Queen Hortense: A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era Part 23

All were touched, enthusiastic, and agitated, but they could do nothing but utter fine phrases; and all that fell from the eloquent lips of these celebrated poets and politicians was, as it were, nothing more than a bulletin concerning the condition of the patient, and concerning the mortal wounds which he had received. This patient was France; and the royalists, who were a.s.sembled in the house of Count de la Pere, now felt that the patient's case was hopeless, and that nothing remained to them but to go into exile, and bemoan his sad fate[47]!

[Footnote 47: Memoires d'une Femme de Qualite, vol. i., p. 99.]

CHAPTER XI

LOUIS XVIII.'S DEPARTURE AND NAPOLEON'S ARRIVAL.

While the royalists were thus considering, hesitating, and despairing, King Louis XVIII. had alone retained his composure and sense of security. That is to say, they had taken care not to inform him of the real state of affairs. On the contrary, he had been informed that Bonaparte had been everywhere received with coldness and silence, and that the army would not respond to his appeal, but would remain true to the king. The exultation with which the people everywhere received the advancing emperor found, therefore, no echo in the Tuileries, and the crowd who pressed around the king when he repaired to the hall of the _Corps Legislatif_ to hold an encouraging address, was not the people, but the royalists--those otherwise so haughty ladies and gentlemen of the old n.o.bility, who again, as on the day of the first entrance, acted the part to which the people were not disposed to adapt themselves, and transformed themselves for a moment into the people, in order to show to the king the demonstrations of his people's love.

The king was completely deceived. M. de Blacas told the king of continuous reverses to Napoleon's arms, while the emperor's advance was in reality a continuous triumph. They had carried this deception so far that they had informed the king that Lyons had closed its gates to Napoleon, and that Ney was advancing to meet him, vowing that he would bring the emperor back to Paris in an iron cage.

The king was therefore composed, self-possessed, and resolute, when suddenly his brother, the Count d'Artois, and the Duke of Orleans, who, according to the king's belief, occupied Lyons as a victor, arrived in Paris alone, as fugitives, abandoned by their soldiers and servants, and informed Louis that Lyons had received the emperor with open arms, and that no resource had been left them but to betake themselves to flight.

And a second, and still more terrible, item of intelligence followed the first. Ney, the king's hope, the last support of his tottering throne, Ney had not had the heart to maintain a hostile position toward his old companion in arms. Ney had gone over to the emperor, and his army had followed him with exultation.

The king's eyes were now opened, he now saw the truth, and learned how greatly he had been deceived.

"Alas," cried he, sadly, "Bonaparte fell because he would not listen to the truth, and I shall fall because they would not tell me the truth!"

At this moment, and while the king was eloquently appealing to his brothers and relatives, and to the gentlemen of his court who surrounded him, to tell him the whole truth, the door opened, and the Minister Blacas, until then so complacent, so confident of victory, now stepped in pale and trembling.

The truth, which he had so long concealed from the king, was now plainly impressed on his pale, terrified countenance. The king had desired to hear the truth; it stood before him in his trembling minister.

A short interval of profound silence occurred; the eyes of all were fastened on the count, and, in the midst of the general silence, he was heard to say, in a voice choked with emotion: "Sire, all is lost; the army, as well as the people, betray your majesty. It will be necessary for your majesty to leave Paris."

The king staggered backward for an instant, and then fastened an inquiring glance on the faces of all who were present. No one dared to return his gaze with a glance of hope. They all looked down sorrowfully.

The king understood this mute reply, and a deep sigh escaped his breast.

"The tree bears its fruit," said he, with a bitter smile; "heretofore it has been your purpose to make me govern for you, hereafter I shall govern for no one. If I shall, however, return to the throne of my fathers once more, you will be made to understand that I will profit by the experience you have given me[48]!"

[Footnote 48: The king's own words. Memoires d'une Femme de Qualite, vol. i. p. 156.]

A few hours later, at nightfall, supported on the arm of Count Blacas, without any suite, and preceded by a single lackey bearing a torch, the king left the once more desolate and solitary Tuileries, and fled to Holland.

Twenty-four hours later, on the evening of the 20th of March, Napoleon entered the Tuileries, accompanied by the exulting shouts of the people, and the thundering "_Vive l'empereur_" of the troops. On the same place where the white flag of the Bourbons had but yesterday fluttered, the _tricolore_ of the empire now flung out its folds to the breeze.

In the Tuileries the emperor found all his old ministers, his generals, and his courtiers, a.s.sembled. All were desirous of seeing and greeting him. An immense concourse of people surged around the entrance on the stair-ways and in the halls.

Borne aloft on the arms and shoulders of the people, the emperor was carried up the stairway, and into his apartments; and, while shouts of joy were resounding within, the thousands without joined the more fortunate ones who had borne the emperor to his apartments, and rent the air with exulting cries of "_Vive l'empereur_!"

In his cabinet, to which Napoleon immediately repaired, he was received by Queen Julia, wife of Joseph Bonaparte, and Queen Hortense, who had abandoned her place of concealment, and hurried to the Tuileries to salute the emperor.

Napoleon greeted Hortense coldly, he inquired briefly after the health of her sons, and then added, almost severely: "You have placed my nephews in a false position, by permitting them to remain in the midst of my enemies."

Hortense turned pale, and her eyes filled with tears. The emperor seemed not to notice it. "You have accepted the friendship of my enemies," said he, "and have placed yourself under obligations to the Bourbons. I depend on Eugene; I hope he will soon be here. I wrote to him from Lyons."

This was the reception Hortense received from the emperor. He was angry with her for having remained in France, and at the same time the flying Bourbons, who were on their way to Holland, said of her: "The d.u.c.h.ess of St. Leu is to blame for all! Her intrigues alone have brought Napoleon back to Paris."

CHAPTER XII.

THE HUNDRED DAYS.

The hundred days that followed the emperor's return are like a myth of the olden time, like a poem of Homer, in which heroes destroy worlds with a blow of the hand, and raise armies out of the ground with a stamp of the foot; in which nations perish, and new ones are born within the s.p.a.ce of a minute.

These hundred days stand in history as a giant era, and these hundred days of the restored empire were replete with all the earth can offer of fortune, of magnificence, of glory, and of victory, as well as of all that the earth contains that is disgraceful, miserable, traitorous, and perfidious.

Wondrous and brilliant was their commencement. All France seemed to hail the emperor's return with exultation. Every one hastened to a.s.sure him of his unchangeable fidelity, and to persuade him that they had only obeyed the Bourbons under compulsion.

The old splendor of the empire once more prevailed in the Tuileries, where the emperor now held his glittering court again. There was, however, this difference: Queen Hortense now did the honors of the court, in the place of the Empress Marie Louise, who had not returned with her husband; and the emperor could not now show the people his own son, but could only point to his two nephews, the sons of Hortense.

The emperor had quickly reconciled himself to the queen; he had been compelled to yield to her gentle and yet decided explanations; he had comprehended that Hortense had sacrificed herself for her children, in continuing to remain in France notwithstanding her reluctance. After this reconciliation had taken place, Napoleon extended his hand to Hortense, with his irresistible smile, and begged her to name a wish, in order that he might fulfil it.

Queen Hortense, who had been so bitterly slandered and scorned by the royalists, and who was still considered by the fleeing Bourbons to be the cause of their overthrow--this same queen now entreated the emperor to permit the d.u.c.h.ess d'Orleans, who had not been able to leave Paris on account of a broken limb, to remain, and to accord her a pension besides. She told the emperor that she had received a letter from the d.u.c.h.ess, in which she begged for her intercession in obtaining some a.s.sistance from the emperor, a.s.suring her that it was urgently Deeded, in her depressed circ.u.mstances.

The emperor consented to grant this wish of his step-daughter Hortense; and it was solely at her solicitation that Napoleon accorded a pension of four hundred thousand francs to the d.u.c.h.ess d'Orleans, the mother of King Louis Philippe[49].

[Footnote 49: La Reine Hortense en Italie, en France, et en Angleterre.

Ecrit par elle-meme, p. 185.]

A few days later, at Hortense's request, a pension of two hundred thousand francs was also accorded to the d.u.c.h.ess of Bourbon, who had also besought the queen to exert her influence in her behalf; and both ladies now hastened to a.s.sure Hortense of their everlasting grat.i.tude.

The fulfilment of her wish filled Hortense with delight; she was as proud of it as of a victory achieved.

"I considered it a sacred duty," said she, "to intercede for these ladies. They were as isolated and desolate as I had been a few clays before, and I know how sad it is to be in such a state!"

But Hortense's present state was a very different one. She was now no longer the d.u.c.h.ess of St. Leu, but the queen and the ornament of the court once more; all heads now bowed before her again, and the high-born ladies, who had seemed oblivious of her existence during the past year, now hastened to do homage to the queen.

"Majesty," said one of these ladies to the queen, "unfortunately, you were always absent in the country when I called to pay my respects during the past winter."

The queen's only response was a gentle "Indeed madame," which she accompanied with a smile.

Hortense, as has before been said, was now again the grand point of attraction at court, and, at Napoleon's command, the public officials now also hastened to solicit the honor of an audience, in order to pay their respects to the emperor's step-daughter. Each day beheld new _fetes_ and ceremonies.

The most sublime and imposing of all these was the ceremony of the _Champ de Mai_, that took place on the first of June, and at which the emperor, in the presence of the applauding populace, presented to his army the new eagles and flags, which they were henceforth to carry into battle instead of the lilies of the Bourbons.

It was a wondrous, an enchanting spectacle to behold the sea of human beings that surged to and fro on this immense s.p.a.ce, and made the welkin ring with their "_Vive l'empereur_!"--to behold the proud, triumphant soldiers receiving from Napoleon the eagles consecrated by the priests at the altar that stood before the emperor. It was a wondrous spectacle to behold the hundreds of richly-attired ladies glittering with diamonds, who occupied the tiers of seats that stood immediately behind the emperor's chair, and on which Hortense and her two sons occupied the first seats.

The air was so balmy, the sun shone so l.u.s.triously over all this splendor and magnificence, the cannon thundered so mightily, and the strains of music resounded so sweetly on the ear; and, while all were applauding and rejoicing, Hortense sat behind the emperor's chair covertly sketching the imposing scene that lay before her, the grand ceremony, which, a dark foreboding told her, "might perhaps be the last of the empire[50]."

[Footnote 50: Cochelet, vol. iii., p. 97.]

Hortense alone did not allow herself to be deceived by this universal delight and contentment.

The heavens still seemed bright and serene overhead, but she already perceived the gathering clouds, she already heard the mutterings of the storm that was soon, and this time forever, to hurl the emperor's throne to the ground. She knew that a day would suddenly come when all this brightness would grow dim, and when all those who now bowed so humbly before him, would turn from him again--a day when they would deny and desert the emperor as they had already done once before, and that, from that day on, the present period of grandeur would be accounted to her as a debt. But this knowledge caused her neither anxiety nor embarra.s.sment.