Queen Hortense: A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era Part 16

The emperor a.s.sured his daughter's amba.s.sador that he had reason to hope for the best for her, but that he was powerless to insist on any action in her behalf.

"I love my daughter," said the good emperor, "and I love my son-in-law, and I am ready to shed my heart's blood for them."

"Majesty," said the duke, interrupting him, "no such sacrifice is required at your hands."

"I am ready to shed my blood for them," continued the emperor, "to sacrifice my life for them, and I repeat it, I have promised the allies to do nothing except in conjunction with them, and to consent to all they determine. Moreover, my minister, Count Metternich, is at this moment with them, and I shall ratify everything which he has signed[30]."

[Footnote 30: Bourrienne, vol. x., p. 129.]

But the emperor still hoped that that which Metternich should sign for him, would be the declaration that the little King of Rome was to be the King of France.

But the zeal of the royalists was destined to annihilate this hope.

The Emperor of Russia had now taken up his residence in Talleyrand's house. He had yielded to the entreaties of the shrewd French diplomat, who well knew how much easier it would be to bend the will of the Agamemnon of the holy alliance[31] to his wishes, when he should have him in hand, as it were, day and night. In offering the emperor his hospitality, it was Talleyrand's intention to make him his prisoner, body and soul, and to use him to his own advantage.

[Footnote 31: Memoires d'une Femme de Qualite.]

It was therefore to Talleyrand that Countess Ducayla hastened to concert measures with the Bonapartist of yesterday, who had transformed himself into the zealous legitimist of to-day.

Talleyrand undertook to secure the countess an audience with the Russian emperor, and he succeeded.

While conducting the beautiful countess to the czar's cabinet, Talleyrand whispered in her ear: "Imitate Madame de Lemalle--endeavor to make a great stroke. The emperor is gallant, and what he denies to diplomacy he may, perhaps, accord to the ladies."

He left her at the door, and the countess entered the emperor's cabinet alone. She no sooner saw him, than she sank on her knees, and stretched out her arms.

With a knightly courtesy, the emperor immediately hastened forward to a.s.sist her to rise.

"What are you doing?" asked he, almost in alarm. "A n.o.ble lady never has occasion to bend the knee to a cavalier."

"Sire," exclaimed the countess, "I kneel before you, because it is my purpose to implore of your majesty the happiness which you alone can restore to us; it will be a double pleasure to possess Louis XVIII. once more, when Alexander I. shall have given him to us!"

"Is it then true that the French people are still devoted to the Bourbon family?"

"Yes, sire, they are our only hope; on them we bestow our whole love!"

"Ah, that is excellent," cried Alexander; "are all French ladies filled with the same enthusiasm as yourself, madame?"

"Well, if this is the case, it will be France that recalls Louis XVIII., and it will not be necessary for us to conduct him back. Let the legislative bodies declare their will, and it shall be done[32]."

[Footnote 32: Memoires d'une Femme de Qualite, vol. i., p. 179.]

And of all women, Countess Ducayla was the one to bring the legislative bodies to the desired declaration. She hastened to communicate the hopes with which the emperor had inspired her to all Paris; on the evening after her interview with the emperor, she gave a grand _soiree_, to which she invited the most beautiful ladies of her party, and a number of senators.

"I desired by this means," says she in her memoirs, "to entrap the gentlemen into making a vow. How simple-minded I was! Did I not know that the majority of them had already made and broken a dozen vows?"

On the following day the senate a.s.sembled, and elected a provisional government, consisting of Talleyrand, the Duke of Dalberg, the Marquis of Jancourt, Count Bournonville, and the Abbe Montesquieu. The senate and the new provisional government thereupon declared Napoleon deposed from the throne, and recalled Louis XVIII. But while the senate thus publicly and solemnly proclaimed its legitimist sentiments in the name of the French people, it at the same time testified to its own unworthiness and selfishness. In the treaty made by the senate with its recalled king, it was provided in a separate clause, "that the salary which they had hitherto received, should be continued to them for life."

While recalling Louis XVIII., these senators took care to pay themselves for their trouble, and to secure their own future.

CHAPTER II.

THE BOURBONS AND THE BONAPARTES.

The allies hastened to consider the declaration of the senate and provisional government as the declaration of the people, and recalled to the throne of his fathers Louis XVIII., who, as Count de Lille, had so long languished in exile at Hartwell.

The Emperor of Austria kept his word; he made no resistance to the decrees of his allies, and allowed his grandson, the King of Rome, to be robbed of his inheritance, and the imperial crown to fall from his daughter's brow. The Emperor Francis was, however, as much astonished at this result as Marie Louise, for, until their entrance into Paris, the allies had flattered the Austrian emperor with the hope that the crown of France would be secured to his daughter and grandson. The emperor's astonishment at this turn of affairs was made the subject of a caricature, which, on the day of the entrance of Louis XVIIL, was affixed to the same walls on which Chateaubriand's enthusiastic _brochure_ concerning the Bourbons was posted. In this caricature, of which thousands of copies were sown broadcast throughout Paris, the Emperor of Austria was to be seen sitting in an elegant open carriage; the Emperor Alexander sat on the coachman's box, the Regent of England as postilion on the lead-horse, and the King of Prussia stood up behind as a lackey. Napoleon ran along on foot at the side of the carriage, holding fast to it, and crying out to the Emperor of Austria, "Father-in-law, they have thrown me out"--"And _taken me in_," was the reply of Francis I.

The exultation of the ladies of the Faubourg St. Germain was great, now that their king was at last restored to them, and they eagerly embraced every means of showing their grat.i.tude to the Emperor of Russia. But Alexander remained entirely insusceptible to their homage; he even went so far as to avoid attending the entertainments given by the new king at the Tuileries, and society was shocked at seeing the emperor openly displaying his sympathy for the family of the Emperor Napoleon, and repairing to Malmaison, instead of appearing at the Tuileries.

Count Nesselrode at last conjured his friend Louise de Cochelet to inform the czar of the feeling of dismay that pervaded the Faubourg St.

Germain, when he should come to Queen Hortense's maid-of-honor, as he was in the habit of doing from time to time, for the purpose of discussing the queen's interests with her.

"Sire," said she to the czar, "the Faubourg St. Germain regards your majesty's zeal in the queen's behalf with great jealousy. It has even caused Count Nesselrode much concern. 'Our emperor,' said he to me, recently, 'goes to Malmaison much too often; the high circles of society, and the diplomatic body, are already in dismay about it; it is feared that he is there subjected to influences to which policy requires he should not be exposed.'"

"This is characteristic of my Nesselrode," replied the emperor, laughing, "he is so easily disquieted. What do I care for the Faubourg St. Germain? It speaks ill enough for these ladies that they have not made a conquest of me! I prefer the n.o.ble qualities of the soul to all outward appearances; and I find united in the Empress Josephine, in the Queen of Holland, and in Prince Eugene, all that is admirable and lovable. I am better pleased to be here with you in quiet, confidential intercourse, than with those who really demean themselves as though they were crazed, and who, instead of enjoying the triumph we have prepared for them, are only intent on destroying their enemies, and have commenced with those who formerly accorded them such generous protection; they really weary one with their extravagances.

"Frenchwomen are coquettish," said the emperor in the course of the conversation; "I came here in great fear of them, for I knew how far their amiability could extend; but their heart is undoubtedly no longer their own. I am therefore on my guard against being deceived by it, and I fancy these ladies love to please so well, that they are even angry with those who respond to the attentions which are so lavishly showered on them, with conventional politeness only."

Louise de Cochelet undertook to defend the French ladies against the emperor's attacks. She told him he should not judge of them by the manner in which they had conducted themselves toward him, as it was but natural that the ladies should be inspired with enthusiasm for a young emperor who appeared to them in so favorable a light, and that they must necessarily, even without being coquettish, ardently desire to be noticed by him.

"But," said the emperor, with his soft, sad smile, "have these ladies only been waiting for me in order to feel their heart palpitate? I seek mind and entertainment, but I fly from all those who display a desire to exercise a control over my heart; in this I see nothing but self-love, and I hold myself aloof from such contact."

While the royalists and the ladies of the Faubourg St. Germain were lavishing attentions upon the allies, and a.s.suring the returned king of the boundless delight of his people, this people was already beginning to grumble. The allies had now completed their task, they had restored to France its legitimate king, and they now put the finishing-touch to their work by providing in the treaty, that France should be narrowed down to the boundaries it had had before the revolution.

France was compelled to conform to the will of its vanquishers. From the weakness of the legitimists they now s.n.a.t.c.hed that which they had been compelled to accord to the strength of the empire.

All of those fortified places, that had been bought with so much French blood, and that were still held by Frenchmen, were to be given up, and the great, extended France was to shrink back into the France it had been thirty years before! It was this that made the people murmur. The Frenchmen who had left Napoleon because they had grown weary of endless wars, were, nevertheless, proud of the conquests they had made under their emperor. The surrender of these conquests wounded the national pride, and they were angry with their king for being so ready to put this shame upon France--for holding the crown of France in higher estimation than the honor of France!

It must be conceded, however, that Louis XVIII. had most bitterly felt the disgrace that attached to him in this re-establishment of France within its ancient boundaries, and he had endeavored to protest in every way against this demand of the allies. But his representative had been made to understand that if Louis XVIII. could not content himself with the France the allies were prepared to give him, he was at liberty to relinquish it to Marie Louise. The king was, therefore, compelled to yield to necessity; but he did so with bitter mortification, and while his courtiers were giving free rein to their enthusiasm for the allies, he was heard to whisper, "_Nos chers amis les ennemis_[33]!"

[Footnote 33: "Our dear friends the enemies!"]

Thus embittered against the allies, it was only with great reluctance, and after a long and bitter struggle, that Louis XVIII. consented to the demands made by the allies in behalf of the family of Napoleon. But the Emperor Alexander kept his word; he defended the rights of the Queen of Holland and her children against the ill-will of the Bourbons, the dislike of the royalists, and the disinclination of the allies, alike.

The family of the emperor owed it to him and to his firmness alone that the article of the treaty of the 11th of April, in which Louis XVIII.

agreed "that the t.i.tles and dignities of all the members of the family of the Emperor Napoleon should be recognized, and that they should not be deprived of them," remained something more than a mere phrase.

It was only after repeated efforts that the emperor at last succeeded in obtaining for Hortense, from Louis XVIII., an estate and a t.i.tle, that secured her position. King Louis finally yielded to his urgent solicitations, and conferred upon Hortense the t.i.tle of d.u.c.h.ess of St.

Leu, and made her estate, St. Leu, a duchy.

But this was done with the greatest reluctance, and only under the pressure of the king's obligations to the allies, who had given him his throne; and these obligations the Bourbons would have forgotten as willingly as the whole period of the revolution and of the empire.

For the Bourbons seemed but to have awakened from a long sleep, and were not a little surprised to find that the world had progressed in the meanwhile.

According to their ideas, every thing must have remained standing at the point where they had left it twenty years before; and they were at least determined to ignore all that had happened in the interval. King Louis therefore signed his first act as in "the nineteenth" year of his reign, and endeavored in all things to keep up a semblance of the continuation of his reign since the year 1789. Hence, the letters-patent in which King Louis appointed Hortense d.u.c.h.ess of St. Leu were drawn up in a manner offensive to the queen, for they contained the following: "The king appoints Mademoiselle Hortense de Beauharnais d.u.c.h.ess of St. Leu."

The queen refused to accept this t.i.tle, under the circ.u.mstances, and rejected the letters-patent. It was not until the czar had angrily demanded it, that M. de Blacas, the king's premier, consented to draw up the letters-patent in a different style. They read: "The king appoints Hortense Eugenie, included in the treaty of the 11th of April, d.u.c.h.ess of St. Leu." This was, to be sure, merely a negative and disguised recognition of the former rank of the queen; but it was, at least no longer a degradation to accept it.

The Viceroy of Italy, the n.o.ble Eugene--who was universally beloved, and who had come to Paris, at the express wish of the czar, to secure his future--occasioned the Bourbons quite as much annoyance and perplexity.