Queen Hortense: A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era Part 25

I looked up at the box in which your majesty sat, between the King of Prussia and the Emperor Alexander. I could see you only--the second Alexander of Macedon, the second Julius Caesar--and I held my arms aloft and saw you only when I repeated the words of my part: 'The friendship of a great man is a gift of the G.o.ds!' And as I said this, the Emperor Alexander arose and pressed you to his heart. I saw this, and tears choked my utterance. The audience applauded rapturously; this applause was, however, not for me, but for the Emperor Alexander[53]!"

[Footnote 53: This scene is entirely historical. See Bossuet, Memoires; Bourrienne, Memoires; Cochelet and Une Femme de Qualite.]

While Talma was speaking, his cheeks glowing and his eyes flashing, a rosy hue suffused the emperor's countenance, and, for an instant, he smiled. Talma had attained his object; he had raised up the humiliated emperor with the recital of his own grandeur.

Napoleon thanked him with a kindly glance, and extended his hand to bid him adieu.

As Talma approached the emperor, a carriage was heard driving up in front of the house. It was Let.i.tia, the emperor's mother, who had come to take leave of her son. Talma stood still, in breathless suspense; in his heart he thanked Providence for permitting him to witness this leave-taking.

"Madame mere" walked past Talma in silence, and without observing him.

She saw only her son, who stood in the middle of the room, his sombre and flashing glance fastened on her with an unutterable expression. Now they stood face to face, mother and son. The emperor's countenance remained immovable as though hewn out of marble.

They stood face to face in silence, but two great tears slowly trickled down the mother's cheeks. Talma stood in the background, weeping bitterly. Napoleon remained unmoved. Let.i.tia now raised both hands and extended them to the emperor. "Adieu, my son!" said she, in full and sonorous tones.

Napoleon pressed her hands in his own, and gazed at her long and fixedly; and then, with the same firmness, he said: "My mother, adieu!"

Once more they gazed at each other; then the emperor let her hand fall.

Let.i.tia turned to go, and at this moment General Bertrand appeared at the door to announce that all was prepared for the journey[54].

[Footnote 54: This leave-taking was exactly as above described, and Talma himself narrated it to Louise de Cochelet. See her Memoires, vol.

iii, P. 173.]

BOOK IV.

_THE d.u.c.h.eSS OF ST. LEU_.

CHAPTER I.

THE BANISHMENT OF THE d.u.c.h.eSS OF ST. LEU.

For the second time, the Bourbons had entered Paris under the protection of the allies, and Louis XVIII. was once more King of France. But this time he did not return with his former mild and conciliatory disposition. He came to punish and to reward; he came unaccompanied by mercy. The old generals and marshals of the empire, who had not been able to resist their chieftain's call, were now banished, degraded, or executed. Ney and Labedoyere paid for their fidelity to the emperor with their blood; and all who were in any way connected with the Bonapartes were relentlessly pursued. The calumnies that had been circulated in 1814 against the d.u.c.h.ess of St. Leu were now to bear bitter fruit. These were the dragon's teeth from which the armed warriors had sprung, who now levelled their swords at the breast of a defenceless woman.

King Louis had returned to the throne of his fathers, but he had not forgotten that he had been told on his flight: "The d.u.c.h.ess of St. Leu is to blame for all! Her intrigues have brought Napoleon back!" Now that he was again king, he thought of it, and determined to punish her. He requested it of Alexander, as a favor, that he should this time not call on the d.u.c.h.ess of St. Leu.

The emperor, dismayed by the odious reports in circulation concerning Hortense, and already enchained in the mystic glittering web with which Madame de Krudener had enveloped him, and separated from the reality of the world, acceded to the wishes of the Bourbons, and abandoned the queen. This was the signal that let loose the general wrath of the royalists; they could now freely utter their scorn and malice. By low calumnies they could now compensate themselves for their humiliation of the past, for having been compelled to approach the daughter of Viscountess de Beauharnais with the reverence due to a queen.

They could pursue the step-daughter of the emperor with boundless fury, for this very fury proved their royalism, and to hate and calumniate Bonaparte and his family was to love and flatter the Bourbons.

Day by day these royalists hurled new accusations against the d.u.c.h.ess, whose presence in Paris unpleasantly recalled the days of the empire, and whom they desired to remove from their sight, as well as the column on the _Place Vendome_.

While the poor queen was living in the retirement of her apartments, in sadness and desolation, the report was circulated that she was again conspiring, and that she was in the habit of leaving her house every evening at twilight, in order to incite the populace to rise and demand the emperor's return, or at least the instalment of the little King of Rome on the throne instead of Louis de Bourbon.

When the queen's faithful companion, Louise de Cochelet, informed her of these calumnies, Hortense remained cold and indifferent.

"Madame," exclaimed Louise, "you listen with as much composure as if I were reciting a story of the last century!"

"And it interests me as little," said Hortense, earnestly; "we have lost all, and I consider any blow that may still strike us, with the composure of an indifferent spectator. I consider it natural that they should endeavor to caluminate me, because I bear a name that has made the whole world tremble, and that will still be great, though we all be trodden in the dust. But I will shield myself and children from this hatred. We will leave France and go to Switzerland, where I possess a little estate on the Lake of Geneva."

But time was not allowed the d.u.c.h.ess to prepare for her departure. The dogs of calumny and hatred were let loose upon her to drive her from the city. A defenceless woman with two young children seemed to be an object of anxiety and terror to the government, and it made haste to get rid of her.

On the morning of the 17th of July, an adjutant of the Prussian General de m.u.f.fling, the allied commandant of Paris, came to the dwelling of the d.u.c.h.ess of St. Leu, and informed her intendant, M. Deveaux, that the d.u.c.h.ess must leave Paris within two hours, and it was only at the urgent solicitation of the intendant, that a further sojourn of four hours was allowed her.

Hortense was compelled to conform to this military command, and depart without arranging her affairs or making any preparations for her journey. Her only possession consisted of jewelry, and this she of course intended to take with her. But she was warned that a troop of enraged Bourbonists, who knew of her approaching departure, had quitted Paris to lie in wait for her on her road, "in order to rob her of the millions in her custody."

The queen was warned to take no money or articles of value with her, but only that which was absolutely necessary.

General de m.u.f.fling offered her an escort of his soldiers; Hortense declined this offer, but requested that an Austrian officer might be allowed to accompany her for the protection of herself and children on the journey. Count de Boyna, adjutant of Prince Schwartzenberg, was selected for this purpose.

On the evening of the 17th of July, 1815, the d.u.c.h.ess of St. Leu took her departure. She left her faithful friend Louise de Cochelet in Paris to arrange her affairs, and a.s.sure the safe-keeping of her jewelry.

Accompanied only by her equerry, M. de Marmold, Count Boyna, her children, her maid, and a man-servant, she who had been a queen left Paris to go into exile.

It was a sorrowful journey that Hortense now made through her beloved France, that she could no longer call her country, and that now seemed as ill-disposed toward the emperor and his family as it had once pa.s.sionately loved them.

In these days of political persecution, the Bonapartists had everywhere hidden themselves in obscure places, or concealed their real disposition beneath the mask of Bourbonism. Those whom Hortense met on her journey were therefore all royalists, who thought they could give no better testimony to their patriotism than by persecuting with cries of scorn, with gestures of hatred, and with loud curses, the woman whose only crime was that she bore the name of him whom France had once adored, and whom the royalists hated.

Count Boyna was more than once compelled to protect Hortense and her children against the furious attacks of royalists--the stranger against her own countrymen! In Dijon, Count Boyna had found it necessary to call on the Austrian military stationed there for a.s.sistance in protecting the d.u.c.h.ess and her children from the attacks of an infuriated crowd, led by royal guards and beautiful ladies of rank, whose hair was adorned with the lilies of the Bourbons[55].

[Footnote 55: Cochelet, vol. iii, p. 289.]

Dispirited and broken down by all she had seen and experienced, Hortense at last reached Geneva, happy at the prospect of being able to retire to her little estate of Pregny, to repose after the storms of life. But this refuge was also to be refused her. The French amba.s.sador in Switzerland, who resided in Geneva, informed the authorities of that city that his government would not tolerate the queen's sojourn so near the French boundary, and demanded that she should depart. The authorities of Geneva complied with this demand, and ordered the d.u.c.h.ess of St. Leu to leave the city immediately.

When Count Boyna imparted this intelligence to the d.u.c.h.ess, and asked her to what place she would now go, her long-repressed despair found utterance in a single cry: "I know not. Throw me into the lake, then we shall all be at rest!"

But she soon recovered her usual proud resignation, and quietly submitted to the new banishment that drove her from her last possession, the charming little Pregny, from her "_reve de chalet_."

In Aix she finally found repose and peace for a few weeks--in Aix, where she had once celebrated brilliant triumphs as a queen, and where she was at least permitted to live in retirement with her children and a few faithful adherents.

But in Aix the most fearful blow that Fate had in store for her fell upon her!

Her action against her husband had already been decided in 1814, shortly before the emperor's return, and it had been adjudged that she should deliver her elder son Napoleon Louis, into the custody of his father.

Now that Napoleon's will no longer restrained him, Louis demanded that this judgment be carried out, and sent Baron von Zuyten to Aix to bring back the prince to his father then residing in Florence.

The unhappy mother was now powerless to resist this hard command; she was compelled to yield, and send her son from her arms to a father who was a stranger to the boy, and whom he therefore could not love.

It was a heart-rending scene this parting between the boy, his mother, and his young brother Louis, from whom he had never before been separated for a day, and who now threw his arms around his neck, tearfully entreating him to stay with him.

But the separation was inevitable. Hortense parted the two weeping children, taking little Louis Napoleon in her arms, while Napoleon Louis followed his governor to the carriage, sobbing as though his heart would break. When Hortense heard the carriage driving off, she uttered a cry of anguish and fell to the ground in a swoon, and a long and painful attack of illness was the consequence of this sorrowful separation.

CHAPTER II.

LOUIS NAPOLEON AS A CHILD.

The d.u.c.h.ess of St. Leu was, however, not destined to find repose in Aix; the Bourbons--not yet weary of persecuting her, and still fearing the name whose first and greatest representative was now languishing on a solitary, inhospitable rock-island--the Bourbons considered it dangerous that Hortense, the emperor's step-daughter, and her son, whose name of Louis Napoleon seemed to them a living monument of the past, should be permitted to sojourn so near the French boundary. They therefore instructed their amba.s.sador to the government of Savoy to protest against the further sojourn of the queen in Aix, and Hortense was compelled to undertake a new pilgrimage, and to start out into the world again in search of a home.

She first turned to Baden, whose d.u.c.h.ess, Stephanie, was so nearly related to her, and from whose husband she might therefore well expect a kindly reception. But the grand-duke did not justify his cousin's hopes; he had not the courage to defy the jealous fears of France, and it was only at the earnest solicitation of his wife that he at last consented that Hortense should take up her residence at the extreme end of the grand-duchy, at Constance, on the Lake of Constance; and this permission was only accorded her on the express condition that neither the d.u.c.h.ess nor her son should ever come to Carlsruhe, and that his wife, Stephanie, should never visit her cousin at Constance.