Part 8 (1/2)
My maternal heart was the more open to this emotion because I had felt doubtful about the result. Now, however, that I am rea.s.sured by Your Majesty, I have no further fear, and I cheerfully share my daughter's happiness. She has described it to me with touching sincerity, and is never tired of telling me how gratified she is by the many attentions she has received since your meeting. Her sole desire is to make Your Majesty happy, and I venture to flatter myself that she will succeed; for I know her character well, and it is excellent. Louise promises to write to me regularly, and this somewhat consoles me for a real loss.
It is pleasant to be able to keep up one's relations with a person one loves, and I am sure that I feel for her the tenderness of a mother, so kind has she been to me, treating me like a real friend. Your Majesty is good enough to say that your wife has spoken about me. I am not surprised; for I know that she, like me, has a very loving heart. But with due regard to truth, I cannot leave Your Majesty under any mistake with regard to her obligations towards me. From what she says you may form a favorable opinion of her candor. If I can boast of anything, it is that I have tried to preserve this candor, which may at first have made her seem timid, while in fact it renders her only the more worthy of Your Majesty's esteem and friends.h.i.+p.
”Some may blame me because my daughter has so few ideas, such a meagre education. I acknowledge it; but as to the world and its perils, one learns them only too soon, and I will say frankly she was only eighteen, and I wanted to preserve her innocence, and cared only that she should have a loving heart, an honest nature, and clear ideas about what she did know. I have entrusted her to Your Majesty. I beg you, as her mother, to be my daughter's friend and guide, as she is your devoted wife. She will be happy if Your Majesty will always confidently appeal to her; for, I say once more, she is young and too inexperienced to face the world's dangers and to fill her position understandingly. But I perceive that I am wearying Your Majesty with this long letter. You will pardon this outpouring of a mother's heart, which knows no bounds when a beloved daughter's happiness is concerned. I must say one thing more.
Your Majesty sets too high a value on my eagerness to satisfy you by letting you have the portrait of my dear Louise. I was too anxious to please you as soon as possible, not to be selfish in this matter, but I shall certainly thoroughly appreciate the portrait you promise me. It will have this advantage, that it will show me how happy she is.”
It must be said that seldom has a step-mother spoken of her step-daughter in a more tender and more touching way. No letter could have better pleased Napoleon; it was not written in official style, with all the formal compliments, but rather with affectionate sincerity. When he read it, Napoleon must have felt that he had at last really entered the brotherhood of kings. Everything she had said of her step-daughter was true. The young Empress of the French had a candor, a simplicity, a freshness of mind and body, which delighted her husband. Doubtless the feeling she inspired was not a fiery, romantic pa.s.sion such as he had felt for his first wife; and Marie Louise, with her northern beauty, had not the same charm as Josephine, the bewitching creole. Napoleon certainly would not have written to his second wife burning letters, in the style of the _Nouvelle Heloise_, such as he sent to Josephine during the first Italian campaign. His love for Marie Louise was less fervent, but he esteemed her more highly. He thought that the society of the Austrian court was after all a better school for a wife than the society of the Directory, and he had found in Marie Louise, a girl worthy of all regard, one invaluable blessing, one treasure which a widow, charming, it is true, but a coquette, lacked; namely, innocence.
XVI.
THE TRIP IN THE NORTH.
”Napoleon and Marie Louise left Compiegne April 27, 1810, at seven o'clock in the morning, to make a journey in several of the northern departments, which was one long ovation. In their suite were the Grand Duke of Wurzburg, brother of the Emperor of Austria, the Queen of Naples, the King and Queen of Westphalia, Prince Eugene de Beauharnais, Prince Schwarzenberg, and Count Metternich. The last-named says in his Memoirs: 'I was an eye-witness of the enthusiasm with which the young Empress was everywhere greeted by the populace. At Saint Quentin Napoleon formally expressed his desire that I should be present at an audience to which he had summoned the authorities of the city. 'I should like to show you,' he said, 'how I am accustomed to speak to these people.' I saw that the Emperor was anxious to let me see the extent and variety of his knowledge of matters of administration.'”
Those who care to know the adulation offered to Napoleon and Marie Louise on this expedition should read the following pa.s.sage from M.
de Bausset's Memoirs: ”Their Majesties went off to visit some of the northern departments, in order to give Paris and all the great bodies of the State the time required for preparing the festivities which circ.u.mstances made necessary. It was a triumphal march. The provinces greeted their young and beautiful Empress with enthusiasm. Amid all the brilliant tokens of respect, one attracted especial notice. It was a little hamlet, with a triumphal arch, bearing the simplest inscriptions.
On the front was written _Pater Noster_; on the reverse, _Ave Maria, gratia plena_. The mayor and the village priest presented wild-flowers.
Flattery could have devised no more delicate attention.” Thus we have M.
de Bausset finding it simple to compare the Emperor to the Almighty and the Empress to the Blessed Virgin. Was not this a sign of the times?
Thiers says of this journey: ”The populace, glad of a break in their monotonous lives, hasten to meet their princes, whoever they may be, and are often lavish of their applause on the very brink of a catastrophe.
Whenever Napoleon appeared anywhere, curiosity and admiration were strong enough to gather a mult.i.tude; and when he had rounded out his wonderful destiny by marrying an archd.u.c.h.ess, the interest and enthusiasm were all the greater. Indeed, everywhere he appeared, their raptures were warm and unanimous.”
Starting from Compiegne April 27, the Emperor and Empress reached Saint Quentin the same day. The ca.n.a.l connecting the Seine with the Scheldt was illuminated, and Napoleon and his court sailed over it in gondolas richly decked with flags. On the 30th of April they embarked on the ca.n.a.l which goes from Brussels to the Ruppel, and by the Ruppel to the Scheldt. The First Lord of the Admiralty and Admiral Missiessy were in command of the Imperial flotilla. When they arrived in sight of the squadron of Antwerp, which Napoleon had created, all the s.h.i.+ps, frigates, corvettes, gunboats, were drawn up in line, and Marie Louise pa.s.sed under the fire of a thousand cannon thundering in her honor.
When the sovereigns entered the city, the throng was most dense. ”It expressed,” the _Moniteur_ tells us, ”the grat.i.tude of the inhabitants for its second founder. It was impossible not to make a comparison between the present condition of the port and city of Antwerp with its condition seven years before, on His Majesty's first visit.”
At Antwerp they made a stay of five days, which the Emperor, who was on his horse at sunrise, spent in visiting the works of the port, the a.r.s.enal, the fortifications, in holding reviews, in inspecting the fleet. May 2 there was launched a s.h.i.+p of eighty guns, the largest s.h.i.+p that had ever been built on the stocks of this port. It was blessed by the Archbishop of Mechlin. According to the Baron de Meneval, ”the Empress was affable, simple, and unpretentious. Possibly the memory of Josephine's charm and earnest desire to please was a misfortune to Marie Louise. Her reserve might have been attributed to German family pride, but that would have been a mistake; no one was ever simpler or less haughty. Her natural timidity and her unfamiliarity with the part she had to play, alone gave her an air of stiffness. She was so thoroughly identified with her new position and so touched by the regard and affection with which the Emperor was treated, that when he proposed to her to stay at Antwerp while he was visiting the islands of the Zuyder Zee, she besought him to take her with him, undeterred by any fear of the fatigues of the journey.” Consequently Napoleon started with her to visit Bois-le-Duc, Berg-op-Zoom, Breda, Middelburg, Flus.h.i.+ng, and the island of Walcheren, which the English had evacuated four months before.
At Breda the Emperor soundly abused a deputation of the Catholic clergy whom he knew to be opposed to him. ”Gentlemen,” he broke out, ”why are you not in sacerdotal garments? Are you attorneys, notaries, or physicians? ... Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's. The Pope is not Caesar; I am. It is not to the Pope, but to me, that G.o.d has given a sceptre and a sword.... Ah, you are unwilling to pray for me. Is it because a Roman priest has excommunicated me? But who gave him any such power? Who has the power to release subjects from their oath of allegiance to the legally appointed ruler? No one; and you ought to know it.... Renounce the hope of putting me in a convent and of shaving my head, like Louis the Debonair, and submit yourselves; for I am Caesar! If you don't, I shall banish you from my empire, and scatter you over the surface of the earth like the Jews.... You belong to the diocese of Mechlin; go to your bishop; take your oath before him, obey the Concordat, and then I will see what commands I shall have to give you.”
After visiting the towns on the frontier, as well as the islands of Tholen, Schomven, North and South Beveland, and Walcheren, Napoleon, constantly accompanied by Marie Louise, ascended the Scheldt once more, merely pa.s.sed through Antwerp, made a brief stop at Brussels, spent three days at the castle of Lacken, and hastily ran through Ghent, Bruges, Ostend, Dunkirk, Lille, Calais, Dieppe, Havre, and Rouen.
June 1, 1810, they were back at Saint Cloud. The Baron de Meneval tells us that Marie Louise was extremely delighted with the way she had been greeted throughout this journey. Everywhere she had been received under arches of triumph, with countless festivities, b.a.l.l.s, illuminations, and every token of the popular enthusiasm and affection, so that ”she was able to appreciate the French character, and to decide that she would readily grow accustomed to a country where the devotion of the people to their sovereign, the enormous influence he wielded, and the affection he bore to them, as well as theirs for his cause, filled her with hopes for a happy life.” Napoleon's life at that time was one long deification.
Louis XIV. himself, the Sun-King, had never received more flattery in prose and verse. All the official poets had tuned their lyres to sing his marriage, and the _Moniteur_ was full of dithyrambs. It also published a translation of an Italian cantata ent.i.tled, ”_La Jerogamia di Creta, Inno del Cavaliere Vincenzo Monti_,” which began thus: ”The silence of Olympus is broken up by the noisy neighing of coursers and by the prolonged and disturbing rattle of swift chariots. The Immortals descend to the banks of the Gnossus to celebrate with fitting rites the new marriage of the ruler of the G.o.ds.” It ended thus: ”The waves of two seas, in motion, though no wind blows, roar in terror, and Neptune, alarmed, feels with surprise his trident tremble in his hand. If such is the sport of the monarch of thunder when he yields to the sweets of Hymen, what will it be when he again grasps the thunderbolt? Divine nurses of Jove, bees of Mount Panacra, ah! distil upon my verses, from the summit of Dicte, one drop of the sweet-savored honey, food of the King of Heaven, that my August sovereign, whose soul is like Jupiter's, may find some pleasure in hearing them!”
Napoleon seemed to rule the present and the future. Even those who had fought against him had become his courtiers. The most ill.u.s.trious of these, the Archduke Charles, to whom he had just sent the broad ribbon of the Legion of Honor, as well as a simple cross of a knight, which was more precious because he himself had worn it, wrote to him: ”Sire, Your Majesty's Amba.s.sador has transmitted to me the decorations of the Legion of Honor, and the affectionate letter with which you have honored me.
Being deeply impressed by these tokens of your goodwill, I hasten to express to Your Majesty my sincere grat.i.tude, which is only equalled by my admiration for Your Majesty's great qualities. The esteem of a great man is the fairest flower of the field of honor, and I have always jealously desired, Sire, to merit yours.”
A stranger thing yet: even the Spanish Bourbons, the victims of the Bayonne treachery, the princes whom Napoleon had ousted, set no limits to their adulation. Nowhere was the Emperor's marriage with Marie Louise celebrated with greater show of enthusiasm than at the castle of Valencay, where Ferdinand III. was living. The Spanish Prince had a _Te Deum_ sung in the chapel; he gave a banquet, at which he proposed this toast: ”To the health of our August Sovereigns, the great Napoleon and Marie Louise, his August spouse.” In the evening there were magnificent fireworks. He chose that moment when his subjects were exposing themselves to every danger, welcoming every sacrifice in their bitter war in his name, against the French, to beg Napoleon to adopt him as his son and to concede to him the honor of letting him appear at court.
XVII.
THE MONTH OF JUNE, 1810.