Part 4 (1/2)
The Grand Chamberlain had charge of all the honors of the palace, the regular audiences, the oaths taken in the Emperor's study, the admissions, the levees and couchees, the festivities, receptions, theatrical performances, the music, the boxes of the Emperor and Empress at the different theatres, the Emperor's wardrobe, his library; he also looked after the ushers and valets de chambre.
The Grand Chamberlain had under his orders (this refers to 1805), a First Chamberlain, M. de Remusat, and thirteen chamberlains: MM. d'Arberg, A. de Talleyrand, de Laturbie, de BriG.o.de, de Viry, de Thiard, Garnier de Lariboisiere, d'Hedouville, de Croy, de Mercy-Argenteau, de Zuidwyck, de Tournon, de Bondy. In the Imperial Almanack of 1805, these men are not named with their t.i.tles, even the _de_ is in all cases omitted or joined with the name, thus: M. Remusat, M. Darberg, A. Talleyrand, Laturbie, Tournon, Dethiard, Deviry, Hedouville, etc., etc.
The chamberlain on duty was called the chamberlain of the day. At the palace there were always two chamberlains of the day, one for the grand apartment, the other for the Emperor's apartment of honor. They were relieved every week. The princ.i.p.al duties of the chamberlains were to have charge of introductions to the Emperor, to give orders to the ushers and valets de chambre, to see that the orders about the receptions were carried out, and to attend upon the sovereign's levees and couchees.
Either a chamberlain or one of the Emperor's aides-de-camp served as Master of the Wardrobe. He had charge of the clothes, the linen, the lace, the boots and shoes, and of the ribbons of the Legion of Honor. If he a.s.sisted at the Emperor's toilet, he had to hand him his coat, fasten his ribbon or collar, give him his sword, hat, and gloves, in the Grand Chamberlain's absence.
The Grand Master of Ceremonies determined questions of rank and precedence, drew up and enforced the rules for public, formal ceremonies, for the reception of sovereigns and hereditary princes, and, foreign amba.s.sadors and ministers.
The colonels-general of the Imperial Guard and the Emperor's aides also made part of the household.
At ceremonies when the Emperor was in his state-coach, there were two colonels-general of the Guard at the left door. When he rode, all four followed close behind. The Grand Equerry, or his subst.i.tute, had a place among them.
The colonel-general on duty received directly the Emperor's orders relative to the different requirements of the Imperial Guard, and transmitted them directly to the other colonels-general. He was quartered in the palace, in preference to any other officer of the Crown, and as near as possible to the Emperor's apartment, whether at the residence or when travelling. In the field he slept in the Emperor's tent.
Napoleon had twelve aides-de-camp. The one on duty was called the aide-de- camp of the day, He always had a horse saddled or a carriage harnessed ready in the stable, to carry any messages the Emperor might give. As soon as the Emperor had gone to bed, the aide-de-camp on duty was especially entrusted with guarding him, and he slept in an adjoining room. In the field the Emperor's aides served as chamberlains.
There were two distinct elements in the Emperor's household: the military, and the aristocratic. Some men owed their position entirely to their merit; others entirely to their birth; these were both patriots of 1792 and emigres, but it must be confessed the Imperial Almanack shows that the aristocratic element was the more prominent. Napoleon, though certain writers persist in representing him as the crowned champion of democracy and the emperor of the lower cla.s.ses, had a more aristocratic court than Louis XVIII. He was more impressed by great manners than were the old kings. Even after he had been betrayed, abandoned, denied, insulted by the aristocracy, he had a weakness for it. In 1816 he said: ”The democracy may become furious; it has a heart; it can be moved. The aristocracy always remains cold and never pardons.” Yet even after this, he blamed himself for not having done enough for the French n.o.bility. ”I see clearly,” he went on, ”that I did either too much or too little for the Faubourg Saint Germain. I did enough to make the opposition dissatisfied, and not enough to win it to my side. I ought to have secured the emigres when they returned. The aristocracy would have soon adored me; and I needed it; it is the true, the only support of a monarchy, its moderator, its lever, its resisting point; without it, the state is like a s.h.i.+p without a rudder, a balloon in mid-air. Now, the strength, the charm of the aristocracy lies in its antiquity, the only thing I could not create.” It must be confessed that from an old Republican general, for the man who had sent Augereau to execute the coup d'etat of the 18th Fructidor, and who the 13th Vendemiaire, from the steps of the Church of Saint Roch had crushed the Paris conservatives, this was a very aristocratic way of talking, reminding one of the old regime. In 1816 Napoleon said again: ”Old and corrupt nations cannot be governed like the virtuous peoples of antiquity.
For one man nowadays who would sacrifice everything for the public welfare, there are thousands who take no thought of anything except their own interests, pleasures, and vanity. Now to pretend to regenerate a people off-hand would be madness. The workman's genius is shown by his knowing how to make use of the materials under his hand, and that is the secret of the restoration of all the forms of the monarchy, of the return of t.i.tles, crosses, and ribbons.”
The old Republicans of 1796, who used to denounce kings, ”drunk with blood and pride,” would not have readily recognized their old general under the golden canopies of the Tuileries, where he dined in state. His table stood on a platform, beneath a canopy, and there were two chairs, one for himself, the other for the Empress. As he entered the banquet-hall, he was preceded by a swarm of pages, masters-of-ceremonies, and prefects of the palace; he was followed by the colonel-general on duty, the Grand Chamberlain, the Grand Equerry, and the Grand Almoner. The Grand Almoner advanced to the table and blessed the dinner. A general of division, the Grand Equerry Caulaincourt, offered a chair to Bonaparte. Another general of division, Duroc, the Grand Marshal of the Palace, handed him his napkin and poured out his wine. Not merely high dignitaries, but the Princes of the Empire themselves, deemed it an honor to wait upon him as servants. If a Prince of the Imperial family happened to be in the Emperor's room, any article of dress that he asked for was given by the chamberlain-in-waiting to the Prince, and by the Prince to the Emperor. The time of the Sun King seemed to have returned.
The Imperial apartment at the Tuileries consisted of two distinct parts, the grand state apartments and the Emperor's private apartment. The state apartment contained the following rooms: 1, a concert hall (the Hall of the Marshals); 2, a first drawing-room (under Napoleon III. called the Drawing-room of the First Consul); 3, a second drawing-room (that of Apollo); 4, a throne room; 5, a drawing-room of the Emperor (afterwards called that of Louis XIV.); 6, a gallery (of Diana). The private apartment was itself composed of the apartment of honor, containing a hall of the guards and a first and second drawing-room, and an interior apartment containing a bedroom, a study, an office, and topographic bureau. The ushers had charge of the apartment of honor; the valets de chambre of the other. A rigid etiquette determined the right of entrance into the different rooms composing the state apartment, according to a carefully studied system. The pages were authorized to enter the Hall of the Marshals; members of the household of the Emperor and Empress could enter the first and second drawing-rooms; the Princes and Princesses of the Imperial family, the high officers of the Crown, the presidents of the great bodies of the state, had admission to the throne room. Men and women had to bow to the throne whenever they pa.s.sed it. The Emperor and the Empress alone had the right of entering the Emperor's drawing-room. No one else could go in except by the Emperor's summons.
An absurd importance was attached to these trivialities, to these empty nothings, to the right of entering this room or that, of walking before this or that person, of handing the Emperor this or that article of dress.
”An honest, reasonable man,” said Madame de Remusat, ”is often overcome with shame at the pleasures and pains of a courtier's life, and yet it is hard to escape from them. A ribbon, a slight difference of dress, the right of way through a door, the entrance into such and such a drawing- room, are the occasion, contemptible in appearance, of a host of ever new emotions. Vain is the struggle to acquire indifference to them.... In vain, do the mind and the reason revolt against such an employment of human faculties; however dissatisfied one is with one's self, it is necessary to humiliate one's self before every one and to desert the court, or else to consent to take seriously all the nonsense that fills the air and breathes there.”
Vanity of human events! What has become of these drawing-rooms of the Tuileries, which it was such an honor to enter, which were trod with such respectful awe? Look at the lamentable ruins of this ill-fated palace.
There may still be seen, blackened with petroleum and stained by the rain, some of those drawing-rooms, once so brilliant, once thronged with an eager and showy crowd. What an instructive spectacle! When is one more urgently reminded of the emptiness of human glory and greatness? This nothingness fills the soul with melancholy when one thinks that soon these crumbling fragments will be razed and that soon one can say with the poet: The ruins themselves have perished, _Etiam periere ruinae_! [Footnote: The ruins have since been removed.--TR.]
IX.
HOUSEHOLD OP THE EMPRESS.
We have just studied the civil and the military household of the Emperor in 1805; let us now study the Empress's household at the same period.
The Empress's First Almoner was a bishop, a great lord, Ferdinand de Rohan. Her Maid of Honor was a relative of her first husband, the d.u.c.h.ess de La Rochefoucauld, called in the Imperial Almanack of 1805 simply Madame Chastule de La Rochefoucauld. She was short and deformed, but distinguished, for her intelligence, tact, and wit, void of ambition, with no taste for intrigue, who only reluctantly accepted the position of Maid of Honor, and often wanted to hand in her resignation. The Lady of the Bedchamber was Madame de Lavalette, a Beauharnais, an able and affectionate woman, who immortalized herself, in the early days of the Restoration, by saving her husband's life by her heroism.
To the four Ladies of the Palace at the beginning of the Empire, Madame de Lucay, Madame de Remusat, Madame de Talhouet, Madame de Lauriston, were added thirteen other ladies: Madame Duchatel, Madame de Seran, Madame de Colbert, Madame Savary, Madame Octave de Segur, Madame de Turenne, Madame de Montalivet, Madame de Bouille, Madame de Vaux, Madame de Marescot.
The Maid of Honor was for the Empress what the Grand Chamberlain was for the Emperor. The Lady of the Bedchamber's duties corresponded to those of the Keeper of the Wardrobe. The Ladies of the Palace were, so to speak, female chamberlains.
”We were all,” said the d.u.c.h.ess of Abrantes, ”at that time radiant with a sort of glory which women seek as eagerly as men do theirs, that of elegance and beauty. Among the young women composing the court of the Empress and that of the Princesses it would have been hard to find a single ill-favored woman, and there were very many whose beauty made, with no exaggeration, the greatest ornament of the festivities held every day in that fairy-like time.”
All the Ladies of the Palace were young, and almost all were remarkable for their beauty. Among the most conspicuous was Madame Ney, a niece of Madame Campan; Madame Lannes, whose face recalled the most charming pictures of Raphael, and above all, the wife of an already aged Councillor of State, Madame Duchatel (whose son was Minister of the Interior in the reign of Louis Philippe, and whose grandson was Amba.s.sador of the Republic at Vienna). The d.u.c.h.ess of Abrantes thus describes this famous beauty: ”There is one woman in the Imperial court who made her appearance in society shortly before the coronation, whose portrait is drawn in all the contemporary memoirs, especially in those written by a woman, and that is Madame Duchatel. Madame Duchatel would not serve as a model for a sculptor, because her features lack the regularity which his art requires.