Part 18 (1/2)
”With these feelings, you will perceive, sir, how happy I shall be to have him soon receive this letter, which I entrust to you. It contains my wishes for the new year. And I can truly say that there is not another heart in France more sincerely devoted to his happiness--his true happiness and his glory. Ah! sir, I a.s.sure him that in France there is one being who is warmly attached, sincerely devoted to him, as are all hers. My children have been cradled in the name of Napoleon, and that without concealment. The misfortune of their father has been an additional tie to attach them to the memory of the Emperor, and to all those who bear his revered name. The bust of the Emperor is in my alcove, by the side of the font in which I place my l.u.s.tral water. There I every morning and evening repeat my prayers. Why should I not say this? I do it because my love for my country constrains me to fall upon my knees before that name which const.i.tuted its glory and its happiness for fifteen years.”
On the 28th of July, 1833, the Louis Philippe Government, in reluctant concession to the almost universal voice of the French people, restored the statue of Napoleon to the Column of Austerlitz, in the Place Vendome. It is scarcely too much to say that as that statue rose to its proud eminence, the whole French nation raised a shout of joy. A Parisian journal, _The Tribune_, intending perhaps to reflect upon the Government, expressed surprise in not seeing a single member of the Bonaparte family shaking the dust of exile from his feet, and coming, in the broad light of July, claiming a ”just reparation.” Joseph wrote to the editor from London a letter containing the following sentiments:
”I have read in your journal of July 29th the article in which you give an account of the solemnity which took place on the 28th at the foot of the Column of Austerlitz, upon the inauguration of the statue of the Emperor Napoleon. You attribute the absence of his brothers to very strange sentiments. Are you ignorant, then, that an iniquitous law, dictated by the enemies of France to the elder branch of the Bourbons, excluded these brothers, out of hatred to the name of Napoleon? Would you wish that, in defiance of a law which the National Majesty has not yet repealed, we should bear the brands of discord into our country at the moment when it re-erects the statue of our brother? _Every thing for the nation_, was the motto of our brother. It shall be ours also.
”Instead of speaking, as a hostile journal would have done, in casting the blame upon patriots proscribed, who wander over the world the victims of the enemies of their country, would it not have exhibited more of courage and of justice on your part, sir, to recall to the electors of France that Napoleon has a mother who languishes upon a foreign soil, without it being possible for her children to speak to her a last adieu? She shares with three generations of her kindred, including sixty French, the rigors of an exile of twenty years. They are guilty of no other crime than that of being the relatives of a man whose statue is re-erected by national decree.
”The name of Napoleon will never be the banner of civil discord. Twice he withdrew from France, that he might not be the pretext for the infliction of calamities upon his country. Such are the doctrines which Napoleon has bequeathed to his family. It is because the French people know well that his pretended despotism was but a dictators.h.i.+p, rendered necessary by the wars which his enemies waged against him, that his memory remains popular. Is it just, is it honorable that his family should still be condemned to endure the anguish of exile, and to hear even his ancient enemies reproach the French with the injustice of their proscription?”
This law of proscription, dictated by the Allies on the 12th of January, 1816, and re-affirmed by the Government of Louis Philippe, was as follows:
”The ascendants and descendants of Napoleon Bonaparte, his uncles and his aunts, his nephews and his nieces, his brothers, their wives and their descendants, his sisters and their husbands, are excluded from the realm forever.”
The penalty for violating this decree of banishment was _death_. Madame Let.i.tia had been informed in Rome that the Louis Philippe Government contemplated abolis.h.i.+ng the decree of exile, so far as _she alone_ was concerned. In response she wrote, April, 1834, to a distinguished gentleman in Paris, M. Sapey, as follows:
”MONSIEUR,--Those who recognize the absurdity of maintaining the law of exile against my family, and who wish nevertheless to propose an exception, do not know either my principles or my character. I was left a widow at thirty-three years of age, and my eight children were my only consolation. Corsica was menaced with separation from France. The loss of my property and the abandonment of my fireside did not terrify me.
I followed my children to the Continent. In 1814 I followed Napoleon to the island of Elba. In 1816, notwithstanding my age, I should have followed him to Saint Helena had it not been prohibited. I resigned myself to live a prisoner of state at Rome; yes, a prisoner of state.
I know not whether that was through an amplification of the law which exiled me with my family from France, or by a protocol of the allied powers.
”I then saw persecution reach such a pitch as to compel the members of my family, who had devoted themselves to live with me at Rome, to abandon the city. I then decided to withdraw from the world, and to seek no other happiness than that of the future life; since I saw myself separated from those for whom I clung to life, and in whom reposed all my souvenirs and all my happiness, if there were any more happiness remaining for me in this world. How could I hope to find any equivalent in France, which was not already poisoned by the injustice of men in power who could not pardon my family the glory which it has acquired?
”Leave me, then, in my honorable sufferings, that I may bear to the tomb the integrity of my character. I will never separate my lot from that of my children. It is the only consolation which remains to me. Receive, nevertheless, monsieur, my thanks for the kind interest which you have taken in my affairs.”
On the 15th of January, 1835, Joseph wrote to his brother Louis, the father of Napoleon III., as follows:
”MY DEAR BROTHER,--I have received your letter of the 27th of December.
I am afflicted by the depression of spirits in which it was written. It is true that for many years fortune has been constantly severe with us.
But it is something to be able to say to one's self that fortune is blind. And an irreproachable conscience and a good heart offer many consolations. They accompany us wherever we go, and prevent us from being too severe in our turn against fortune and her favorites of the day.
”It is indeed true that there are but few gleams of happiness to be met in this life. The least unfortunate have still their storms. There are but few privileged men. How many there are whom we must admit to be more unhappy than we are. And we do not sufficiently take into account the sufferings of dishonored men, whose conscience will at times awake and react upon those who have done it violence. Those who have borne arms against their country, against their benefactor, who have sold their services to foreigners, think you they can be happy? The consciousness of not having merited the abandonment of which you speak, is not that a happy sentiment? It is necessary then for us to perceive what we are in this life, and not what we could wish to be. Being men, we are destined to live, that is to say, to suffer. But we can preserve our own self-respect, and the esteem of the friends who appreciate us. So long as that continues, one is not absolutely unhappy. In that point of view, no person ought to be more satisfied than yourself, my dear Louis. All other evils over which we have no control are hard to endure, undoubtedly. But their necessity, in spite of ourselves, should lead us to bear them. We ought to submit to that which we can not prevent.
”Still, I can say nothing upon this subject which you do not know as well as I do. But I am not writing a dissertation. I recount my sensations and my sentiments as they flow from my pen. The consciousness of not meriting the evil which one suffers greatly mitigates that evil.
Adieu, my dear Louis. I love you as ever. We have not known any revolutions in our affections.”
Soon after Joseph had established himself in London, he called his brothers Lucien and Jerome, and his nephew, Prince Louis Napoleon, to join him there. The acts of the Government of Louis Philippe and the intense opposition they encountered engrossed his meditations. Fully satisfied that the Government could not maintain itself in the course it was pursuing, Joseph deemed it important for the triumph of what he called the popular cause, to effect a cordial union between the Republican and Imperial parties. The Government thwarted this union by sending spies into the clubs, who, joining those a.s.sociations, a.s.sumed to be earnest democrats, and strove in every way to promote discord, while they extolled in most extravagant terms the brutal deeds of Marat, St. Just, and Robespierre. Joseph could not act in harmony with such men, and the projected alliance was abandoned.[AM]
[Footnote AM: Oeuvres de Napoleon III., tome deuxieme, p. 449.]
In a brief sketch which Louis Napoleon, while a prisoner at Ham, wrote of his uncle Joseph just after his death, he says: ”In general, Prince Louis Napoleon was in accord with his uncle upon all fundamental questions; but he differed from him upon one essential point, which offered a very strange contrast. The old man, whose days were nearly finished, did not wish to precipitate any thing. He was resigned to await the developments of time. But the young man, impatient, wished to act, and to precipitate events.
”The insurrection at Strasbourg, in the month of October, 1836, thus took place without the authorization and without the partic.i.p.ation of Joseph. He was also much displeased with it, since the journals deceived him respecting the aim and intentions of his nephew. In 1837 Joseph revisited America. Upon his return to Europe in 1839 he found his nephew in England. Then, enlightened respecting the object, the means, and the plans of Prince Louis Napoleon, he restored to him all his tenderness. The publication of _Les Idees Napoleoniennes_ merited his entire approbation. And upon that occasion he declared openly that, in his quality of friend and depositary of the most intimate thoughts of the Emperor, he could say positively that that book contained the exact and faithful record of the political intentions of his brother.”
It will be remembered that Louis Napoleon, after the attempt at Strasbourg, was sent in a French frigate to Brazil, and thence to New York, where he remained but a few weeks, when he returned to Europe to his dying mother. At New York, under date of April 22, 1837, he wrote the following letter to his uncle Joseph at London. The letter very clearly reveals the relation then existing between them.
”MY DEAR UNCLE,--Upon my arrival in the United States, I hoped to have found a letter from you. I confess to you that I have been deeply pained to learn that you were displeased with me. I have even been astonished by it, knowing your judgment and your heart. Yes, my uncle, you must have been strangely led into error in respect to me, to repel as enemies men who have devoted themselves to the cause of the Empire.
”If, successful at Strasbourg, and it was very near a success, I had marched upon Paris, drawing after me the populations fascinated by the souvenirs of the Empire, and, arriving in the capital a pretender, I had seized upon the legal power, then indeed there would have been n.o.bleness and grandeur of soul in disavowing my conduct, and in breaking with me.
”But how is it? I attempt one of those bold enterprises which could alone re-establish that which twenty years of peace have caused to be forgotten. I throw myself into the attempt, ready to sacrifice my life, persuaded that my death even would be useful to our cause. I escape, against my wishes, the bayonets and the scaffold; and, having escaped, I find on the part of my family only contumely and disdain.