CHAPTER XXXVIII. PRELUDE TO THE EMPIRE.
The sun of happiness which for Josephine seemed to shine so brightly over Malmaison, had nevertheless its long shadows and its dark specks; even her gracious countenance was obscured, her heart filled with sad forebodings, and her bosom stung as if by scorpions hidden under flowers.
Josephine had in her immediate circle violent and bitter enemies, who were ever busy in undermining the influence which she possessed over her husband, to steal from his heart the love he cherished for her, and to remove from his side the woman who, by her presence, kept them in the shade, and who wielded or destroyed the influence which they desired to have over him.
These enemies were the brothers and especially the sisters of Bonaparte. Among the brothers of the first consul, Lucien showed to his sister-in-law the most violent and irreconcilable enmity. He left no means untried to do her injury, and to convert her into an object of suspicion, and this because he was convinced that Josephine was the prime cause of the hostile sentiments of Napoleon against him, and because he believed that, Josephine once out of the way, Napoleon’s ear would be open to conviction, and that he, Lucien, the most powerful citizen, next to his brother, would be the second “first consul.” He was not aware that Napoleon’s keen eagle eye had fathomed his ambitious heart; that he was the one who kept Lucien away, because he mistrusted him, because he feared his ambition, and even looked upon him as capable of the bold design of casting Napoleon aside, and setting himself up in his place. Lucien was unaware of the influence which Josephine frequently exerted over the mind of the first consul, in favor of himself; that it was she who had pacified Napoleon’s anger at Lucien’s marriage, contracted without his consent, and prevented him from annulling it violently. The other brothers of Napoleon, influenced, perhaps, by the enmity of Lucien, were also disaffected toward their sister-in-law, and of them all, only Louis, the youngest, the one who loved the first consul most tenderly and most sincerely, showed toward her due respect and affection.
His three sisters were still more active in their opposition. Constantly quarrelling among themselves, they, however, united heartily in the common feeling of hatred to Josephine. It was she who stood in their way, who every day excited anew their anger by the position she held at Napoleon’s side, and in virtue of which the three sisters were thrust into the background. Josephine, the wife of the first consul, was the one to whom France made obeisance, upon whom the ambassadors of foreign powers first waited, and afterward upon the sisters of the first consul. It was Josephine who took the precedence in solemn ceremonies, and to whom, by Bonaparte’s commands, they had to manifest respect. And this woman, who by her eminence placed the sisters of Bonaparte in an inferior position, was not of nobler or more distinguished blood than they; she was not young, she was not beautiful, she was not even able to give birth to a child, for which her husband so intensely longed.
The three sisters might have been submissive to the daughter of a prince, they might have conceded to her the right of precedence, but the widow of the Viscount de Beauharnais was not superior to them in rank or birth; she was far inferior to them in beauty and youth—and yet they had to give way to her, and see her take the first place!
From these sentiments of jealousy and envy sprang the enmity which the three sisters of Bonaparte, Madame Elise Bacciocchi, Madame Pauline Borghese, and Madame Caroline Murat, cherished against Josephine, and which her gentle words and kind heart could never assuage.
Josephine was in their way—she must therefore fall. Such is the key to the right understanding of the conduct of the three beautiful sisters of Napoleon toward the wife of their brother. In their violence they disregarded all propriety, and shrank from no calumny or malice to accomplish their ends. It was a constant warfare with intrigues and malicious suspicions. Every action of Josephine was observed, every step was watched, in the hope of finding something to render her suspicious to her husband. On every occasion the three sisters besieged him with complaints concerning the lofty and proud demeanor of Josephine, and ridiculed him about his old, childless wife, who stood in the way of his growing fame! Though Bonaparte in these conflicts always sided with Josephine against his sisters, yet there probably remained in his heart a sting from the ridicule which they had directed against him.
This hostility of the Bonaparte family was not unknown to Josephine; her soul suffered under these ceaseless attacks, her heart was agonized at the thought that the efforts of her sisters-in-law might finally succeed in withdrawing from her the love of her husband. She was persuaded that even in the Bonaparte family she needed a protector, that she must look for one among the brothers, so as to counteract the enmity of the sisters; and she chose for this Louis Bonaparte. She entreated Napoleon to give to his young, beloved brother the hand of her daughter Hortense. It would be a new bond chaining Bonaparte to her—a new fortress for her love—if he would but make her daughter his sister-in-law, and his brother her son-in-law.
Napoleon did not oppose her wishes; he consented that Hortense should be married to his brother. It is true the young people were not consulted; for the first time, Josephine’s selfishness got the better of her love for her child—she sacrificed the welfare of her daughter to secure her own happiness.
But Hortense loved another, yet she yielded to the entreaties and tears of her mother, and became the wife of this laconic, timid young man, whose meagre, unpretending appearance resembled so little the ideal which her maidenly heart had pictured of her future husband.
Louis on his side had not the slightest inclination for Hortense; he never would have chosen her for his wife, for their characters were too different; their inclinations and wishes were not in sympathy with each other. But through obedience to the wishes of his brother, he accepted the proffered hand of Josephine’s daughter, and became the husband of the beautiful, blond-haired Hortense de Beauharnais.
In February, of the year 1802, the marriage of the young couple took place, and this family event was celebrated with the most magnificent festivities. Josephine’s joy and happiness were complete—she had thrown a bridge over the abyss, and was now secure against the hostilities of her sisters-in-law, by giving up her own daughter.
Every thing was resplendent with beauty and joy at these festivities; every thing wore an appearance of happiness; only the countenances of the newly-married couple were grave and sad, and their deep melancholy contrasted strikingly with the happiness of which they themselves were the cause. Adorned with diamonds and flowers, Hortense appeared to be a stranger to all the pomp which surrounded her, and to be occupied only with her own sad communings. Louis Bonaparte was pale and grave, like Hortense; he seldom addressed a word to the young wife that the orders of his brother had given him; and she avoided her husband’s looks, perhaps to hinder him from reading there the indifference and dislike she felt for him. [Footnote: “Memoires sur l’Imperatrice Josephine, la Cour de Navarre,” etc., par Mlle. Ducrest, vol. i., p. 49.]
But Josephine was happy, for she knew the noble, faithful, and generous spirit of the man to whom she had given her daughter; and she trusted that the two young hearts, now that they were linked together, would soon love one another. She hoped much more from this alliance; she hoped not only to find in it a shield against domestic animosities, but also to give to her husband, even if indirectly, the children he so much desired—for the offspring of his brother and the daughter of his Josephine would be nearly the same as his own, and they could adopt and love them as such. This was Josephine’s hope, the dream of her happiness, when she gave her daughter in marriage to the brother of her husband.
The fact that the first consul was childless was not only a family solicitude, it was also a political question. The people themselves had changed the face of affairs, they had by solemn vote decided to confer the consulate for life upon Napoleon, who had previously been elected for ten years only. In other words, the French people had chosen Bonaparte for their master and ruler, and he now lacked but the title to be king. Every one felt and knew that this consulate for life was but the prelude to royalty; that the golden laurel-wreath of the first consul would soon be converted into a golden crown, so as to secure to France an enduring peace, and to make firm its political situation.
With her keen political instinct, Josephine trembled at the thought that the King or Emperor Bonaparte would have to establish for himself a dynasty—that he would have to appease the apprehensions of France by offering to the nation a son who would be his legitimate heir and successor. Thus was the subject of divorce kept hanging over her head until the conviction was forced upon her mind that some day Napoleon would be led into sacrificing his love to politics. Josephine was conscious of it, and consequently the hopes of Napoleon’s future greatness, which so pleased his brothers and sisters, only made her sorrowful, and she therefore entreated Bonaparte with tender appeal to remain content with the high dignity he already possessed, and not to tempt fate, nor to allow it to bear him up to a dizzy height, from which the stormy winds of adversity might the more easily prostrate him.
Bonaparte listened to her with a smile, and generally in silence. Once only he replied to her: “Has not your prophetess in Martinique told you that one day you would be more than a queen?”
“And the prophecy is already realized,” exclaimed Josephine. “The wife of the consul for life is more than a queen, for her husband is the elect of thirty millions of hearts!” Bonaparte laughed, and said nothing.
Another time Josephine asked him—“Now, Bonaparte, when are you going to make me Empress of the Gauls?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “What an idea,” said he; “the little Josephine an empress!”
Josephine answered him with the words of Corneille—“‘Le premier qui fut roi fut un soldat heureux’” (the first king was a successful soldier); and she added, “The wife of this fortunate soldier shares his rank.”
He placed his small, white hand, adorned with rings, under her chin, and gazed at her with a deep, strange look.
“Now, Josephine,” said he, after a short pause, “your successful soldier is only, for the present, consul for life, and you are sharing his rank. Be careful, then, that the wife of the first consul surrounds herself with all the brilliancy and the pomp which beseem her dignity. No more economy, no more modest simplicity! The industry of France is at a low ebb—we must make it rise. We must give receptions; we must prove to France that the court of a consul can be as splendid as that of a king. You understand what pomp is—none better than you! Now show yourself brilliant, magnificent, so that the other ladies may imitate you. But, no foreign stuffs! Silk and velvet from the fabrics of Lyons!”
“Yes,” said Josephine, with charming tenderness, “and when afterward my bills become due, you cut them down—you find them too high.”
“I only cut down what is too exorbitant,” said Bonaparte, laughing. “I have no objection for you to give to the manufacturers any amount of work and profit, but I do not wish them to cheat you.” [Footnote: Abrantes, “Memoires” vol. iv.]
Henceforth, the consulate began gradually to exhibit a splendor and pomp which were behind no princely court, and which relegated, amid the dark legends of the fabulous past, the fraternity and the equality of the republic. The absence of pretension, and the simplicity of Malmaison, were now done away with; everywhere the consul for life was followed by the splendors of his dignity, and everywhere Josephine was accompanied by her court.
For now she had a court, and an anteroom, with all its intrigues and flatteries; and its conspiracies already wove their chains around the consul and his wife. It was not suddenly, it was not spontaneously, that this court of the first consul was formed; two years were required for its organization—two years of unceasing labor on the new code of regulations, which etiquette dictated from the remembrances of the past to the palace-officers of the Consul Bonaparte. “How was this in times past? What was the practice?” Such were the constant questions in the interior of the Tuileries, and for the answers they appealed to Madame de Montesson, to the old courtiers, the servants and adherents of royalty. Instead of creating every thing new, they turned by degrees to the usages and manners of the past. Always and in all countries have there been seen at courts caricatures and persons of ill-mannered awkwardness; at the opening of the court of the first consul it is probable that these existed, and appeared still more strange to those who had been used to the manners, traditions, and language of the ancient court of Versailles. Their awkwardness, however, was soon overcome; and Josephine understood so well the rare art of presiding at a court establishment—she was such an accomplished mistress of refined manners and of noble deportment—she united to the perfect manners of the old nobility the most exquisite adroitness, and she knew so well how to adapt all these advantages to every new circumstance—that soon every one bowed to her sovereignty and submitted to her laws.
From the glittering halls of the Tuileries there soon disappeared the sword and the uniform, to be replaced by the gold-embroidered dress, the silk stockings, and the chapeau bras; and on the glassy floors of the Tuileries generals and marshals appeared as fine cavaliers, who, submitting to the rules of etiquette, left behind with their regiments the coarse language of the camp. Many of these young generals and heroes had married the beautiful but impoverished daughters of the aristocrats of old monarchical France. These young women, who were the representatives of the ancient noblesse, brought to the Tuileries the traditions of their mothers, and distinguished themselves by the ease of their courtly deportment and their graceful manners; and they thus unconsciously became the teachers of the other young women, who, like their husbands, owed their aristocratic name only to the sword and to their fresh laurels, and not to ancient escutcheons.
In the Tuileries and in St. Cloud there were reception-days, audience-days, and great and small levees, at which were assembled all that France possessed of rank, name, and fame, and where the ambassadors of all the powers accredited at the court of the consul, where all the higher clergy and the pope’s nuncio, appeared in full dress.
Bonaparte ventured to remove still further from the landmarks of the revolution, and from its so-called conquests. He restored to France the church; he reopened the temples of religion, and he also gave back to the people their priests.
Just as in the days of old monarchical France, every Sunday, and at every festival, a solemn mass was said at St. Cloud; and in the glass gallery on the way to the chapel, Bonaparte received petitions and granted short audiences. France, with the instinct of its old inclinations and habits, readily returned to this new order of things; and even those who once had with enthusiasm saluted the Goddess of Reason, went now, with hands joined in prayer and eyes bent low, to Notre Dame, to offer again their supplications to the God of Love.
Every thing seemed to return to the old track, every thing was as in the days preceding the revolution—the re-establishment of the throne, the national, willing approbation that the republic had become a monarchy, was, however, still wanting.
Finally, on the 18th of May, 1804, France spoke out the decisive word, and, by the voice of its representatives the senators, it offered to Bonaparte the crown, and requested him to ascend as emperor the throne of France.
Napoleon acceded to these wishes, and, as the senate, in a ceremonious procession, marshalled by Cambaceres, came to St. Cloud to communicate to Bonaparte the wish of France, and to offer to him and to Josephine the dignities of an empire, he accepted it without surprise, and apparently without joy, and allowed himself to be proclaimed NAPOLEON, THE FIRST EMPEROR OF THE FRENCH.
On this memorable day, after Cambaceres, in the name of the senate and of France, had addressed the first consul as the actual emperor, he turned to Josephine, who, with that unparalleled admixture of grandeur, grace, and tender womanly beauty, which were all so especially her own, was present at this audience at Napoleon’s side.
“Madame,” said Cambaceres, “there remains yet to the senate a pleasant duty to perform: to bring to your imperial majesty the homage of its respect and the expression of gratitude of the French people. Yes, madame, the public sentiment acknowledges the good which you are ever performing; that you are always accessible to the unfortunate; that you use your influence with the chief magistrate only to diminish evil, and to procure a hearing to those who seek it; and that your majesty with this well-doing combines the most amiable tenderness, rendering thankfulness a pleasant duty. These noble qualities of your majesty foretell that the name of the Empress Josephine will be a watchword of trust and hope; and, as the virtues of Napoleon will ever be to his followers an example to teach them the difficult art of government, so also, the lively remembrance of your goodness will teach to their honorable wives that to strive to dry the tear is the surest means of ruling the heart. The senate deems itself happy in being the first to congratulate your imperial majesty, and he who has the honor of addressing you these sentiments in the name of the senate, dares trust that you will ever number him among your most faithful servants.”
It was, then, decided! France had accepted her master, and Cambaceres in his solemn address had already marked out the situation of France and of her rulers. Bonaparte and Josephine were now their imperial majesties, the senators were their most faithful servants. What remained to the people but to call themselves “faithful subjects?”
The people, however, had made known their wishes only through the voice of the senate; it was the senators who had converted Bonaparte into the Emperor Napoleon; but the people were also to make their will known in a solemn manner; they were, through a universal public suffrage, to decide whether the imperial dignity should be given only for life to Napoleon the First, Emperor of the French, or whether it should be hereditary in his family.
France, wearied with storms and divisions, decided with her five millions of votes for the hereditary imperial dignity in Bonaparte’s family, and thus the people of France created their fourth dynasty.
Meanwhile Josephine received this new decision of the nation, not with that disquietude and care which she had formerly experienced. Bonaparte had given her the deepest and strongest proof of his love and faithfulness. He had not only withstood the pressure of his whole family, which had conjured him before his election to the empire to be divorced from his childless wife, but he had in the generosity of his love appointed his heirs and successors, and these were to be the sons of Hortense. The senate had decreed that the imperial dignity should be transmitted as a heritage to Napoleon’s two brothers Joseph and Louis, and moreover they had given to Napoleon the right to choose his successors and heirs from the families of the two brothers.
Napoleon had given to Josephine the strongest proof of affection—he had declared the son of her daughter Hortense and of his brother Louis, the little Napoleon Louis, to be his successor and heir, and the idea of a divorce no longer caused apprehensions before which Josephine need tremble.
Bonaparte had appointed the sons of his brother and of Josephine’s daughter as his heirs, and the heir of the new imperial throne was already born. Hortense’s youth made it hopeful that she would add to the new branch of the Napoleonic dynasty new leaves and new boughs.
Josephine could now rejoice in her happiness and her glory; she could abandon herself to the new splendors of her life with all the enjoyment of her sensitive and excitable nature. She could now receive with smiles and with affable condescension the homage of France, for she was not only empress by a nation’s vote, but she was also empress by the choice of Napoleon her husband.
The brilliancy of this new and glorious horizon was soon overhung by a sombre cloud. The execution of the Duke d’Enghien threw its dark shadows from the last days of the consulate upon the truly royalist heart of Josephine; and now that heart was to receive fresh wounds through the royalists, to whom she had remained true with all the memories of youth, and in whose behalf she had so often, so zealously, and so warmly interceded with her husband.
A new conspiracy against Napoleon’s life was discovered, and this time it was the men of the highest ranks of the old aristocracy who were implicated in it. George Cadoudal, the unwearied conspirator, had, while in England, planned with the leaders of the monarchical party residing in France, or who were away from it, a new conspiracy, whose object was to destroy Bonaparte and to re-establish the monarchy.
But Fate was again on the side of the hero of Arcola. His good star still protected him. The conspiracy was discovered, and all those concerned in it were arrested. Among them were the Generals Pichegru and Moreau, the Counts de Polignac, Riviere, Saint Coster, Charles d’Hozier, and many others of the leading and most distinguished royalists. They were now under the avenging sword of justice, and the tribunal had condemned twenty of the accused to death, among whom were the above named. The emperor alone had the power to save them and to extend mercy. But he was this time determined to exhibit a merciless severity, so as to put an end to the royalists, and to prove to them that he was the ruler of France, and that the people without a murmur had given him the power to punish, as guilty of high-treason, those who dared touch their emperor.
Josephine’s heart, however, remained true to her memories and her piety; and, according to her judgment, those who, with so much heroic loyalty, remained true to the exiled monarchy, were criminals only as they had imperilled her husband’s life, but criminals who, since their plans were destroyed, deserved pardon, because they had sinned through devotion to sacred principles.
Josephine, therefore, opposed Bonaparte’s anger, and begged for pardon for the son of the former friend of Queen Marie Antoinette, the Count Jules de Polignac. Bonaparte, however, remained inexorable; he repelled Josephine with vehemence, reproaching her for asking for the life of those who threatened his. But she would not be deterred; since Bonaparte had turned her away with her petitions and prayers, she wanted at least to give to the wife of the Count de Polignac an opportunity to ask pardon for her condemned husband. Despite Bonaparte’s wrath, Josephine led the Countess de Polignac into a corridor through which the emperor had to pass, when he went from the council-room into his cabinet, and by this means the countess was fortunate enough, by her tears and prayers, to save her husband’s life. The Count de Polignac was pardoned; and now that Bonaparte’s heart had once been opened to mercy, he also granted to Josephine the lives of Count Riviere and of General Lajolais, in behalf of whom Hortense had appealed to the emperor. More than twenty of the conspirators were accused and sentenced, some to death and some to severe punishment, but one-half of the accused were, thanks to the prayers of Josephine and of her daughter, pardoned; a few were put to death, and the rest transported. Pichegru committed suicide in prison; Moreau received permission to emigrate to America; George Cadoudal perished on the scaffold.
After this last fruitless attempt to re-establish in France the throne of the Bourbons, the royalists, wearied and terrified, had at least for a time to withdraw into obscurity and solitude, and the newly-established empire appeared in still more striking magnificence. The monarchy by God’s grace had been conquered by the empire by the people’s grace, and Napoleon wanted now to show himself to astonished Europe in all the glory of his new dignity. He therefore undertook a journey with his wife through the conquered German provinces; he went to Aix-la-Chapelle, to the city of coronation of the ancient German emperors, and which now belonged to imperial France; he went to Mayence, the golden Mayence of the old Roman days, and which now, after so many streams of bloodshed, had been transferred to France.
This journey of the emperor and empress was one uninterrupted triumphal procession; the population of the old German city applauded, in dishonorable faithlessness, the new foreign ruler; all the clergy received their imperial majesties at the door of the cathedral, where Germany’s first emperor, Charlemagne, was buried; and, to flatter the Empress Josephine, the clergy caused a miracle to be performed by her hand. There existed in the sacred treasury of the cathedral a casket of gold, containing the most precious relics, but which was never opened to the eyes of mortals, and whose lock no key fitted. Only once a year was this precious, sacred casket of relics shown to the worshipping crowd, and then locked up in the holy shrine. But for Josephine this treasury was condescendingly opened, and to the empress was presented this casket of relics, and behold, the miracle took place! At the touch of the empress the lid of the casket sprang up, and in it were seen the most precious jewels of royalty, amongst which was the seal-ring of Charlemagne. [Footnote: Constant, “Memoires,” vol. iii.] No one was more surprised at this miracle than the clergy!
The neighboring German princes came to ancient Mayence to do homage to Josephine, and to win the favor of the sovereign of France toward their little principalities, and to assure him of their devotedness. Bonaparte already understood how to receive the humble, flattering German princes with the mien of a gracious protector, and to look upon them with the eye of an emperor, to whom not only the nations but also the princes must bow; and Josephine also excited the admiration of genuine princes and legitimate princesses, by the graciousness and grandeur, by the unaffected dignity and ease with which she knew how to represent the sovereign and the empress.
CHAPTER XXXIX. THE POPE IN PARIS.
Fate had reserved another triumph for the ruler of France, the Emperor Napoleon—the triumph that the empire by the people’s grace should be converted and exalted into the empire by God’s grace. Pope Pius VII., full of thankfulness that Napoleon had re-established the Church in France, and restored to the clergy their rights, had consented to come to Paris for the sake of giving to the empire, created by the will of the French people, the benediction of the Church, and in solemn coronation to place the imperial crown on the head anointed by the hands of God’s vice-gerent.
Bonaparte received this news with the lofty composure of an emperor who finds it quite natural that the whole world should bow to his wishes, and Josephine received it with the modesty and joyous humility of a pious Christian. She desired above all things the blessing of God and of the Church to rest upon this crown, whose possession had seemed to her until now a spoliation, a sacrilege, and about which her conscience so often reproached her. But when God’s vicegerent, when the Holy Father of Christendom should himself have blessed her husband’s crown, and should have made fast on Josephine’s brow the imperial diadem, then all blame was removed, then the empress could hope that Heaven’s blessing would accompany the new emperor and his wife!
But was it really Napoleon’s wish that Josephine should take part in this grand ceremony of coronation? Did he wish that, like him, she should receive from the hands of the pope the consecrated crown?
Such was the deep, important question which occupied, at the approaching arrival of the pope, the young imperial court; a question, too, which occupied Josephine’s mind, and also the whole family, and more especially the sisters of Bonaparte.
Josephine naturally desired that it should be so, for this solemn coronation would be a new bond uniting her to her husband, a new guaranty against the evil which the empress’s foreboding spirit still dreaded. But for the very same reasons her enemies prepared their weapons to prevent Josephine from obtaining this new consecration and this new glory, and harsh and bitter conflicts took place within the inner circles of the imperial family on account of it, which on both sides were carried on with the deepest animosity and obstinacy, but finally to a complete triumph for Josephine.
Thiers, in his “History of the Consulate and of the Empire,” relates the last scenes in this family quarrel:
“Napoleon vacillated between his affection for his wife and the secret presentiments of his policy, when an occurrence took place which nearly caused the sudden ruin of the unfortunate Josephine. Every one was in a state of agitation about the new monarch—brothers, sisters, and allies! In the solemnity which seemed to give to each a blessing, all desired to perform parts adequate to their actual pretensions, and to their hopes of the future. At the sight of this restlessness, and witnessing the pretensions and claims to which Napoleon was exposed from one of his sisters, Josephine, carried away by anxiety and jealousy, gave utterance to an insulting suspicion against his sister and against Napoleon, a suspicion which agreed with the most bitter calumnies of the royalist emigrants. Napoleon grew violently angry, and, as his wrath mastered his better feelings, he declared to Josephine that he wanted to be divorced from her; that he would have to be, sooner or later, and that it was therefore better to announce it on the spot, before other bonds should unite them still closer together. He sent for his two adopted children, communicated to them this decision, and thus produced on them a most painful impression. Hortense and Eugene de Beauharnais declared with a sad but unwavering determination that they would follow their mother into the exile which was being prepared for her. Josephine manifested a resigned and dignified sorrow. The contrast of their sorrow with the satisfaction which the other portion of the imperial family manifested, deeply lacerated Napoleon’s heart, and he relented; for he could not consent to see the companion of his youth and her children, who had been the objects of his deserved affection, made so unhappy by being forced into exile. He took Josephine in his arms, told her with emotion that he could never have the strength to part from her, even if policy itself should dictate it; and he then promised her that she should be crowned with him, and at his side should receive from the pope the divine blessing.” [Footnote: Thiers, “Histoire du Consulat et de l’Empire.” vol. v., p. 249.]
Josephine, therefore, had won a victory over the hostile sisters, but this defeat made them still more embittered, and though they were now compelled to recognize Josephine as the imperial wife of their brother, yet they would retreat only step by step, and at “least secure a place near the imperial throne, and not be compelled by the empress to stand behind. Yet this was exactly what was to take place according to the programme, which prescribed for the festivity in Notre Dame that on the day of coronation the brothers of the emperor should carry the trail of his mantle, and that his sisters should at the same time carry the trail of the empress’s mantle. But the sisters of Napoleon decidedly opposed this arrangement.
“The emperor, tired of these constant wranglings and domestic strifes, decided as judge, and declared he would no longer listen to these unheard-of and unjustifiable pretensions.
“‘Truly,’ said he, to the beautiful Pauline, who, as Princess Borghese, considered herself justified in making opposition, ‘truly, one would think, after listening to you, that I have despoiled you of the inheritance of the most blessed king our father.’” [Footnote: “Histoire du Consulat,” vol. v., p. 251.]
The ambitious sisters, kept within bounds by the angry voice of their brother, who now for the first time showed himself their ruling emperor, had to fall into their places, and abide by the regulations of the ceremony.
Nothing was wanted now to perfect the sacred celebration which was to crown all the triumphs and victories of Napoleon, nothing but the arrival of the pope: the whole imperial family, as well as France, awaited his advent with impatience.
At last the couriers brought the news that the pope had touched the French soil, and that the people were streaming toward him to manifest their respect, and to implore his blessing on their knees; the same people who precisely ten years before had closed the churches, driven the priests into exile, and consecrated their bacchanalian worship to the Goddess of Reason!
At last, on the 25th day of November, the pope entered Fontainebleau, where the emperor and the empress had hastened to receive him. No sooner was the pope’s approach announced, than Napoleon mounted his horse and rode to meet him some distance on the way. In the centre of the road took place the first interview between the representative of Christendom and the youngest son of the Church, a son who now sat on the throne of those who in former times had enjoyed the privilege of being called the elder sons of the Church.
The pope alighted from his carriage as soon as the emperor was in sight; Napoleon dismounted and hastened to meet and embrace tenderly his holiness, and then to ascend with him the carriage, the question of precedence remaining undecided, as the pope and the emperor entered the carriage at the same time from opposite sides.
Josephine, surrounded by the official dignitaries, the ministers of state, and all the generals, received the pope under the peristyle of the palace of Fontainebleau; and then, after Napoleon had led him into his room, Josephine, accompanied by her ladies, went to welcome Pius, not as empress, but as an humble, devout daughter of the Church, who wished to implore a blessing from the Holy Father of Christendom. Josephine was deeply moved; her whole being was agitated and exalted at once by this greatest of all the privileges which destiny had reserved for her, and by this consecration which she was to receive at the hands of the vicar of Christ.
As the pope, agreeably affected by this respect and emotion of the empress, offered her his hand with a genial smile, Josephine, humble as a little girl, sank down on her knees before him, kissed his hand, and with streaming eyes implored his benediction. Pius, in his soft, winning manner, promised to love her as a daughter, and that she should ever find in him a father.
The empress, deeply moved by this affectionate condescension of the pope, and impressed by the importance and solemnity of the moment, bade her ladies withdraw, whilst she, in solitude and silence, as a confessing child before the priest, should unveil her innermost heart to the Holy Father. She then sank down upon her knees, and, stammering, ashamed, with her voice broken by her sobs, acknowledged to the pope that her marriage to Napoleon had never received, the consecration of the Church; that, contracted amid the stormy days of the revolution, it still lacked the blessing hand of the priest, and that her own husband was to be blamed for this neglect. In vain had she often besought him that, since he had restored the Church to Prance, he should himself give to the world a striking example of his own return by having his marriage blessed by it. But Napoleon refused, although he had been the cause of Cardinal Caprera giving to the marriage of his sister Caroline Murat, long after it had been contracted, the blessing of the Church.
Pius heard this confession of his imperial penitent with holy resentment, and he promised her his aid and protection, assuring her he would refuse the act of coronation if the ecclesiastical marriage did not precede it.
No sooner had Josephine left him, than the pope asked for an interview with the emperor, to whom he declared, with all the zeal of a true servant of the Church, and the conviction of a devout, God-fearing man, that he was willing to crown him, and to grant him the blessing of the Church, for the state of the conscience of emperors had never been examined before their anointment; but if his wife was to be crowned with him, he must refuse his co-operation, because in crowning Josephine he dare not grant the divine sanction to concubinage.
Napoleon, though inwardly much irritated at Josephine, who, as he at once supposed, had made this confession to the pope in her own interest, was still willing to abide by the circumstances. He did not wish to irritate the pope, who as was well known was unyielding in all matters pertaining to faith; moreover, he could not change any thing in the already published ceremonial of the day, and thus he consented to have the ecclesiastical marriage. After this conversation with the pope, Napoleon went at once to Josephine, and the whole strength of his anger was spent in violent reproaches against her untimely indiscretion.
Josephine endured these silently, and full of inward satisfaction; she did not listen to Napoleon’s angry words; she only heard that he was decided to have his marriage sanctioned by the Church, and now she would be his wife before God, as she had been before men for the last ten years. Now at last her fate was decided, and her marriage made irrevocable; now she would no longer dread that Napoleon would punish her childlessness by a divorce.
During the night which preceded the day of the coronation, the night of the 1st of December, the ecclesiastical marriage of Napoleon and Josephine took place in the chapel of the Tuileries. The only witnesses were Talleyrand and Berthier, from both of whom the emperor had exacted an oath of profound silence. Cardinal Fesch, the emperor’s uncle, performed the ceremony, and pronounced the benediction of the Church over this marriage, which Bonaparte’s love for Josephine had induced him to consent to, and which her love endeavored to make indissoluble.
This marriage, which she desired both as a loving woman and as a devout Christian, was the most glorious triumph which Josephine had ever obtained over the enmity of her husband’s sisters, for it was a new proof of the love and faithfulness of this man, whom neither expediency, nor family, nor state reasons, could remove from her, and who, with the hand of love, had guided her away from all the dangers which had surrounded her.
CHAPTER XL.
THE CORONATION.
At last, on the 2d of December, came the day which Napoleon had during many years past longed for within the recesses of his heart; the day which his ambition had hoped for, the day of his solemn coronation. And now the victorious soldier was to see all his laurels woven into an imperial crown—that which Julius Caesar had tried to win, and for which the republic punished him with death.
But now the republicans were silent: before this new Julius Caesar they dare not lift up their swords, for the power belonged to him, and that he knew how to punish had been seen by trembling France not long ago at the execution of George Cadoudal and his associates, the people sanctioning those executions.
There was no Brutus there to plunge the dagger into the breast of the new Cassar. His was the victory, the throne, the crown; and all France was in joyous excitement at this new triumph, that the pope himself should come from Rome to Paris so as to place the crown on the head of an emperor by the grace of the people, and to make of the elect of the people an elect of God.
The day had scarcely begun to dawn when all the streets of Paris through which the imperial as well as the papal procession had to move toward Notre Dame were filled with wave-like masses of human beings, who soon occupied not only the streets but all the windows and all the roofs of the houses. Those who were fortunate enough to be provided with cards of admission into Notre Dame, went at six o’clock in the morning to the cathedral, for whose adorning during the last fourteen days more than a thousand workmen had been busy, and who had not yet quite finished their work, retiring only when the approach of the pope and of his suite was announced. In the interior of the Tuileries began from the commencement of the day, on three different sides, a lively movement.
Here, in the apartments which the pope occupied, gathered together the cardinals, the clergy, and all the church dignitaries who in the pope’s suite were to proceed to Notre Dame.
There, in the apartments of the emperor, a host of courtiers and officers waited from early dawn for the moment when the toilet of the emperor should be completed, and he should go to the great throne-room, where the empress and the imperial family would await him.
The greatest excitement, however, naturally prevailed in the apartments of the empress, whose toilet occupied a host of chambermaids and ladies of the court, and which had already been for months the subject of thought, labor, and art, for painter and embroiderer, and for all manner of professions, as well as for the master of ceremonies. For this imperial toilet-ceremonial was to be in accordance with the traditions of ancient France, but was not, at the same time, to be a mere imitation of the coronation-toilet of the Bourbons, whom the revolution had dethroned, the same revolution which had opened for Napoleon the way to the throne.
For this important ceremony, therefore, special costumes, somewhat resembling those of former centuries, had been found. The painter Ingres had furnished the designs for these costumes, and also plans for the procession and for the groupings in Notre Dame; he had prepared all this in pictures of great effect for the emperor’s inspection. But in order to show to advantage the several costumes, as well as the train of personages, and the subdivisions of the different groups of the imperial dignitaries, Ingres had caused small puppets to be dressed in similar costumes, and arrayed in the order of the procession according to the prescribed ceremonies for that day; and for weeks the imperial court had been studying these costumes, and every one’s duty had been to impress on his mind the position assigned to him for the day of coronation. [Footnote: Constant, “Memoires,” vol. iii., p. 111.]
The pope’s toilet was the first completed; and at nine o’clock, all dressed in white, he entered a carriage drawn by eight grays; over it in gilt bronze were the tiara and the attributes of papacy. In front of the carriage rode one of his chamberlains upon a white ass, bearing a large silver cross before God’s vicegerent. Behind it in new carriages came the cardinals, the prelates, and the Italian officers of the pope’s palace.
While the papal train was moving slowly on the quays of the Seine toward the cathedral, amid the sounds of bells, and the unceasing, joyful shouts of the people, all was yet in motion within the apartments of the emperor and empress. On all sides hurried along the dignitaries and officers who were to form a part of the imperial procession.
For this day, Napoleon had been obliged to cast off his plain uniform and substitute the splendid theatrical costume of imperial magnificence. The stockings were of silk, wrought with gold, embroidered round the edge with imperial crowns; the shoes were of white velvet, worked and embroidered with gold; short breeches of white velvet, embroidered with gold at the hips, and with buttons and buckles of diamonds in the shape of garters; the vest also was of white velvet, embroidered with gold and having diamond buttons; the coat was of crimson velvet, with facings of white velvet along all the seams above and around, and sparkling with gold; the half-mantle was also crimson, lined with white satin, and hanging over the left shoulder, while on the right shoulder and upon the breast it was fastened with a pair of diamond clasps. Sleeves of the most costly lace fell about the arms; the cravat was of Indian muslin, the collar likewise of lace; the cap, of black velvet, was adorned with two plumes and surrounded by a coronet of diamonds, which “the regent” used as a clasp. Such was the costume which the emperor wore in the procession from the Tuileries to Notre Dame. In the vestry of the cathedral he put on the ample state-robes, that is to say, the robe and mantle of emperor. [Footnote: Constant, “Memoires,” vol. ii., p. 212.]
The toilet of the empress was no less splendid and brilliant. It consisted of an elaborate robe with a long train; this robe was of silver brocade, with gold bees scattered all over; in front it was embroidered into a maze of gold-leaves; at the lower edge was a gold fringe; the shoulders alone were bare; long armlets of wrought gold, and adorned at the upper part with diamonds, enclosed the arm and covered one-half of the hand. It required all the art and grace of Josephine to carry this robe, it being without any waist, and, according to the fashion of the times, extremely narrow, and yet in wearing it to lose naught of her elegance or condescending dignity. At the upper part of the dress rose a collar a la Medicis of lace worked in with gold, and which Josephine had been constrained to wear, so as at least, through some historic details, to make her toilet correspond to the costume of the renaissance worn by Napoleon. A gold girdle, adorned with thirty-nine diamond rosettes, fastened under the breast her tunic-like dress. In her fondness for the antique, Josephine, instead of diamonds and pearls, had preferred for bracelets, ear-rings, and necklace, some choice stones of rare workmanship. Her beautiful thick hair was encircled and held together by a splendid diadem, a masterpiece of modern art. This toilet was to be completed, like that of Napoleon, before the solemn entrance into the cathedral, by putting on the imperial mantle, which was fastened on the shoulders with gold buckles and diamond clasps.
At last the imperial toilets were completed; all the dignitaries, as well as the imperial family, gathered together in the throne-room, ready for the procession. Holding Josephine by the hand, her countenance expressing deep emotion, and her eye obscured by the tears shed as a price for the solemn marriage of that night, Napoleon appeared in the midst of his brilliant courtiers, and received the impressive, heart-felt wishes of his family, his brothers and sisters, who pressed around him and the empress, and who at this moment, forgetting all envy and jealousy, had only words of thankfulness and assurances of love, devotedness, and loyalty.
Napoleon replied to them all in the short, comprehensive words which he addressed to his brother Joseph, whilst with his naming eyes he examined his brothers and sisters in the brilliant costumes of their dignity and glory:
“Joseph,” said he, “could our father see us now!” [Footnote: Meneval, “Souvenirs,” vol. i., p. 204.]
From the pomp and solemnity of this important moment the thoughts of the emperor, for whom the pope was waiting in Notre Dame, wandered far away to the gloomy, quiet death-bed of his father, whose last hour was embittered by the tormenting thought of leaving his family unprotected and with but little means.
The thundering roar of cannon and the chimes of bells proclaimed that the emperor and empress, with their train, were now leaving the palace to ascend into the wonderful carriage made of gold and glass, and which was waiting for them at the Pavilion de l’Horloge to proceed toward the cathedral.
This carriage, prepared expressly for this day’s celebration, was of enormous size and breadth, with windows on all sides, and entirely alike in its front and back seats. It therefore happened that their imperial majesties, on entering the carriage, not thinking of the direction to be taken, sat down on the front instead of the back seat.
The empress noticed the mistake, and when she laughingly called the emperor’s attention to it, they both took the back seat without a suspicion that this little error was a bad omen.
Another little mishap occurred before they entered Notre Dame, which threw a gloom of sad forebodings and fear over the heart of the empress.
Whilst alighting out of the carriage, the empress, whose hand was occupied in the holding and carrying her robe and mantle, let slip from her fingers the imperial ring which the pope had brought her for a present, and which before the coronation he was to bless, according to the accustomed ceremonial, and then place it on her finger as a token of remembrance of the holy consecration. This made Josephine tremble, and her cheeks turned pale, especially as the ring could nowhere be found. It had rolled a considerable distance from the carriage, and only after some minutes did Eugene Beauharnais find it and bring it to his mother, to her great delight and satisfaction. [Footnote: Aubenas, “Histoire de l’Imperatrice Josephine,” vol. ii., p. 283.]
At last the procession entered Notre Dame, and the brilliant solemnity began. It is not our purpose to describe here again the ceremony which has been in all its details portrayed in so many works, and to repeat the solemn addresses and the different events of this great and memorable day. It is with Josephine we have to do, and with what concerns her individual destiny—that alone claims our attentive consideration.
One event, however, is to be mentioned. At the moment the emperor took from the altar the so-called crown of Charles the Great, and with firm hand placed it on his head—at the moment when he assumed the place of the ancient Kings of France, a small stone, which had detached itself from the cupola, fell down, touched his head, leaped on his shoulder, slipped down his imperial mantle, and rolled over the altar-steps near to the pope’s throne, where it remained still until an Italian priest picked it up. [Footnote: Abrantes. “Memoires,” vol. vii., p. 258.]
At the moment of his loftiest grandeur the destiny of his future aimed its first stone at him, and marked him as the one upon whom its anger was to fall.
This was the third evil omen of the day; but fortunately Josephine had not noticed it. Her whole soul was absorbed in the sacred rites; and, after the emperor had crowned himself, her heart trembled with deep emotion and agitation, for now the moment had come when she was to take her part in the solemnity.
The Duchess d’Abrantes, who was quite near Josephine, and an immediate witness of the whole celebration, depicts the next scene in the following words: “The moment when the greatest number of eyes were fixed upon the altar-steps where the emperor stood, was when Josephine was crowned by him, and was solemnly consecrated Empress of the French. What a moment! ... what a homage! What a proof of love manifested to her from him who so much loved her!
“David’s painting, and many other pictures taken during the coronation, at the very spot and time, have well represented the empress at the feet of Napoleon, who crowns her; then the pope, the priests, and even persons who were four hundred miles away—as, for instance, the emperor’s mother, who was then in Rome, but whom David nevertheless brings into his picture. But nothing, however, can give us a true description, or even an approximate idea, of this alike touching and lofty scene, where a great man by his own efforts ascends a throne, for on this occasion he was full of gratitude and emotion.
“When the moment had come for Josephine to take her part in the great drama, the empress rose from the throne and approached the altar, where the emperor was waiting for her; she was followed by the ladies of the palace and by her whole court, while the Princesses Caroline, Julie (the wife of Joseph), the Princess Elise, and Louis Bonaparte, carried the trail of her robe. One of the most admirable features in the beauty of the Empress Josephine was not her fine, graceful figure, but the bearing of her head—the gracious and noble manner in which she moved and walked. I have had the honor to be introduced to many ‘real princesses,’ as they are termed, in the Faubourg St. Germain, and I can in all sincerity say that I have never seen one who appeared to me so imposing as the Empress Josephine. In her, grace and majesty were blended. When she put on the grand imperial robes there was no woman whose appearance could be more royal in demeanor, and, in reality, none who understood the art of occupying a throne as well as she, though she never had been instructed in it.
“I read all that I have now said in the eyes of Napoleon. He watched with delight the empress as she moved toward him; and as she knelt before him, ... as the tears she could not restrain streamed down her folded hands, which were lifted up to him more than to God, at that moment, when Napoleon, or, much more, when Bonaparte was for her the real and visible Providence, there passed over these two beings one of those fugitive minutes, unique in its kind, and never to be recalled in a whole life, and which fills to overflowing the void of many long years. The emperor performed with an unexcelled grace the most minute details of every part of the subsequent ceremony, especially when the moment came to crown the empress.
“This ceremony was to be performed by the emperor himself, who, after he had received the small closed crown surmounted by a cross, placed it first on his own head, and then afterward on the head of the empress. He performed these two movements with a most exquisite slowness, which was indeed admirable. But at the moment when he was to crown her who was for him, according to a prophecy, ‘the star of happiness,’ he made himself, if I dare use the expression, coquettish. He arranged this little crown which was to stand over her coronet of diamonds, and placed it on her head, then lifted it up to replace it in another way, as if to promise her that this crown would be light and pleasant to her.” [Footnote: Abrantes, “Memoires.”]
After this twofold crowning performed by Napoleon himself, the pope, surrounded by cardinals and prelates, approached the throne, and arriving upon the platform pronounced in a loud voice, spreading his hands over their imperial majesties, the ancient Latin formula of enthronization: “In hoc solio confirme vos Deus, et in regno aeterno secum regnare faciat Christus.” (God establish you on this throne, and Christ make you reign with Him in His everlasting kingdom.) He then kissed the emperor on the cheeks, and turning himself to the audience, cried with a loud voice: “Vivat imperator in aeternum!”
The immense cathedral resounded with one glad shout of thousands of voices: “Long live the emperor! long live the empress!” Napoleon, calm and reserved, answered this acclamation with a friendly motion of the head. Josephine stood near him, pale, deeply moved, her eyes, full of tears, fixed on the emperor, as if she would pray to him, and not to God, for the prosperity and blessing of the future.
Meanwhile the pope had descended from his throne, and while he approached the altar, the bands played “Long live the emperor,” which the Abbe Kose had composed for this solemnity. Then the pope, standing before the altar, intoned the Te Deum, which was at once executed by four choirs and two orchestras, and which completed the ecclesiastical part of the ceremony.
This was followed by a secular one. The emperor took, on the Bible which Cardinal Fesch presented to him, the oath prescribed in the constitution, and whereby he pledged himself solemnly to maintain “the most wise results of the revolution, to defend the integrity of the territory, and to rule only in the interest of the happiness and glory of the French people.” After he had taken this oath, a herald approached the edge of the platform, and, according to ancient custom, cried out in a loud voice: “The most mighty and glorious Emperor Napoleon, Emperor of the French, is crowned and enthroned! Long live the emperor!”
A tremendous, prolonged shout of joy followed this proclamation: “Long live the emperor! Long live the empress!” and then an artillery salute thundered forth from behind the cathedral, and a similar salute responded from the Tuileries, and from the Invalides, and proclaimed to all Paris that France had again found a ruler, that a new dynasty had been lifted up above the French people.
At this moment from the Place de Carrousel ascended an enormous air balloon surmounted by an ornamental, gigantic crown, and which, on the wings of the wind, was to announce to France the same tidings proclaimed to Paris by bell and cannon: “The republic of France is converted into an empire! The free republicans are now the subjects of the Emperor Napoleon I.!”
The gigantic balloon arose amid the joyous shouts of the crowd, and soon disappeared from the gaze of the spectators. It flew, as a trophy of victory of Napoleon I., all over France. Thousands saw it and understood its silent and yet eloquent meaning, but no one could tell where it had fallen, finally, after many weeks, the emperor, who had often asked after the balloon’s fate, received the wished-for answer. The balloon had fallen in Rome, upon Nero’s grave!
Napoleon remained silent a moment at this news: a shadow passed over his countenance; then his brow brightened again, and he exclaimed: “Well, I would sooner see it there, than in the dust of the streets!”