier took
Moreau's indecisive speeches for a commencement of resolution
and Bernadotte's harangues as a signal for the overthrow of
tyranny. The two generals, on their side, were enraptured
to see their discontent pampered by so much beauty, wit and
grace. There was, in fact, something romantic and poetic in
that young and bewitching woman who talked to them of the
liberty of their country. Bernadotte never ceased repeating
to Madame Récamier that she was made to electrify the world
and create fanatics."
While noting the delicacy of this portraiture by Benjamin Constant,
it must be said that Madame Récamier would never have entered into
political interests but for the irritation which she felt at the
banishment of Madame de Staël. The future King of Sweden had a list
of the generals who still held with the party of independence, but
Moreau's name was not on it; it was the only one fit to be opposed
to Napoleon's, only Bernadotte did not know what manner of man the
Bonaparte was whose power he was attacking.
Madame Moreau[372] gave a ball: all Europe was there, excepting France,
which was represented only by the Republican Opposition. In the course
of this entertainment, General Bernadotte led Madame Récamier to a
little drawing-room where only the sound of the music followed them to
remind them where they were. Moreau passed into this drawing-room;
Bernadotte said to him, after long explanations:
"You have a popular name; you are the only one of us who can put
himself forward with the support of the people; see what you can do,
what we can do under your leader-ship."
Moreau repeated what he had often said before, that "he felt the danger
with which liberty was threatened, that they must watch Bonaparte, but
that he feared civil war."
This conversation was prolonged and became animated; Bernadotte lost
his temper, and said to General Moreau: "You do not dare to take up the
cause of liberty; well, then, Bonaparte will make sport of liberty and
you. It will perish in spite of our efforts and, as for you, you will
be involved in its ruin without having fought."
Prophetic words!
Madame Récamier's mother was intimately acquainted with Madame Hulot,
the mother of Madame Moreau, and Madame Récamier had contracted with
the latter one of those childish friendships which it is a pleasure to
continue in after life.
[Sidenote: The trial of General Moreau.]
During General Moreau's trial, Madame Récamier spent all her time
with Madame Moreau. The latter told her friend that her husband
complained that he had not yet seen her among the public which filled
the court and the bench. Madame Récamier arranged to be present at
the sitting on the day after this conversation. One of the judges, M.
Brillat-Savarin[373], undertook to pass her in through a private door
which opened on to the amphitheatre of the court. She raised her veil,
on entering, and cast a glance over the rows of prisoners in order to
find Moreau. He recognised her, rose and bowed. All eyes were turned in
her direction; she hastened to descend the steps of the amphitheatre
to reach the place intended for her. The prisoners were forty-seven
in number; they filled the benches placed opposite the judges of the
court. Each prisoner was placed between two gendarmes: the soldiers
treated General Moreau with deference and respect.
Messieurs de Polignac and de Rivière attracted attention, but
especially Georges Cadoudal. Pichegru, whose name will remain
associated with that of Moreau, was missing from his side, or, rather,
one seemed to see his shadow there, for it was known that he was also
missing from prison[374].
There was no more question of Republicans: it was Royalist loyalty
fighting against the new power; nevertheless, this cause of the
Legitimacy and of its high-born partisans had, as its leader, a man of
the people, Georges Cadoudal. One saw him there, with the thought that
that so pious and so fearless head was about to fall on the scaffold,
that he, Cadoudal, alone, perhaps, would not be saved, for he would
do nothing to be saved. He defended only his friends; as for what
concerned him in particular, he told all. Bonaparte was not so generous
as people supposed: eleven persons devoted to Georges perished with
him[375].
Moreau did not speak. At the end of the sitting, the judge who had
brought Madame Récamier came to take her away. She crossed the bar
at the opposite side to that by which she had entered, and passed by
the bench of the prisoners. Moreau came down, followed by his two
gendarmes; he was separated from her only by a hand-rail. He addressed
a few words to her, which, in her startled condition, she did not hear;
she tried to reply, her voice broke.
To-day, when the times are changed and when Bonaparte's name alone
seems to fill them, we do not conceive how small a hold his power as
yet had. On the night preceding the sentence, during which the court
sat, all Paris was on foot. Floods of people went towards the Palace of
Justice. Georges wanted no mercy; he replied to them who wished to ask
it for him:
"Do you promise me a finer occasion of death?"
Moreau, condemned to transportation, set out for Cadiz, whence he was
to cross to America. Madame Moreau went to join him. Madame Récamier
was with her at her departure. She saw her kiss her son in his cradle
and saw her turn back again to kiss him a second time; she took her to
her carriage, and received her last farewell.
[Sidenote: Letter from General Moreau.]
General Moreau wrote the following letter from Cadiz to his generous
friend:
"CHICLANA (near Cadiz), 12 _October_ 1804.
"MADAME,
"You will, no doubt, be pleased to hear news of two fugitives
in whom you have shown so much interest. After going through
all sorts of fatigues, by land and sea, we were hoping to
rest at Cadiz, when the yellow fever, which in some way may
be compared to the ills we had recently undergone, came to
besiege us in that town.
"Although my wife's confinement obliged us to remain there
for more than a month during the sickness, we were lucky
enough to escape infection; only one of our servants caught
it.
"At last we are at Chiclana, a very pretty village at a few
leagues from Cadiz, enjoying good health, and my wife quite
convalescent, after giving me a very healthy daughter.
"She is persuaded that you take as great an interest in this
event as in all that has happened to us, and she asks me to
acquaint you with it and to send you her kind remembrances.
"I say nothing of the kind of life which we lead: it is
excessively tedious and monotonous, but at least we breathe
at liberty, although in the land of the Inquisition.
"I beg you, madame, to receive the assurance of my respectful
attachment, and to believe me ever
"Your most humble and most obedient servant,
"V. MOREAU."
This letter is dated from Chiclana, a spot which, together with glory,
seemed to promise an assured reign to M. le Duc d'Angoulême: and yet
he appeared on that coast only with as fatal a result as Moreau, who
has been believed devoted to the Bourbons. Moreau, in the depths of
his soul, was devoted to liberty; when he had the misfortune to join
the Coalition, the question in his eyes was solely that of contending
against the despotism of Bonaparte. Louis XVIII. said to M. de
Montmorency, who was deploring the death of Moreau as a great loss to
the Crown:
"Not so great: Moreau was a Republican."
The general returned to Europe only to find the cannon-ball on which
his name was engraved by the finger of God.
Moreau recalls to my mind another illustrious captain, Masséna. The
latter was going to the Army of Italy; he asked Madame Récamier for a
white ribbon from the trimming of her dress. One day she received this
note in Masséna's hand:
"The charming ribbon given him by Madame Récamier was worn by
General Masséna in the battles and the blockade of Genoa: it
never left the general and constantly promoted his victory."
The old manners peep out through the new manners of which they form the
ground-work. The gallantry of the knight of gentle birth appeared again
in the plebeian soldier: the memory of the tournaments and crusades lay
hidden in the feats of arms with which modern France has crowned her
ancient victories. Cisher, the companion of Charlemagne, did not deck
himself in the fight with his lady's colours:
"He carried," says the Monk of Saint-Gall[376], "seven, eight, or even
nine enemies strung on his lance."
Cisher went before and Masséna came after chivalry.
Madame de Staël in Berlin heard of her father's illness; she hurried
back, but M. Necker was dead[377] before she reached Switzerland.
At that time happened M. Récamier's ruin[378]; Madame de Staël was
soon informed of this unfortunate event. She at once wrote to Madame
Récamier, her friend:
[Sidenote: Letter from Madame de Staël.]
"GENEVA, 17 _November._[379]
"Ah, my dear Juliet, what pain have I felt at the shocking
news that reaches me! How I curse the exile which does not
permit me to be with you, to press you to my heart! You have
lost all that has to do with the ease and comfort of life;
but, if it were possible to be more loved, more interesting
than you are, that is what would have happened to you. I am
going to write to M. Récamier, whom I pity and respect. But,
tell me, would it be a dream to hope to see you here this
winter? If you were willing, three months spent here, in a
narrow circle where you would be passionately cared for:
but in Paris also you inspire that feeling. At any rate, I
will come to see you at Lyons, or anywhere outside my 'forty
leagues,' to embrace you, to tell you that I have felt more
tenderness for you than for any woman I have ever known. I
can say nothing to you by way of consolation, unless it be
that you will be loved and valued more than ever and that
the admirable features of your generosity and benevolence
will be known, in spite of yourself, through this misfortune,
as they never would have been without it. Certainly, to
compare your situation with what it was, you have lost; but
if it were possible for me to envy what I love, I would give
all that I am to be you. A beauty unmatched in Europe, a
stainless reputation, a proud and generous character, what a
fortune of happiness that remains in this sad life through
which we go so naked! Dear Juliet, let our friendship draw
closer; let it consist not only of generous services, which
have all come from you, but of a sustained correspondence, a
reciprocal desire to confide our thoughts in one another, a
life together. Dear Juliet, you shall make me come back to
Paris, for you are still an all-powerful person, and we shall
see each other every day; and, as you are younger than I, you
shall close my eyes, and my children shall be your friends.
My daughter cried this morning at my tears and yours. Dear
Juliet, we both enjoyed the luxury that surrounded you; your
fortune was ours, and I feel myself ruined because you are no
longer rich. Believe me, some happiness remains when one has
made herself loved thus.
"Benjamin wants to write to you; he is much upset. Mathieu de
Montmorency has written me a very touching letter about you.
Dear friend, may your heart remain calm amid so many sorrows.
Alas, neither the death nor the indifference of your friends
threaten you, and those are the eternal wounds. Adieu, dear
angel, adieu! Respectfully I kiss your charming face...."
Madame Récamier now became the object of a new interest: she left
society without complaining and seemed as much made for solitude as for
the world. Her friends remained to her, "and this time," M. Ballanche
has said, "fortune withdrew alone."
Madame de Staël drew her friend to Coppet[380]. Prince Augustus of
Prussia, captured at the Battle of Eylau[381], passed through Geneva on
his way to Italy: he fell in love with Madame Récamier. The intimate
and private life that belongs to every man continued its course beneath
the general life, the blood of battles and the transformation of
empires. The rich man, on waking, beholds his gilded panellings, the
poor man his smoky rafters: there is but one sun-ray to give light to
both.
Prince Augustus, believing that Madame Récamier might consent to a
divorce, proposed to her in marriage. A record of this passion remains
in the picture of Corinne, which the Prince obtained from Gérard; he
made a present of it to Madame Récamier as an undying reminder of the
feeling with which she had inspired him and of the intimate friendship
which united Corinne and Juliet.
The summer was spent in merry-making: the world was upset; but it
happens that the echo of public catastrophes, mingling with the joys of
youth, redoubles their charm; we surrender ourselves the more eagerly
to pleasures the nearer we feel to losing them.
Madame de Genlis has made a novel out of this attachment of Prince
Augustus. I found her one day in the throes of composition. She
was living at the Arsenal, surrounded by dusty books, in a gloomy
apartment. She expected nobody; she was dressed in a black gown; her
white hair obscured her face; she held a harp between her knees, and
her head was sunk upon her breast. Hanging on to the strings of the
instrument, she allowed her pale and emaciated hands to wander on
either side of the sonorous wire-work, from which she drew feeble
sounds, resembling the distant and undefinable voices of death. What
was the ancient sybil singing? She was singing Madame Récamier. She
had at first hated her, but had later been conquered by beauty and
distress. Madame de Genlis had just finished this page on Madame
Récamier, giving her the name of Athenais:
[Sidenote: Prince Augustus of Prussia.]
"The Prince entered the drawing-room, with Madame de Staël
showing him the way. Suddenly the door half opened, and
Athenais advanced. By the elegance of her figure, by the
dazzling brilliancy of her features, the Prince could not
fail to recognise her, but he had formed a quite different
idea of her: he had represented this woman to himself as
famous for her beauty, as proud of her successes, with an
assumed bearing and the kind of confidence which that sort
of celebrity only too often gives; and he saw a timid young
person step forward with embarrassment and blush as she
appeared. The sweetest sentiment mingled with his surprise.
"After dinner, they did not go out, because of the excessive
heat; they went down into the gallery to make music until the
time came to take the air. After a few brilliant chords and
harmonious sounds of entrancing sweetness, Athenais sang to
her own accompaniment on the harp. The Prince listened to her
with rapture and, when she had finished, looked at her with
inexpressible commotion, exclaiming:
"'And such talents!'"
Madame de Staël, in her maturity, loved Madame Récamier: Madame de
Genlis, in her decrepitude, found back for her the accents of her
youth; the author of _Mademoiselle de Clermont_[382] lays the scene of
her novel[383] at Coppet, with the author of _Corinne_, a rival whom
she detested: that was one wonder. Another wonder is to see me writing
these details. I am turning over letters which remind me of times in
which I lived solitary and unknown. There was happiness without me on
the shores of Coppet, which I have not seen since without a certain
movement of envy. The things which have escaped me on earth, which
have fled from me, which I regret, would kill me, were I not so near
my tomb; but, at this short distance from eternal oblivion, truths and
dreams are equally vain: at the end of one's life, all is time lost.
Madame de Staël set out a second time for Germany[384]. Here begins
again a series of letters to Madame Récamier, perhaps even more
charming than the first.
There is nothing in Madame de Staël's printed works which approaches
this naturalness, this eloquence, in which imagination lends its
expression to the feelings. The virtue of Madame Récamier's friendship
must have been great, since it was able to make a woman of genius
produce what was hidden and, as yet, unrevealed in her talent. We
divine, moreover, in the sad accent of Madame de Staël a secret
displeasure, of which the beauty would naturally be the confidant, she
who could never receive like wounds.
Madame de Staël, having returned to France, came, in the spring of
1810[385], to live at the Château de Chaumont[386], on the banks of the
Loire, at forty leagues from Paris, the distance fixed by the radius of
her banishment. Madame Récamier joined her at that country-house.
Madame de Staël was at that time supervising the impression of her work
on Germany; when it was on the point of publication, she sent it to
Bonaparte with this letter:
[Sidenote: Madame de Staël to Napoleon.]
"SIRE,
"I take the liberty of presenting to Your Majesty my work on
Germany. If you deign to read it, it seems to me that you
will find in it proof of a mind capable of some reflection
and ripened by time. Sire, it is twelve years since I
saw Your Majesty and since I was exiled. Twelve years of
misfortune modify all characters, and destiny teaches
resignation to those who suffer. Prepared to put to sea, I
beseech Your Majesty to grant me half-an-hour's conversation.
I believe that I have things to tell you which may interest
you, and it is on that score that I beseech you to grant
me the favour of speaking to you before my departure. I
will allow myself only one thing in this letter, which is
an explanation of the motives which oblige me to leave the
Continent, if I do not obtain permission from Your Majesty to
live at a country-place near enough to Paris for my children
to stay there. Your Majesty's disgrace casts so great a
disfavour in Europe upon the persons who are its object,
that I cannot take a step without encountering its effects.
Some fear to compromise themselves by seeing me, others
think themselves Romans when triumphing over that fear.
The simplest social relations become services which a proud
mind cannot put up with. Among my friends are some who have
allied themselves to my lot with admirable generosity; but
I have seen the most intimate sentiments shattered against
the necessity to live with me in solitude, and I have spent
my life during the past eight years between the dread of not
obtaining sacrifices and the sorrow of being the object of
them. It is perhaps ridiculous thus to enter into details of
one's impressions with the sovereign of the world; but that
which gave you the world, Sire, is a sovereign genius. And,
in respect of observation of the human heart, Your Majesty's
comprehension embraces the greatest and the most delicate
springs. My sons have no career, my daughter is thirteen
years of age; in a few years it will be necessary to settle
her: it would be selfish to compel her to live in the insipid
residences to which I am condemned. I shall therefore have
to part from her, alas! This life is unendurable, and I know
no remedy for it on the Continent. What city can I choose in
which Your Majesty's disgrace does not place an invincible
obstacle to both the settling of my children and my personal
repose? Your Majesty is not yourself, perhaps, aware of the
fear which most of the authorities of every country entertain
of exiles, and in this connection I should have things to
tell you which surely exceed what you may have ordered. Your
Majesty has been told that I regretted Paris because of the
Museum and Talma: this is an agreeable jest upon exile, in
other words upon the misfortune which Cicero and Bolingbroke
have declared to be the most insupportable of all; but, if I
were to love the master-pieces of art which France owes to
Your Majesty's conquests, if I were to love those beautiful
tragedies, the images of heroism: would it be for you, Sire,
to blame me for it? Is not the happiness of each individual
compounded of the nature of his faculties? And, if Heaven has
given me talents, have I not the imagination which renders
the enjoyment of the arts and the mind necessary? So many
people ask of Your Majesty real advantages of every kind!
Why should I blush to ask of you friendship, poetry, music,
pictures, all that ideal existence which I can enjoy without
swerving from the submission which I owe to the Monarch of
France?"
This unpublished letter was worth preserving[387]. Madame de Staël
was not, as has been contended, a blind and implacable enemy. She was
listened to no more than I, when I also saw myself obliged to write to
Bonaparte to ask him for the life of my cousin Armand. Alexander and
Cæsar would have been touched by this letter so lofty in tone, written
by so famous a woman; but the confidence of the merit which judges
itself the equal of the supreme dominion, that sort of familiarity of
the intellect which places itself on the level of the master of Europe
to treat with him as from crown to crown appeared to Bonaparte but
the arrogance of a disordered self-esteem. He thought himself set at
defiance by all that had any independent greatness; to him baseness
seemed fidelity, pride revolt: he did not know that true talent
recognises no Napoleons save in genius, that it has its right of entry
into the palaces as into the temples, because it is immortal.
Madame de Staël left Chaumont and returned to Coppet[388]; Madame
Récamier again hastened to go to her; M. Mathieu de Montmorency also
remained devoted to her. Both were punished for it; they were smitten
with the very penalty which they had gone to console: the forty
leagues' distance from Paris was inflicted on them[389].
Madame Récamier retired to Châlons-sur-Marne[390] influenced in her
selection by its propinquity to Montmirail[391], where Messieurs de La
Rochefoucauld-Doudeauville resided.
A thousand details of Bonaparte's oppression have become lost in the
general tyranny: the persecuted persons dreaded to see their friends
for fear of compromising them; their friends dared not visit them, for
fear of drawing down upon them some increase of severity. The unhappy
outlaw, becoming as one infected with the plague, lived sequestered
from the human race, in quarantine in the despot's hatred. You were
well received so long as your independence of opinion was unknown; so
soon as it became known, every one drew back; there remained around you
none save authorities spying on your connections, your feelings, your
correspondence, your proceedings: such were those times of honour and
liberty.
Madame de Staël's letters reveal the sufferings of that period, in
which talents were at each moment threatened with a dungeon, in which
one busied one's self only with the means of escaping, in which one
aspired to flight as to a deliverance: when liberty has disappeared
there remains a country, but no more mother-land.
[Sidenote: Madame de Staël's marriage.]
When writing to her friend that she did not wish to see her, from
apprehension of the evil which she might bring upon her, Madame de
Staël did not say all: she was secretly married to M. de Rocca[392],
whence resulted a complication of difficulties by which the imperial
police profited. Madame Récamier, from whom Madame de Staël thought it
right to conceal her new cares, was astonished, with good reason, at
the stubbornness which she displayed in forbidding her the entry of her
place at Coppet: though wounded by the resistance of Madame de Staël,
for whom she had already sacrificed herself, she persisted in her
resolve to join her.
All the letters which ought to have restrained Madame Récamier only
served to confirm her in her intention; she started and, at Dijon,
received this fatal note:
"I bid you adieu, dear angel of my life, with all the
tenderness of my soul. I recommend Auguste[393] to you:
let him see you and then let him see me again. You are a
celestial creature. If I had lived in your company, I should
have been too happy: fate carries me away. Adieu[394]."
Madame de Staël was to meet Juliet again only to die. Her note struck
the traveller with a thunder-bolt: to fly suddenly, to depart before
pressing in her arms her who was hastening to fling herself into her
adversity, was not that a cruel resolution on Madame de Staël's part?
It appeared to Madame Récamier that friendship might have been less
"carried away by fate."
Madame de Staël went in search of England by way of Germany and Sweden:
the power of Napoleon was a second sea separating Albion from Europe,
even as the Ocean separates her from the world.
Auguste, Madame de Staël's son, had lost his brother killed by a
sword-thrust in a duel[395]; he married and had a son: this son, a few
months old, followed him into the tomb. With Auguste de Staël the male
posterity of an illustrious woman died out, for it does not revive in
the honourable, but unknown name of Rocca.
[Sidenote: The Duchesse de Chevreuse.]
Madame Récamier, left alone and full of regret, first sought a
refuge in her native town of Lyons[396]: there she met Madame de
Chevreuse[397], another exile. Madame de Chevreuse had been forced
by the Emperor and, afterwards, by her own family to enter the new
society. You would scarce find an historic name which did not consent
to lose its honour rather than a single forest. Once engaged at the
Tuileries, Madame de Chevreuse thought she would be able to hold
sway in a Court newly-issued from the camps: that Court, it is true,
sought to acquaint itself with the airs of olden times, in the hope of
covering its recent origin; but the plebeian manner was still too rough
to receive lessons from aristocratic impertinence. In a revolution
which endures and which has taken its last step, as for instance in
Rome, the Patricians, a century after the fall of the Republic, could
resign themselves to being no more than the Senate of the Emperors;
the past had nought wherewith to reproach the Emperors of the present,
since that past was finished; every existence was branded with a
like stigma. But in France the nobles who converted themselves into
chamberlains were in too great a hurry; the new-born Empire disappeared
before them, and they found themselves face to face with the old
Monarchy raised to life again.
Madame de Chevreuse, attacked by a disease of the chest, begged and was
refused the favour of ending her days in Paris; we do not expire when
and where we please: Napoleon, who made so many dead, would never have
done with them if he had left them the choice of their tomb.
Madame Récamier succeeded in forgetting her own sorrows only by
interesting herself in those of others; through the charitable
connivance of a sister of Mercy, she secretly visited the Spanish
prisoners in Lyons. One of them, brave and handsome, a Christian like
the Cid, was passing away to God: seated on his straw, he played the
guitar; his sword had betrayed his hand. So soon as he caught sight of
his benefactress, he sang her ballads of his country, having no other
means to thank her. His enfeebled voice and the confused sounds of
the instrument were lost in the silence of the prison. The soldier's
comrades, half wrapped in their torn cloaks, their black locks hanging
over their bronzed and emaciated faces, raised eyes, proud of their
Castilian blood, moist with gratitude, on the exile who recalled to
them a mother, a sister, a sweetheart, and who bore the yoke of the
same tyranny.
The Spaniard died. He could say with Zarviska, the young and valorous
Polish poet:
"An unknown hand shall close my eyes; the tolling of a
foreign bell shall announce my death, and voices which are
not those of my country shall pray for me."
Mathieu de Montmorency came to Lyons to visit Madame Récamier. She then
knew M. Camille Jordan and M. Ballanche, both worthy to swell the train
of friendships attached to her noble life.
Madame Récamier was too proud to solicit her recall. Fouché had long
and to no purpose urged her to adorn the Court of the Emperor: the
details of these palace negociations can be read in the writings of
the time. Madame Récamier retired to Italy[398]; M. de Montmorency
accompanied her as far as Chambéry. She crossed the rest of the Alps
with no other travelling-companion than a little niece of seven, to-day
Madame Lenormant[399].
Rome was at that time a French town, the capital of the Department of
the Tiber. The Pope was repining a prisoner at Fontainebleau, in the
palace of Francis I.
Fouché was on a special mission in Italy and commanded in the city
of the Cæsars, even as the chief of the black eunuchs commands in
Athens: he merely passed through; M. de Norvins[400] was installed in
the quality of Minister of Police: the movement was bearing upon a
different point in Europe.
Conquered without having seen its second Alaric, the Eternal City lay
silent, plunged in its ruins. Artists dwelt alone on that heap of
centuries. Canova received Madame Récamier as though she were a Greek
statue which France was returning to the Vatican Museum: the pontiff
of the arts, he inaugurated her into the honours of the Capitol in
deserted Rome.
[Sidenote: Antonio Canova.]
Canova had a house at Albano; he offered it to Madame Récamier; she
passed the summer there. The balconied window of her bed-room was one
of those large painter's casements which frame the landscape. It opened
upon the ruins of Pompey's Villa; in the distance, over olive trees,
one saw the sun set in the sea. Canova returned at that hour; stirred
by that beautiful sight, he loved to sing, with a Venetian accent and
a pleasant voice, the barcarolle, _O pescator dell'onda_; Madame
Récamier accompanied him on the piano. The sculptor of Psyche and the
Magdalen revelled in this harmony, and sought in Juliet's features the
type of the Beatrix which he was dreaming of one day making. Rome had
of old seen Raphael and Michael Angelo crown their models in poetic
orgies, too freely related by Cellini[401]: how much superior to them
was this pure and decent little scene between an exiled woman and that
simple and gentle Canova!
More solitary than ever, Rome at that moment wore widow's weeds: she no
longer saw pass, blessing her as they did so, the peaceful sovereigns
who rejuvenated her old days with all the wonders of the arts. The
noise of the world had once again withdrawn from her; St. Peter's was
deserted like the Coliseum.
I have read the eloquent letters which the most illustrious woman
of our past days wrote to her friend; read the same feelings of
tenderness, expressed with the most charming artlessness, in the
language of Petrarch[402], by the first sculptor of modern times. I
will not be guilty of the sacrilege of trying to translate them:
"_Domenico, mattina._
"Dio eterno? siamo vivi, o siamo morti? lo voglio esser
vivo, almeno per scriveri; si, lo vuole il mio cuore, anzi
mi comanda assolutamente di farlo. Oh! se'l conoscete bene
a fondo questo povero cuor mio, quanto, quanto mai ve ne
persuadereste! Ma per disgrazia mia pare ch'egli sia alquanto
all'oscuro per voi. Pazienza! Ditemi almeno come state di
saluto, se di più non volete dire; benchè mi abbiate promesso
di scrivere a di scrivermi dolce. Io davvero che avrei voluto
vedervi personalmente in questi giorni, ma non vi poteva
essere alcuna via di poterlo fare; anzi su di questo vi dirò
a voce delle cose curiose. Convenie dunque che mi contenti, a
forza, di vidervi in spirito. In questo modo sempre mi siete
presente, sempre vi veggo, sempre vi parlo, vi dico tante,
tante cose, ma tutte, tutte al vento, tutte! Pazienza anche
di questo! gran fatto che la cosa abbia d'andare sempre in
questo modo! voglio intanto però che siate certa, certissima
che l'anima mia vi ama molto più assai di quello che mai
possiate credere ed imaginare."
Madame Récamier had succoured the Spanish prisoners in Lyons; another
victim of the power which struck her enabled her to exercise her
compassionate humour at Albano: a fisherman, accused of holding
intelligence with the subjects of the Pope, had been tried and
sentenced to death. The inhabitants of Albano entreated the stranger
who had taken refuge with them to intercede for the unfortunate man.
She was taken to the gaol; she saw the prisoner; struck by the man's
despair, she melted into tears. The unhappy man begged her to come
to his assistance, to intercede for him, to save him; his prayer was
the more harrowing in that it was impossible to snatch him from the
punishment. It was already night, and he was to be shot at sunrise.
Nevertheless, Madame Récamier, although persuaded of the uselessness
of her application, did not hesitate. She sent for her carriage and
stepped into it, without the hope which she left to the condemned man.
She drove through the Campagna infested with brigands, reached Rome,
and failed to find the Director of Police. She waited two hours at
the Palazzo Fiano, counting the minutes of a life of which the last
was approaching. When M. de Norvins arrived, she explained to him the
object of her journey. He replied that the sentence was pronounced and
that he had not the necessary power to suspend it.
[Sidenote: The Albano fisherman.]
Madame Récamier set out again heart-broken; the prisoner had ceased
to live when she approached Albano. The inhabitants were awaiting the
Frenchwoman on the road; so soon as they discovered her, they hastened
up to her. The priest who had attended the culprit brought her his last
vows: he thanked _la dama_, whom he had not ceased to seek with his
eyes while going to the place of execution; he begged her to pray for
him: for a Christian has not done with everything and is not beyond
fear when he is no more. Madame Récamier was led by the ecclesiastic to
the church, where the crowd of handsome Albano peasant-women followed
her. The fisherman had been shot at the hour at which the sun rose upon
the bark, now unguided, which he had been accustomed to steer over the
seas and upon the shores which he had been accustomed to survey.
To become disgusted with conquerors, one must have known all the ills
they cause, one must have been a witness to the indifference with
which men sacrifice to them the most inoffensive creatures in a corner
of the globe in which they have never set foot. Of what consequence to
Bonaparte's successes were the days of a poor net-maker in the Papal
States? Undoubtedly, he never knew that that paltry fisherman existed;
amid the clatter of his struggle with kings, he did not so much as know
the name of his plebeian victim.
The world perceives in Napoleon naught save victories; the tears with
which the triumphal columns are cemented do not fall from his eyes. And
I, I think that, out of those despised sufferings, those calamities of
the small and the lowly, are formed, in the councils of Providence, the
secret causes which hurl the ruler from his pinnacle. When instances
of injustice accumulate in such a way as to bear down the weight of
fortune, the scale descends. There is blood which is dumb and blood
which cries out: the blood of the battle-field is drunk in silence by
the earth; peaceable blood when shed spurts with a moan towards Heaven;
God receives it and avenges it. Bonaparte slew the Albano fisherman; a
few months later[403], he was banished among the fishermen of Elba, and
he died among those of St. Helena.
Did my vague memory, scarce outlined in Madame Récamier's thoughts,
appear to her amid the plains of the Tiber and the Anio? I had already
passed through those melancholy wastes; I had left a tomb there
honoured by Juliet's friends. When M. de Montmorin's daughter[404]
died, in 1803, Madame de Staël and M. Necker wrote me letters of
regret; you have seen those letters. Thus I received at Rome, almost
before I knew Madame Récamier, letters dated from Coppet; it was the
first sign of an affinity of destiny. Madame Récamier has also told me
that my Letter of 1804 to M. de Fontanes served her as a guide in 1814,
and that she often read and re-read the following passage:
"Whosoever has no tie left in life should come to live in
Rome. There he will find for company a land which will feed
his reflections and occupy his heart, and walks which will
always say something to him. The stone which he treads under
foot will speak to him; the dust which the wind raises
beneath his steps will contain some human greatness. If he
is unhappy, if he has mingled the ashes of those whom he
loved with so many illustrious ashes, with what charm will
he not pass from the sepulchre of the Scipios to the last
resting-place of a virtuous friend!... If he is a Christian,
ah! how can he then tear himself away from that land which
has become his country, from that land which has witnessed
the birth of a second empire, holier in its cradle, greater
in its might than that which preceded it, from that land
where the friends whom we have lost, sleeping with the
martyrs in the catacombs, under the eye of the Father of the
Faithful, appear as though they ought to be the first to
awake in their dust and seem to be nearer to the skies?"
But, in 1814, I was only a vulgar cicerone to Madame Récamier, the
common property of all travellers; more fortunate in 1823, I had ceased
to be a stranger to her and we were able to talk together of the Roman
ruins.
In Naples, where Madame Récamier went in the autumn[405], the
occupations of solitude ceased. Scarce had she alighted at her inn,
when King Joachim's ministers came hastening up. Murat, forgetting the
hand which had changed his whip[406] into a sceptre, was ready to join
the Coalition. Bonaparte had planted his sword in the middle of Europe,
as the Gauls planted their blade in the middle of the _mallus_[407];
around Napoleon's sword were drawn up in a circle kingdoms which he
distributed to his family. Caroline[408] had received that of Naples.
Madame Murat was not so elegant an antique cameo as the Princess
Borghese; but she had more expression and more wit than her sister. In
the firmness of her character one recognised the blood of Napoleon.
If the diadem had not been for her an ornament for a woman's head, it
would still have been the emblem of a queen's power.
[Sidenote: Queen Caroline Murat.]
Caroline received Madame Récamier with an alacrity which was the more
affectionate that the oppression of tyranny made itself felt as far as
Portici. Nevertheless, the city which possesses Virgil's[409] tomb
and Tasso's[410] cradle, the city in which Horace[411], Livy[412],
Boccaccio[413] and Sannazaro[414] lived, in which Durante[415] and
Cimarosa[416] were born, had been beautified by its new master. Order
had been restored; the _lazzaroni_ no longer played at ball with
human heads to amuse Admiral Nelson[417] and Lady Hamilton[418].
The excavations at Pompeii had been extended; a road wound over the
Posilipo[419], into whose flanks I had penetrated, in 1803[420], to go
to ask at Liternum[421] for Scipio's retreat. Those new royalties of
a military dynasty had brought back life to regions in which before
them the moribund languor of an old race of kings had made itself
manifest. Robert Guiscard[422], William Iron-arm[423], Roger[424] and
Tancred[425] seemed to have returned, minus the chivalry.
Madame Récamier was in Naples in February 1814; where was I then? In
my Vallée-aux-Loups, commencing the story of my life. I was concerning
myself with the sports of my childhood to the sound of the foreign
soldier's footsteps. The woman whose name was to close these Memoirs
was strolling on the _marine_ of Baja. Had I not a presentiment of the
good which was one day to come to me from that quarter, when I was
depicting the Parthenopian seduction in the _Martyrs_:
"Every morning, so soon as dawn began to appear, I went under
a portico.... The sun rose before me... it illumined with
its tenderest fires the mountain-chain of Salernum[426], the
blue sea studded with the white sails of the fishermen, the
islands of Capræ[427], Œnaria[428], Prochyta[429]... the cape
of Misenum[430] and Baiæ[431] with all its enchantments.
"Flowers and fruits moist with dew are less sweet and less
fresh than the Neapolitan landscape emerging from the shades
of night. I was always surprised, on reaching the portico, to
find myself beside the sea; for the waves in that spot scarce
gave forth a fountain's gentle murmur. In an ecstasy before
that picture, I leant against a pillar and, void of thoughts,
desires, or plans, remained whole hours breathing a delicious
air. The charm was so intense that it seemed to me that that
divine air was transforming my own substance, and that, with
an unspeakable pleasure, I was rising towards the firmament
like a pure spirit....
"To await or go in search of beauty; to see her come towards
us in a wherry and smile to us from amid the waves; to
float with her on the sea, while strewing its surface with
flowers; to follow the enchantress into the recesses of
that wood of myrtles and into the fortunate fields where
Virgil set Elysium; that was the occupation of our days....
Perhaps there are climates dangerous to virtue through their
extreme voluptuousness. And is it not this that an ingenious
fable strove to teach, when telling that Parthenope[432]
was built upon a syren's tomb? The velvet brilliancy of
the country-side, the lukewarm temperature of the air, the
rounded outlines of the mountains, the soft inflexions of the
streams and valleys form at Naples so many seductions for the
senses, which everything tends to rest, nothing to wound....
"To escape the noonday heat, we would retire to that part of
the palace built under the sea. Stretched on beds of ivory,
we listened to the murmuring of the waves above our heads. If
some storm surprised us down in these retreats, the slaves
brought us lamps filled with the most precious nard of Araby.
Then entered young Neapolitan girls, bearing roses of Pæstum
in vases of Nola; while the billows moaned without, they
sang, performing tranquil dances before us which reminded
me of the manners of Greece: thus were realized for us the
fictions of the poets; we seemed in Neptune's cave to be
watching the sports of the Nereids[433]."
Madame Récamier met, at Naples, Count von Neipperg[434] and the Duc
de Rohan-Chabot[435]: one was destined to climb to the eagle's nest,
the other to wear the purple. They said of the latter that he was
devoted to red, having worn the coat of a chamberlain, the uniform of a
light-horseman of the Guard, and the robe of a cardinal.
[Sidenote: The Duc de Rohan.]
The Duc de Rohan was very pretty; he warbled plaintive ballads, painted
little water-colours and was eminent for his coquettish and studied
dress. When he became an abbé, his pious hair, tried by the iron,
had all a martyr's elegance. He used to preach at dusk, in sombre
oratories, before devout women, taking care, with the aid of two or
three artistically-distributed tapers, to light up his pale features in
mezzotint, like a picture[436].
We cannot, at first sight, explain to ourselves how men whose names
rendered them stupid by sheer force of pride came to accept wages from
a parvenu. Looking more closely into this aptness for entering service,
we find that it proceeded naturally from their manners: accustomed
to the domestic condition, little recked they if the livery was
changed, provided the master were lodged at the castle under the same
sign-board. Bonaparte's contempt appraised them at their true value;
the great soldier, abandoned by his own people, said to a great lady:
"As a matter of fact, there are only yourselves that know how to serve."
Religion and death have passed the sponge over a few weaknesses, very
pardonable after all, of the Cardinal de Rohan. A Christian priest, he
consummated his sacrifice at Besançon, succouring the unhappy, feeding
the poor, clothing the orphan, and wearing out in good works his life,
the course of which was naturally shortened by deplorable ill-health.
Reader, if you grow impatient at these quotations, these accounts,
reflect, first, that perhaps you have not read my works and, next, that
I can no longer hear you; I am sleeping in the ground on which you
tread; if you be angry with me, stamp on the ground, you will insult
only my bones. Reflect, moreover, that my writings form an essential
part of that existence whose leaves I am unfolding. Ah, why had not
my pictures of Naples a background of truth! Why was not the daughter
of the Rhone[437] the real woman of my imaginary delights? But no; if
I was Augustine, Jerome, Eudorus, I was all these alone; my days went
before the days of the friend of Corinne in Italy. How happy should
I have been could I have spread my whole life under her feet like a
carpet of flowers! My life is rough and its unevenness hurts. May my
dying hours at least reflect the tenderness and charm with which she
has filled them upon her who was beloved by all and of whom none had
ever to complain!
[Sidenote: Murat, King of Naples.]
Murat, King of Naples, born 25 March 1767, at the Bastide, near Cahors,
was sent to Toulouse for his studies. He took a dislike to letters,
enlisted in the Ardennes Chasseurs, deserted, and ran away to Paris.
Admitted into Louis XVI.'s Constitutional Guard, he received, after
the disbanding of that guard, a cornetcy in the 12th Regiment of
Mounted Chasseurs. On the death of Robespierre, he was dismissed as a
Terrorist[438]; the same thing happened to Bonaparte, and both soldiers
were left without resources. Murat was restored to favour on the 13
Vendémiaire, and became aide-de-camp to Napoleon. He served under him
in the early Italian campaigns, took the Valtellina and added it to the
Cisalpine Republic[439]; he took part in the Egyptian Expedition and
distinguished himself at the Battle of Abukir[440]. Returning to France
with his master, he was ordered to turn out the Council of the Five
Hundred[441]. Bonaparte gave him his sister Caroline in marriage[442].
Murat commanded the cavalry at the Battle of Marengo[443]. He was
Governor of Paris at the time of the death of the Duc d'Enghien and
bemoaned in secret a murder which he had not the courage to condemn
aloud.
Brother-in-law to Napoleon, and a marshal of the Empire[444], Murat
entered Vienna in 1805[445]; he contributed to the victories of
Austerlitz[446], Jena[447], Eylau[448], and Friedland[449], became
Grand-duke of Berg[450], and invaded Spain in 1808.
Napoleon recalled him and gave him the Crown of Naples. Proclaimed
King of the Two Sicilies on the 1st of August 1808, he pleased the
Neapolitans through his magnificence, his theatrical dress, his
cavalcades and his entertainments.
Summoned in his capacity as a grand vassal of the Empire to the
invasion of Russia, he reappeared in all the battles and found himself
charged with the command of the retreat from Smolensk to Wilna[451].
After manifesting his discontent, he left the army, following
Bonaparte's example, and went to warm himself in the sun of Naples, as
did his captain at the fireside of the Tuileries. Those men of triumph
could never accustom themselves to reverses. Then began his connexion
with Austria. He appeared once more in the camps of Germany in 1813,
returned to Naples after the loss of the Battle of Leipzig[452],
and resumed his Austro-British negociations. Before entering into a
complete alliance, Murat wrote Napoleon a letter which I have heard
read by M. de Mosbourg[453]: he told his brother-in-law in this letter
that he had found the Peninsula in a very agitated condition, that
the Italians were demanding their national independence and that, if
this were not restored to them, it was to be feared that they should
join the European Coalition and thus increase the dangers of France.
He besought Napoleon to make peace, as the only means of preserving so
powerful and fine an empire. He added that, if Bonaparte refused to
listen to him, he, Murat, abandoned at the further end of Italy, would
find himself compelled to leave his kingdom or embrace the interests
of Italian liberty. This very reasonable letter was left for several
months unanswered; Napoleon was, therefore, not able to reproach Murat
justly with having betrayed him.
Murat, obliged to make a quick choice, signed a treaty with the Court
of Vienna on the 11th of January 1814; he bound himself to furnish
the Allies with a corps of thirty thousand men. As the price of his
defection, he was guaranteed his Kingdom of Naples, and his right of
conquest over the Papal Marches. Madame Murat revealed this important
transaction to Madame Récamier. At the moment when he was about to
declare himself openly, Murat, very much excited, met Madame Récamier
at Caroline's, and asked her what she thought of the decision which he
had to take; he begged her to weigh well the interests of the people
whose sovereign he had become. Madame Récamier said to him:
"You are a Frenchman and you must remain faithful to the French."
Murat's face became distorted; he rejoined:
"So I am a traitor? What can I do? It is too late!"
He threw open a window and pointed to an English fleet entering under
full sail.
Vesuvius was in a state of eruption and throwing out flames. Two hours
later, Murat was on horseback at the head of his guards; the crowd
surrounded him, shouting, "Long live King Joachim!" He had forgotten
all; he seemed drunk with delight. The next day, a great performance at
the Teatro di San-Carlo; the King and Queen were received with frantic
acclamations unknown to people on this side of the Alps. The Envoy of
Francis II. was also applauded; the box of Napoleon's Minister was
empty; Murat appeared troubled at this, as though he had seen the ghost
of France at the back of that box.
[Sidenote: Fall of Murat.]
Murat's army, set in motion on the 16th of February 1814, forced Prince
Eugene to fall back upon the Adige. Napoleon, who had at first obtained
unhoped for successes in Champagne, wrote to his sister Caroline
some letters which were captured by the Allies and their contents
communicated to the English Parliament by Lord Castlereagh. He said to
her:
"Your husband is very brave on the battle-field, but he is
weaker than a woman or a monk when he does not see the enemy
before him. He has no moral courage. He has been afraid, and
he would not risk to lose in one instant what he can hold
only through me and with me."
In another letter, addressed to Murat himself, Napoleon said to his
brother-in-law:
"I presume that you are not one of those who think that the
lion is dead; if that was your calculation, it would be
erroneous.... You have done me all the harm you could since
your departure from Wilna. The title of King has turned your
head; if you wish to keep it, behave yourself."
Murat did not pursue the Viceroy to the Adige; he hesitated between
the Allies and the French, according to the chances which Bonaparte
seemed to be winning or losing.