PARIS, August, 1805.
MY LORD:--The day on which Madame Napoleon Bonaparte was elected an
Empress of the French, by the constitutional authorities of her husband’s
Empire, was, contradictory as it may seem, one of the most uncomfortable
in her life. After the show and ceremony of the audience and of the
drawing-room were over, she passed it entirely in tears, in her library,
where her husband shut her up and confined her.
The discipline of the Court of St. Cloud is as singular as its
composition is unique. It is, by the regulation of Napoleon, entirely
military. From the Empress to her lowest chambermaid, from the Emperor’s
first aide-de-camp down to his youngest page, any slight offence or
negligence is punished with confinement, either public or private. In
the former case the culprits are shut up in their own apartments, but in
the latter they are ordered into one of the small rooms, constructed in
the dark galleries at the Tuileries and St. Cloud, near the kitchens,
where they are guarded day and night by sentries, who answer for their
persons, and that nobody visits them.
When, on the 28th of March, 1804, the Senate had determined on offering
Bonaparte the Imperial dignity, he immediately gave his wife full powers,
with order to form her household of persons who, from birth and from
their principles, might be worthy, and could be trusted to encompass the
Imperial couple. She consulted Madame Remusat, who, in her turn,
consulted her friend De Segur, who also consulted his bonne amie, Madame
de Montbrune. This lady determined that if Bonaparte and his wife were
desirous to be served, or waited on, by persons above them by ancestry
and honour, they should pay liberally for such sacrifices. She was not
therefore idle, but wishing to profit herself by the pride of upstart
vanity, she had at first merely reconnoitred the ground, or made distant
overtures to those families of the ancient French nobility who had been
ruined by the Revolution, and whose minds she expected to have found on a
level with their circumstances. These, however, either suspecting her
intent and her views, or preferring honest poverty to degrading and
disgraceful splendour, had started objections which she was not prepared
to encounter. Thus the time passed away; and when, on the 18th of the
following May, the Senate proclaimed Napoleon Bonaparte Emperor of the
French, not a Chamberlain was ready to attend him, nor a Maid of Honour
to wait on his wife.
On the morning of the 20th May, the day fixed for the constitutional
republican authorities to present their homage as subjects, Napoleon
asked his Josephine who were the persons, of both sexes, she had engaged,
according to his carte blanche given her, as necessary and as unavoidable
decorations of the drawing-room of an Emperor and Empress, as thrones and
as canopies of State. She referred him to Madame Remusat, who, though
but half-dressed, was instantly ordered to appear before him. This lady
avowed that his grand master of the ceremonies, De Segur, had been
entrusted by her with the whole arrangement, but that she feared that he
had not yet been able to complete the full establishment of the Imperial
Court. The aide-de-camp Rapp was then despatched after De Segur, who, as
usual, presented himself smiling and cringing.
“Give me the list,” said Napoleon, “of the ladies and gentlemen you have
no doubt engaged for our household.”
“May it please Your Majesty,” answered De Segur, trembling with fear, “I
humbly supposed that they were not requisite before the day of Your
Majesty’s coronation.”
“You supposed!” retorted Napoleon. “How dare you suppose differently
from our commands? Is the Emperor of the Great Nation not to be
encompassed with a more numerous retinue, or with more lustre, than a
First Consul? Do you not see the immense difference between the
Sovereign Monarch of an Empire, and the citizen chief magistrate of a
commonwealth? Are there not starving nobles in my empire enough to
furnish all the Courts in Europe with attendants, courtiers, and valets?
Do you not believe that with a nod, with a single nod, I might have them
all prostrated before my throne? What can, then, have occasioned this
impertinent delay?”
“Sire!” answered De Segur, “it is not the want of numbers, but the
difficulty of the choice among them. I will never recommend a single
individual upon whom I cannot depend; or who, on some future day, may
expose me to the greatest of all evils, the displeasure of my Prince.”
“But,” continued Napoleon, “what is to be done to-day that I may augment
the number of my suite, and by it impose upon the gaping multitude and
the attending deputations?”--“Command,” said De Segur, “all the officers
of Your Majesty’s staff, and of the staff of the Governor of Paris,
General Murat, to surround Your Majesty’s sacred person, and order them
to accoutre themselves in the most shining and splendid manner possible.
The presence of so many military men will also, in a political point of
view, be useful. It will lessen the pretensions of the constituted
authorities, by telling them indirectly, ‘It is not to your Senatus
Consultum, to your decrees, or to your votes, that I am indebted for my
present Sovereignty; I owe it exclusively to my own merit and valour, and
to the valour of my brave officers and men, to whose arms I trust more
than to your counsels.’”
This advice obtained Napoleon’s entire approbation, and was followed. De
Segur was permitted to retire, but when Madame Remusat made a curtsey
also to leave the room, she was stopped with his terrible ‘aux arrets’
and left under the care and responsibility of his aide-de-camp, Lebrun,
who saw her safe into her room, at the door of which he placed two
grenadiers. Napoleon then went out, ordering his wife, at her peril, to
be in time, ready and brilliantly dressed, for the drawing-room.
Dreading the consequences of her husband’s wrath, Madame Napoleon was not
only punctual, but so elegantly and tastefully decorated with jewels and
ornaments that even those of her enemies or rivals who refused her
beauty, honour, and virtue, allowed her taste and dignity. She thought
that even in the regards of Napoleon she read a tacit approbation. When
all the troublesome bustle of the morning was gone through, and when
Senators, legislators, tribunes, and prefects had complimented her as a
model of female perfection, on a signal from her husband she accompanied
him in silence through six different apartments before he came to her
library, where he surlily ordered her to enter and to remain until
further orders.
“What have I done, Sire! to deserve such treatment?” exclaimed Josephine,
trembling.
“If,” answered Napoleon, “Madame Remusat, your favourite, has made a fool
of you, this is only to teach you that you shall not make a fool of me:
Had not De Segur fortunately for him--had the ingenuity to extricate us
from the dilemma into which my confidence and dependence on you had
brought me, I should have made a fine figure indeed on the first day of
my emperorship. Have patience, Madame; you have plenty of books to
divert you, but you must remain where you are until I am inclined to
release you.” So saying, Napoleon locked the door and put the key in his
pocket.
It was near two o’clock in the afternoon when she was thus shut up.
Remembering the recent flattery of her courtiers, and comparing it with
the unfeeling treatment of her husband, she found herself so much the
more unfortunate, as the expressions of the former were regarded by her
as praise due to her merit, while the unkindness of the latter was
unavailingly resented as the undeserved oppression of a capricious
despot.
Business, or perhaps malice, made Napoleon forget to send her any dinner;
and when, at eight o’clock, his brothers and sisters came, according to
invitation, to take tea, he said coldly:
“Apropos, I forgot it. My wife has not dined yet; she is busy, I
suppose, in her philosophical meditations in her study.”
Madame Louis Bonaparte, her daughter, flew directly towards the study,
and her mother could scarcely, for her tears, inform her that--she was a
prisoner, and that her husband was her gaoler.
“Oh, Sire!” said Madame Louis, returning, “even this remarkable day is a
day of mourning for my poor mother!”
“She deserves worse,” answered Napoleon, “but, for your sake, she shall
be released; here is the key, let her out.”
Madame Napoleon was, however, not in a situation to wish to appear before
her envious brothers and sisters-in-law. Her eyes were so swollen with
crying that she could hardly see; and her tears had stained those
Imperial robes which the unthinking and inconsiderate no doubt believed a
certain preservative against sorrow and affliction. At nine o’clock,
however, another aide-de-camp of her husband presented himself, and gave
her the choice either to accompany him back to the study or to join the
family party of the Bonapartes.
In deploring her mother’s situation, Madame Louis Bonaparte informed her
former governess, Madame Cam---n, of these particulars, which I heard her
relate at Madame de M----r’s, almost verbatim as I report them to you.
Such, and other scenes, nearly of the same description, are neither rare
nor singular, in the most singular Court that ever existed in civilized
Europe.