Queen Hortense: A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era Part 19

"'Ah, that is true,' said the queen, in embarra.s.sment, awakening, as it were, from her dreams.

"'Is it possible,' asked M. de Canonville, 'your majesty has not read Corinne?'

"'Yes--no,' said the queen, visibly confused, 'I shall read it again,'

and, in order to conceal an emotion that I alone could understand, she abruptly changed the topic of conversation.

"She might have said the truth, and simply informed them that the book had appeared just at the time her eldest son had died in Holland. The king, disquieted at seeing her so profoundly given up to her grief, believed, in accordance with Corvisart's advice, that it was necessary to arouse her from this state of mental dejection at all hazards. It was determined that I should read 'Corinne' to her. She was not in a condition to pay much attention to it, but she had involuntarily retained some remembrance of this romance. Since then, I had several times asked permission of the queen to read Corinne to her, but she had always refused. 'No, no,' said she, 'not yet; this romance has identified itself with my sorrow. Its name alone recalls the most fearful period of my whole life. I have not yet the courage to renew these painful impressions.'

"I, alone, had therefore been able to divine what had embarra.s.sed and moved the queen so much when she replied to the question addressed to her concerning Corinne. But the auth.o.r.ess could, of course, only interpret it as indicating indifference for her master-work, and I told the queen on the following day that it would have been better to have confessed the cause of her confusion to Madame de Stael.

"'Madame de Stael would not have understood me,' said she; 'now, I am lost to her good opinion, she will consider me a simpleton, but it was not the time to speak of myself, and of my painful reminiscences.'

"The large _char a banc_ was always preferred to the handsomest carriages (although it was very plain, and consisted of two wooden benches covered with cushions, placed opposite each other), because it was more favorable for conversation. But it afforded no security against inclement weather, and this we were soon to experience. The rain poured in streams, and we all returned to the castle thoroughly wet. A room was there prepared and offered the ladies, in which they might repair the disarrangement of their toilet caused by the storm. I remained with them long, kept there by the questions of Madame de Stael concerning the queen and her son, which questions were fairly showered upon me. There was now no longer a question of intellectuality, but merely of washing, hair-dressing, and reposing, with an entire abandonment of the display of mind, the copiousness of which I had been compelled to admire but a moment before. I said to myself: 'There they are, face to face, like the rest of the world, with material life, these two celebrated women, who are everywhere sought after, and received with such marked consideration. There they are, as wet as myself, and as little poetic.'

We were really behind the curtain, but it was shortly to rise again.

"Voices were heard under the window; among other voices, a German accent was audible, and both ladies immediately exclaimed: 'Ah, that is Prince Augustus of Prussia!'

"No one expected the prince, and this meeting with the two ladies had therefore the appearance of being accidental. He had come merely to pay the queen a visit, and it was so near dinner-time, that politeness required that he should be invited to remain. And this was doubtless what he wished.

"The prince had the queen on his right, and Madame de Stael on his left.

The servant of the latter had laid a little green twig on her napkin, which she twisted between her fingers while speaking, as was her habit.

The conversation was animated, and it was amusing to observe Madame de Stael gesticulating with the little twig in her fingers. One might have supposed that some fairy had given her this talisman, and that her genius was dependent upon this little twig.

"Constantinople, with which city several of the gentlemen were well acquainted, was now the topic of conversation. Madame de Stael thought it would be a delightful task for an intellectual woman, to turn the sultan's head, and then to compel him to give his Turks a const.i.tution.

After dinner, freedom of the press was also a topic of conversation.

"Madame de Stael astonished me, not only by the brilliancy of her genius, but also by the deep earnestness with which she treated questions of that kind, for until then custom had not allowed women to discuss such matters. At entertainments, philosophy, morals, sentiment, heroism, and the like, had been the subjects of conversation, but the emperor monopolized politics. His era was that of actions, and, we may say it with pride, of great actions, while the era that followed was essentially that of great words, and of political and literary controversies.

"Madame de Stael spoke to the queen of her motto: 'Do that which is right, happen what may.'

"'In my exile, which you so kindly endeavored to terminate,' said she, 'I often repeated this motto, and thought of you while doing so.'

"While speaking thus, her countenance was illumined by the reflection of inward emotion, and I found her beautiful. She was no longer the woman of mind only, but also the woman of heart and feeling, and I comprehended at this moment how charming she could be.

"Afterward, she had a long conversation with the queen touching the emperor. 'Why was he so angry with me?' asked she. 'He could not have known how much I admired him! I will see him--I shall go to Elba! Do you think he would receive me well? I was born to worship this man, and he has repelled me.'

'Ah, madame,' replied the queen, 'I have often heard the emperor say that he had a great mission to fulfil, and that he could compare his labors with the exertions of a man who, having the summit of a steep mountain ever before his eyes, strains every nerve to attain it, ever toiling painfully upward, and allowing his progress to be arrested by no obstacle whatever. "All the worse for those," said he, "who meet me on my course--I can show them no consideration."'

"'You met him on his course, madame; perhaps he would have extended you a helping hand, after having reached the summit of his mountain.'

"'I must speak with him,' said Madame de Stael; 'I have been injured in his opinion.'

"'I think so too,' replied the queen, 'but you would judge him ill, if you considered him capable of hating any one. He believed you to be his enemy, and he feared you, which was something very unusual for him,'

added she, with a smile. 'Now that he is unfortunate, you will show yourself his friend, and prove yourself to be such, and I am satisfied that he will receive you well.'

"Madame de Stael also occupied herself a great deal with the young princes, but she met with worse success with them than with us. It was perhaps in order to judge of their mental capacity, that she showered unsuitable questions upon them.

"'Do you love your uncle?'

"'Very much, madame!'

"'And will you also be as fond of war as he is?'

"'Yes, if it did not cause so much misery.'

'Is it true that he often made you repeat a fable commencing with the words, "The strongest is always in the right?"'

"'Madame, he often made us repeat fables, but this one not oftener than any other.'

"Young Prince Napoleon, a boy of astounding mental capacity and precocious judgment, answered all these questions with the greatest composure, and, at the conclusion of this examination, turned to me and said quite audibly: 'This lady asks a great many questions. Is that what you call being intellectual?'

"After the departure of our distinguished visitors, we all indulged in an expression of opinion concerning them, and young Prince Napoleon was the one upon whom the ladies had made the least flattering impression, but he only ventured to intimate as much in a low voice.

"I for my part had been more dazzled than gladdened by this visit. One could not avoid admiring this genius in spite of its inconsiderateness, and its wanderings, but there was nothing pleasing, nothing graceful and womanly, in Madame de Stael's manner[36]."

[Footnote 36: Cochelet, Memoires sur la Reine Hortense, vol. i., pp.

429-440.]

CHAPTER VI.

THE OLD AND THE NEW ERA.

The restoration was accomplished. The allies had at last withdrawn from the kingdom, and Louis XVIII. was now the independent ruler of France.

In him, in the returned members of his family, and in the emigrants who were pouring into the country from all quarters, was represented the old era of France, the era of despotic royal power, of brilliant manners, of intrigues, of aristocratic ideas, of ease and luxury.

Opposed to them stood the France of the new era, the generation formed by Napoleon and the revolution, the new aristocracy, who possessed no other ancestors than merit and valorous deeds, an aristocracy that had nothing to relate of the _oeil de boeuf_ and the _pet.i.tes maisons_, but an aristocracy that could tell of the battle-field and of the hospitals in which their wounds had been healed.

These two parties stood opposed to each other.

Old and young France now carried on an hourly, continuous warfare at the court of Louis XVIII., with this difference, however, that young France, hitherto ever victorious, now experienced a continuous series of reverses and humiliations. Old France was now victorious. Not victorious through its gallantry and merit, but through its past, which it endeavored to connect with the present, without considering the chasm which lay between.

True, King Louis had agreed, in the treaty of the 11th of April, that none of his subjects should be deprived of their t.i.tles and dignities; and the new dukes, princes, marshals, counts, and barons, could therefore appear at court, but they played but a sad and humiliating _role_, and they were made to feel that they were only tolerated, and not welcome.

The gentlemen who, before the revolution, had been ent.i.tled to seats in the royal equipages, still retained this privilege, but the doors of these equipages were never opened to the gentlemen of the new Napoleonic n.o.bility. "The ladies of the old era still retained their _tabouret,_ as well as their grand and little _entree_ to the Tuileries and the Louvre, and it would have been considered very arrogant if the d.u.c.h.esses of the new era had made claim to similar honors."

It was the d.u.c.h.ess d'Angouleme who took the lead and set the Faubourg St. Germain an example of intolerance and arrogant pretensions in ignoring the empire. She was the most unrelenting enemy of the new era, born of the revolution, and of its representatives; it is true, however, that she, who was the daughter of the beheaded royal pair, and who had herself so long languished in the Temple, had been familiar with the horrors of the revolution in their saddest and most painful features.

She now determined, as she could no longer punish, to at least forget this era, and to seem to be entirely oblivious of its existence.

At one of the first dinners given by the king to the allies, the d.u.c.h.ess d'Angouleme, who sat next to the King of Bavaria, pointed to the Grand-duke of Baden, and asked: "Is not this the prince who married a princess of Bonaparte's making? What weakness to ally one's self in such a manner with that general!"

The d.u.c.h.ess did not or would not remember that the King of Bavaria, as well as the Emperor of Austria, who sat on her other side, and could well hear her words, had also allied themselves with General Bonaparte.

After she had again installed herself in the rooms she had formerly occupied in the Tuileries, the d.u.c.h.ess asked old Dubois, who had formerly tuned her piano, and had retained this office under the empire, and who now showed her the new and elegant instruments provided by Josephine--she asked him: "What has become of my piano?"

This "piano" had been an old and worn-out concern, and the d.u.c.h.ess was surprised at not finding it, as though almost thirty years had not pa.s.sed since she had seen it last; as though the 10th of August, 1792, the day on which the populace demolished the Tuileries, had never been!

But the period from 1795 to 1814 was ignored on principle, and the Bourbons seemed really to have quite forgotten that more than one night lay between the last levee of King Louis XVI. and the levee of to-day of King Louis XVIII. They seemed astonished that persons they had known as children had grown up since they last saw them, and insisted on treating every one as they had done in 1789.